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Saturday, August 15, 2009
I love my iPhone. I know, I know: I'm a sheep/Mac-tragic/everybody has one/blah blah, but it's a great little piece of technology that makes my life easier (maybe. Or maybe more complicated and I'm buying into some big corporate lie. Whatever), means I'm never without my beloved internets (I have made peace with my addiction; it's fine), and it's real purty. Six years ago, I refused to even own a mobile phone. I still remember feeling like a shameful sell-out walking into Clifton Hill Retravision to buy my first pre-paid Nokia 3210 after my employer insisted I do so. Now I sometimes catch myself sitting on a bus, sliding my fingers over what is essentially a palm-sized touch-screen computer, as I check my email/pay bills/download music, and can't help but smile at how impressively high tech and futuristic it all is. Yes, for all my hardened cynicism, even I know that 18-year-old playing black-and-white 16-bit snake for the first time on the bus home from Retravision would be utterly stunned to see what I was doing on that exact same bus less than a decade later (though possibly more stunned that I still don't have a driver's license and am STILL public transport's bitch). Anyway, enough wide-eyed gushing. That was really all just a long-winded intro leading up to a list my favourite iPhone apps. Because I like lists. (Disclaimer: some of these are technically mobile/iPhone versions of websites that I have on my home screen and not technically apps, but they operate in much the same way -- sometimes better). Newsy apps A fair part of my job involves being on top of the news, at home and abroad, all the time. I read newspapers, magazines, blogs and online news sites all day long. So the first thing I like to do in the morning is see what the rest of the world has been doing and reading while I've been asleep. First port of call is the ABC app, which is fairly good for the latest local news (though interspersed with random ABC content I don't want to see), and is fast and well designed. Next is Google News, which is a nicely pared down version of the site. I then often check the Huffington Post's 'World' section. The actual HuffPo website makes my eyes bleed, but their app is much sleeker and dare I say, a better way of looking at their content than via the actual site. 'Big Headlines' out of the way, I jump on the Daily Beast's Cheat Sheet, which has been nicely optimised for phones. It's fairy US-centric, but they pick through the best/most interesting of the US papers, and have a great nose for leaked documents, good political interviews and meaty op-eds. For similar things and an equally slick, easy-to-use design, broken down well into categories, I'll give a shout-out to the Newser mobile site. Then, to see what stories have been doing big eyeball mileage overnight, I use Diggle, which is a great little Digg app and another one I prefer to use over the original site itself. I don't know what algorithm they use, but I find the stories/sites listed tend to be fresher than on the real site. It's also insanely easy to bookmark every headline that looks interesting and send the whole list in one email for me to read when I get into the office. I also have Breaking News Online, which sends push notifications for any really big news stories from around the world, as soon as they break. You have to be, uh, really addicted to the news cycle for it to be of much value, but if you're the kind of person who always likes to know what's going on in the world in a really OCD way, it's curiously reassuring to know you'll be notified straight away. Social networking I of course use the Facebook app, even though it sucks. For Twitter, I've been switching between TweetDeck and Tweetie. TweetDeck is awesome, because I use it at home and at work, and they all sync in together and have my groups and it's a beautiful design. But -- and it's a big but -- it's still so freaking unstable and takes forever to load. The whole point of Twitter is writing about what you're doing now. Usually, by the time TweetDeck has loaded, I've realised what I was going to write isn't actually as witty or interesting as I'd immediately thought, and if everybody did that, Twitter would cease to exist. So if I want to say something really quickly, I jump on Tweetie -- it's simple and functional and has served me well. But I also follow a good 650+ users, so if I want to kill some time reading other people's inane thoughts, I'll wait for TweetDeck to churn into life. Games Here's a super-embarrassing confession: I'm a big fan of those cutesy casual/time management games of the Diner Dash ilk (don't judge me!), and the iPhone is pretty much the perfect platform for them. They're fun and mindless and good time-wasters while waiting for late trains. I won't list all the cringey titles, but if it's here, I've probably played and enjoyed it. Fuck you. That said, the single most played game -- and I'd venture to say the single most used app full stop -- on my phone is Solitaire City. I am hopelessly addicted to Spider Solitaire and I play it every time I have a few seconds to