Here’s a picture that I have as my latest iphone background. I got it from the Hubble app. It’s just gorgeous.
Latest iPhone Backgrounds
These are my latest iPhone backgrounds. Many thanks to @Cmdr_Hadfield and his tweeting of pictures from the ISS!
Current lock screen:
Sunrise through the atmosphere.
Current home screen:
The ISS solar panels.
Upgrade
It’s coming up to the time when I can upgrade my phone. Upgrade is a curious term as essentially it means I sign up for two more years on an increased tariff. So although it sounds like I’m getting something for nothing it’s the mobile carrier that makes the money!
I need to get a phone with more memory. I don’t like having to delete apps because I want more music on my phone. My iPhone 4 has 32Gb of memory and it’s not enough. This means I have to go for a 64Gb phone. Also, as I have completely bought into the closed garden that is the App store and iTunes. I don’t want to have to spend a load of money re-buying all the apps I have for iOS on another OS. However, if the contract and phone is a ton cheaper that might be the most cost effective way to get what I want.
Anyway. In a few weeks I will trundle down to the Vodafone shop and sign up to spending a ton of money with them so I can have a phone that will fit all the stuff I have bought from Apple. The thing is that along with the new phone I need a case, screen protectors and new cables given that Apple have decided to “improve” their USB connector. That’s even more money. Is it worth it given that the network coverage in my house is rather shabby!
IF Vodafone are willing to give me a Sure Signal box then I am going to stick with them. It’s a box that connects to my hub or switch and gives me a good signal throughout my house. At the moment if I am in the lounge then WW can’t get in touch although I guess she could call the home phone if I knew where that was!
If Vodafone can’t do the deal then come March I’m off to another carrier that has a good signal throught my entire house.
Bad App
Shocked
It’s not a strong enough word to describe my reaction the the ABC Animals app from the Apple App Store.
I looked for an alphabet app for #1 to play with as he is starting to learn to read. ABC Animals looked good and I was quite impressed with it.
You go through the alphabet and touch the screen and get a picture of an animal, that animal’s sound and the animal is aurally named.
There’s a crocodile for C:
An elephant for E:
A tiger for T:
But hold on just a MF minute. WTF is this?.
There’s a UNICORN for the letter U:
This is just utter ARSE. I am ashamed I ever even downloaded this app. It’s not like there’s a shortage of animals beginning with U.
The app managed just fine to find the X-Ray Fish for the letter X so why are they messing around with a mythical animal for U?
The app has been deleted.
Shatoetry
Just got the Shatoetry app. Been playing a bit but want to put some serious effort into re-creating some metal songs in Shatoetry. Shatner is a genius.
Here’s my first attempt:
More to follow. Search this site for “Shatoetry”.
One Night
Over the last week I have “borrowed” the soundtrack to the Megadeth live DVD recorded in Buenos Aires – That One Night. Once the soundtrack was ripped I had to separate out the tracks so I could import the files into iTunes. This was rather fun and I enjoyed using Audacity.
This process is now complete and I have a lovely album on my iPhone of Megadeth live. I have to say that the energy and quality of the music is brilliant. It really makes me want to listen to the original songs again.
There were some issues. The orignal rip was rather quiet and I had to try and increase that within iTunes. Also I cut the tracks without always listening to them and I had two which had some acoustic impovisation in front (which would make sense watching the DVD but not when listening to the soundtrack) so I have gone back to my original recording and re-cut those tracks. Going to import them back into iTunes and onto my phone tonight. Love it all. :-)
Long Time
Continuing the iTunes and iPhone theme I have here a list of songs arranged by time (descending).
I need to listen to most of these to check whether they are proper songs or just tricks that have lots of empty space. Time to melt by Lard definitely seems to be a proper song. Over time I will check these and get back to you. The list stands as follows:
- Lard, Time To Melt – seems a proper song.
- Therapy?, Sister – seems some parts of silence, cheats!
- Combichrist, At The End Of It All
- Senser, Weatherman
- Lodestar, Iliac Crest
- Nirvana, Something In The Way – gaps and silence.
- Throbbing Gristle, After Cease To Exit
Current Most Played
Here’s my list of top played songs from my iPhone. Actually the first 5 were all children’s songs so I haven’t kept those in the picture.
As you would expect Combichrist are at the top as are some other Aggrotech or hellectro bands. Some might question Boston’s Foreplay/Longtime but I reckon if you listen to it you’ll realise it’s a very good song. Black Betty by Ram Jam is one that gets my children dancing so, although I appreciate it is a good song, without them it probably wouldn’t be in the top.
It’d be very interesting to mine my mind for data about songs I have listened to in my lifetime as this list really only covers the last year since I rebuilt my iTunes library. AC/DC’s If You Want Blood and plenty of Iron Maiden and Megadeth would be in the list. Would there be some shocking surprises? Maybe some Prince!
GTune5
I’m happy.
There’s a Gran Turismo application (or program to someone my age) for the iPhone. It’s called GTune5 and is an app that should make the tuning of cars easier.
