Pmabey's blog

Majestic buildings and trying to work

HDR - Inside Leeds Town Hall

Originally uploaded by Tiddler.

I attended a conference yesterday for work that was held in such a grand venue I was constantly distracted by the architecture around me. This was Leeds Town Hall. I had never been here before, or to Leeds before for that matter (it only took me 45 mins to get out of the city on my 4th attempt at the loop road and finding the M1 - oh for a SatNav) but anyway, I was really impressed. It was quite hard to focus on the speakers as they stood in front of the huge and ornately decorated church type organ.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a camera with me, so I looked on Flickr and found, amongst thousands of hits, this HDR image which captures the grandiosity of that room perfectly. We didn't have the chairs out for our conference, it was a table based layout, but what a lovely venue. The building is just as impressive on the outside, have a look at some of these.

QotD: I'd Rather Be...

If you were suddenly granted the day off today, how would you go spend your free time?

If I could have the day off from my 2.5 year old and 14 week old kids, ASLEEP!!

Our Awesome Universe - in HD

Originally published at All things considered.... You can comment here or there.

Uploaded with Skitch!

Here's something to help you escape all those day-to-day anxieties. When it all seems too intense and you need to take a step back, fire up iTunes and watch this fantastic HD video podcast, from NASA (you'll need iTunes installed, or you'll be asked to install it if not). Amazing images of deep space, some natural, some in other colour spectrums (spectra?), accompanied by a lovely piece of music, just takes you away from it all for a few moments and helps you realise how small we (and our problems) are in the 'grand scheme of things'.

It's great to see big organisations such as NASA release video and images like they do. It can be really educational and a great thing to get the kids interested in. You never know, it might help with some homework to? If you're interested, check out the rest of the stuff NASA provides, FREE!

Mac Expo Paris - What’s the point?

• No rumours.
• No keynote - by anyone!
• No Apple announcements.
• 10,000 less people attending in 2006 than in 2005 (not sure about this year yet).

Yep, it’s the biggest Mac show outside of the US. Is there any point to the MacExpo in Paris which started today?

Apple don’t seem bothered about it, and no-one seems to be mentioning it in the news around the Mac community. If I was attending I would be a bit deflated by the onslaught of disinterest in the event from the media and community. Without all the fun and hype that surrounds the biggies in the US, the whole thing is reduced to looking like what it is, a big market stall.

Couldn’t Apple have delayed their iPod announcements by just a few weeks to make this event more of a pull for the Mac faithful? What about the iPhone France/Europe announcement? Rather than leaking out and being confirmed with a press release, wouldn’t it have been good to get Orange all caught up in the fanfare and fun of a big iPhone announcement?

Ah well, perhaps it’s just me being cynical, but it seems like the ‘Mac’ bit isn’t quite so important to Apple as it once was.

Sorry, I really don’t like Tuesdays, they’re so…. Blah!!

Vox Hunt: Music - Hurry Up Already!

Show us an artist who you wish would hurry up and put out a new album.

The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion

Black Crowes

The Black Crowes: listening to their whole catalogue on shuffle right now, come on get this rumoured new material out, and TOUR the UK please!

New Nanos aren’t half bad (and Matte or Glossy MacBook Pro)

I travelled the 60 miles from where I live to visit my nearest Apple Store yesterday and it was a great experience as always. I was mainly eyeing up the MacBook Pro which I hope will eventually replace my aging G4 AlBook, but I saw the new Nanos and was pleasantly surprised.

Everyone is referring to them as the ‘Fat Nano’, but actually it is VERY thin and I could easily imagine it slipping into a pocket (although these ones were quite well attached to the display!). From the front it does look strange, with its new wider profile (yes, I know that’s where the ‘Fat Nano’ comes from), but they had to make room for that very nice screen it carries. I thought it felt nice in hand, and the click wheel was very responsive, better than my ‘G5 iPod w/video’ for tactile response. My wife HATES the new look and she was not convinced. I must admit, I was expecting to not like it, but was pleasantly surprised. The new interface is very nice too, with its mini-previews and Ken Burns like effects of the items selected in some cases.

