Category: Weekly digest

The Apple Watch is out and I’m wearing mine right now, hence a lot of Apple Watch stories caught my eye this week.

• My rocky first 24hrs with the ᴡᴀᴛᴄʜ
• How Does Apple Watch Stack Up as a Health-and-Fitness Tracker?
• The Watch
• How to Tame the Apple Watch
• 28 Apple Watch tips and tricks you should know – some great tips in this list
• New Watch users: if you check the Activity app on your Watch-paired iPhone, you can see in the history (month view) when it was built/tested.
• How to Turn Your Apple Watch Gold
• Apple.com – History of Apple web pages
• Façades – another great post from Matt Gemmell. We all have façades – I know I do.
• The Paralysis of Perfect
• The triumph of Nicola Sturgeon
• Commentary: On quislings, ‘non-Scots’ and Scottish nationalism
• Euan McColm: Does Cameron’s masterplan extend beyond his survival?
• The Best Gear for Travel – great roundup for the travellers amongst us
• How Photography Was Optimized for White Skin Color
• What if Man of Steel was IN COLOR? – Man of Steel had more problems than it’s Colour.

Enjoy.

Trailer week and for me it was a case of the good the bad and the ugly. Still not shifted the cold/cough and I had a throughly slow run yesterday which proved I’m well below par.

• Star Wars: The Force Awakens Official Teaser #2 – The Good. A great trailer and hit all the right notes – goosebumps were had. Also worth watching Matthew Mcconaughey’s reaction to the trailer and Fr. Roderick watches the Star Wars trailer. So good.
• Terminator Genisys Movie – Official Trailer 2 – The Bad. If you don’t want spoiled then avoid this trailer. Major twists and to be honest it looks a mess of a story now. Why couldn’t they have left it alone after Terminator 2?
• Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice – Official Teaser Trailer – The Ugly. The Dark Knight Returns is one of my favourite graphic novels and I always wished for a film version of it…but this isn’t it. To dark, too grim, too much CGI, too much Zack Snyder.
• Fatal silence: Why do so many fortysomething men kill themselves? Sombre viewing but well worth catching on iPlayer.
• The Cult of Work You Never Meant to Join
• The True Cost of Gun Violence in America
• OS X Reviewed – John Siracusa steps down from reviewing OS X. His reviews were long and detailed but a must read and they’ll be missed.
• The Eternal Return of BuzzFeed
• Star Wars Battlefront Reveal Trailer – looks to good to be true…and it’s from EA so firmly in the “I’ll believe it when I see it” camp.
• Reverse Engineering Wipeout – I loved Wipeout and seeing the original tracks in a browser brought back some fond memories. Still think it’s a missed opportunity that there’s no current gen Wipeout or anything even remotely similar.
• Enter Sandman – METALLICA Cover – The Warning
• Creep – Vintage Postmodern Jukebox Radiohead Cover ft. Haley Reinhart

This week – Avengers: Age of Ultron and hopefully an Apple Watch delivery. Toys!

A bit late this week due to Easter. I’ve got the week off which means lots of DIY around the house and a few days to decide on ordering an Apple Watch. I probably will as I’m intrigued enough to understand how it will work day to day and whether it will actually add benefit. It also means there is lots of time to catch up on Apple Watch articles.

• iPhone Killer: The Secret History of the Apple Watch
• Welcome to Apple Watch – Apple has now posted guided tours for the Apple Watch. Each week the Christy Turlington Burns blog has leaked some more detail on the Apple Watch features. Drip drip drip.
• I Followed My Stolen iPhone Across The World, Became A Celebrity In China, And Found A Friend For Life
• The Making of Alto’s Adventure
• Rockstar Deals With GTA Cheaters In A Very GTA Way
• San Francisco in Cities: Skylines is freaking mind-blowing
• Cimtographer – Cities: Skylines mod to import roads from real world road maps or export your cities and view them with road map viewers. I’ve tried Glasgow and I need to work a bit on smoothing out the land but the roads were very accurate in places, especially kingston bridge which was a work of art with the various intersections and flyovers.
• Buzz Out Loud: 10 Years Later
• NewsShaft – New Scottish Politics podcast
• The Nicola Sturgeon memo: Westminster’s nasty machinations have been exposed – The fallout form the leaked memo and story in the Telegraph, the almost immediate debunking of it by all parties involved and Labours glee at the initial article and then refusal to acknowledge it was fabricated will live long in the memory. Rotten to the core and Labour deserve all they won’t get come May 7th. Just after I posted this I see the Labour MP’s are deleting tweets relating to this…but we have all the evidence we need.
• The mysterious case of the MP and the time travelling hackers of doom – stumbled on this last night – very funny.
• Go Ahead, Post It: Why You Shouldn’t Play It Safe On The Internet
• Someone Flew a Drone into an Active Volcano — And It’s Incredible
• 37 incredible drone photos from across the globe that would be totally illegal today – still want a drone!
• Dot Everyone – To Be Brilliant At The Internet
• Choose Boring Technology

One week until I get some time off which will mean more physical work around the house but some much needed downtime from work work. Like most folk in the UK my reading this week has become more political. 6 weeks from now it will all be over, but until then:

• Analysis: Nicola Sturgeon delivers a speech that will frame an election – the SNP have become the only real alternative to austerity in the UK. Labour should be ashamed.
• How Scotland’s Economy Contributes to the UK – some interesting statistics on Scotland’s economy, especially in the light of the surge of SNP support and the seemingly inevitable prospect of another independence vote in the next 5 years no matter what happens in May.
• A question for Ed and David: are you scared to talk about policies? – biggest surprise from the first televised debate wasn’t Miliband but the lack of any substance.
• Cassetteboy – Emperor’s New Clothes rap – too good.
• The War Over Who Steve Jobs Was
• Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli: Meet the Author – Authors of Becoming Steve Jobs speak to John Gruber
• Apple’s Tim Cook leads different – good interview with Tim Cook who is giving away his fortune and definitely thinks differently to Steve Jobs.
• Comparing my Fitbit One and iPhone 6 – with the Apple Watch coming soon and their reluctance to share data with Healthkit I’m more and more thinking of moving away from Fitbit.
• The Shut-In Economy
• Follow the White Ball – The New Yorker profiles Ronnie O’Sullivan – a great read.
• Bloodborne Review: Scarlet Letter – First AAA for the PS4?
• How To Traffic, v2 – an amazing guide to traffic issues in Cities: Skylines from an actual traffic planner.
• Spectre Teaser Trailer – great teaser for the new Bond film.
• TARS and CASE – Interstellar [Behind the scenes] – great insight into Interstellar
• Obama talks ‘The Wire’ with show’s creator, says favorite character is Omar
• The Last Hours of Laura K – launches tomorrow.