Too long to tweet, too short to novelise

The Joy of Draw Something

Lordy, it’s been a while since I last wrote anything here. In my defence there’s been a lot going on in my life*, all of which I’ve talked to death about elsewhere, so I’m going to ignore it all and instead write about Draw Something.

Me and art aren’t natural friends. I was considering taking GCSE Art until my teacher of the time made it clear this would be a massive mistake in no uncertain terms. And yet, there’s something about the finger-painting clarity of Draw Something that really appeals.

For those that don’t know, Draw Something is basically co-operative Pictionary for mobile phones and tablets. Loads of folks have tried this before, but Draw Something (wearing my game production hat) does pretty much everything right: It’s simple, easy to pick up, rewards long term play with extras and is naturally, actually viral. The Facebook integration isn’t intrusive** and allows you to quickly find friends already playing, and challenge them. Best of all, it lets you watch the other player guessing your drawing in real time, which is a real pleasure and brings some of the atmosphere of board games to the cold, less personal world of mobile phone apps.

I could go on, but what good would talking about it be without a few examples of mine, and my friends, work to date? Here’s some of my favourites. I should add that having recently bought an iPad, it’s far easier to look like an artistic genius on the 9.7” screen:

I was pretty pleased with my output, until I let Philippa have a go on the big screen tablet version and, well, she clearly puts me to shame:

And finally, it’s worth always remembering that drawing for friends will always bring out your least mature side:

Anyone reading this who wants to play with me based on this gallery that Tony Hart would most likely not stick on his fridge, I think my username in the game is alanpmartin.

* Including, as a follow up to my last post, an offer accepted on a house. It is going at a snails pace, but assuming it all goes well, I’ll soon be moving to a two bedroom house in Tooting, South West London.

** This is less true now than when I started writing this post. Since then, and the developer’s $200m buyout by Farmville clevercloggs Zynga, they’ve patched it to ensure it doesn’t work unless you give the app permission to read your data and post to your wall as you, because everyone loves that sort of thing. Or maybe that’s partly why its Daily Active Users have fallen off a cliff…

Adventures in London Housing by Someone Entirely Unsuitable

Hello readers. Oh, surprised to see me? Well you see it’s the strangest thing: since my last post where I (probably) promised to update more often… right, I really meant to, but..

Actually, I do have a decent excuse. Y’see, in May last year, roughly at the time that I was trying to force a table up a flight of stairs that was absolutely not designed to have a table forced up it, I decided that this would be the last time I’d rent a flat in London. 

I should have done this years ago, but for some reason I confused myself with someone who lives a nomad existence where I may have to vacate London at any second. Entering my 5th year in the capital, that seems unlikely.

So, since late last year, I’ve been studying Rightmove and generally preparing for the whole buisiness this year. That’s involved:

1) Googling the phrase “how to buy a house”

2) Reading the results and taking in as much as I can

3) Getting terrified/bored and going to look at something else more appealing (get your mind out of the gutter, I was talking about Zooborns)

I repeated this for a while, taking in more each day. This is pretty much exactly the same way they treat arachnophobes, with gradual exposure to the feared object. Only of course, mine’s far more scary - how many spiders do you know that require a full structural survey? They either have 8 legs and stand, or have less than 8 legs and wobble.

The next step was exploring Rightmove for houses and flats that matched my budget, and that’s when the next realisation hit. The areas I’ve lived in before are almost completely out.  The whole ‘up to £250,000’ bracket brings up a handful of small houses in okay areas, and a group of lovely looking ones in areas that Estate Agents would try to avoid describing as “a bit stabby.” On this basis, Walthamstow, Stratford and Brixton have gradually been knocked out like no-hoper X Factor contestants.

