Tag Archives: technology

Health

Catching Up

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Well. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I wasn’t even going to look up how long it’s been, but the WordPress app front loads the list of recent posts and, well, the last time I posted here was in February. And even that post was late. So I guess 2022 hasn’t been a good year for posting. Hasn’t been a good year for a lot of other people either, but at least this one small thing I can fix…

In actual fact, I did have plans for posting here multiple times across the year, but distractions and overthinking combined make for a high hurdle. Something of a theme for the year, maybe? Anyhow, here’s a bundle of thoughts that maybe should have been posts of their own but didn’t make it.

Health

May as well get this out of the way first, seeing as part of the reason for getting back into posting was to throw out updates on my health situation. So, the good news is that the cancer is staying put for the moment—my medicine is doing its job nicely and long may it continue to do so. Covid hasn’t been quite so friendly, and it’s taken two shots at me this year, the latter of which left me with a cough that’s been hard to shake in the face of a cold snap and the array of sniffles and maladies doing the rounds at the moment. Still, Christmas is coming, and that’s a season of rest, right?

Work

Not a huge amount to say on this front, apart from the fact that I’m getting towards two years in the games industry and still enjoying it. Actual details will be thin on the ground, due to the NDA-heavy nature of the industry, but we actually had some RTE cameras in the studio recently, and it was nice to see some info creep out into the wild. With any luck, there will be some exciting news on the projects I’ve been working on revealed to the world.

Writing

Not for the first time, NaNoWriMo was a bust. Honestly, being stuck at home as much as I’ve been this year isn’t conducive to creative writing, at least for me. What creative juices have been flowing have been directed towards work instead. Hopefully something to balance a little better in 2023.

Travel

I travelled! Not just once, but twice. First time in March, a long weekend in London, to catch the Stonehenge exhibit in the British Museum (proof that the BM can do pretty well in the absence of imperially abducted goods) and do a metric ton of walking across a city I love but hadn’t been to in about ten years. Then, towards the end of the year, I took a somewhat chaotic trip across Switzerland, Germany, and Brussels. My travelling partner came down with Covid (I dodged it, somehow), but we took in new cities and met old friends, and I got to travel by rail and climb to the top of Cologne Cathedral, eleven years after I arrived in town too late to gain access. Again, here’s hoping that 2023 has some new travel adventures in store.

From below ground level to the base of the tall spire. With only a few pauses to catch my breath.

Movies

I didn’t get to the cinema much this year, mostly out of a desire to avoid Covid. And there are still several movies that came out this year that I really want to watch, not least The Banshees of Inisherin. Still, I did see a few. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was disappointing, at least on my first and only watch. Chadwick Boseman’s absence was felt and the gap wasn’t entirely filled, even with multiple actors taking their shots at it. In this, it felt as disjointed as its Marvel stablemate, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Which at least had the advantage of multiversal capering and Sam Raimi’s imaginative visuals to keep things fun. Lastly, there was See How They Run, which started strong with Saoirse Ronan and Sam Rockwell’s double act (Ronan in particular is a deadpan delight) but never quite committed to the bit and limped to a flat finish.

TV

If movies were something of a mixed bag for me in 2022, TV offered a lot. Especially when it came to large-scale fantasy productions. Amazon’s The Rings of Power threw huge amounts of money at the screen to variable results, but despite a few charming performances it was sunk by the fact that its setting, massively truncated in time and space, had little to no internal coherence. Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon fared a lot better by keeping its focus on the machinations of family and regal politics and trusting the audience to follow along with its time jumps. Its success can be seen in just how hard the climax of the series hit. Lastly, there was the long (as in decades) awaited adaption of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, which proved admirably faithful to the books, under Gaiman’s stewardship. Perhaps even to a fault, as the series more or less climaxed in episode 5, had its strongest episode in the subsequent one, then picked up some loose plot threads to round out the season. Now that it’s been confirmed for a second season pickup, hopefully some of these pacing issues can be smoothed out.

Other Media

Loads to talk about here, but this is already dragging on a bit, so I’ll do a drive by on everything.

