from Clunk to Funk - Cisco Re-invent the Router

I was absolutely fascinated the day I went to see Linksys/Cisco launch their new router.  After failing to get there on time due to 

1) not leaving on time - my fault,

2) getting off at Paddington Station instead of Lancaster Gate   - also my fault    and 

3) realising that there are, in fact, no less than 3 different Craven Hill Gardens dotted around a 100m radius   - hmm, possibly not my fault that London is a ridiculous maze designed to rob anyone of their navigational ability and/or their will to live…

- but, let’s face it, it’s probably my fault for not knowing that in advance and planning for it accordingly. 

No matter; I turned up late, frazzled and thinking how on earth I’d be able to write something interesting about a new router, after all, if you have broadband, you probably know all about routers, boring boring boring snore.

But no! Wake up!!  Thank goodness this wasn’t a crusty presentation about connecting your laptop up to the “Interweb” and the wonders of wireless networking.  After all, it turns out most of us do that anyway, and we don’t need to be told about it - in fact, a recent YouGov poll showed that 54% of UK women who were surveyed were already surfing wirelessly, gaming wirelessly and printer-sharing (oh yeah, baby, we’re officially living in the digital age).

Instead, we were told the story of how a new router design was formulated, including making it work better without those big aerials - paralleling the disappearance of mobile phone antennae - and (my favourite part of the presentation) being treated to a sneak peek at concept sketches, the sort of thing consumers never get to see…  asking nicely resulted in being provided with a couple of these pics to show on the blog!

I don’t think I realised just how much work is involved in re-designing a device that already exists - and I’ve been working in the tech and gadget industry for years.

Yes, the electronics business has finally realised that us tech consumers are getting more savvy - we realise that something can look good and work properly at the same time - it’s the i-concept we’re locking in to and Linksys/Cisco have fully commited to this with their new router.  Here’s hoping that the trend for making functional things look good will continue to roll out across the industry - after all, the technology is finally around to back up the aesthetics, and I, for one, will welcome the change.

By the way, there’s some new software called LELA that comes with this router - it’s also been developed to be more intuitive… I’ll get to play with that in a few weeks’ time, and report back accordingly. 

Remember this? Exterminate!! Exterminate!!

From brain to paper. Early Sketch

Closer to the real thing. Hmm, this looks more Batman - let's go with it.

Wouldn't look out of place on Picard's desk... Make it so, number 1.

Look at the sockets on that! Always good to see the business end.

 

Well, I’m off to China soon, hopefully I’ll be able to update this blog whilst I’m there - depending on whether I can get a sim card with data, I may even be able to Flickr some pics onto the web using Shozu, recommended by my nokia-picture-blogging pal BlackPhoebe- it’s exciting and daunting at the same time - can’t wait.

Until I go away, though, there’s a completely bonkers schedule to wade through… I’ve got a packed out telly-heavy weekend, with a selection of choice graveyard shifts ranging from midnight Friday night through to midnight Saturday night (and a few in between to guarantee the desired amount of sleep deprivation).  

Happily, I’ll be arriving at QVC in good time for the shows, as

 1) I’ll leave in good time,

2) I’ll get off at the correct station, and not somewhere miles away, and

3) I’ve been to QVC UK about a bazillion times before, so it would be really, really dense to end up at the wrong QVC even though there are a few different studios (like the one in Philadelphia, USA, for example),

- but,let’s face it, anyone could mix up “flight BA169″ with “district line”, after all, they almost rhyme…

 

Virgin Gadget Spy Webcast Out!!

Wow! Remember I did some filming about 3 weeks ago for a pilot called “Gadget Spy” at Virgin Media?  I went off to visit Firebox a while ago to scope out some quirky electronic gizmos for this, pulled in some cool stuff from my industry mates at Archos and the like, then (and after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing), we managed to get a filming date in the diary.  I just got an email this morning saying that they’ve completed the edit!

