Here’s my biggest gripes with this new foldable phone craze:
When folded up, the phone’s.. girth.. appears to be considerably more than that of a non-foldable phone. It saves space length-wise, but not thickness-wise. It’ll probably fit in most men’s trouser pockets just fine, but it’ll be bulky:
“Why, is that a Galaxy Z Flip in your pocket, or are you just a pervert?’
Easily damageable screens, and potentially easily damageable/limited hinge lifespan. These phones requires far greater care and attention that a regular phone which negates the whole reason for having a folding phone in the first place. You want durability. You want to save space (both in length and thickness). You should not have to pick one or the other.
They don’t look that much different from the flip phones (you know, the ones with a physical keypad on one half, and a tiny non-touch screen on the other) from the 90’s and early 2000’s.
In short – foldable phones, in their current state, are simply cute and fluffy Mogwais just waiting to turn into Gremlins. It’ll cost you an arm and a leg at this early stage of the technology, and if you damage your phone, possibly a spleen or kidney to continually replace the screen.
“Oh good,” I thought to myself, “the trains are running normally. Storm Dennis hasn’t affected trains heading into or out of London Waterloo.”
Got to Woking station. Train fault around the Surbiton area.
Fun Quiz: There are 200 people on platform 2. Name them all.
It started off with the trains being about 10 minutes behind the regular service, then they started cancelling the stopping service to cater for all those wanting to head directly to Waterloo (see photo above). At that point I gave up and went to work from home instead.
They say (and rightly so), that you don’t buy a Mac to play games. And yet, how do you explain Apple Arcade – the £4.99/month subscription service from Apple which provides a selection of high quality games (albeit no AAA titles) across iOS, iPadOS, tvOS and macOS devices?
On my old 2018 15″ MacBook Pro, I could play the same games I had on my iPhone on my Mac – and the performance wasn’t too bad. It’s even better on the 2019 16″ MacBook Pro, of course. But Macs weren’t really intended for heavy gaming – this has long been the dominance of games consoles such as the Playstation, Xbox, or the Nintendo Switch. And gaming PCs, of course – Nvidia graphics, quad/hexa/octa-core CPUs with 16Gb+ RAM and superfast SSD drives.
Yet modern Macs have quad/hexa/oca-core CPUs, 16Gb+ RAM and superfast SSD drives. Yet they can’t play AAA titles even if they were ported to macOS. In part this is due to the Nvidia vs AMD graphics. Nvidia has had a long established foothold in the graphics market on PCs – yet AMD’s graphics power the likes of the Xbox and Playstation (and will do with the next generation consoles coming this year).
Nvidia vs AMD
Macs did once have Nvidia GPUs, but due to a long running spat between Apple, Intel and Nvidia, things were never the same. This is not to say AMD produce inferior graphics chipsets – as we’ve seen, they’re used in today’s modern consoles alongside AMD CPUs too. And AMD has just released a 64-core CPU capable of 128 threads. This is a monster of a CPU (with a monster price – $4k for the CPU alone).
But Macs graphics have never been particularly powerful for gaming – primarily because Apple has been concentrating on more professional creative workflows than 3D gaming. And MacBook Pros have been very slender machines which makes designing thermals to keep the machine cooled a bit of a challenge.
Another problem with Macs is that now macOS Catalina has gone fully 64-bit, many 32-bit titles will not work. Goodbye Team Fortress 2 – many a wasted hour spent laughing long and hard playing that game.
But with the 16″ MacBook Pro with an Intel Core i9 processor and an AMD Radeon Pro 5500M with 8Gb of video RAM, I can finally play Fortnite at reasonable framerates. The only downside is that with the release of macOS Catalina 10.15.3, the native Fortnite client takes around 4-5 minutes to load every time. With 10.15.2, it was near instantaneous. Also, with the newer thermal design, the CPU fans will ramp up and it does become quite noisy – so I revert to using headphones.
Nvidia’s GeForce Now – a potential solution to all Mac gamer problems?
Nvidia has a possible solution to the Mac/older PC problem. They have a subscription service which lets you play owned games (including Fortnite) by effectively providing a hosted virtual machine with one of their high end graphics cards. You’re effectively playing the game on their server and streaming the video back to your machine. This relies on:
Having a fast connection (50Mbs+ recommended)
Using ethernet rather than Wi-Fi
Low latency
You also need to own PC games. Fortnite is free to play, so as long as you have your Epic Games credentials, you’re all good. GeForce Now requires that you have logins for the games you’re playing. Nearly all games these days require some form of connection to the internet anyway, so this isn’t so much of a problem. Many of them are available from Steam anyway.
