Rachel 2.0

A couple of Sundays ago i noticed something wrong with my iPhone 5c (which is called Rachel - all of my computer and gadgets have names). Rachel was starting to warp, something appeared to be pushing the screen out from the back. I assumed it was a glue issue or maybe warping caused by heat so i taped the screen back in and all was fine again (apart from sellotape over the screen!)

I was due an upgrade on my phone contract with Vodaphone anyway so got a new Lumia Windows phone (which is called Hazel) but hoped that Rachel would be able to continue, albeit with tape, as a spare phone. Unfortunately the phone warped again. I went online and found it was probably due to the battery expanding after a gas build-up! Suffice to say it was time to contact Apple...

And everything was sorted out very quickly. Apple sent me a box with pre-paid postage to send Rachel to them. I posted it on Monday and on Wednesday night i took delivery of a brand new iPhone! So now i have Rachel 2.0. Its easy to moan so i thought i would write a blog post to praise Apple for sorting my phone out so quickly. Now all i have to do is try and remember all of my passwords again...

Incidentally Hazel is a very nice phone, i like Windows Phone OS too. Hazel is very good, but just not quite as good as Rachel.

Camera C64

Instagram is one of my favourite apps with its ability to add a layer of faux retro-ness to your photos. Camera C64 takes it to the next level. The iPhone app modifies your photos to the resolution and colour depth of graphics on the Commodore C64 with its VIC-II video chip! The app is free though there is an optional (and very cheap) in-app purchase for extra colour filters for green, amber and B&W monitors. They were easily worth 69p to be honest! An example photo is below. Interestingly since i installed this app i have found there is another similar app too.

All very nice, though i never had a C64, i did have a VIC-20 though and still have a C16 somewhere... Here is a photo i took yesterday (of the canal natch).

Building my first iPhone app

On a rainy Sunday afternoon i finally got around to installing Apple's Xcode development suite on my Mac. My first degree was software engineering and i have done quite a bit of programming in the past (going back to my days on the Sinclair ZX-80!) though i haven't done a great deal in my job in recent years. Nearly all the programming i do these days is Perl CGI for myself, i have an on-line database of my book collection for example.

However i have felt like trying a bit of iOS development, i have vague ideas of an app to help people navigate the canals in the Midlands (canals being another interest of mine). So i installed Xcode then went through a "Hello World" exercise, the result you can see below running on an iPhone simulator. The app is very simple though is quite involved, its a bit more complicated than writing

10 PRINT "I AM THE BEST"
20 GOTO 10
RUN

on a microcomputer in Dixons and then running away...

When i have time i will get around to planning a canal navigation app. Time is the key constraint there.

iPhone o'clock

Finally my exhausted c510 mobile phone has been retired (or put into reserve anyway) and i have got a new phone, an iPhone 4S no less. I love it of course, the only question being why did i wait so long to get one. Well of course the answer to that is i didn't actually buy it myself but it was bought for me by my wife. I did buy a rather nice and funky case for it though.

It is of course a big step up from my old phone which was barely a smart phone (though was OK for its time) but the novelty of nonsense like FourSquare hasn't yet faded away. I'm the mayor of the patch of canal i walk most lunchtimes of course.

QR code crazy

I've added a QR code to this blog as you may notice on the right (of course if i later change the design and remove the code then people who read this post sometime in the future may become slightly bemused but just assume it was there once!) Now if you don't know what a QR code is then basically its a small barcode that can be read with a smartphone and is a quick and easy way to jump to a website. So people can scan the code on this page and... er... go to this page.

Of course you may wonder why bother? Well i have been playing around with QR codes a lot for the university i work at, pioneering their use at our open days last year and we'll be using them on a much bigger scale this year so why not deploy them for myself too? Perhaps someone will print out the page and then may find it useful to use the code to return here. Or it just looks a bit cool. That will suffice.

Actually the QR code ties into a custom bit.ly link i set up for this blog which is http://bit.ly/mix-match which is probably a little more useful. I've also set up http://bit.ly/trip-tv for my music blog.