One of the reasons I bought an iPod touch in November, as opposed to a cheaper, vaster iPod classic that I could use to store all of my music, was that it held out the promise of being an interesting device to fit into Apple's slowly-expanding range of devices that hang off iTunes. I don't just mean in the obvious "iTunes organises your music" sense, either, but by using iTunes library sharing and the music streaming that the AirPort Express enables.
It took months, and the release of the App Store, but one of Apple's two apps - and the only one that's free - is Remote. As Apple put it,
With Remote, you can control the music on your computer or Apple TV from your iPod touch or iPhone. Play, pause, skip, shuffle. See your songs, playlists, and album art on your iPod touch or iPhone as if you were right in front of your computer.
Better writers than me have outlined some of the ways that Remote actually improves on the user interface of "Mobile iTunes", the native interface to the music stored on an iPod touch. (In short, it provides much more contextual information within the space provided.) However, I used it and saw three things that it could do, but doesn't, although I readily admit each might have issues that stand in the way of an implementation.
No Cover Flow
Mobile iTunes uses the iPod's orientation sensor to swap from a list view to the Cover Flow view, which lets you see lots of artwork and scroll through it. Remote doesn't do anything with the orientation sensor at all, and certainly doesn't use full-size artwork.
There are two explanations I can think of. The trivial is that Cover Flow might be getting out of favour in Cupertino, just like metal windows did before it. The more sensible is that the demands on a network - even a wireless network - of downloading all the images are too high. Heck, even when copying from the "disk", my iPod can't refresh the entire list at once. Nonetheless, a man can dream, and it would be nice if the app had some sort of horizontal mode.
No streaming
In an ideal world, I'd have speakers in every room, connected to an AirPort Express, and I'd be able to wander around the house with the same music playing out of every speaker. (Actually, ideally, something would know where I was and switch the speakers on and off as required, but let's stick with what we have, shall we?) However, I can't afford that many wireless routers, so instead I'd be quite happy to wear the iPod and listen to it instead. Apple don't let you do that, despite the fact that's how shared iTunes libraries work.
There is, once again, a possible technical reason for this. The iPod might not be up to decoding all the different formats in your iTunes library; in particular, Apple Lossless might be a problem. However, it can play local lossless files, and I can't see that shifting the data is that much harder. I'm hoping this shows up as an option in a new release.
Since I first thought about writing this, two things have happened. Firstly, the tech press noticed an Apple patent filing discussing the "Remote access of media items", which goes beyond the capabilities of shared libraries at present (as it mentions syncing metadata). Secondly, Simplify Media released their client for iPods with the 2.0 software. However, I'm unhappy about having to run a second application just to cater for the chance I'd like to stream. (Interestingly, a recent blog post notes issues with cover art and bandwidth, so there may be something to the technical issues after all.)
No shared libraries
This is the biggest problem for me personally, and it could be the easiest to fix. It's straightforward: there's no way to use Remote to connect to a shared library. There are reasons you'd want this: an office server that doesn't have music of its own, but instead which plays from lots of other people's machines, or perhaps a laptop which relies on an iMac as the source of a home's entire music. While you could argue that you should connect Remote to the server in the latter case, that's not going to work out if you're using mt-daapd, and it doesn't work in the first case either, since the music won't come out of the server's speakers.
This does of course raise a few issues with the user interface, but
Steve Jobs employs some very smart people, and I'm sure there's a way
to deal with it. So there's my wishlist for a future version. Shared
libraries, streaming to the iPod, complete with a Cover Flow view.
Sure, it's tricky, but then, don't fanboys always demand the
near-impossible of Apple?
On a whim I picked up some Pork Tenderloin on the way home yesterday because, let's face it, isn't life essentially meaningless without chunks of raw swine. The phrase "existential void" is lurking, sullenly on my frontal lobes. Full ahead I thought, cheerfully, and DAMN the trichinosis.
Not that I had any idea what to do with it of course, but I determinedly poured myself a glass of vino and perused my oddly lopsided spice rack (15 different types of salt, no chilli powder. You get the picture).
The pork came in two loins and so I whipped up a marinade of garlic, cayenne, orange juice, coffee and cocoa powder and let both slabs luxuriate in them for 15 minutes whilst I set the oven and made sure that bottle knew who's boss. It's not for nothing that I studied at the Keith Floyd School of cooking.