kill. The only 'big'/actually-paid-more-than-a-buck-for games I have is Sim City. I always loved the PC version, and the iPhone adaption is incredibly detailed and true to the original. It takes a bit of scrolling on such a small screen, but hey -- building cities then burning them down is good family fun. Tools (and other things) When I bought that 3210 all those years ago, Snake did indeed get a good workout, but the feature I probably loved the most was the little torch on top of the phone. Equally, one of my favourite iPhone apps is the most simple: Flashlight. It's just a full screen of white light, but really, really useful. Theme Clock makes for a good makeshift bedside clock and allows you to turn the auto-lock off, so it stays showing all night. This one is probably the single most useful thing on my phone: the Metlink app. As I said before, I am totally public transport's bitch, and this puts just a little of the power back in my hands. It has all the timetables and routes for all public transport, and lets you save your regular tram/train/bus stops and lines, for quick access to just how long you'll have to wait until the next sardine tin is showing up. To a lesser extent, Tram Tracker is also great, but I just catch fewer trams, and tram stops tend to be better at displaying accurate timetable info anyway. I actually lied before when I said the first thing I looked at in the morning was the ABC -- it's actually Pocket Weather. The default weather app on the iPhone is terrible, but I really like this one. It has a seven-day outlook, gets its info direct from the BoM and has cute little animated logos. I leave the house before 7am and usually don't get home until well after 8:30, all interspersed with lots of sitting at bus stops. If it's going to be cold or rain, I really need to be appropriately dressed, because I fucking loathe the cold. I also like to find a good half-hour of non-rain in there to go running, if I can. I actually haven't used this one for ages, but when travelling overseas (... she says like the seasoned jetsetter she is. Hah, no, but I usually take one overseas holiday a year), I have found the Currency app really useful. I can never remember even approximate currency conversions, and in these crazy economic times, it can move around a bit from day-to-day, anyway. UrbanSpoon I like (though I don't really use that 'random' function), but because I'm a tree-hugging, carrot-marrying hippy vegetarian, I probably more often use VegOut, which shows all the vegetarian/vego-friendly places in your vicinity. Hmm, I think that's the lot. I have a zillion other apps, I just don't use them very often. These are the ones that I love again and again and again and crack my hardened exterior to squeal "Wow, technology!" Now naturally, I want to know your favourite apps -- especially the free/cheapo ones.
posted by Ruth at 9:25 PM Monday, July 06, 2009
In lieu of actual words, here are some random photos from my phone: This is near my house. I don't get it:  I bought these to be sweet or something. They were gross.
Puffing Billy!
James in Chiang Mai, doing what he loves to do best on holiday:
I... don't know. A typically productive work day in the office.
Do you want... BARBARION?!
Heh:
Best pun ever? Maybe!
This is my work desk, including speakers shaped like dogs, erasers in the shape of sushi and too many post-its:
posted by Ruth at 10:54 PM Saturday, February 14, 2009
Oh yeah, I have a blog. Sorry. So, one thing I've been doing a lot in my blogging hiatus is Thai boxing. For the uninitiated, it's somewhat like kickboxing, but with added knees and elbows and fewer mullets. For those who learn visually: Kickboxer:  Thai boxers:  Aaanyway, I do a lot of this. As I mentioned recently, I got pretty fat and lazy for a while there. It wasn't fun, but it wasn't devastating, either. I ate a lot of cheese, and that was great. Now I train maybe 13 or so hours a week and eat fairly well to sustain this level of activity. I do it because I love the sport and, although I'm an utterly lovely, compassionate, peace-loving person, I have always really enjoyed fighting. It's just fun. But despite this, I'm not terribly interested in sport or health and fitness in a general sense. If I didn't do Thai boxing, I sincerely doubt I'd be running or doing pilates or buying an Ab-doer instead. I'd just be eating cheese. Because those things are boring. It's great being really, really fit, but it's not SO great that I'd buy a Fitness First membership just for the privilege. I bring this up for two reasons: 1. Since I'm really, really fit these days, people talk/whinge to me a lot/ask me questions about their own fitness endeavours and, more often, their desire to get fit/lose weight, but inability to do so. 2. I've been following a great series of posts over at a blog called The Pound titled 'Against the Professionalization of Movement' (parts 1, 2, 3, 4) that expresses what I'm about to say better than I'll probably say it. Here is what I get a lot of: "I want to get fit/lose weight. I hate the gym (or running, or whatever), but I know I should go. I will start going again." First off, if you hate the gym, you're