Test

Is this thing on?

So, it was the WWDC yesterday. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s the Worldwide Developer Conference. Basically, E3 for Apple.

And along with all the typical bumpf about Apps and the iPad, and Aids- Sorry, iAds, Steve Jobs eventually got round to showing off the iPhone 4, and my gosh does it look nice:

But obviously the looks of the device aren’t really it’s major selling point, so there’s also quite a lot of new features, a few of which are actually quite good.

Yes, they’re introducing video calls, yes, it can finally multitask, yes, it’s finally got folders, yes, it’s got a screen so fine that the human eye can’t actually make out single pixels. None of which are really all that exciting.

But the most interesting part of the new iPhone, which I never thought I’d say, is the camera.

If Steve is to be believed, it’s capable of recording 30fps in 720p HD, which is quite impressive in itself, but he then also announced that iMovie is coming out on the iPhone.

So HD video recording, and HD video editing on a device that’s small enough to fit in your pocket? That’s incredible, and it’s the one thing that’s really making the new iPhone seem like a viable purchase to me. Obviously I need to try it before I’m willing to part with my hard-earned cash, but if it does turn out to be good, then I’m there.

It’ll be interesting to see how iMovie actually runs on the iPhone, as iMovie on my Mac can’t handle HD video…

Frustration

“the feeling that accompanies an experience of being thwarted in attaining your goals”

I’ve been being thwarted in attaining my goals recently by Microsoft and their useless Xbox DRM.

Yesterday I finished Lazy Raiders, the room rotating XBLA puzzler. Unfortunately, during my session, my brother had removed his memory card from the 360, which (as he was the one who purchased Lazy Raiders) had the license for the game on it. I didn’t know this at the time, because the game hadn’t decided to tell me, instead letting me play on like nothing was wrong. So I finish the entire game, with all the idols, and wait for the wonderful “ba-doink” noise to let me know that I’ve just unlocked the two achievements for finishing the game.

This picture can’t really convey quite how annoying this level actually is.

The “ba-doink” never came, hence my frustration. I had had to replay each level numerous times to try and learn the best path to take to earn the right amount of points to unlock the idols, then once I’d succeeded in doing so, the game doesn’t even bother to reward me? Sadface.

After that, resigned to an evening of failure, I booted up Guitar Hero 3, to fail at finishing Through the Fire and Flames on Expert.

But it seemed that the xbox had witnessed my frustration at Lazy Raiders, and decide to take pity on me, allowing me to flail my way through Dragonforce without failing, and upon completion treated me to the “ba-doink” noise that had been so disappointingly absent from my Lazy Raiders session.

To me, that 15G is the hardest 15G I’ve ever earned in my entire life, but according to TrueAchievements it’s only the 8th hardest achievement I’ve earned.

None of the other 7 achievements hurt my hand quite that much, though.

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P.S. Yes, I haven’t posted a blog in almost a month, sorry about that. Unfortunately my degree had to take priority in recent weeks. With summer here now though, I should be able to get back into a more frequent schedule.

(Right, Uni work meant that the Thursday Thought for yesterday got a bit lost, so I’ll have to do a double bill next week….)

You might remember that earlier this week I brought a new camcorder, if you don’t, I’d recommend you read that post before this one. It’s right below, go on.

Read it now? Good stuff.

Anyway, yes. I’ve been having a go with it for the past few days, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s actually quite good. The colours are superb, and the low-light recording seems to be every bit as good as I’d been lead to believe.

IT CAN EVEN RECORD IN SLOW MOTION!

I’ve also worked out how to import in HD and then upload it to YouTube too, with minimal quality loss! \o/

iMovie still lost a bit of the colour depth when it was exporting, and a slight bit of the image quality, so it’s not a perfect representation of the video quality. Still looks pretty good as it is, though.

So yeah, that’s a bird I filmed out my window to check how good the colours looked and how good the zoom was. It’s got some image stabilization thing too, which means that I can now zoom all the way in and not have footage that shakes all over the place due to my chuffing shaky hands, which is obviously a good thing.

If you want a few better quality videos, check out YouTube, I’ll be recording some more in the next few days too. It’ll be interesting to see how it copes on rollercoasters, might actually try and get some on-ride footage of Crush’s Coaster this year

That’s this thing, if you didn’t know:

Hopefully the low-level light modes will make it so you can actually kind of see the rollercoaster bit.

A few days ago, I brought a new camera.

Having used a quite nice 720P Aiptek thing for a while, but been disappointed by how terribly it handled indoors, I decided that it was time for a new one, that worked like my eyes do indoors (I.e: rather well). So armed with the power of YouTube, a few hundred quid and an upcoming birthday, I set to work.

In the end, I decided on a Sony HDR CX115E (exciting name, I know) after trying it out in John Lewis.

So far, it’s pretty immense, full 1080P HD, image stabilization, and all the other groovy things that they always have slapped over the box.

But there’s one or two problems.

The first one I encountered when I tried to copy the files onto my Mac. For starters, they’re not saved in a normal format, with each separate clip being an Mpeg4 or something, they’re instead saved in the new AVCHD format, which I then discovered that my version of iLife wasn’t compatible with. Cue a slight bit of swearing, before acquisition of the latest iLife. Problem 1 sorted.

But then there’s another problem – How do I save it in HD and then upload it to YouTube? The only YouTube option in iMovie wants to export it in 540P…

Anyone know how else I can export it? I want to show you guys my awesome film of a bird in my garden…

Politics. You can’t really escape it at the moment, and for good reason. The upcoming election is the proverbial “biggie”, or so I’ve been lead to believe by the Newspapers. But somethings worrying me.

At Christmas, Facebook was held accountable for getting Rage Against the Machine to number 1, it was a crap song, I know, but it stopped Simon Cowell from getting another pointless Christmas number 1.

Now, there’s a group on Facebook, entitled “We got RATM to Number 1, we can get the Lib-Dems into power!”, or words to that effect, I can’t be bothered to go and find it right now. There’s a key difference here, though. At Christmas, it was purely to stop Simon Cowell winning. Here, I don’t think it’s just to stop Gordon Brown winning the election – These people actually want the Liberal Democrats to run the country.

But the only reason a lot of them actually want the Liberal Democrats to run the country is that they’re planning to scrap University tuition fees. That’s all well and good, I’m all for not having to pay for my education, but that’s not the only thing the Lib Dems are planning to scrap. Along with the tuition fees, they’re also planning on cutting funding to the Trident missiles and the Eurofighter Typhoon. So if World War 3 breaks out under Lib Dem rule, we’re all – to put it politely – scuppered.

Let’s try this from a different angle: Which would you prefer, given the choice – £3000, or a fighter jet?

I know what I’d have:

NEEOOOWWWMMM!