Tag: iPhone

Happy iOS7 Release Day

Today’s the day. iOS7 will be made available at some point today. It’s not out yet, but it will be.

Are you looking forward to upgrading your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch with a user interface that looks like it was designed by a five year old with a box of crayons?

I know, I know… I’m going to upgrade both of my iOS devices. Maybe not tonight, but definitely this week. The new UI doesn’t excite me at all. In fact, it makes me a little sad. It makes me hesitate to upgrade. The screen shots I’ve seen look… well… stupid. I can’t stop imagining a five year old with the smallest box of crayolas scribbling away on the screen. Despite that, I am guessing that within a day or so I won’t even notice the changes anymore, and I’ll forget what iOS6 looked like. I mean, it’s only a UI after all.

Happy iOS7 release day. Come on and party down with the Apple nerds.

Oggl One Ups Hipstamatic

I didn’t realize this until this morning, but if you use Oggl you can go back and change the lens/film selections of photos you’ve already shared. I shared these last night:
Harvard Square

and

HipstaPrint

But I could have sworn that I did not post them as black and whites. I thought I had changed to a color film before sending them off everywhere. Today I played around for a minute and a half and was able to change them to these:

photo

and

photo

Cool, eh? The downside is that I cannot re-share them via Oggl itself, and the new configuration actually replaces the old one in the photo stream, so it’s not like you can take one picture and save 50 different versions of it or anything crazy like that. Still, I don’t think you can do that with Hipstamatic itself. You have to set the lens/film/flash (does anyone use the flash? I don’t) before you snap the pic.

Just letting you all know.

Telecommuting Trick – Apple Style

When I am working from home I like to listen to music.  For some reason, Richard Thompson (with and without Linda, and with and without Fairport Convention) seems to work for me while I work.  Not sure why.

Anyway, I have gotten into the habit of sitting at the dining room table while I work.  I don’t like wearing headphones for long periods of time so I don’t like to wear them while working all day.  I have a sweet Bose iPod dock that I had been using, but it isn’t something I can leave in the dining room and frankly I’m too lazy to hook it up and take it down all the time.

What to do?

I thought about streaming my iTunes Match account through our Apple TV.  Why not, the television goes through what is by far the best sound system in the house.  Unfortunately, it’s not in the same room as me when I work, and if I get a call I would have to run into the next room and shut it off before answering.  That’s a pain.

Ahh… but iTunes Match, plus Apple TV means… Airplay!

What I did today was send the music app (formerly known as the iPod app) on my iPhone through the Apple TV via Airplay.  That means the control of the music (volume, track, ect) is here in the dining room with me.  It also means that if the phone rings, the music is automatically paused!  Two proverbial birds, one proverbial stone!

Apple, you so cool!  Thanks!

iPhone Video

Video taken with an iPhone, and then uploaded directly from the phone to youtube kinda looks like utter crap, don’t you think? Word on the street is that the next iOS release is going to include integration with Flickr and Vimeo, similar to the way it integrates with Facebook and Twitter in iOS 6.

I might have to go sign me up for a Vimeo account just out of spite.

Stop Motion Vacation

During the times when I wasn’t driving during our long drives to and from Virginia I did some goofing around with the stop motion cafe app on my phone. If I had a way to stand the phone up on the dashboard I would have filmed one of these covering the whole trip. As it is, it took one picture every five seconds, and then the play back is 12 pictures per second.

Interesting

DSC_0005Moon Over the Chrysler Building2012-04-27 - Cove and Sunset 344Sunrise Over Canobie Lake
2012-05-26 to 28 - Bar Harbor 349Hancock Tower in BostonBlizzard of 2013DSC_0387
Dodgers Stadium PanoDSC_0261DSC_0142Bad Tsongas Arena Pano
Honeymoon Day OneDSC_0635

Interesting, a set on Flickr.

Did Flickr change their “interestingness” algorithm? It seems to me that for ages most of my top 20 were taken with my iPhone, and most of those were bad panoramas. Now my top 20 is down to only three iPhones and one Kodak. The rest are from the D90. I don’t know when that happened, but I just noticed.

