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07
Jan 13

My Nexus 4, As It Happened

Initial thoughts

Damn this thing is big. I mean seriously. Same height as my iPhone 5 but wide in the hand. I am not yet comfortable with a phone this size.

Hmm. It’s just getting on with downloading all my apps and… ooh, hey, that’s the wallpaper I put on my Nexus 7.

System update. The bane of all new gadgets. Reboot time.

… whilst I’m waiting for the reboot, I’ll just let y’all know, I saw the 9 minute preview they’re doing for Star Trek Into Darkness in IMAX cinemas. It looks awful. Ah. Phone’s back.

Urgh. Am I going to have to sort out my Google Music account? Why is Terry Pratchett’s Dodger turning up in my Nursehellamentary EP album? NONSENSICAL

Oh yeah, is there a way to play my non audible audiobooks? Add audiobook player to podcast catcher as software problems I need to solve.

Living with Android

So I continued with the Nexus 4 for a week. I was determined to live with it and draw my conclusions. So many people weigh in on the Android vs iOS fight armed with one side of the story. I wanted to go from iOS6 on an iPhone 5 to Jelly Bean on a Nexus 4. Let’s see the flagship experience on both sides.

Listening to Android

One of the first things that bothered me is Play Music. I’m coming from iOS and you have to remember, every iOS device is an iPod. That means years of maturing the interface for navigating music and controlling its’ playback. Between music, podcasts and audiobooks this is the primary use of my smartphone, beating out ‘communication device’ in number 2. Play Music is simply not good enough.

This is search. On Google. Let me repeat search on Google and it’s hopeless. One of these songs is by Perfecto. One is by Disturbed. One is by Yoko Kanno. They are all called ‘Rise’ and I know which one I want to listen to. I can’t, however, tell which of the three that is. Still, they have a context menu. Presumably that’ll help.

Presumption is the mother of all fuck-ups. I literally had to play each one in turn to work out which was which. One of the reasons I decided to jump to Android was the incredibly slick user experiences of their apps on iOS. Google Maps, Google+ even gMail are utter pleasures to use. Play Music is shockingly bad.

As far as audiobooks and podcasts go I have only this to say: I have been mean about the Podcasts app on iOS. I regret it. It was, at least, free. I have yet to find a podcast manager on Android that is a comparable experience to Podcasts on iOS at its’ worst and they’re all for-pay apps.

In-Pocket Controls

Now let’s come to headset controls. This is a logical follow on. Because the vast majority of my usage of a phone is actually as an iPod and the vast majority of that is done whilst it’s in my pocket I have come to rely on my headset controls. They are simple:

Volume Up Button
Center Button
Volume Down Button

The volume buttons do what you might expect. The center button is clever. Its’ role is: answer a call when phone is ringing, double press to send ringing call to voice mail, hang up a call in progress, place call on hold if new call ringing, long press to ignore incoming call whilst already on call, play music (when no call in progress or ringing), pause music in progress, double tap whilst playing music to skip forward, double tap whilst playing music to skip backward, double press and hold to scan forward, triple press and hold to scan backward, long press to activate siri.

On my Android device, using the same headset, the volume buttons do nothing and the center button’s roll is: press once to maybe start music, maybe start a podcast, probably do nothing. Whilst listening to something, press to maybe pause it, one in five times perhaps, but otherwise you’re gonna have to get your phone out of your pocket, mate.

My TIOLI co-host Andrew, a vehement Android supporter whose opinions on Apple are well documented was quick to jump in with a suggestion:

But no, I’m not using Apple headphones.

Sennheiser, your mileage may vary.

I cannot stress this enough. I use my phone as an audio player constantly and the vast majority of that time it’s in my pocket. Reaching up to tap the button to pause and knocking my left earbud out so I can talk to someone is goddamn reflexive. I feel like a part of myself is missing and I have to ask you, Android users, how do you live like this?.

The iOS methodology for handling audio applications is that there is a single channel for audio output. Sound effects can be played incidental of this channel but if you want to do VOIP, streaming, audio playback or even video playback you’re using this single channel. The headset controls, if there’s no phone call going on, simply attach to the last application to use that channel.

Android is… confusing. There is one single channel for audio output. You’d think that the headset controls would attach to the last application to use the audio channel here too, but that’s not the case. The strangest example I can cite was walking home from work. I was listening to music, but switched to my audiobook app. This was a problem in itself. Switching to the audiobook application instantly set the volume to full whilst still playing my music back. There was a pause of a second or so before the audiobook began but I was already deaf. When my audiobook was done (I only had 17 minutes left) I switched to podcasts.

