this post has no name, or an app a day keeps luddites away

This post has no name, although that’s mainly due too me being cheap and running open office at home, forgetting to save as a .doc and having accessibility problems on this machine.

Anyway, you’ll see the intended post soon enough, a serial it shall be too. But this really needs a new post and this is it tada!. Okay so that’s a messy sentence.

I need to really post at least once a week, but I have been so busy doing, well nothing tbh, looking for a job takes time and is incredibly frustrating.

One thing I have been meaning to talk about for a while now is apps, I have an iPhone and with that come applications. Usually I hate trying to draft up review articles, mainly because I’m nice and rather easily pleased, but plunging into the murky world of the app store can be confusing and overwhelming due to the sheer quantity that’s out there (several trillion billion thousand, true story) so I thought I would help you out by suggesting a few I like,

Instagram

 

Instagram is a nifty little camera app that allows you to see your and your friends photo’s as they stream. This has to be my favourite photo-sharing app and according to its user info, 7 million agree.

You can upload your pics to bookface et al with a few taps but in all honesty the built in news feed works best. Coupled with a slightly rehashed ‘like’ feedback on each pic it allows you too talk and comment on each picture. Perhaps its main selling point is the filters included allowing you to edit new and old photo into something much nicer.

The popular page is a good way to find other users you like and too nab inspiration, as with all photo platforms your going to find a lot of crap among the goodness but there is some genuine talent in there.

Come find me @stephen_green 

Hipstamatic

Hipstamatic is a very, very nicely done camera app and although I have started using Instagram more, it is in some ways far better. Although you have to pay for this one, and there’s a lot of inapp stuff too, it is pretty good quality software. Unlike Instagram you choose from a variety of films and lenses before shooting making for a more realistic app and a plethora of customising opportunities and scope for playing around, extending the life of this app nicely. You also get a cool onscreen camera complete with viewfinder (while cool, this can be annoying when trying to get a shot, luckily you can disable it).

Synthetic Corp, the makers, is also pretty generous when it comes to bringing out special edition freepaks once in a while.

More to follow,

 

The Battle of Belko

On Saturday our new washing machine arrived, the hired men dropped it in the dinning room and left. That’s all well and good but it needs to be in the utility room.

Now this leaves us with two problems, firstly now I have to move it, secondly and this is the big one, now we will have to install it ourselves. Have you ever installed a washing machine? Well I have now. Flicked through the instructions and they read simply enough, it all seems so straightforward. Can’t be hard, no I’m certain it will be simple.

Day One,

Step one, remove restraining bolts. I own one spanner, it doesn’t fit, we give up in despair.

Day Two,

Step one, remove restraining bolts. Go out shopping a buy a new set of spanner, spanners don’t fit. Rage. Think to myself ‘I knew I should have bought an adjustable spanner’. Ask next-door, return with a magic albeit rusty adjustable spanner. Spanner works and we loosen bolts, not sure what to do so we just keep turning. After twenty minutes my beautiful assistant manages to remove one, turns out you have to pull them out not twist. Well get the remaining three out in record time. What’s next..

Step two, move into final resting place. Now this was the part I was dreading, now moving it into place sounds deceptively easy but bear in mind its going into a very small utility room with very little room for play. We had about an inch height clearance and a foot width. Slots in nicely you may think, ah I retort but if you just slide it right in how do you connect it up?

Washing machines have three main connections, water in (some machines have two water inlets, a hot and a cold, ours had only the one, being more of an economic model, electricity in and waste out. It’s recommended that you get each of these connections right. The electric connect is an easy one to make, even I know what a plug looks like.

I guessed which pipe I needed for the water and connected a hose before testing into a bucket, water flows, right, good. The waste pipe was the one I really had to get right, mess up with that and you get flooded. With the waste and mains connected it was a relatively easy case of walking the machine into place and reaching around into the dark and trying to screw on a fiddly connection. It’s like when you try to reach around a big television a plug in a scart lead but infinitely harder and aggravating. That done however and a firm shove into place and our washing machine was in. Turning on the water was a nervy moment, but hooray no leaks! I had confirmed my masculinity and installed a washing machine.