The downside to this is:
You’re giving credentials to a third-party service (Nvidia) which stores those credentials on their platform. The logins are usually connected to accounts where credit/debit card details are stored.
On a Mac, some symbols are only accessible via the option key – if you have a particularly complex password, good luck trying to enter them via the GeForce Now Mac client. Oh yes, copy and paste between the Mac and the client isn’t supported.
Nvidia does not support any form of two-factor authentication on their accounts. This is very bad.
So you’ve got to be very trusting that Nvidia will keep your credentials safe. And you’ll need to ensure that your GeForce Now account’s password is a strong one. Nvidia really need to get their arse into gear and deploy 2FA as soon as they bloody well can. They also need to fix their SPF and DMARC record, because all Nvidia store email goes to spam as a result. This is basic, basic stuff.
Nvidia needs to go back to email school and learn all about SPF and DMARC
Fortnite under GeForce now is very good. Initially it felt as if there was a little bit of lag (latency) when running under the Balanced setting, though it seems to have passed and gaming feels as good as running it locally. As I run my 16″ MBP via an external monitor – it’s limited to 1920×1080 which is a decent setting to run most games on high mode. GeForce Now Fortnite runs well with the high settings enabled and connected to Zen Internet via ethernet at 300Mbs download/50Mbs upload.
Fortnite using Nvidia’s GeForce Now on a Mac. High framerates! (Match sped up x 2)
In terms of loading speeds, GeForce Now and Fortnite are considerably faster than the native macOS Fortnite client. And the Mac’s fans never ramp up at all during gameplay. But I’d ideally still like to play Fortnite natively – if only the loading time issues can be resolved.
Can’t run Team Fortress 2 on macOS Catalina because of 32-bitness? GeForce NOW *can*.
The biggest bugbear is that GeForce Now doesn’t support one of the biggest titles in the past 7 years – Grand Theft Auto V.
GeForce now has two subscription tiers: free, with one hour sessions, and a limited edition Founder’s level which gives longer sessions and priority access (whatever that means). That said, it is £4.99/month with a 90 day trial before your card is charged, which is the cheapest and most generous I’ve seen.
Beware of the Shadows
There are alternatives to Nvidia’s video game streaming. One of them is Shadow. I’ve tried them before. They essentially provide you with a fully virtual Windows PC with Nvidia Geforce graphics card. You’d install games as you would under Windows. Unlike Nvidia’s GeForce Now, you have disk space and, as such, a quota to work with.
The biggest stumbling block I found with Shadow was the latency and overall streaming performance. Despite ethernet or Wi-Fi connection, the lag was very noticeable. And it was extremely expensive for what it is. You’d be better off saving the money towards a console or middle-end gaming PC. Even now, you have pre-order – with some specifications unavailable until 2021.
There’s also Google’s Stadia. Another streaming platform, designed to work across TVs, laptops and tablets. From what I understand you’ll need to buy hardware (at the very least a controller) and a subscription. From what I understand from the web site, you need to buy the games directly from Google to play with Stadia rather than bringing your existing library into it. That kind of limits things somewhat, and makes everything more expensive if you already own titles held on a different platform.
My recommendation
The current range of consoles – especially with Microsoft’s Xbox – are shaping up nicely as a good all round gaming system. Xbox has introduced mouse and keyboard support which when developers take advantage of, give PC-like gaming at a fraction of a cost. The next generation of consoles will also introduce SSDs for storage, which means much faster loading times. It’s also possible to stream from the console to a Mac or PC over local LAN, should you so wish.
But for the Mac user, regardless of whatever model you may be using, a combination of Apple Arcade and GeForce Now may be good option. Providing Nvidia continue to add titles, fix bugs, add essential features (as I mentioned earlier – copying and pasting between environments, and 2FA protection of Nvidia accounts).
My ex-wife bought me a copy of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell back in 2005 which I read in practically no time at all while we were on holiday in Italy. I absolutely loved it. The use of language, imagination and historical placement was unlike anything I’d read before.