Coming out of the train station I stopped in to pick up some dinner. Reached up to pause my podcast but when I touched the headset button for some reason my audiobook began playing its’ closing credits again. Not quite what I’d had in mind.

What really confused me was the whole time the on-screen controls seemed to be coming from Play Music. This suggests the headset buttons and the lock-screen audio playback aren’t even using the same rules to work out what last played sound.

You Touched What?

Apple have made claims in their marketing before. Bold claims. Some would say bullshit claims. One of these was “a patented system for ignoring unintentional touches”. I always thought this was marketing spiel before using a phone that didn’t have a patented system for ignoring unintentional touches.

The first kind of unintentional touch I encounter is when I put the phone in my pocket with the screen facing inward. The material of my pocket must be very thin because my thigh appears to activate the touch screen. Walking along I am interrupted every 10 feet by the pitched-tones of my phone dialing itself. It has activated emergency call mode and begun dialing just from the movement of my leg as I walk. This, frankly, is shit. So I learned to place it in my pocket screen facing out. That fixed that problem but the fix is what we in the biz call ‘a hack’.

The second kind of unintentional touch I encounter is almost worse. The screen is significantly larger than my iPhone’s and to reach the top of it or the far left is a stretch. This means I fold my hand around the screen and sometimes my thenar eminence (learning is fun with wryterra!) just touches the bottom right of the screen. In most cases this results in an unintentional multi touch as I press the tip of my thumb down and something resizes. Not every time though. Jelly Bean has introduced a menu that is accessible from a small touch area in the very bottom right of the screen, indicated with three vertically spaced dots. When one of these menus is present the unintended touch will present that menu which is a very jarring experience.

Google, license Apple’s method for detecting unanticipated touches. FFS.

The Good

It’s not all bad. That photograph of my earbuds would have been unusable if I’d been stuck with what I got when I tapped the shutter. Given that I have a modicum of understanding of digital photography however I was delighted to discover that I could deep-dive into the image processing. I adjusted the curves of a phone camera snap before posting it. That’s pretty awesome.

I love the notifications. It’s no wonder to me that Android users made a lot of noise about Apple stealing Android’s notifications system. What you guys should have been saying is how bad a job Apple did of it. The Nexus 4 even has a neat multi-colour LED that gently pulsates with a colour indicating what type of message is waiting for me. That’s cute.

Intents, the means by which the OS presents you with a menu of applications able to fulfil a request, are great. I’m beginning to see a lot of peoples’ points on this. It’s also the lowest-hanging of fruit left to the iOS team and I expect to see something like it get into the next version of iPhone’s OS. Or at least the version after.

Google Now

The Future

As of right now I carry two phones because my experience has lead to one, awkward conclusion: both platforms excel in areas that I am unwilling to compromise on. The great convergent technology revolution has created two devices that are almost perfect but neither of which can truly supplant the other in my pocket.

Balls.

At least the future looks like an interesting place. If you’ll permit me a tangent?

I was talking to a guild-mate the other night about service-culture and the difference between high class American and high class British hotels. The difference, broadly defined, is this: In the US the hotel staff will cater to your every request and do so gladly and make you feel like nothing you ask for is too much trouble. In the UK they want you to feel like you never have to ask, adopting a culture of ‘if you have to ask for something, we’ve failed to anticipate your need’.

Can you see where I’m going with this? Apple have put Siri in a phone. It’s your digital personal assistant. As time goes by you’ll be able to ask Siri for increasingly complicated things and Siri will happily provide. Google, on the other hand, are fighting the Google Now approach. After all they’re a data-mining operation at heart. Their recent unified privacy policy could be read as ‘we already know everything about you, why not at least let us put that knowledge to work for you as well as for us?’. They know your appointments, your friends, your friends’ homes, your home, where you work, when you’re flying, when your package is arriving. Google Now strives to give you the information you need before you knew you needed it. That is the future I want.

Oh and I want a set of Google Glasses modified to look like Garrus’ eyepiece from Mass Effect, but that’s just a personal taste thing.

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26
Sep 12

An Unexpected iPhone 5 Problem

First, let’s get it out of the way. Yes. I bought one. Of course I did.