not going to go. You're just not. You might go for a month, or you might go sporadically, but you're not going to go regularly for the forseeable future. If you were going to love the gym, you'd know by now. I have two friends who joined the gym as adults after leading largely un-sporty lives and fell in love with it. I have many, many more friends who haven't. And they never will. Secondly, fitness and weight loss probably isn't going to be enough of a motivator to get you to do something you don't enjoy for any sustained length of time. If you were one of those people who just loved being fit/thin that much, you'd probably already be doing the things that were necessary to get there. My point is this: find something you actually enjoy doing. It depresses me that so many people think the only way they can be active is by dragging their arses into the human equivalent of a hamster wheel. If you just enjoy being active for the sake of being active, you'll get fit as a result. You won't even have to think about it. It also depresses me that many people don't even consider trying the hundreds of activities out there because the fitness industry has them convinced that the only thing adults can do is boring-arse shit like the stairmaster. Here is a list of things you can do that aren't the gym:
(Don't worry, I'm not going to turn into a fitness blogger, because ZZZZ)
posted by Ruth at 10:34 PM Sunday, February 01, 2009
Let me tell you about the worst program on television at the moment. Maybe ever. It's called 4 Ingredients and it's on the Lifestyle Channel and it's not even so bad it's good -- it's so bad it makes me hate humanity just a little bit more. (I still watch this program, of course, but only because I'm kind of addicted to the instant hit of bile I get every time I hear the theme song and so I can accurately relay it's shitness to you in full detail). It's hosted by these two women:  The one on the left has a horrible bogan nasal voice, while the one on the right puts on this faux softly-spoken posh accent, but it's definitely fake because they're from Queensland, and all Queenslanders sound like the Scully family from Neighbours. I imagine her real voice sounds like a rusty buzz saw. She is also up the duff. Since when are pregnant women allowed on television? Anyway, apparently these ladies wrote a cookbook consisting of recipes that only have four ingredients in them, and it was a huge seller, because people are stupid and lazy, and thus someone thought it would be a good idea to give them their own TV show. In fact I'm pretty sure it went down something like this: Lifestyle Channel monkey: These women have written a successful cookbook -- let us give them their own show without screen-testing them first or giving them actual scriptwriters. I'm sure their ability to write a successful cookery book means they can write and present their own TV show. That's... pretty much the only way I can fathom this show having been created. That, or sexual favours. So the primary reason the show is so bad is that they generally make what can only in the very loosest, vaguest, Microsoft-Word-thesaurus-synonym-choice way be called "recipes". Here is one recipe: Get some lamb. Put some bottled pesto on it. Put it in the oven. THAT. IS. NOT. A. RECIPE. Some are even worse. One was just strawberries dipped in sour cream. That was it: take a strawberry, dip it in sour cream, eat it. And the dishes that DO resemble actual recipes are inevitably constructed entirely from bottled, tinned or pre-made ingredients so they come in under the four-ingredient limit. This is particularly annoying, as they constantly stress how "healthy" their food is. It never, ever, ever is. This was another "recipe": Get a pre-made pie crust. Fill it with canned caramel (yes, there is canned caramel. I know.) Cover with cream. Serve. a) Yuck b) They PAY these women to come up with this shit? And sometimes they just flat-out bullshit to claim something has four ingredients. "Mixed veggies" isn't ONE ingredient, lady. To make matters worse, as I alluded to earlier, they are horrible presenters and just spout off the most idiotic shit. In one episode, the bogan one went on a rant about how she only buys "organics". "I started buying organics years ago. It's just so much better and now I only buy organics." ARGH. I think I actually yelled at the screen. It's organic food, you dolt, not a fucking brand name. Doesn't someone check this shit? Isn't there a producer on hand to have a quiet word with her? Another time, the faux-posh one was reeling off a stupid list of ways to be more healthy (or something) and they were all stupid, but the stupidest one was this: "Eat lots of veggies because they contain antioxidants which help protect your cells from damage." Yes, THAT is the reason to eat vegetables -- because they contain molecules that, according to most studies, consuming more of won't make a shit of difference to your health -- not the millions of actually good reasons to eat them. Oh, and the bogan one has a son called Jaxson. *brain explodes* If you dare, you can read some of their "recipes" here and view the horror for yourself here.
