Stu Helm : Tumblr

Macboo

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:07:16 +0000

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M-Audioboo

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:51:51 +0000

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A really well thought out video about Flash on mobile devices,...

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 00:22:50 +0000

A really well thought out video about Flash on mobile devices, especially the iPad.

Optimise the Fireball!!

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:28:21 +0000

clientsfromhell:

Me: “Ok, we’ve pushed the site live.”

Client: “Why isn’t the site #1 on Google yet?”

Me: “We just pushed it live five minutes ago.”

Client: “Optimize the fireball.”

Me: “I’m sorry? Do you mean the firewall?”

Client: “I need more hits NOW, so I need you to optimize the fireball. I know what I’m talking about!”

Me: “We’ll get right on it.”

The new Saffire Pro40 audio interface by Focusrite

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 20:13:26 +0000

The new Saffire Pro40 audio interface by Focusrite

The iPad Flash Controversy : Wake Up & Smell the Cocoa

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:12:00 +0000

It’s just over 24 hours since Apple announced their new product, the iPad, their answer to the needs and wants that the netbook market are trying, and failing, to provide for.

I’m in love with the device already, and if I can find the funds I will be buying the 32gb WiFi model. I really believe Apple have hit the nail on the head here, it’s the right size for sitting on the sofa, or the train, or at the airport, or even in class and doing email, , browsing the web, playing games, connecting with social media, making notes, even giving presentations from the iPad version of iWork Keynote.

Now to the point that’s driving me crazy, a lot of commenters have made the observation that Apple has decided not to support Adobe’s Flash on the iPad, just as they haven’t with the iPhone or iPod Touch. These same commenters, and sadly a lot of the mainstream media too, are citing that Flash is an important part of the web experience, highlighting things such as Facebook games as an example of things the iPhone OS can’t do.

Want to know what I have to say about Flash? Really? I hate it, while I agree it was born out of a legitimate need to add interactivity and multimedia playback to the web, that was a long time ago in terms of how the Web has developed, now we have the emergence of HTML 5, AJAX, CSS and more web technologies than you can shake a fairly large stick at, I don’t see a place for Flash in the modern use of the Web, even less so on Apple’s iPhone, iPod Touch and certainly the iPad.

Apple really have given developers a rich SDK to enable amazingly powerful games and applications to be built for these devices without the need for Adobe’s resource intensive, security flawed and often gosh-darn-ugly platform to be involved.

So my comment to the commenters is simple, wake up and smell the Cocoa!

(Computer) Size Matters!

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:42:30 +0000

clientsfromhell:

Client: “Well, how big is your computer?”

Me: “My, uh… How big?”

Client: “Yeah. How big? Is it big enough to handle a big sign?”

Me: “Well it’s a newer MacBook Pro so, like I said, I shouldn’t have any trouble.”

Client: “No, like how many inches?”

Me: “Um, well… It has a 17-inch screen.”

Client: “Well that won’t work. We need something that’s thirty or forty inches wide. It’s a big sign.”

MacPresentBoo

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 13:05:28 +0000

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o2fail boo

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 18:02:06 +0000

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Liverpoolboo

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:03:59 +0000

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Bus Boo

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:01:28 +0000

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Should Apple be Defending AT&T?

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:06:49 +0000

Should Apple be Defending AT&T?:

Just jotted down my thoughts on the latest Apple iPhone ads in the US

Eyeboo

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:36:44 +0000

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No Other Will

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:34:05 +0000

Will: You can't put the word Will in the body of a post, or it'll pick it up and flag it as something I've done
Me: But what if we have another Will on the show?
Will: Don't!!

Hall Park MiFi Tests with Tim

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:07:33 +0000

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The Evolution of Watching Video

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:23:43 +0000

This is a repost from my previous blog.

As I write this post I’m sat in a comfy chair in our brand new family den, equipped with a 32” LG LCD TV (HD Ready of course) and my trusty XBox360, which is currently playing Babylon 5 season 3 on DVD, which I have to say looks stunning as it’s been upscaled by the 360.

It got me thinking, something I do every now and then, about how the act of watching video has evolved in the 25 years I’ve been around, as you can imagine I’ve got a fair amount of experience. So come with me (if you want to live!) on a journey through my personal evolution of video consumption.

