The builders and electrician who set up my new flat made some very creative wiring choices which have left me with half as many plugs as I need, all in awkward places, and a hugely inconvenient landline socket into which my ADSL broadband router is plugged – nowhere near my desk and my desktop PC.

Luckily I had access to a free Wi-Fi networking card from an old Dell Vostro desktop that didn’t need wireless, so I popped it into the non-Dell desktop, established that it was an Atholos 1525 Mini-PCI card, downloaded the drivers from Dell and tried to install them. No joy, the installer just pops up a dialogue stating “The installer can not run on this platform. Please select package for your operating system.” – Dell appear to have customised the installer exe to only run on their own hardware, even though the card itself can run on any Windows PC.

There doesn’t seem to be a non-Dell driver for this card, at least not one I could find that worked, but a little lateral thought solved the problem. Rarher than run the installer exe, jump into the Windows Control Panel, go to Device Manager, find the “broken” hardware entry under “Network adapters”, double click on it and then opt to install a driver from the local hard drive. Point the installer at the folder your Dell drivers were unpacked to (eg. C:\dell\drivers\P12345678 – the download will have asked you to specify a folder), and it’ll do the rest.

I have to confess, it has taken me half a year to write this review. Not because I don’t like the album – I do, in places a lot. But because I know the band, and like them, and felt that that would largely compromise the integrity of the review. It was only when I found myself absent mindedly really getting into Shake whilst walking through Gatwick – completely unaware that it was Bleak playing, just enjoying the music – that I felt I should do it.

Bleak present a pretty unique blend of the blues, in large part due to singer Anton’s Russian accented vocals – not everyone will like them, but there’s a lot to like from the rage of Wash My Hands to the laid back mellow bliss of Melt.

One of the most interesting aspects of the recorded album was how it changed my perception of which songs were my favourites. Live – especially accoustic – I find Absinthe to be an emotional masterpiece, with far more soul than its drinking lyrics carry written down on paper; on the album it’s good, but falls behind Get Thee Behind Me – a song I never fully warmed to live.

Not The First can justifiably whip up a stonking mosh pit live, but is surpassed by Wash My Hands as the record’s superlative song to rock out to. Wash My Hands rocketed into my top 3 songs to shred piste to in Val d’Isere this January – objectively, from any band. It retained that crown at Snowbombing in April despite the plethora of quality drum’n'bass going on around me, which is no mean feat.

At this point I’m painfully aware that I lack the skill of writing a good music review, so I’ll stop. Suffice to say – check them out live (they’re at The Goldsmiths in Southwark tomorrow night, and the Purple Turtle in Camden in a few weeks time), pick up the album, or both. At the very least you’ll be entertained, and the bassist is hot

You can pick the album up on iTunes or Amazon.

Slides from my talk at this May’s MEX (Mobile User Experience) conference in London, where I gave the first presentation on the “Efficient UX Techniques for an Age of Network Austerity” pathway:

The slides walk through steps Masabi has taken to minimise dependency on network uptime in our travel apps, and why that matters.

The whole conference was incredibly well put together – props to Marek for that – and encouraged some stimulating debate through it’s unique interactive workshops. Nice food too! Highly recommended to anyone interested in mobile…

After a considerable time failing to add this blog to the WordPress iPad app, I finally spotted a comment on a forum pointing out that it requires XML-RPC to work.  So if you are having the same intensely frustrating rejections every time you try and add your site, you fix it like this:

1. Log in to the admin console via the web
2. Click on Writing (under Settings)
3. At the bottom of the page, check the XML-RPC checkbox and hit Save.

Now when you start up the app it should be able to authenticate you.

This is the kind of bug that is pretty unneccessary, and will doubtless put off a lot of new users.  How hard is it to point out such a basic requirement whenever the app fails to find an XML-RPC uri active on the site?

After 2 mins of using the app I’ve been dumped out by crashes twice and find a lot of  the setup, but will persevere as I’d love to be able to draft blog posts on the bus home and save them offline…

This month I’ve been taking part in Movember, the world’s premier facial hair charity event held to raise funds for prostate cancer.

Starting from a clean shave on November 1st, the trick is to come up with the most impressive moustache possible without any beard or joining up of sideburns – which still leaves plenty of creative potential Right now, I’m sporting a pair of lightning stripes down under my chin:

I’m thinking it’s now time to start changing the style – sponsor me some money and you can have a say in where it goes next

For the curious, this is what it looked like on day 9, before I added the last step of the lightning:

Fun though the moustachery is, it’s all for a good cause – one man dies every hour in the UK from prostate cancer, and by sponsoring me here you can help raise awareness and find a cure.

This post originally appeared on the Masabists blog.

I created a quick infographic this weekend to illustrate the trends shown in Gartner’s recent Q3 2010 handset shipments report:

The bluer a company is the more its market share is growing, the redder a company is the more its share is being eroded (even if handset shipments themselves are up) – which illustrates nicely the slow decline of the old guard, as a more diverse mix of companies invade the handset space. Fragmentation is here to stay.

