In case you didn’t know, the new, soon to be available Apple iPad doesn’t support Flash. Not a bad thing in my view as Flash is a memory hog, drains batteries and isn’t the most standards compliant technology out there. It is also a proprietary Adobe technology rather than an open standard. Apple claim these points as reasons not to support it on their mobile devices, although the latter point is a little hypocritical when coming from Apple.
Many people hope that the increasing popularity of Apple’s mobile devices in the form of the iPhone, iPod Touch and the new iPad will pressure website and content providers to provide their content in a form that doesn’t require Flash. YouTube is already moving in this direction and is experimenting with HTML5 to deliver its videos and others will follow suit as more an more users demand it.
Adobe seem to be hitting back though in conjunction with HP and their up and coming tablet device – obviously inspired by the iPad! Let the tablet wars begin!
I recently discovered that iTunes had some Mountain-Biking videos for download and I couldn’t resist them.
The first I downloaded was ‘Seasons’ from the Collective which was amazing, loads of good footage, some excellent filming and a good mix of riding. At about an hour long you just can’t go wrong for £1.89. The sound track was good too and it just made me want to get out and ride.
Here’s the Trailer for Seasons:
Next up was Kranked 7 which was pretty good, but not quite as good as seasons in my view. I also downloaded ‘Virtuous’, which was a little shorter but just as good. Some really good downhill footage, although I wasn’t so sure about the soundtrack on this one as it would require an ‘explicit’ tag so I couldn’t really let Morgan watch it.
If only iTunes had some windsurfing movies too as it is so easy to download them and at £1.89 each you don’t mind paying for them. I know you can get such things for free if you look in the right places, but I’d prefer not to do that – I must be the only person who has actually acquired all of his video, music and software legitimately – if the products are available at a sensible price then I’d much rather buy them and support the people making them. It isn’t as though I don’t already give Apple enough of my hard earned cash, so they may as well provide my media as well!
Head on over to iTunes now and get inspired to get out there on the trails. Even the Guardian has an article about Mountain Biking video clips. All I need now is to find a way of viewing them on the TV in the living room.
As part of my job as a freelance website designer I’m always being called upon to help people out with their computers. Anna is the same and we both seem to be the first people friends and family turn to when they need some advice or help.
We kind of enjoy helping out too and everyone always seemed pleased when we do so. It has also shown us that there is a market for some simple, friendly, down to earth computer help and advice, so we’ve decided to start up ‘Computer Tutor Wales‘, offering just that service.
We’re not offering to fix computers and we aren’t necessarily offering to help when things go wrong, it is more a case of helping people get the most from their computers. Whenever we go to someone house to help them out we always try to educate them about where they went wrong, how they can prevent such things happening again and how to help themselves and this is the best part of lending a hand. The education side of things is really satisfying and passing on our knowledge always feels good.
We don’t know how this new venture will go yet, we may be able to help people over the phone, via remote access to their computer or more likely in person at their house where we can help them on their own machine. Rather than teaching them things we think they should know we’ll hopefully teach them how to do the things they want to do on their computer.
So, if you need some help or computer tuition in the Aberystwyth and Machynlleth area give us a call, let us pass on some of our knowledge and before you know it you’ll be astounding your friends and family with your own computer wizardry!
Computer Help and Tuition in Aberystwyth & Machynlleth
OK, time for a moan about our Broadband Speeds again!
As part of my job as a freelance website designer I’m often being called on to help people with their computers, set up e-mail accounts, sort out their broadband connections and generally teach them how to do certain things on their computers. Living in rural West Wales, many of these people live outside of Aberystwyth in little villages or in houses miles from anywhere. Because of this, conversation often turns to the speed of the broadband connections in these area and the fact that it is the people who live ‘out in the stick’ that need a decent connection more so than the people living in bigger towns.
Broadband has become an essential commodity these days, just like water or electricity and some of us are getting left behind. Mind you, most of the places I go to, however remote seem to have a better connection than I do. 2-3Mb per second is common in most places, whereas the most I can get is a 1Mb per second connection.
Bits and Bytes
When I do a speedtest (I usually use this real world checker) I get a download speed of around 900-950kbps and an upload speed of 200-230kbps.