Another thing that impressed me was the CoverFlow effect (links to movie). Again, I thought ‘tiny screen, how is that going to be any good?’, but it was actually really good looking and the thumbnails seemed to be scaled perfectly to give the correct visual impression of scrolling through the horizontal animation. It is detail like this in the UI that makes Apple products so hard to beat.

It is obviously a personal thing, and you should spend some time with it first, but if I was in the market for a Nano sized iPod I would have no hesititation in buying one. The only difficulty would be choosing a colour to be honest!

Now, my real problem is, Matte or Glossy screen for the MacBook Pro? After seeing them side by side for a good 20 mins. I am not convinced my anti-Glossy prejudice is valid anymore. I’m stuck with it once the decision is made though, and I don’t want to be regretting my choice for another 5 years (my average upgrade cycle). That (and the imminent release of the iPod Touch) is one of the reasons I don’t have a new MacBook Pro on my desk today.

Gibson (Guitars) Introduce self tuning guitar

Powertune: Gibson’s Revolutionary New Self-Tuning System

Suffice to say, “I want one of these!!!!“.

Not only is it my favourite guitar ever made, a Les Paul, but it can tune itself, on the fly, and best of all can tune the strings to alternate tunings (used by many, many people) and back again at the touch of a button, even BETWEEN SONGS.

Even if you’re not into playing guitar, this is a brilliant gadget innovation using electronically controlled tuners (200 tunings from an AA battery!). Have a look at Gibson’s article for pure geekery alone.

By the way, if you live in the US (I don’t), you can enter a competition to win one of these when they’re released, grrrrrrr…

Guitar Hero III coming to the Mac this year

I’ve been reading about this very cool development at TUAW Guitar Hero III coming to the Mac this year.

Now I will admit that I am one of the few people on this planet under 40 who has not played Guitar Hero (any version), but there’s one or two people on YouTube who seem to have played it before! It really isn’t about playing guitar at all (something I am trying to learn to do well) but it is all about very quick reflexes and manual dexterity, which is a good skill to have, and it gets people into guitar music even more.

However, I still think this is a great development for Mac users, who aren’t the best served group as far as great games goes, it’s got to be said. As the article linked to above says, it’s a USB device, which means someone could hack it to be used with GarageBand, although I’m not sure how useful that would be. But it’s just the possibility of doing it that makes it cool!

Hurrah for Mac games development…

BBC - About the only place to get any Tour of Britain video

You may not know it, but there is a 6 day pro-cycling tour taking place this week right here in ‘Blighty’ called, funnily enough, the Tour of Britain. It was in Hampshire and Somerset earlier in the week, but I have been unable to get to see it, which is a real shame, especially after not making it to London to see the start of the Tour de France. I’m not really a ’super-fan’ am I?!

In case you’re interested, BBC2 has a complete race highlights program on Sunday (16th) at 1230, but if you want to see what it’s all about and get the goss on this event in the meantime (like some dippy council pen pusher not clearing road closures for today’s stage meaning 24 miles of the race being ‘neutralised’), check out the link below.

BBC - tour of britain videos or BBC’s cycling news pages here.

Today Apple announces….

So, at 6pm GMT the famous Moscone Centre in San Francisco hosts Apple’s next big media announcement. Lots of rumours abound about what it will be, but the leading ones are:

• New ‘iPhone format’, i.e. widescreen, iPod with multitouch technology (would be very nice) and bigger capacity (than the iPhones)

• The Beatles catalogue finally being released (’the beat goes on’ was used in the final press release after the Beatles split)
• Wi-fi for the new iPod?
• Previews of Leopard stuff (doesn’t really seem appropriate, but you never know)
• etc…

But what I really want to hear is the Network and UK release date for the iPhone! Could this be Steve’s one more thing, announcing the European release dates today? I certainly hope so.

I’ll be hitting refresh in Safari a lot from 6pm tonight!!