Rants in the Void

Author: Tiggs Panther

  • iOS Wishlist

    With iOS6 due for release this autumn, Apple have already released a list of a lot of the upcoming features and improvements it will bring.There are definitely some useful additions in there, as well as some features I know I will never use.

    I have been using an iPad for just over a year at this point, and there are a few key features that I would dearly love to be added. The iOS platform has grown from strength to strength since its inception but there are a still a few minor niggles where the way it works is at odds to some logical-seeming use-cases.

    When I thought of this topic a few months back, I had originally made notes about the rumoured “Podcasts” app.
    This has already arrived and, although far from perfect, it allows me to do what I had hoped from it. Here’s hoping some of my other ideal features arrive…

    Games

    One of the current drawbacks of iOS as a mobile gaming platform is that saved progress is not kept separately form the main app. As a result, when you remove the game you remove your saves. There is currently no simple way to delete a game for space without completely losing all progress.
    This is not useful if a game you’re not currently playing is taking up space on your device. If you ever intend to return to it, you are forced to leave it sat there taking up space.

    Make it part of the backup-via-iTunes. Hell, make it available through iCloud. I don’t currently use it, but this would instantly make it into something worth looking into.

    The ability to store and manage save files will become increasingly important as mobile devices are starting to become the mobile gaming platforms of choice, Why carry a DS or PSP with you (along with their charging cables) when you already have a cellphone and tablet?

    The thing is, as the bigger games companies try to bring entires onto iOS and Android, they are competing with much cheaper games in the same store. Yes, you are often paying for increased gameplay and brand recognition, but this is where space runs into a problem,
    Do I really want to pay £10-20 on a game that will eat up a chunk of the fixed storage space on my iPad? Currently, no. Not if I can’t shift the save files around to use later. But if I can move games on and off the tablet, yet always have access to my save files when I put them back on the device, I am going to look into more of them.

    User-Defined Default Apps

    Whilst you can get alternative apps for things like web-browsing and email, there is currently no way a non-jailbroken iOS device can change the default app.

    For example, unless an app specifically knows to look for Google Chrome as a possible web browser, you can only open URLs frpm other apps in Safari.

    A way of allowing apps to officially announce themselves as being alternatives to default apps would be really nice. Being able to also set a default would, of course, be ideal but even adding an menu option of “Open in Other Browser” would help a lot.

    Higher Cellular Download Cap

    I understand why they want to stop some of the larger downloads happening when people are on cellular as opposed to wireless. The current 50MB limit, however, is increasingly restrictive. With Retina-compatible apps having larger additional graphical assets and some podcast episodes going over 50MB, it is harder to find things that fit within this limit.

    My iPad is on a contract that includes 15GB per month. I go nowhere near this – I just chose it as 3 have the highest cap for the same price as everyone else. It would be nice to be able to use the merest fraction of this when I am trying to download an app, game or episode when not near a wireless signal.

    By all means still impose limits. It’s just that 50MB is too restrictive these days. If I want a half-gig game, yes make me find a proper internet connection. But for something under 150MB? Really?

    Anything Else?

    It’s hard to think of any other features I’d class as must-have. The only other currently-lacking features that I can actually think of are things (like per-account email signatures) that are already in the next version. So I will be very curious to see what else shows up, and where they can go in iOS7.

  • eBooks and “Agency Pricing”

    I own a Kindle. It’s probably the greatest thing that happened to my reading habit, specifically in that it restarted it.

    Don’t get me wrong, physical books are great. For long-term ownership, for lending to friends, for quickly flipping through to double-check something. For all these things they are great. But for general reading, I find an e-ink reader just far superior.
    They’re portable. You can bring a collection with you easier than a single book. you can lay it down ona  table and not have it lose your place, great for reading during mealtime. Just place it on the table, read it there, only touching it to hit the page-advance key.

    Pricing-wise for the books themselves, they sort suck at times.

    For one thing, I dislike paying full price for a digital copy of something, especially when it carries DRM restrictions. To me, that is a rental not a purchase. So I favour cheaper eBooks. I don’t see them as a long-term investment (that’s what I buy dead-tree versions for), I see them as a long-term loan.

    This is not the only reason, though. I always favoured paperbacks over hardbacks. They’re more convenient to carry around and less bulky to read. So yeah, the same reason I favour my Kindle over a physical book. I like to read, I don’t like the hassle of a bulky form factor.
    It has always bugged me having to wait the extra six months or more to get something in my preferred size-class. It’s not just the price of paperbacks I favour(ed), it’s the actual medium.