posted by Ruth at 10:53 PM Sunday, January 25, 2009
So, huh, it's been a long time between drinks, eh? Here's what I've been doing with my life instead of posting here: Up until late last year, I was working for an evil magazine publishing company. My business card said 'Editor', but it wasn't all PR freebies, ordering writers about on assignments and scintillating interviews over long lunches. Actually, it wasn't any of that. It was begging photographers for discounts, begging people to write free, rewriting the kind of copy you get when pay writers nothing, de-mangling dull email interviews, being my own sub-editor and proof-reader, trying to avoid the constant ethical compromises I was asked to make... and being told I'd done a shit job of it at the end by my barely-literate, sycophantic boss, regardless. Anyway, I did that for almost two years. In that time, I probably put together about 20 issues of 90-120 page magazines, where I wrote (or re-wrote) the vast majority of the copy, subbed almost everything, organised and oversaw all the photo shoots and image selection, and oversaw the layout and design. I learned a lot. I also suffered from anxiety attacks and heart palpitations, couldn't sleep, ate like crap and put on weight. And I earned less than I did as a bartender for the privilege. I'm actually not at all sorry I did it. But I hope you can all forgive me for not really wanting to spend my down-time writing when I finally got home from work at 9pm. But anyway, you can put away the tiny violins and call off the wah-mbulance, because I'm now working in a super excellent job, with lovely, intelligent people and good hours and interesting, relevant things about which to write, and they pay me to blog and use Twitter and do silly things in Photoshop. So now I'm happy and healthy again, I thought what better time to resurrect this here blog. I may even bring back the much-loved cult comic series, The Illustrated Adventures of Ruth! Crazy times. I know most of the Australian blogosphere have jumped ship in favour of Facebook and Twitter and whatever, but I was blogging long before it was cool and no doubt I'll be beating this horse long after it's dead, too. So: did you all miss me or what?
posted by Ruth at 3:20 PM Monday, May 19, 2008
A few years back, I did a post about my favourite Firefox add-ons. The interwebs, and the ways we use browsers, have changed so much since then, I thought it was worth revisiting. I'm still a big fan of many I nominated back then — FoxyTunes, ForecastFox and Flashblock are still favourites. Some newer ones I like are:
What add-ons are you digging at the moment? If you commented on the original post back in the dark ages of 2005, what has changed since then? Are you still using IE? Seriously? Are you intellectually deficient in some way?
posted by Ruth at 12:50 AM Saturday, March 29, 2008
For those who enjoyed (or continue to enjoy) the reviews of Babysitters Club Books here, you may also appreciate these two sites: 1. Blogger Beware: The Goosebumps Blog. Goosebumps was the Harry Potter series for youngsters when I was a kid - even kids who hated reading collected them. I'm not really sure why, in retrospect; I'm told the Harry Potter books are quite good, but Goosebumps weren't particularly engrossing or well-written - although I will admit 9-year-old Ruth did at least find several of them scary - but for whatever reason, you HAD to have them, and most kids also read the words inside. All the kids in my grade 3 class (or maybe just my table that year, which I cannot believe I still remember consisted of Lachlan, Rowan, Saskia, Kate and myself. Wow.) would bring all their Goosebumps books each day and stack them in a pile on our tables to... uhm, I don't know why. Show how many we had, I guess? 2. The Dairi Burger reviews Sweet Valley High. I never read a lot of the SVH books as a kid - I was generally too much of a tomboy to have ever been seen borrowing girly YA fiction books, but generally relished any of the trash my sister brought home - but the reviews are appropriately snarky and I'm sure many of you out there (both of you) did read them. Apparently the SVH books are being re-released and updated, which is incredibly lame. YA fiction isn't generally of a very high standard, and it surely isn't THAT hard to find a moderately competent author to come up with new-ish storylines. Even R.L. Stine is apparently penning some new books.
posted by Ruth at 1:14 AM  |
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