That said… Whilst I’m almost entirely happy with the new iPhone there is one small problem I have encountered. As most of the world is already aware the iPhone 5′s screen is taller than the old iPhone. This means that until apps are updated to support the new screen ratio they’re going to have to be stretched or appear with a black bar border. It turns out Apple went the black bar way and center old apps. In general, a fine idea, but then comes the keyboard…

As you can see, the keyboard is shifted vertically depending on what type of app you’re using, new form or old form. In fact the shift is almost exactly a row on the keyboard. What this means, in effect, is that if you’ve just adjusted to using a modern app adjusted for the new screen ratio and change to an old style app you’ll miss the space bar every time unless you’re trying to type a letter from the bottom row of the keyboard. You’ll hit return if you’re trying to type m. That comes as a surprise more than once.

Yes, this problem will be solved quickly as apps are updated but was this really the most elegant solution you could think of, Apple? Really?

CS:GO – The Problem, In a Nutshell

Since its’ release, I’ve been playing an awful lot of CS:GO, the latest remake of Counter Strike. I have history with the original source material. I was part of the first ever public-server game of Counter Strike way back in the day and I’ve been playing, on and off, ever since.

I’m not very good. That’s not the point.

Anyway, that confession out of the way, let’s move on. There’s a lot to say about GO, some of which I’ll doubtless say in a fuller review in time. There’s no silencers any more. There are molotovs now. Weapons feel floaty but it’s all very pretty. I especially like the way the teams are defined with a uniform look and feel but a randomness that marks each player as individual. Something I was pushing for when I used to work on the occasional mod back in the days of Quake 3 and Elite Force.

The problem though is the AWP. The problem that has plagued CS throughout living memory. In the picture above we see five members of a team of eight players hiding in the same spot with the same sniper rifle. That’s five of the surviving six members of the team. Who are not doing their job. Who are camping, for kill count.

CS:GO is already plagued with pistol/sniper scripts. To prevent abuse of the AWP’s one-hit kill power, the developers took out the target reticle (the little + in the center of the screen) when carrying a sniper rifle but not being zoomed in. To combat this certain players wrote a script that automatically switches from pistol to rifle, fires a shot and switches back. In other words they’re aiming with the reticle as normal but firing a one-hit kill sniper rifle.

I’ve said it before, Counter Strike would be a vastly improved game if the developers put a limit on the number of AWPs purchasable by any one team and put a delay on switching to the weapon before firing. Perhaps a little animation of the player removing the lens caps from the AWP’s scope, just a half-second delay to prevent pistol scripts.

Until such time, however, remember to throw a molotov up into the sniper’s nest.

Blog / Video Games — 1 comment
06
Jun 12

Digital Distribution Platforms

Let’s be clear; my past is not unblemished. That said I always maintained, even in my darkest days, if developers just got wise to the fact that we’d rather get our games instantly over broadband and give them to us in a convenient, fairly priced way I’d go legit in a heartbeat. Then Valve started putting games out on Steam and I bought them. Then everyone started putting games out on Steam and I bought them by the hundreds. I really, really like Steam. I think digital distribution platforms are the way forward.

I can, however, understand why some people worry that the technology might be unreliable. I can understand this because I have used EA’s Origin.

(click to see full size)

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25
May 12

An Open Letter to One Million Moms

I am a long term comic book reader and whilst I support your effort to protect children I am afraid I am somewhat confused about the campaign to write to DC and Marvel in objection to their depiction of gay characters. I would like to support any action to protect children but I can’t commit to something I feel I do not fully understand. As I am sure you feel the same way and would not incite such a campaign without becoming fully informed on the subject at hand I would appreciate it if you could clarify a few points for me before I agree to write a letter supporting your cause.

DC comics’ announcement that they will re-introduce a character as gay comes as part of a now nine-month old initiative to relaunch the brand. Many other things have happened in these nine months that, if homosexuality is a worryingly imitable and corrupting influence on children, are surely also of concern.

You speak of the concern that a child might want a boyfriend like Batman. This seems to imply that in other respects you are content that Batman is an acceptable role model. Does this mean that you support his having entirely anonymous, fetishised sex with a complete stranger in (what is effectively) public? In one of the first issues of the relaunched DC line a man had the skin of his face severed to create a grizzly skin-mask, without anaesthetic. This also happened in a Batman book. As did men and women being cut into pieces and then fashioned back together into patchwork corpse puppets.

