Andy's Ramblings
Tech, Reviews and More…
Sony Tablet S Review
Apr 14th
A few weeks ago I took a look at the iPad 3, now let’s take a look at an Android tablet. Namely the Sony Tablet S.
This is a pretty standard configuration Android tablet with a Nvidia Tegra 2 processor and 1GB of ram. Unlike many of its rivals it does not sport a ten inch screen, but rather a 9.4 inch display, that’s just a bit smaller than an iPad (its also a different aspect ratio).
One of the Sony’s most distinctive features has to be its shape – rather than being made of thin slab of material, it is wedge shaped. According to Sony this is supposed to resemble a magazine with the cover folded back, and it does to an extent. They say that the heavy components have all been specially designed to be at the thick end (so that its not pulling out of your hand) and that, when combined with the smoothed edge, makes for a much more comfortable device to use.
To a large degree Sony have achieved their ambition here, however there are a number of issues cause problems with this. First is that the 16:10 aspect ratio used on most Android tablets means that they more at home in the landscape orientation, meaning that you will probably end up holding it by the comfy side less than you think.
That wouldn’t be so much of a problem if it where not for the fact that the non-curved sides are actually quite uncomfortable with sharp edges that’s dig into your palms when using it.
Then there is the issue of build quality, I would not call it poor, but it’s certainly does not feel like a premium product. The plastics are cheap and tacky feeling and (on the unit I was testing) creak in some places when pressed. The screen is defiantly not Gorilla Glass and if your typing at speed on the on-screen keyboard noticeably flexes under you’re figures.
Performance wise the Sony is fine, powering though every at tasks and 3D games alike. The screen is bright and colourful, and on about the same par as an iPad 2.
Sony thoughtfully bundle it with some apps to get you going, including a DLNA media player which works well and is excellent for playing music if you pair it with a networked media library and a WDTV Live box.
The remote control app can be a real deal maker, it makes use of the infra-red port located on the thick edge of the tablet to allow you to use the tablet as a universal remote. It already contains codes for a good few TV and HIFI manufacturers, but for those it lacks you can easily teach it the codecs by using the original remote. If you’re not using the Sony and want to control your TV, take a look at the Griffin Beacon.
Some of the other apps where less convincing, including a favourites app, that sort of shows your favourite apps and web pages a 3D sets of boxes – not that useful.
Of course, the Tablet S, along with its folding brother the Tablet P are both Playstation certified, meaning they can access the PlayStation store. This works well, allowing you to download a few PlayStation One games (don’t expect anything newer though). The on screen controls take a few seconds to get used to, but do an excellent job of allowing you to pay Crash Bandicoot.
On the back of the tablet is a 5 megapixel camera, as ever a tablet is probably not the best photographic platform (please do buy a dedicated camera!). As a slightly smaller, lighter device with the camera thoughtfully positioned in the middle rather than at one side, actually taking pictures is easier than with the iPad. However, in my good light test the pictures showed poor clarity and colour reproduction, leading to a distinctly "taken on a phone" look. In my poor light test the Sony handled noise well, but under the low energy bulb I was shooting under failed to correctly set the while balance, making my lovely green duck look like a boring old yellow one..!
For comparison, here are some pictures taken on it and an iPad 3, you can click each photo to make it bigger if you like (Hit the Facebook like button down the bottom if you love green ducks!).
| Sony Tablet S | iPad 3 | |
| Good Light |  |
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| Bad Light |  |
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That brings us on to Android itself, at the moment it is running Android 3 “Honeycomb” although Sony have promised Android 4 “Ice Cream Sandwich” in late April. Google have done a pretty good job with Android – the Holo interface design is beautiful and easy to use. Even the Android Market (now Google Play) is lovely to use. This, however, is where the problems start – developer support for Android tablets just doesn’t seem to be there yet (which is odd given how many of them there are now). There are very few dedicated tablet apps, even high profile ones like Facebook and Twitter are just phone apps upscaled to fit the larger display. Also absent from the marketplace are the beautifully crafted high profile applications which dominate the lists of best apps (such as the amazing Flipboard).
