July 29, 2008
90 minutes of aerobic exercise a day
The BBC has announced breathlessly that the secret of weight loss has been discovered: eat like a mouse and do at least 55 minutes of aerobic exercise a day. That will probably allow you to lose 10% of your body weight and keep it off for a year. My joy is unconfined.
Of course, this weekend I had no trouble hitting the target at the glorious Warwick Folk Festival. We went to this festival two years ago; it's on a tricky weekend that normally clashes with either Trowbridge or Cambridge. It's a perfectly-formed delight; big enough to book big bands and have plenty going on, but small enough to be easy to get around and see everything you really want to.
My aerobic exercise came from Oysterband on Friday and Bellowhead on Saturday, in addition to a certain amount of ceilidh, swimming twice, and plenty of tent-pitching and general walking around. Memo to other festivals; here is how you set up for a band that people are going to want to dance to at a festival where the main marquee is seated. You set the stage high off the ground (nearly as high as me), you leave a big space at the front, and then you put the seats behind that. Result; everyone gets to see, those who want to stand can do so, and those who want to sit have an unimpeded view. Warwick was just about perfect in this regard.
An additional feature was a big screen, complete with local ads, screen lag, and cute camera angles. I am not sure the main stage at Warwick is big enough to warrant it, but some people clearly appreciated it.
Discovery of the festival for us was the loud and rather silly metalcore ceilidh band Glorystrokes, playing the Saturday night ceilidh. Great fun to listen to and pretty good to dance to. We also particularly enjoyed hearing Bella Hardy, fresh from the Proms, veteran folkie Tony Benn, appearing here with elder statesman Roy Bailey; and the suddenly Mercury-nominated Unthanks, with all new backing musicians.
We also found time for traditional crafts, including more corn dollies (I made a Welsh fan! And I had a picture, except that AirMe appears to have neither saved nor uploaded it). Marianne bought a knitting board, which is essentially French knitting on steroids. She's currently generating large amounts of square knitting; I have a plan to acquire stripy cotton yarn and channel her creativity into homemade dishcloths.
Posted by Alison Scott at 10:31 PM | Comments (0)
July 20, 2008
Money-Free Weekend
The concept of the money-free weekend came from the Simple Dollar. In truth, it was not entirely a money-free weekend. But it was pretty close.
First, I must tell you that TOR.COM, a new entry into the focal point fanzine market, went live today. They have a number of people blogging for them, of whom I am one. But have no fear, gentle readers: I decided that they didn't really want lengthy screeds on weekend life in and around Walthamstow and 'what I just watched on the telly', so I will continue to blog here too.
Saturday started with my regular trip to EFDSS for the last of their Saturday morning singing workshops. These aren't quite free but I paid at the beginning of term. They continue next term; singing workshops 10:30 - 12:30, lectures 1-2, instrument classes in the afternoon. So next time I'm continuing with the singing, and also taking up beginner's banjo. Be afraid. Lecturers next term include Jon Boden, Brian Peters, Maddy Prior, and Roy Palmer.
In going there, I missed the wake for the Orford Road Post Office, closing on Tuesday despite the best efforts of Walthamstow village residents. This photo shows an unco-operative Marianne posting perhaps my last ever eBay package in the black-shrouded post box.
From there we went to Chingford, where the Bargain Bookshop, was having its 20th anniversary party, complete with beautiful cake, Pimms, goodie bags and the Chingford Morris, slightly confused by actually dancing in Chingford. We had only a brief stop there because our main event of the day was a party in Cambridge. The party was jolly, with plenty of food, beer and interesting conversation. People had observed, from the closed beta, that I was one of the tor.com bloggers. I said that I was blogging fandom and they all moved away. Clearly I need a tor.com version of the "I'm blogging this" t-shirt. (Yes, petrol does cost money, so that's a bit dodgy; beer also).
This morning we went to beginners' and juniors' morris practice. Morris dancing is an excellent cheap hobby, in that you get dance instruction and healthy exercise and a sense of community and so on, all for free or very very cheap indeed. I did lots of dances, and played for a couple as well; in particular playing for the one that I bogged up completely yesterday afternoon.
From there we went to Halfords to buy accessories for Marianne's new bike. That wasn't quite money-free either, but it was very close as the bike came with a voucher for accessories that nearly but not quite covered the accessories. (Which were a lock, lights and a rack. She already had a helmet).
