Tidying up and Fireworks

Having found myself with a little free time I decided to do a little tidying up of this site. I am amazed at how much time I can actually spend trying things out and thinking about how to put things together to then find, at the end of the day, that I have changed very little but know at least ten new ways that the design won't work.

Having said this, I have managed to go even more minimalist. The sidebar has been reduced to search, latest posts and social icons. I was going to chop the latest posts but there is point where minimalism goes to far. A design is finished when no more can be taken out, and although they could be taken out I like having them. So they stay, for now... The social icons are in (shock horror) colour. That may also change, but having them in their native colours make them easily identifiable, however, whoever chose red for instagram needs their head examined. I also changed the WA logo from square to round, as I think it fits the aesthetic of the site better. 

I am also going to start using two columns for the writing of blog posts, I have seen this in a few sites and I quite like the look of it.

You can see that I have changed the March madness post into this structure.

For those reading this on a mobile device the only thing you'll really notice is the logo...so that's about 80% of you :-)

I have brought back some of my older galleries into the main menu under 'Archives' and have also added a new gallery of Fireworks from Edinburgh. I vaguely remember saying that I would post the shots from the iPhone X that I took at New Year and never got round to doing that. After finding the photographs today I was really surprised and happy with how well the vast majority were captured. Take a look at the gallery. These are all straight out of the iPhone X without any re-touching or post processing. The photographs that were in the sidebar that I occasionally updated can also be found in a new gallery in the 'Archives' menu.

I updated the 'About' page a little as well with some archive information of previous blog posts from 2014 till now and added a new about image of myself, which was taken by @alycoste, my official photographer ;-)

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I'll finish this post with a couple of the fireworks images from New Year to try and entice you to the gallery of all the Fireworks images :-) Thanks for reading!

February drought

I only realised yesterday that I went out photographing once in February. I think it was a combination of the weather and illness that caused this. On the bright side I have some photographs of Stirling to post later and will be taking a lot of photographs in the last third of this month and next month due to having some time off and vacationing! 

For now, I found this video inspiring and extremely creative and it features one of my favourite objects and a favourite music artist (FKA Twigs).

AGI Scotland Annual Event

I have just returned from what was a very interesting day at the annual meeting of the Association for Geographic Information, held at the Lighthouse in Glasgow. The AGI primary focus is to maximise the use of Geographic Information (GI) for the benefit of the citizen, good governance, and commerce. There was a whole host of talks surrounding two key themes:

- Data Security & Ethics
- Application of Geographic Information  

I attended the application of GI presentations and the two that I enjoyed most were:

Some Like it HOT, given by David Frankland from thinkWhere. The presentation surrounded the HOT tasking manager. The Tasking Manager is a mapping tool designed and built for the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team's collaborative mapping process. The purpose of the tool is to divide up a mapping project into smaller tasks that can be completed rapidly with many people working on the same overall area. It shows which areas need to be mapped and which areas need the mapping validated. Anybody can join this mapping effort and right now there is a particular need for mapping to be completed in Papua New Guinea after an earthquake set off mudslides. Helping mapping these areas will be vital for rescue and aid agencies. Anybody can help from novice to advanced mappers! 
 

Philip Taylor from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology provided a informative and humorous presentation on New Ways to Communicate GI data. The part that really caught my attention (apart from the Bloomin' Algae application) was the Edinburgh Tree Map (which is being expanded to other parts of the UK). Have a look at this wonderful map, the data was provided by Edinburgh Council which made all their Tree Data available for free and online! The map tree was inspired from these maps of London, Melbourne and particularly New York, the question was asked: "Can we do that for Edinburgh?". A fantastic achievement for Edinburgh! Now I know where I can get all the good Cherry Blossom photographs in the spring!

Alto’s Odyssey

Following up from the hugely successful Alto’s Adventure, Alto’s Odyssey was released today in the Apple App Store (also available on Android).

It's a remarkably simple game that is hugely addictive, an endless snowboard journey (on sand this time) across the desert achieving different tricks and tasks.  