Now, connection speeds such as this are measured in kilobites (or megabits) per second as opposed to kilobytes (or megabytes). Note the lower case ‘kb’ and ‘mb’ which denotes bits rather than ‘KB’ or ‘MB’ which denotes bytes. There are 8 bits in a byte so in real terms, my 950kbps download speed enables me to download data at approximately 120KBps. Not exactly great so it can take me a while to download videos and such like and it does sometimes mean that streaming things such as BBC iPlayer isn’t that successful.
Upload Speeds
Upload speeds are usually much slower – The ‘A’ in ADSL stands for Asymmetric meaning that the data transfer into the house is faster than the data transfer out of the house. This is usually fine as most people download more than they upload. However, I do quite a lot of uploading and recently I’ve been really pushing my upload limits.
As part of my backup strategy I’ve started using Carbonite as an offsite backup. The first thing I needed to do in order to use this was to upload all of my files to their server. Obviously I didn’t back up everything, but by the time I added all of my documents (letters, e-mails, financial records, spreadsheets, databases etc.) and all of my photos my upload queue had hit around 50GB. I have yet to add my music, movies or even the websites I’ve built to the queue as that would add another 30GB. I started the upload of the 50GB of data of December 22nd 2009 and it has been running almost continuously night and day since then. It finally finished the upload on Monday, 6 weeks or thereabouts of uploading!…. Oh for a faster broadband connection.
So, the Apple iPad is here… Well, it will be soon, so do I want one?
Giant iPod
iPad
After all the hype I was initially a little disappointed. To me it was just a large iPod touch. It did of course look gorgeous, but that is to be expected from Apple, but it didn’t really seem to do anything revolutionary. Other than having a larger screen it doesn’t really do anything that an iPod doesn’t. You can view photos, movies, read books, listen to and buy music, browse the web and use iPhone apps. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want one but there wasn’t anything really compelling that made me think I needed one.
New Concept
I’ve now had a bit of time to think about it though and can see that it might indeed become a completely new concept in computing that does indeed fit in between a laptop and a smart phone and could become a useful appliances in many households.
I can imagine many households, ours inculded, having an iPad lying around in the living room or the kitchen and being used as a family computer for quick access to e-mails and thing such as calendars or address books or a quick check of something on the web. Rather than going to the office and maybe having to start up the computer or get the laptop, we’ll be able to just pick up the iPad and get on with it.
The Pros
The iPad obviously has lots going for it. The looks are great and the user interface and functionality is up to Apple’s usual high standards. The screen is super high quality and about the right size for tasks such as web browsing. The eBook reader looks good, and with so many 3rd party apps available in the app store it can do more than you would imagine. The new iWorks apps for the iPad llook good too, but it does have a few downsides as far as I’m concerned.
The Cons
First up is the lack of multi-tasking. As far as I know, you can’t have more than one app open at a time (other than a couple of Apple specific ones). This may nor be a huge issue for general ‘living room’ tasks, but if I’m thinking of the device as a computer and trying to use productivity tools on it I could see that being an issue. It also looks as though I’d have to buy iPad specific versions of applications such as iWorks that I already have on my Mac. They aren’t expensive but it all adds up. And that brings us to the price. UK pricing isn’t being released until the product is launched, but the US price for the basic model is $499, so I’m sure the UK price will be around the £399 mark. That only gets you 16GB of storage though which probably won’t be enough for most and with no SD slot there isn’t a way of expanding the storage at the moment. The price isn’t bad, but it isn’t an inconsiderable amount to throw at a gadget unless you have a legitimate use for it.
There also isn’t any GPS which is a shame. Admittedly as a ‘living room computer’ this isn’t really needed, but people will take this out and about with them and it could make a great SatNav device in the car if it had a GPSr built into it.
I’m also surprised that there isn’t a front-facing camera. If it did have one and this was coupled with an iPad version of iChat then the iPad could become the ultimate home video chat system. I could just imagine passing it around on the sofa so that we could all chat to Granny!
iPad 2.0
It has to be remembered of course that this is only version 1 of the iPad and they have to hold some things back for version 2.0 so I guess a camera and GPS might appear in a later version.