I took one of the loins and pan roasted it then stuck the pan in the oven with some chunks of onions for about 20 minutes. And it came out looking like this
After resting for 15 minutes (during which time I gave the bottle another stern talking to) I plated it up with a avocado and spring green salad and some rice
And damn tasty it was too - moist but with a crispy crust. The marinade turned out really well too considering it was largely a random collection of whatever I had in my cupboard ("Hmm, mincemeat, maybe that will work").
And what happened to the other tenderloin you might be asking? Or might not to be honest. You might also be sitting in front of your computer asking the world at large loudly who this bloke is and why he keeps taking bad photos of food. Or more philisophical questions like "If omnipotence is defined as the ability to do anything then surely that must include the ability to create something that can't be done?" or "Is that nagging in my soul a reaction to the vapid consumerism of everyday life or just that I've got the munchies?". Either way, I recommend having more wine. Not my wine of course, get your own you stingy bastard, and, oh, I seemed to have finished mine anyway. Can I have some of yours?
Anyway, the other loin. I chopped it up into knuckle sized chunks which, having marinaded in the same sauce, I placed lovingly but firmly in a roasting pan with more roughly chopped onion and then covered with foil. When the first loin (do keep up) came out of the oven I turned the temperature right down and then stuck the second loin in for, oooh, a couple of hours. The nice thing about dishes like this is that you could even do it for longer - things just keep getting more tender. or burn eventually but the margin of error is quite large.
It ended up looking like this
It was so tender that even transferring it to the bowl caused it to fall apart. It's currently sitting in my fridge until I figure out what to do with it - possibly tacos or over more rice tonight.
Or I could make a meatshake out of it. Mmm.
This weekend I learnt to weld. And cut stuff with oxyacetylene torches. I now feel approximately 10-15% more manly than I did on Friday and it's another thing ticked off the ToDo list I keep in order to be fully prepared for the forthcoming zombie apocalypse.
I'm absolutely fucking knackered though. And strangely sore.
Things I learnt:
- Electrodes for arc welding burn through startlingly quickly
- Welders masks are really, really dark. When I first put mine on I thought it was broken.
- That head flip thing to bring your mask down is practical as well as making you feel cool.
- Metal gets really hot when you weld it.
- The same defective gene that makes me pick up hot things in my hands when I'm cooking is alive and well when I'm welding (see above).
- Cutting things with a torch is just bad ass.
- It's amazing how quickly you become blasé about a 3500 °C flame.
- The phrase "finessing molten metal by whacking it a lump hammer" makes perfect sense.
And on that note, a bit of digital hardcore should go down nicely
Hello,
As every Londoner knows, all tube lines were not created equal. There's a definite ranking of the lines you'd like to have to use, and those you'd like to avoid. So here's my own, totally unscientific (yet, I hope, reasonable) list of lines in order of usefulness.
Victoria
This isn't just because it's my daily commute (although I must say, in the nine months since I've been using it regularly, it's been pretty much rock solid), but it's because it's reliable and frequent. It probably helps that it's a single line with no branches (the only exception being the slight thinning of trains north of Seven Sisters as they peel off to the depot). Other things that help are the fact it's a relatively new line - only forty years old - and that the stations are spaced relatively far apart, making end-to-end journeys remarkably quick. Let's hope the current engineering works and the new stock (in service from next year, and hopefully a bit more roomy inside) don't cause any problems.
Bakerloo
The Bakerloo feels remarkably like the Victoria's older sister, partly due to its similar rolling stock. (It's much older, as it happens - the line celebrated its centenary a couple of years ago). However, it's also a single line (avoiding all those pesky problems with points) and it's mainly sheltered underground, so it seems to me - and I'm an infrequent user - that it's near the top of the list.
Central
Another old line, the Central manages to be remarkably useful despite having a fork at one end and a rather complicated loop at the other. However, its stock is pretty cramped - the line has some of the smallest tubes n the network - and although I commuted on it happily for six months, it doesn't quite reach the heights of the previous two entrants.
