John Tiernan – Blog

Ok, so you may have noticed the style of the blog just changed. Well theres a good reason for that…sort of…
It seems that at some point in the past day, an update occurred which manage to tear apart the poor defenceless theme (Which consequently died). As a result, the blog was left looking like it was skinned for a mobile device atleast 5 years old. Efforts are being made to go back to what we had, but it may not happen. More later.

EDIT:

It is with some minute hint of sadness that the old theme was just declared dead. After a brief coma and other such inappropriate things, it was scrapped. Why? Despite several attempts to reinstall the theme, it just failed to load properly.

So I just got an invite to try mflow. I have to say, don’t bother.

Aside from the shiny interface (Which looks a bit too familiar…like Spotify familiar…) it really isn’t worth it. If you strip away the user interface you get a mash up. That is all it is. You can replicate the entire service yourself with a little bit of time, a bit of programming knowledge and the APIs for a few well known services.

Once you get an invite, download the application, install it, register for an account, input your invite code for a second time, slay a goat in honour of Sigmund (Todays God of choice), hit register again and finally open the program, you are in. The user interface is well design, all be it with a couple of interesting features that are not necessarily explained. The basis of the program is to share and/or buy music. It is all a little similar to Last.fm, just in a stand alone application. As such what you can do is this;

• Follow users
• Be followed by users
• Search for music
• Buy music
• Recommend music
• Preview music

So what exactly makes this different to using individual sites to do this? Well nothing really, one of the main selling points is the backing from several record labels. To get a similar experience, sign up for last.fm, youtube and a decent download site such as 7digital. This way you get full tracks, cheap downloads, videos and a better community. Sure both options have their advantages and disadvantages, but honestly? I don’t see any point in wasting time with an application (Thats going to eat up your drive space where you could put your music…) when you can do everything it offers else where and without the need for an invite code.

Verdict: Could be good, but doesn’t look like it is happening any time soon.

Note

I am in no way supported or otherwise affiliated with the companies mentioned. This review is independent and not biased.

So I got a little bored, and decided to follow the recent formspring trend. Ask me anything! I may even post the best ones here!

http://www.formspring.me/ananasjihad

Indeed, today is Ada Lovelace Day. If you haven’t already, go show some appreciation. If you already have, do it again!

Not sure what the day is about? Check out http://findingada.com/

So who is your inspiration? As the day is about showing your appreciation and showing support for women in science, technology, engineering and all the other related fields, I’d write a blog explaining why the named few are awesome. However, partly because I’m lazy, and partly because my brain is fried today, I’ve decided to keep it simple and just list them with a sentence or two explaining why.

In no particular order;

• Mel – A science, a geek and just plane awesome.
• Kitty – Crazy geologist with a dinosaur. What more can be said?
• Radina – Brilliant computer scientist, even if its denied!
• Limor – For showing theres no limits in what can be done, as demonstrated by adafruit industries.
• Emma – Despite what may be claimed, she is still great at what she does.
• Hayley – Great science writer, one of the people behind Geek Pop.
• Steph – Not strictly a scientist, but wishes she was. Good enough for me! Oh and she remembers a biology course, thats enough 😉

This list is by no means complete as there are just so many names that could go on it. In any case <3 to them all!

So after this weekends MakerFaireUK and the associated Virtual Treasure Hunt, a few blogs and sites have shown up that are worthy checking out:

• www.hayleymbirch.co.uk | http://hayleymbirch.wordpress.com/blog/
• www.soundsofscience.co.uk
• http://www.thebox.myzen.co.uk/Site/Intro.html
• http://geekpop.podbean.com/
• http://www.craftlass.com/
• http://www.oomlout.com (Technically not a new find, but still worth checking out!)

Any other sites you think should be on there? Comment and they may be added!

Highlights of the MakerFaire include: all of it.

So this coming weekend (13/14th March) is MakerFaire UK in Newcastle as part of the Newcastle Science Fest. So who is going? What are you looking forward to the most?

If you are reading this after the event, what did you enjoy the most?

Its taken a while, but I’ve finally got round to designing my first PCB specifically for public consumption.

It is a very simple design, but I’ve not seen anything similar recently. While working with I2C devices I’ve found a need for a simple bus board, specifically for prototyping as some times breadboards just arn’t big enough. For this reason, hopefully rather soon a new board may be available (Maybe even a kit type affair). Leave a comment if you are interested and tell your friends! More details to follow.

Once in a while you come across a site worth sharing, other times you just happen to find them. This is one of those times.

A friend, commonly known as Steph has one such page. In this particular case, it is her blog. A must read for all art appreciators and music fans.

Until next time, enjoy.

Don’t panic.

You can always throw some parts from Sparkfun at the problem. True fact!

While designing and building a project I have been working with I²C, a lovely protocol, works wonders. If only I can say the same about the LCD. While the other components on this months favourite bus are working wonders, the LCD is not. Even after several  months the cause of the issue is still not known. The current guess is magic  mixed with a bad address and a broken part. This in itself is not such an issue until the manufacturer is mentioned.

Normally I won’t mention manufacturers for anything other than to praise them, but on this case I’ll make a minor exception. After having enough of trying to solve the problem, Data-Modul were contacted and the response was honestly shocking. The first email was just plain ignored, not even so much as an automated response. The second email did get a response, although it did not help. Sure a relevant PDF was attached, but nothing else was despite what they claimed. Thinking it was a simple mistake, a reply was sent. This was around 2 weeks ago and there is still no reply. I can understand a lack of a response if say the emails were highly offensive, but no. This was a nice product support query that could lead to further sales (Thats if the product ever goes any where, but that is a story for another time) yet there is nothing. Highly disappointing.

Mean while back in to the main point. After the failure of the LCD, guess who should come to the rescue? Thats right a part from the lovely Sparkfun which I had handy. Just goes to show that once in a while small companies with custom built adapters are better than large corporations.

We’ve all seen the blogs and news articles and have no doubt been told about open source projects by some other means, but how many of you have felt you didn’t quite have the skill to contribute to one?

Partly due to a series of amazing issues (thanks to a couple of libraries, and time), I have scrapped some existing code for a project and started it again, this time with an open source twist. The idea itself is very basic, a java MPG calculator. If you are an experienced java programmer you may feel this could take no time at all to do, and you could be right. Less experienced programmers however may not think this. For this reason, I am making the project open to provide people with the chance to work on a simple tool and to get very basic experience of version control (in this case git is being used).

Want to contribute or know someone who might? Get in touch here or via the project repository at http://github.com/cookieglitch/MPGCalc