So this is the Inaugural Gadget Spy mini-cast! It’s the first time the VirginMedia web chaps and I have ever done anything like this - the idea certainly comes across, and if the powers that be like it, then who knows, they might put a budget behind it, and we can do it again in a month or so, As far as I know, the more clicks they get, the more likely that is - so do please add yours

Gadget Spy Pilot show: www.virginmedia.com/digital/gadgetspy

Hello Michael...

 

Music Messing with our Heads

I recently devoured a great book called “Quirkology” by Prof Richard Wiseman, whose experiment measuring how fast people walk in different cities around the world showed (unsurprisingly) that the pace of walking has got faster (to find out which cities were faster than others, and other weird and wonderful experiments, buy the book!)

This increase in pace mirrors an increase in musical pitch over the last few centuries - as the pace of life gets faster, Middle C gets higher! In Baroque times, (around 1700) Middle C was a full semitone lower – this is why I have to transpose in my head when I play baroque-pitch harpsichords.

When I’d go dancing, it would distress me musically as the sound systems would regularly play music at about 5-6Hz higher than it should have been – I wondered whether this pitch-shift was intentional, and people would unwittingly dance more / drink more as a consequence of this increase, or whether the sound systems were just rubbish, no-one was experimenting, and only freaks like me would suffer?

My freakiness is Perfect Pitch, a strange affliction/gift that means I can correctly identify notes, chords etc., and tell someone what key they are speaking in – where it starts to get a little strange is that I’ve found that people who speak in, say, F major, appear to be quite persuasive and good at motivating, whereas people who speak in B minor appear to be quite negative in their outlook - I’ll go out on a further limb here, and mention that everyone seems to have a key they normally speak in, and others that they modulate to depending on their situation/company/mood – this is something I’ve done since I was a kid, but last weekend at the Food 2.0 wrap party, I mentioned that someone was speaking in Bb major, which resulted in strange looks and a request to blog about it, hence the post.

…but one digresses (as usual). Continuing the pacing theme, in the 90s, music at 135bpm was considered ridiculously fast, however, in the noughties, we happily imbibe 160bpm without missing a beat (no pun intended) – there’s not that much more room in terms of tempo, (before it becomes pitch) so what happens next?

How fascinating that music affects us so deeply!  During (and after) my music degree, I performed some (very) empirical research. As a lifelong insomniac, I wanted to find out a way to get to sleep easily. The relaxation tapes I purchased were fine in terms of the NLP-type hypnotic language used etc, however, the background music kept me awake!  After reading all kinds of weird and wonderful research that music at 60bpm, the average resting heart rate, can sometimes have a calming effect on the body, I decided to test that out by composing - and engineered music that would relax me by using this tempo and also choosing the keys that I personally found calming.  Well, it worked on me, because I fell asleep writing it, and had to compose some of the stuff in double time (how frustrating).  What was even stranger was that it appeared to work on other people, too…

I’d be very interested to hear any thoughts on music and how it affects humans (or other animals - I remember New Scientist running a piece about chickens listening to Pink Floyd) - and I’ll put some samples  up online soon (will blog with link) so you can have a listen.   LJ x

 

Food 2.0 nom-nom-nom

I finally completed the mammoth task of editing that 10GB of video cooking for charity.  This was a geek “masterchef” competition, where 24 of us competed in teams of 12 to cook a 3 course meal in 2hrs30mins, and be judged on our efforts - a truly surreal experience.

The competition was not just about how the food tasted, it’s also about how it was recorded - very digital/interactive - so consquently I’m also compiling a blog post especially for the food 2.0 nomnomnom site including a Flickr gallery of our team, the “Avocadolls” and a story of the day, and hopefully the recipes too.  If all goes to plan, you should be able to see it here from Friday 30th May - please vote for our video if you like it.

Here’s the Youtube vid, looking shiny and new. I had to re-do the captions at 20pt font instead of 14 so you can read some of the groan-worthy puns at the bottom.