The announcement that the Stamp Duty Holiday for first time buyers would expire on 26th March 2012 made me do some quick sums on my calculator, and figure out that the approximate amount saved on Stamp Duty would cover my rent for the 2 months period between the holiday ending and my break clause commencing. So I sped into life, seeing 5 houses last weekend:

- One in Surrey Quays (tiny, way over my budget and with friendly but ever so slightly racist elderly owners)

- Three in Colliers Wood (all fairly decent)

- One in Morden (lovely, but definitely still in Morden)

Then I looked at my tenancy agreement again, and realised I can’t activate my break clause until May, so that’s that. I’ll look again in April, then. 

Back to coming up with inplausible excuses over why this blog hasn’t been updated. Illness? Business? New found super powers?

Review of Samsung Galaxy S2

This is something I wrote for something that came to nothing. I’m putting it up here to add it to my portfolio of writing wonderment…

The Good:

+ Incredibly thin and stylish design

+ Fast and lag free

+ Stunning 4.3” screen

+ Swype integration makes typing super quick

The Bad:

- Samsung’s UI isn’t for everyone

- Not as user friendly as iOS

There’s no denying the influence of Apple upon the Samsung Galaxy S2. Whether it’s too influential is a matter for Samsung and Apple’s lawyers to continue to debate, but to dismiss the S2 as a wannabe iPhone is to do it a serious disservice.

Weighing in at just 116 grams, and with a thickness of just 8.49mm (or 9.91 at its thickest point), the phone certainly turns heads. When you flip it over to expose the 4.3” screen, those heads will probably do another full 360 degree turn too, because the AMOLED Plus screen is clear and vibrant, even in bright sunshine.

There’s no way of getting away from it: the Galaxy S2 is one seriously stylish looking bit of tech.

Look and feel

Imagine a Samsung engineer took a a rolling pin to the iPhone 4, then took a cheese-slicer to the resultant slightly fatter iPhone. If you tried this at home, other than a voided warranty, you’d theoretically have something resembling the Samsung Galaxy S2.

The front of the handset is dominated by the giant 4.3” screen, and beneath it is a single square home button. The other physical face buttons of earlier Android handsets are no longer present, though they are there in touch form. Pressing lightly either side of the home button illuminates the ‘back’ and ‘menu’ symbols, ready for use. Other than that, there’s a front facing two megapixel camera for video chat, and an embossed silver Samsung logo.

Turning the phone over reveals a flat plastic battery cover and the phone’s main eight megapixel camera. The flimsy plastic battery cover is the only blot on the S2’s otherwise flawless aesthetics, but it’s a small concession to the incredible size that makes the phone truly eye catching.

Under the bonnet

The phone packs some serious punch too, with a 1.2Ghz dual core processor and 1GB RAM, it leaves almost all smartphones – including the iPhone 4 – in its dust. Apps open quickly, graphically intensive games run flawlessly and switching between screens is lag free.

Speaking of rival handsets, Samsung follows the lead of HTC and tries to cover up the less user friendly aspects of Android with its TouchWiz UI. In truth, it’s not as appealing or intuitive as HTC’s Sense UI, and it’s streets behind that of iOS, which it looks like it’s trying to emulate.

Apps and bundled software

By default, the homescreen is a series of icons, with some limited widgets. These go from left to right on seven screens, with the main phone functions sitting in an iOS style permanent dock. The dock cannot be dramatically changed without rooting the phone, and more bafflingly such simple functions as reordering the applications menu alphabetically has to be done manually, which will drive obsessively neat users mad.

Likewise, Samsung’s reasonably impressive voice input software Vlingo also can’t be disabled without rooting. The software is designed to dictate notes and perform tasks through verbal instruction, for when you’re driving or just too lazy to use your fingers. Here Android’s advantages come into play as it’s integrated throughout the phone, unlike on iOS where as a third party app, it would be locked out of most core functions. The trouble is that Vlingo is activated by double tapping the home button, something that’s remarkably easy to do by mistake. On UK firmware, there’s no option to turn this off, and it’s all too easy to activate the piercing robotic voice that awaits your instruction.

