The Blog of G

Ok, I gotta get this off my chest. The Internet has been known as “the Cloud” for almost as long as I’ve known it as the Internet. It’s not some new cool buzzword, it’s been around for ever. Seriously, can you ever remember seeing a network diagram that referenced the internet as anything other than a cloud?

No?

Grand then, we’re all agreed it’s not some magical way to save money by throwing more money at it. Like all these things it takes a bit of thought, planning and most importantly research. If you’re going to invest money on cloud anything, do yourself and everyone else a favour and invest some time and energy in educating yourself in the con’s as well as the pro’s first.

And for god sake, don’t base your decision on what the guy selling it to you is telling you, get independent advice from experts in the field (yes, people with 10K+ hours of experience, that’s at least 5 years of full-time working in the field) that you know and trust. Otherwise, give me a shout, I have these great “Cloud Gates” you might be interested in investing in

We all know how important it is to keep our passwords private and to make sure that they are strong passwords consisting of different character types so that hackers can’t crack them and gain access to our online lives.

But have you ever really thought about what makes a password strong? well this article is a great explanation of how hackers can attack a website and looks into great detail on what makes for the most secure passwords.

It’s changed how I think about password security and has made my passwords easier for me to remember while still being secure… Well, all the ones I’ve updated so far anyways

So a while back Elly and I were planning a holiday. Once we had decided on destination and timing and some activities etc, Elly’s thoughts turn to packing (so she can decide how many bags we’re going to need to check in) Part of this process included, what electronics would we be bringing.

Of course our mobile phones would be required so chargers and socket adapters would be required as well, Elly’s Kindle cause it’s so much easier than carrying the amount of books she will read in a week and of course my netbook so we can connect to the free wi-fi in our hotels and not have to pay for an internet café, plus it would mean we can watch some of our TV shows while relaxing before or after a hard days touristing.

This of course lead to the usual discussion over how pathetic the speakers are on the netbook. It’s not so much that their bad speakers, more that they are pathetically quiet. So, I said I’d have a look for some sort of portable speakers to help.

After a bit of digging about online, reading some reviews and so on I decided to grab one of the XMI X-mini II Mini Speakers from Amazon.

Included with the speaker is the USB charging cable and a small pouch to carry both the speaker and cable in, which is a nice touch. The speaker itself has a short cable, about 3 inches, attached which plugs into any headphone socket and wraps away into the bottom of the speaker for storage.

The next thing that I noticed is that the unit shipped fully charged, another nice touch. Immediately it was connected to my mobile phone and tested, the sound was pretty good and the volume level was more than respectable if a little tinny sounding.

Just as I was starting to feel a teeny bit disappointed with it I remembered that the speaker had a neat trick, a quick twist of the base and the bellows style middle of the speaker was expanded. this really surprised me with how much it improved both the over all sound quality and increased the volume.

Now let’s be clear about this the sound quality is never gonna match a decent Hi-Fi, for a start, this is a mono speaker, add to that it’s tiny (see photo’s) and anyone with even the most basic knowledge of sound will know that. Here’s the trick though, you can’t stick a Hi-Fi in you pocket, this you can and the sound is definitely better than any laptop, mobile phone or mp3 player speaker that I’ve heard.

The battery life is surprisingly good, I get about 2 days out of it between charges. I used it constantly while studying for my recent exams just to give it a decent test you understand And charging couldn’t be easier, just connect it to a USB port and it will charge in about 3-4 hours, I’ve even charged it from the USB ports on my X-Box 360 while it was off.

There’s also a neat little trick it can do, if you have more than one you can daisy chain them together to give more volume although if volume is what you are after this is not the best solution.

Now think about the cost, we paid £20.00 sterling for ours. Since then Amazon have reduced the price again, it is superb value. My biggest concern about it is that those annoying teenagers that play music from their phones on the bus will get hold of these and become even more annoying. As a small device to make using your laptop in a hotel or even a small presentation a little less painful I couldn’t recommend this mini speaker more.

