I managed to get through 30 minutes without committing social hari kari or making too bigger tit of myself. Pat Lauke was in full on Opera and HTML5 brainwash form, but energetic and interesting enough to be different from Chris Mill’s session at Leeds. The coup de grâce was obviously Simon Collison of Erskine Design, with his In the Pursuit of Magic presentation, and fair play to him for being drugged up but persevering and putting on a really thoughtful and inspiring presentation. Read more…
One thing I really like about talking to some of the Opera guys I know, is that they will take the time to consider another viewpoint. Whilst they’re all about the open web, they realise they need to listen to people who are making and creating content for clients, but face real world restrictions like time and budget. I know. Ridiculous…
I run a business (well, Pete does most the business end stuff, but you know what I mean) and all this talk about HTML5 <video> tags has kinda riled me a little bit, because it’s getting so much exposure, and to be honest I think it’s already shot itself in the foot.
There’s an uproar at the moment on the interwebs. You may have heard about it.
The iPad will not support Flash.
Just like the iPhone before it, the Flash plug-in cannot and will not run in the iPad’s browser. Apple say it’s because the Flash plug-in is the single biggest cause of Safari crashes. I can’t say I’d blame them for being pissed. The window to the internet on your default install can be crippled by a third party proprietary plug-in. Not cool.
So, because Apple have a closed platform in the iPhone and iPad they can choose who plays ball.
But wait, you were out on Monday night too… what gives, Smith?
Ok, I will come clean. Monday’s drinking was less about the drinking (hah!) and more about talking with Chris Mills and Patrick Lauke about presenting, presentation material and subjects around validation and general geekiness. We did not at one point mention any rumour or conjecture about the iPad, which I feel is very important to mention. Leffe and Hoegaarden were order of the evening!
However the Transmission 3 (#tx3) event was different. It was all about the mobile web, the pleasure and the pain of being in this field. There were 3 speaking slots, starting with Chris Mills from Opera giving an overview of mobile to date. Peter-Paul Koch of Quirksmode whose done a ridiculous amount of research on the state of mobile browsing. Finally, two likely lads from down south, Polls and Mills from usTwo, would look at the world of iPhone app dev.
I’m honoured to have been invited to speak at an upcoming web “gig”, by my two mates Rich Clarke and Dan Donald.
Speak The Web aims to break down the barriers that prevent a lot of people getting to the bigger conferences. Travel, time off work, hotels and the bar bill can all be quite prohibitive, so the lads have started a grass roots collective of local talent and are hitting four venues in the North.
Being a scouser, they asked me if I’d be interested in the Liverpool venue, and of course I said yes.
The tickets are all very reasonably priced, and the whole atmosphere is hoping to be more like a gig than a conference, with speakers hanging round for beers and chat after the shows. I intend to get to the other three, as all the speakers are insightful.
I started writing a top 10 list of albums released in 2009 that I’d given regular time to. Turns out that 2009 was a bit shit for my kind of music. Anyway, here’s a few I did enjoy…
Omar Rodriguez Lopez – Xenophanes
Silversun Pickups – Swoon
Street Sweeper Social Club – self-titled
Josh Freese – Since 1972
Rancid – Let The Dominoes Fall
NIN – Another Version Of The Truth: The Gift
I have to put NIN in because of how this free release has come about, especially the video.
“On January 7th, 2009, over 400Gb of video from the Victoria, Portland and Sacramento shows from the same tour were unofficially released by the band.
“By working together, the Nine Inch Nails fan community have created “Another Version of the Truth” – a 3 disc release bringing together numerous editors, designers, and web programmers to create a professional digital film, followed by a physical release created by fans for fans.”
Head over to This One Is On Us to find out more and grab a version of the video in everything from iPod to Blu-Ray format.
But damn, only six. Let’s hope that every band I like was busy writing material for this year…
I seem to be on a roll with video games at the moment. I guess that’s for two reasons. My boy is getting old enough to play Mario Kart on the Wii, and the winter in the UK is made for gaming. Cold, wet and dark.
Anyways, there was a question on the gaming forum I use a lot for chatter and buying/selling, NTSC-uk, asking what your Top 10 Games of the Decade were. Wow, that got me thinking. It’s actually a pretty tough question, and it’s hard to date some games in your head, as when you look ‘em up they were too early in many of my cases. So we chatted about it at work and with friends on Twitter, but it’s taken me all day to get this down.
After talking about Emulation in the last post, I thought it might do well to video it and show some of the different handhelds running the Mega Drive emulator.
It’s the first bit of video I’ve done for the blog, so please excuse anything you think to be crap… and I was full of cold, so kept the voice over to a minimum!
Emulation has been something I’ve been interested in for years… getting super excited about trying to run Sega Megadrive games on a 7200/90 PowerMac when I first learned about emulation. This was all quickly killed by the frustration of seeing the game stutter and jerk about like about like a bad strobe attack.
It took many years for things to improve, but even then I felt cheated, using a £1,200 laptop to play a 20 year old game that I had in the attic that would run without the problems… but with recent handhelds, thankfully, there’s been a better way. Read more…
I love this video! Great imagination and shows what a bunch of brothers and friends can do! Swound! – Predator 3. You can buy it from iTunes here…
What’s more, my little boy loves the video too! He has a shirt like Joe, the singer, and when he sees it, he starts singing and doing the actions from the video, like kicking a ball, rolling on the floor and playing his guitar!
30something front ender and director at JP74 and a guy who likes anything with a plug, including —in no particular order— Apple Macs, wifi war-driving and video games, particularly the Sega Mega Drive.
