Ah it's grand.
Sure.

It seems difficult to reach the website for this, so here it is:

Mahon Tribunal Report (PDF 56Mb)

I have been threatening to get a tablet for awhile. Of course, as one might expect, an iPad has been the object of desire. This remains the case but not because I see this Android experience as a failure. Using a tablet has proven the tablet form factor for me. Even though I’m pecking this out on a soft keyboard which leaves a lot to be desired. Part of that’s probably due to the compromises that brought this €175 price tag. I accept that. The smart text that accompanies my typing just doesn’t seem as smart as on iOS which is down to UX design. It’s good but just not there yet. As an example, typing this I miss the space bar a lot and would expect that to be handled but it isn’t. There’s a good blog post by Benjamin Tseng doing the rounds on Twitter today (actually it was ages ago as I’ve been slow to get this finished). It talks about text and cursor selection positioning on Android versus iOS where the author prefers Android but I’m just not finding that same experience. Again, some of that is probably down to the capacitive screen and so not an entirely fair comparison. It’s enough of a pain in the arse that I’m now completing this, quite sometime after first starting this post, on a laptop.

In the iOS Productivity Apps quick post I mentioned one app from Ricoh: Image to Text OCR and I felt that I needed to discuss it a bit further because it really is a great little app that I think might be quite under rated. When I first went looking for OCR apps I was looking to solve a rather annoying little problem: I’ve been working with Sharepoint Workflows at work and I wanted to document the rules that I was creating. I thought this would be as easy as a copy/paste of the rules from Sharepoint Designer where I was creating them. Alas, no. You can’t select the text of the rules in the workflow wizard. So I decided to look for an elaborate technical solution rather than type them out by hand.

I’ve been in a couple of retail outlets over the past few days and am taken aback by how little effort is put into either selling or upselling. I’m taken aback because we here so much about recessionary times and how hard the retail sector has been hit. This is a bit of a long post as I’m going through the scenarios. Here’s what I’m talking about:

This isn’t a particularly deep and insightful post, more of a share. These are the apps that I have in my iPhone Productivity folder currently. Feel free to suggest others.

I’ve followed the GTD threads on sites like lifehacker.com for awhile but was never really able for the minimalism and perhaps the discipline required to follow true GTD. I had found a decent task manager in The Hit List but the hot and cold behaviour of the developer behind it means it’s a tool that I don’t feel I can depend on. It’s also Apple only (iOS & OS X) and I wanted one tool for everything. Having a hunt around I came across Nozbe. My first reaction was ‘Meh’ but a second look made me realise what a great app it is. This isn’t going to be an in-depth review and discussion of GTD; I’m not up to that :) What this is, is a look at how I’m using it.

In an effort to get working on some code and improve that aspect of my skills I started to look at jQuery. This was largely inspired by seeing what @suth did with Social Timeline and borrows heavily as well as learning lots from his work. The idea behind My Day On Twitter (MDOT) is to have a simple dashboard (buzzword alert!) of my day’s twitter activity; conversations, mentions, favourites, new followers/followees. I’ve filtered mentions so that only ‘free standing’ mentions are included i.e. those which aren’t a reply (as these would show up in the main conversation timeline). It’s built on the Thinkup (by @ginatrapani) API so as of now only posts data is accessible. This means only conversations and mentions from the functionality list above are included. MDOT makes use of the excellent Embed.ly to provide a preview of any linked content in a tweet. So, posted images will show up as well a Google Map preview when I tweet from @cyclemeter

I’ve had this bike (official product page) since December 2010 so I think I have had enough time cycling it to be able to post a review.

My Beloved Kona Dr. Good, kitted out for the commute

Prior to riding this bike I’d been on a Free Radicalised,  Electra Townie which is a fantastic bike (currently sitting in the shed disassembled from the house move in February). However it seemed too heavy for the daily commute when I wasn’t using it as my primary transport any longer. I’m lucky to have a great LBS (Local Bike Shop, in case you’re wondering what that oft used TLA is) in Moycullen Bike Works who don’t push you when you go in for a chat. Garry (MBW) was initially suggesting the Norco XFR 4 (as he also rides a Norco XFR among other bikes) which appealed with the relaxed frame and front suspension. I was considering the front suspension due to my wrists being painful for several weeks after a tumble on my older Raleigh hybrid and the roads along the route from Moycullen to Dangan (Galway) being in such a shocking state of disrepair. Eric (MBW) also had a Kona 2011 catalogue and knows of my interest in internal hubs as he did the wonderful conversion on my Electra Townie. That was it, the Dr Good was perfect for me as soon as I saw it in there; internal hub, front disc brake and rear roller brake on a relaxed frame. Depending on the Sterling exchange rate you’ll pay about €700 for it (that’s the price I paid).

I realised that I have a whole load of cycling related stuff that I really should be blogging about. Now, I’m not necessarily talking about the kind of stuff that we talk about over on http://GalwayCycling.org but maybe more of the happy, review type stuff. I’ve been building up kit and getting happier with the overall setup so maybe it’s time to start referencing some of that. Maybe, just maybe instead of some of the shite sales directories that appear on Google when you search for something will be replaced by my sweary goodness.