Quick lunch at home and then off to the Green Fair, where Marianne was one of 500 local children playing in a massive "Fellowship symphony" celebrating William Morris and I was one of several grizzled old folkies who'd been asked to provide some incidental music on the Hornbeam Centre's stall. The latter worked out rather well as the Hornbeam was selling organic real ale on its stall. The combination of cheery folk music, comfy grass to sit on and actual beer attracted a fairly large crowd over time. Our scratch band featured keyboard, piano accordion, melodeon, banjo, mandolin, fiddle, autoharp, guitar, concertina and a bloke dressed as the Green Man playing the bodhran.
The symphony, by comparison, turned out to be a huge and glorious undertaking, with several different bands and orchestras all around the park, playing sequentially and simultaneously. The fair was free, the symphony was free, there was free bungee trampolining for any child prepared to wait in a huge queue to go on it, and people kept pressing energy saving light bulbs and so forth on us.
As we were walking into the fair Marianne made a Spot Hidden Object role and noticed that at the bottom of one of the posters for the fair, in rather small print, were the words "featuring live music from The Men They Couldn't Hang". Now. It does seem faintly unlikely that a band I really like, that I follow, that I have all the main albums by and that I've paid good folding money to see on numerous occasions, could be playing a free concert half a mile from my home without my knowing about it. Turns out I was not alone in this; I mentioned the concert to several other incredulous TMTCH fans over the course of the afternoon. Of course, it was impossible to find out when or where they were due to play; I worked it out by the process of speaking to every sound engineer on every stage in Lloyd Park or Aveling Park, until I found one who said wearily 'well, they were supposed to be on now, but everything's running very very late'.
The result was that they played to a very small but very appreciative audience; this photo is slightly unrepresentative in that those people who were bopping moved back behind the grass so as not to get in the way of those sitting in the pleasant evening sun. Before they started Marianne said "They'd better play Colours, if they don't play Colours I'll ask for my money back...". They did of course, along with The Ghosts of Cable Street, Iron Masters, Wishing Well, Rosettes, Bank Robber, Walkin' Talkin', the Green Fields of France, Shirt of Blue and Smugglers. And maybe some others I'm forgetting. Anyway, it felt fabulous, as if they were playing just for us, and all free. And great for Marianne, as normally TMTCH play festivals where it's hard for kids to see, or venues where kids aren't admitted.
By the time they were done we had to dash home very very fast because BBC Four were televising the Folk Prom, featuring Bella Hardy, Martin Simpson and Bellowhead. If I'd paid £35 for a ticket to that prom I would be pretty offended, as you got just about half an hour of Bellowhead. A very good half hour however, and the BBC sound editing was excellent. Bella Hardy impresses me more every time I hear her; she was great live at Ely with Chris Sherburn (described, quite accurately, by Phil Beer that weekend as "the funniest man alive"). If you can use iPlayer then it's available on Listen Again on Radio 3 for a week.
Posted by Alison Scott at 09:43 PM | Comments (0)
July 19, 2008
More iPhone app reviews
Well, there seem to be lots of people out there on the web looking for iPhone app reviews, and I've just acquired a pile more apps. Obviously they're not cheaper by the dozen. But there you go.
One general point about apps; many of the apps seem to run better if you reboot your phone first. Now, that's not very Maclike; but I think what's happening is that some apps are strewing cruft around where other apps trip over it. So this is worth bearing in mind.
Banner Free is free and feels like it could be very handy in those noisy, crowded places where it's difficult to attract people's attention or make yourself heard. It scrolls a banner message (like an LED banner sign) along your screen. Nice and big, you just type the message. Bubble Wrap is also free and simulates a little piece of bubble wrap. Handy when you're stressed out.
After I mentioned eReader, a friend told me to pay actual folding money for Bookshelf. This has several nice features; it reads several ebook formats already, with more to come; it loads books over WiFi by looking in the eBook folder on my desktop (desperately handy), and then transfers books onto the phone in a few seconds. I've read a novel using it, too, which was perhaps not as pleasant, but much more portable, than carrying the book. £5.99.
Critter Crunch is a very cute action puzzle game which has had excellent reviews on other platforms. I still feel like I'm learning and am making silly beginner mistakes; which often prove fatal. I do like games of these kinds but normally get the most fun out of them in that sweet patch between sussing them enough to play effectively and exhausting their normally limited strategy. £5.99.