Household Computer
So, do I want one? Well of course I do, who wouldn’t?
Do I need one? No I don’t, but I can see use for it in our house. As a Living Room Computer which is the niche that I see for this device, it has many uses. Having an iPad lying around ready to go would be great for quickly checking my e-mail or looking something up on the web. I can see us using it as a family computer for organising things, storing address books and calendars. Even in the kitchen for recipes and such like.
What’s more when not in active use we could place it on a stand and use it as a gorgeous 10″ digital photo-frame. Looks as though I’d better start saving up ready for the UK release!
The world is full of Apple rumours, we now know what the iPad actually is and what it can do, but I’ve come across a source of information regarding a Apple event in Aberystwyth.
Yep, the sleepy seaside town of Aberystwyth is to host an Apple roadshow!
According to a job description on the careers advisory service website:
1 student is required to distribute leaflets and promote Student Discounts on Apple products, and pre-promote a Apple Roadshow that will attend the University on 2nd February 2010.
Sounds interesting to me, but then I am an Apple Fanboy!
Hypercard
As a man obsessed with order, data and lists I’ve always had a softspot for databases. Right from the early days using an Apple Mac one of my favourite things to do was create HyperCard stacks and little apps within Hypercard for all sorts of things. I used to make my own financial recording stacks, exercise training stacks, databases of my books and music and so on. None of it was particularly good but it worked and served a need.
Filemaker Pro
Of course, HyperCard didn’t last long and I soon moved onto FileMaker Pro. Once again, I put it to similar uses and created some nice relational databases for things I needed (wanted) to keep track of.
More recently if I needed a database I was more likely to develop a quick online one using a MySQL database and PHP, and to be honest as my “Simple Life of Luxury’ has developed I’ve had less time for cataloging things I didn’t really need to catalogue and haven’t been using databases at home.
Bespoke Apps
I hadn’t used a database application such as FileMaker Pro for a few years. In most cases if I wanted to keep track of certain things such as my bike rides or my finances I would use a bespoke application – Ascent for my bike rides and other exercise, Moneywell for my personal finances. In most cases these bespoke applications are much better and have features that wouldn’t be possible with a database.
However, with the moth season approaching I wanted a way of recording my moth counts and having heard good things about Bento I needed an excuse to satisfy my need for a database! There are bespoke biological recording applications out there such as MapMate, but nothing for a Mac so I decided to give Bento a go and build my own.
Bento
Moth Trapping Record
Bento is built by the makers of Filemaker Pro but at £29.95 is much more affordable. It isn’t a cut down version of Filemaker Pro, rather it is a completely different product with a very user-friendly approach to database design.
I downloaded the trial on Saturday and had a go at building a database without reading any of the manual! The look and feel of Bento is very Mac-like and the interface resembles that of iTunes. There is a pane to the left of the window which contains your various libraries (tables), a smaller pane below this which lists the fields (columns) used in any library and the main screen which contains the records (rows). The records can be displayed as individual cards or as a list.
Adding new fields and arranging them within a record card (form) is easy and just a case of selecting the field options and dragging the field to where you want it. I was up and running with a basic database of moths in no time.
Relationships
The next thing to try was creating some relationships. Now Bento isn’t a fully-fledged powerful relational database application. It isn’t trying to be, but it is trying to be a useful database application for personal use. I wanted to have one library that contained records of the moth species, with descriptions and photos of that moth, along with another library that contained records of the moths I collect in my trap. Of course I wanted to join these together so that any recording of a particular species in my trap was linked to the description ot the moth species.
Moth Species Record
I did have to resort to the manual a little here, but once I knew how to do it this was simple. First I created the moth species library with its various fields. Then I created a moth trapping library with its relevant fields. Linking the two was then just a matter of dragging the Moth Species library onto a form within the moth trapping library. This has the effect of creating a ‘related data’ field in the trapping form that allows me to select a record from the Moth species library. You can choose which fields from the related library are shown in this related data field.
