Tag: gadgets

April 11, 2016
More 360° nonsense for those of you not yet bored.

This is getting surreal. Checking on what was up on HugVR today, I found the Canadian chap I was talking to last night experimenting with another guy in England, attempting a two way VR hookup.

April 10, 2016
Last night, long past my sensible bedtime, I found myself chatting to a chap in Canada who was broadcasting his lounge in 360°, on hugvr.com. Hugvr is still in Beta, but is a site for live streaming 360° video. I’ve taken to checking it out on my way to bed, as a large proportion of people playing with it are in the States.

For this chap, it is his job – he has started a company producing and consulting in VR for sales, education and entertainment; I’d come across him chilling and playing with kit, but when he knew I had the same camera as the one he was using tonight, he was interested in my opinions on quality. Then when he found I was an amateur musician, he really got excited, and got his guitar out, and we spent time discussing how cool live streamed 360° could be for virtual house concerts.

January 22, 2016
It was inevitable that my purchase of a Ricoh Theta S 360° camera would spur me on to buy more tech. The big hand syndrome, where handheld pictures and video have an out-of proportion hand holding nothing (the camera having removed itself from the picture) was easily fixed by a selfie-stick/monopod.

But it also led me to play with Google Cardboard, which is a deliberately cheap design for a Virtual Reality headset. In particular, video taken with the Theta and uploaded to YouTube can be viewed using Google Cardboard, and as you move your head, the frame of view moves accordingly. It is an amazing immersive effect, even with the crudest resolution of video.

January 5, 2016
December 12, 2015
October 26, 2015
Over the weekend, I’ve been playing with scoring some of my songs. It’s been on my to-do list for a very long time; although most of my songs exist as lyric or chord-sheets (more recently in chordpro format), very few of my songs have notes on paper. This is not a problem for me, as I remember my tunes better than I recall my lyrics, but it makes it difficult to share original songs.

I’ve been encouraged to look at a few large packages, including Notion and the more affordable Progression. I do intend to examine those, but for the moment, I have been using the free and open source MuseScore. This has been a revelation; although I expect it has less functionality than the more commercial packages, I’ve managed to hit the road running and produce a decent bit of sheet music.

October 1, 2015
Since upgrading to an EOS 1100D, 2 years ago, my old Canon EOS 350D (Rebel XT) has been on the shelf. Pretty decent camera, but not worth enough to sell it.

However, the price of specialist conversions have been coming down recently, and for 80 quid I could have the internal filters removed to turn it into a full spectrum camera. This would let me use it, with appropriate external filters, both as an infra-red camera, and for astro-photography with better response in the Hydrogen Alpha band.

September 11, 2015
In other news, I have also managed to pick up a nearly new Roland GR-S V-Guitar Space, at a bargain price. More toys for this boy.

I’ve had a GR-33 Guitar Synth for some years, which I use with my Godin Synth Access guitars. The GR-S has nothing like the features of the GR-33 – it essentially has 4 sound/affects: Crystal, which is a bell-like synth sound; Rich Modulation – an enhanced chorus effect; Slow Pad, a warm synth, with octave control; Brilliant Clean adds additional octaved strings (above and/or below) for a 12 or even 18 string effect. There is also a brilliant freeze function, which allows you to hold a pad on the synth, while continue to play on the guitar.

September 11, 2015
I’m almost embarrassed to admit this, but I’ve been shopping again for toys.

I’m going through a fairly creative time at the moment, and have both been writing some new material and arranging other folk’s material. I’ve recently bought some new instruments that are challenging me (in a good way), and have been doing some music with others, in particular, my friend Annie.

April 12, 2015

FON

For a few years, now, I have used a cheap FON wifi access point to provide limited (internet only) access for any visitors, separate from my own wifi access.

By default, a FON device offers two networks – one private and one public. In my case the private network is POSHGAMES, which my friends use; the public FON network is one that *anybody* can log into if they have FON credentials. The good part is that by hosting FON access, you yourself gain free access to any other FON point in Europe, which also includes many BT access points.

November 23, 2014
When I first got my original (shop-bought) YouView box, I thought it was pretty brilliant, but the there was the inevitable complaints how it didn’t have stuff like YouTube, NetFlix and LoveFilm. YouView’s answer to this was that they were open to new content partners, but at the end of the day, writing the app was down to the content provider, not them. This didn’t seem unreasonable to me, but didn’t stop the bickering.

Since then, a number of new content partners have appeared, most of which I’m not particularly interested in – Sky, NowTV (which I think is another permutation of Sky), UKTV, Dave etc. But this month, NetFlix has made a welcome appearance. The app is slick, and miles better (in appearance and perfomance) than the app I have been using on my BluRay; so I’ll be watching it on the YouView box from now on.

November 3, 2014
The weekend before last, I noticed something strange about my Nexus 10 tablet. The centre of the screen looked grubby. I’d actually noticed this a little a few weeks before, but had assumed it was the light, or some fingermarks on the surface.

But no, the centre part of the screen, in an irregular blot about 3 inches wide, was actually slightly green, and not as sharp as the rest of the screen. Opening a blank page of white, this could be seen quite clearly; and it was nothing on the surface, this was in the screen itself.