Motion X Poker is getting rave reviews everywhere. This is an implementation of that fine old standard of beginning programmers, poker dice. But what a version; dozens of gorgeous sets of dice each with their own sound effects and lovely rendering. You roll the dice by shaking your phone, and manipulating the dice to hold and release them is super quick. I bought it for its secondary mode, where you just roll dice; handy if you're one of those people who can never quite find a pair of dice when you need them. But in fact I've played the poker dice quite a lot; I just want to unlock all the dice sets now. £2.99 which is a total bargain. Everyone's asking for two-player support but top of my wish list is a big ask which would probably be a slightly different program; I would like support for rolling an arbitrary number of dice (more than the 1-5 now supported), but even more I would like support for the commoner sorts of polyhedral dice. Because frankly it would be easier to carry around an iPhone than a dice box.
Brain Challenge also has pretty good reviews, but for me the jury is out. I enjoy the 'daily challenge' on these games, but as yet I've unlocked very little and have little enthusiasm for repeating those minigames I've tried. I may review this one again in a few days. £5.99
iDrops looked quite pretty at 59p, and it is a very sharp implementation of a puzzle game that I've never liked; where you click on groups of squares to remove them; as you do so the squares squeeze up and you have to get rid of all the squares to progress. If there is any strategy here beyond blind luck I have never found it. But this is nicely done, with sweet jellied edges to the squares.
Guitar ToolKit is probably best value if you're a guitarist, but I bought it because it has a splendid electronic tuner, which is another of those things, like dice, which I want to keep in my pocket at all times. It also has a sweet metronome with a tap the beat feature; I would like it to have more better beats (at least 6/8 and 5/4 please, both of which I use quite a lot). The feature which I don't use but obviously would if I was a guitarist is a chord diagram library with over 200 chords in it; the feature that doesn't quite hit the mark for me is reference tones, where I could do with all 12 like a pitch pipe but instead this just has the strings of standard tuning. Which is a little odd as the tuner offers you, as well as 'any note', a choice of dozens of different custom tunings. £5.99
Posted by Alison Scott at 12:25 AM | Comments (2)
July 15, 2008
Shiny new iPhone
Yes, of course I have a 3G iPhone. I now have a proper, bona fide, Apple queueing experience under my belt also. Which resembled a silent movie in which primitive iPhone hunters of Walthamstow ran back and forth between the O2 shop and the Carphone Warehouse shop depending on which was currently being the least disorderly.
CW won the day for me at least; they had more iPhones, and they were better organised. O2 had only 15 iPhones, and could only sell them to people who were upgrading as their systems had crashed. CW had clearly rather more than 15 iPhones, and could sell them to anyone, but only new customers could easily walk out of the store with them, because the credit check for existing customers required a search on the O2 system, which was just as crashed at Carphone Warehouse.
Anyway, after a couple of hours I had an 8Gb iPhone 3G, so that was one game won I suppose. I realised I had no idea how to transfer my SIM over, or even where the SIM was. The internet clued me into the need for a paperclip; we appear to live in a post-paperclip society but I eventually found one. Days later I discovered that the 3G iPhone comes with a Official SIM extraction tool.
The new phone is very nice, and 3G and GPS are £99 worth for me at least (yes, I know there's a contract extension too, but in the UK at least the tariffs are perfectly reasonable.) I noticed the yellow tint before reading about it.
I immediately set about getting apps for it, including social networking and games. AIM and Twitterific will work better once the much-heralded message count in background is implemented. AIM is a bit pointless if you have to actually be in AIM to tell if someone's messaging you. The best free app to give your mates a laugh is Carling iPint. Yes, it's advertising. That doesn't stop it being funny. The best free games appear to be the rhythm game Tap Tap Revenge, the currently unavailable Cube Runner and match-3 RPG Aurora Feint.
Other handy free apps include Apple's iTunes remote control (but just as with the Apple remote, better to control everything on your Mac, not just iTunes, and I'm sure someone will offer this soon); Light, which turns your phone into a handy torch; and eReader, which should read your eReader.com and fictionwise.com bookshelfs, but in my case at least only reads eReader books. It's a start, but I'm waiting for FBReader.
