richard mackney |
my photoblog and scrapbook |
Here are a couple of pics of the iPhone in car holder that I picked up from Amazon for £6.49 ... http://bit.ly/diM5Uz
The ‘sucky’ bit, seems to ‘suck’ just fine and I quite like the fact that it can be rotated portrait or landscape without adjusting the main arm. By resting part of the arm on the dash, it reduces the vibration of the screen.
I had a surprise delivery the other day from http://nerdoh.co.uk who design and produce movie inspired T-Shirts. What I really love about their designs is that they are not blatantly ripping off movie logo’s but creating links to things within the movies that, at first glance you would not relate to a movie. In fact, to get some of them, you really need to be a movie geek!
Nerdoh! Bring you a new range of movie t-shirts that are made to a superior premium quality, screenprinted to exacting standards (none of this transfer rubbish that will wash off after a day), with unique, subtle designs from cult films.
Nerdoh creeps into the fictional realms of movie corporations, places and subtle references only the avid fan will know.
Do YOU recognise these?
Why not visit http://nerdoh.co.uk, follow them on twitter @nerdoh or become a fan on Facebook
Let me know if you can guess the movies from the T-Shirts pics above ...
As mentioned in the video above, this is an AA or AAA battery charger from Energizer. It comes with an AC adaptor but also a solar panel to recharge your batteries. The pack also includes 2 x 2000mAh rechargeable Energizer batteries and feels quite solid with a rubberised finish. It claims to be weather resistant, so the solar panel can be left outside on a table unlike many of the cheaper panels. It has built in smart charging technology to avoid battery damage and also has a built in LED torch.
I was quite impressed with this solar charger today, I had two flat AA batteries and left it on the windowsill from about 9am until 4pm and in those seven hours the charge status on the device now reports full. I need to do a full test with the batteries to check they do have a full charge, but I don't see why this would be reporting wrong. It was quite a bright day today (with all the snow) and the unit was not in direct sun for all of those seven hours.
Important note: the USB out socket did not charge my iPhone, however, once the batteries are charged I will use my Energizer AA battery emergency iPhone charger or my iGo PowerXtender for iPhone
If you are thinking of getting one of these solar chargers, make sure you have a really good hunt around. I have seen some ridiculous prices listed for these devices (up to £70!) but you should be able to pick one up in Maplin for £34 with free delivery (if you are quick).
Product Features (from their website)
Charge times:
| Mode | 900mA | 1300mA | 2000mA | 2450mA |
| AC mains | 3 | 5 | 8 | 10 |
| Solar | 9 | 14 | 21 | 26 |
Hasbro Star Wars Clone Wars Wave 1 Action Figure: Obi-Wan Kenobi
Hasbro 2009 Star Wars Legacy Collection Carded Darth Maul
We had a bit of fun over Christmas, my son is now the age where he can appreciate Star Wars ... and who am I to stop his fun :)
This video features:
This year I've done the timelapse on the iPhone using an app called TimeLapse (currently £1.19) taking a pic every 5 mins. Quality isn't as good as the video last year, but it was much faster and easer to produce.
I attempted to use ReelDirector on the iPhone (currently £2.99 on special offer) to pull all the images together, but it seems to do a pan and zoom effect to each picture rather than letting you just flick to the next shot. This is a shame because the shooting, editing, uploading and writing of this post could of been done so easily on just the iPhone alone.
I dropped all the shots onto the desktop and dragged them into Adobe Premier Elements to create the following video (music is added with YouTube's AudioSwap).
Last years Christmas Tree TimeLapse video is in HD resolution as I used my SLR camera on a tripod with a slow shutter to get the blur.
Oh, yes, it's the same tree and decorations ... recycle, recycle, recycle!
Update:
I've just tested iTimeLapse Pro iPhone app (£1.79) It even renders the video & music! here is my sample: http://j.mp/5jCXZN
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So here we are with the final blog post for this round of #Beerswap. It's been an interesting journey, carefully selecting and packing my own local beers and struggling with the postal service to retrieve the beers sent to me. I think if I were to be involved again, I would like to suggest areas of the UK in which I would like to receive beer - as after a few rounds I would end up with beers from the same region if it was left mainly to a random draw.
It has been a great social media experience too, with many new #beerswap participants now fully fixed as part of my daily twitter diet. With each event or activity I get involved with on twitter, I learn more and more first hand from the experience of those people that enjoy tweeting about their passion.
So, back to the beers ... I am very happy with the beers I received. Interestingly, two were dark and two were pale - was this by design? I have included a couple of notes below for each beer - without going into too much detail as that's not really my bag :) ...
The Beers
Hibernator 5.0% / Old Bear Brewery / Keighley, West Yorkshire / Website
Ale with attitude, strong on flavour as well in alcohol Dark ruby red in colour with a tan head, not for the faint hearted!
