Let's start with the technical aspects of this recording.
This was recorded by the BBC for high definition broadcast and you can tell. It is for recordings like this that I spent so much time and money getting my home theatre just right. The audio is a DTS Master Audio 16 bit/48khz 5.1 mix. The quality is superb, the balance across all 5 channels is excellent and the sound stage is massive. There is a slight echo in the vocal that perfectly suits the look of the room.
The picture is incredibly clear high definition captured in a well lit studio with great camera work throughout. The BBC should be proud of the job they did on this Blu-Ray.
K.D. Lang's performance in this small venue is remarkable, stellar, superb. She is enjoying herself here, with her usual band at the time backed by an orchestra courtesy of the BBC. There is not a single song that does not show off her remarkable voice and stage presence. The BBC concert Orchestra add a lushn, full feel to most of the tracks and seem to fade into the background in others.
Lang walks the stage, at times her eyes closed as she reaches for that perfect pitch and tone at others her smile is so wide that it threatens to split her face. Here is a true vocal talent, a true performer doing what she loves.
Even if you don't love K.D. Lang you may well enjoy this just for the quality. I can imagine high end home theatre stores owning a copy just for demonstration purposes.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Monday, July 18, 2011
Tio and Due for the iPhone
At the moment I'm taking a lot of medication and performing a lot of tasks while recovering from a serious chest infection. A couple of iPhone apps have been incredibly useful.
The first is 'Due'. This tiny app allows you to quickly turn on a timer or a set a reminder. I use the timers constantly. After gargling to wash out my mouth and throat after taking either my Ventolin or Symbicort I've been advised to not eat or drink for ten minutes - a few seconds with 'Due' and I have a timer. I also have to wait half an hour after taking my twice a day throat lozenge. Another quick timer. I don't use the Reminder function often, but it is easy to use when I do. It will even sync across your iPhone and iPad if you want.
The second app is 'tio'. This tiny app just allows you to log an event by entering a time stamp into an even log. The free version allows you three different events, the 99 cent version allows nine. I use it to log taking medicine and pain killers so I can quickly figure out if it's OK to take some more. I also use it to log each cigarette I smoke for two reasons. One, when I feel a craving coming on I can check the event log and tell myself "No, it's only been an hour since your last one." It also allows me to count the number I smoke each day, making it easier to ration and cut back. The app will email you the event log. Well worth the dollar.
The first is 'Due'. This tiny app allows you to quickly turn on a timer or a set a reminder. I use the timers constantly. After gargling to wash out my mouth and throat after taking either my Ventolin or Symbicort I've been advised to not eat or drink for ten minutes - a few seconds with 'Due' and I have a timer. I also have to wait half an hour after taking my twice a day throat lozenge. Another quick timer. I don't use the Reminder function often, but it is easy to use when I do. It will even sync across your iPhone and iPad if you want.
The second app is 'tio'. This tiny app just allows you to log an event by entering a time stamp into an even log. The free version allows you three different events, the 99 cent version allows nine. I use it to log taking medicine and pain killers so I can quickly figure out if it's OK to take some more. I also use it to log each cigarette I smoke for two reasons. One, when I feel a craving coming on I can check the event log and tell myself "No, it's only been an hour since your last one." It also allows me to count the number I smoke each day, making it easier to ration and cut back. The app will email you the event log. Well worth the dollar.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Productivity on the iPad
Recently I found myself in hospital and once again my iPad was a godsend. Yes, it allowed me to watch some TV and movies and read a book or two but it also allowed me some pretty good productivity.
So what tools do I need? What tools are useful and what tools are nice little frills?
The Essentials
The two essentials were Dropbox and Evernote. I have a huge Dropbox folder and an Evernote database full of useful files and information. (So the Specialist wants to know exactly what medication I take, when was my last hospital admission, what’s my GP’s address and how have my peak flows been for the past month? Guess where that information’s stored? I even had a copy of my last discharge summary.)