RSS readers / Can’t see the Embedded Video?  Click here for the link

Here’s the Flickr gallery if you want to have a look

Right, must pop off now, I have much work to do, and an Archos Blog to prep - also on telly this weekend, which means time to memorise those techy stats and make sure I have everything I need for Saturday afternoon, evening, and Sunday…

 

24 Hours on TV

I have no time at the moment! So I’ve decided to “do less”, which is a new one on me, brought about by a schedule that was crazy last week even by my standards.  Just to give you an idea of how busy I’ve been, there are still 3 unwatched episodes of Battlestar Galactica on my box.  I’ve reproduced Friday/ Saturday here:

Friday 1400 - get ready for TV marathon- that includes the incredibly dull and non-glamorous stuff like washing hair, doing nails, choosing outfits, making sure I have all my kit, checking specifications, and confirming the hotel is booked and the staff won’t be freaked out that you’ll be turning up at 2am looking half-mad and slathered in heavy make up. (NB: It turns out that if you call in advance and let reception know that you’ll be turning up at 2am looking half-mad etc, you are 78% more likely to be admitted.)

Friday / Saturday midnight to 0200 - go on telly.  There is an odd thought that sometimes hits me when I do the late shift, which is this: I know for a fact that the vast majority of people are going out on the town, dancing, eating, messing up their hair, or definitely not working - I can’t remember the last Saturday night I’ve not worked! Prior to doing the TV stuff, I used to gig in a band from Thursdays to Sundays - weekends were work even then… but I love having Mondays off.

Saturday 0830 - wake up ravenous and driven slightly bonkers by lack of sleep mixed with adrenalin from being on TV - yes, even after 8 years on the telly,  I still get quite excited.  Must. Eat. Now.  I suffer from “angry hungry” if I’m not fed, especially in the morning.

Saturday 0930 - back into QVC to get ready for the next show, including making sure the tech is working and no-one has unplugged/blown up anything whilst I was asleep, which is possible, although unlikely.  I normally also go for breakfast no. 2 at this point.  Must. Eat. Again.  I meet with the producer and the director and we talk about how last night went, what was good, and what could be done better (i.e. what was utterly pointless and needs to be dropped)  - I normally cave in to my first caffeine craving and drink a cup of tea just before going to air.

Saturday 1300 - I’ve presented 2 shows by now, we’re into the swing of things and the afternoon beckons- I’ll be looking at the 1600 and 1800 show, then it’s on to the evening shows at 2000 and 2300.  All the preparation of the weeks before has paid off - I know what I’m talking about, and I know how to talk about it, and of course, I’m used to the voices in my head (producer/director) giving advice and asking questions at the same time as my co-presenter is talking to me on air.  After the 1800 show, I start looking forward to yummy chinese food for dinner, which I normally indulge in between the last two shows of the shift.  

Saturday 1700 - this is where I’m hoping for my second (or third) wind, the frenzied preparation of the days before has finally demanded payback by now - I’ve sold my soul to caffeine, which comes to my rescue, a double latte with an extra shot, no foam.  Although it has to be skimmed milk now, I’m currently on a health kick and saving my “recommended guideline daily amount for Fat” for CHOCOLATE.

Saturday 2015 - just finished my penultimate show - normally the 8pm slot is quite fun.  Everyone knows what they’re doing and we sail through (assuming there’s no technical mayhem).  I bolt from the double doors off to dinner, and stuff my face with the same thing every time* before waddling back to the studio feeling contented and a little too full up.

Saturday 2259 - one more show to go, I’ll get to leave after this, but live TV is broadcast until 2am every night, so I can’t get publicly excited about going off home to bed after 24 hours, because others can’t turn in until much later.  It’s difficult being “De-mob happy” if you’re the only one allowed out.

Saturday 2315 -just finished the last show, all that’s left now is to De-rig.  This includes striking the set (i.e. clearing down the stuff in the studio), sorting out what’s mine and needs to go home, and what belongs to QVC and needs to stay at the studio, before completing the last “once-over” check and leaving at around midnight.