Wrap Up
On paper, the Sony Tablet S is a likable piece of equipment – good spec and a well thought out design. In practise, it is let down by an economy drive from Sony, which effects the build quality. Its also let down by Android’s lack of really high quality apps.
That said, my local retail store is now selling the Tablet S at £300 – £50 less than when I first drafted this review out on a Post-It note. That puts it only £20 less than an iPad2 though.
If you’re determined not to own an Apple product, this is a pretty solid budget Android tablet with some nice touches, however, the iPad 2 is still better for basically the same price.
As for the star rating, I was winding up to give this 7 out of 10, however given the price drop I’m cracking that up to an 8 out of 10 from me.
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Augmented Reality
Apr 12th
Ladies and gentlemen, I want to talk to you about augmented reality. I say this because its an amazing subject that has some really exciting developments, but so many people get all excited about all the wrong parts.
Many a time I have seen augmented reality touted by TV programs such as the Gadget Show, in which the presenter holds up a little piece of paper to a webcam. They the preceded to marvel as a shoddy, badly animated model “appears” to be standing on the card when they look at the grainy, low resolution webcam image on the screen.
Sorry, but that is rubbish. I’m sure it’s pretty clever, but it’s utterly useless and massively underwhelming. Not only that, but it fails completely to qualify to be augmented reality in any way, shape or form. Looking at a webcam image is not reality and as such is not augmented.
No, proper augmented reality is far more scifi than that. Imagine, if you will, that you are walking down the street and suddenly find that you are lost, you could get out your smart phone and use Google to give you directions. But walking around staring at your phone just isn’t cool. What if, as you approached a corner a little popup appeared in your vision advising you to go down that street, like something out of a video game.
If you think that sounds impossible, you may be surprised to learn that we are closer to this than you think. A lot of the technology already exists in one form or another. Apple’s Siri, for example makes real progress with voice control, even containing a built in “sense of humour” (if you have an iPhone 4s, try asking Siri to “talk dirty to me“). All smart phones now know where we are, where we should be and how to get there, all we have to do is slot this all together and present it to you in an unobtrusive way.
The problem is that producing an overlay on your vision normal takes huge bulky glasses with projectors attached to the top. Still not very cool. To that end Google have recently made real headway in this field, announcing their Google Glass project. Although details are thin on the ground at the moment, it looks as if Google have finally cracked the delicate task of producing a pair of glasses to provide an overlay to your vision that’s don’t make you look a total prat. Brilliant. Google’s Video of their vision of the future offers a tantalising glimpsed what could be possible if all the technology could come together.
While I appreciate that not everybody will want to sell out completely to that vision of the future, I find this a very exciting prospect, and we’re very very close. So can we now please stop getting worked up over some shoddy webcam image on a screen and focus on the real prize, okay?
Thanks.
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Third Generation iPad – A Review
Mar 20th
The latest (and greatest?) iPad is now out! And I’ve managed to get my hands on one to review. It’s been reviewed to death elsewhere (PC Mag, Engadget, TechRadar, the Guardian et al) so I’m going to keep this short.
Let’s jump right in and take a look at the screen. With the third generation iPad Apple introduced what they call a “Retina” display – this is Apple Language for a screen whose pixels are so small and so dense that you cannot make out the individual pixels with the naked eye.
So what does this mean to you? Well it has a few benefits, firstly the screen is now “full HD” (it’s actualy a lot more than HD) meaning that 1080p movies can be watched in sumptuous detail. Colours look richer, too, with a blind side-by-side stand-off with the iPad2 showing much more vivid colours and superior details when viewing a picture of my cat.
The final improvement you’ll see from the new screen is much crisper text with virtually no “fuzz” around the letter edges. This is best explained by example, so I acquired an iPad 2 for a while and took some comparison photos with a macro lens. You might need to click on the photo to make it full size to see the difference clearly.
The above is a 100% crop of a picture taken form a webpage in Safari zoomed to maximum. On the top image you can clearly see each of the coloured pixels that make up the display, on the bottom you can barely make them out at all. You should also be able to see that the letter forms on the bottom one are a bit smoother with less jagged edges.
At this point you may be thinking it all sounds very impressive, but the text doesn’t look THAT much better. You’re right – because the bigger the text is, the less important the effect of the fuzzy text is – and that text was massive! So let’s take a quick look at some really small text from the home screen.
