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17th october 2006

yes, it is wireless and yes, it is sexy

you may remember a post i made a while ago regarding logitech's wireless dj music system. luckily, if you can't remember, i've been so rubbish at posting lately that it's only three posts below. anyways, mine arrived at the weekend, and i'm very, very impressed.

the remote and dock - which also acts as a charger - look great, and the bright, blue, back-lit screen is beautiful. it feels great too, heavy enough so it doesn't feel cheap, light enough so you don't think 'what is in this thing!?'.

the software installed with no problems, and looks to be pretty good. we all know that some electronics companies do software well, and some - perhaps most - don't, but i have no problems with what i've seen so far. the streampoint app indexed all my music easily, and you choose how that music should be played, thankfully allowing you to use your usual player - itunes for me - rather than forcing you to use windows media player because you're using a windows machine, or even worse a manufacturer's own player (i still have nightmares about having to use sony's awful sonic stage when i first bought a sony mp3 player back in the day). the transmitter again looks good. small and classy looking, and doesn't seem out of place on my desk. and no problems so far with it's range (my pc - and music - is upstairs, my entertainment system downstairs).

the best thing though? for me, the sound quality. i was really quite aprehensive about this. i tried a couple of times playing my ipod through my home entertainment amp, and it sounded like a cheap transister radio. i figured this may need to have an digital connection, rather than using stereo jacks, but i was wrong - the sound is excellent. granted, my jacks lead cost me about £60 (used to use it with my last dvd player), but still.

so my one problem - there had to be one - is with the scroll wheel. i know i'm used to the ipod's wheel, so i immediately didn't like that fact that this wheel actually does turn (not a touch sensitive thing), but it just feels a little... plasticy. this surprised me, considering the quality of the rest of the system. but that, i can live with. what is irritating is the speed of the thing. i have somewhere in the region of 600 albums, and if i want to quickly listen to a favourite track from an artist starting with, for example, "S", you soon realise that "quickly" just ain't gonna happen. that's what i did yesterday, and although i didn't time myself, i reckon it must have taken a couple of minutes to get to "s". that is gonna be a problem. despite the fact that i don't like zz-top. hopefully they can release an update to the software. perhaps an "artist by letter" and "album by letter", so the maximum number you have to initially scroll through is 26?

all in all though, if you're looking for a wirless, streaming solution, this is it. it simplys looks great and it just... well, works.

related:
permalink:
http://www.oneplayer.co.uk/06/10/17/yes-i...

14th september 2006

bow down, for i am... the master

it's about time i got some credit for... well, anything really. lady and gentleman, i have just been awarded the title of "master" for my javascript knowledge on the ever excellent, and must have bookmark, experts exchange. not bad i reckon after only 12 weeks. if i keep this up, i'll be a "guru" in another 24 weeks.

related:
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http://www.oneplayer.co.uk/06/09/14/bow-d...

10th august 2006

wireless and sexy

sorry i haven't posted for an absolute age. i finally made the jump from permanent employee to contractor three or four weeks ago, and i'm only now just getting settled in. hope the pain of my absence hasn't been too much.

anyways, i really like the look of logitech's new wireless dj music system. it's what you would expect from a wireless music system - it allows you to play your music files, located on your pc/mac, through your stereo system, er... wirelessly. however, instead of having another box sitting on top of your home entertainment seperates, controlling it through the remote, this thing *is* the remote. everything is done through the remote control, using it's lcd screen and a clickable scroll wheel - yes, like those ipod things. the thing just looks... sexy.

i've wanted one of these type of things for ages, and came very close to buying a soundbridge last month, and then a squeezebox a couple of weeks ago, but i think i'm now going to go for one of these babies. i bought a logitech harmony 525 remote control last week, and i can't say how impressed i am with it, so i'm going to give this dj music system a go as soon as it hits the streets. my only disappointment is that it doesn't have an optical or coaxial connection to your amp/receiver, instead using standard rca input jacks, but surely that must have been considered during the design and testing process, and the sound quality should still be the shit.

no news on when it's released yet, but i'll let y'all know as soon as i have mine, and i've used - and heard - the thing.

related:
permalink:
http://www.oneplayer.co.uk/06/08/10/wirel...

12th july 2006

yes, those mac ads

if you don't know what i'm talking about when i speak of the new 'i'm a mac, i'm a pc' ads from apple, you may have to google it first as there isn't a chance that i'm going to link to them here. i know you - the mac users anyway - are probably thinking 'typical pc user, he knows macs are better, and the ads prove it, so he's gonna ignore them', but that's not actually my issue with the ads. the reason i hate them, and i do, is this...

when i was 15 and doing gcse (that's an exam for my non-british reader) art and design, if we had this whole mac vs pc thang going on, and my teacher gave me a advertisement project to do called 'i'm a mac, i'm a pc' from apple's side, i would have created these ads. i would have a young, cool, hip, good looking, recognisable actor (ideally from some kind of recent hip hollywood comedy film that the 'kids' loved) play the mac, and then - and this is good - i'd get some middle aged, grey, geeky, boring, accountant (no disrespect to accountants) type bloke to act as the pc. i'd then write a script that was increadibly see-through. i'd make it look as though pcs can't play music, create videos, build websites, etc and that macs were soooooo cool that you couldn't create a spreadsheet on it even if you wanted to! and i'd definitly ignore the countless numbers of performance tests that have been carried out for years that invariably see the pc win, or that i can buy a pc for me, one for t'wife, and a spare one to run as a web server, for the cost of one small-i-big-m-ac. and after all that, i'd probably get a 'c', maybe a 'c+', with some comment from my teacher about 'trying harder', 'more thought', 'be original', 'less predictable', etc.

so the point of this post? (you mean i have to have a point to post something on my own site? damn) it's the fact that i do like the vh1 spoof ads.

related:
permalink:
http://www.oneplayer.co.uk/06/07/12/yes-t...