    Enter the eReader and the problem just escalates, especially given Agency Pricing. This is what stops the various online stores (namely Amazon) from heavily discounting popular eBooks toa  point where other stores can’t compete and that people won’t buy the paper copies.

    News Flash: Some of us have Kindles specifically to avoid paper copies.

    Now, there are fair reasons behind this, but it then has the slight disadvantage that is especially noticeable in long-running series.
    The latest hardback-only book will have an eBook price of £7 or more. Sounds reasonable, right? Maybe it is, but the rest of the series is available for under £5, which can make it hard to justify the price. Especially if you already own the book. Why pay almost twice the price of what it’ll be later this year when you already own it in one format?

    Did that make no sense? I guess it wouldn’t to most people. And that’s the problem. Nobody really envisioned a case where you might want to get a cheap digital copy of a book you already own shortly after getting it.

    Like maybe wanting to re-buy a convenient form-factor of something you were given as a gift?

    I mean, hardback books are great to own. Hardback booked are a wonderful gift to receive. hardback book are also a bugger to read, and the opposite of portable. The idea situation is to have both. One to keep (if you like the book) one to read.
    But not at these prices.

    “The Publisher has set the price for this book”.
    I guess the publisher wants me to read stories published by their competitors, then. Because for a DRM-encumbered platform-locked copy of a book, price is a deciding factor. It can make the difference between “impulse buy”, “maybe alter” and “not happening”.

  • Ar Tonelico Qoga: How to find Harvestasha DLC in the UK

    One of the (free) pieces of DLC available for the PS3 game Ar tonelico Qoga is the Harvestasha personality patch set. Each of these is free and, allegedly, available in the UK – and the rest of the EU PS3 region as far as I am aware.

    It never showed up in the store, though. Or so people thought.

    NISA (publishers) and the PSN blog page both claim it was out about a year ago. Web searches mostly said it was missing. It isn’t…

    …it’s just very badly filed.

    It will not show up if you browse for DLC. The only things in the section for this game are the Binary Field adventures. But if you search for it, it will show up.
    I used “Qoga” as a search term. I expect “Harvestasha” would work, too.

  • New Camera Adventures

    So after about 18 months of consideration and about three months of real thought and research I got a DSLR this weekend. I went for the current Canon entry level DSLR, the EOS 1100D (also know as the Rebel T3). So far I have only taken a handful of shots but I am already impressed. The real(including outdoor) test will be today, as the light was going by the time I got home and the box unpacked yesterday.

    Now I am very much the beginner when it comes to photography. I have a little Samsung compact camera which takes reasonable photos for most of what I do, and this is more or less the correct camera for most of my needs,
    Those “mosts” though are why I needed something more. My niece turns five this year, and she becomes a big sister in a few months time. And if there is one this she has taught me it is that small children can outmove a cheap point-and-shoot camera.

    (more…)

  • Doctor Who movie – Why the Panic

    Another day, another Doctor Who Movie rumour. And this one seems to be gaining traction as something actually possible. As expected, there is a wailing and gnashing of teeth, with many people concerned that it would be its own continuity and not fit in with the existing show.

    I can see two reasons why this is not a bad thing.

    Firstly, take the Transformers movies of recent years. Big blockbuster spectacles. They didn’t exactly resonate well with a lot of the existing fandom, but there are many vocal fans who appreciate them despite not really liking the movies.
    The bay-verse Transformers certainly revitalised interest in the franchise, and interest in the toyline. And even if you don’t like the look of them, it allows Hasbro to put money into other TF toys. For me, I bought my first transformer in about 20 years this year. Is was Reveal the Shield: Wreck-Gar – part of a line inspired/funded by the success of the movie toys but of an old character from the 1980s that would (and did) appeal to people who remember him from back then.

    It’s also probably at least partly down to the success of the movie that the new series Transformers Prime can exist. It is definitely not the movie-verse. But some of the styling take a few cues, yet are more smooth and rounded and, to be honest, more like “real” Transformers…

    …but without the movies, probably no Prime.

    Secondly, have you ever seen an in-season movie? I’ve seen a few. Between some of the Japanese shows that I follow and stuff like the X-Files that I used to watch a bit back in the day.