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I had the great pleasure of attending London’s underground War in the Park festival last weekend – and the even greater pleasure of missing the torrential downpour that left most people huddled under a tarpaulin serenaded by raindrops and the inimitable Country Al‘s Lonesome Guitar. I caught his set at the warmup gig in Brixton Market a week before, so don’t feel as upset about missing it as I otherwise would.

I’ve been to a lot of music festivals since taking part in Pitchshifter’s stage invasion that opened Phoenix ’95, and they’ve all got something different going for them but they all share some common commercial ground – even the boutiques like Winterwell, rising up to fill the gaps as the older boutiques like Bestival grow.

War in the Park is a little different, entirely dropping the commercial angle and concentrating on an eclectic mix of acoustic music, poetry and spoken word curated by Anton and Yvonne of Bleak.  You are unlikely to watch Guns’n'Roses close off the day with a headlining set, but then again that’s rare even when you pay £150 for a festival they’re billed as headlining… instead you get to relax with a hundred or so chilled out people (and some bemused locals) in a park of Anton’s choice (it’s only announced a few days before) listening to some slightly more ethical musicians than Axel, more likely to hold forth on justice or sustainability than how annoying it is to be paid a lot of money to do something and then have to do it.

Particular highlights were the first ever recorded crowd surf at a poetry gig, bravely performed by Mr Joe Law to the lyrics of SP Howarth, and an acoustic performance of Absinthe by Bleak – which they rarely play live but really should.  I’m reliably informed that it will be on the new album, but this is the same album that has been coming for several years so don’t hold your breath.

I do feel semi-obliged to mention and review all of the other acts, but then again I’d just say nice things, if alcohol allowed me to remember all of their names. I urge you all to track them down here and listen to their stuff, in a legally responsible fashion. Herbal viagra optional.

Roll on next year’s War… in the meantime, photos of this year’s destruction are here.

I’ve been using the lens a fair amount since I wrote up my first impressions, and I don’t think they’ve changed.  The poor lens cap regularly falls off, but otherwise I think it’s pretty much ideal for a special effect lens like this – light enough to carry around without noticing, good enough quality for the occasional snap when a good scene presents itself, and cheap enough that you don’t have to think too hard before ordering.

I used it more than I expected in Florence earlier this summer, getting this complete shot of the Duomo’s ceiling by sitting the camera on the floor, moving as far away as I could get and setting off the shot with a remote trigger cable:

Giant interiors are always pretty hard to capture with a more conventional lens and the fisheye works nicely with the columns.

I took a few other shots through a square metal grille which show off the distortion provided with the lens on a full frame body (click for larger versions):

I’ve finally remembered to post a picture of my first custom Teddy Trooper (the vinyl toy created by German graffiti artist Flying Fortress):

The design is based on the famous van Gogh self portrait with the bandaged ear, currently hung in London’s excellent Courtauld gallery – probably the best gallery I’ve ever been to and well worth the token price of admission if you’re ever in London.

I have plans to do a series of them based on famous artist’s styles, though this is moving as slowly as side projects tend to move…

He’s pictured here basking in the late afternoon Tuscan sun at Corzano e Paterno.

This post originally appeared on the Masabists blog.

Earlier this week Passenger Focus, the UK’s official rail watchdog, released their annual Spring Passenger Satisfaction Survey, and the press release focussed on some very interesting insights into the reasons why UK rail passengers shun automated ticket vending machines.

At Masabi, Passenger Focus’s earlier research into ticket maching usability was a key influence in the User Interface design of our mobile phone ticket vending app, and it was encouraging to see this new research appears to validate our approach. The report shows that users choose humans over machines for the following main reasons:

1. “Incomplete ticket restriction information”
2. “A barrage of information and choices”
3. “Bewildering jargon”

“As a result some passengers would rather queue to speak to a member of staff, buy more expensive tickets than they need to or just give up and join the ticket office queue.”

Ticket Sales Usability

The UK has evolved a particularly complex fare structure, so a certain amount of complexity is innate in the system. The trick is to remove as much as possible, allowing the passenger to make an informed decision based on price and/or time preferences, without any arcane rail fare knowledge – I can say from personal experience that most ticket machines really do handle this badly.

By fusing real timetables with fare selection, the Masabi mobile rail ticketing app allows the passenger to visualise which trains each ticket will be valid on very rapidly, whilst also including a more detailed concise restriction description than most in-station vending machines. Timetables indicate which operator runs each train, a key point of confusion when many tickets are tied to a single operator.

The application can also adapt to the user, remembering favoured journeys and previously used payment cards (securely stored, and only reusable by re-entering the CVV number on the back). This personalisation helps eliminate the myriad of destinations thrown at the user of a vending machine, most of which will be totally irrelevant.

Queues

This year’s survey also looked at queue times in a number of regional stations – contrasting to last year, which focussed on the largest stations, almost all in London.

The industry lays down a maximum acceptable queue length of 3 minutes at off-peak times, and 5 minutes during peak times. Many stations, big and small, are still failing to meet these standards (click on graph to see a larger version):

Mobile ticketing offers a solution to this, providing a superior ticket purchase experience combined with informative timetables – all of which can be tested risk-free whilst queuing for a window or ticket machine.

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