First day back at work.

So today was something like my first day back in the office after maternity leave. Not my leave, of course, my wife's. In the normal course if things she goes to work while I stay at home and look after the kids. We've had the luxury of maternity leave for about four months now though, but that is rapidly coming to an end.

So I have to start thinking about how to organise my days around being home alone with two small children. It's a little daunting, to say the least.

But it is a privilege too. My first child is awesome in so many ways and a lot of that is due to her having had me around all her life.

Without getting too preachy, it is an absolute shame more families aren't able to keep one parent at home full time. A better economist than me could tell you more about why mums working became less about the entitlement to do so than a financial necessity. Or maybe it is just as simple as people choosing to pursue financial and material rewards but just missing out on what is really important in their lives. All I know is we have less holidays than a lot of our peers, drive a crappy car, and so on, but we have two kids whose lives we are filling with memories of happy times doing things together.

Ugh, that does sound very preachy, doesn't it?

Well, it doesn't change the fact that I am going to have less and less time to myself in the coming months. And that means I am going to have to be more disciplined than I ever have been before if I am going to keep raising awesome kids and feel like I am doing something for my own life too.

And that is perhaps what is really daunting...

Review: The Raid - Assault by Precinct 13

I had seen the flashy trailers for this film. You know, the ones that promise you the most amazing experience of your life, the most incredible action, most spectacular fights, calligraphy, and so on. And to be honest, I wasn't all that intrigued. It took an article in Wired, of all places, to get me to want to see the movie, basically because they were very enthusiastic about the stunts in the film.

The movie plot is about as simple as it can get. Truckload of cops, tower block full of villains. Raid goes wrong and, instead of a clinical room by room pacification of the block, one false move results in things going crazy quite quickly. Enter the mad martial arts.

Pencak silat is an Indonesian fighting form it forms, apparently possibly derived from watching a monkey fighting a tiger. Having watched The Raid, I can believe it. The fighting in the movie is really intense.

At times I was actually reminded of some of the hand-to-hand struggles in Saving Private Ryan - us that desperate and intense. It's fast too, but this is not the speedily choreographed kung fu of a Jackie Chan flick, designed to amuse as much as amaze. This is brutal, dirty, survival fighting. It is clear these are moves aimed at maiming or killing an opponent.

There is one scene near the start of the movie where we see the hero, played by Iko Uwais, practising against a dummy. After a few genre-typical situps and stretches, I'll let's rip with a blistering number of punches and strikes to the dummy. At thus point I remembered hearing they used to have to slow down footage of Bruce Lee, so the audience could see he had in fact thrown a punch. But then I wonder if Bruce would have approved of the sheer graphic nature of the violence in a film like The Raid.

I looked away at a couple of points when it was clear we were just building up to a killer applying the coup de grace to a brutalised opponent (victim?). And there were other times when it felt like I might actually be watching a particularly bad piece of Saw-sequel fanfic - way too much blood and gore onscreen than is at all necessary to make the point someone one a fight.

It just seems a little out of place in a film that is really as superficial and throwaway as The Raid. Make no mistake, I'm not saying it's a bad film. It's just not a serious film, like Private Ryan is.

The Raid could be a serious hit without it. The acting, such as there is, what with all the fighting in the film, is good enough. The characters are all sufficiently well written to get the piece moving along and it's all competently directed and all. But that slightly nasty, sadistic side to some of the violence will probably stop The Raid being more than a cult hit for fans of Asian fight flicks.

Not a bad way to spend a fiver and a couple of hours on a Tuesday night, but not the greatest action or martial arts movie to come out of Asia in recent times either. Certainly not one for date night or watching with the kids either.

Last minute post

Just a few spare minutes on a Sunday evening, as my bath runs in the background, for a quick post/update and a few thoughts on the week.