The first couple of washes were regularly scrutinised but it stayed a flood free environment. God am in proud. This must be what having a child feels like…

Bob's Burgers,

Have you all watched 'Bob's Burgers' on E4? If not go watch it 4OD etc.. it is the best thing i have saw for a very long time. In brief it's an animated show about a man called Bob Belcher, Bob runs a burger joint with his family, his wife Linda and their three children Tina, Gene and the wonderfully pyscotic Louise (voiced by the brilliant but a little weird Kristen Schaal {she was Mel in The Flight of the Conchords}).

It's the most a cartoon has made me laugh in a while, Family guy, American Dad, Cleveland Show et al.. are funny but it's the same type of funny day in day out. Stuff like this makes me laugh properly, not just a little giggle hither and tither but real macho belly laughs. It's the same with 'The Life and Times of Tim' another brilliant low budget cartoon with big ideas.

Thats all for now, the papers here and its action time

Hidden Gems in forgotten wasteland

I walk past these houses everyday now, and it also strikes me how odd they are when you consider the surrounding area of vauxhall/kirkdale. They really are out of character, its a shame they are so battered up as they are lovely houses. Locally the legend is as follows, they did belong to a property developer who was planning to turn them into flats (rather elegant flats [in a rather inelegant area {i mean vauxy is all well and good but people who afford places like that don’t live here}]), but as they are grade two listed buildings, not sure which grade actually but they are listed, it's pretty tricky to update them as there is a shed full of bureaucracy to navigate.

Anyway, apparently the developer decided to bail and touched them to clean a sizable insurance premium. How true this is i don't know, it's clear that they have suffered some flame damage, but to be fair i wouldn't put it past the locale to torch some thing for the sheer hell of it.

Anyway, regardless of how it happened, it happened and now these buildings are going to waste. That’s the story of Liverpool really, it ruined swathes of the Cheshire country side to build estates when there are miles of neglected brownfield sites cluttering up the place. Hipsta kids would love those dock front warehouses.

Also here is more of the cats

Hey Government! Leave those Libraries alone!

If you live in the liverpool area please go here, and fill in this questionnarie/survey. It is without a doubt far more important than the census bollocks. Our books are at stake hear people!

The Government are bastards

Anyone want proof of the government scrapping arts and culture for the masses?

Sorry about the crappy frame, acidently shook my phone and set Hipstamatic on random configuration. This photo makes me very sad indeed. Now the National Conservation Centre is by no means the best museum in Liverpool, but I, like many others, have whiled away quite a few afternoons there. It's important that we have a plethora of insitutions promoting arts and culture in this country. This country made great by our thirst for knowledge and history.
But when the blue fuckers axe funding like this it results in one thing, one message, art and culture belongs to the rich, to the people who can afford to pay for it.

On a lighter but equaly annoying note, these are not the same as choc dips,



Lacking the will to work and sensory overload..

I am hearing too many things, one ear is 50’s rock and/or roll and the SFX of a baseball zombie mash up game, the other is film previews. The music I can dig, the rest maybe not…

And now the new receptionists are bothering us with silly queries.

Anyway back to blogging, been trying to write a bit of a review on XCOM considering the new game will be out for the 360 soon, and it looks awesome, but after trouble getting it too work on my laptop followed a brief session or two on D’s laptop I have come to a startlingly simple and short conclusion, It’s pissing HARD.

So instead I have prepared a few words on pocket monsters, these fluffy (scaly, bristly, pixely) little creatures have taken the world pretty much in storm. I mean sure their popularity has wavered slightly, there merely bestsellers now, while the initial games strode astride the world like gods.

Now, I have been a fan since Pokemon red and I have more or less owned at least one of every pairing since then but the issue I have with the later games is that they are trying a little too hard. The first three where simple things, you collect, you fight, you own the world. Now there are beauty competitions, wifi connectivity and flashy four way video conferencing. I want to fight monsters, not plan a corporate takeover. I think a big part of the lack of sheen is to do with the constant reinvention of the pokedex and its contents, do we really need over 150 extra beasts? Well yeah, I suppose Game Freak need to introduce new pokemon to keep the series alive and full of new life, but I miss the old ones, the ones I know and love. My old friends.

My team and I have problems, two of them I like. The rest I care not what becomes of them, they faint and I don’t care enough to even bother with a sigh of indifference. Can I complete the game with two pocket monsters? I doubt it, I’m rocking ground and fire the first water gym I encounter will be serving me up a nice tall glass of pixel death. But the other ilk are just so boring one of them is a pigeon, a fucking pigeon.

Right that’s it, I’m off to find a game boy pocket and my copy of Pokemon Yellow.