This is a tumblelog, kinda like a blog but with short-form, mixed-media posts with stuff I like. Scroll down a bit to start reading, or a bit more to read more about me.
Just a quick note to let you know that I’ll no longer be blogging here at 36-degrees.co.uk. I shall instead be redirecting traffic from this site to my new site stuartfrisby.com.
For your feed subscription reference, you can add: feedburner.com/stuartfrisby to your feed reader.
The 1964 Dylan song, which recounts the true story of a black hotel employee killed by a wealthy Maryland Tobacco plantation owner. It’s a beautiful and timeless piece of music, I hope I didn’t butcher it too much, and do listen to the original, it’s amazing.
In mello mello.
Just some quick notes:
1. It took me two installation attempts to get it to launch, the first time round I got a non-launching application and system beachballed for a couple of minutes.
2. With the software updates required to install the Beta, and my two attempts to install the app, I had to do four restarts of the system. A bit like being transported back in time to Windows XP.
3. The tabs on top are an odd choice, there is no visual seperation between the first tab and the window operations (close, maximise, minimise.) You can only rearrange the active tab, and must do so using the extreme right of the tab, whereas before you could rearrange any tab, from any point of origin therein. The rearrangement of tabs seems like much harder work than before. Visually, I’m also unsure as to whether I like them or not - I’m guessing this is something we’ll see more of in Snow Leopard, and which will potentially be available for application developers of multi-tab interfaces, at which point it’ll probably make more sense. For now, it just feels a bit wrong.
4. Still no option to have a multi-line bookmark bar, which is unfortunate.
5. The lack of a refresh/stop button is perhaps going to take the most getting used to. Safari 4 has inherited at iPhone style progress indicator and refresh button which sit within the location field. The lack of a more obvious indication of loading progress is a notable loss.
6. It feels a little quicker, but not greatly so over Safari 3. Javascript performance is definitely improved, but is certainly not as smooth as the copy on apple.com would suggest.
7. Coverflow history, and the top sites mosaic are all very nice, how often I’ll actually use them, I’m unsure.
8. The Google Search with live results are nice, but I prefer the inquisitor style interface which I used in Safari 3.
9. The toolbar is so lacking in whitespace, that it took me 20 seconds of trying to get the context menu in order to customise the button layout before frustratedly retreating to the ‘View’ menu.
My report on the comparative experiences of top flight football fans in England and Japan, written as a final year dissertation for my Japanese & International Business degree at John Moores University in Liverpool. Via Terracist.
A work in progress, I’m uploading rough recordings of a few new tracks to my opentape.
“this country, once great(?), is a pit of inequality, of crime and of desperation. And you can blame whoever you like, and try to fix it in anyway you see fit, but I tell you this with utter conviction - Once I have swelled my universities coffers for one final year, I will be taking my educated, intelligent, success hungry self to a country which deserves, and values me. I used to be proud of my country, and extoll its virtues to people who dared speak ill of it, but they were right, in spirit if not in the degree of their condemnation.
I would be happy to pack a case this day, and leave to never set foot on this infected soil again.”
Given the painfully awful process of actually getting an iPhone to call my own, it reaaly needed to be good in order for that process to have seemed worthwhile. Luckily, it doesn’t dissapoint.
Having been in an iPhone-less Japan for the best part of a year, the original iPhone passed me by completley. And so many of my observations would have been pertinent to the iPhone as a product range, not just this latest iteration of the hardware and software within.
The most startling diference the iPhone has made is to my MacBook Pro. I used to have it switched on all the time, ready to check emails, feed read and browse. I now do all of those things on my phone. And the only limitation I’ve really been concerned by, is battery life. I’m using it far more as a PDA than as a phone, and I’m needed to charge it daily to ensure it doesn’t die on me. I’m thinking I’ll need to buy a small, rechargable charging dealie soon.
Overall, the 3G iPhone is undoubtably the best mobile phone I’ve ever used, but it’s also the best MP3 player I’ve ever used, the best portable video player I’ve ever used and the best PDA I’ve ever used. Not bad then.