Moving on from the screen, the new iPad continues to feel as incredibly sturdy and well built as its predecessors. Its heavier than alot of is predecessors, but somehow doesn’t feel uncomfortable. It’s true that at 650grams its heavier 50g heavier than the iPad 2. And yes, if you hold them both, you can tell. But before you go off the rails, I should point out that according to my kitchen scales (Disclaimer: I have no idea have accurate these actually are) the Smart Cover weighs in around 140g, and I don’t recall anybody complaining that using that suddenly made the pad too heavy to use.
The camera is another area where Apple have made a substantial improvement over the iPad 2. A good few people have complained that it has fewer megapixels than the iPhoine4s, but megapixels aren’t everything in a camera, and a 10 inch slab of glass makes a pretty unwieldy camera that is hard to to line up without wobbling all over the place. I’d encourage you get a dedicated camera if you want to take serious pictures.
Nevertheless, in good light it captures pictures that are crisp and detailed with good colours - good enough for most quick snaps. In low light, the picture became substantially grainy, and struggled to correctly set the white balance for the low energy light bulb I was shooting under. Preforming the same test on an iPad 2 showed that in good light the picture was fuzzy and washed out, while under poor light it was almost unusably grainy.
Below are a few comparisons to the iPad 2 – As ever, click to make them larger (Hit like if you like my rubber ducks ;) ).
| iPad 2 | iPad 3 | |
| Good Light |  |
 |
| Poor Light |  |
 |
As with the iPad 2, the 3 is awesome fast, loading and scrolling through complex websites quickly and elegantly, without suffering from flickering grey boxes at the corners while panning, like some Android devices. Battery life, thanks to a larger battery, is still at a solid 10 hours and I’ve seen nothing to contradict this – under “normal” use I’d easily expect this to last 1-2 days. My only complaint is the length of the charging cable – at a mere 40cm it’s not nearly long enough to reach from a wall outlet to my desk.
Firing up a 320kbps MP3 with a decent set of Senhiser CX300-II’s reviled the audio quality to be fair. Clarity was good, bass a little on the excessive side for my tastes but was crisp and well controlled. As per usual on a device of this type, a pleather of equalisers are available, all of which serve to degrade the experience into a gimmicky mess off poor quality sound.
As with any iDevice, one of the main attractions is sheer number of high quality apps in the App Store. At this point, a lot of reviews proceed to tell you how many million apps are in each store. That is a completely pointless action, you’re never going to download them all. No, what I’ve noticed most is how the quality of the applications varies between the platforms.
Contained in the Apple App store are a number of simply beautiful dedicated iPad apps, which not only delight the eye but are rocket fast. Contrast that with the Android Market (now “Google Play” for some reason), where the vast majority of apps are upscaled phone apps, and suffer from lacklustre aesthetics, even for apps that are just fine on the iPad – Twitter and Facebook for example.
Round Up
Looking back, this has to be one of the most complimentary reviews I’ve ever done. This is unquestionably the best iPad of the three. Although it’s hard to say there’s really enough to warrant upgrading from an iPad 2, unless you really want to spend the cash. Comparing it to Android tablets, its better built, faster, prettier than most of the rivals and has much better apps. Quite honestly, with the market as it currently is, it’s hard to recommend Android tablets of equivalent price, unless you really want to avoid Apple (Fair enough, a lot of people do).
All in all, a solid 9 out of 10 from me (longer power cable next time please, Apple!)
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Is The Netbook Dead?
Mar 18th
I was in a talk other day, when it came for a quick show of hands – those who use a netbook and those who used to use a netbook don’t anymore. The implication was very much that nobody wants to use a slow undersized laptop with cramped keys when you could use a tablet such as the iPad, or one of its rivals.
This set me thinking, does this mean that the, once massive, phenomenon of the netbook is now dead? Consigned to a footnote in the history of portable computing. For many the answer to this is probably ‘yes’, but that does not mean that it is completely dead? (As a matter of interest, I own and regally use netbook, but am currently typing this using Microsoft OneNote on an Android tablet, using nothing but the on screen keyboard (more on that in a later post)).