Saturday/Sunday 0125 - I’m finally making my way back home where I’ll attempt some form of make-up removal and hit the pillow square on in a triumph of unconsciousness.  I won’t even unpack until I wake up in the morning.

Normally, this is where I take a break, however, last weekend, I enjoyed the honour of taking part in Food 2.0, a fantastic charity event in which we raise money for Action Against Hunger whilst cooking a 3-course meal at the Cookery School for some incredibly sophisticated judges.  It was just like Masterchef, except with geek. You should have seen the kit people brought with - there were laptops, mobiles and camcorders everywhere.  We could have probably hacked into the Pentagon and/or broadcast to the outer reaches of the universe with the computing power in that kitchen.

Re: Food 2.0 Gulp!! I’ve managed to record 10GB of data!! 10GB!!!  Am not looking forward to wading through that much footage, when I’m pretty certain that the vast majority of it is not very interesting at all… mainly waffling about mushrooms and pastry it seems.  The usual saying in the industry is “Don’t worry, we’ll fix it in post (post production i.e. editing etc)” but I shall soldier on valiantly and post a link once it’s a) done, b) interesting, and c) not 14 hours long.

Well, next posts are imminent, they will be on the Food 2.0 experience, and I’ll be doing a special Archos post as I’ve been getting some techy queries from some viewers, it’s only polite to respond accordingly. 

*Vegetable Ho Fun noodles, no beansprout, no baby corn, no water chestnut, no bamboo shoots, extra tofu and extra chinese mushroom.  Followed by banana fritters.

 

Food 2.0, Lightscribe

As I’m taking part in Food 2.0 this Sunday, I went to do a little research at a place in London called Vanilla Black, perhaps one of my favourite places to eat an unsuitable amount of food.  Here’s the first part of the review I posted:

Gasp!! Gourmet Vegetarian food that even carnivores are satisfied by? Tasty veggie delights that your tongue will treasure for weeks to come? Vanilla Black is out-of-the-way in Chancery Lane, but only 3 mins walk from the tube - a blessing if you’re bored with fighting through Soho and fancy a change. This destinational eaterie is a heavenly escape from the usual bland veggie options that I’ve become resigned to…. check out the rest here:   Vanilla Black

I’m partnered with the lovely Tiara Diamond and we are planning a vegetarian feast of fabulous flavours.  We spent quite some time going through what we ate and didn’t eat - turns out that both of us have a fear of raisins as well as a startling amount of “no-go” food areas.  After writing out a “hate list” followed by a “love list” we decided upon Mushroom Menage on Summer Rosti with Fresh Asparagus as a main course, followed by Toffee Apple Meringue pie.  The starter will be a tricolore salad with Honeyed Balsamic Dressing. It’s going to be mad because I’ll have just finished a 24-hour stint on telly, and will be ravenous.

 

Meanwhile, I got a lovely Lacie Lightscribe drive to play with in the post today, installed like a dream on my Mac, it’s almost enough for me to consider defecting from Vista, all this plug-and-play business… but I must confess, it’s weird not having that right-click for tweakage.  I’m very clearly straddling two camps here, as it were.

This drive is both PC and Mac compatible so happily I don’t have to choose yet.  Now I must fight the temptation to lightscribe a naughty word on to a disc with a laser.  Just like old times - I just remembered programming my ZX Spectrum to “speak” words that were typed in - this was many years ago - and a Derek and Clive sketch was chosen as the ultimate test of skill … but what would you expect from a Red Dwarf fan?*

 

*only the first 4 series though.

 

JVC, QVC, Ironman and Food

I just had a major stint on telly after spending the afternoon at JVC looking at new gadgets and tech.  There’s an incredibly superslim telly (their new flagship telly range) and I’ll try and get pics of other stuff for posting.

Looking forward to chinese for dinner and will be attempting a few words of mandarin, since I’ve now had 4 lessons.  Hopefully I won’t insult anyone - I’ll report back accordingly. 