More effective is Swype, which integrates with the whole Android system. This is a keyboard that predicts words by the lines you draw over the keyboard, allowing for lightning fast typing. It has to learn words like any other text program, but with a little use it’s hard to go back to the stock Android keyboard, without exclaiming a string of swear words that even the most efficient voice recognition software would struggle to decode.

Not all of the bundled software is welcome. There’s a lot of Samsung endorsed bloatware here including music, ebook and gaming hubs. To their credit, Samsung don’t attempt to block the official Google Marketplace, and the better apps that users will inevitably gravitate towards.

Multimedia

As you might expect from the praise for the screen, watching video and browsing websites on the S2 is an absolute pleasure. The quality of the image is maintained over a wide viewing angle too, ensuring you don’t need to be looking at the screen straight on to benefit from the image quality.

The built-in eight megapixel camera is another triumph for the handset, producing impressively detailed and colourful pictures. The software is easy to use, packed with options and with a simple interface to share any noteworthy photography on the fly.

You can also record video in 1080p, which is as crisp and smooth as you’d expect given the quality on display elsewhere. Serious film makers and photographers inevitably won’t be using it as a replacement camera, but it’s above the standard smartphone quality.

Phone functions and battery life

Then of course, there are its qualities as a phone. We’re pleased to report that the call quality of the S2 is fine, with conversations clear, even in windy and noisy environments.  

Perhaps most pleasingly of all is how well the battery holds up for a light device with serious power, and such a large screen. While it’s not going to break the ‘nightly charge’ cycle of modern smartphones, we were initially concerned it would require a charger in your pocket. Even with live screensavers, we found we’d have between 50% and 20% charge remaining by nightfall.

Conclusions

While it comes at a premium price, there’s no doubt the Samsung Galaxy S2 is a premium product. Very few Android handsets come close to beating its performance and weight, and while it doesn’t deal a clear killer blow to the iPhone 4, Android enthusiasts will have plenty to support an argument that this is the best smartphone around right now.

Not dead

Just in case anybody was wondering, this post’s title expresses my current state of well being in an easy to digest phrase. I’ve been meaning to write on Tumblr for ages, but real life, and my persistent desire to fill my limited free time up with other stuff means even Tumblr has taken a back seat.

I’ve been making some major inroads in the world of freelance writing, for a start. Pocket Gamer’s workload briefly tripled as I took on 8 Xperia Play reviews a month, and I also got my first piece on Wired.co.uk. All very good, though I am somewhat dreading the whole ‘filling out a tax return’ thing, as any sane person would.

On top of this, I’m also idly eyeing London house prices with the intention of purchasing in the next year. I’m reasonably determined that this will be the last time I rent, but the whole purchasing process is legitimately terrifying. I’m working through the fear in the same way they treat arachnophobes: gradual and repeated exposure to the source of terror. In their case 8 legged monsters, in my case ‘first time buyers’ guides and God-awful programs like ‘Location, Location, Location’.

…and finally I’ve decided to try and set up a proper political blog collective. More on that when it’s off the ground, but it’s quite an exciting project, so if anybody reading is interested in getting their political voice heard, do drop me a tweet or e-mail or something.

And now back to other projects - hopefully it won’t be another 2 months before I post again!

The Difference Between Riot and Wrong

I haven’t really talked about the UK riots. Not because they’re not important and interesting, but because my Pocket Gamer workload has really picked up. I’ve been reading other people’s analyses, but haven’t had time to put my own thoughts to keyboard.

I suppose I could pretend I wanted to let the dust settle a bit. When the trouble first broke out in Tottenham, I was on a stag weekend in Nottingham. When I returned, some looting was about 10 minutes walk from my current house in Deptford. And now, two weeks on, it’s very much a distant memory.

Except in terms of the law and order backlash on the way as a result.

Since Cameron came back from holiday to save the day*, we’ve seen the kind of tough talk that hardline Tories love. Labour have mimicked it in a slightly diluted form - the difference between the two parties, as ever, proving to be like Coca Cola and Coke Zero. They’re both bad for you, but one of them is less obviously so in the short term.

