Blatantly Random » Apple

Happy Monday – iPad Takedown

Malcolm Owen — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 20:57:45 +0000

1. If you’ve bought a new electrical device, you’ll want to take it apart as quickly as possible to see how it works. Sadly, most of us are unable to do so as we are klutzes and will damage the goddamned thing. Well, the people at TechRestore have demolished and rebuilt an iPad. In stop motion…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fs79QEbWrLc

2. Happy Monday!

[TechRestore via TechMamba]

Photoshop CS4 Has Sliders… Lots of Sliders…

Malcolm Owen — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:44:39 +0000

You would expect from a high-priced product with a vast user base to get things right. Sadly, it appears Photoshop CS 4 has issues.

For reasons known only to Adobe, Photoshop has lots of different types of sliders. A good selection of those are documented here, along with a few other gripes over the software from someone that uses it for a living. Of course, there are others that complain about Adobe all the time…

[via Neven Mrgan's Tumbl and Adobe UI Gripes]

Free Music in Vast Quantities is Hard to Comprehend. Help?

Malcolm Owen — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 13:50:39 +0000

You know, it’s a really quite strange thing to have problems with. As you know, thanks to that Coca Cola contest, I have become the owner of a brand new 80GB video iPod (well, technically 2, but I sold the second one for a hefty sum of notes). And as part and parcel to the way I (and a few other people I helped out) entered the contest, I ended up with a ton of free songs from iTunes.
Over 300 to be exact.
To any normal denizen of the internet, they’d say “That’s nothing, my music collection is over 5000 songs, thanks to certain websites…”, but there’s a few factors at play here. Namely (a) I don’t usually buy music, (b) I don’t download music to keep, and (c) I listen to the radio a lot. So, given the opportunity to legally download tracks to keep, I’d be happy. Anyone would.

Out of 300, I still have 180 free tracks to choose. And I have until the end of the month.

…So, any suggestions? Seriously, I need help.

Using Up Song Credits on iTunes – Downloading Music is Good

Malcolm Owen — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 11:13:55 +0000

So, thanks to that Coke/iTunes contest, winning an iPod and then going nuts helping other people get iPods too, I’ve managed to amass a large amount of free song credits. 273 to be exact.
Now, granted, I know very little about the modern music buying experience. I’m one of those people whom prefer podcasts and the radio. I’m not one to go to HMV to get the latest compilation or latest album, because I know that they’re expensive per good song I actually want to listen to. As in on an album of 10-15 songs, you might actually want to listen to 2 or 3, and since the rest is really just filler, it makes each of those good tracks expensive.
In comes iTunes. A music library that charges per track at a very reasonable price. You can pick and choose the tracks you want to buy from the albums (although you do save a tiny bit by getting said album) and ignore anything else that doesn’t tickle your fancy. This is a good thing, and makes music buying more attractive to me. As in potentially cheaper.

(Side Note: Apple makes it relatively simple to buy a song or album, in terms of the buying experience. Some online stores could learn from this…)

I now have 250 credits remaining. What was the first song I bought off iTunes?

Walkie Talkie Man by Steriogram. A Fantastic song.

“Schmack!” (Steriogram)

Coke/iTunes UK Contest – I Won an iPod (Thanks Partly to Logic)

Malcolm Owen — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 01:20:06 +0000

So. Yeah. Coca Cola is doing a contest to win stuff. Entering codes via text or the website enters you into a draw. Every minute they give away 15 iTunes song credits, and every hour they give away an 80GB iPod from Apple, and you get entered into both draws automatically.

I like Coke, funnily enough, so I just bought the smaller bottles instead of the larger ones, not only for more entries due to liquid volumes, but also because the smaller bottles had 2 entries each. I’ve tried a few times between 2am and 3am (partly because I have late shifts at the moment, partly because I doubted that many people would be awake or bother to put codes in at that time), entering a few labels to see what the wins to labels ratio is. In total, I had 104 entries (52 labels, half are me, half are picked up from friend’s bottles whom didn’t bother with the contest. At least I didn’t scavenge the bins at all…) winning me 96 song credits. That is an admirable ratio, with 9/10ths of the time getting a song.

However.

Last night, I decided to go a bit overboard, and bought 10 bottles from Tesco, because they were on some 2 for £1.40 offer. 10 Labels, plus an extra 6 I had sitting here anyway, making 16 labels, 32 entries.

Last night, I won 31 songs. I was a bit bummed out from missing that one song.
Until I got an e-mail at 3:01am.
From Coca-Cola Music.

Subject Line: “Great News – an 80GB iPod is yours”

…

My immediate thought was “…Wha? Really? I didn’t think many were entering at that time, but that few for me to actually win the iPod?!”. Closely followed by “…this claim form on this website is a bit of a pain to fill in. How do you click that Submit button?” (because it took me 5 attempts, on both my Mac and my PC, using multiple browsers. Eventually did it by tabbing down to the button and hitting Return)

So. Yes. It appears I now have an 80GB iPod coming. I can now replace my fairly crappy 1GB MP3 player with something that more than does the job.

Next question: How do you fill up those 80GB?

Safari – Great for “Private Browsing”

Malcolm Owen — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 09:28:28 +0000

So, I’m watching the latest episode of Diggnation, and halfway through they talk about the Safari browser for Windows. More specifically, this button…

…Guh? It’s an option that when activated does not add anything to the history, cache or anything, keeping whatever happens in that session from that point onwards “Private”. “Off The Record Browsing” if you will. Great for online banking and other applications where you don’t want your loved ones to see where you’ve been online.

And yes, it’s practically tailor-made for “adult” material viewing.

Via Diggnation and Apple

Blogging with ecto

Malcolm Owen — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 09:38:07 +0000

So. You’re writing away on the perfect blog post in your friendly neighborhood browser window, and suddenly the internet connection dies on you just before you hit submit. You get the Page Can’t Be Displayed error, and so you quickly hit the Back icon to revive your work. Sadly, in quite a few cases, it isn’t there. What could you have done to prevent such a tragedy.

On my Mac, I use something called “ecto“, which is a bit of blogging software that allows you to lay out the post, to put pictures where you want them, and generally prepare the post offline before posting it on the big wide internet world. Sure, you could edit the blog posts in Microsoft Word or Open Office, and quite frankly for the whole “writing” bit they would be better, but ecto does more than that.
Within ecto, aside from allowing you to write posts, it gives you all the options you need that are in your WordPress control panel. Tagging, Categories, Time Delayed Posts and so on. You can even see a list of the most recent blog posts on the site, edit them within ecto, and then republish them with minor edits.
And as for you multiple blog managing people, you would probably like it for it’s ability to switch between blogs and blog systems with ease. For example, I can very easily edit Blatantly Random and then switch to the Stick of Wrong Dev-Blog, then switch back to BR, with no problems at all.

If you do a lot of blogging, I would highly recommend ecto. It works on both the Mac and the PC, and there’s even a 50% discount on a copy if you buy both versions at the same time. At the moment it’s in version 2, but soon enough there will be version 3, which promises some big changes if this one doesn’t quite tick all your boxes.