Albums of 2011: Number 9 - Battles - Gloss Drop

This year's countdown continues...

9. Battles - Gloss Drop

Nobody thought they'd do anything much after Tyondai Braxton left them in the lurch mid-way through recording this album. The remaining members deleted all of his parts and built the rest up from scratch using guest vocalists to good effect where required. It's what I though all music would sound like in 2011 when I was in 1975. I saw them in Sheffield a couple of weeks ago and they do this stuff really well live.

Number 8 tomorrow...

Albums of 2011: Number 10 - James Blake - James Blake

OK, it's that time of year again. Pleasingly it's a little bit harder pulling together a list of ten favourite albums from this year as it's been a reasonable year for music.

I'll do it as a countdown this year.  Today it's Number 10.

10. James Blake - James Blake

This year's Burial or XX entry. Spooky, ethereal, haunting and so on and so forth. Good though.  If you like this check out Jamie's Woon's Mirror Writing too.

Number 9 tomorrow...

You Say Pomodoro...

I've been trying to limit travel expenses... my own and my companies... to see just how productive I can be whilst working from home. I have to say, it's going pretty well. I use the Pomodoro technique when I really have a lot to accomplish and I find that it's much easier to do whilst at home than it is in an office.

Don't get me wrong, it's great catching up with people and collaborating in real life, but when you are using a technique such as Pomodoro, you really need absolute control over your environment in order to limit distractions and potential interuptions.

If you haven't used Pomodoro, it's worth taking a look. It's far from complicated but it's very useful. Essentially it's about working in a very focused way on a single task for 25 minutes before taking a five minute break and then returning for another 25 minute stint. Repeat to fade...

There's more about it here... it was named after those tomato-shaped kitchen timers which, if you have one, you can easily set to use the technique. If you haven't, there are plenty of apps available across all platforms.

Enjoy.

The Only Way Is... UP!

I couldn't resist purchasing UP! The wearable health-band and accompanying iOS app just brought to market by Jawbone, who are famous for making bluetooth earpieces.  Here are my thoughts on the band and its accompanying app:

Buying the Band

I got it from the Apple Store via the store's iOS app. It suggested that delivery would be in 2-3 three weeks but it arrived within a week. In theory, the band comes in a range of sizes and colours, but there were only black ones available directly from Apple. I got a medium and, when it arrived, wished I'd gone for large as it seemed a little tight. However, after a couple of days I read in a forum that you're meant to where it on your less dominant arm and I found that when switching it to my left arm to sit alongside my watch I suddenly couldn't really feel I was wearing it.

The UP app is a free download but doesn't work until your register an UP band, which cost me £80.

Housekeeping Suggestions for iOS 5.01

This isn't comprehensive... I'm just starting a list. They're not major, just annoying in the current state.




All Notifications Off!

There used to be a switch that allowed you knock off all notifications in one go so that you could sleep peacefully at night until the alarm app went off in the morning.

Now you have to dig into the labyrinthine Notifications menu and remove all apps from the Notification Centre one by one. Don't think so. I have taken to switching off my phone completely at night and banging my head on the pillow several times according to the hour I wish to wake.


Clear All switch in Notifications View

If you have lots of different apps pinging alerts at you all day it doesn't take long to rack up a lengthy ticket-roll of notifications to scroll down when you drag down from the top of your screen to see them.

Currently you have to clear them in chunks, all mail messages, all tweets, all Foursquare logins and so on.

This isn't as much hassle as the lack of an All Notifications Off switch, but it could still do with tidying up.


Newsstand Icon

You should be able to shift this into a folder... it isn't of interest to everyone. There is a super-tricky Kung Fu Jitsuduko method of achieving this now by swiftly moving the Newsstand icon over another whilst the folder-creation animation is still running but I've never been able to make it work.

I'll think of some more later.