But what’s really interested me about the fallout is how the reactions of the leading figures in our government and capital city reveal a total lack of empathy. They can’t contemplate the validity of socio-economic motivations because that isn’t what motivates them.

Let’s take a look at their responses to the idea that rioters were spurred on by financial and ideological concerns:

David Cameron:

“This is not about poverty, it’s about culture,” Cameron said. “A culture that glorifies violence, shows disrespect to authority, and says everything about rights but nothing about responsibilities.”

Boris Johnson has…

“heard too much sociological explanation and not enough condemnation.” 

Nick Clegg, who predicted riots if the Tories pushed through austerity measures a year before he joined the coalition, has also changed his tune, saying it’s “ludicrous” to suggest that riots have anything to do with spending cuts.

Just as well they’re not sociologists then. Dismissing cause and effect mere days after an event is pretty dangerous.

I’ve also heard next to nothing in the mainstream media trying to justify the riots as linked to politics - the most widely touted press narrative I’ve observed is that some people are just bad, and need a good slap. Anecdotally, it’s depressing to see quite so many previously liberal people wishing for police crackdowns as soon as things get slightly scary, with water cannons, tasers and even live ammo being on many people’s must-have Christmas wishlists.

So why do our leaders feel the need to dismiss sociological justifications when nobody with serious influence was plugging them in the first place?

It’s no coincidence I chose Clegg, Johnson and Cameron to quote. You don’t have to look hard for records of their youthful indiscretions which look suspiciously like vandalism and the same lack of respect they’re accusing of the 2011 youth.

Nick Clegg on his arson of a priceless collection of cacti while on exchange in Germany, aged 16:

“‘We didn’t know what we were doing. We were teenagers, we’d drunk too much - frankly, we did behave appallingly, irresponsibly, criminally.”

David Cameron says he’s “deeply embarrassed” about his membership of the Bullingdon Club, an elite Oxford University drinking society that deliberately trashes restaurants, and then lavishly pays for the damage on the way out. Boris Johnson used to be rather proud of his membership until people started to notice that condemning 2011 rioters for criminal damage was hypocritical even by his standards. George Osborne is also a Bullingdon alumnus, but is half way between Cameron and Johnson in his approach, neither boasting about it, nor apologising.

Did Clegg, Cameron, Johnson and Osborne vandalise people’s property because of poverty? Did they do it because they lacked a voice? Were they protesting austerity measures? Were they just plain bad?

No, no, no and probably not. And it’s because of this that I suspect they are unable to believe differently of others. 

They’re happy to blame youthful inexperience for their own misdemeanors, but with Clegg 16, and Johnson, Osborne and Cameron aged 18-21 when they committed their vandalism, how can they be so hypocritical when looters in the 2011 riots are said to be as young as 9 - does youthful inexperience only count for those at expensive private schools and Oxford University?

Even more than the expenses scandal, even more than changes to the NHS and even more than the business with electoral reform, the political reaction to the riots has really underlined for me exactly how out of touch our elected officials are with 21st century Britain.

* As an aside: for all his myriad faults (and given I’m currently reading ‘The End of the Party’, I think I’m putting that mildly) I can’t imagine Gordon Brown taking 3 days to return from holiday in the event of a national emergency

A Few of my Favourite Podcasts

It’s no exaggeration to say that podcasts have completely changed the way I commute. Since I took up my vow to walk to work every day, I don’t think I could have kept up the two hour commute each day if it weren’t for the magic of podcasts.

For those that don’t know, podcasts are essentially free (mostly) downloadable radio shows. You can find a whole bunch through iTunes, or via RSS feeds for those more technically inclined.

