callumj.com. an internet webpage

Homescreen inside a homescreen

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 09:03:49 +0000

Just because Apple created the in-out homescreen experience doesn't make it right & it doesn't need to be something apps adopt. But alas, apps feel that users would love it they jumped from homescreen to another just to execute the task the app is meant to truly deliver.

Never mind the wild concept of the app instantly delivering what the user wants to achieve, let's them leave to choice from 5 different options before they can actually achieve something.

Like this shopping centre app, I imagine the idea of a shopping centre app when you launch is when you need to find a certain shop. Maybe right away show a directory or a map showing where you are in the centre with an obvious search bar to quickly pinpoint your destination?

Let's be honest, how many people who go to a shopping centre care about sharing it with their friends or reading some news about a shopping centre? If you're going to try and build an experience around your shopping centre don't palm it off to a section of your app; from the moment you start the app have it all connected. You open the app with a map of the place, a convenient search bar to quickly locate places and place pins on the directory map showing where cool sales are on offer.

And don't create a homescreen if you haven't go enough icons to fill it, making it look like it's my job to somehow fill the homescreen with your pseudo apps. I was really disappointed by the switch in design by Urbanspoon to the homescreen design. You use Urbanspoon to find cool places to eat at when you're stuck or in need for something to eat; so that's what it should open with. Open with the Shake to find feature and then use the tab bar at the bottom to offer other features like search and nearby. Urbanspoon bills itself as being able to help you find places to eat it; so it's not really helping when the user has to make a decision on what do in the app before it can help you.

If this is the future of the mobile web

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:00:27 +0000

Then kill me, kill me now. I don't want to waste my high resolution screen on some awful default Wordpress theme or some annoying OMG ADD THIS TO THE HOMESCREEN NOW.

Let me preface this by saying, thank god for Reeder and Google Reader.

We have the choice of default Wordpress themes that try to make you feel like you're in some pre-retina display iOS app, you know the theme you see everywhere.

But don't worry, we'll just change the colour scheme -- it's all good.

Let's make the assumption that you're using Safari and you are happy to deal with this annoying add-to-homescreen spam before you can enjoy the site you came to see. It's irrelevant if you're in an app using UIWebView and there isn't an add to homescreen button. Also what the hell is with the caps?

Ads are meant to look good and be unobtrusive, right?

BackingLINK [iPhone wallpaper]

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:36:50 +0000

Been messing around with the new version of Pixelmator, really great app for OS X. I've been wanting to work on textured backgrounds as complements to iOS apps, so here is a first attempt at some texture.

(Designed for the iPhone 4/4S retina display)

HipsterDB

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 10:46:11 +0000

Fork MongoDB and add Vinyl, Tape, Polaroid, and Broken Memories as data types.

On Windows 8

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 08:14:34 +0000

Considering the state that Windows tablets were back when Windows 7 was touted as a touch capable operating system, I have to admit I'm very impressed in the jump from Windows 7 to the developer preview of Windows 8. It's very exciting to see Windows losing its reliance on the start+taskbar paradigm that we've seen since Windows 95.

Metro

It's a design concept and I hope it's one Microsoft is going to invest heavily in training/education/certification to allow developers to understand how to develop applications that actually suit Windows 8 and suit touch gestures. I'd say it would be better for Microsoft to loosen the focus on .Net certification and ramp up the emphasis on great design in Windows 8 applications.

JavaScript+HTML+CSS

With the demise of WebOS I thought we would be waiting a few year before we see another platform enable web applications to be first class citizens on a platform. It seems with the WinRT layer JavaScript joins the ranks of C# and C++ for enabling Windows developers to build rich applications.

I think web development and design is an exciting realm to be in and with Microsoft opening Windows up to JavaScript API calls it is only going to strengthen the importance of open frameworks and web development. I hope it exposes more and more students to JavaScript as an alternative to the dry "Intro to Java" curriculum we see now (or even the awful institutions that still teach VB).

Change at the .Net shops

I'm curious to see how the .Net shops respond to not only JavaScript as an increasingly power language but also the Metro concept. Based on my small experience in .Net consulting companies most of them aren't interested in the UI development stage; it's all about the code and maybe a simplistic design template.