6th july 2006

will the real sony please stand up?

look, i'm known in my circle as being a sony addict. anyone walking into my flat would immediately see why (although two lg products have invaded over the last few weeks, as i got my hd plasma - coz the reviews of the bravia were poor - and my hd upscaler dvd player - coz sony don't do them as they're concentrating on blu-ray). i love the brand. i always have.

however, it seems that once a week now - for at least the last 18 months - the sony foot is placed in the sony mouth. it's as though the people who used to make the decisions have been replaced with a group determined to make sony no longer a brand, but a pr #### up. this ad campaign is the latest embarrassment.

if anyone finds the real sony, can they please return it as soon as possible? thanks.

related:
permalink:
http://www.oneplayer.co.uk/06/07/06/will-...

9th june 2006

a cracking read

never thought i'd be making a post about safe cracking, but i've just read a really, really interesting article on howstuffworks about... well, safe cracking.

the page on "safe manipulation" was fascinating - determining your contact points, parking the wheels, graphing the results. at the risk of alerting the metropolitan police force, i'd love to give it a go.

and here's something you'd never pick up from watching heist movies - "knowing the combination is the most common way safecrackers open safes". not exactly sexy though is it?

take five minutes out of your day, read the article, and learn something new.

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http://www.oneplayer.co.uk/06/06/09/a-cra...

5th june 2006

amen

youtube is showing a superb 18 minute documentary on the amen breakbeat - a 6 second drum sample from a 1969 track that you have heard a thousand times. if, like me, you're a fan of hip hop, or jungle/drum'n'bass, you've got to watch it.

take a look at the vid.

related:
permalink:
http://www.oneplayer.co.uk/06/06/05/amen/...

24th may 2006

the powerbook prank

"it all started with an ebay auction for a new g4 powerbook..."

one of the funniest things i've read for a long while. it's a lllooonnngggg read - especially for the t'internet as, as we all know, none of us can be bothered to read more than three paragraphs nowadays - but i read it from beginning to end, and it really is worth it.

just hope that everything is ok with regards to point 3 on the final page. oneplayer salutes you, jeff.

take a look on zug.com.

related:
permalink:
http://www.oneplayer.co.uk/06/05/24/the-p...

19th may 2006

oh. great.

so, sony have announced that the price of the "proper" ps3 in the uk will be a whopping £425! yes, £425. £425. can you believe it? £425?

again, we (we in the uk) are being asked to pay more than the us are expected to pay for theirs, and more than the europeans (huh?) are expected to pay for their boxes. in fact, we're being asked to pay £109 more than the us. and, perhaps more importantly, we must pay £146 more than the premium xbox. is it just me, or have sony been getting really good at making themselves unpopular over the last twelve months? and this is from a sony freak.

of course, they are using the "it does play blu-ray discs y'know?" card, which - i guess - is fair enough, but such a claim will only benefit those people who wanted to buy a hd-player pretty soon, as well as a games console (i admit, "those people" includes me). but, obviously the important market for the ps3 are the gamers, the game console owners, who surely are going to find £425 (did i say it's gonna be £425?) a tad... steep. and let's not forget the thousands and thousands of under-18 year olds who own ps2's, and maybe a psp, who are expecting a ps3 for christmas. i'd hate to be one of those parents this year.

and can you imagine if it doesn't live up to the hype?

related:
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permalink:
http://www.oneplayer.co.uk/06/05/19/oh-gr...

10th may 2006

have you tween this!?

philippe maegerman from belgium has created an amazing motion tween library - yeah, as in flash's motion tweens - completely in javascript that is really worth a look. the documentation and examples are superb, and it looks so simple.

whenever i see things like this nowadays i always think back to how it used to be. anyone remember brent gustafson's assembler.org? i know it's still there, but i mean the black one that had several beautiful javascript experiments, using coloured atari style blocks, at the beginning of the century? that was my favourite site for years, and probably still is. i spent so much time (excuse me brent) hacking around that code, and learnt so much about javascript, but creating those types of effects was so complex and, often, very difficult. you needed a masters degree in mathematics.

nowadays of course, it's pretty much all done for you. what with scriptaculous and maegerman's motion tween engine (and prototype of course), you call a few lines of other people's code, and it's all done for you. i'm not bitter by the way - i think it's brilliant (for a start, the testing has been done for you). however, i am glad that i attacked javascript in the late 90s early 2000s as i think a lot of developers today know how to embed scriptaculous and make a div magically appear, but would struggle if they were just asked to do something dirty like quickly validate a form or create a date object for example. also, i fell in love with javascript, and many today miss out on that. ahh, the walks on the beach with flanagan's definitive guide; watching the sunset with the pocket reference; sharing a private joke with a print out of gustafson's assembler source code; those where the days my friend.

related:
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permalink:
http://www.oneplayer.co.uk/06/05/10/have-...

thanks for coming