It pushed me to create a blog around it, and to try and find out more info about the movie they were planning. Needless to say, a movie never materialised – the story is just far too big and complex to fit within a single, regular-length film. But a TV mini-series did emerge, and it was so good, I bought a copy of it on nearly every format imaginable (Blu-Ray, iTunes, Google Play, etc.) as a way of saying thank you to the production team, Susanna, Colin, Bloomsbury, and Curtis Brown for all their work and their help and advice over the years.
So to recap: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is bloody marvellous. So bloody great. I love it. It sits directly alongside The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as my favourite book ever.
So you can imagine that finding out Piranesi was due to be released this year came as both a shock and a wonderful surprise. And I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy. You can pre-order a signed copy of the hardback edition at Waterstones for £14.99. Needless to say, already done! But I’ll also be buying the Kindle edition and maybe even another hardcopy edition so that I can keep the signed edition pristine.
It’s extremely rare for me to buy physical books these days because I live in a small cottage which is already full to the brim of books and bric-a-brac (which reminds me, I really must get around to sorting that out – I’m a Norrellite in that regard!), and whenever I travel, I like to have a selection of books on hand just in case. So Kindle has been one of the greatest things I own and use these days. Audible too.
In the mean time, I’m very much looking forward to meeting Mr. Piranesi and exploring his House.
I’ve been looking at the stats for this site, and along with lack of active blogging recently, I’ve decided to head back to WordPress.com for the hosting and ditch the likes of DigitalOcean and Cloudflare.
I’ve paid up front for two years which works out about a third of what I’m paying now. And I’m also saving money by not paying for plugins such as WP Rocket (caching/optimisation), Foobox (lightbox for images) and the Wayfarer theme. Though I am still using the Wayfarer theme because it comes part of my WordPress.com plan.
And, I don’t know whether it’s just me or not – I’ve noticed that with the Premium plan I can now add Google Analytics. I’m sure that when I signed up early last year the premium plan didn’t have this – only Business or E-Commerce plans had that option. So good news!
What’s not so good news is that trying to import a media library (images, etc.) is not the easiest thing to do with WordPress – so I’m ditching all articles from last year and starting anew. Besides which, one of my bugbears about search engines is that a lot of the stuff they archive can be so old and out of date, the information is useless. It can really hinder when searching for technical information. So the posts in this blog may not last much more than 1-2 years maximum before biting the dust.
Still a bit more work to do around here, but it’s nearly done. Comments should continue working as before.
I like Wimbledon. It’s a nice town. I had no idea that I’d be working here, though. Back when I lived and worked in Norwich for an ISP, we had a client in Wimbledon who needed on-site support. So I came down and spent the day helping them fix the issue.
Then, when I went to work for MPC in London, we were tasked with providing visual effects for the film Wimbledon in which we had to make Paul Bettany look like a world-class tennis champ by replacing his balls with CG ones. Oo-er missus. I mean tennis balls, of course – when he’s lobbying the tennis balls back and forth during the matches. The film also features one of the catchiest end credits tunes – Grove Amarda’s But I Feel Good.
But I digress.
Many years later I now work for an e-commerce in Wimbledon. I’ve been working for them for over two years and we’ve just moved into brand new offices (literally next door!). The view from the terrace is pretty good.
Peeking around the corner, on a clear day you can see the unmistakable outline of London:
In short – not a bad place to work. Not bad at all. If only South Western Railway and Network Rail didn’t keep breaking/fixing things every 30 seconds. Took me two and a half hours to get home last night thanks to a broken train at Surbiton. And the journey between Wimbledon and Surbiton was horrendous. Absolutely packed. Not helped with two lads pushed their way on before the doors closed and one had a backpack which took up so much space and kept hitting me..
What a week. Two days of South Western Railway disruption (today being the worst with signal failures at Woking and power failures at Raynes Park) and I get an email from the administrators of the now-defunct Wonga to say that any compensation owed will be 4.3p in the pound (a tweet of mine is embedded in that Mirror article – I’m famous – LOL).
I put in my claim many months ago and was told I was owed £593 (rounded up). I was told I’d receive significantly less than this, and it ended up being a measly £25. Twenty-five quid. Which is going to be two months late.
The administrators have put in their own claim – their fees are over £2 million. And I’m willing to bet the directors of Wonga are going to get away with little more than a slap on the wrist for all this mess.
The FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) has a lot of explaining to do as to why these companies aren’t better regulated. But similarly, they’re a bunch of fools. We’re already seeing many big banks increase their standard overdraft rates to 40% APR (equivalent) all because the FCA told them that their current daily charges were unfair.