As people occasionally ask for recommendations, here’s the 3 that I really look forward to each week. I listen to others, but these are the ones that I head to first…

The Bugle

Comedians Andy Zaltzman (Political Animal), and John Oliver (The Daily Show, Political Animal, and, erm, The Smufs Movie) host a weekly satirical comedy show discussing the week’s events for Times Online.

Often laugh out loud funny, and it really does run rings about the MOR political comedy shows on TV. Recently they’ve been having quite a lot of fun with the phone hacking story, despite technically being a News Corp property.

http://podcast.timesonline.co.uk/rss/thebugle.rss 

Stuff You Should Know

Stuff You Should Know is incredibly informative. Hosts Chuck and Josh pick a topic, and then explore it thoroughly, from “Where’s the best place to get shot?” to “How do I start my own country?”, the range of subjects is incredibly diverse, and always entertaining.

This may not sound too intriguing from the description, but take a look down the list of topics, and you’ll definitely find one or two you’ll find interesting. They’ve just passed the 300 episodes barrier, so it should keep me going for a fair while yet…

http://www.howstuffworks.com/podcasts/stuff-you-should-know.rss

Politics Weekly

Finally Politics Weekly, from The Guardian. I won’t lie, if you’re not a politics nut, this will be incredibly boring, but it’s one of the highlights of my week as each week three liberal journalists discuss the week’s events.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/series/politicsweekly

One more thing to point out: podcasts can be pretty fiddly, having to remember when new ones are out and manually download them. Fortunately, there’s a couple of apps that will make your life easier, allowing you to schedule downloads for the middle of the night, or when you’re on wi-fi so you won’t get charged for mobile data use.

For iPhone, try Downcast.

For Android, try Doggcatcher.

Both cost a small amount, but are more than worth it when you consider you don’t have to plug in your phone or remember to check for new releases.

Enjoy!

My Political Leanings 2011 Edition

Regular readers of this blog (hello all 5 of you!) will be aware that I’m really rather left wing in my outlook. In the ‘political leanings’ box on the rather intrusive Facebook profile screen, mine reads “commie pinko liberal”, which probably has me on a list somewhere in Mark Zuckerburg’s pocket.

Anyhow, these last two years have seen me becoming more and more politically interested, whereas before I was just as left, but less in touch with events and real world case studies. 

Conventional wisdom would suggest I become more right wing as I get older, and it was with some trepidation that I approached the Political Compass website for an annual check-up.

For those not in the know, Political Compass consists of 6 pages worth of statements and gets you to allocate your response with “Strongly Agree”, “Agree”, “Disagree” and “Strongly Disagree”, and covers topics ranging from multiculturalism to economics.

Some for me are no-brainers (“What’s good for the most successful corporation is ultimately good for all of us”), while others are actually quite subtle and ambiguous when you stop to break them down (“There is now a worrying fusion of information and entertainment”).

Once you’re done, the site pops you onto a four quadrant grid from Authoritarian to Libertarian on the Y axis, and Left to Right on the X axis.

So, where did I land?

Here:

That’s actually more left wing, and more libertarian than I was the last time I took it, back in my student days.

To put that into perspective, according to the site that puts me further left, and more libertarian than those noted hard-line reactionaries Gandhi, The Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela.

And here’s where the British parties were in the 2010 elections:

I appreciate this may be of interest only to me, but I’ve decided to do the test every year and see how my political outlook changes with age. I’m putting it here, so I can compare.

Though at this rate, I imagine I’ll be writing negative Amazon reviews of Das Kapital on my 40th birthday, using the phrase “fascist claptrap.”

Boris Johnson: Immune to Satire

Boris Johnson and I do not politically see eye to eye, but I can accept - grudgingly - that he’s endearing to an awful lot of people. Many of them, I suspect, are unaware of his fully chequered past.

I won’t go into it here in much detail, because it’s all out there to be discovered - he’s on the right of the Tory party, describes his £250,000 Daily Telegraph wage to be “chicken feed” and once promised to help an old friend beat up a News of the World reporter. Okay, right now there may be quite a few people claiming that’s the least that NotW journalists deserve, but still. This is just scratching the surface of his history, and there’s plenty more - make up your own mind, as this isn’t really what this post is about.

