So wait, a few months ago Apple rejected tap tap tap’s Camera+ app from the App Store because of a setting which allowed you to use your iThing’s volume buttons as a hardware shutter release because “it uses iPhone volume buttons in a non-standard way, potentially resulting in user confusion”, and now they are touting that very same feature as one of the innovations in iOS 5?
You stay classy, Apple.
PLEASE RETURN TO SENDER
Dear British Gas,
Lady Holt is deceased. You know this, because I informed you of it when I phoned you on purchasing this house two months ago. And yet the number of letters addressed to her you’ve sent to this address since then is fast approaching double figures. You can keep posting them if you like, and I will keep writing “DECEASED, PLEASE RETURN TO SENDER” on them and returning them, but it’s not going to bring her back.
It’s time to let her go.
Thought of You, by Ryan Woodward (HD version on Vimeo)
An absolutely beautiful dance film by the animator that created the fantastic Google Doodle for Martha Graham’s 117th birthday. It’s a must-watch for anyone with any interest at all in dance or animation.
(via Jess Fink)
It’s the final match of the final weekend of the Six Nations tournament, and WYWG is going to liveblog every exciting minute for you! By which WYWG means that WYWG will watch it on BBC iPlayer late on Sunday night, and post ~2,500 words on it several days after the tournament is over. As always, my words are unadorned, and those of WYWG-contributor Tom [are surrounded by square brackets and italicised, thus.]
The BBC have dubbed last week’s fiasco “ball-gate.” Ugh. They also still haven’t figured out that there are three reasons that the controversial throw-in shouldn’t have been allowed, or the difference between a lineout and a quick throw-in.
Wales have travelled without their defensive coach, Shaun Edwards [due to a mystery “disciplinary” issue]. Jiffy doesn’t think it’ll be a problem because they’re professionals. [Hmmm…] Martyn Williams is in the studio as an analyst. Let’s hope he’s as good at talking about rugby as he is at playing it. [That is a big ask.]
While You Were Gone has been following the Welsh campaign in the 2011 Six Nations tournament. This is the fourth liveblog in the series. As you will no doubt already be aware, text that looks like this was written by me, While You Were Gone, and [text that looks like this] was written by esteemed associate, Tom. Except for that bit just there. That bit was me doing Tom’s voice VENTRILOQUIST style. Okay enough of the small talk let’s get cracking!
I saw the thrilling Italy/France game live on Saturday, but I’m watching the Wales/Ireland game late on Sunday night. This Welshman has his priorities straight! The BBC also have their own priorities, and concentrate on the English campaign in the build-up to the Wales-Ireland match. Then Keith Wood plays Paul O’Connell at golf and Gordon D’Arcy takes the lead in Brian Moore’s Big Mouth with a whopping 10 balls thrown into Brian Moore’s maw. [Which is unarguably the most skilful thing D’Arcy has accomplished with a rugby ball this season.]
This is my “live” blog of the Italy vs Wales match on Saturday. As usual, contributor Tom will be chipping in with bits that [are delimited thus].
BBC iPlayer seems to have the whole TV show today. Which means the Italy vs Wales broadcast begins with an extended preview of the England game. I faff about for a while trying to figure out exactly how much to skip, and then to get iPlayer to allow me to do so.
Craig Gower, on the sidelines, is injured and so won’t be playing for Italy today. I have to say, he doesn’t exactly have a typical Italian accent. Colin Charvis [who, to be fair, doesn’t really have a “typical” Welsh accent] thinks the Welsh team is “maturing well”, like a fine cheese. He’s stumbling over his words a bit, which is unusual for him. He also thinks the Welsh back three have “gas… coming out of their ears.” I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be a good thing or not.
This is the second in my series of almost-liveblogs on the Welsh rugby team’s campaign in the Six Nations tournament. As always, I’m ably assisted by WYWG special-correspondent Tom, whose contributions will look [almost precisely like this].
I’m watching this game a few hours late on BBC iPlayer. There doesn’t seem to be a download option for some reason, so I’m streaming it. Hope my shoddy Virgin Media connection holds out for the entire match!
There’s no preamble, the footage starts only seconds before Parks kicks off for Scotland. The ball hasn’t even come down again before the picture stutters and then freezes for the first time. This could be a long evening.
It’s that time of the year again! The Six Nations tournament is upon us, so I can look forward to 2 months of Welsh underachievement, and you, dear reader, can look forward to another series of not-quite-liveblogs written collaboratively by yours truly and intrepid WYWG pitch-side reporter, Tom. [Almost literally pitch-side! These are awesome tickets. Wow, rugby players are MASSIVE. Bigger than on telly and everything.] As always, this is me, and [this is Tom]. So lets get cracking!
