graham’s blog

Shiny objects

Since I was a kid I’ve always been on the lookout for shiny new objects.

When I was a kid it was new Matchbox Cars, or a new Lego Box or some Meccano.

When I was a teenager it had a lot to do with Music, new singles or LP’s. I was thirsty for music and spents hours listening to it.

I continued and indeed still continue with my passion for music of most kinds in my life today.

In addition, however, with the advent of the Internet I am still on the lookout for shinies and it becomes almost unhealthy at times.

I collect sites as I collected music but unlike my music a lot of these sites lose their shine rapidly or are replaced by even shinier ones.

Life was simpler before the Internet. For a fiftysomething geek, if the genre really exists, it can become an ongoing struggle.

I don’t dare expose the number of apps I had when I was using Windows XP and know I am using my iMac (I love my iMac) my applications folder is overflowing with stuff I pick up and in reality use only from time to time.

I can’t afford (or justify using) Photoshop and I try to be ethical so I have Photoshop Elements and Pixelmator and the Gimp and strive to use them properly. I mention these apps because inevitably I tried out Photoshop Express earlier as well.

In every category it’s more or less the same combat.

It would be nice to be able to simulate an application environment by hiding or concealing applications on the fly. That way I could dip into the Lucky Bag (a childhood memory) and draw out a new toy only when I really needed it. I should be able to have categiries of applications such as -Often Used- or -Not yet mastered-. Perhaps in the Apps folder they could be sorted into categories (Graphics, Words, Games, Music etc etc).

Maybe this is possible or partly possible. I haven’t tried working with them yet.

I’ll let you know how I get on. Is this a problem for you?

Read the words

I signed up for ReadTheWords earlier so I can combine pleasure with exploration without even losing focus.

Here is yesterday’s post read out for your listening enjoyment. Although the voice is synthesized it’s not too bad and I can think of several uses for the service.

I need some help from you now (but if you are not quick enough I may already have found a solution). I have made a hostable badge to spread the word to find Robert but I can’t display the code for the badge here in WordPress. It always comes out as executed html even though I enclose it with the right tags. Any ideas?

How do you do it?

Powered By ReadTheWords.com

I just couldn’t wait

I’ve quite a few friends who have bought Nokia N95 8Gb mobile phones these past few weeks. This in addition to a good friend who visited last weekend from the States and had two iPhones led me to make an impulse purchase the day before yesterday.

This is the result. I was putting it through it’s paces yesterday and it’s really cool. The internal GPS works a lot better than I thought and the downloaded maps of Europe resulted in zero data being transmitted

How is your phone shaping up?

One might not be enough?

My son David showed me this earlier so I’m spreading the geekiness!

USB Zen?

While looking at one of the free newspapers here in Geneva this morning I came across an article that drew my attention. On the inevitable shopping page there is an article for a gadget that infuses perfumes around your PC or notebook. All this from a USB Key. I looked up the web address (USB Geek) and have found that they sell enormous quantities of USB devices ranging from the very useful to very geeky. Check it out, at least for a laugh!

By the way, I’ve already unplugged my USB Christmas tree and my USB fan is stored away safe for next summer.

Speech recognition - the next chapter

I decided to take the risk of purchasing iListen the other day and to use it with my Logitech USB Headset here on my iMac. I had asked Steph but she continues to use Dragon Naturally Speaking in a Parallels session as Dragon is capable of transcribing either French or English.

My English accent when I speak French is too strong to be able to do this without extensive training and I don’t want the expense. Dragon is quite expensive.

First impressions with iListen were unfavorable.

I started the learning process, which is rather long (haven’t finished yet). I even did the 94 screens of the Dracula Story and my mouth was dry after that one.

When I dictated however and although iListen seemed to be transcribing correctly I was getting jumbled and duplicate letter and words in my applications. Through the help files however I was able to “throttle” the speed and now I am getting near 90% success rates. I may have throttled it too much as it is rather slow to type it out.

I’ll be continuing my use and when I am using it to write articles here you will be sure to know! I am feeling more optimistic now.

New shinies

Through twitter and a Chris Pirillo broadcast I’ve “discovered” Blurb and Joe’s Goals.