Nor does it stop there. Wonder Woman, it has been revealed, is the descendant of a people who are serial mass-rapists and serial committers of mass-infanticide. The rape is even depicted, though not graphically. In their defence it’s made clear the Amazon women no longer commit infanticide of all males born of their rape-culture, simply sell them into heretical slavery to the false-god Hephaestus, but as mothers how can you condone either behaviour? And oh yes, that false god is one of many of the greek pantheon of heretical gods that is a regular character in the book, in violation not of a verse of the book of Romans but of the 1st commandment itself!

Catwoman is shown as not simply a villain instead she is presented as an anti-hero. She has a book series of her own in which she is seen fornicating, committing theft after theft and even beating a helpless man to a very violent, bloody and disfiguring death with a baseball bat. Whilst she also stands up for the defenceless in other regards, does that really make up for her other behaviours?

Even Bunker, a new character introduced to the Teen Titans, a book surely aimed at Teenagers by its’ very nature, is both gay and Catholic, conflating the subject of homosexuality and religion.

Now, seeing as all these and other issues exist I can come to only two conclusions. Either you are aware of these things and have concluded that they are all perfectly acceptable for your children whilst the idea of re-introducing a character as gay is not or rather than consider them perfectly acceptable for your children you give you children the credit that they are sufficiently complex individuals to not find these behaviours imitable or laudable but are concerned they will be encouraged to emulate this character’s coming out, despite the already existing characters of Bunker, Batwoman, Renee Montoya and others that they have successfully avoided following into homosexuality up until now.

I look forward to your answer and having my confusion assuaged so that I can confidently write in support of your campaign to protect children from the threatening idea that a man or woman might be gay and still be a good person.

Thank you,

Simon Aplin

Blog / Movies / Reviews — 5 comments
29
Apr 12

Avengers

I’ve been trying to get this post started for a while now. I want to blog about Joss Whedon’s “The Avengers” because a tweet doesn’t cut it. I can tell people I thought it was amazing in <140 characters but I definitely couldn’t pack what I felt into so small a space.

The trouble is what I feel is still hard to reconcile with an effects-fest superhero movie. I try and explain why “The Avengers” moved me, quite literally, to the verge of tears and I suddenly fear that maybe you didn’t see the same movie I did. Not literally, of course, but in the philosophical sense. Hopefully when I spit it out I’ll hear from one or two of you (I have names in mind) that you reacted the same way and I’ll feel less like a crazy person.

Cut for potential spoilers (though I’m not planning on any).

Continue reading →

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26
Apr 12

Dead by 27: Why Do I Like Amy Winehouse Now?

As I write this I’m listening to Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black” album. The reason I’m writing this is because I’m listening to it, as it happens. Whilst I was listening to a Winehouse song on shuffle earlier in the day I began to reflect on how and why my tastes have changed to include her work.

When she was alive I never liked her music though if I’m honest I suspect that had more to do with my opinions of her as a person than anything else. It’s speaking ill of the dead, perhaps, but I don’t think it’s a surprise to anyone reading this that Amy Winehouse lived a life which was increasingly self-destructive. She was, again without surprising anyone, the subject of massive tabloid coverage because of it. All of this turned me off. I was peripherally aware that she had a truly phenomenal singing voice but I was more aware of her reputation for misbehaviour, her stumbling inability to complete a performance and being a figure of public ridicule.

When she died she joined a very prodigious club. The 27 Club, a collection of musicians who died young (at the age of 27) and left exceptional bodies of work. Amongst others she now calls John Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and, of course, Kurt Cobain, peers of a sort. Amy Winehouse is no longer a public spectacle, she’s now a part of a pantheon of musical legend and now I can allow myself to enjoy her music. The question that arises is why did she have to die for me to make that allowance to myself? After all, Nirvana were the defining influence on my musical interests and that was long before Kurt Cobain killed himself.

Why is it, then, that I wasn’t put off Nirvana’s music by Kurt Cobain’s self-destruction? I can’t claim to have been so naive or unaware as to not know he was increasingly depressed and struggling with addiction. I was younger, yes but not so very much less aware.

My suspicion is quite pertinent as it comes on a day on which Rupert Murdoch has been facing questions and criticism about the News of the World’s and The Sun’s celebrity gossip and scandal addictions. In 1994 celebrity gossip was just that, it was salacious rumour and supposition on the cover of rags that everyone knew were ridiculous on their face. This has changed.