Now, when I enter a new record to the trapping library, I enter the various details such as date, species, and the number trapped and also click in the related data field and select the relevant species from the Moth Species library. This is OK, but not actually that useful. I therefore created a relationship in the opposite direction. This time dragging the moth trapping library onto the Moth Species form. I displayed this related data field as a list showing the date and quantity of moths trapped from the trapping database. This is quite useful. Now when I look up the details of any particular moth species I can also see the days that I have seen these in the trap and in what quantities.
Of course as these records are now related, changing anything in one is reflected in the other.
OK, using such a database to keep track of simple moth records isn’t groundbreaking but it was a fun way to get to grips with Bento and as far as database applications go I have to say I’m impressed.
iApp Integration
Probably the most important aspect of Bento of most home users will be the seemless integration it has with Apples iApps. The libraries pane by default contains special libraries that link to Address Book, iCal and iPhoto meaning that databases for each of these apps are automatically created for you.
You can therefore add more information to records within these apps, contacts, calendar events and photos, or integrate them into libraries of your own. It is all very slick and I’m sure I’ll find a use for it soon.
Compatibility
Import Dialogue Box
The ease of use is continued through to exporting and importing of data too. Importing data from a Numbers of Excel spreadsheet is ridiculously easy. Just drag the spreadsheet file onto the libraries pane. Bento analyses the data and up pops a diaolgue box showing you that it is going to create a new library based on the data in the spreadsheet. Bento works out that the first record in the spreadsheet contains column names so it uses these as field names in the library and then it allows you to check through the records to make sure it has everything correct. Click on the import button and Bento creates a completely new library for you containing all of the data in your spreadsheet. It couldn’t be easier.
Exporting to Excel or CSV format is just as easy meaning that Bento should be compatible with a range of other applications.
Looks
In addition to the Mac look and feel, you can customise the various forms you create in Bento using various themes that come pre-loaded. You don’t have complete control over all aspects of the form design and I found what you could do was a little limiting. You can’t change fonts for a start and there are only 5 font-sizes that you can choose from. This does of course simplify things and I guess databases are meant for storing and analysing data, not looking pretty, but a little more control would be nice. I for one don’t like the fact that I can’t make the scientific names of my moths display italicised.
Making changes to the look and layout of a form is really easy and there is enough flexibility for most users. I’d like to be able to lock the form layout though so that it couldn’t be changed. I would then be able to use it in simple data-entry and retrieval mode without the ability to accidentally edit the form. When sharing a database with others the database is ‘locked’ in this fashion meaning that users viewing your shared database can’t create or delete fields or make changes to form layouts, but they can edit, add and delete data.
Overall Bento is easy to use, works well and would suit the needs of most personal users needed a database application. I just need to find a few more uses for it now, but I think it is well worth £29.95.
Tubular tyre
I changed the rear tyre on the bike I use on my turbo trainer recently.
The bike I use is pretty old. I had it 20 years ago and at the time it was pretty good. Top of the range Reynolds 753 steel frame with Campagnolo groupset, nice wheels and all the trimmings… However by modern standards it is an antique. Steel is rarely used these days instead aluminium or carbon fibre is king. The components, especially the drive chain and gearing look ancient. No things such as indexed gears or 20 speeds for me, just old-fashioned non-indexed 14 speed gearing with a tiny little rear cassette.
Also, the fact that it has tubular tyres rather than clinchers means that it isn’t ideal for the turbo trainer. You can’t get turbo-trainer specifuc tubular tyres so I decided the best thing to do was to find something similar to what I had on there before. The ones I had one there were 20 years old and had spent most of that time drying out and cracking in the shed.
A quick look online though and I found some that weren’t too expensive. I ordered one and couldn’t quite believe it when it arrived. It was exactly the same as the one on there. Not just the same make and model but every aspect of it was identical, right down to the graphics and branding. It’s kind of reassuring that some things never change.. Either that or I’ve just bought a tubular tyre that has been sitting in a bike shop store room for twenty years!
My Tacx Flow Turbo Trainer has a built in calibration device allowing it to ensure that workouts you do on it are consistent despite changes to things such as tyre pressure, contact pressure, bike you use etc. Any change to such things would make a difference to the efficiency and could therefore adjust the effort needed for a particular workout.