Despite the fairly terrible summer the Welsh side has had, I can’t help but feel a surge of optimism as the national anthems are played. [Whereas I, accompanied by a confident Englishman, and some beers worse off following the train journey to Cardiff, am less sunny in my outlook.]
Eddie Butler and Brian Moore are commentating today. They’re definitely my favourite pairing. [This is because you can’t see the pitch-side Little & Large act of Derwyn Jones and Gareth Edwards commentating for, I’m guessing, S4C. 6 foot 10 really is very tall. Also, I am in the stadium so I can’t hear them, or Jiffy, Jerry, or effing John Inverdale. How will I summon up the proper levels of “game rage”? Will I be happy sans commentators, or do I secretly actually prefer having a smarmy know-nothing ire-target to keep my blood boiling through the game? Let’s find out!]
Have you heard of Girls are Pretty?
It’s an ongoing collection of hyper-short stories that are whimsical, hilarious, and heart-achingly sad. Sometimes they’re absurd, sometimes they’re so true it hurts. Often they’re both at the same time.
An Experiment In Cord Cutting by Hill Holiday
We asked five families to spend a week without their cable TV and instead use one of the new “connected TV” devices - Roku, Boxee Box, Google TV, Apple TV, Xbox360.
I found this video fascinating. In its first five minutes the subjects of the experiment complain about the poor choice of shows on their new boxes and their bad user interfaces. No arguments from me there. Typing on a virtual keyboard with a clicky remote is irritating in the extreme, and the copyright holders’ ridiculous unwillingness to allow me to purchase their content is the single reason that I haven’t been championing the Apple TV to all and sundry for the few years I’ve owned one. If its catalogue were even half as large as LoveFilm’s it’d be a no-brainer purchase, in my opinion1.
However, in the final minute the subjects all bemoan the loss of their ability to just turn on the TV and watch whatever’s on. They hate having to decide what to watch.
In the past couple of years I’ve been trying to cut down on my vegetative TV viewing, and instead spend the time (and money) watching films and box sets of TV shows that I actively like. (Or even doing something less boring instead.) To my chagrin, I do still sometimes spend time idly flicking through channels, and occasionally even watch something I find there, but the number of times I’m still happy the following day about what I watched is so low I suspect it might be zero.
It’s jarring to be reminded that some people, perhaps even the majority, don’t see this as a waste of their time.
There’s more info on the experiment on the Hill Holiday blog.
(via John Siracusa)
The catalogue is already slim, but worse than that, films which I’ve previously placed in my wish-list regularly pop up when I come back to them as “no longer available”. There is no technical reason for this. It can only be described as wilful stupidity on the part of the film industry, or something similar but involving swearwords. ↩
Nation’s Sweetheart, Cheryl Cole
You would not believe how long1 it took me to make this.
And how many applications! In roughly chronological order: Safari, Snapz Pro X, FFmpeg, Photoshop, iMovie HD, FFmpeg again, Acorn, and GIFfun. Photoshop actually failed at two different jobs in the process. I’ve half a mind to write up my travails as a not-so super simple guide. ↩
You think you’ve seen headspins before? You haven’t seen headspins. These are headspins.
(via B-Better)
(Source: youtube.com)
Friend-of-WYWG Dr. Richard Gaywood* created a rather informative graph showing the vast quantities of iOS games that have been released since the birth of Apple’s App Store.
I thought it might be even more interesting to see a graph in which the heights of the bars represented the number of years the various games platforms were around, and the lengths of the bars represented the average numbers of games per year, with the area of each bar thus standing for the total number of games on each platform.
I suggested this to my esteemed friend, but he demurred, and so I took it upon myself to remix his graph, the result of which you can see above.
It is, obviously, even more flawed than Dr. Gaywood’s original**, but I think it displays rather effectively his original point, viz. “WOW there are a lot of iPhone games.”
Previously, on While You Were Banging on About your Expensive Phone.
* Previously featured on WYWG here and heeeeere.
** Not least because of my horrendous lack of Excel-fu.
…for the extended hiatus. Normal scheduling will resume as soon as possible.
I’m linking to Brian Phillips’s article about Pelé and David Foster Wallace on Federer for two reasons:
It’s a fantastic article,
Because apart from the “Run of Play” banner at the top, its design is precisely what I had in my mind when I set about half-finishing the design to my photography tutorial. That is what While You Were Gone is supposed to look like.
(via FreeDarko)
