Scoble Speaks Out

First of all if you don’t know who Robert Scoble is, then you should. Currently he works for podtech making his videoblog scobleshow as well as writing the brilliant Scobelizer blog. My understanding isn’t great (feel free to correct me if i’m wrong) but if i remember correctly his rise to blogging fame came whilst he was still working for Microsoft and would interview employees on their current projects for a kind of videoblog (which may now be channel 9??)

Okay, im going to stop embarrassing myself. Lets be honest i got into the whole reading/writing of blogs long after all that had blown over. But the facts stand, Scobelizer’s a damn good read and he tends to be a reliable tech journalist.In This recent post he hits out against the very Apple vigilantes i spoke of in my previous post. He criticises the way the apple marketing machine works and recent hardware failures have clearly spurred on a little bitterness too.

I think its a refreshing read and touches on a few things that others aren’t brave enough to say. I’m afraid i sit on the fence over the whole issue. I love my apple products, my ipod, my Macbook pro and they are without a doubt my first choice in their field of technology. I love the styling and the simple ‘just works’ interfaces… but i’ve had my fair share of problems with them too. Leopard broke the macbook pro outright. Would not boot at all. Period.

Thankfully Andy Hicks was close to a computer and fished off the relevent commands to punch into single user mode to rescue it. I’ve had to replace hard drives in a powerbook and a macbook (Andy’s actually!) both of which went without any warning at all. Just *poof* your data is gone. I can therefore sympathise with the anger too.

I think this quote really explains one of the gripes at the heart of the argument.

‘Any idiot can use an Apple machine (that’s what they tell you before you buy one) but if your machine crashes then you must be a “genius” to fix it’

Thats my read of the day! I’m sure that this and many other Mac related disputes will continue for time to come. There will always be the die-hard fan boys, those who totally hate them and every shade of grey that lies between.

November 28, 2007 | No Comments »

App of the week : Syncmate

I’m a bit of a geek, there’s no real way of getting around that. Also, im a particular kind of geek. I’m a Mac user. Now there is an army of devout Apple followers who will berate anybody who so much as questions the very brilliance of a Mac.

I’m not one of those.

I’m a funny hybrid. I still own windows boxes, and am very much tied to windows because of certain applications i use at work. I’ll even occasionally dabble with Linux (well Ubuntu, one of the more user friendly forms of Linux). Yet still, nothing i use really measures up (in my eyes, I’m not here to start an argument) to my Macbook Pro.

As such, i do the vast majority of my day to day emailing, browsing and communicating on my Macbook. Therefore you can understand my complete frustration and being unable to sync my phone, a HTC hermes running windows mobile 5 with my main computer. I have tried various syncing utilities over time, but none have been effective or free. This has meant one of two alternative options.

1. manually adding any events/contacts to whichever device i wasn’t nearest to when i need to make the addition.

2. bypassing my mac completely and always syncing with a windows box.

I tried the second for a while, but i just found it a plain nuisance as i rarely sat in front of the same windows machine on a regular basis. Like i said, i encounter them a lot at work but those machines are part of our media server so it would be completely inappropriate to run outlook on them. I have an office pc at work which is windows but never sit in the office. I pick up my work email on my Mac via webmail bypassing the need for all that. At home i have 2 windows boxes, one is a file server and the other a media server which get well used. But again, always via my mac!

The whole re-entering events multiple times completely defeats the object of the modern interconnected world! So one big HALLELUYAH to the very great lifehacker for discovering Syncmate its a freeware app for doing the windows mobile syncing to ical, address book, bookmarks, iphoto… infact you name it. I’ve had a bit of a play with it today and so far i’m very impressed. It just works, first time ever time. The way i expect it to!

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No rest for the wicked

As I rolled into work yesterday morning it struck me that i’d been doing this for far to many days in a row. 16 to be precise. This prompted me to have a think about the hours i’ve been working. During Monday to Friday this week i’d worked a total of 66 hours. Thats 26 more than i was suppsed to and 26 more than i was paid for! NIGHTMARE! Still this doesn’t happen every week, does it? Hmmm.

Anyway, all the overtime was for a good cause. The edge awards rolled into the Camden Roundhouse on Thursday morning, it didn’t go ideally but then thats life. The Photoset is here.

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November 25, 2007 | No Comments »

Projection on the Southbank

Frequently i’m in two minds whether to post photos of the video work i do. Depending on how sensitive the client it about the content i can usually gauge what to do. More often than not i’ll post photos that omit the design or logos used for that particular event. In the hope that it leaves me clear to showcase my own work without stepping on anybody elses toes.

