Apologies for the short show this week, but we barely managed to squeeze this in between other shoots this week. Topics discussed include iPad Air impressions, the Nexus 5, Android KitKat, the Surface 2, and JJ Abrams’ new book S. Enjoy!
One Day Builds
Adam embarks on one of his most ambitious builds yet: fulfil…
Show And Tell
Adam recently completed a build of the royal St. Edwards cro…
Making
Viewers often ask to see Adam working in real-time, so this …
One Day Builds
Adam and Norm assemble a beautifully machined replica prop k…
One Day Builds
One of the ways Adam has been getting through lockdown has b…
Making
Adam unboxes and performs a quick test of this novel new hel…
Making
When Adam visited Weta Workshop early last year, he stopped …
One Day Builds
Adam tackles a shop shelf build that he's been putting off f…
Show And Tell
Time for a model kit build! This steampunk-inspired mechanic…
One Day Builds
Adam reveals his surprise Christmas present for his wife--a …
The fact that an unlocked 16GB Google Nexus 5 is $349, as compared to Apple’s 16GB unlocked 5C which is $200 more (directly from Apple), is bananas!
No, make that Chloe Bananas!
A couple of Nexus observations. I’ve got the Nexus 4 and my wife has the 5. The handsets are almost identical in size, the 5 just has a smaller bezel.
I use face unlock on my phone too and I’ve found it to be incredibly handy. It unlocks in a fraction of a second but if it fails (it’s probably got an 80% hit rate in normal/incandescent light) it drops back to the pattern unlock. A failure adds probably half a second to my unlock time, a success saves about the same time but has the added bonus of not leaving the smear on the screen which can reveal the unlock pattern if you don’t wipe the screen down from time to time.
My observations about the new Nexus. I’m not getting it. I just bought the Note 3. Same processor. More memory. Bigger screen. Almost %100 guaranteed Kitkat. It’s fast and snappy. Spen is WAY more useful this time around compared to the Note 1. Great battery life. Overall a better phone than the new Nexus. Also, I paid $50 less for it. If I think of more I’ll add it.
As much as I want an N5, the N4 is fine for me right now and I’m in the midst of dealing with XMas gifts, XboxOne+PS4 financing, replacing my N7 or looking at replacing my GTX680 with a GTX780 TI.
I dunno what articles Will is reading, but the list of possible Microsoft CEOs is down to five people.
Mulally won’t get it simply because he’s 68 years old. If he even wants it. He plans on retiring after next year.
Elop and Bates would both just listen to whatever Gates and Ballmer tell them to do (the former probably more than the later).
Nadella I could see being the board’s favorite internal pick. He’ll keep the money flowing from Microsoft’s strengths, and Elop will do fine running Devices.
There’s one more unnamed internal candidate.
PS – Azure is now one of Microsoft’s billion dollar businesses.
We still have a blockbuster here and I’m really not sure why.
https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!q=rocklin+blockbuster&data=!1m8!1m3!1d3!2d-121.265627!3d38.796845!2m2!1f61.08!2f87.72!4f75!2m7!1e1!2m2!1sCxdqQH3zb8h3CMmmKbQuYg!2e0!5m2!1sCxdqQH3zb8h3CMmmKbQuYg!2e0!4m15!1m14!4m8!1m3!1d6502594!2d-119.306607!3d37.2691745!3m2!1i1024!2i768!4f13.1!17b1!27m3!1sblockbuster!2sRocklin%2C+CA!3s0x809b1f47fda0e3b5%3A0x45b31f477d8d2144&fid=5
LOL making fun of Google and their face login stuff while using a phone whose big feature is a finger scanner.
Re: Horrific World War 2 bomber missions. Listen to journalism god Edward Murrow recount his flight on an RAF Lancaster over Berlin in 1943: “I began to breathe, and to reflect again that all men would be brave if only they could leave their stomachs at home. When…”
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/edwardrmurroworchestratedhell.htm
Yesterday I traded-in my ipad mini for an iPad air at Best Buy. I got $200 for the mini. I was amazed at the retina screen. I didn’t realize what I was missing. Thanks for the idea guys! Keep testing.
Regarding Blockbuster – in Australia they are remaining open – we do have bad internet here though 🙂
in addition to geoblocked netflix, hulu etc
so come to Australia and rent a DVD!
Wow, “S” sure sounds a lot like House of Leaves:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Leaves
House of Leaves doesn’t have any “found objects” inside, but it has that multiple narrative structure told partially in the footnotes and annotations. It’s about a haunted house (kinda) that is the subject of a documentary, which itself is analyzed in a scholarly paper (written by a blind man?), which was found in a trunk by a man who adds his own story about the manuscript and tracking down its meanings and how it affects his life in the footnotes, which are then further annotated by an “editor” of the volume that you hold in your hands.
And, further, there is a lot of code and hidden meanings in the passages that are explored by readers if you really want to go down that rabbit hole. And there’s a lot of cool typography used to “show” different aspects of the story, from claustrophobia to open spaces to disorientation. The Wikipedia article was heavily edited to remove all mentions of that, for some reason.
Will, you should stop recommending that people get iPads that are not the same carrier as their phone if they get a cellular model. What you should recommend is they get a Verizon model plus an AT&T and/or T-Mobile SIM card, as it is fully unlocked and works on all the proper CDMA, GSM, and LTE frequencies for those three carriers. (Technically, AT&T and T-Mobile models should work on Verizon LTE, but people had trouble getting the LTE Nexus 7 working, and I’m betting iPads won’t be any easier.) The Sprint version is the same except it won’t work on Verizon, and there’s basically no reason to get anything on Sprint.
Can I rent a VHS still?
some stores still have them in the bargin bin at the front.
However I have a collection of VHS and BETA tapes that I still have to get rid of if you need some 🙂 In PAL though, not NTSC.
Sorry… I forgot to put that in italics… Sometimes I wish there was just a sarcasm font.