Only a couple of years ago Asus set the computer world on fire by releasing the revolutionary eeepc 701, this was a tiny laptop running a tiny custom operating system. It was designed to be cheap and rockin’ fast. And it was. That, however, is where the problems stared – no sooner had Asus unleashed this little machine on the world than the rivals started to eye it up. They made the screen bigger, added a large hard drive and even developed a series of low power processers to run things (Atom to you and me). They gave these new machines a name (netbook) and started to charge more money for them. The teach journalists got excited by the ever more powerful machines, they were no longer super-fast, super cheap computers to check your email on. They were powerful business tools – fully fledged Windows computers that you could sling in your bag and take anywhere, always ready to work on whenever you had a free moment.
Nobody minded this much until Apple suddenly worked out how to make the tablet format (a format that has been around far longer than the iPad, incidentally) work. Suddenly the iPad was the “must have” gadget for sitting at the train station or in front of the TV casualty updating Facebook. Now those ugly slow netbooks where looking distinctly unattractive to the home user. That was the end of Asus’s netbook dream, right there.
But wait, the dream of a super-fast internet machine may have been replaced by the tablet, but what of the tiny laptop that you can sling your bag and take anywhere? Do people still care about it? I think so. The netbook is still alot cheaper than an ultrabook or a Macbook Air (or a tablet for that matter!) so it’s so it’s something you’d be happy to lug everywhere, and won’t break the bank to replace. So perhaps the netbook era is over for the general consumer, but its spinoff platform has found a new home with businessmen, students and people who want to travel light.
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Sonnet of Christmas
Dec 25th
It’s Christmas day! Happy Christmas, by the way! I hope you are all well. I thoughts I’d try something a bit different today, so I wrote the bellow Sonnet. Bear in mind that I am not an English student, poet, artist or in any other way vaguely qualified to construct such an article. I just felt like doing something a bit unexpected (normal service resumed soon). It’s terrible, I know but here you go. Enjoy:
Sonnet of Christmas by Andy Bradford
Christmas Day is upon us,
Families gather to say a prayer,
Children run making such a fuss,
Screams of delight as the wrapping they tare,
Coloured sheets tossed into the air,
The table is an impressive sight,
Decorations sparkling in the low winter sun,
The pudding is alight!
And so the day is nearly done,
One by one the guests leave my home,
Alone I slump to watch the Great Escape,
Tiredness falls; disturbed dreams begin to roam,
All of Christmas left, is the crumbs of my cake,
Such an energetic day is now over,
Until next year, Christmas shall slumber
Like a “proper poet” I even wrote it out on paper with a fountain pen first:
Feel free to say nice things in the comments, else please take inspiration from Thumper. Happy Christmas, have a good one.
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Tutorial: Remapping a US Keyboard in the UK (Windows)
Nov 30th
Lots of countries have their own keyboard layout so that they can cater best for what their residents are typing. Some more dramatically different than others, the US QWERTY layout is very similar to the UK QWERTY layout, with a few subtle differences. This means that is not uncommon for us English folk to find ourselves using a US layout board. Indeed, I’m typing this on a US keyboard right now. Although not that different, it can cause some confusion, this post will guide you though the process I used to remap my US keyboard to get the most out of it.
When using a US keyboard you have four options:
1 Learn to use it use it in US mode. This works great (all the keys do what they say) until you want to type a £, then you have issues.
2 Use it in UK mode. This works pretty well as long as you’re happy with some keys no doing what they say. But you may fall apart at the complete absence of the backslash / vertical pipe key. If you have no idea why you’d want these, go ahead and uses this.
3 Set Widows up to switch between UK/ US keyboard modes on a hotkey so you can switch language if you need to type a missing key. Works well, but is a bit of a fiddle to keep switching.
4 Use the free Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator tool to make your own custom layout. This works really well as long as you can remember how your keys are modified.