The Early Days

I remember being about 2 or 3 years old, we had a fairly good TV, about 21” if I remember correctly, and a VHS video cassette recorder, which we rented from the local electronics shop (this was a very common practice, the players still cost a great deal of money to buy outright in the 80s) I remember my parents renting videos from the local store, classics like Mr Men, Thunderbirds and of course the Disney movies.

Looking back, the process was messy, having to rewind a tape before you could watch it again, having poor quality and being careful not to damage the tape, or accidentally urinate in the top loading player (yes, I did actually do that, much to my mother’s horror, hey when you gotta go you gotta go!). I do have fond memories of sitting with my parents watching some great shows and movies.

Not much changed with this setup, we purchased our own VCR, I suppose we’ve never really been early adopters in terms of new technology as a family, of course my purchased video collection did start to grow and we amassed a huge amount of recorded material from TV.

DVD - The Next Generation

I remember seeing DVD video for the first time at a family friend’s home, I was impressed with the video quality and the ease of navigation, not to mention the special features, being a geek I loved the idea of an audio commentary on my favourite sci-fi movies. We got a cheap player at home, and slowly began to build up a library, of course my PC of the time could play DVDs, but the 15” 4:3 monitor was not exactly the best for entertainment.

At this point there really wasn’t any online video, the odd clip here and there, but certainly no full length movies, and with broadband only just taking off, our first connection was 128kbps down, the chances of being able to download the latest movie or TV show in any sort of timely manner was out of the question.

As the years went by, my DVD library grew and as I finally got a good spec PC (I wasn’t yet a Mac convert at this time) I began to rip a few DVDs to my laptop to watch on the train.

The Digital Revolution

I’d had an MP3 player for quite some time, but never anything that could play video back, but that changed, I bought an Archos AV420, which had a huge, for the time, 20 Gb hard drive, it would play DivX video, so of course I began to encode shows I’d been able to rip, or even download (at this point we had a whopping 2mb internet connection) from various illicit sources (there weren’t really any legal sources at this point) and I thought that was fantastic, ok so it was a bulky device with a less than perfect UI.

Then, came the start of the Apple addiction, I decided to give the iPod a try, and was blown away by the UI and the ease of loading video content onto the device, of course using h.264 meant the quality was a huge improvement over what I’d experienced before. I was still collecting DVDs, I was still unaware of a legitimate source of downloading TV shows and movies (the iTunes Store didn’t have the content, yet), but I started ripping each new DVD into my collection so I could carry a good selection on my iPod.

I got my first Mac in October 2006, which got me hooked on iTunes as a way to download my music, I used the amazing Handbrake app to rip my DVDs and get these into iTunes to sync across to the iPod. Of course, once I got my iPhone and the iTunes store had TV & Movies available I found I was increasingly using that as my primary method of purchasing new video content, the concept of having a physical disc didn’t bother me at all, I wanted the video ready to go on my Mac and iPhone, which, at the end of the day, are the devices I tend to watch most of my video content on.

It’s gotten to the point now where I even use my Xbox360 to stream video from the Mac to our new TV, using the great app ‘Rivet’, and now with more and more online video streaming sites, such as the BBC iPlayer, SkyPlayer, Hulu etc and more and more video podcasts of high quality, such as Diggnation, Totally Rad Show and of course the amazing ScreenCastsOnline, I really feel the way forward is downloaded, yes I will be buying a PS3 to get a great quality Blu-Ray player, since as yet there’s no really great way of getting HD movies (the iTunes store only allows HD movies on the AppleTV.

Some of you may be asking, what about the special features you love so much? Well, that’s a very good question, certainly buying DVDs will give me the extras I love to watch, but recently I’ve not had the time to enjoy them, so it seemed digital downloads were a better way for me to get the content I wanted, it’s certainly a lot more convenient than either ordering from Play.com or Amazon or worse going to the local retailer to buy the DVD.

So that’s my journey, I’m loving where we are right now, being able to consume video content on something as small and simple to use and the iPhone and at the same time be able to get this on our nice new TV through streaming technology.

I’d love to know some of your experiences, that’s what the comments are for, let’s give the SquareSpace servers some fun keeping up shall we?

- Stu

The Tumblr Thing

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 18:32:25 +0100

Right, so here’s the deal, I’m going to be testing out Tumblr to see if it could be used as my main blog, I’m a huge SquareSpace fan but with having no job right now I can’t really afford to keep paying for the service.