Steve Jobs 1955-2011

It was with some sadness that I checked my iPod Touch early this morning to see the breaking news about the death of Steve Jobs. I had never met the man himself, but his attention to detail that people have been talking about today in various tributes certainly came across.

If you have any iOS device, just take a look at the screen detail under a magnifier and you will see what I mean, the detail and the colour gradients are very delicately done, yet most people will not notice them at normal viewing distances.

The design of the packaging of Apple products goes well beyond other items I’ve ever bought in the last 10 years, they are an art form in themselves, you don’t want to dispose of the cardboard box because it’s so nicely designed.

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Music Makes My World Go Around

My love of modern pop music dates back to my childhood. I have a very vague recollection of going to see the film ‘Hard Day’s Night’ at the cinema, which would have been about 1964, I was only 5 then hence why I say vague. I was born ‘across the water’ in Bebington, which is the other side of the River Mersey from Liverpool, where the Beatles thing all sort of exploded during my childhood, although I don’t remember much about them apart from their appearances on TV.

The first album I can recall buying was by Simon and Garfunkel, although I’m not sure why I bought it, may be it was to impress a girl I knew at the time!  Anyway my musical interest sort of laid dormant for a couple of years or so. Then a friend of mine introduced me to the guitar, he was in a band and I went along to see them play a few times. I bought my own guitar and tried to learn how to play it, not very well I may add.

One of the first guitar pieces my friend Peter tried to teach me was the lead guitar from a Steely Dan track off of their album ‘Can’t Buy a Thrill’ called ‘Reelin’ in the Years’ which I feel I’m doing now! I literally tied up my fingers in knots learning that one track. I can just about remember how to play some of it still, but not at the speed required!

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I have been blogging around the world!

As well as my normal activities on Philofaxy, I’ve been taking part in the Philofaxy All Stars Tour, which is about a team of blogging doing guest posts on a variety of blogs, connected to readers of Philofaxy. The tour is going very well. Here are some of my contributions:

 

Choosing a digital camera

Choosing a camera these days is quite a difficult task, not because your choice is restricted, but because the number of models for sale is very extensive, terms of price and quality. These days even mobile phones have cameras of quite reasonable specification compared to the first digital consumer cameras of say 10-12 years ago. Over the years specifications have improved and the prices have come down.

When choosing a camera we will all have a price band in mind, what ever that price band is there will be quite a range of cameras to choose from.

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Improving your Skype audio

I use Skype a lot these days for keeping in touch with family and friends around the world. Computer to Computer calls are free so it makes a lot of sense to use it

However are you getting the best from your Skype set-up?

Because of the small delays in transmission across the internet it is possible that you might get an ‘echo’ coming back to you, which can be quite distracting.

Whilst Skype works with nearly all computer set ups. I don’t recommend using the built in microphone and speakers on your laptop.  You can improve the performance of your set-up by just plugging in some earphones/headphones in to the speaker out socket (normally the green socket) on your laptop or computer. This will isolate the incoming audio from your outgoing audio via the microphone.

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