This tutorial will guide you, step by step, through the process of making you very own hybrid layout that can type everything you need. First things, lets familiarise ourselves with what keys end up where:
- The backslash key moves up to above the return key
- The double quote swaps places with the @ symbol
- The £ symbol is replaced with the # symbol
- The broken vertical pipe the ~ symbol moves up and replaces the ¬ symbol
The changed keys are marked in orange in the bellow pictures:
A UK Extended Keyboard
A US International Keyboard
Most of these changing are pretty simple, put your keyboard mode back into UK and they will regain their correct (ahem) position, albeit with a different symbol written on the keyboard. The biggest problem is the complete absence of the backslash key.
My solution to this was to completely remap that key onto the UK # key (occupying the \ slot, above the return key, on a UK board) so that we have the following characters assigned to the same key:
- Primary: #
- Secondary (Shift): ~
- Ternary (Alt Gr): \
- Quaternary (Alt Gr + Shift): |
You can think of this as the key behaving normally (# and ~) until the Alt Gr key is pressed, when it takes on the role of the other key (\ and |). Of course, there are other mappings you can change if they make more sense to you – you could take a US layout and put the £ symbol on Alt Gr + 3 if you like, I just liked this one.
To achieve this remapping we use a free Microsoft program called the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator. Here’s how you do it:
1 Download and install keyboard creator
2 Start keyboard creator and click File>Load Existing Keyboard
3 Select United Kingdom Extended
4 Double click on the “#” key on the onscreen keyboard, then click the “All button”
5 Now enter “U+005c” (without quotes) into the “ctrl+alt+<key>” box (ctrl+alt is the same as alt gr) and “U+007c” (without quotes) in the “shift+ctrl+alt+<key>” box, as shown below:
6 Hit OK (Why does this have a step to itself?)
7 Click Project>Properties, and give it a (very short) name and description
8 Click Project>Build DLLs and setup package. Save it to a easy to find location
9 Now find the files your just created and run setup and install the new keyboard
10 Finally, now you have the keyboard installed you need to tell windows to use it. Go to control panel > Change keyboard or other input methods. Click on the “Keyboards and languages” tab, then on the “Check keyboards…” button.
11 In the drop down box, select the name of the new keyboard you just installed.
12 Hit “OK” and reboot your computer. You’re done!
If you can’t be bothered with all the that, you can download both the source Keyboard Creator project or the compiled installer (Disclaimer: both of these are provided “as is” with no warranty or guarantees. You use them at your own risk. I take no responsibility for any direct or indirect consequences of using these files. Thanks).
So there you go, sorry if this was a very specific post but I thought I’d get this info out there. Normal service resumed soon.
Good day!
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Google Analytics and Referal Spam
Nov 23rd
This site, as with almost all sites on the web, attracts spam from all angles, which I do my best to keep off the public site. But recently I’ve started to see something odd in the Analytics data for this site as well as some of the others I manage. The strange data I see is in the form of spurious referrals, from non-sites such as bit.ly crunched URLs.
Don't visit that link. I doubt it goes anywhere nice
According this this excellent article, this is the result of a new kind of “referral spam”, whereby spammers use tools to extract the UAxxxxxxx code from the Google analytics tracking code and use this to spoof visits to multiple sites with dodgy referral URLs, which frequently lead to dubious sites. Apparently they go to all this trouble because some sites publish their referral lists, so a well spoofed link could help to boost the reputation of the dodgy site.
It’s hard to imagine how Google could rework Analytics to avoid this happening (although, they could put some form of “does this host name look plausible” check in place to improve it, I suppose), so it’s probably just something to live with. If you don’t publish referral lists you have nothing to fear, except it messing up your statistics. Either way, the aforementioned post has a good tutorial on how to filter this spam out.
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Gaggia Cubika Plus Review
Nov 16th
I have to admit, I do love my coffee; less in a “getting your morning fix” sort of a way, but more in an “enjoying the drink” sort of way. This means that my coffee drinking weapon of choice is not a spoon and a jar of Nescafé but rather a “proper” high-pressure espresso machine. After the tragic demise of my lovely old Bodum, it was clearly time for a replacement.