I’m a coding junkie, I just can’t help myself. Never a week goes by when I don’t find some excuse to write something, an AppleScript, a shell script or a bit of Python. I’ve even been known to play around with HTML, CSS and JavaScript to write little web apps. So bored in hospital was the perfect time to play with those. How? I’ve found a great little text editor that deserves a big wrap. Textastic is almost perfect as an iPad editor. It will sync files between itself and Dropbox or an FTP site and even comes with a built in WebDAV server so you can easily get your files to and fro. It even remembers the path to the file and will sync it back with a single touch. To help with your coding you get syntax colouring for more than eighty languages, including all I ever use with the exception of Logo (nothing seems to offer syntax highlighting for Logo). You get next line auto-indent and adjustable tab stops. Even more useful when you don’t have your Bluetooth keyboard along you can set it to add an extra row of keys along the top of the iPad built-in keyboard that include quotes, brackets, parentheses and a tab key. The feature list goes on further.
I could use Textastic for writing my prose and journalling, it does support Markdown syntax and offer a soft wrap but Pages is not that expensive and is, of course a fully featured word processor so I’ve got a copy of that.
The other thing I like to do is diagram. Well, like might not be the right word, I do find myself doing it a lot and doing it by hand looks atrocious so I do it on the computer. On my Mac I have Eazydraw, a fairly well featured piece of software. On the iPad I use TouchPad, which cost me less than ten dollars and has more features than you can poke a stick at. It has layers, libraries, figures, bezier curves, freehand tools, alignment tools and more. It is more than I’ll ever need - I couldn’t recommend it more. I actually find myself doing diagrams on the iPad rather than my Mac as shifting things with my finger seems easier than the mouse.
The Useful
The first of these is TextExpander Touch. Cheaper than the Mac version, which I also own, it allows for quick entry of text snippets in supported applications or in its own little note pad. It is supported by Textastic and Plain Text at least. From its little notepad you can Send By Email or send the note to Twitterific. I don’t use it a lot on the iPad since the snippets don’t work everywhere as they do on the Mac but it is still handy.
Then we get to lists. It doesn’t matter if it is a task list or just an item list, I like to have them. I also like them as an outline so that items can have sub-items. For this I have CarbonFin Outliner - this excellent outliner even syncs to a website so that you can edit the outlines on your computer. It supports outline items as checkboxes so that you can make a to do list and if an item has a number of children the dot turns into a circle filled in according to the amount of the tasks completed.
On the “keeping up with the world” front there are the three essentials. Reeder, my favourite RSS reader, the new Zite news application and Instapaper for all those long form articles I come across while browsing and want to get back to.
I like the interface for Reeder, it is clean and simple, and the ability to sync with my Google Reader account is nice so that’s my RSS reader of choice.
Zite is amazing. A news aggregator that seems to find a good selection of interesting articles every time I open it. When it was first installed it asked to have a look at my twitter feed and Google Reader settings. from that it made some intelligent guesses as to the categories of news i might be interested in. I then added a few others. Since then I have made a point of marking the articles I liked and now it does a good job of finding things I want to read.
Instapaper is another great idea. As I browse the incoming news stream from both Zite and Reeder I can quickly mark the longer articles for later reading. Instapaper also looks good, often making the articles easier to read.
The Others
Then I need a calculator. A spreadsheet would be overkill but a calculator with a tape is fine for almost everything. since I like to have hex and binary on my calculator you just can’t go past P2. Not that dear and it has every function you might ever want and a nice list of constants.
I also use iSSH, a nice SSH terminal client. Not everyone needs a terminal client but if you do want one then this is inexpensive and fully featured.
I would also like to recommend Apple’s Bluetooth keyboard. I carry mine around in the box it came in and it doesn’t weigh much or take much room. When travelling it can go in your check-in bag easily. I find it can even slip into a corner of my briefcase.
All those apps taken together turn my iPad into an incredibly useful and productive platform. What are the apps that allow you to be productive on your iPad? Drop me a note and tell me.
So what tools do I need? What tools are useful and what tools are nice little frills?
The Essentials
The two essentials were Dropbox and Evernote. I have a huge Dropbox folder and an Evernote database full of useful files and information. (So the Specialist wants to know exactly what medication I take, when was my last hospital admission, what’s my GP’s address and how have my peak flows been for the past month? Guess where that information’s stored? I even had a copy of my last discharge summary.)