Comics: Kieron Gillen has been one of my favourite writers for years, and he got his moment in the sun this year with the Judgement Day crossover, in which he got to put all of the Marvel toys in play and run them through an existential wringer. Well worth catching, especially if you read his Eternals series (a vital prequel and great series in its own right).

Games: Best game of the year is a recent entrant. Pentiment sees the player take the role of an artist in medieval Germany and attempt to solve a murder that rocks a small mountain community and the nearby abbey. It’s meticulously researched and beautifully presented, but it’s not heavy going at all, and I introduced a non-gamer friend to it, much to their enjoyment. Worth a spin if you have any interest in murder mysteries, the social politics of imperial Germany, or illustrated manuscripts.

Roleplaying Games: Keeping up a regular gaming habit in the face of social distancing wasn’t easy, but now that those restrictions have eased a bit, there has been some in-person gaming too. Most of that has been plain old D&D (with Solasta providing a nice toolset for online D&D adventures) but I’m hoping for more in 2023: a return to Call of Cthulhu, the new Pendragon release from Chaosium, and the Kickstarter delivery of DIE, based on Kieron Gillen’s comic of the same name, which promises some psychologically intense gaming if I can find people willing to play it.

And that’s…

…it. Too little too late as far as 2022 goes, but here’s hoping I’ll be a little more active in 2023. Plans are afoot to be a little more organised at least. I have all of the tools at my disposal. I just have to use them and develop good habits that have fallen into abeyance. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.

Technology

The New Baseline

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All the colours of the candy rainbow.
Lickable shiny. Just … keep your tongue away from mine, okay?

The announcement this week of Apple’s new range of iPhones has generated some new and some standard complaints from pundits. For the new top-of-the-line iPhone 5s, the complaint is that it’s not all that different from the previous model. For the new midrange 5c, it’s that it isn’t a cheap iPhone. Oh, and the colourful plastic shells look tacky.

To deal briefly with the 5s: yes, it’s a speedbump. Everyone saw that one coming. However, initial reports suggest that it’s a substantial speed bump, and there are new and useful features in the form of an improved camera, an intriguing standalone motion detection chip and the much-discussed fingerprint sensor. Perhaps most importantly, it shifts the iPhone towards 64-bit computing, providing some decent futureproofing.

I’m not going to comment on the looks of the 5c until I have one in hand, other than to note that those who have handled them seem to have come away impressed. The issue of whether the 5c is too expensive to work for Apple as a “cheap” iPhone is the more interesting question, and it’s one where most critics (including the perennially misled markets) seem to have missed the point.

For all the talk of a “cheap” iPhone prior to the arrival of the 5c, Apple doesn’t do cheap, certainly not since the second coming of Steve Jobs. Its products tend to fit between “premium” and “affordable luxury”, depending on how you view those scales. In that sense, the 5c has been positioned as a “midrange” iPhone, fitting just beneath the new 5s.

Except that doesn’t tell the entire story either. Up until now, Apple had only one model of iPhone: the new iPhone. (It also sold last year’s new iPhone, and the previous year’s new iPhone too.) Selling older iPhones alongside the new model allowed Apple to leverage investments in manufacturing and economies of scale, but those old iPhones always felt a little second-hand.

With the release of the 5s, Apple has doubled the breadth of its new-iPhone product line in a stroke, giving consumers a choice much more appealing than one between the “new shiny” and the “old shiny that you can actually afford.” Relatively expensive the 5c may be, but to balance that it’s still a fully capable smartphone, in a brand new form factor that offers a splash of colour never seen on iPhones before.

Yes, an old-new iPhone still remains on the product list, in the form of the 4s, but I’m not sure that’ll last even a year. With two lines of iPhones above it, both using the iPhone 5 form factor and manufacturing lines, Apple is going to be shifting as quickly as it can to focus solely on these products. Improved manufacturing techniques and greater output lead to economies of scale and enhanced margins for Apple—or lower prices.

Because that’s really the thing with the 5s. Once the 4s goes, it becomes the new baseline for the iPhone line, and while it will never be “cheap”, I can see Apple cutting its price by €100 or so in about six months, making it even more price-competitive with Android smartphones.

