LIKE I WHAT- WHAT I LIKE

The Walking Dead

I was the biggest Lost fan. However, as time goes by, the poor final season really gets to me. So much so that I almost feel cheated by the ending. It was pretty obvious that it wouldn't be able to live up to the hype. Someone on the lost fansite Dark UFO predicted at the start of the last season, to answer all the unexplained mysteries, there would have to be a reveal on average every three minutes of running time throughout all 17 episodes. Anyway, I needed a replacement, something that would give me that level of almost unbearable anticipation for each episode. Flash Forward, The Event and Fringe, (although pretty promising,) failed. Then came The Walking Dead. Adapted from the Robert Kirkman graphic novel series, but clearly going in a different narrative direction, the first season was a five part masterpiece.

Never Let Me Go

Okay, my probable top five books, in no particular order as as follows:

Never Let Me Go 

Catcher in the Rye 

One Day

High Fidelity 

American Psycho 

What really kills me about all of these is that they have all been made into films. I know it's a statement of the obvious but books aren't films, they're books. Isn't that the whole point? Rarely does an excellent book make and excellent film. At the risk of sounding like I have finally lost what little  'it' I have left, text incites the imagination in a way that film does not. Literature becomes as much a part of your imagination as that of the authors. That said I am not too much of a snob to refuse to watch film adaptations in general.

I am currently making an exception for Never Let Me Go because for me, reading the book was a deeply personal experience. However I am pretty torn at the moment because the film stars two of my favourite actors at the moment Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield. I particularly loved Carey's performance in An Education. A film, of which if you admit you like, you gain an immediate and rightfully deserved tag as a Pabst drinking hipster. 

Three Essential Cloud Based Apps

The mobile phone, Sky+ (TiVo) and toilet paper. Inventions that once used, you wonder how life was ever tolerable before they came into existence. Unfortunately there is far more dross that we have to use daily, that everyone wishes could be uninvented and banished from existence. 

As always, I feel legally obligated to link this to Apple and mention their latest update of their mobile operating system iOS 5 that has hit the headlines for 'borrowing' features from several popular existing cloud based iPhone/iPad apps,such as Dropbox, Instapaper and Evernote that could render these apps obsolete.  Personally I don't think that is the case but what I do find interesting is that although wildly popular with those that are deeply into tech, I never seem to see these apps on any 'regular' persons mobile or PC. Like the three inventions I mentioned at the start, once used, I think its hard to go back imagining life without them.

Dropbox 

This free app, basically is cloud storage in its purest form. It can be installed on iPhone, Android mobile, Windows and Mac, and created an integrated folder system that saves to the cloud. This means that files saved to the folder can be accessed on any device with either dropbox installed or a web browser. It also saves a hardcopy on each device that can be accessed offline. It's a service that once used, the thought of not storing files on dropbox  makes you worry about hard disk failures, loosing or damaging your phone and loosing those files. It also makes the process of emailing files to yourself or transferring files by USB stick seem outdated an obsolete. Whats more, you can send public or private links to share folders, which is a feature I use all the time when I want to transfer photo's or large files.

Instapaper 

This app installs a 'read later' bookmark onto your web browser/ mobile device, which basically saves that page to your instapaper account for you to read at a later date. It saves all you pages in a clear text only format which is ideal for when your browsing. Essentially it's a Sky+ for websites. One other feature is that on mobile devices, it sync's and will display your read later folder offline. Meaning that when you're in locations where there is no mobile connectivity, such as the underground or on a train, you can view all your favourite webpages offline. 

Evernote 

Republic Bike

Edward Hopper - Nighthawks

Is The iPhone Camera Doomed?

I have no idea who came up with the idea of putting a camera on a phone. On paper it seems like such an incompatible and bad combination. Apple seem to agree. iPhone camera's are always lacking from their rivals. My Nokia N95 from 2007 had a 5mp camera, when my 2010 iPhone 4's camera is only 3mp. And the 4 is the first generation on iPhone to get a flash. So why don't Apple seem to believe in the iPhone camera? I have a theory.

  I love photographs, I love photography, the problem is that I am a particular poor photographer. I have a Canon 350D that I bought by accident a few years ago, which I can just about use as a point and shoot, mainly for family events. It's only recently that I have discovered Instagram for the iphone on the app store. It's easy to use, point, shoot, edit using a variety of simple filters, post. The success of the app is, firstly, the speed at which it works, the app opens in under a second. Secondly the meta data, such as the location is automatically uploaded to the Instagram site, limiting the fuss. Thirdly and most importantly, the retro, hipstermatic-like filters make the photo's look great. There has also been a general rise in iPhone camera usage by both casual and amateur photographers alike.

  So it looks pretty good for the iPhone and Apple so far; and there's more. It was recently reported in TUAW that a wedding photographer Joshua Brown had photographed and edited a whole album from a trip to Italy using only Camera+ on his iPhone The results are amazingly impressive. Joshua actually took a Canon D5 DSLR with him on the trip but didn't use it as he found the D5 too bulky an obtrusive to carry round. 

