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Google Chrome, I choose you!
Unless you’re living under a bridge you may have heard about Google’s recent release of their open source internet browser known as Google Chrome (if you haven’t read this comic they made). It boasts to be the fastest browser out for rendering JavaScript as well as doing other things that others failed to implement. Upon installing it, I had my lovely bookmarks imported from firefox and was presented with a lovely speed dial screen similar to the lovely Opera browser. The interface is simple and clean and it definitely does a good job in the real estate end (I like real estate, means less scrolling). The address bar reminds me of firefox 3’s awesome bar and does a good job in recognising what page the user wants when he’s tapping away the address. The problem for me with Google Chrome is that it’s still not mature enough yet, I still need a browser like firefox to do my work and do all sorts of crazy things via addons and whatnot. However, the real reason I wanted to use it is because it allows users to create individual web applications that will run independantly.
That toppled with the super fast javascript rendering means I can finally get Gmail to run smoothly (it takes forever to load at work and often stalls the computer meaning i have to wait a bit longer whilst it all loads). I have Google Calendar, Google Reader, Gmail and Igoogle all currently turned into applications which I can load up with a push of a button, it’s all kinds of awesome. To be honest I like the direction Google are going, slowly moving us into a world of web apps, where things aren’t OS dependant and accessible to any terminal. Anyway, that’s just a small waffle about Google Chrome, the most interesting thing is their logo, does anyone else think it looks like a pokeball? Like a rare one that can capture the likes of Mew Two without the need for weakening him down with scratches and tackes (that wasn’t very effective mind).
So yeah, give Google Chrome a spin (sorry mac and linux users) if you already haven’t, it’s not ready to become your primary browser, but it’s worth installing just for the sake of going “yeah, I know about Google Chrome, I’m hip, word”. Let me know what you think!
Ticket in my hand and thinking wish I didn't hand it in
I’m a big fan of Google, I use Gmail to manage all my email accounts (I have about 15 addresses floating around that all forward to Gmail), I use Google Reader to check out new content on sites via RSS feeds, and I use Google Calendar to manage all my appointments, gigs and other bits and bobs I go to. Anyway, this isn’t about google. This is about Last.fm (sorry got carried away from Google advertising).
Most of my music is scrobbled and sent to last.fm, it’s useful to get music recommendations and have an overview of your listening patterns (and making sure Muse ISN’T the most listened artist in your charts!) Anyway, most of that stuff we already know (if not, visit them at www.last.fm), but one feature I love most is the events section. Most ticket websites send updates of gigs they currently have on sale but usually it’s for bands that are well known and will sell well, what happens to those bands you like that are small and wee? This is where the super useful events section comes into play, it recommends you gigs to go to based on the music you’ve listened to, so if you’ve been rocking out to Okkervil River, boom, you get that gig they’re playing in Shepherds Bush Empire, if you’re stomping out to Tilly and the Wall, boom, it tells you about their gig at the ULU (which I’ll be attending), if you’re admiring some Philip Glass piano solos, boom it tells you an Opera made by Phillip Glass is showing (and boy aren’t £11 tickets to see an Opera epic?).
Gigs I've been recommended in October, ignore dragonforce, I only like that song featured on guitar hero :p
So yeah, definitely use that page, why did I mention Google? Well I use Google Calendar to track all my events and whatnot, what I’ve done is basically subscribed to a calendar generated by Last.fm (in a lovely standard ics format) which plots all gigs I could potentially go to (in London, god bless Last.fm) onto my calendar, meaning I can book them if I feel like seeing them. Today I’ve already booked tickets to see Wolf Parade, Emiliana Torrini and a few others for the last quarter (work related terms tut tut). The venues are very wee (well Koko is kinda wee) so I’m glad last.fm was here to the rescue to tell me that they were playing. Tickets were all under £15 so that’s good. Moral of the story, use last.fm, it’s an epic tool for new music and for giving you recommendations for gigs you can go to, though I suppose it only works when you live in areas like London where the mass venues are stuffed with gigs left right and centre (and surround left, surround right and lfe if you’re into 5.1 digital dolby surround sound like me, mmm).
I’m so getting that! Lacome tem! YUMI YUMI! NOOOOOOOOY!