I’m a coding junkie, I just can’t help myself. Never a week goes by when I don’t find some excuse to write something, an AppleScript, a shell script or a bit of Python. I’ve even been known to play around with HTML, CSS and JavaScript to write little web apps. So bored in hospital was the perfect time to play with those. How? I’ve found a great little text editor that deserves a big wrap. Textastic is almost perfect as an iPad editor. It will sync files between itself and Dropbox or an FTP site and even comes with a built in WebDAV server so you can easily get your files to and fro. It even remembers the path to the file and will sync it back with a single touch. To help with your coding you get syntax colouring for more than eighty languages, including all I ever use with the exception of Logo (nothing seems to offer syntax highlighting for Logo). You get next line auto-indent and adjustable tab stops. Even more useful when you don’t have your Bluetooth keyboard along you can set it to add an extra row of keys along the top of the iPad built-in keyboard that include quotes, brackets, parentheses and a tab key. The feature list goes on further.
I could use Textastic for writing my prose and journalling, it does support Markdown syntax and offer a soft wrap but Pages is not that expensive and is, of course a fully featured word processor so I’ve got a copy of that.
The other thing I like to do is diagram. Well, like might not be the right word, I do find myself doing it a lot and doing it by hand looks atrocious so I do it on the computer. On my Mac I have Eazydraw, a fairly well featured piece of software. On the iPad I use TouchPad, which cost me less than ten dollars and has more features than you can poke a stick at. It has layers, libraries, figures, bezier curves, freehand tools, alignment tools and more. It is more than I’ll ever need - I couldn’t recommend it more. I actually find myself doing diagrams on the iPad rather than my Mac as shifting things with my finger seems easier than the mouse.
The Useful
The first of these is TextExpander Touch. Cheaper than the Mac version, which I also own, it allows for quick entry of text snippets in supported applications or in its own little note pad. It is supported by Textastic and Plain Text at least. From its little notepad you can Send By Email or send the note to Twitterific. I don’t use it a lot on the iPad since the snippets don’t work everywhere as they do on the Mac but it is still handy.
Then we get to lists. It doesn’t matter if it is a task list or just an item list, I like to have them. I also like them as an outline so that items can have sub-items. For this I have CarbonFin Outliner - this excellent outliner even syncs to a website so that you can edit the outlines on your computer. It supports outline items as checkboxes so that you can make a to do list and if an item has a number of children the dot turns into a circle filled in according to the amount of the tasks completed.
On the “keeping up with the world” front there are the three essentials. Reeder, my favourite RSS reader, the new Zite news application and Instapaper for all those long form articles I come across while browsing and want to get back to.
I like the interface for Reeder, it is clean and simple, and the ability to sync with my Google Reader account is nice so that’s my RSS reader of choice.
Zite is amazing. A news aggregator that seems to find a good selection of interesting articles every time I open it. When it was first installed it asked to have a look at my twitter feed and Google Reader settings. from that it made some intelligent guesses as to the categories of news i might be interested in. I then added a few others. Since then I have made a point of marking the articles I liked and now it does a good job of finding things I want to read.
Instapaper is another great idea. As I browse the incoming news stream from both Zite and Reeder I can quickly mark the longer articles for later reading. Instapaper also looks good, often making the articles easier to read.
The Others
Then I need a calculator. A spreadsheet would be overkill but a calculator with a tape is fine for almost everything. since I like to have hex and binary on my calculator you just can’t go past P2. Not that dear and it has every function you might ever want and a nice list of constants.
I also use iSSH, a nice SSH terminal client. Not everyone needs a terminal client but if you do want one then this is inexpensive and fully featured.
I would also like to recommend Apple’s Bluetooth keyboard. I carry mine around in the box it came in and it doesn’t weigh much or take much room. When travelling it can go in your check-in bag easily. I find it can even slip into a corner of my briefcase.
All those apps taken together turn my iPad into an incredibly useful and productive platform. What are the apps that allow you to be productive on your iPad? Drop me a note and tell me.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Still loving the iPad
I just had another short spell in hospital and my love for the iPad just deepened. I'm writing a longer post on the apps I found useful there but the short form is that it made life a lot more pleasant.
Apart from being lighter than a laptop it is useful to have a device that can be recharged from the same gadget as your phone. It also has better games for hospital than any laptop - including a Windows laptop. You really want light entertainment and the ability to keep in touch with people. My iPad connected via 3G was just the thing.
Apart from being lighter than a laptop it is useful to have a device that can be recharged from the same gadget as your phone. It also has better games for hospital than any laptop - including a Windows laptop. You really want light entertainment and the ability to keep in touch with people. My iPad connected via 3G was just the thing.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
In love with my ScanSnap 1300
Recently I purchased a ScanSnap 1300 and I have to tell you how much I love the little device.