I hope they realise that a Metro styled application isn't just the default template provided by Visual Studio; it's about building applications that suit the method of input, designing screens that aren't cluttered and making the app something a user wants to use and not something they are forced to use to get the job done.

The worry

I really hope the default state of Windows 8 (at least on tablets) is that you never see that awful Windows 7 desktop no matter how hard you tried; I hope Microsoft pushes developers to change for new paradigms and not just rely on the old concepts that have existed since Windows 95.

I'm a little worried about the consulting shops that will understand Metro enough to use the templates but not enough to actually put the effort in to build distinct apps that conform to Metro but don't feel like any other Metro app. I think this is the beauty of iOS where I can jump from Facebook to Tweetbot and be in two amazing different world; I'm worried that Metro will be just a feature that developers enable and never care about.

One things for sure

I'm excited to see Windows 8 replace those awful touch displays at shopping centres, it seems killing Flash is a joint effort from all parties (except RIM...).

Is there no creative industry in China?

Sat, 03 Sep 2011 10:01:38 +0000

Baidu (the Chinese based web company) has shown off its demo video which details its mobile OS based on Android. It has no originality whatsoever, it's borrowing UI elements from Apple and Google.

Is it so hard in China to find creative agencies or local designers that companies (Meizu, Baidu) are forced to take individual bits from iOS and Android to create this Frankenstein OS?
I am honestly curious as to the state of product and user interface in design in China. China's rich history shows us how creative they are in their inventions and ancient art but when it comes to today's modern technology it feels like China is just playing catchup. They are capable of producing the behind the scenes hardware that powers these beautiful operating systems but can't invent their own ideas for what a phone should look and feel like?

Check out the video at YouTube

If you're going to copy the iOS Messaging app, at least change the colour

An obvious clone of the Google mobile web app

Apple isn't the only one to implement the great UITableView

Always been a big fan of the UISegmentControl

I really look forward to the day

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 15:16:15 +0000

When it doesn't matter what hardware or software you run; you can take an application and be able to throw it out there and it just runs. It isn't picky whether it runs on Windows, Linux or Mac; there aren't any Apache modules. It just runs.

That way people can just build things that matter and let the hosting platform scale it out as needed.

Peeps like Heorku are doing that, with more than one language.

IDC learnt how to use find and replace.

Sun, 12 Jun 2011 04:17:42 +0000

So here’s what IDC is predicting the smartphone market will look like in 2015.

Basically IDC is assuming

Windows Phone will just take the place of Symbian because of the Nokia deal. Assuming that the Nokia brand is so strong that it demands loyalty and Nokia will continue being one of the very few players that can manufacture cheap smartphones that people will flock too.
That assumes Nokia is the only one capable of getting processor intensive Windows Phone to run on dirt cheap hardware.
BlackBerry who seems to be pretty much dead in terms mindshare amongst consumers in 2011, either is able to keep on limping long enough to have some market share in 2015 or has some ace up its sleave that IDC knows about.
iOS will somehow slip more places that BlackBerry

I think the only thing they got right is that Android will be the dominate player, purely by saturating the makret and nothing else.

If I was a company using IDC for business intelligence, I’d start looking elsewhere.

IDC Press Release

Plank, a discussion board designed for Dropbox.

Tue, 31 May 2011 15:45:13 +0000

I’ve recently begun work on a fun little open source project that I hope some people will enjoy using.

I am calling it Plank, it is a small discussion board that uses a standard folder on a file system as a database. This allows people to use sharing solutions like Dropbox to have a central database for their discussion board without the need for a centralised public server; instead each person wishing to access the forum just runs Plank locally on their own computer and accesses the board through their web browser.

I am trying to make Plank really simple to get going with a shared folder from the command line, all you have to do is start plank from the terminal with the shared folder as your directory then Plank will automatically provision the folder with a database and fire up the server at http://localhost:4567 for you to setup your profile and start posting.

Plank uses MessagePack to store each entry of each class as a file in the shared Dropbox and uses a simple Sinatra web instance to serve up the local discussion board.

You can check it out at https://github.com/callumj/Plank.

Carbon copy

Mon, 30 May 2011 11:33:30 +0000

Everyone wants to be like Apple.