In the world of Espresso machines Gaggia (pronounced gar-shee-ahh (or gar-che-ahh), for the interested) was the first and is still one of the best, and usually have a price tag to back that up. That was, until the Cubika Plus came along – the Gaggia brand at an affordable £150. But is this even possible, or is it a horribly compromised blot on their brand? Read on to find out…
Look and Feel
Off to a good start, the Cubika Plus does not feel cheap – in the pictures it look like the case is plastic. In fact, it is a sturdy and attractive matt black anodised metal. Both the machine’s footprint and its height is relatively small meaning that it fits nicely into a small kitchen. It has a power button nestled around the side (annoyingly this means you can’t put it against a wall on the left), two buttons on the front and a (slightly plastic) knob for controlling the steam. Lights come on the two buttons to indicate when it is up to temperature, but the lack of a power light to indicate that the machine is on (but not yet warm) seems a bizarre omission.
Functionality
At the business end, the Cubika is simple but easy to use. It lacks any of the (unnecessary) toys found on posher models: it doesn’t automatically dispense the correct amount of water; it won’t grind beans for you or any other such gadgets.
The one gadget it does have is a bizarre variation upon the normal filter holder, for no apparent reason it is spring loaded, so that it moves an inch or so back after you have fitted it to the machine. I read somewhere that this device removes the need to tamp the coffee in the filter; however it does nothing of the sort, leaving the coffee thoroughly un-tamped. The massive downside to this is that it hangs down a lot further under the machine, creating space issues – more on that in the next section.
At first I was a little concerned by the steam nozzle. It’s a large plastic contraption and I was worried that it was one of those attachments that you get on some coffee makers that attempt, yet ultimately fail, to make it easier to froth milk. This concern was unfounded – it does a jolly good job of heating and frothing milk, and can be detached and washed in the sink. Sadly, the aforementioned milk then drips out of the plastic housing and onto the worktop.
The water tank is massive, and is easy to fill by removing a cover on the top and using a jug to fill it. In theory you can remove the tank and take it to the sink to fill it but it’s a bit of a fiddle to pull the fill pipe out of the tank and pull the plastic tank out of the frame.
The Problems
You might find it concerning to have an entire section devoted to problems, but this machine had a number of design mistakes that I would not expect from a premium brand:
The first of which being the amount of space between the bottom of the filter holder and the drip tray – it’s not nearly enough. In the below picture you can see that I have attempted to place an industry standard shot glass (the kind you would find in your local Café Nero) under the filter holder. It will not fit without tipping it up, so that once full you tip hot coffee on your fingers and you fumble to get it out. My suspicion here is that the Cubika was designed to use a normal filter holder, and by the time they realised that the needlessly pointless PortaFilter didn’t fit, it was too late to change it.
No room for a shot glass (Click for a closer look)
My second complaint is very similar to the last. That is, an industry standard milk jug will not fit under the steam nozzle without tipping it up and losing some of your lovely milk.
No room for the milk jug either...!
The End Result (A Steaming Cup of Joe)
With a coffee maker of this type, everything so far is just fluff; what really matters is how good the coffee it makes is. I’ve compiled this review in collaboration with my Dad, and we’ve spent the last two weeks brewing coffee and assessing the Gaggia. I’m pleased to say that (in the right hands – See “Making the Perfect Cappuccino” bellow) the Gaggia Cubixa can keep up with its pricy brothers and makes excellent coffee, with a well-rounded favour, good texture and a smooth, thick, crema. Couple this with a good (although slightly flawed) milk steamer and you have the makings on an excellent cappuccino, latte, macchiato or just a plain espresso.
Remove the drip tray and you still use a shot glass
Round Up
This is a tough one to call, it depends where your priorities lie, how much weight you put on each of its features and how much money you have to spend.
On the one hand, you have a very reasonably priced, big brand espresso machine that brews excellent coffee. On the other, you have a sizeable collection of quirks that wouldn’t be out of place on a machine costing £90 less. Personally, having owned a £60 no-brand machine that made pretty poor coffee I’m willing to overlook the Gaggia’s faults so that I can have a good coffee at a good price. But at £150 it tows a very thin line, if it cost any more I would say that it had too many small issues to justify paying that much and that for not a lot more money you could buy a better Gaggia.
If you’re looking for a great espresso on a budget – look no further. If you feel like splashing out a little, think about buying the £210 Gaggia Baby.
For this I give the Gaggia Cubika Plus a solid 7 out of 10.
