The Devil’s Pulpit is somewhere I had never heard of until a couple of months ago when Shak mentioned that a work colleague had recommended visiting as it’s a magical place. Some of the photo’s online looked great so early Monday morning we set off to get some sunrise pics and pay it a visit.
Devil’s Pulpit is formally known as Finnich Glen and is only a couple of miles south of Drymen so less than a 30 minute drive from Glasgow. Devil’s Pulpit is seemingly the name of a rock within Finnich Glen but over time has become the common name for the location. Getting to it is easy although there aren’t many parking opportunities. There is some parking available on the junction of the A809\B834 (56.034243,-4.419551) or you can park at Queens View car park and walk for 2 miles. We chose the former and had a short trek through a field before clambering over a small fence to find the path.
The path takes multiple routes and while obvious in the daytime in the dark it was a bit tricky to make sure we were on the right one. It was also pretty muddy thanks to the recent weather in the West of Scotland. After 10 or so minutes we finally arrived at the top of the steps down into the Glen itself. We decided to wait until the sun was up as there was a chance of a really good sunrise and we wanted to tackle the steps in more light.
The steps were laid in the mid 1800’s and it shows. They are worn, sometimes missing and very slippy. We took our time going down and in a couple of area’s it was very tight. Someone has placed ropes to help but we never used them – not sure how safe they are. Once down we started to explore and take some pictures (video courtesy of Shak)
The area isn’t that big but ripe for long exposures. We had a couple of ND filters with us but it was pretty dark so didn’t really need them most of the time. I’m pretty pleased with the photo’s from the day and the full set can be found on Flickr.
The Devil’s Pulpit is well worth visiting but make sure you are wearing some good boots especially if there’s been recent wet weather. If you want to get more unusual shots a pair of wellingtons isn’t a bad shout either so you can wade through the water. It goes without saying that if you arrive in the dark you will need a torch – luckily I’d brought my head torch so we had some light to get us there safely. Also be prepared for a steep decent and a bit of dirt and mud so a change of shoes for afterwards or a towel to get cleaned up is worth taking. Mid summer might also be a better time to visit to try and get some more light into the gorge as there was very little of that when we visited. Enjoy and good luck!
I’m a bit later than normal with iOS 10 impressions and iPhone 7 thoughts this year. I didn’t take part in any of the public beta’s so iOS 10 was new to me when it was released on September 13th and I wanted to use the new iPhone for a while before jotting down my thoughts. So without further ado…
iOS 10
iOS 10 features a number of updates, some big but most not so much. A few thoughts on the new features first.
The first noticeable change is to the lock screen. Raise to wake on iPhones changes the reliance on the home button. It means you can see notifications or interact with widgets with ease. There’s also a lot more information on the lock screen than before which I like. It also relies on swiping which may infuriate some people as features seem lost now – where’s the camera shortcut from before? No icon instead swipe to the right pane to access camera.
Today view is better as well, and widgets seem far stronger from app developers. Hue and Dark Sky are just two app’s that take great advantage of the Today view allowing me to see information far more quickly than I could in the past.
Control centre now has three screens/cards instead of one. Control, Music and Home. All makes sense and combining Raise to wake and accessing control centre makes Hue light control so simple. One weird button on Control screen – Night shift. Does it really need that massive button? Also nice to see 3D touch to alter settings like torch brightness, bulb brightness and camera options.
Siri supports third party app’s but hard to see much other improvement. Still lags to Google and Amazon.
Photo’s seems a bit broken. A couple of nice new features around creating video’s based on location, photo’s and it does a good job. However machine learning has now been added (surely just enhanced and not added) but it does this per device. So I’ve got 7,500 photo’s scanned on the iPhone but the iPad has only 6,000 photo’s scanned asking me to plug in and switch of the device to resume scanning. Seemingly when all devices have finished scanning a comparison is done via iCloud but this approach seems bonkers compared with Google. The intelligent searching, so asking for photo’s of tree’s, summer, dog’s etc, isn’t as good as Google’s. Apple made some big claims about computation on the devices as compared to computations on a cloud service but Google wins this pretty easily.