Actually, the unveiling video is probably the best part of this weird scripted fake mess.

Newspapers 2.0

Sun, 01 May 2011 11:10:38 +0000

Perth (my home town) has just received it’s first news app for the state developed by The Sunday Times (which is owned by News Ltd. -the Australian arm of News Corporation) to enable West Australians to access news on their iPads as they would normally with a traditional newspaper.

Sadly, it’s just the same old from newspaper publishers trying to carbon copy their traditional print media behaviour in digital app form and it’s noticeable right from the beginning. Starting up the app you’re stuck at the spinning wheel loading screen for a good 2 – 3 minutes. Why? Because the Perthnow app operates in edition format; one at 7am and one at 7pm. This is amazingly bizarre to me that an internet connected and basically always on device is treated to news delivered in the same way a paper boy would deliver the news the front lawn years ago. Who would of thought something as volatile and ever changing as the news has to be delivered in a edition form over the internet to a tablet?

You begin browsing around the application and discover something even more annoying that the ever patient wait for the download to finish; pre load advertisements. I am hoping that these pre load advertisements will disappear when the free trial expires but regardless I’m worried that this old school style of delivering content is just going to ruin the idea of great content (Flipboard, Zite, Our choice) for consumers who bought the iPad as the next generation content consumption device.

Everything about this app feels less like the iPad is always connected and instead feels more like the device waits for the paperboy to deliver it’s latest round of news. Every time you relaunch the app from the background it prompts if you want to replace your content and download the latest batch of news. Sorry? Are we in some sort of data shortage on my 16GB iPad or are you so modelled on your outdated brother that you need to delete any old news because the stack of newspapers is out?

As you browse more it just gets worse and worse, as you swipe back and forth between articles these will invoke the pre load advertisements ruining the flow of the iOS swiped based gestures and your ability to quickly glance at the content and move on to the next page.
Each article just feels like a newspaper article because there is no effort to make the related images interactive or at least alive on the iPad, even in the Confidential section there was 2×3 grid of photos that you couldn’t touch to zoom in. It all just feels like a PDF surrounded by a menu system and god awful advertisement “engine”.

I’d rather see newspaper team up with the people at Flipboard to get their content syndicated through their section catalogue. It just makes sense, Flipboard is a company built to design content to fit the tablet and mobile experience and newspapers are companies built to create content for the consumers; they are not designers and they clearly don’t use an iPad or any tablet on a regular occasion.

Just like most newspapers didn’t get blogs, I don’t think many newspaper houses get iPads. And they shouldn’t, it’s not their job to so why not offload their content to the marketplace of Zite or Flipboard?

Putting a burden on your platform

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 06:03:39 +0000

There’s been an equal amount of like and dislike for RIM’s upcoming foray into the tablet space, the BlackBerry Playbook. From a UI perspective it actually looks like a half decent entry into the tablet space and one that while it is definitely not a direct challenger to the iPad; it is in fact a welcome change into the space dominated by questionable Android tablets.

What has me a little confused and worried is the promise of Playbook’s extensive legacy support; especially supporting existing applications made for BlackBerry OS 6 made in Java or WebWorks. It’s one thing to support existing BB OS applications (like iOS does going from iPhone to iPad) but it’s even more dangerous to make it a selling feature that you can take the existing applications you know and love from your low resolution BlackBerry and then have them working on this completely different paradigm shifted tablet device.

I feel RIM is supporting way too many platforms and treating their new consumer device like a PC. From the looks of the specification PDF (seriously, what sort of company publishes their specs only in PDF format?) the Playbook supports Air/Flash, HTML5, Java, POSIX OS (do they mean C?), BlackBerry 6, etc etc.

Supporting that many platforms and especially supporting that many legacy platforms isn’t going to be the death of the Playbook (I for one hope it succeeds, the UI is pretty sexy) but I think it’s going to be a dent in the user experience. Users are going to through on a bunch of applications that they can get their hands on in the RIM App World and I think they are going to be confused or a put off by the weird inconsistency of the app behaviours; you’ll have some apps that feel that they depend on a keyboard or optical trackpad, you’ll have some that depend on a mouse pointer and then you’ll finally find some apps that like and handle multitouch well.