Piccadilly
Another line with branches, the Piccadilly does especially well given its length, with long extensions to Heathrow and Uxbridge (although the latter is a bit unreliable, from what I've noticed). I'm one of those people who'll save a tenner by taking it rather than the Heathrow Express, for example, and when I lived in the western half of Islington it was a pretty safe way to get back from the West End. However, it is pretty slow through the centre, with stops that are arguably too close together (the classic being Covent Garden's proximity to Leicester Square, exacerbated by the former's reliance on slow lifts), which keep it down at the current ranking, as does its extensive overground sections - always a problem if there's sufficient heat, rain or snow.
Waterloo & City
On the grounds of reliability alone, I reckon the Waterloo and City would score highly. Unfortunately, it loses out rather severely on the utility front, since it connects just two stations, closes in the early evening and isn't open at all on Sundays. It's also got the most uneven flow of any line I can think of, being full northbound in the mornings, with the reverse in the evenings, as commuters from the south west head back to their mainline trains.
Jubilee
The Jubilee is the newest line, with older sections being younger than the Victoria. However, a botched attempt to move to sophisticated signalling during the construction of the extended section seems to have doomed it to unreliability, and it seems to have quite low train frequency. This all knocks it along way down the list, which is a shame, because I like the noise of the gate thyristors of the trains, and it really should be a showcase for the system.
East London Line
This is a rather special case, since it's closed for engineering works until 2010, when it vanishes - it'll become part of London Overground (which, in the interests of sanity, I've excluded from this list, along with the DLR). Certainly, the current replacement bus services would be bottom of the list, but before its closure, I found the line reliable and friendly. Its use of Metropolitan stock meant the trains were spacious, and while train frequency was a little low (there was only one every six minutes) I still think it comes in as a fairly useful line.
Metropolitan
A long subsurface line, and the oldest (incorporating the original 1863 route from Baker Street to Farringdon), the Metropolitan seems to do surprisingly well, given the amount of its track exposed to the elements and the complexity of its north-western end. However, it does have issues, both out in the suburbs and when it gets interleaved with the other lines, which mean that, despite the spacious interiors, the line ends up pretty low in the rankings.
District
Another long subsurface line, the District has its fair share of branches, but mainly it loses points not for junction delays or complexity, but because it's so slow. The stations it shares with the southern edge of the Circle line all feel far too close together, so it takes an age to get anywhere. However, as with the Metropolitan, large carriages help it out, so it's saved from bottom place.
Northern
Ah, the Misery Line. No wonder it's down here. But what's this? A look at TfL's performance data seem to show more trains in service than any other line, and not too many delays. So why does the Northern end up all the way down here? Well, its complex layout is mostly to blame, causing both low train frequency on either branch (especially if you need to pass one of the link points at Camden Town or Kennington), while also letting delays affect either branch, if they're bad enough. Coupled with that are the short rolling stock - only six carriages, compared with a more typical eight for tube stock - and somewhat cramped interiors. (One can only be thankful that London Underground abandoned their usual colour-coding inside the train: all-black handrails would have just been even more depressing.) It drops into the last place for the deep tubes.
Hammersmith & City, Circle
I'm going to list these as a single line, because they share rolling stock, and they also share some of the same problems. However, in case you were wondering, the Circle really is deliberately listed last. The problem with it is simply that, except for two points, the line doesn't really exist: it's shared with the Metropolitan and District lines, and, as the name makes clear, has no terminus. This also means that there's nowhere to go when the service gets disrupted, and the usual outcome is that these two get sacrificed for the others. TfL plan to unroll the line somewhat in the next few years, running from Hammersmith around the loop once and then back to Edgware Road, which should help, but even so, the low train frequency (you can wait ten minutes for a Circle line train) and relatively small carriages (for a subsurface line, anyway) put the line at the bottom of the list.
So, that's the list. I should note that, even though it's last, the Circle still manages a reliability of over 85% and the average customer delay is about 10 minutes. I'd certainly usually choose it over buses, taxis or (horrors) driving.
I'd love to hear from more regular users of any of these lines if they have any comments.
Whoops. It appears to be Tuesday already. Tricksy weekends and Friday weddings confusings me.
In the spirit of laziness and expediency then, MORE JONATHAN GLAZER.
I promise this will be the last one. Honest.
Note once again the use of lighting and colour palette - that there's so much texture in a video which is almost monochromatically green and grey is, well, pretty damn impressive. Similarly the use of what wikipedia informs me are called diegetic sounds - the actual ambient sounds of the scene rather than just the music - add another layer of crunchy texture on the bitter but smooth yoghurt of the video. Or something. It's possible I'm rambling.