I think it’s time to delete some of the old change logs for Musewiki. This should help make backing up a lot easier since the database is becoming pretty epic, though I suppose the main cause is actually the photos but nonetheless, a purge is in order. I shall propose to do it on the 15th of July (because I like that number) So make sure you’re not leaving out anything that needs restoring.
Bought a new monitor so I thought I’d show off my desk hehe, it’s a lovely 24inch widescreen monitor, got myself a nice graphics card to compliment it too. Hopefully this will improve my productivity at home.
Managed to make myself a skin, it was almost built from scratch since i used a pretty minimalistic theme. I went with a blue and green theme since they’re my favorite colours. I’ve added some katamari backdrops to really make the theme come out. The theme is still in the making, I haven’t even finished the top part yet.
I’ve pretty much backed up crazybobbles.org so what’s left now is to finish the blog theme and start migrating. Quite excited since I feel like I’m not really making the most out of crazybobbles.org so migrating stuff from my blog seems like a cool idea. I just need a lovely place to dunk my covers and I can generate some flash player to play them (loads of people are using my songs for their sites and all :(). Another thing I’m worried about is the amount of spam and crap that’s been generated via crazybobbles.org, boy that was a legacy. Luckily wordpress is a beauty at managing spam. So yeah content you’ll be expecting on my blog:
- Muse related information, I’ll only post stuff that are super interesting, I prefer using musewiki.org to sort out the news since it rocks (hehe got to love self promotion).
- Musewiki news, I have a news section on the wiki but it would definitely benefit if it was stored in some more blog like than wiki
- Feeds seems to be the key for getting these things right, I’ll be generating individual category feeds so people can subscribe to the correct ones, so if you’re only interested in my banter (fat chance) than you’ll subscribe to banter, if you’re interested in musewiki updated than you subscribe to that, of course there would still be a one feed that will rule them all.
- The obvious addition will be covers, having the blog migrated to crazybobbles.org means I’ll need to start recording more music, I’m quite tempted to just making youtube videos of them all so it can all be hosted externally, we’ll see.
- A new email address! The old crazybobbles was spammed silly haha.
- I might start a music myspace account. Reason is that it’s by far the most productive way of storing latest covers as well as distributing them, and lets face it, I never use myspace correctly, won’t do facebook though, wouldnt work too well.
- Some focus on photography as well, I will try and include more flickr photos on the blog (got to love the blog feature) will focus on band photography but to be honest I’ll try everything that’s interesting.
That’s all for now, I’m just writing out ideas so yeah. Will hopefully incorperate everything mentioned since it’s all doable. Blogging will definitely easier since I’m really enjoying blogging on the tube, nice hour spot to get something done and all.
Going to be spending xmas and birthday up north with Alice. Really excited about it, haven’t got much to pack except my clothes though. Was going to go topshop to buy some clothes but then decided not to because i could do my shopping in leeds (plus i managed to catch a train back home AND grab myself a seat).
Bit worried about finishing off my work and handing it to someone else, hopefully it will be alright. Feel sorry for the others who have to stay and work. But yeah, travelling and stuff, really need a break too! Tonight will be proper hectic getting things packed up and ready to go. Will try and keep my attire formal as possible but i need to travel light so a big turtle neck will do to cover it all up or something. Might just wear a shirt and tie still tbh, easier plus i don’t mind wearing that.
Man it’s annoying typing so much on the tube only to find that it’s not really that much when you paste it onto the computer. Perhaps blogging isn’t the best idea unless you have proper time to spare and all!
My phone was getting old and annoying, theres a pin where the power socket is and it’s snapped off meaning I cannot charge the phone. So i decided I should get myself a new phone as well as a contract to go with it. I’ve been tempted to get a contract since I wanted to phone Alice quite a lot without wasting too much money and knew that Orange did magic numbers, meaning you can phone people you’ve assigned as your magic number for free. It’s really handy and definitely promotes communication. Looking at phones I was stuck at what to get, I eventually opted for the phone similar to Maddox’s epic e70 phone he used to compare against the iphone. I’ve been a fan of Nokia phones so it was quite push to stick with Nokia again. I already knew that there were a lot of apps that were unique to Nokia. So yeah, here’s my phone..