Exposure, a slick Flickr browser, demonstrates a likely iPhone business model. Like Twitterific, you can have this app free and ad-supported, or in a premium, paid-for, ad-free version. The App Store doesn't appear to support free trials in any obvious way, so this is an alternative approach. Exposure delivers a powerful hit of icy-cool future shock, with its 'Near Me' button; click it, and you can see the photos on Flickr taken near where you happen to be at the moment.
And what of paid apps? I've bought two so far. Super Monkey Ball is the poster demonstration game for the iPhone, and well worth £5.99 to amaze people. However, as other reviewers have noticed, it's incredibly hard and unforgiving, and it breaks the first rule of portable gaming, which is that you should make it easy for people to quit and resume at any moment. It also breaks the second rule of portable gaming, as I discovered while playing as a car passenger; whenever we drove round the corner, my poor little monkey flew helplessly into the ocean. So, it's very pretty and very clever, but you can't really play it when in motion, or when you only have a few minutes to play.
The second was Zen Pinball: Rollercoaster. The iPhone's a good shape for pinball games, and this table's reasonably interesting and a good price at £2.99. As I wasted many many hours playing the various Pro Pinball tables, I'm always slightly disappointed by other pinball sims. This one is a bit cluttered; some of the shots are not obvious and the modes are not as imaginative as they might be. But it's a reasonable attempt, and after all, you're gaming on your phone.
Which brings me to the great catch of iPhone gaming. Will the iPhone be a serious competitor for the Nintendo DS? No. Why not? Because the iPhone already has the battery life of a geriatric firefly; a few minutes' gaming and it's turning up its toes. To test the games I've bought, I've played with the iPhone plugged in; at which point it drains power faster than it charges.
The solution is clearly to power my phone through my bra, either by solar power or harnessing my natural bounce. I can't wait.
Posted by Alison Scott at 04:21 PM | Comments (0)
June 30, 2008
Folk Rising 2
Blatant commercial plug really; for Folk Rising 2
Posted by Alison Scott at 08:35 PM | Comments (0)
June 11, 2008
The Dark Lord's Tower
Our train pulled into Northampton station, which was odd in itself, because it wasn't supposed to go anywhere near Northampton. I'd asked to sit at a table; I like the tables, and they seem to be dying out. They foster conversation on trains, which is, on the whole, a good thing. And I was whiling away this slow and deviated journey by conversing with the other people at my table. The man sitting next to me pointed to the tower, and asked us to guess what it was. We were all wrong. Repeatedly. But I was wrongest, with my explanation that it had fallen through a rift in the space-time continuum from one of those fantasy worlds where the evil-doers build very tall and largely featureless towers. All the better to drop things from a very great height, you see.
Like, say, lifts.
Photo from Simon Hammond's Flickr stream; CC licensed for which thanks
Posted by Alison Scott at 01:21 AM | Comments (0)
May 27, 2008
The H-Bomb Girl
In the book, our hero, Laura, finds herself in a new school in Liverpool following her parents' separation. Her father has given her the key to a Vulcan bomber in the belief that she can use this to get special treatment in the event of a nuclear war. She makes some new friends, who discover the key and quickly dub her the H-Bomb girl of the title. But the key has attracted the interest of visitors from the future, who have a variety of reasons for wanting to get their hands on it. This all plays out against the backdrop of beat-mad 1962 Liverpool; the Beatles make a slightly over the top appearance.
This book is clearly perfect for older kids, both those who have read a good bit of SF and those who have only a little. Like Marianne, they'll absorb all the historical background; the SF is interesting and thought-provoking, the plot cracks along at a good pace, and the ending is agreeably satisfying. I don't know whether interesting YA SF with female protagonists is at all common these days; when I was growing up it obviously wasn't at all.
For adults? My own views were much closer to Abigail Nussbaum's than Farah Mendlesohn's. I found the tokenism of the supporting characters (poor mouthy girl who gets pregnant, only black boy in school, only gay in the village) insanely irritating. The scene-setting is clumsy; Laura has moved from High Wycombe, but the description of Liverpool domestic life is consistently written as if she had moved from the future that the young readers live in. And the base story is a very simple piece of SF; it works for young readers, but adult SF readers are going to be way ahead of the plot.