Consolidation

I consolidated every GarageBand file I’ve ever created onto one machine tonight. Some came from my iPad 2, others from my New iPad, a few from my iPhone, many from my Mac mini, and many more from my MacBook Pro. My MacBook Pro now contains a folder for finished songs, including sub folders for the last two RPMs, a folder for songs I would like to finish within the next month or so, and a folder for song ideas that I don’t know what to do with. I was especially looking for two ancient songs that I know I have unfinished recordings of somewhere, but after coming up empty across all of my various Apple devices, I think I know where they are. On SVHS tapes in ADAT format. Yup, definitely going to start those over again. My 8-track days are over.

I am king nerd. Bow before my uber nerdliness.

Winter Sucks

So, after the nice people who went door to door offering to shovel driveways left (with their small fee and a tip) a kind hearted plow driver deposited that load of crap at the end of our driveway.

I do so freakin’ hate winter.

photo

Funny, I’ve never tried taking a picture through a screen door using my iPhone. It sort of freaked out on me. Oh well, you get the point.

RPM Day 23

It’s almost 8:00pm here and I haven’t done my stupid daily update that is boring all of you to tears.  Never fear.  In the words of the Yardbirds, Here’s ‘Tis.

Earlier this week I had announced that this particular song:

was complete and done and finished.  Today I changed my mind.  I remixed it.  It’s not much different, just a little more care was taken with it.  Oh, and I put some seriously retarded goofiness into it as well.  Gotta love idiots who put flangers onto drums, right?  Am I right?

This little song:

Was not finished, but now it is.  I used a fuzz box.  How have I made it this far into life without owning a real fuzz box?  Fuzz boxes and Phasers are the big overused stomp box gimmicks for this year’s project.

This particular little ditty:

Was also not finished, but now it is.  This holds the distinction of being the only song in the batch of 14 that did not have any work done on an iOS device.  This was all done on the full GarageBand on my MacBook Pro.  I think you can hear the difference.  I am a little sad that I didn’t do the whole thing on a computer now.  The iPad and the iPhone are just so damn convenient   I mean it would have been tough to have written a song in the car in a parking lot waiting for a take out order to be ready if I had to do it all on an actual computer, right?  Am I right?

So that’s three songs that are finished, finished, finished.  There is one other that used to be finished but I have decided it will get a new vocal take on Monday.  There are two other songs that have vocals that I want to re-record, at least in part, that still need lead guitar parts.  Then there are seven (7) more that don’t have any vocals yet.  RPM requires 10 songs.  FAWM requires 14.  I have 14 in progress, I could call FAWM done now but I won’t.  Finishing the vocals for a total of 10 songs on Monday is definitely doable.  Getting up to a total of 14?  That’s a little more difficult.

We shall see.

RPM Day 17

My useless streak is over.  My stupid streak is in full swing.

I believe that I have all the rhythm guitar parts recorded.  I’ve been going pretty minimal this year.  Only one song has more than one rhythm part, and I’ve used my Les Paul for everything.  No acoustics or 335 at all.  I think I’m going to stick to the one guitar plan throughout, but who knows.

I still need to write one more section of the mini-suite thing (which still could be dropped in favor of using the A and C sections as a stand alone song) and to arrange the last five songs.  Those are tonight’s goals.  After that its vocals time, which is where my RPM projects normally die.  We shall see.

On the stupidity front, I did the recording last night in the dining room.  I cleaned off the table and gave it a quick wash.  Then I folded up my iPad’s smart case to use as a stand while I did my thing.  When I was finished I closed the cover and put it away.  Later that night I went to check my email and there was a spot of some kind of incredibly sticky Indian food sauce that I missed when I washed the table.  It got onto the inside of the cover, and when the cover was closed it got on the screen.  Crap!  I have to get something to clean the screen with, and I’m just going to replace the stupid case.  I’m pissed at myself.

 

Oh we’ll.