And instead of giving you the specs from the nokia site, here’s some things I can do with it:
- Phone people; yup! Granted I use a bluetooth adaptor for that most of the time (well when I know it’s a long call) because it’s quite a meaty phone to hold around
- Type a lot faster with the QWERTY keyboard; oh yeah, useful when blogging and writing texts to people. I really enjoy using the keyboard to type stuff and I can definitely get more words done compared to a normal numpad.
- See all my things at a glance; beauty of Nokia phones (using Symbian S60v3) is that you have a lovely standby screen which is flooded with information that I can check out at a glance, this includes the last two text messages I’ve received (and a quick preview of the texts), calendar entries (more on that), new email and text alerts, missed calls and answer message alerts, wifi scanning (says whether or not it detects wifi spots). The todo list is by far the most useful one out of them all
- Todo list; it’s becoming more and more difficult to remember stuff I need to do, having a phone to quickly enter them on a todo list saves me time remembering them as well as motivate me to do them (since it’s written and all)
- Wifi and 3g; wifi is one of those beauty features that allow mobile interneting a breeze, since I dont have a all day internet mobile package wifi is useful for me to use my phone to it’s maximum capabilities. I have quite a lot of emails coming through and when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do isnt turn the computer on, wait for it to start up and check my mail, I just check the mail through the phone, no start up needed since it’s already on and I can read it when I head to the tube. It’s also useful when you’re visiting people and they have wifi available, I mean a laptop is cool but doing all the laptop stuff on a mobile is cooler since you don’t need to lug a laptop. But yeah, if wifi isnt available, than it’s 3g time, decent broadband like speeds so it’s all good.
- Surf the web; mm this baby can display the entire page with it’s wide screen and all. Makes more sense than portrait since it’s all narrow. I’ve got all sorts of sites to browse on including Google Reader, Twitter, Flickr, Muse board ( thanks to the new mobile skin I made), Facebook (everyone’s doing it :(), RTM, and Calendar.
- Email; nice to check emails here, it has an email button to make the process easier, I use email to send flickr images, todo items as well as blogging
- Fring; it’s an awesome app that I can use for skyping and msn’ing, they’ve recently updated their software so that msn is a lot nicer. (I’ve used the skype app for phoning people abroad, New York was an example)
- TomTom; now I know I dont drive but when people drive me it’s nice to know where I am, this isnt a necessity but there are times where I’ve found it ultra useful, including finding Nando’s.
- Syncing; not only can I sync my todo list to my outlook at home, I can also sync my google calendar onto my phone and check out events when mobile, pretty useful and makes use of the calendar display thing when I’m on the standby screen
- Notes; a nice place for me to write up my blogs, I used this a lot when I’m on the tube and then email them to myself for further updating and posting. Makes my tube journeys a lot more productive (instead of just reading the papers).
- Youtube; this app is awesome, view AND download youtube videos onto my phone, it’s fun to show people random clips
- Underground tube map app, sometimes I need that damn map
- Panorama photos; not just normal photos that all camerasphone do, this baby does pano shots, it automatically detects the edges and yeah, instant pano shots
- JoikuSpot; I can create a wifi hotspot for my laptop or someone else’s laptop, dead useful at times when I want to use internet on another pc
- Putty; featured in Maddox’s iphone article, you can make Scarlett Johannson moist!
- View PDFs; sometimes I get pdf bills I would like to check on the phone, not that important but fancy to have
- Nes emulator, tetris and solitaire games; sometimes I don’t carry my ds lite or psp (I’m spoilt :$) so it’s nice to have something to play with
So yeah, very useful phone! It’s nice to have it all packed into one! I’m not keen on having my music there however since I love an awesome chunk of hard disk space to listen to my t00ns haha.
For my contract, I got myself a dolphin £20 plan at first which had 200 txts and 70 minutes, I later on upgraded to the Racoon 25 with 100 txts and 220 minutes, not sure why but it encourages me to phone people a lot now (inn keeps assuming I’m only phoning her because I’m wasting credit). But yeah, now it puts a smile on my face when I have an excuse to phone people hehe.