    These movies fall into two major categories. They are either totally standalone or pretty heavily integrated into the season mythology. So you’re either paying big money to see a story that doesn’t really count, or paying big money to see an important part of a story that you’re following on a TV channel you already pay for… neither sits well.
    Then there’s a third, minor, category. The story that kind of fits, but doesn’t really gel with continuity. They can still be fun to watch, but when character and situations line up that don’t fit with the main show’s plotline, it can take you out of it. Suspension of disbelief can only go so far when the same movie has a character that definitively left or changed at the same time as a power or ability or item being used that was not around when the other character was. Minor, maybe. But if you’re spending more time wondering when it fits, you’re not enjoying the movie.

    So, yeah. Something that is its own take on DW would actually sit well with me. As it would either be a really cool what-if, or something crap I can class as not counting.

  • iPad Podcast Playlists

    If, like me, you use playlists to keep on top of your podcasts you might experience a problem if you have moved to iOS5. I started to use playlists a few years back, as I can connect my iPod to my car radio but its menu doesn’t include podcasts. It does, however, include playlists. So I would queue them up in order and play them that way. It worked so well for me, I stuck with it for general use. So I just fire up the playlists whether in iTunes or on my iPod. Or my new iPad… until changing to iOS5.

    iOS5, on the iPad anyway, has a shine new “Music” app that sorts and displays things totally differently.
    It will put the contents of podcast playlists into the podcasts section (sorter by show, not in your order), but it won’t show the actual playlist anywhere. I found a workaround that works for me, though.

    1. Add a music track to the end of your podcast playlist
    2. Put the playlist into a folder
    3. Ensure the playlist is selected for syncing both under Music and Podcasts
    4. Re-sync your device (this might require turning it on and off first, it might not)

    You will now find the playlist on the main page (i.e. under Music), under it’s folder. Order or tracks is preserved.

  • Star Wars – The Fandom Strikes Back

    So the Blu-Ray releases of Star Wars are having further edits done to them. And the fan outrage is… spectacular… -ly amusing.
    For one, I don’t see why people are shocked. Disappointed, yes. But shocked?

    Now, I don’t have the same attachment to the originals that many fans have. I’m in my thirties and didn’t see the complete trilogy until I was about 18. Also, I only saw the whole thing once, maybe twice, before the cinematic rereleases which had the first round of edits. I didn’t mind the changes because the original scenes weren’t lodged in my brain the same way.

    Although it wound me up that by the DVD versions they had inserted scenes but couldn’t redo the lightsaber effects to be 100% consistent across all six movies – new and old.

    But the bulk of the changes… whether I agree with them or not,  I personally don’t have a problem with them.

    Even before I saw any of the Star Wars films, I was an avid reader of books. I was used to the concept of the revised edition. I was used to the minor edits, the changes for consistency and simply a few changes to reflect where the story had got to and where the author was planning to take it next.

    I’d also seen first books in the series where they hadn’t been revised. Going back to book one can be really jarring.

    There have also been a lot of Director’s Cuts these days. In most cases, they’re seen as a definitive edition of a film. Whether it’s for the DVD, or something revisited years or decades after the fact. They add bits missed out. They change concepts a little. It can feel like a different film. And so often it is taken as how the film should be.

    As soon as the director is George Lucas, though, and the films are Star Wars, people don’t want anything except the version they saw first. At all.
    And I’ve heard people who had trumpted other Director’s Cuts as being the best (admittedly fixed) versions of films, but who will then slate any changes to the Star Wars films.

    I guess the thing that winds me up a bit is that it becomes a double-standard. If you create a movie, you can go back and fix it up except if it becomes a dearly-beloved fan favourite. At which point you back off, as original is the One True Version.

    And I think it all comes down to people latching hard onto certain aspects of a story. It’s what winds me up about other topics, too. The story becomes those aspects and any change (even those that serve a story) is… challenged.

    Isn’t that right, Ianto?

  • Miracle Day – initial thoughts

    I watched the start of the latest Torchwood series last night. First episode of Miracle Day. I liked it.

    It definitely had First Episode Syndrome, What with introducing new characters and catching up with old ones at the same time as setting up the Season Arc. It still had Torchwood humour, though, along with action setpieces. Oh, and some pretty crappy compositing.
    I accept that you can’t have a real explosion, a lead actor and a young baby in the same physical space. It doesn’t really excuse letting you see the “join” though.
    I loved that the baby had little pink ear-protectors on when the guns came out, though.

