The date of our flight is getting closer, yet so much remains to be sorted out. Finding temporary accommodation in Miami for example, before we can find a place to rent. Or getting one final visit in with our favourite trusted dentist in Birmingham.
Much more important things have been attended to today though: I bought a wireless keyboard for my iPad, complete with case that folds into a stand. Since there’s a lot of writing that needs to be done I thought this a worthwhile investment.
There’s an annual National Story Writing Contest called NaNoWriMo. It happens every year in November and participants have exactly 30 days to write furiously to come up with a 50.000 word novel.
The idea is not to finish a masterpiece in this time, but rather to establish a daily routine in which the goal is to “do writing” rather than procrastinate, edit, try to perfect or think yourself out of a good idea. There are even local groups that come together and write in silence, but also to encourage each other to pull through to the magic 50k.
Many creatives have often remarked that there is no special spark that needs to happen for anything creative to happen, it’s rather about “sitting down and doing it” and not about “thinking about it”.
You know me, I’m up for a challenge – and it dawned on me that with such a cool writing tool as Storyist on my hands, plenty of forthcoming time ahead of me, and an amazing story to tell, NaNoWriMo is just what I need in the forthcoming twilight season I’d like to call Stateside.
I’ve just discovers a new software called Storyist. It’s a tool for writers that lets you outline ideas on index cards, then shift them around using drag and drop. Full written sections follow along in the manuscript.
For me as a lifelong Word user, discovering Storyist is like discovering plutonium!
I’m writing several how-to manuals for clients and I’d like to expand them into larger editions for sale on Amazon. Writing these longer-than-5000-word articles proves to be a pain in Word and Pages because even though these are very great text processors, they not support creative brainstorming.
So I was looking for an iPad app that behaves like index cards. I heard that writers often use them, and I can understand the benefits of such a workflow. My original idea was to use index cards to jot down loose ideas, bringing together what I want to write in principle but not worry about the correct order. I would then move them into something that makes more sense to the reader, adding chapter marks as appropriate and then start writing accordingly.
Shot on Hipstamatic with Watts Lens on Dream Canvas film.
Found in Mevagissey, shot on Hipstamatic with Dream Canvas film and Loftus lens.
Hipstamatic
Hipstamatic
Hipstamatic for iPhone
Zen Brush for iPad
I was just browsing through my archive and stumbled upon an iOS App I’ve made a few months ago. It looks great on the new iPad due to really hi-res images – but what’s even better is that it’s written almost entirely without code!
It’s still using Xcode so it’s a native app of course, but there are no complicated Objective-C statements in there (apart from one but it’s not essential to the app).
Here’s how I did it – I even give you the source code too.
Let me test something here real quick: speedtest.net We take speed for granted and that it’s getting faster and faster by the month. This here is the upload and download we’re getting at work in 2012 (and over the last few years). This isn’t even possible with my home “g” WiFi. In a few years …
After a year of becoming a Mac user I’ve taken stock: it was a very good decision, but just like PCs, even Macs are getting slower the more stuff you put on.
I remember my Mac was extremely fast to boot up when it was new, but now that I’ve installed man heavy Adobe apps and a lot of other stuff it’s taking its time. Nothing I couldn’t live with, but something that could certainly be improved upon.
So I thought to myself: how about one of those Solid State Drives? I wonder how much they are, remembering that this time last year a 512GB SSD would set me back a hefty £1k. As techie prices drop all the time, now it’s just under £300 plus VAT – excellent!
Scouting out some recommendations and how-to’s on the internet, I found the entire thing an extremely simple process. Let me show you how I did it and how it’s improved the speed of my Mac for the better.
I was showing Dave how the Percolator App on his new iPad works. This came out rather by accident, I love it. Thanks, Percolator 😉
This morning my beloved iPad app Paper by FiftyThree received a long awaited update: they’ve just added an option to export an entire book as PDF. Hurray! This turns an extremely good doodling app into a solid professional graphics tool.
Now I can share an entire book rather than a single sketch either via email or to any iPad app that supports the “Open In” option. This means that there’s no limit on what other apps can receive your work: DropBox, iBooks, EverNote. Rather than Paper dealing with each API, Paper lets the iPad deal with all that techie stuff. Genius!
Sometimes it’s nice to come back to the very basics of how Photoshop came when you’ve first installed it. Sadly the Reset Brushes command doesn’t always work so I’ve decided to upload the default brush set right here. Simply unzip the following file, choose Replace Brushes and and load it in: Download Photoshop CS5 Default …
Due to a fluke my logo disappeared from this site. I think it happened because I upgraded a plugin which inserted it via a HTML statement – sadly this plugin now has more functionality, however lost my logo in the upgrade process. It’s amazing how organized I am with other people’s work, but my own …
I’ve seen a couple of demos on the upcoming Premiere Pro CS6 which will become available in a few months. You may recall my earlier post about a hands-on experience with Premiere Pro CS 5.5 so I’m eager to see what else the team have improved.
Not having tried the product myself yet (since that’s impossible) I can however give you a quick opinion on what I’ve seen demonstrated at NAB 2012 at Adobe’s stand.
When I visited Adobe at this year’s NAB in Vegas only a couple of days ago I enjoyed a couple of great demos about the upcoming features in Premiere Pro CS6.
But what I really wanted to know was: when will Adobe Creative Cloud be launched and how much will it be?
Sadly that information was not available, but I was told that all my questions and more may be answered this coming Monday, 23rd of April…
Today you find me rather speechless: because I’m sitting here with my iPad which is running a web browser that I’ve just written in Xcode!
As in “written myself, working and doing what I’m expecting it to do”. I’m in SHOCK!
This is seriously cool – and it didn’t take long either. Let me tell you how this happened, how it works and even share the code with you.
Shot on Rock BW-11 Film with Americana Lens.
Today Amazon have released a new version of their Kindle for iOS App (3.0.1). This must be a direct response to some feedback I have sent over after the last update (3.0 for Retina and Amazon Cloud Integration). The previous update didn’t show new content after I had purchased it.
I love my Kindle, and I love my content. And I love the Kindle App on all my other devices: I can read on anything I happen to have with me: Kindle, iPad, iPhone, Laptop. That rocks!
Here’s a slightly annoying email thread I had with Amazon’s low level support who clearly didn’t understand the issue I was bringing up – from one developer to another.
Brought to you by Blockbuster, Rio Pet Grooming and The UPS Store.
I was being a bit of a fan boy yesterday when I bought two new iPads in the Apple Store on Lincoln Road. We’ve even joined the live event via Twit when the announcement of the new gadget was made last week.
So now I’ve got an iPad with razor sharp Retina Display, an improved camera, 4G LTE and a bunch of other stuff. Let me tell you all about my first day with The New iPad.
I’ll pay close attention to the new camera features and compare them to the iPad 2 and the iPhone 4S.
Here’s a collection of some dramatic images I took on the Rock b/w film in Hipstamatic, all taken with the Ben Watts lens.
Shot with James M lens and Cano Caffenol film
shot with Matty ALN lens and BlacKeys SuperGrain film
Shot on Hipstamatic with Ina 1969 film and Matty ALN lens.