After that, Apple suddenly has two product lines to work with—the “top-end iPhone” for those who want the latest and best iOS device, and the “iPhone for everybody” who wants an iPhone device but doesn’t want to break the bank for the latest and greatest.

What the 5c means is that the latter group no longer has to see themselves as buying last year’s cast-offs. The 5c isn’t about what it is now, as much as it might sell on its release. It’s about what it’s going to be a year from now. Because Apple always plays the long game, and it’s just shifted the iPhone baseline.

Reviews, Technology

Beauty, not Brains?

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20130822-141343.jpg
Hairy arm: model’s own.

Pebble Smartwatch, $150, iOS and Android

As people smarter than myself have already pointed out, taking part in a Kickstarter funding campaign is like buying a present for your future self: by the time it arrives, you’ll have forgotten that you paid for it, and be pleasantly surprised that it showed up at all. That and the feeling of actually participating in a product rather than just buying it are all the reasons you need to know why Kickstarter is still huge.

To date, I’ve participated in five Kickstarter campaigns, mostly for small amounts. In each case, it was clear that I’d be waiting a long time for the results, something I didn’t mind at all. Well, in recent months my currently impoverished self has been reaping the benefits of my affluent former self, in that two of the results have shown up (in one form or another).

My biggest Kickstarter contribution to date was for one of the site’s most famous campaigns: the Pebble ePaper watch. A customisable bluetooth watch for Android and iOS phones, the Pebble raised $10,000,000 through Kickstarter, far above an original funding goal of $100,000. Due to the fact that I opted for a grey watchface rather than black, red or white, mine took a little longer to arrive than it might have otherwise, but a few weeks ago I wrested it from the hands of Irish customs and onto my wrist.

For the first wave in a new breed of smartwatches (Kickstarter is already hosting its more ambitious next-gen brethren), the Pebble has a definite retro, plastic feel to it. Which is not to say it’s not solid: the plastic case keeps it watertight while allowing charging through a USB lead and keeps the body light despite the its bulk.

The ePaper screen is basic but readable, with a motion-activated backlight, and can be modified with a multitude of watchfaces. Figuring out how to do so can be a bit of a chore: the online setup process is straighforward enough, but for more expansive options, you’ll need to use your phone’s web browser and the app that manages the Pebble itself.

In use, the Pebble is a handy accessory. I often don’t hear my phone when it’s in my pocket, but I can feel the Pebble’s vibration on my wrist without a problem, alerting me to calls, texts and mails. I can even read the mails and texts, or at least the first few lines of the mails, on the Pebble’s screen, though this only works in the moment—there’s no way to browse older messages.

At the time of buying the Pebble, my main reason was to have it as a running accessory. I’d just started recording my running with RunKeeper, and the idea of having a watch that would tell me my pace and distance covered sounded pretty good. Well, mission accomplished on that front: the Pebble keeps updated throughout a run

There are only three issues with the Pebble, all of them technology based. The first is that it drops the bluetooth connection occasionally. This is an issue because the Pebble isn’t a smartwatch. It’s a terminal for your smartphone, and lacking the connection, it can tell you the time in various pretty ways but not much else (there are game apps for the Pebble, but the chunky buttons don’t allow for sensitive control).

The second issue is battery life. I’ve averaged around five days so far, which isn’t too bad for a bluetooth device, but the phone software doesn’t do a great job of indicating when you need to recharge, so there have been a couple of times when I’ve looked at my wrist and found a blank screen looking at me. Annoying, but some of those multitude of watchfaces promise to fix that issue.

The last issue is probably the biggest one for Pebble: this is a first-generation device, cute and functional, but staring down the barrel of technological innovation. As stated, Kickstarter is already hosting second-generation devices, and Apple and Samsung look set to enter the space before long, bringing all their engineering know-how to the field. When that happens, Pebble’s retro looks may become all-too apt.

For now though, I’m wearing a watch for the first time in a couple of years, and I’m more than happy with the present my former self bought me. Runkeeper functionality, message and call alerts and a variety of funky watchfaces. It may not be smart, but it sure is handy.