    All in all, an interesting start to the season. And an interesting look at what it would mean if death just… stopped. Some people left sick/damaged but undying. Others able to properly recover because they were kept extra-alive just long enough for treatments to kick in.

    I can’t wait for the next part.

    And it seems easy enough to wait the almost-week between the US airing and the UK one. No farting around trying to find a filetype that works with my setup, just watch it on Freesat HD.

  • Time to Fix – Choosing Sides

    So, what is it? Do things take time, as I keep stating, or do they get sorted straightaway? Both sides are mutually exclusive and it’s really reached a point where I have to fall hard on one side or the other.

    Basically, Work and Personal lives are clashing over the whole concept of time-to-fix.

    In the case of my home tech, when things don’t work it’s a case of “sit back and be patient”. Nothing can be done to speed things along. Whether it’s getting a phoneline installed or having said phoneline checked on behalf of my ISP owing to broadband failure. Right down to things waaaay outside my control like the PSN Store being down.
    I don’t like it when things don’t work and I have to wait, but as I’m a techie by trade I accept that this is how things are. after all, haven’t I blogged to that effect a good few times here?

    Problem is, I’m a techie by trade. End-users don’t like the idea of waiting. If it’s broken, it has to be fixed. Right now. Being without working tech is simply not an option. No way. no how.

    Now on a personal level, I get where they’re coming from. It pisses me off to no end, as I mentioned above, when my stuff takes “too long” to get fixed. But that doens’t make it any quicker to fix. Or change my basic overview.

    So basically, I have to choose one outlook and stick to it. As I can’t be one way at work and another way at home. It’s one of the other. Only, which do I chose?

    Do I become an Unholy Terror towards any support-lines I have to contact? Taking noting short of “it’s done” as an answer? Refusing to accept the fact that things might involve an inconvenient level of downtime?
    Or do I become totally unswayable at work? Reposing to every “urgent” query with “things take time to sort out” – and potentially getitng a bad reputation of being unhelpful.

    I can’t be neither, though. That’s for certain. The idea of not only switching sides on a world-view but always taking the side that is going to cause more hassle for me is really not an option. As it’s doing my head in.

  • BBC iPlayer – A different type of TV download

    This is a repost of a comment I left on a thread on the BBC Internet Blog back in September.

    Yes, the tone was completely humourous but the points I raise are valid. The feature-set of the iPlayer, along with some of it’s most persistant bugs, really let it down in comparison to other… less official means of acquiring TV content.

    It all becomes clear whe you realise that, above all else, BBC iPlayer is a legal download service. As such, it has to distance itself from any other method of viewing content via thw internet, just to make sure that nobody gets confused and uses… other means for catching up on what they missed.

    “Unofficial downloads are illegal. BBC iPlayer is not.”

    Good start good start. Fantastic in fact. This is exactly how it should be. So now we’ve got our theme, lets run with it.

    “Unofficial downloads are free of social sites such as Facebook and Twitter. BBC iPlayer ensures you are not missing out of the social networking revolution”

    Ummmmmm. OK. I guess. I follow a lot of people on Twitter whose recommendations I trust. Were I to use iPlayer, this might be useful. Maybe.

    “Unofficial downloads can work on almost any platform you can name. iPlayer makes sure that you can only use the hardware and software we endorse.”

    If you say so… After all, you’re the BBC. Anything you don’t support obviously isn’t worthwhile as a media player.

    Although… I do seem to recall my Xbox 360 handling DVD, downloaded and streaming content quite well. But I must be mistaken. After all, no iPlayer. So it can’t be any good. Right?

    “You can watch unofficial downloads offline. Whereas with BBC iPlayer, all but one of our solutions works purely by on line streaming.”

    Good. Good. Because I wouldn’t ever watch to watch files when out of signal. Or during a peak time of the day. It’s not like those hours I’m asleep or at work could be used by any of the devices I might have when I’m not in the lounge.

    “Unofficial downloads can be kept after you’ve watched them. BBC iPlayer deletes things before you’ve even had the chance.”

    See. Another feature that you don’t get from the Torrent sites. No why would anybody wish to break to law when we offer functionality such as this?

    So yes. It’s a marvel of success. BBC iPlayer is a download service that works nothing like the non-legit ones. There’s no way anybody could confuse the two whatsoever. 100% legal. 0% like Torrents. After all, it’s not like any of those “other features” could ever be of use to anybody…

    – Tiggs
    (with tongue firmly in cheek)