I think the idea is that it will give you settings based on a car set up you like and translate them to other cars. So, I like some oversteer in my cars and the app will allow me to recreate that in other cars once I enter the details for a car I can really handle well.
Lovely. Now I just need some time to play the game!
Find me on PSN as Kertz.
Latest iPhone Backgrounds
My latest home screen:
My latest lock screen:
iTunes Albums
I spent a few hours at the weekend sorting out my iTunes library and then changing it back. I’ll explain:
My car stereo lets the iPhone plug into it. I can then browse the library and select songs and playlists etc. from the stereo display. Unfortunately the display doesn’t have many characters and so long album names scroll across which takes some time. If there are two parts to an album and I’ve jogged the select wheel while going over a bump then I have to wait ages and concentrate on the stereo display while the album name scrolls across. This is a touch unsafe and irritating.
So I decided to rename all multi-part albums with a 1 or 2 prefix so that I could see which part I had selected quickly on the car stereo display. Doing this took a while as I have my music library on my NAS drive and iTunes takes a while to adjust the music tags and then copy the new files to the phone.
That night I slept rather uneasily. It was distressing me that my albums were not correctly named. It seemed wrong.
So the next day I set about changing it back. Again it took a while but I feel more relaxed about it now. The albums are all correctly named and I’ll just have to be careful when selecting these songs in the car.
See my music collection here.
When I mentioned to WW that I had changed everything back to what it should be she said “I thought you’d do that”. I guess she knows me very well.
80s Rock
I have been buying up CDs of all my records or tapes over the last year or so. Everytime I think I have finished I get a snippet of another song in my head and off I go and search Amazon and EBay. A list of bands that I could consider slightly embarassing to admit liking are below. I haven’t bought Hysteria by Def Leppard yet as I can’t find it cheap enough!
If it gets you emotionally then that’s what you like! The best piece of music will send a shiver down your spine.
Here’s the list of bands in my 80s playlist:
- Adrian Smith And Project
- Britny Fox
- Dio
- Dokken
- Don Dokken
- Extreme
- Great White
- Lynch Mob
- Mr. Big
- Poison
- Ratt
- Salty Dog
- Tesla
- Whitesnake
For a complete list of music on my iPhone look at this page.
Latest iPhone background
My latest lock screen background.
It’s the Shrike for those of you who don’t know. For more information look up Hyperion or Dan Simmons.
My previous iPhone backgrounds
This ought to even it up a bit.
Main screen:
Lock screen:
My latest iPhone backgrounds
Not really interesting but just my latest iPhone backgrounds.
Normal background:
Lock screen:
Plane Finder AR
Just installed Plane Finder AR onto the phone. Point your camera at a plane and it’ll tell you
absolutely brilliant. I love it. Just right for an aircraft geek.
Night time picture of screen! That’s what time it is here!
Latest Tech
Here’s the latest tech I’ve bought. I’m a bit of a Logitech fan so this was always going to be something of theirs.
Really nice sound and rechargeable batteries to carry it around.
Ambition
Think I’d like to break into the top 10000. Doing ok at the moment on Angry Birds. Have spent far too much time playing it though.
iPhone Apps
Here are some of my favourite iPhone apps and why:
General apps:
- Podcaster – I listen to lots of podcasts! There’s a list here.
- Tunein Radio – when I do the washing up I listen BBC Radio 4 via the internet as the FM signal in the kitchen is a bit iffy. I also listen to Radio Rock – Helsinki
- Met Office – Get the weather and rain maps. Just great.
- WordPress – for editing this site on the move and when I am away from a computer.
- Wolfram – for maths stuff and finding out things that require time series or comparisons.
- Flickr – puts my family photos onto the Flickr site.
- Twitter – I can follow my favourite people and occasionally tweet about the aero-fauna I see.
- IMDb – ever recognise someone in a film and wonder what else they have been in? If so then you need IMBd. I remember it when it was based in Cardiff (that’s a long time ago).
- GTPlanet – I use it to check out interesting things about the Gran Turismo series.
Sport apps:
- WTCC – keeps me in touch with the World Touring Car Series.
- William Hill – I can place my usual amount on the sporting outcomes on offer.
- Spurs – just to keep up to date with the score and Premiership table. Football on the whole bores me as a sport.
- ECB Cricket – because cricket is a sport that matters.
- NFL – after motorsport this is probably my favourite sport.
- F1
Games:
- F-Sim Shuttle – in top 3%
- X – Plane – 4G
- RC Plane 2
- F.A.S.T.
- Real Racing 2
- Slayer Pinball HD
- Angry Birds – in the top 9%
- Sailboat Pro
- Flick Golf
My GameCentre name is Kurtz72
Random:
- Wind Tunnel – as an aero engineer (by degree) this is fascinating.
- Star Walk – it’s always good to know what stars you are looking at.
- Fractile – zoom into the Mandelbrot set which is just lovely and fascinating.
Mobile blog
Hello, this is my first blog from my phone. Brilliant.
Having had a website for ages this will make updating and editing so much easier. I have finally come around to web 2.0
Linear interpolation to approximate roots of a cubic! Excellent fun.