I was listening to The Now Show - a programme that’s practically bi-polar in its comedic hit rate - and they were doing a bit about politicians end of year school reports. It was a fairly formulaic section, and attacked the most obvious flaws in each politician’s character. For Cameron it was his lack of detail, for Ed Milliband it was his nerdy styling, and so on. When it got to Boris Johnson, it was a pretty weak impression of his bumbling nature.

The trouble with this being targeted as his weakspot rather than any of his other flaws is that he’s actually almost universally loved for it.

He’s managed to do what so many folks have tried to do in job interviews for years: he’s picked a weakness that’s actually his greatest asset. If the best satire can come up with is to highlight something that’s actually worked really well for him in the past, then there’s no reason people should find out about the real man behind the buffoon.

True, prime time topical radio comedies shouldn’t try to break down an entire character in a two minute bit, but it does seem a little lazy that someone as complex as Johnson should be defined by something that is completely superficial, and that I suspect can be switched on and off at will.

And you know what? It does work. I heard a number of people either overtly stating or implying that they’d vote for Johnson in the 2008 London Mayor election because he was funny on Have I Got News For You. Be very afraid if the bookies are right about his chances of being the next leader of the Tory party, should Cameron continue to wobble.

For full disclosure, in the 2008 London mayoral elections I voted for Brian Paddick as  my first preference*. He then went on to appear on “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here”, eating bugs with such intellectual heavy weights as Timmy Mallett. So yeah, I don’t regret that one bit.

* Yes, London Mayoral elections use the Alternative Vote, and yet we didn’t end up with a BNP mayor, a candidate getting the least votes and yet winning, or Satan rising up to reap havok. Who’d have thought the No to AV campaign might have been a bit misleading?

Just what is this blank CD made of anyway?

While going through boxes in my house, I discovered this striking similarity:

On the right is a cheapo blank CD I bought around 10 years ago, and on the left is a cheapo horror movie that involves some poor (and presumably quite desperate) actors getting stitched anus-to-mouth into a “human centipede”.

I should point out that the latter was a birthday gift from the ever-attentive @aliray1709. At some point I intend to watch it (and maybe even liveblog it here), but I haven’t hit an evening where rock bottom seems suitably out of reach just yet.

As a point of interest, Alistair originally packaged it with its alternate box art:

Vin Cable: A Case Study of “Muscular Liberalism” (and Bad Photoshopping*)

I like Vince Cable. I think he essentially speaks common sense, seems to be more uncomfortable with propping up the Tories than most of his Lib Dem cabinet buddies and represents the muted centre left of the party. 

Yet he doesn’t have the gravitas of Paddy Ashdown, the authoritative voice of Chris Huhne, or the media smoothness of a circa May 2010 Nick Clegg. Poor old Vince, whenever he’s on Question Time or interviewed, with his slightly whiny voice and wavy white hair appears more like a harmless old grandfather than the tough voice of the Lib Dems.

If Nick Clegg wants the Lib Dems to show “muscular liberalism”, Vince needs to change. It’s time for Vince Cable to meld with Vin Diesel.

I present to you, ladies and gentlemen, Vin Cable:

(WARNING: CONTAINS CRIMINALLY POOR USAGE OF PHOTOSHOP*)

Vin Cable shows off his new RIPPLING sixpack to an astonished David Cameron.

This time when Vin Cable “declared war on Murdoch”, News International took him seriously.

Vin Cable’s essay in The Orange Book was based on his experiences on set in The Chronicles of Riddick. Fact.

“Hey RBS!” called Vin Cable, menacingly, “come and get your bonuses…”

What’s that? No, I have no doubt that this was the best possible way I could have spent my Friday evening. Why do you ask?

* Who am I kidding? It’s MS Paint, and proud of it.