My own personal authorised overdraft could potentially cost me up to double in fees because of the FCA’s meddling. They’re about to remove the buffer-free zone too. So they’re no longer a stand-out bank – they’re just like any other. Which is a shame.
And I’m still waiting on a good number of former creditors to pay up on PPI. One particular creditor has been delaying for months due to the amount of claims they’re still processing (even after the August 2019 deadline). That said, they told me that I’d still be earning interest on the sum they said they’d pay up until the point the money is released to me.
But it strikes me as hypocritical that banks can get away with delaying payment (or go tits up and expect a bailout from the government using public tax money) when it suits them, but heaven forbid you owe THEM money it can do all manner of things.
The FCA needs a kick up the arse, and some steel dentures in order to be an organisation that gets stuff done. Properly.
There are two devices that I would consider to be Apple’s greatest achievements over the past decade. The first is the Apple Watch, and the second is AirPods. Both have become daily essentials in my battle to get fit and healthier and to pass the time when commuting (especially when South Western Railway/Network Rail implodes).
AirPods are just so damn useful. You can keep them in your jacket or trouser pocket and whip them out (oo-er missus) when you need audio stimulation (oo-er missus). They are a little bit fiddly, yes, and there is the constant danger of dropping them/losing them. But when you need to listen to something in relevant peace and quiet – they’re much better than lugging around normal size headphones.
Beat(s) *THAT* Apple – You Can Do So Much Better
Speaking of normal size headphones, until I bought my first set of AirPods, I’d been using several of Apple’s Beats headphones for a few years – but I can’t say I’ve been terribly impressed. About three years ago I bought the Beats 3 Solo wireless headphones. No Bluetooth audio lag when watching a video, reasonably portable, very comfortable. But when I took them up to Edinburgh, I found I couldn’t charge them. So I took them to the Edinburgh Apple Store and they took them in for repair, and bought a pair of Beats wired headphones to tide me over. But over the past year or so, I can’t say I’m impressed with the earpads of either set of headphones:
Goodness knows how much I’ve got to pay in order to fix the earpads – they don’t appear to be user-replaceable. I’m quite disappointed in Apple here – and as a general opinion of their “extended| warranties, I do wish they’d offer FOUR year AppleCare/AppleCare+ warranties. Dell gives you a choice. Apple do not. In this case, I don’t have any AppleCare with the above headphones, but I DO have them with the AirPod Pros. And I’ve been using the headphones normally (and carefully).
Getting back on track, the one problem with AirPods is that they let in sounds from your current environment, which can make it rather difficult to hear anything unless you crank up the volume. On the iPhone, the volume is limited in a number of ways, but can be overridden:
Until I disabled Sound Check and turned off the Volume limit on the iPhone, listening to audiobooks on the iPhone was noticeably more difficult than with the Apple Watch (yes, you can upload music and audiobooks to an Apple Watch – providing you pair it with Bluetooth headers/speakers). The Apple Watch volume output was much louder and could be heard against a greater range of environmental noises (mainly trains passing through stations).
The AirPods Pro are different in that they introduce noise-cancelling features and a design which fits better inside your ear, creating a better seal, which should help reduce as much as your local environmental sounds as possible. Plus it can also be used as a kind of hearing-aid – using the built-in microphones, it can relay sounds directly to you, which makes it much easier to hear people talking to you/announcements. Whenever you need to be alert. Noise cancellation can be turned off and be used as regular AirPods. Noise cancellation itself is pretty good for an in-ear device. It won’t get rid of sounds completely, but it’s good enough to listen to music and audiobooks without having to have the volume turned up loud.
The AirPods Pro use silicon tips which keep the pods in your ears and comes with two other sizes. They’re easily replaceable (and if you lose them – Apple will sell you a new set for about $4) – just pull them off and push new ones on. I found that I had to use the larger size to get the most comfortable (and most efficient) fit. Big lugholes require big tips. Oo-er missus.
I absolutely love my AirPod Pros, and the wireless charging case makes things even easier (I’m coming from the first generation AirPods which didn’t have any wireless charging). I almost entirely use AirPods/AirPods Pro when on the phone, and at work – when I want to drown other people’s music out and/or concentrate when the office gets a bit too noisy.
They’re a bit more pricey than regular AirPods – but thanks to EE, I’m able to add them to my phone plan and split the cost over 11 months. I’ve just got to be sure NOT to wash the things – which I did when I left my first ever set of AirPods in a trouser pocket once.