  It still looks good news for Apple; and theres even more good news. In the same week Techcrunch / reported that the iPhone is about to overtake the Nikon D90 as the most popular camera for posting to Flickr. It's easy to see why,

  So whats the problem? Answer: Google's Android. It doesn't take a great leap of imagination WiFi and 3g connectivity, capacitive touchscreens and realtime editing. If you want to adjust the white balance, is there a better way then taptaptap Camera +, method utilising the touchscreen? I don't think so. Android is open source and free. In his Weekly Podcast The Talk Show, John Gruber connected the dots and predicted that the next generation of DSLR's have a version of Android pre-installed with these features. If this is the case then, it doesn't appear to bode well for future growth of the iPhone as a viable photography device. 

  I doubt that this is going to worry Apple. In the long run it's not going to affect sales of the iPhone or any other Apple product. The chances of standalone Apple DSLR camera? Slim, the Cupertino company just doesn't have the background in this area, after all all it's iPhone, iPad and iPod touch manufacturers are sourced from other manufacturers. What is will definitely happen is that the iPhone 5 (or 4S) will have better camera that the 4. Just how far they will go is a matter is really contentious. Rumours were circulating that Sony were to provide an 8Mp camera, but this although not improbable, seems unlikely, and anyway 12Mp is the current benchmark for phones and point & shoot camera's.

Kenwood KM600

Everyone thinks that if I am going to choose a classic cake mixer it's going to be the Kitchen Aid Artisan. After all that thing looks like the iPad of kitchen utensils. However its the Kenwood KM600 that I love. This is the mixer that my mother had, i grew up with it in the house. Unlike the Artisan, it looks absolutely monolithic. On of my most distinct memories is the smell of the actual mixer. When its in full mix, it just smells of grinding metal and electricity. Such and odd combination, but such a unique smell.

Mad Men

Sometimes I am positive about life, other times I fear for humanity. Most people's reaction to Mad Men makes me feel the latter. It's the subtle nuances as much as the film quality cinematography, set dressing and fashion design that make this the second greatest show on television (after The Wire). 

Sherlock Holmes vs Sherlock Holmes

Ok, everyone knows that the best ever Sherlock Holmes is Gregory House MD. However, if we have to keep it canon I have a problem. I wasn't expecting much from the Guy Ritchie directed Sherlock Holmes, but Robert Downey JR's Holmes had me hooked from the first scene. The only problem I had was it seemed constrained by the period setting.

 Then came the BBC adaption titled Sherlock. At first I didn't want to see it because, a) It was from the  Dr Who writer Steve Moffatt and I must be the only person in the world who isn't a big Dr Who fan, and b) It was set in the modern day. We already have a Sherlock set in the modern day, it's called House and in the most watched show in the world. However, it did have Martin Freeman (from The Office) and I am a big fan, so I thought i'd give it a go. 

Anyway Sherlock is impressive, Watson is a Afghanistan War veteran, Benedict Cumberbatch plays Holmes as arrogant, cold with an implication he has Aspergers. We should hate him, but something about him always has us on his side. By the third and final episode of the season I was hooked.

Apple

Ok, where do I start? I bought an iPod mini 4Gb back in 2004, I was pretty impressed until it crashed and no amount of plugging into iTunes could save it, so it was replaced with a 4Gb iPod Nano (1st generation). This got machine washed with my running clothes by my now wife. I didn't immediately replace it but eventually went out with the intention of buying a 2nd generation iPod Nano 8Gb but the 8Gb Touch was on offer so I bought that instead. At the time I was using a Nokia N95 8Gb phone but the Touch iOS blew this away so I bought an iPhone 3G was followed by the iPhone 4, iPad (1st Generation), MacBook, Apple TV (2nd Generation) and now I await the iPad 2. 

I'm going to post about their products individually at some point, but they epitomise everything that is great about design. The hardware looks and feels so great, but what really makes you fall in love is the integration with the software. I don't hate Microsoft, I love my Xbox360 and using Windows at work, isn't the worst torment you could be subjected to, it's just that using OS X and iOS just feels so great. 

Motorola - StarTAC

Half Life 2 (Episode 2)

Yes I do think Mass Effect 2 is amazing, but my heart is with Half Life 2. If you want an idea of what it means to me, my eldest daughter is named after one of the main protagonists, Alyx. Its immersion is total, you feel for the characters and the cause. I would never claim that this is the perfect IP, the gameplay feels decidedly dated next to Halo Reach (or even Halo 3), but it just gets to to, and leaves its imprint on you, long after you have finished playing it.

Guernica 

Solaris - The Docking Scene

I'll cut straight to the chase; I am not a great fan of either version of Solaris. I have tried so hard, but I just don't get it. However the scene of Chris Kelvins shuttle docking with The Athena in the Steven Soderberg 2002 version is on of the greatest pieces of modern cinematography.

I really want at least 3 framed A2 size screenshots of this scene to mount in my study but have never been able to find any stills with the quality required.

Dualit toaster