Iron Man ROCKED, by the way - I and many other blogger types took over the Digital Cinema at Leicester Square and thoroughly relished this inventive, amusing and thank goodness, actually good comic book interpretation.  I haven’t been to a Friday night / First night show at the cinema for ages, it was great - everyone clapped at the good bits and laughed at the funny bits -you get my drift.

By the way, stay till the end - worth the wait!  My friend at JVC (a comic connoisseur) didn’t wait, and he is still annoyed.  Mind you, he gets to play playstation on JVC’s crazy 120″ set up with a £10K projector/lens combo and speakers that are only available in Japan, so don’t feel too bad for him.

Oooh, and here’s a little mini-review of Butlers Wharf Chop-House , which I visited over the weekend.  I’m quite into all this food lark - after submitting the menus for Food 2.0 (will mention more on that soon) I’ve discovered quite a liking for restaurant commentary.  I’m ljrich on Qype if you want to say hello.

Must publish now, craving noodles quite badly.  I shall return anon.

 

Digital Summer at Millennium Hotel, London

Wow! Just got back from a fantastic tech-filled evening - Even though there was torrential rain tipping it down outside, inside the Millennium Hotel in Grosvenor Square, ’twas Digital Summer! I went along with pals Ant Davis, whatleydude, and Rob Hinchcliffe.  There was much fun stuff:   

Take this from Belkin (not out yet) called the Rockstar. Connect up to five headphones, and your iPod or other MP3 player, to start sharing. Or, add another portable device to mix songs and listen together.  Imagine if you had 2 people with wildly differing tastes playing their music through this at the same time…. Hmmm, mixing two music sources on the fly will sound a little interesting. 

Come to think of it, I bet it sounds a bit like my train home from London, there’s always a couple of mobile phones blaring out diametrically opposed musical genres.  I confess to finding that  strangely comforting, perhaps as I now associate the sound of “mash-up” to being less than 18 minutes from my house.  

Right, Next Up:

These are the W5000 headphones from Audio Technica, not sure if they’re available in the UK yet.  Yes, of course they sound fantastic.  The outer part of the earphones is made of Striped Ebony, there are stand-alone cushioned rests for the top of your head that make them feel incredibly light on, in fact, I can’t help thinking that these cans are perfectly suited to your hardcore hi-fi fanatic… and if that’s you, the specs are here for those gorgeous gory details.

Finally for this post:

 Squarrrk!!

Well, the parrot went on the record saying that it enjoyed listening back to itself with the LS-10 voice recorder from Olympus.  Parrots need voice recorders so they can practice in their cages when no-one’s listening.  Why else are they so good at mimicking?  Rather amusingly, I remember a (probably apocryphal) story about a friend’s parrot who only said rude words.

I’ve now realised that the story was in fact not real - it was a joke told to me a while ago.  D’oh! If I had this voice recorder (which has stereo recording capability and records high-quality straight to PCM (Wav) ), I’d have been able to listen back to myself, know for certain that the parrot story is a naughty joke with a punchline I cannot bring myself to reproduce, and delete this entire paragraph (if you get my drift…).  Actually this is a great looking device close-up, and I love the clever placement of the microphones, ensuring that if you are a net-caster, you can stick this in the room and get a satisfactory spacing between conversationalists, as well as some easy buttons and a friendly interface.  Stay tuned, as I’m going to test it in the field.

 

There are other products I want to share with you, but I’ve got to take pictures so  you can see them properly - I’m thinking of the iskin range of mac accessories and the v-moda iphone-friendly earphones. 

Digital Summer was great - there was a friendly vibe about the place, and great chocolate mousse, which is always a winner as far as I’m concerned.  I had a fantastic time, and it’s great to see innovative stuff from companies that could just play it safe, but choose not to.  

 

 

Handling Overload #1 / Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Yes, I wish I knew. 