The graphics, sound and music create an amazingly immersive atmosphere (best experienced with earphones). Like the original there is also a Zen mode in which you just ride without the nuisance of thinking about points and tasks! 

If my time playing this version is anything like the original I am about to lose a lot of sleep! Priced at £4.99/$4.99 on the App Store, more expensive than the original but totally worth it (and hey, it’s only two lattes worth). Would also recommend the original if you like this version!

First impressions of Apple's HomePod

It may have been delayed by two months but wow, was it worth the wait. The HomePod is a speaker with a digital assistant. Note: speaker and digital assistant was worded as speaker first and digital assistant second.

There has been lot of comparison between the HomePod and Amazon's Echo and Google's Digital assistant. In my opinion comparing the HomePod to Echo or Google Assistant is like comparing Apple's to Orange's (see what I did there...). Google and Amazon have digital assistants that happen to play music.

So, what does $350/£319 get you?

• Mind blowing sound quality, like astounding. 
• Is extremely easy to setup and connect to your iOS device.
• Can be used as an Airplay speaker (for Mac, AppleTV)
• Voice interaction via Siri

I purchased the Space Grey HomePod which was delivered on launch day and had it up and running within 5 minutes of opening. It is deceptively heavy, but oozes quality from the feel of the specially designed mesh fabric that covers it to the power cord that connects it to power.

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The sound comes from 7 tweeters arranged in a circle around the base of the unit and one high-excursion woofer at the top of the unit. The Apple A8 chip provides the power for the software (which is basically a stripped down version of iOS 10.2). HomePod automatically analyses the acoustics, adjusts the sound based on the speaker's location and separates the music into direct and ambient sound, direct sound being directed to the centre of the room while ambient sound is diffused into left and right channels and bounced off the wall.

There are six functions that you can activate on the touch surface on the top of the HomePod:

• Play/Pause
• Next Track
• Previous track
• Activate Siri
• Volume up (dedicated +)
• Volume down (dedicated-)

The space between the + & - is also the space for the siri wave, which is activated by saying "Hey Siri". What is most amazing about the Siri function is that you don't need to pause between saying "Hay Siri" and your question. It's that fast. Another impressive feature about the HomePod is that no matter how loud the music is playing it can still hear any commands you ask without the need to raise your voice. It has the ability to do some audio math where it takes away the music it is playing and is left with your voice command. It's impressive and the accuracy is very good.

Two of the features that were promised at the announcement are yet to be released; being able to connect to another HomePod to create stereo sound and Airplay 2 which would allow HomePods to connect throughout your house. These features are coming later this year, most likely with the update to iOS 10.3. There has been a lot of talk about these features not being included at launch, but this is Apple, they would rather launch when it is ready than release something that is half baked and requires updates (that doesn't mean they have never got it wrong, but that they never release something they know isn't as good as they can make it).

There are some negative points that are worth mentioning. There is no native Spotify support. I imagine this will put a lot of people off as switching to Apple Music will mean that they will loose there curated taste in music that Spotify has built. You need a device running iOS to use the HomePod (so all Android users are out). Also, for some reason a lot of people have pointed out that there is no line in, but then these are probably the same people that want a 3.5mm jack on their iPhone though...

Siri on the HomePod has limited functionality at this point. You cannot add calendar items, but you can set reminders, send and receive text messages and add reminder items. I expect that more functionality will be added to Siri in the future. At this point it will only play Apple Music, iTunes or Beats 1 radio natively, unless you use Airplay from your iOS device.

So, if you want a digital assistant I would recommend the Echo or the Google Assistant, however, if you want an amazing speaker to listen to music, then the HomePod is the answer.

I am going to link to a couple of reviews that I have read and liked. These are longer, more in depth from highly respected tech journalists and will certainly answer more questions than I do here.

Daring Fireball  - HomePod
Om Malik - My HomePod Review
 

So, first impressions after a weekend of using it; I like it. The sound is incredible, if you don't believe me go into an Apple Store and listen to one. I am confident that more functionality will be added to Siri, but then I bought a speaker first and a digital assistant second. 

I have yet to peel of the plastic at the top of the unit as apparently it is a fingerprint magnet :-)