This is the super extra long special double-double extra edition because, well, who doesn't want 5 minutes of slightly unsettling and depressing music and visuals.
"When was the last time you were at a wedding that had a death defying hike, rogue waves, a luau, ultimate fighting, a presidential candidate and a budding bromance?" asks Papi Chulo. For most of us, the answer is never, but luckily, Papi Chulo and Secret Agent Scotch took the time to Vox all the amazing moments during their unforgettable Hawaiian wedding on 08.08.08 so we could all take part in the festivities.
The story began last February, when Papi Chulo popped the question and Secret Agent Scotch said yes! Since then, they've kept us in the loop about all the details, from the bride's veil to the wedding song to the final To-Do List. And throughout it all, they inspired us with their love for each other. (I'm pretty sure it doesn't get any better than knowing your future husband thinks you are The Perfect Girl.)
It's an amazing love story and we are thrilled they shared it with us. Watch the video of the ceremony and please join us in wishing Papi Chulo and Secret Agent Scotch the fairytale ending they deserve.
And What's a Team Vox Post without New Themes?
Spice up your Vox blog with one of our latest themes (found in the design area under "New") or any of our hundreds of themes. From shopping to sushi, comics to cycling, there's something for everyone.
Can't get enough of the wedding? A few lucky Voxers - Krissy, djchall, and Beau Smith - made the trip to Hawaii to take part in the celebration. Check out their Vox blogs for more pictures and stories.
Congratulations again to Secret Agent Scotch and Papi Chulo! Enjoy the Honeymoon!
This summer's pop culture cornerstone seems to be, without much doubt, Christopher Nolan's new Batman film, The Dark Knight. Along with the usual (and surprisingly favourable) mainstream reviews, it's shot to the top of IMDB's customer ratings, and has inspired musings on the Joker's grasp of game theory.
So here's my little observation: The Dark Knight is possibly the first superhero sequel that actually gets more realistic, and less bombastic, than its predecessor.
Let's look at the usual trajectory of a superhero series (this may apply to other sequels, in fact, but the only major series I can think of is Pirates of the Carribean, and I valued my time far too much to watch that nonsense). Start with Tim Burton's Batman, which was dark, and had a vague attempt at realism, although the presence of a bat-shaped aircraft (seemingly inserted mainly so that Burton could put it against a full moon, recreating the iconic signal) shows that it's not allowed to trump artistic needs. Follow that up with his still mainly monochrome, but far camper, Batman Returns, which asks the viewer to accept an army of remote-controlled missile-toting penguins and the resurrection of a murder victim by a herd of cats¹.
When Burton lost the reins of the franchise, things got even worse. Batman Forever saw Joel Schumacher turn up the saturation, with Jim Carrey gurning manically as the Riddler. Let's not even mention the horror that was Batman and Robin, although it provides a useful rule of thumb: the sidekick showing up is usually the end of the road.
You can plot a similar curve for the recent Spider-Man films, which go from a man with an exoskeleton (ok, kind of plausible) to an alien parasite bodysuit (er), and, although in a slightly different way, the Superman films of the '70s and '80s, which finally reached a series-ending nadir with our Kryptonian protagonist trying to end the Cold War single-handed. Enough said, I suspect.
In The Dark Knight, by contrast, I can only think of a single technical plot element which isn't at least in the realms of possibility (for those who've see the film, two words: "sonar surveillance".) As Jon Barnes writes in the Times,
Nolan has [made] plausibility his watchword. Every aspect of the crime-fighter’s milieu has been granted as believable and realistic an explanation as possible (the hero’s cape becomes a glider, his car an urban tank appropriated from the US military and his arch-enemy the Joker’s horrifically distinctive features the result of scars and make-up, “war-paint” designed to intimidate). The world of the film is necessarily fantastic but it feels closer to ours – uncomfortably, distressingly closer – than any previous version.
I'm certainly happy to see this, especially as it makes the intellectual meat of the film (and yes, there is some) much easier to relate to the real world. As Barnes says in his conclusion, the film holds out the promise of its own sequel (as, to be honest, all works in this genre have to), and if it can maintain the path of even-increasing realism, I'm really looking forward to it.
¹ For all its nonsense, this is probably still my favourite of the '90s Batman films. Go figure, as they say in America.