Third party dev’s can now take photo’s in RAW format which is impressive. Lightroom and a few other app’s have updated to allow this and it does help with editing.
Maps – still worse than Google Maps.
Music has seen a big UI change. Bold fonts, simplifying options and I prefer the new look. Makes getting to my music more easy. Playlist creation still sluggish, or is that just me?
News – similar UI change to Music. Nice.
Home – an app specifically for HomeKit applications. My only devices that support it are the Hue lights and they work really well with Home. A great update over previous iOS versions.
iMessage is now a platform. Massive emoji support, animations, effects, gif’s and it’s own app store mostly for stickers. I like it.
Upgrading to iOS 10 on my iPhone 6 was a pain. I use encrypted backups which helped but after upgrading my stored music had gone, my app’s aren’t installed so you have to wait a couple of hours for them to download and on day one the Apple server’s can’t really cope with demand so you get iCloud errors. Not the great user experience that it should be.
There’s some other small features elsewhere but overall a solid if unspectacular update. Performance on my iPad Air is a bit sluggish but other devices are all working fine.
iPhone 7
Tick-tock. Apple have followed the tick-tock model for phone design for a few years. iPhone 4 then 4S, 5 then 5S, 6 then 6S with each new number bringing a change in design while the S models were refinement. The iPhone 7 should have seen a new design but instead we got the ultimate refinement which see’s a slightly tweaked 6 design but given the iPhone 7 name. Most noticeable design changes were to do with colour finish of the phone. Jet black and black were the two stand outs for me. As I hadn’t upgraded in a couple of years I went with a black 128 GB iPhone 7. Some thoughts after 10 or so days with the phone…
Matt black looks really good. Love the finish of the phone although it does pick up fingerprints
It is so fast. App’s launch quickly, web pages render without issue. I’m still loving the speed increases after a number of days and considering the iPhone is my most used device this makes for a great reason to upgrade on it’s own.
Screen is slightly better than the 6 to my eye. The reviews talk endlessly about why it’s the best screen yet but it feels like diminishing returns with the current screen technology. Next year finally a move to OLED for Apple?
Crucially the battery is lasting longer than the 6 for me with everything running as it was before and my extra usage with the new device.
The camera is great. OIS (Optical Image Stabilisation) is so good on video’s. The first video I took to show my Hue lights working for a friend was so good compared to what I could shoot on the iPhone 6. The pictures out of the 7 are also getting closer to some really high end camera’s. I didn’t go for a plus as I find the size just too big (I have a plus as a work device) but the dual camera support on the 7 looks to be great as well.
Removing the headphone jack. So in the grand scheme of things it’s not that big a deal I guess and Apple did include an adapter in the box so you won’t be stuck with £1000 headphones that no longer work. People will lose the adapter though and bluetooth isn’t as reliable or as good (yet) as a wired connection. I’ve held off upgrading my headphones for the last year as I expected this was coming so some form of wireless headphones will be bought soon…not sold on the Airpods though so who knows what I will pick up.
The home button is no more. It’s a pretend button with your brain tricked by the Taptic engine that a button has been clicked. Does it work? Sometimes. I’m mostly used to it although it does feel weird switching between 7 and 6S, from Taptic button to real button. There are times though that it feels like the whole bottom of the iPhone is clicking, not just the button.
Use of Taptic engine through the rest of the O/S though is great. Neat little touches as you resize an image, scroll through a list are much improved thanks to the new engine and iOS 10. An unexpected win.
3D touch is much improved compared to the iPhone 6S. Much better feeling and used in many more places. Another win.
Live photo’s are improved compared to previous iOS/hardware and there’s been a couple of great gif’s create already 🙂
The video above was from St Rules tower in St Andrews on a pretty windy day and apart from me taking the video in portrait I thought the OIS did a really good job of keeping things stable. On Monday I took a trip to Finnich Glen and despite some challenging conditions the iPhone performed really well.
Panorama from Finnich GlenFinnich Glen
Overall I’m delighted with the iPhone 7. Fast, great camera and the haptic and 3D touch improvements are unexpectedly good. Shout out too for the Apple leather case which is a step up on previous versions. Metal buttons make all the difference.
