ShiftyBloke.net

I’ve had the Nexus 7 since it was released and the Nexus 4 since February, but I still can’t bring myself to turn on Google Now. It’s probably easy for some people, but when I see the warning my location will be constantly logged and sent to Google, I just can’t bring myself to click ‘Agree’. I’ve had a few moments where I thought I could do it, but always stopped at that warning.

I’m not ready for that I guess….

If you use the IE View Firefox add on, I suggest you uninstall it now. The developers behind it have started bundling code with it that injects Javascript into the webpage, calling resources from the superfish.com domain.

The only reason I caught this was because I was seeing weird activity in NoScript’s list of blocked domains. You can see from the user reviews they’re none too happy about it either.

If you use any of their other add ons, I suggest you remove them as well. After all, can you trust a developer whose home page link is PPClick.com?

PS. The original author of the add on is no longer affiliated with the project.

My face after watching the Hobbit

They certainly know how to ruin a good book. I’ve no idea why they added extra nonsense like a wizard that looks like he escaped from a mental institution or mountains that fight each other. Oh, and Martin Freeman, please say your lines without sounding like you don’t give a damn if the film succeeds or not.

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With all the recent drama around the Pebble watch and the potential Apple iWatch, I was surprised to read so many people have replaced their watches with phones (granted, these were comments on tech blogs, so obviously a biased sample). I’ve been wearing a watch ever since I can remember, including the calculator ones (although the ones able to control TVs evaded me). I, for one, can’t imagine my phone replacing my watch, and while I can see the appeal of a smart watch, I don’t see myself buying one any time soon.

You see, there’s nothing like a good ‘ol watch, built to last and built with quality. I currently own 2 watches, an every day Accurist watch which has been going strong for a couple of years now and an expensive Rotary watch for interviews, weddings, etc. The Rotary has an awesome feature where you can swing open the back and see the inner working of the watch, there’s something quite beautiful about it (shown above). You can also hear the internals of the Rotary working away when you hold it to your ear, just awesome.

As you’ve probably guessed, I like a nice watch. But lets move on to some practical reasons why a phone can never replace my watch:
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….is the only explanation for why users suffer from bugs in AndChat that never occur to me.

Stop trying to be so damn clever. Stop inventing problems to solve.

The newer cars I’ve driven do some mind bogglingly stupid things, you have to wonder how the ideas got into production.

Take the Renault Megane. I drove this as a courtesy car after my accident. Decent car with one big flaw: the hugely distracting digital speedometer.
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….is depressing. But at least I have a trip to Switzerland to look forward to

Just realized, it’s been 8 months since my last blog post :o Time.has.flown by! Since then, I’ve been on holiday abroad twice and I’ve moved to another part of the country to continue my job, although, now, it’s shift based, which leaves me pretty tired. I’ve enjoyed the whole experience though, even though it was weird leaving the whole family behind :s haven’t enjoyed having to learn to cook though ;(

Anyway, that job’s coming to an end, so back to job hunting (which I should be doing right now, instead of writing a blog post…

Now the dust has settled around ICS, I thought I’d write a little something on upcoming improvements to AndChat.

Firstly, there is a lot of work being done to make AndChat work great on ICS. The main improvement being worked on is the userlist handling, which will be similar to how it works on Honeycomb and slight changes to the UI. The challenging part with the userlist is the small screen real estate and nick selection and I’m working hard to find a nice way to get it to work.

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