With my most recent project i don’t have any such problem at all! The venue was the Shell building on London’s Southbank, with the result viewable to thousands of Londoners, i had no worries about snapping away. Unfortunately light was bad, and i’d forgotten my tripod so few made the grade when i uploaded them. Still, the ones i did manage (i propped my camera on a flightcase on top of a projector lens cap) i’m pretty proud of. Take a look at the flickr set here

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November 17, 2007 | No Comments »

Blog of the week – Terrybumpkin

A friend of mine gets a mysterious lump removed from her neck and makes a quite brilliant blog about the whole experience. I’m not sure how much lifespan there will be now the lump has gone, but definitely worth a read here

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Today’s Find of the day – Do-it

Do-it is an automator script for inputing events into apples ical. It groups all your options together and streamlines the whole process. I like it. Give it a try!

November 14, 2007 | No Comments »

Retrospect : In the beginning

Like so many of the guys i went to uni with, getting into the production industry wasn’t a planned or deliberate choice. There was no, “mummy when i grow up i want to be a roadie” conversations to be had at all. Instead it was the result of a much more organic process. Like many my interest was grabbed during my secondary school days. A drama teacher at the school called Jay Marriott ran what we called the ‘stage crew’ which serviced the termly showcase of work by the drama and music departments as well as the annual school play. It wasn’t too hi-tech or complex, but we had fun non-the-less! Jay left the school as i moved into year 10 and it seemed natural progression that we continue our little club on ourselves.

By a democratic process (a show of hands) i ended up fronting the Stage Crew for the last 2 years i spent at my secondary school and handled hires and organisational responsibilities for the most part. Now i know, i’d call that role a production manager. Either way the roles were fairly unimportant, as the shows would almost always be 8 pars a couple of S4’s and the dated (i mean 1980’s) in house sound equipment.

Academically i was a conscientious student, i worked hard and i turned up to my lessons etc. Unfortunately however i was fairly average in my ability. I stumbled through my GCSE’s a got what i considered to an okay set. When it came to further eduction, the ethos at the school was very much “drop outs go to college, propper students stay at 6th form’ A ruthless money making scheme if nothing else!

I stayed at the 6th form for a year struggling with a collection of A/S levels that i was both uninterested in and performing poorly at. My overall grades for that year were one D in Drama. A poor show considering i took four subjects! It just goes to show, just because you’re conscientious doesn’t mean you’re an academic!

Knowing that i’d messed up, and flailing at the prospect of failure and uncertainty i hit the internet and found a course that i knew i’d enjoy. The Theatre Productions Course at NCN Clarendon was the answer.

I spent 2 of the best years attaining a BND and came out with a distinction. I’d finally managed to find something i was good at and had made a really good set of friends in the process. Throughout the course i’d studied, Lighting, sound, costume, set design, stage managment, and props. When it came to the end there was that same panicky feeling of uncertainty. Not sure what to do, or if i was even in any position to get a job with the qualifications i’d attained. So what do you do ? More eduction! I’d particularly enjoyed the Lighting and Stage Managment aspects of my course at Clarendon So thats what i applied to do at uni.

My first interview was at a place called Rose Bruford in Kent. I fell in love with the place straight away, the grounds, the resources and tutors all appealed to my way of working. A few weeks later i would get the acceptance letter to offer me a place on the Stage Management course.

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November 9, 2007 | Tags: | No Comments »

Still no IMAP :-(

Its been 2 or so weeks since i first read the exciting news about the IMAP upgrades google are rolling out for their Gmail customers and i’m still yet to receive mine! C’mon google!

Have many others received theirs yet ? Your answers on a postcard.

November 6, 2007 | No Comments »

Another Update

Due to a heavy work load and some enforced insomnia i’ve been rarely near an internet connection for the last week and a half. As such, the whole blogging business as unfortunately taken a bit of a back seat. Thankfully life will slow down a bit over the next few weeks and i should be able to give this more attention. As a starter here’s what you’ve missed.

Spent 5 day in mancheser working at the G-Mex. We produced a huge 180degree panorama out of five stacks of Christie 20k’s for a corporate conference. For the sake of sensitivity i won’t be naming who the client was, but the photos can be found here.

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In more photo related news i attended the ‘Guy Fawkes memorial service’ last night at a friends house in Sidcup. There’s a photoset from the night here.

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Like i said, no gigs for 2 weeks! So should get time for some more blogging, and maybe even some sleep!

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