It sits on the edge of my desk occupying less room than a sheet of A4 paper. It uses a neat little application called ScanSnap Manager that runs all the time (Activity Monitor tells me it uses less than 102Mb of RAM.) I insert up to about 8 sheets of A4 (it depends on thickness) or anything smaller such as a cash register receipt or a business card and press the little blue glowing button on the right hand side and away it goes. Since it is a duplex scanner it will do both sides of a sheet in one pass and doesn't care with a one sided sheet if you have it down or facing. If you want to be a perfectionist it thinks that the face down side is before the face up side.
ScanSnap Manager then turns it into a PDF with searchable, selectable text. I then have it set to save the scan in a folder called "Scans" in my Dropbox and send it to Evernote as well (you can change that to any software that will cope with being told to open a PDF.). By default it gives the scan a name derived from the date and time but I changed the preference and I just get a name "Scan" followed by a three digit reference. One funny thing, if you rename the files then it loses it's count; the software obviously looks in the folder to see if there is a "Scan001.pdf" and so on. You can also set it to send to email, send to Excel or send to print among others. You can also set it to ask you each time, though if you do that you seem to not be able to specify a non-standard application such as Evernote.
The entire process is so easy that I now scan each piece of mail and every receipt I get. I also scan all those bits you get with a new piece of tech; the warranty, the quickstart guide and so on.
Oh, it's compatible with that other popular operating system, too.
Highly recommended. I can't remember how much it cost me but it was worth every cent.
It sits on the edge of my desk occupying less room than a sheet of A4 paper. It uses a neat little application called ScanSnap Manager that runs all the time (Activity Monitor tells me it uses less than 102Mb of RAM.) I insert up to about 8 sheets of A4 (it depends on thickness) or anything smaller such as a cash register receipt or a business card and press the little blue glowing button on the right hand side and away it goes. Since it is a duplex scanner it will do both sides of a sheet in one pass and doesn't care with a one sided sheet if you have it down or facing. If you want to be a perfectionist it thinks that the face down side is before the face up side.
ScanSnap Manager then turns it into a PDF with searchable, selectable text. I then have it set to save the scan in a folder called "Scans" in my Dropbox and send it to Evernote as well (you can change that to any software that will cope with being told to open a PDF.). By default it gives the scan a name derived from the date and time but I changed the preference and I just get a name "Scan" followed by a three digit reference. One funny thing, if you rename the files then it loses it's count; the software obviously looks in the folder to see if there is a "Scan001.pdf" and so on. You can also set it to send to email, send to Excel or send to print among others. You can also set it to ask you each time, though if you do that you seem to not be able to specify a non-standard application such as Evernote.
The entire process is so easy that I now scan each piece of mail and every receipt I get. I also scan all those bits you get with a new piece of tech; the warranty, the quickstart guide and so on.
Oh, it's compatible with that other popular operating system, too.
Highly recommended. I can't remember how much it cost me but it was worth every cent.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Bynkii on a post XServe world
So we are now into February and as a result you can no longer buy an XServe from Apple.
All us Server addicts had a momentary pang of hope when Active told us they were announcing a new product - after all one of those guys designed the first XServe. They gave good news for theXSan people - a replacement to an XServe as a controller, but no Mac OS on it.
Is this going to be a problem?
John C. Welch (known as bynkii on his blog.) sums it up for me perfectly here.
To be truthful, if the Mini had two NICs then I'd never have bought an XServe. The last time I bought two I'd have preferred buying eight Mini Servers and a really smart switch - the problem would have been convincing the powers that be to let the little beasts into their data room. This may well be the middle ground for Apple. Give us a slightly better Mini.
All us Server addicts had a momentary pang of hope when Active told us they were announcing a new product - after all one of those guys designed the first XServe. They gave good news for theXSan people - a replacement to an XServe as a controller, but no Mac OS on it.
Is this going to be a problem?
John C. Welch (known as bynkii on his blog.) sums it up for me perfectly here.
To be truthful, if the Mini had two NICs then I'd never have bought an XServe. The last time I bought two I'd have preferred buying eight Mini Servers and a really smart switch - the problem would have been convincing the powers that be to let the little beasts into their data room. This may well be the middle ground for Apple. Give us a slightly better Mini.
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