Posted by Alison Scott at 07:48 PM | Comments (0)
May 10, 2008
Comic Life Magiq first impressions
I got an email from the lovely people at Plasq offering me a cheap family pack of the new version of Comic Life. The new edition is Leopard only because it uses all the lovely Leopard core functionality. As a test for this review, I made this collage of some of the photos Steven took of the morrismen on Bank Holiday Monday. I really liked the extract feature, which isn't perfect but is good enough, and amazingly quick. I liked the flexibility around lettering, panel shape options, the great array of comic fonts that come bundled in and the starter templates. And I liked the overall ease of creating comic pages. You can see above that for a local club, you can create something really fun very quickly.
What's not to like? Well, a fair bit actually. Do you remember 'Kai's Power Goo'? It was a great little image editing program with a really silly interface. Looks like Plasq remember it too. If you decide to do complex editing on an image, it throws up a large palette in the middle of your screen, with a tiny editing window inside that; perhaps 640x480 (see screenshot below; either that editing window is very small or very far away). There are no context-sensitive right-click menus, and almost none of the elements are smart. Layout programs with layers need easy ways to see what layers are under your mouse at any given time and bring the right one out to work on. If there's a way to do this in Comic Life, I haven't found it yet. I want it to be perfectly obvious how to, for example, flip an image or object 180 degrees horizontally; I never found a way to do that at all.
The program keeps guessing about what it is you're trying to do, like Clippy. Several times, it decided for me that I wanted to insert an object into the frame of a different object. Er, no, ta; why would this ever be the default for anything other than an empty frame? And on one occasion Comic Life created a smart object out of two different elements, for no reason I can see, and I couldn't retrieve them except with Undo. 
There's a weird circular editing tool that brings up a wheel of seemingly random options; its purpose is completely opaque to me. I guess my problem is that I'm not looking for 'intuitive' or 'whimsical' user interfaces; I'm looking for a neat array of tools with clear menus for their use, and a program that takes full advantage of my screen real estate.
Having said all that, I do think this is a great program. Comic Life has been used not just for comics and for family greetings and snapshots, but for a whole range of instructables and manuals. This version extends its functionality and provides enough editing tools for most non-power-users' needs. And the core of the program -- making comics to share with your friends and family -- is as much fun as ever.
Posted by Alison Scott at 05:37 PM | Comments (0)
May 06, 2008
Smultron and LilyPond
Regular readers will know that I'm a great fan of Barfly, a great .abc reader for the Mac. And, in fact, a great fan of abc, the simple music file format that's very popular with folk tune collectors. Barfly's now been upgraded to work fully with Leopard. It's splendid for dealing with long abc files with many tunes in; it plays them really well, and it generates sheet music instantly.
However, nobody could claim that Barfly's printed output is beautiful. For that we turn to LilyPond, a Free Software music engraving program. The output from LilyPond is exceptionally lovely; the program has been designed from the ground up to make elegant sheet music. LilyPond itself is not exceptionally lovely; it's a command line program. It once had a nice Mac gui front end, but this has broken in Leopard. Instead, it's now supported on the Mac with a tiny bit of Applescript. So you do have to roll up your sleeves to use LilyPond at present. And although LilyPond includes an abc2ly converter, I can't make it work. Hand-coding from scratch is taking me about ten minutes a tune at present (this for 'ordinary' 32 bar English tunes). So I will not be producing a 2000 tune tunebook any time soon. But for tunes I'm actually learning, it's fine. In fact, it's causing me to think about the ways in which the abc that I'm working from is different from the tunes as played by the better melodeon players around me.
LilyPond has a reputation for fearsome syntax; I had little trouble with straightforward tunes, but as soon as I tried tunes with chords or books of tunes, I started to struggle. It's worth persevering though, because when it does come right the results are spectacular. I'm not exactly stretching it, with easy monophonic tunes. The most complicated thing I've coded so far is a You can use LilyPond to produce multi-part orchestral and choral scores. But you might die in the attempt.
At heart this is a markup language, and for that you need a text editor. Plokta famously uses SubEthaEdit for collaborative working, so I hadn't tried other text editors. The text editor of choice for LilyPond is Smultron, which is a lovely Maclike editor that supports LilyPond syntax colouring. I'm not exactly a power user of text editors, but this appears to me to be both easy for beginners to use, and has some key features (like keeping track of nesting). For some reason the Mac isn't overly provided with good, free text editors, so it's nice to find one that's actively supported.
