Adam LOLsawaf

Just because I haven't really put anything to do with Adam on this blog :D

Beaker's Ballad

Masterpiece

Ukrainian Sand Artist Extraordinaire!

Kesniya Simonova is a very talented Ukrainian woman. She is a sand animator, ie she creates pictures and animations using sand as her primary material.

In 2009, she won the Ukrainian equivalent of "Britain's Got Talent" with her fantastic animation of Ukraine during The Great Patriotic War.

It's a fantastic, moving, emotional, and very artistic vision of the horrors of war. Enjoy the video below.

PS - it's 8 minutes, but please watch it all, especially those of you who are Metallica fans ;)

Browser Pong

Before you browse away, STOP!

This isn't about a game of pong within your browser. How boring would that be? heck, we can play Quake 3 within our browsers these days!

Nope. This is about a game of pong that is played WITH your browser. I could try to describe it more, but would probably fail.

So, just play it yourself instead ;)

That's trouble of some kind George?

Home footage of the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster has been found.

Retired optometrist Jack Moss decided to test out his new betamax camcorder by filming the Challenger launch from his front garden, little did he know that he was about to film the world's worst space disaster.

Interestingly, he put the film in his basement and forgot all about it. The tape surfaced when Moss told a friend that he had the disaster on tape somewhere, and that he could have the film when he died.

It is believed to be the only amateur video of the explosion known to exist. Remember, this was 1986, there were no camera phones and such, and I would bet that Moss' camcorder actually had a big battery he had to carry on his shoulder.

Finding a betamax player these days was quite a struggle, but nevertheless, the video has been uploaded to youtube for all to see.

Once you see it.... you can't unsee it!

True, true..

(courtesy of Game Rave)

FAIL!

fast forward to one minute and pay attention to the guy in the background (on the left) :P

Now that we've met each other

I've had some time now to think about Apple's iPad.

Initially, like almost everyone else, I thought "meh". It's just a big iPhone. The thought came to me as I was using my actual iPhone to check twitter. It was then that it dawned upon me:

I use my iPhone as an "iPad" WAY MORE than as a phone, especially at home. Out and about, it's my phone/calender/mobile web device and it's a very convenient and great device.

At home, on the other hand, I use it a lot as a quick and convenient way to quickly check a web page, play a quick game of something, check my emails, etc etc etc.

So the epiphany came to me - the iPad is a bigger, more convenient iPhone; if, and ONLY if, you're a person who uses your iPhone at home for anything else other than a phone.

A good example is in bed. We all like to do some bedtime "reading", by that I mean check our emails one last time (for the 1000th time in the day) and check our favourite social network, and perhaps our favourite forum just in case we've missed out on the next big thing.

I typically use the iPhone for that, mainly for convenience.

There are more scenarios I can think of which are too many to list here, but all of which will be filled quite nicely with the iPad.

There is still, of course, the matter of what the devs are gonna do with the device. The much smaller iPhone sparked some amazing creativity in otherwise unknown devs, and practically recreated the bedroom coding scene of the 80s. I believe the iPad will just go to extend this - better games, better apps with bigger, clearer displays and controls.

And the print media will lap this up - the NY Times is leading the pack with it's app, formatting the newspaper to fit the device nicely, complete with embedded videos, links etc. Now imagine your favourite gaming magazine (or even blog/website) formatted to fit the screen (and controls) nicely, with embedded links to demos, trailers, etc. I personally can't wait for the digital version of the printed media, things like GamesTM, Edge, or Wired - in a brilliant package. The Guardian (UK newspaper) already has a brilliant iPhone app that displays its articles formatted to the iPhone's native display.

The book store is the biggest concern for me. It's not announced for the UK yet, but more importantly, how practical is it to read a book on a backlit screen? Screen glare can cause nasty eye-strain, especially when trying to read a novel for an hour or two. As an owner of a "traditional" ebook reader (iRex iLiad), I'm not concerned about the comfort of holding the device (it's a lot easier than holding a standard hardback), but staring at the screen reading words might not be. We'll see.

I know this post might annoy a lot of people (especially those that visit here via twitter), but this is my view of the topic, and after thinking about it a while and reading the various reactions (mostly negative), I've made my informed decision: I will buy an iPad.

And I think, like the Nintendo DS before it (which generated the same negativity but we all know what happened next), the iPad won't be as big but will change the way we interact with our digital world.

Remember you heard this here first - the first person to integrate the iPad in to the health system (results, xray images, etc) will be a very rich man indeed.