Today we live in an era when the compromising photographs a celebrity might have on their own phone can be identified, verified and distributed world wide within minutes. Within hours they’ll be published by websites with readerships in the thousands. Within a day they’ll be mainstream headlines. Within the week they’re old news. Whereas Kurt might have unsteadily mumbled his way through a Nirvana show the worst he might expect is for a column in a music magazine who had a reporter in the crowd. Maybe a column inch in a tabloid rag. Amy’s performances in her later years are duplicated a hundred fold on YouTube, filmed from every angle for our dissection and ‘entertainment’.

So whilst I always knew Kurt Cobain was a tragic figure he was a tragic figure once-removed. You knew, you were aware of what was happening but the ‘contact’ you had with him was almost exclusively through his albums. Moments of perfection, produced and edited into articles to be preserved. Our ‘contact’ with Amy Winehouse was constant, invasive and unedited. Even I, who at the time was one step removed from actively trying to avoid knowing about her, knew more than I would ever want to know about someone’s demons and addictions unless they were a close personal friend or family member, someone I would want to know the gory details about because I couldn’t help them without knowing.

So did I dislike Amy Winehouse or was her existence an excuse for the socially-networked, internet-aware modern society to reveal its’ uglier face to me, making me uncomfortable to admit I liked what I heard?

I never met her. The legacy she left was amazing. I think the answer is clear.

Blog / Video Games — 6 comments
09
Apr 12

Mass Effect In Retrospect

Before I begin I want to put this post in context. I finished Mass Effect 3 when it came out 3 weeks ago (at the start of writing, longer by the end!). I am part way through my second play through, beginning to explore the possibilities available in the narrative. I operate under the assumption that Mass Effect 3′s ending is a trilogy and series ending finale, that further games may be set in the universe but are not part of this particular narrative because this is what we have been told. April has not yet come, when BioWare have told us they will address the ending. That’s where I’m writing from, a position of necessarily incomplete knowledge. No doubt I’ll have more thoughts and perhaps more to say when we hear from BioWare.

Also, before I begin, I want to state my position up front and clearly. I do not like the ending of Mass Effect 3. I do not think it is suitable to, good enough for or in keeping with the Mass Effect franchise. I am not demanding a new ending, do not consider myself as part of any movement, I am merely a disappointed fan. The reason I care that I do not like the ending is that I consider Mass Effect to be one of the most important science fiction franchises in recent years whose importance and significance is squandered by this non-sensical ending.

Why? Read on, but expect spoilers. For the whole franchise.

Continue reading →

Blog / Video Games — 1 comment
08
Apr 12

Bible Studies with Chris Priestly

I saw on Twitter today a little Easter humour from Chris Priestly.

What do you mean “at the end he died on a cross”? That makes no sense! And what of his companions? *newtestamentrage* #retakeeaster

Now, clearly Chris was venting a little spleen over the fact that no one likes the ending of Mass Effect 3. That their attempt to leave it ambiguous and open-ended has back fired, largely because they specifically promised the ending would be neither ambiguous nor open-ended. Chris’ clever tweet leads me to two conclusions:

1. The ending of Mass Effect 3 is a weak Christ-analogue after all

It’s been hurled as an accusation, what with the ascension in a beam of light and the sacrifice. Hell, Shepard even bleeds from her side.

Well now we know, thanks to Mr Priestly. It is just the Christ story. Nothing more.

2. The end of the bible story is Jesus dying on the cross

That’s right, folks. The ending of Mass Effect 3 is as good as the ending of Jesus’ story. Which is an apt post to make on Easter Sunday because Jesus’ story ended three days before Easter on Good Friday when he was crucified. In fact, there is no Easter, because there is no more to Jesus’ story than that he died on the cross.

There’s no story of Jesus rising again. Nothing in the Bible about how his followers’ responded to Jesus’ death. He certainly didn’t return, address his followers and ascend into heaven as a saviour.

Except, of course, that all of that is wrong. The Bible tells a clear, specific and non-ambiguous story of what happens to Jesus after the death on the cross. I doubt Christianity would have quite the same followers if the ending had literally been a death on the cross and not even a nod to what happened to the disciples. Would EA, perhaps have ended the Bible with a nearly blank page, in the center of which was printed:

Jesus Christ has become a legend by dying on the cross for your sins. Now you can build that legend by giving money to the church.

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23
Mar 12

The Obvious Answer

This week, Israel passed a law banning models from advertisements or fashion shows if they measure less than 18.5 on the body mass index (BMI). It’s part of an effort to promote health for women of all sizes, and to stop glorifying the ultra-thin.

“Beautiful is not underweight,” says Rachel Adato, one of the creators of the bill.

Nor is ugly.

(Source: BBC)