Finished Esspressos
Update (15/01/2012) – Leaks: A few people have mentioned to me to issue of this machine leaking. This was an issue I also found with mine at first; it appears that the filter holder and its bracket have a tendency to be extremely tight at first, making it very hard to screw the filter holder on far enough.
As a rule of thumb the handle should be straight out the front, at 90 degrees to the front of the machine, once it has sprung back. If you cannot get it this far on, work it backwards and forwards a few times, moving it further round each time – it will loosen up quite quickly and be fine.
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Christmas Toys
Nov 15th
Right, so a couple of weeks ago the Toy Retailers’ Association published the top 12 chart of must have Christmas toys. From what I can tell this list serves very little practical use: your kids already know what they want and, thanks to their continuous reminders and Post It notes in the Argos catalogue, you do too. While it can probably be argued that the toy retailers use this so they can prepare (by putting up the price buying more stock), I doubt the list really tells them much they don’t already know.
Therefore I must conclude that this list’s only use is so that breakfast news presenters can dust off their rose coloured glasses and compare the current toys with what they had “in their day”, and then wheel on some poor mugs to tell us how these modern interactive toys don’t allow children to use their imagination, and the 21st century is a disaster.
I couldn’t disagree more. I looked at the list, and what struck me first and foremost was that some of the toys looked to be pretty shoddy – made of cheap plastic that doesn’t look like it will last. The second thing that struck me was that most of the toys aren’t that fun or are just “fads” (a play dough pooing dog, woo!), which will be consigned to the back of the toy cupboard after a matter of days. Appalling, what is the world coming to…?!
But wait. Is this really something new? Is it really a bad thing? I would argue on both accounts “no”. This has been going on for years; many generations of children have pressed their faces against the toy shop window longing to be the new owner of the latest big thing, only to find that their family couldn’t possibly afford such an outrageously expensive thing.
Equally common is the problem where you see some toy advertised, put it on your Christmas list, and wait excitedly for Christmas day, only to find that its crap. I seem to remember James May recalling the story of the Super Flight Deck in one of his TV programs, while relatively recent this still shows that this is a very common event.
So what we have here is quite possibly a set of life lessons, all wrapped up in the season of good will. One teaches us that we can’t have everything we want, the other that some stuff is rubbish. While these aren’t such nice things to learn, I think they are a very important part of growing up, and have helped make almost every single person what they are today.
Right, so we’ve debunked the idea about unobtainably expensive and unusably poor toys being a bad thing, let’s take a look at this “modern electronic toys stop children imagining” attitude. It’s quite simply not true – let me briefly hold up a couple of examples: My two year old niece has every gizmo she desires available to her, yet she still likes to play with non-electronic dolls, pretending to put them to bed and take them to the toilet. The other day, while I was at the playground with her there was an older boy who ran across the wooden climbing frame and grabbed a toy steering while shouting “I canny hold her any longer, captin’”. Imagination is not dead – it’s just as present as ever and kids don’t just play on the electronic stuff. Dare I also say, that the onus to ensure balanced playtime falls to the parents? Shoving your kid in front of an Xbox to keep them quiet and complaining that they don’t go out isn’t going to wash, thank you very much.
So there you go: toys are terrible, but that’s the way that they should be. Electronic toys aren’t evil, but probably aren’t as much fun as a climbing frame. And I had another parenting rant. What more could you want of an evening?
Oh, by the way. I thought as we were talking about children we should have a news report style picture of a child blurred so much you wonder “why not just put something else there?”
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Making Facebook Show Everything In Chronological Order Again
Nov 13th
A couple of months ago Facebook let loose one of the infamous updates that changed the way the news feed is shown, so that instead of having a choice between a list of “interesting updates” that it thought you might like and a list of everything to always showing the “top updates” at the top.
To me, and many others, this did not appeal. It meant that I would frequently miss updates that Facebook didn’t think I would like. I much prefer to see everything and make up my own mind.
Thankfully, last night Facebook made a tiny change that puts everything right again. Simply click the “SORT” button now at the top of your timeline and change it to “Recent Stories First”. Now all stories will be shown in Chronological order, with supposedly “interesting” ones having a little blue tab on the corner.
Enjoy!
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