It poured a beautiful dark ruby colour with a great creamy head, some spice, fruit and chocolate as you would expect. It was thick and heavy and seemed that it had more alcohol content than 5%. This is the type of beer I like :)
Cascade Pale Ale 4.8% / Saltaire Brewery / Shipley, West Yorkshire / Website
American style pale ale with the floral aromas and strong bitterness of Cascade and Centennial hops.
Cascade is a type of hop - It tasted floral and bitter. This beer is an American style Pale Ale (APA) and was a light hazy orange in colour. It had a crisp and bitter dry finish.
Morocco Ale 5.5% / Daleside Brewery / Harrogate, Yorkshire / Website
This is a very dark, rich and mysterious ale brewed to an ancient recipe dating back to Elizabethan times
This was my personal favourite of the four. Strong, dark with a load of depth and a solid texture. All the usual suspects are present, nutty, spice, chocolate,coffee with a bite of ginger.
Leeds Pale 4.0% / Leeds Brewery / Website
An easy drinking pale ale. Light and ho ppy with delicate floral notes and a well balanced finish.
Full of lovely bitterness and dangerously drinkable! I was actually really pleasantly surprised at how bitter this Pale Ale was. Grassy, hoppy with a hint of fruit.
I'd just like to finish by thanking @steelrazor for the beers and also everyone else who has been involved with #beerswap. It's been a pleasure to hear everyone's thoughts. Thanks also to Mark Dredge and Andy Mogg who have done a great job in arranging it all.
If you are interested in reading all of the blog posts about #beerswap, I have collected them all into one Posterous for your pleasure :)
Related blog posts from richard.mackney.com:
I looked at the iGo PowerXtender in August and thought it was quite a nice emergency power product for the iPhone - it was £14.99. But I recently found this Energizer product in Toys R Us for only £2.99 which included batteries!
I'm not sure if this was an end of line product, but it's really handy to have in the bottom of your bag when you need a boost of power. You can also carry rechargeable AA batteries just in case you need even more power or if you are caught short ... buy some batteries in any local newsagents.
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Since I took part in Twitter Taste Live (Wine) and recently the ongoing #Beerswap I’ve learnt much more about the people, cultures and companies involved in blogging about food and drink. I use the iPhone a lot and always search for apps that are related to the subjects that I am currently interested in or learning about; photography, video, Social Media, Formula One, Brewing, Beer or Wine tasting etc. So currently I’ve been looking at apps that allow you to make tasting notes on the move and also search a database of existing products.
I’m currently looking at an iPhone app called Wine Notes that allows you to rate and review wines using a nicely designed and well thought out user interface. These guys have really thought about what is required when tasting and have created an app that requires minimal typing and more tapping of icons to select different options such as flavours. Your rating could easily be performed in a restaurant or bar with minimal fuss and without having to carry a pen and pad. It even has twitter integration to allow a brief note to be sent out live and the Wine Note twitter account seems to re-tweet your review.
One thing missing from this app is the option to email the note. This is actually present in other tasting apps I have tested and this gives the option of sending the rating and the photo to any email address. Obviously, if you were to enter your Posterous email address you would have an instant way of sharing your full note live (and sent to twitter) and you could use Posterous to create a full tasting review blog.
I would really like to see something like this for Beer, I’ve already paid for a few Beer tasting apps to test, but I don’t think they achieve what Wine Notes has achieved for FREE!
If you know of any great Beer related iPhone apps, please let me know in the comments below ...
Slight change of format tonight ... a bit of a vlog. Don’t worry it’s not going to happen very often, at the moment I prefer photo’s, text and a bit of video when it’s required to capture something not involving me. It was quite nice however, to set up the iPhone 3GS on a tripod, hit record, talk, hit stop and send to YouTube direct from the phone without much fuss.
Anyway, onto the subject ... Innis and Gunn IPA and The Perfect Pour. Well as you can see, I’m not sure it was anywhere near perfect. I did however follow their instructions and was slightly worried about the vigour or the pour, usually we are always taught to tilt the glass ... at least I was when I worked behind the bar in Progress at the Warehouse in ’91 (although to be fair, most clubbers wanted a can of Red Stripe).
This post follows on from a couple of recent others ... Innis and Gunn Gift Box and Rum Cask and I’m quite impressed with this IPA, it certainly has its own unique character and if it was available on it’s own, I would stock up on it.
I don’t confess to know loads about beer (yet), I’ll just tell you what I think and may get the terminology or history wrong, however, please feel free to correct me in any comments below. I won’t actually type what I thought about the IPA, you will have to watch the video for that. One day, Google will translate the audio into text for us so that it is searchable, but until then, just watch it.
How this was made:
Video recorded and uploaded raw to YouTube using PixelPipe, YouTube URL grabbed and inserted into an email with an iPhone photo already attached and all sent to Posterous using nothing but the Phone.
Here is a video created by BEERreviews.co.uk and the inspiration for my Perfect Pour ...
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· Rum Cask
Since 1996 I’ve made a living from creative internet technologies, it’s my job to be connected and my goal to stay ahead of the curve ... About Me
