Landing
Well, we're all back in sunny (or more likely soggy) England, and with September about to arrive and the year two-thirds through... well, I'm trying not to think about it!
The Korea trip went very well, and now as we prepare to launch ourselves into the final third of the year, I thought I'd let you have a few updates here at last:
- Whilst I haven't been posting here very frequently, I've got myself hooked on Twitter, the "microblogging" service. If you haven't encountered Twitter yet, imagine a cross between blogging and instant messaging, where posts are limited to 140 characters so there's a similarity to texting. I just don't have the time to write big blog posts most days, and Twitter forces you to use those 140 characters wisely, so I like the discipline and the convenience of the service. Even better, I can post "tweets" to Twitter from my mobile, and do so fairly regularly (though obviously less so during work hours), so my Twitter page is probably the best way to keep up with what I'm up to.
- Before I left for Korea, I managed to do some more work on the largely-dormant concept album project, and believe I might actually be able to complete it by the end of 2008 (as I announced in January I intended to do). The track listing might be a song or two short of what I planned, and in true "Sgt Pepper" style the "concept" might end up looser too, but we may well have something to show for this particular New Year's resolution!
- My music tastes seem to have taken a decisive shift lately, arcing back towards the British folk music I liked during the 1990s. It was initially triggered by some of the tracks on the children's song CD I produced this year, but the shift accelerated once I found some clips on YouTube of Steeleye Span, and in particular this one of the 1970-71-era lineup performing "The Lark In The Morning".
What brought me up short was seeing/hearing Tim Hart playing the main accompaniment of the song on what I soon realised was a solid electric mountain dulcimer. The instrument had a jangling tone like an electric 12-string guitar, but with a persistent "drone" effect caused by the open "accompaniment" strings—interestingly, Roger McGuinn sometimes plays guitar this way (melody on one string, open strings providing acompaniment). Anyway, to cut a long story short, I was smitten, and have started saving up for an electric dulcimer (as well as trying to find the actual instrument to go for, as they're quite hard to locate in the UK).
- Oh, and the Proporta USB Mobile Device Charger was worth its weight in gold on the Korea trip :-)
Anyway, best wishes for September!
Labels: dulcimer, instruments, koreatrip, music
Going to Korea with a few gadgets
I hope no-one will mind if I indulge myself in a non-musical post for once, to touch on one of my other 'loves': gadgets, and a couple of them in particular...
Whilst I have a pretty formidable collection of small electronic devices (or as Joy semi-jokingly refers to them, 'toys'—the cheek!), if I was pressed to name the one which I really don't think I could do without for long, it would have to be my Nokia N95. Yes, it's most well-known for being a mobile phone (and yes, I do happen to use it to talk to people over long distances from time to time :-) ), but for me, my N95 really lives up to Nokia's description of it as a "multimedia computer":
- I use it as a digital stills camera, as for most applications the N95 is pretty much the equal of our existing digicam, a Canon IXUS 500 (though the Canon is four years old now, so perhaps it's not the fairest comparison).
- The N95 can also 'geotag' photos (i.e. store the location data for where the photo was taken), using the phone's built-in GPS receiver, and upload the tagged image(s) directly over the Internet to a photo-sharing service like Flickr.
- I also use the N95 as a tiny camcorder, as its video-recording (640x480 at 30 frames per second) is not far off TV-quality—in fact, I'm experimenting with making DVD home movies with iMovie, using footage shot mostly, if not entirely, on the N95. From time to time, I also use the Qik service, which allows you to 'broadcast' live video straight from your compatible mobile phone (e.g. the N95) to the Internet (see some of my experiments with Qik).
- The N95 works brilliantly with Google Mail (via IMAP), and I have been known to post to this very blog directly from the phone.
That's just a taster of what I do with the N95, but all this functionality comes with a price, which is the N95's Achilles' heel: low battery life. If I use the N95's more advanced features (GPS, WiFi, 3G, camera, etc.)—and especially if I use them in combination—I can count on getting only a few hours' life out of the battery before it's beeping plaintively at me for a recharge. (I actually think of the N95 as almost like a tiny laptop that happens to make phone calls as well—it helps me not to get too annoyed at the battery life!)
To deal with this issue: if I'm near a power socket, or in the car, I can usually plug in with no trouble. But what if we're out somewhere, where this is not an option—for instance, when we visited the Dano Korea Summer festival in Trafalgar Square last month, and spent the afternoon away from handy power sources when there was lots of photoing and videoing to do?
Well, in the event, we just about got by (you can see the video we made at the Festival at our blip.tv page), but it would've been nice to have a backup power supply on hand to squeeze some more life out of the N95. As we're intending to visit Korea next month—where we'll not only be out and about a lot, away from power outlets, but the sockets are a different type from the UK—it's a question which raised itself ever more loudly, to the point where for Father's Day, I indulged in what I hope is going to be a practical solution to the power problem.
The Proporta USB Mobile Device Charger is a small white box (or a small two-tone brown one, if you get the Ted Baker-branded one, which Proporta sent me as they were out of stock of the white ones), about the size of an iPod, with a single button and a green LED on the front. It houses a 3400mAh lithium-ion rechargeable battery, which you can charge up via a USB connection (adapters for USB-12v car 'cigarette lighter' and USB-mains are available, and depending on the 'package', may be included with the Proporta charger). From there, you can connect the Proporta to your mobile device, and recharge it wherever you happen to be at the time.
I received my Mobile Device Charger a few weeks ago, and am pleased to report it does what it says on the tin, and does it very well. I am hoping as a result that my N95 will become even more useful than it already has been, not least because the battery won't give out after three hours of intensive photoing, videoing, GPSing and (hopefully) WiFi-ing...
Ironically, when we go to Korea, I'm likely to be using the device as almost everything else apart from as a phone. Whilst my mobile network in the UK (T-Mobile) has a roaming agreement with a partner network over there (SK Telecom), the pricing for most network operations is comparable with most European countries—that is, prohibitive (£7.50 per Mb of data? hope I find some WiFi hotspots over there)—so about the only mobile phone service which doesn't break the bank is, oddly enough, picture-messaging. In other words, my N95 is likely to be set to 'offline' mode for a fortnight, while it turns into a camera / camcorder / navigator / PDA for the duration.
I also have some things in mind to try when we go to Korea, including an experiment to try out a "mashup" between Flickr and Google Maps, so you'll be able to view geotagged photos I take in Korea, and where they were taken, as I upload them. If I can get everything to work out, I also intend to try editing some video 'shorts' on the N95, and upload them to our blip.tv account during our visit, with some longer movies to come when I arrive home and get on the Mac. Watch this space for further details nearer the time.)
It's raining on and off outside. Can I go there this week instead...?
Labels: gadgets, koreatrip, life