Apple Watch
The Apple Watch has been out for around 18 months and the biggest step change is watchOS 3. It’s made my watch actually usable for third party apps and killed some of the other features like it’s focus on messaging to provide a dock which contains frequently accessed app’s. The change in day to day use is pretty startling. I can now access weather and news without waiting for 30 seconds while it refreshed. Activity stats are also readily to hand and messages is still there but as an app alongside the others not in its own unique place.
It’s also easier to swap watch faces so you can have one setup for work, one for activity, one for travelling. Along with the easy switching there’s a couple of new faces. One focussed on activity and one which is Numerals and a very simple display. Extra customisation with regards complications and third party watch faces are clearly for a future watchOS version.
The upgrade wasn’t without issue though. The first few days it felt like the display would take slightly longer to switch on. I also had a lot of hassle with third party complications but it looks like they were all third party developer issues as subsequent app updates have resolved all the issues. Overall watchOS 3 is a great update.
Apple also launched Apple Watch Series 2. It’s interesting to see Apple focus on sport and activity over timepiece and luxury which the first editions were all about. The new watches have far brighter displays, are now water resistant to 50 metres and now have a dual core processor which is twice as fast as the previous watch. While important upgrades the biggest for me is built in GPS. This means a run or walk no longer needs the iPhone to track it accurately. If I was running right now it would be an instant purchase but for now I’ll stick with my current watch.
The Future
Apple iPhone 7 and the Apple Watch Series 2 are great devices. iOS 10 is a strong mature platform and watchOS 3 proves that Apple isn’t scared to rip it up and start again. The reimagining of the device thanks to watchOS 3 is fantastic. However it’s clear that exploding batteries aside, Samsung have caught up and in many ways overtaken Apple from a design perspective and pushing new technologies out to consumers. Apple really have to pull out the stops for next years iPhone or risk seeing more people shift to Samsung and Android.
It also needs to up it’s gain with regards Siri as it looks tired when compared to it’s competitors. I also wonder if next year is when Apple shows it’s AR hand? 2017 feels like a year when Apple needs to knock it out of the park. Can it?
iOS 10:The MacStories Review – Federico Viticci delivers a 50,000 word review on iOS 10 and for club members it’s available as an e-book. Deep and worthwhile read.
The Marvel Symphonic Universe – I can just about remember one tune from a Marvel film but in general there music isn’t as memorable as their films.
Fury Road – Crash & Smash – This is breathtaking, so much in Fury Road was real and not CGI and all the better for it. Black and White edition comes out later this year too!
New toys week. Fuji X-T2 has arrived and it’s awesome, Apple announced some new toys and while all pretty predictable I’ll have an iPhone 7 later this week.
I’ve been an Evernote user for many many years and despite looking at alternatives nothing struck me as good in comparison. That’s despite the product starting to get worse, not better, in recent times. The chat/commenting service was of no interest, the related searches were of no use and I found the overall tool getting slower with time.
I stuck by Evernote as I was a premium user and I had so much invested in the platform. I was used to how it worked and a lot of my content over the last few years was almost trapped within it. Exporting from Evernote was poor and basically in a proprietary Evernote format.
This year though a couple of things changed. Firstly Evernote tweaked there prices so I’d be paying more going forward. Secondly, Apple Notes improved and also offered a way to import Evernote content as did Microsofts Onenote. There also seemed to be a lot of grumbles in the many podcasts I listen to about what Evernote had become and how viable was it’s future.
So a few weeks ago I migrated a chunk of content from Evernote to Onenote and Apple Notes and gave each platform a try. Both sync services worked well and I’ve had no issues with searching. In fact both have been speedy in comparison to Evernote, all with much the same accuracy. One Evernote feature I did miss was saving a webpage into Evernote. This was a one click action that saved a great representation of the page forever in Evernote. Neither rival service offers this so I rely on Safari’s ‘Export as PDF’ on both Mac and iOS to save out a PDF which I can then store in Onenote and Notes.
After trying the two tools I’ve plumped for Apple Notes. The Onenote front end is pretty clunky and I preferred the simplicity in Apple Notes. So I’ve moved all my notes and stored content to Apple Notes and it’s fully synched across all my devices. I’ve also deleted everything from Evernote and shutdown the account. So long Evernote.