² I dislike paging in web sites usually, but cleverly the entire Dark Knight review is on that page; the second page is a review of Wall-E, which I saw a couple of days earlier, and which, to be honest, I thought was even better, although it's hard to compare such dissimilar works.
I'm surfing some sort of endocrinological roller coaster here (and, apparently, mixing my metaphors with alacrity and gay abandon) suffering from the trifecta of immunocompromise, jetlag and post wedding attendance recovery. Yesterday I sat down in front of the Hungarian GP and then promptly slept through the whole thing waking only to catch the instant replays - my reptile brain somehow roused from its slumber by a sudden rise in excitement in James Allen's commentary maybe - only to crash straight back out again. Even after nearly 10 hours sleep last night I can barely keep my eyes open. It's possible, as John McClane would say, that I'm getting too old for this shit.
Either ways, I'm tired and lazy and so I'm going to stay with Jonathan Glazer for inspiration.
Perfectly suited to highlight Jay Kay's unique dancing style the video was a mind blower - although being a nerdish film geek with the kind of unsatisfied mind that likes knowing how magic tricks are done it somewhat baffled me that people couldn't work out how it was done. Although it occurs to me, in retrospect, that that sort of attitude may be why I remain friendless and alone to this day with nothing but my internet arguments and a bottle of Scotch for company.
I'm a sucker for long tracking shots, especially the kind of establishing tracking shot used at the start of Serenity and the 12 minute long one at the start of Snake Eyes (perhaps the only bit of the film I really liked. Apart from Carla Gugino) although a sneaking part of me suspects it's because I like to play "spot the cuts, esepcially when no-one else can". See my above point about the internet/whisky for more details.
I confess to not having seen this video for years - its media saturation on launch probably providing indefinite satiety. What's weird is how ropey it looks this time around. I mean, I never liked the dodgily comped crow or the obvious cuts 'hidden' by pans down to writhing insects. And thematically (so to speak) that black liquid was always somewhat baffling. But moreso I can't help but noticing the Doctor Who-esque wall wobbling this time around - how on earth did I miss that before or was it just willfull denial? And if I'm being harsh some of the floor moving sequences are repeated.
That said it still looks fresh and new and, even knowing the secret to how it's done, the sequences where Jay barely misses being 'trapped' between the encoraching couch and the wall still look stunning.
More bad food photography - I don't know if it's the stabiliser in my camera failing or the DTs are finally catching up with me but these came out quite blurry.
That said - this ratatouille (old-style, no aubergine eggplant) came out spectacularly well. One doesn't get the opportunity to throw around word bombs like "unctuous" much but hot damn - the spirit of Elizabeth David was moving through me on Sunday night. I feel compelled to stand up in the street and WITNESS, brothers and sisters, because surely the only way to salvation is through this ratatouille. If possible it was even better the next day. I wept. Openly and without shame. Seriously.
I should therefore be critical about the lamb which was more hit and miss. I cleaned up the rib bones a little to make them more 'french' but then was too lazy to wrap them in tin-foil to keep them pristine and pure, which is the way that god and Gordon intended.
I did them for about 20 minutes at 200°C (400°F) then glazed them with a mixture of dissolved brown sugar and dijon mustard and put them back in for about 10 minutes (or until the tip of the knife I stuck in came out warm to the touch on my tongue) and they were pretty perfectly cooked - pink in the middle chops and crusty on the outside as per the teachings of Friar Gary of Rhodes.
The glaze however - wasn't in love. It was a bit of a compromise since I didn't have any honey and so made a syrup with demerara sugar (light brown) when I would have preferred muscavado (dark brown). I also didn't have any English Mustard or even any proper Djion and had to make do with the squeezy bottle of djion in the fridge. Which turned out to contain high-fructose corn syrup (WHY?!) which gave the glaze a slightly sickly undertone. The Housemate loved it though so either a) I'm being way too self critical or b) He's become immune to the evils of HFCS. Or, I suppose d) He's been brainwashed by the Bilderburg group and the shapeshifting lizards of the British Royal Family/Bush Family NWO secret government. They orchestrated 9/11 don't you know? It's true! I saw this documentary on the internet and everything.
As always, the final plating money-shot is as graceless as it is badly exposed.
Drunk with a very, very good '06 Owen Roe Sharecropper's Pinot Noir which I'll be ordering a case of sometime soon.