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, wait no that’s not right, it was about 20 years ago in pre-Celtic tiger Dublin. Hmm thinking about it maybe I was right to start with. Anyway I digress, back to the story I want to tell you all.

I was young, and with all the things that come from being a teenager who has just finished school and having a dream in my mind that I just knew was mine for the taking I set about a career as a musician, composer, arranger, songwriter and really just all round rock god The next few years were to hold stories of success and failure, of immense joy and deep heartfelt anguish. All the usual stuff a teenager goes through and genuinely believes is unique to them.

I loved to play, write and arrange music, I enjoyed it immensely and I believed I was really great at it, just the world hadn’t coped on to my genius, eventually I would cop on.

When I did, I ended up in a job I didn’t really want for a while and slowly I drifted away from all my music interests. First I stopped writing and arranging and eventually I stopped playing. I’m really not sure why, I guess I just got caught up in life and decided I had less and less time for it which I’m now discovering was really stupid.

I’m saying this now as I’ve recently started playing again, bizarrely as a result of studying for exams. At some point about two weeks before my exams were due to start, when I was studying, I started to get distracted by thoughts of playing as I got tired from studying. After a day or two of this I gave in dug out my horn and had a blow for about half an hour and then returned to study refreshed like I’d just started.

Even after that first day I suspected that there was something more up with my playing than just a lack of practice and I’ve discovered that my beautiful twenty year old horn is in need of a major overhaul. In the mean time It’s still playable, just not with any other instruments as the tuning is a little wild in places.

It still allows me to practice my scales, arpeggios, long tones and all the other boring stuff that all instrumentalist must practice to play the tunes that everyone loves. Unfortunately this is only a small part of playing and the most fun part, playing tunes as part of an ensemble, be it a real or virtual, is not possible with my baby, until I can afford the overhaul.

Hopefully it won’t take too long for me to save the funds to get the work done. Thankfully, I have a solution that will keep the itch scratched in the meantime. A few years back, while considerably flusher than I am now, I invested in an EWI, that’s an Electronic Wind Instrument.

At the time I bought it I practised and played it a fair amount but thanks to a less than simple manual and some difficulty setting it up and familiarising myself with it that didn’t really last long. However in the meantime a number of people have come along and published a number of simple how-to’s on you tube, so I now have it set up to my liking and am getting my playing back in shape reasonably rapidly. Who knows what may come of this.

In the meantime, if you’re an EWI player why not leave a comment below about what style and music you like to play and if you are struggling with an EWI take a look at Saxman999′s channel over on youtube or leave a comment below and maybe I’ll be able to help.

Back in the eighties, when I was growing up, there were lots of TV documentaries which were basically futurists telling us all about how the world could be, my favourite sub-genre was ‘the home of the future’ type shows and there were lots of them. Oh sure, I was a fanatical ‘Tomorrows World‘ fan as well, but I was and still am a bit of a dreamer, which I guess is why I was drawn to these types of TV.

Fast forward twenty years and I now live in a home where I’m connected to the ‘information super-highway‘ in every room, my home entertainment system allows me to watch the TV I want to watch, whenever I want to watch it and even allows me to pause it (when the doorbell/phone ring) or rewind when I miss a bit and we have our own house-bot.

All these thing’s were simply thoughts and idea’s to that 80′s kid (vinyl and cassette were the norm) but now they’re a reality and nowhere near as expensive or difficult to put together as you might think. You may even be surprised to find that a lot of this technology is already in your home and just needs to be enabled.

I’m going to put together a few posts about the technology that Elly and myself use on a daily basis and how it impacts our lives, both the positive and negative aspects, as well as some futurism of my own.

So stay tuned for updates and in the meantime why not leave a comment letting me know what crazy idea’s from your own childhood/teenage years have made it (or not) into mainstream technology and the kind of things that you would like to see make it in the next few years.