So I save a little bit of cash and I’ve got a slightly faster but simpler notes service and one which I’ve got more confidence in over the next few years. Next on the list is photo services. Flickr has been my goto online photo service for years but like Evernote, I’ve no confidence in it going forward. So I’ll be looking at 500px, Google, Apple and Adobe’s services and maybe Smugmug. I’ve got a day emotional tie with Flickr and so much content there…this will be a difficult one.
I come to. Looking round I can see a ship, some spare parts and strangely coloured fauna. I also hear warnings but I want to explore.
I wander around not knowing where I am or what I’m supposed to do. I find an orb which will help me…or will it?
So I guess it’s helping, I need to mine stuff and fix the ship and keep my life support going and so many other things….but I just want to explore. I guess I can mine and explore.
I see a lifeform. Some sort of cross between a beaver and an antelope? I move closer and it runs away. I start mining as there’s lots to fix. God I wish my suit could carry more.
After 20 mins I have the ship repaired but I want to see more of this planet before leaving for sunnier shores. It’s massive and so much seems untouched. I’m seeing lots of new species but not making any discoveries like I expected. I’ve also upgraded my mining laser to a gun. Fight time.
Or so I thought. Mining with the gun is difficult, not a great upgrade. I’ve also attracted the sentinels. Fight or run? Fight of course…then run and hide as they bring in reinforcements.
I scrap the gun and go back to the mining laser as I’ve one last bit of fuel to get…and I guess thats whats marked in the distance. It’s quite a harsh planet so it’s on the limit of my suit surviving and about 3 minutes away. I finally get there, get the fuel and head back to the ship. On the way I fire up my jetpack for the first time. Woo-hoo….then ouch as there isn’t much but time.
With the fuel onboard the ship I can finally take off. I say goodbye to the planet and head for the stars….or asteroids. There’s so many of them. But there’s a space station, lets head there.
Landing was easier then expected and trading looks like the best way to make a fast buck. So many ships too, maybe I can buy a bigger one to get more gear slots. I tried a few and although they are for sale I don’t have enough credits. On to a new planet.
This one is more friendlier and has all the parts and fuel I need to enable a warp drive. It takes another hour or so to get everything I need before I fly off…time for warp. Who knows what the next system will hold for me.
3…2…1…warp.
Error, contact Sony with this crash.
What? Elon Musk was right. We are living in a simulation.
That was my first 3 hours with No Man’s Sky which was revealed to the world at the end of 2013. At the time I loved the concept. Everything procedurally generated, a whole universe to explore and so many elements that appealed to me – space travel, trading, on and off planet fighting, stylish graphics and the trailer featured music from 65daysofstatic. This had come out of nowhere and promised so much. Give it to me now!
No Man’s Sky revealed to the world at the end of 2013
It stole the show at VGX and at the next E3 the updated trailer and the hype increased. It was now a PS4 and PC exclusive. Sony were pushing it hard, but it seemed to be promising almost impossible things.
Sean Murray is the face of Hello Games, developers of No Man’s Sky. While the video’s promised so much, could Hello Games, whose history included Joe Danger on iOS (and other platforms) and whose team size in 2014 was…4…really deliver this game? By 2015 the team had grown to 13 but it still seemed tiny compared to the teams delivering COD, Battlefront etc. Hundreds of developers all working on delivering a game that looks great, has atmospheric audio and has a compelling story…with very little bugs that get in the way of the game.
Bambi
That was my biggest fear throughout the development. I loved the concept and each demo only convinced me more, but interviews with Murray and the team were vague, almost evasive at times. Were they keeping the game a surprise or was there a reason why not much was said?
Roll on to 2016 and we finally get to play No Man’s Sky in all it’s procedural goodness including procedural music from 65daysofstatic. Does it deliver on that early promise?
No Man’s Sky – My trusty ship
Apart from reading early interviews and watching the big show video’s I’ve kept away from what No Man’s Sky really is. I wanted to be surprised. There were four video’s released in the run up to launch that showed what the main focus of the game is – Explore, Fight, Trade and Survive. That was enough for me although I did wonder….what is the story?