Posted by Alison Scott at 06:30 PM | Comments (0)
April 26, 2008
Wii Fit First Impressions
Unsurprisingly, I had pre-ordered Wii Fit. Regular readers will know that I'm particularly interested in two key gaming concepts; games that instruct in a fun way, and games that use physical simulators as controllers. Wii Fit tries to do both of these things. How well does it succeed?
The controller is a balance board, the size of two sets of scales, that measures your weight and how it is distributed front to back and right to left. It asks you your height, and how much your clothes weigh, to calculate your BMI. Here at PloktaCentral, we don't like BMI much as a measure of fitness or health, but there you go. We also don't know how tall the children are, so we had to guess. Having done that, it tests your ability to balance and shift your weight precisely, and gives you a Wii Age. All four of us are crocks, it appears.
Obviously, this is another inconvenient controller to go with the dance mats, guitars, bongos, wheels, snowboard and maracas. At least this one can be pushed under the sofa (and that is where they suggest you keep it). But it turns out to be fabulously versatile, and when combined with a remote and nunchuk holds the promise of full-body game controls.
There are then four sets of activities; yoga poses, more traditional strength exercises, aerobic activities and balance games. Of the four, I'm least convinced by the traditional exercises. The game gives you a model to follow in the manner of a fitness DVD, and it tracks your centre of gravity as you do the exercise. But I am not persuaded that you're getting much more here than you would from a DVD.
On yoga, however, the benefits are much clearer. Tracking centre of gravity is incredibly useful as a focus for static yoga; the first balance I did in Wii Fit was as good as any I've managed in an actual yoga class. Admittedly I have no sense of balance, but there you go. For other poses, it shows you where the ideal centre of gravity is, which helps you get the pose right. I think this probably works better for people who've done some yoga than for complete beginners.
The aerobic activities feel like games to me; I guess the difference is that they're more directly simulations of real world activities. But there's a fine line here. They include jogging, step, hula hoop, and some to unlock, including rhythm boxing. The jogging is a particular joy; I find running on the spot terribly dull, but they have an island to run round, populated with all the other Miis on your machine, hidden Nintendo characters, and interesting scenery. A nice touch is that there's a map of the jogging island in the instruction book. The rhythm boxing is the first game we've unlocked that uses the board for your feet, plus a Wiimote and nunchuk for your hands, to control all four limbs, opening up a whole new layer of controller complexity.
The balance games include ski slalom and jump, heading footballs (and avoiding panda heads), and a great tilt table game where you maneuver balls into little holes like a puzzle. That one I found very intriguing; after playing a couple of times, I completely forgot I was using my whole body to control it; the mental process felt identical to the irritating little puzzles you get.
WiiFit tracks your activity over time and unlocks things; given that it suggests you play for 30 minutes a day, unlocks seem to come a little quickly for my liking. It can store up to eight users per Wii, which was a pleasant surprise after family-argument-prone Zelda. One big change that Nintendo need to make is in Mii management. Our Miis now carry our history in half a dozen different games; they're essentially our individual user accounts on the Wii. But anyone can delete a Mii in the Mii channel; not even any parental control.
Overall, I'm very excited by this game. The whole family has registered, and we're all fighting to get a go on it. And we all like different things. Marianne really likes the Step, Jonathan has played a lot of the balance games, and Steven has displayed a heretofore unsuspected talent at Hula Hoop. What about me? I've been down the slalom track about 100 times. And gosh, my calves ache today.
We will need to play for some time to see whether it helps us stick to a regular exercise routine. I don't think there's any holy grail for the yoga or muscle exercises. And all the aerobic activities and balance games feel like minigames; there are different difficulty levels, but I'm not sure there's much variety in, say, the placement of the slalom gates, or the step routines. Most of them could be developed, using the same control system, into full games. Imagine a simulation where you buy a Lake District map to jog or walk around, for example? Or SSX Wii, controlling the board with your feet and doing tricks with the Wiimote and Nunchuk?
I expect Wii Fit to sell in huge numbers. The prospect it's offering is very enticing and the price point is not bad. But the real potential is in the other games that could be made using the balance board as a controller. Because it's splendid.
Posted by Alison Scott at 12:30 PM | Comments (1)