This was after his clip mentioning them in relation to rewarding yourself after attaining some goals. The referral was to using Joe’s goals as a tool to survey ongoing goals and to Blurb as a reward. The person in question who maintained a photo blog over 365 days is going to write a book using Blurb.

I catch on quick and have signed up to Joe’s Goals but have started putting together a few books out of sheer pleasure. I love Blurb!

Apple Premium Reseller Blues

I don’t want to start a personal vendetta but I’m extremely disappointed with one of our local Mac stores here in Geneva. For this reason I won’t divulge the name.

Those following me on twitter know that I’ve been looking into solutions for speech transcription software professionally and have ordered and obtained several copies of Dragon Naturally Speaking Mobile and ascertained that it can’t (without a lot of training) cope with my somewhat pronounced English accent when speaking French. Those who know me also know what I mean. It’s been quoted as being cute, even charming but it’s too thick for Dragon.

I did have a lot of success with speaking English though, even from a dictating machine (Philips) and recognition was well over 95%.

Unfortunately it wasn’t working too well here on my iMac at home using Parallels. I couldn’t figure out whether it was the headset (a Logitech USB) or other problems.

I decided to make a visit to a local Reseller and decided on a specialist rather than just a chain store that sells Macs.

I waited in line and then asked about headsets with microphones and was promptly recommended one of only two headsets they had in store. It is precisely the Logitech headset I am trying to use. Either I made a really good choice, which I doubt, or they don’t know what headsets are really adapted to transcription against those that are better suited to Skyping or IM. Either way I must admit that the choice of USB headsets is very limited in the stores I visited.

Moving on I asked about CD and DVD burning software for OSX as I have several large FLAC files with corresponding .cue files enabling them to be burnt onto CD thus reproducing the original CD. It used to be my favourite way of archiving CDs while retaining a lossless format. I haven’t yet found a Mac app that will read the cue file and burn the CD.

You may not believe this but neither of the two shop assistants had heard of FLAC files and had absolutely no idea of what I was talking about!!!

Sometimes I wonder why I ask for advice in stores. A lot of the time I have more knowledge than those that I am asking.

I won’t be going back to that store again. I’ll just muddle on or contact support I guess.

Internetlessness

I know the title is not English but it does describe what I lived through earlier this week.

I decided to upgrade our connection and rent a Set Top Box for IPTv from my IP Bluewin (Swisscom). As we live in the country we can’t get cableTV and so the only way to increase the number of channels is through IPTv and the extra bandwidth will theoretically increase the comfort of our access. I say theoretically because often the cause of slow downloads are elsewhere but you know that anyway so I won’t expand on it.

The result however was a day without any connection at all at home and although I’ve gone without voluntarily on many occasions this of course was different because it was out of my control.

All is good now however and I’m pleased with the Set Top Box. It makes recording programs a snap and whole series just another press of the button away which is nice. I could even set something to record from the net but haven’t tried yet.

As for the increased bandwidth, our connection “seems” a little snappier, but not markedly so. I’ll have to look for some big downloads and see what happens.

Testing offline blogging editors

This post is made with another editor (ecto) which I have downloaded and have a 21 day trial period.

The photo was taken on a walk my wife and I made in the Geneva countryside towards the end of September (a very nice walk by the way).

So more about me.

As you know i went into hospital in mid-October for an operation and stayed for 10 days. Since then I’ve been laying low and convalescing.

I’m feeling a lot better now although it all took a lot longer than I expected. I am due to go back to work on the 3rd of december.

I thought I would have the time to do things around the house but in the end watching tv, reading and listening to music have been my mainstay these past few weeks.

I took advantage of the time given to purchase an aluminium iMac and immediately installed Leopard. The first days were a bit frustrating because I was a victim of the famous iMac freezes but since the last update and graphics card update I’ve not had a (touch wood) freeze so all seems well.

I don’t miss my pc (and in any case I have a vm on parallels and another on Bootcamp so I’m covered.

The only things left to resolve are drivers for printers and my pen scanner for my banking apps and in the meantime these are installed on the vm. I’m not gaming for the meantime but some mmorpgs have osx clients so it’s looking good.

I’ll see you later.