The calibration system is easy to use. Press a few buttons on the computer, then pedal up to a certain speed at which point it tells you to stop pedalling and it then measures the amount of time it takes for the wheel to come to a halt. From this, the turbo trainer can work out what braking resistance it needs to use so that it remains calibrated from session to session.
It is recommended that you do this from time to time just to make sure the machine is still calibrated correctly and you should do it if you change things such as a tyre, tyre pressure or anything else on the bike. I’ve done it a few times since having the turbo trainer and the calibration result has always been ‘+2′. As I understand it this means the braking resistance is slightly higher than a factory default of 0.
The bike I use on the turbo trainer is quite nice, everything works really well on it, it is smooth and has an amazing rear hub and I keep the tyre pressure high so that always made sense to me as the turbo trainer needed to up the resistance a little to compensate for the efficiency of the bike. However, the bike is also 20 years old and the tubular tyres on it have been on there for 20 years. Most of that time it has been sat in a shed and the years had taken their toll on the tyres. The cracks and splits in the rubber finally succumbed to 500 miles abuse on a turbo trainer so I replaced the rear one over the weekend.
Cue a re-calibration of the Tacx Flow. I re-calibrated today with the new rear tyre and this time got a reading of ‘+1′. I left it at that as I assume that means it will now give me a braking resistance that will allow me to replicate workouts I was doing before despite the new tyre.
The only way I could test it was to do a known workout and see how it compared. I therefore did my normal 1 minute interval session with the hard efforts at 350 Watts. Trouble was I was planning on upping this to 360 Watts next week as it was now beginning to feel quite comfortable, on top if which I was well rested today and felt quite good.
The workout did feel a little easier than usual with my heart rate reaching around 162 on the efforts rather than 166, but I now don’t know if this is due to the slighty lower braking resistance following the re-calibration or the fact that I should have been in good form and I’m improving.
I guess I’ll have to see how it pans out over the next few sessions… It does of course mean that I’m still on target and can increase the power output on the hard efforts to 360 Watts next week as planned.
Heart Rate from Todays 1 Minute Interval Turbo Trainer Workout
Yoga
I’ve always wanted to do Yoga or Tai Chi or something similar to help with my overall flexibility, but I’ve never quite had the nerve to actually do it.
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against spending time in a room with lithe, supple, leotard clad girls, but I’m not so sure what they would think of the middle-aged, greying (OK.. grey!) man in the corner grunting and groaning as he tries to adopt some of the poses. I think doing it in the comfort of my own home would be a better option. I’m also not so keen on the ’spiritual’ aspect of such things. I’m sure for some it can become a spiritual thing but I just want to do it to for the physical aspects.
With the recent purchase of a Wii, one possible hi-tech solution was to get a Wii-Fit and the do Yoga using that. That might be an option one day, but it isn’t cheap and for now I wanted a better solution.
I therefore took a look on the iTunes store for Yoga podcasts and found a video podcast called Yogamazing. The website states that:
“YOGAmazing classes are designed for everyonefrom out-of-shape parents to athletes to those with no yoga experience or those with an on-going practice. In a relaxed, down-to-earth, and inclusive atmosphere, Chaz works on developing a yoga practice that you can take home and use every day to improve the quality of your life”
Sounds good to me so I’m going to give it a go. I’ve downloaded a beginners class from yogamazing and will give it a go (when no-ones watching). I’m starting to do a bit more training in the form of swimming, cycling and circuits so it probably won’t be long before my old aches and pains (knees and back mainly) start to rea their ugly heads. I’m hoping the Yoga will help alleviate such things by improving my overall strength and flexibility and at the same time help me relax.
Some say that Yoga is a complete workout for your body, mind and soul. I’m doing it for the ‘body’ aspect and it may help with the ‘mind too. I doubt that it’ll help me find my inner-self so I’m not so worried about the ’soul’ aspect, but I guess you never know.
Don’t worry I won’t post any video clips of me mid Yoga-Flow, but I’ll let you know how I get on with it and what I think of Yoga and using a podcast to guide me through it.