If you’re a component, it’s easy, you just shut down until someone comes and fixes you, or that’s it, game over.   If you’re more carbon-based than silicon-based, it appears to be a little more complicated.

You see, I’m currently suffering from life overload, and as usual I’m writing a blog with the perverse mindset that trying to make enough sense of the stuff I have to do by sharing with the internet will help in the real world, as I’ll be left with a blog of how to handle overload at the end of this post. 

Am I making any sense?  Of course not.  My brain needs some serious defragmenting.  Perhaps some down-time would be in order….

Things I have to do #1  I really have to tell you about Forgetting Sarah Marshall, perhaps one of the best films I’ve seen in a long while.  Actual laugh-out-loud funny, along with some very geek-friendly in-jokes that kept the (in this case, geek-filled) cinema in stitches. 

What’s odd about this movie is that I wouldn’t normally go out of my way to see this, even though I enjoyed “Knocked Up” and “40-year-old Virgin” from the same stable.  It’s described as a “romantic disaster movie” in the press kit, which hints at something more than your run-of-the-mill schmooze-fest.

A lot of the time, I’ll walk out of a movie theatre and think “well, that’s another 2 hours out of my life, oh well”, but this was different - my companions and I were rather surprised at just how good the movie was, and even talked about the funny bits over sushi at Satsuma afterward.

The premise is simple: Bloke gets dumped by TV star girlfriend, Bloke gets back on horse (to know which horse, you’ll have to see the film).  Underlying that premise is one thing that’s left out of so many movies these days - a real sense of humour and characters that feel authentic and sincere.  Russell Brand puts on a great performance, and the script is satisfyingly tight - all killer, no filler, boys and girls.  Watch out for some admirably geeky Tshirts too.  In short, I’m quite the evangelist for this one. 

Things I don’t have to do #1

Here’s my moo card - I threatened to upload the pic in a previous post.  The back says something about me being from Outer Space, to see if anyone actually reads it…

 

Other things I have to do involve editing up Qype’s chocolate tasting video at Melt and Firebox’s mini-movie about some of their gadgets, getting a Virgin gadget project going (hush hush at the mo), and going on QVC this weekend amongst others.

I’ve decided (in my infinite lack of wisdom), to do a Quentin and make this a mini-series of “do’s” instead of one long hard slog.  Dinner is calling, and I made fairy cakes for dessert.  I’m no closer to making sense of my quest to handle overload, but I do think it will be easier to manage on a full stomach.

 

Brenthaven Antics

And on to the next gadgety item - I got it last week, and it was good.  

 

This is the Eclipse Sleeve I - part of the Brenthaven range of laptop sleeves specialising in portable computer protection.  Ah, the stuff tech dreams are made of, a comfortable, low-impact journey from A to B, perhaps along with some nice even current, and the odd dusting.

I hulked my heavy but sexy Rizeon PC all over Las Vegas in January, and [prior to that] bashed seven bells out of my Vaio.  I remember, with some trauma, one time, just before going on air, my vaio leapt off the table in an impressive attempt to escape live TV.  As the camera crew and co-presenter looked on in horror, I remembered how important it was to back stuff up in that ohnosecond - so an item that claims to help protect my laptop is definitely worth further examination.

I’ve been waiting a long time for something interesting to appear in the cushioned laptop bag category.  The inside is a bit like memory foam, and there’s a separate bit for papers, although I found it difficult getting my power adapter into the case as well, perhaps because this is the slimline model. 

Happily, this foamy, friendly small bag [would that be a baguette?] fits my macbook as well, and nestles into my larger backpack for easy transportation (you can see that in the final pic).  

Now I do have new-age tendencies, and I certainly have a terrible leaning towards puns - so it was doubly gratifying to hear that the company behind the bag are committed to reducing their effect on the environment, as well as reducing the dents and grazes on my lappy.  I therefore applaud their choice of the name Zero Impact for the range.

Have a look here for some footage of their cases being chucked out of trucks.