In the first few days of playing the fighting aspect has been seen the least with explore, trade and survive taking priority in that order. I’m up around 10 hours of playing and I’m still enjoying it which is unusual for me as multiplayer is king and No Man’s Sky has no multiplayer at all.
Animals
The planet variety so far, even though I’ve been to only 7 planets, has been excellent. Unique species, fauna, environments. One almost dormant planet, another really harsh with cold nights. I’ve also seen and done so little in the grand scheme of things, that’s whats keeping me coming back for more.
Graphically it’s been good on the PS4 although it does kick in the fans more than other games. You see a bit of pop on planets as you fly around and even when running or using your jetpack but nothing that destroys the game. The audio is also decent but on the slightly repetitive side. Maybe that will change as I visit more planets.
On my second go I found some buttons and options that I’d totally missed first time round. On the multi-tool, triangle swaps between gun and mining laser. Doh! Pressing L2 analyses the environment so you can discover and upload species for credits. Tempting to fly back to my starting planet but instead I’m sticking with this new system and trying to max out each planet. One was pretty barren with not much to mine but the next one was much colder and has a lot to see and do…and earn.
Also starting to see some story elements unfold which I won’t mention here to keep it spoiler free. The game is doing a nice job of adding in some backstory and prodding you to move on, but it seems you can take things at your own pace.
Warp
There are a few niggles though. The controls are a bit…weird? Sprint on R3 seems wrong and there’s no options to control turn speed. It’s so slow and can be a bit frustrating. Not sure if thats a console specific issue and you get some more flexibility on PC? Your height in the world also seems low. Maybe it’s just me but there have been a few times already where I feel like I’m looking up at everything. I guess alien worlds will mean lots of different heights?
One other issue is that it is a bit crashtastic. I’ve had two already and Hello Games have posted on launch issues stating they are working on it and have brought in a large QA team to help. They’ve also posted some help for those stuck. You can theoretically get stuck on a planet with no fuel, but you can go back to an older save to get you out of a pickle. There’s also a sameness to some of the bases found so far. Nothing disastrous but hopefully something that changes as I journey across the universe.
Alien!
Something that’s clear from reading forums over the last couple of days is that there are many not happy with the game. It doesn’t deliver what Hello Games promised, it shouldn’t be a full price game which is bollocks (due to team size?), it has no multiplayer which has been promised/hinted etc etc. They are delusional. The game lets me land on a planet, roam around for hours finding…stuff…and then lets me take off and visit any of the stars I can see in the sky. Any! Thats fucking awesome as long as you aren’t a Greenpeace member and are quite happy raping planet after planet for your capitalist gains.
I have been wondering why this game appealed to me so much from the first showing back in 2013? Why would I get a kick out of travelling across a universe in a solo adventure? I think back to when I was a kid with my Amstrad and three games that I loved that in some ways No Man’s Sky pay homage to.
Elite
Elite is know by everyone. It was the daddy of space adventuring and everyone who had a computer at the time gave it ago…and many probably gave up when they couldn’t dock. What a bastard introduction to the game made much more easy when you upgraded to the auto dock. But that sense of scale, with such simplistic graphics, stuck with me for a long time.
MercenaryMercenary was another science fiction title that I loved. You started the game having crashed on a planet and the goal was to escape the planet. You had to trade, upgrade to better ships and fight. Spot the similarities? It was one of the few games that I felt compelled to complete a few times as there were different ways to succeed. Graphics so simple but your brain filled in the rest. The final game that No Man’s Sky reminds me of is Captain Blood.
Captain Blood
This was a great looking but bit of a weird French game that involved talking to different alien races, flying to different planets across the solar system and trying to find clones of Captain Blood. I never really got into it but loved the concept.
So tie those gaming memories together with the likes of Star Wars and the possibilities of a massive sandbox environment with a story makes for a compelling game. That was always the promise and Hello Games have delivered. I’m sure there will be frustrations along the way and so much still to discover, like space combat this morning and the joy of mining asteroids – who knew! And the best bit is it’s my game, my planets, my story. Congratulations to Hello Games in delivering a game that does meet the hype. Onwards.