Firstly, Diablo 3 is a little disappointing. I am not blown away by the single-player experience. Yes, its slick as snot, nicer visuals, nice audio and so on. But its a little, er, repetitive, isn't it? I mean, is this really what has gotten millions of people so excited about - endless running around fairly similar dungeons, mostly spamming two or three buttons? Its pretty easy too. I've just killed Belial and it was the first fight with enough difficulty to it that I needed to rejigger my abilities to win. And that's nearly halfway through the game. I don't know, its ok, I just struggle to see the immense attraction if running the same instances again and again, just to get loot to make those instances easier to run. But maybe it gets better in Act 3, maybe public games or higher difficulty levels will be fun.

All this is assuming of course you can actually play. it took nearly an hour to log in on launch say and two hours tonight.

So far, the best thing about playing Diablo is all the time it gives me for other hobbies. I've been working on painting 10 wraithguard I got on Ebay. This is also a little repetitive as the models are more or less identical, but at last at the end off it I'll have sine nice looking models I can use in games with other real live human beings.

I've also been doing a little research for a future article computing the mobile phone market with modern theology. Yes,I can see how you might think that's a stretch.Burr its actually a straightforward concept,I just want to duo a goods job getting background, quotes, links, and so on, so the finished piece will feel a little more professionally done than my usual writing.

And I started looking at what the internet had to say this evening about stimulating creativity. When you set yourself a goal of writing every say toy quickly realise you need a lore of good ideas too write about. One of the tips that came up again and again was exercising. Which its great as I started using The Biggest Loser Alimentary Workout for Xbox Kinect this week, on to of going stunning at least twice a week for the last month our two. It's pretty horrifying seeing your fat self bouncing up and down in screen as you work out, but that in itself is a pretty good motivator to keep going.

So that's all for now. The bath is run, the blog is written and I, for now, am done.

Galxy Note Review - First Impressions

I have had my brand new Samsung Galaxy Note for a few days now and have put together a few thoughts on it. These are only first impressions though. Over time I will no doubt uncover more tricks and secrets for the device along with, possibly, a few weaknesses too, and I will probably write a further review in a couple of months. But for now - how does the 'phablet' fare?

A common criticism of the device is its size. There was a period in time when mobile phone development was relentlessly pushing towards smaller and smaller devices.

Even supermodels were hawking them

Then touchscreens, and more pertinently the iphone, were invented and that trend was halted. A new form-factor was invented and it was suddenly cool to have a big screen again. Oddly enough though, for me, the Note is actually a step down in size as I have been using a Samsung Galaxy Tab for nearly a year. The Note is maybe half its size. It is still of course larger than most phones though but really, don't let that put you off. The Note is still palm-sized for most regularly sized humans and will fit in your front pocket. Its a little weird for me to be able to do that after having a phone that would really only fit in cargo trouser pockets but I could honestly forget the Note was in there. Seriously - a couple of times I have had to check every pocket on my person to find where I put it.

As far as the Note's layout goes, it is identical to the Galaxy S2. I know because that is the phone my wife is rocking right now. Packaged software is also virtually identical too. The only visible difference between the two is the S-pen that comes with the Note. So, why would you choose the larger of the two devices? What benefit comes from having a stylus and a larger screen?

It seems the designers intent is for you to use the pen as a more precise way to interact and work on your phone than just fingertips. There are lots of promo videos showing hip young professionals cutting up screen grabs and photos, maps and illustrations, then mashing them together into SMS's and emails. I have tried doing some of the tasks these videos show and in principle they are as simple and easy as shown. But bear in mind, results will vary according to genuine artistic talent. So my first few annotated photos and drawings look like, well, like they were drawn by someone who never went beyond GCSE art. A long time ago. But hey, if you're of the artistic bent, you can probably put together some nice mashups.

The phone comes with rudimentary video and photo editing software. There's a nice little range of effects in each one. For example, all the effects I used in my unboxing video, made in Windows Movie Maker, are present in the Note's software package and are easier and more intuitive to access too.

The photo editor is similarly easy to use to get quick, impressive results. Witness the most beautiful little girl in the world:

I am no great photographer. I just snapped a quick pic of my sleeping daughter. Then I added two effects, straight in the Note's video editor. And hey presto - instant awesome. (When I tried adding a handwritten caption over this picture, it looked a little less cute. And kind of more stalkery)

Make no mistake - for editing this sort of thing, screen real estate matters. The bigger the better. But precision and control is important too. So the S-pen is great for working with pictures and a big screen is essential too in order to feel like you're making real art and not just farting about and I have found myself wishing, so many times, I could have done the things I can do on the Note on the Tab.

Unsurprisingly given the device's name, Samsung is aiming this phone at people who take a lot notes, whether they be voice, text, or pictures. So it comes with the S Memo system, a really nice Post-it Notes style package. You can write with the pen, write with the onscreen keyboard, dictate, draw sketches, whatever. You can nest your notes to collect related ideas and thoughts. I used it to jot down what I wanted to cover in this post. But here's the problem - your notes are only ever on the phone itself. Given that this is a state-of-the-art mobile device, able to connect to all sorts of networks and will most likely be bought as part of a package with a generous data allowance, why would you want to use a notes package that is not backed up on the cloud?

Consequently, I installed Evernote and cut and pasted the aforementioned notes into it and am now viewing them on my PC as I type.

Incidentally, the S-Pen is really great for taking notes and writing. Combined with Samsung's Swype software and a nice big onscreen keyboard, it makes writing feel natural and easy. The Note supposedly has handwriting recognition software but it struggled to recognise mine. Even if I try really hard to write capitalized, large, clear letters, the phone came back with gibberish so I will probably just stick to the onscreen QWERTY.

The pen is also great for playing games. I have tried Fruit Ninja on my wife's S2, and on my Note, both using my fingers and with the pen, and the pen rules. R-Type, Spirit, and Osmos all also benefited from the precision control the pen offers and I'll be trying it you on some tower defense games soon too.

Thats about all I have for now. So far, so good - no reason to regret getting a Note and no reason for anyone else not to get one too. If you've ever felt the desire to have a mobile device that is truly pocket-portable and truly powerful enough to do real work on, the Galaxy Note could be for you. More thoughts as they come to me.

Samsung Galaxy Note Unboxing

Yay - three days in and I missed one already! I blame Diablo 3. That and new phones arriving for me and the wife yesterday. Anyway, I did get it together enough to record a video of my phone being unboxed. Its not the greatest quality - it was recorded with my Galaxy Tab and my wife managed to get her hand in-frame for most of it. But at least you get to see what is in the box and how to get your phone functional. Enjoy.

More on the Note as I get to play with it.

Brave Beginnings.

How to be productive? Its not as easy as it seems.

As a child from the slacker generation (or the one that came slightly after it), underachieving comes easily to me. Yeah, I see the irony in that. But I wish it didn't. I wish I created more, saw more, did more, and wrote more. So this is a start. But everyone has a blog, right? How do you turn that into a tool, not just to masturbate/flagellate the ego, but to actually promote and assist creativity?

Here is where I'm starting. Its a simple principle - set a goal and have an easily visual reminder/accountability tool. I guess this works because, for those of us who don't go into an office each day, we need a replacement for the social pressure of co-workers, dress codes, and office schedules.

I sort of envy those naturally self-motivated, self-driven, high achievers. The Tony Starks of the real world that have no problem just handling a dozen different projects every day. It would probably help to be born a billionaire, sure. But there are plenty of really good self-starting people in the world that weren't. I'm just not one of them.

But I am motivated enough to try this trick though. I ordered a calendar today which I will hopefully receive by the end of the week. So thats accountability sorted. But what about purpose?

Well, I have some fairly esoteric interests. From politics to game mechanics. From Lego's to world health. I play the occasional game of toy solders too but I sort of deal with that in another blog already. This then, I will keep for everything else.

I will publish a post on this and/or my other blog every day. Not all will be 'complete' articles, as it were. Some will no doubt just be progress updates and some may just ask a lot of questions, rather than providing any answers. 

Its a broad remit then and should produce a fairly varied read. Hopefully, producing it will teach me a few things as well and open up some avenues for further, offline, activities. My plan will be to do it for 365 days, so consider this one down.