Not to bring this back to Apple but I’m glad that iOS sticks to one native platform and forces everyone to use it. With Objective C and the iOS frameworks (CoreAnimation, CoreGraphics, etc) all developers have the same way of accepting input, drawing graphics, rendering native UI controls and interacting with the “multitasking” layer. There’s even a guide from Apple on how to treat user experience in your applications.

Sadly RIM is trying to play catchup in the tablet space and to do that they are more concerned about the number of apps at launch, than the sexiness of their apps at launch. RIM needs to understand that they world has move on from accepting BB OS’s outdated UI and accept that from the homescreen to the app everything needs to look awesome.

Do the marketing and engineering teams at Microsoft ever meet?

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 03:02:36 +0000

I’m sure everyone has the seen the to the cloud ad before, the one where the couple are sitting at the airport and decide to go “to the cloud” to access recorded TV shows from their home computer. It seems somewhat idealistic, but we all know it’s just not going to work at all.

The problem is that those recorded TV show files are HUGE, around one gigabyte for an hour. So could imagine transferring a gigabyte via your home internet connection? Not to mention these people are on a airport WiFi hotspot which was designed for Facebook and YouTube browsing; not saturating a pipe with WTV files.

Microsoft should of looked at this situation and thought that maybe the whole remote desktop solution to access your media centre is not really what the cloud is all about. Microsoft should of noticed the unfriendliness of this decided that a true cloud would allow Media Center to be accessed over a web interface or even a media extender client for Windows (which after 5 years still doesn’t exist despite the popularity of people owning multiple computers).

What’s even more weird about the lack of “cloud” for Windows Media Center is that Microsoft hired the developer of WebGuide to work for the WMC team. If you check out WebGuide you’ll find a complete package for enabling Windows Media Center for Vista to stream content off your box over the web. Did Microsoft just hire this guy and make him work on the pointless desktop client?

If both teams had sat down and reviewed that ad you would think that a lightbulb would go off in the head of someone there and released there’s nothing “cloud” about Windows; it’s all just terminal services with some fancy new features.

would you pay a thousand dollars for this?

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 14:28:18 +0000

He’s an an app from EZi APP that costs around $1,199.00AUD and all I can tell from the description is that it is used for generating reports. But from the screenshots it seems like someone has just fired up InterfaceBuilder and “crafted” something from generic tools; building something they think is worth a lot of money and then just releasing this ugly thing into the world.

Would you really pay over a thousand dollars just for some report generator? Especially for something where no trouble has gone into making the UITableView look like a thousand bucks.

I’m especially worried by any app that has 9 ratings, all with 5/5 stars.

The iPad will never have USB

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 03:29:45 +0000

This seems to be a constant question or speculation about the next version of the iPad, will it have USB? My feeling is that iPad will never add a USB port to their post-PC device, the iPad, and it all comes down to the fact that USB use amongst users is just too hard.

Go to any electronics store near your house and you’ll see shelves of random unknown brand TV tuners that retail for some cheap price of $40 and come in some cheap packaging. Plug it in and you’ll find the dodgy drivers only allow it to work on a Windows PC (possibly only a 32bit copy).

That’s really confusing and odd for most users. If I can plug it in to my USB port and it fits, why won’t it work. It’s The USB right? That’s the problem with USB, this powerful and extensible connectivity format has no guarantees on OS or computer support.

With Apple building this post-PC device the plan is to rid users of the relics which came with computers; filesystems, Windows update, setup installers, RAM upgrades and USB. Removing the relic USB means Apple can say to users, whatever you plug into this thing just works. There’s no need to look at the system requirements, if the package says Made for iPad buy it and it will work as soon as you plug it in. USB itself has no promises, it’s just a plug. The iPhone/iPad connector has promises, it was built for the iOS family.

Update: Someone very rightly pointed out that the “dongle” or Camera Connection Kit has a USB port. If you look at the description, Apple states it is used for plugging in camera USB cables. While we all know the iPad actually can support keyboards or USB sound devices (like the iMic), Apple wants to ensure people think it’s a camera connection kit and not a USB connection kit.

sometimes you can give users too many options

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 02:44:27 +0000

I’m all for giving users options, but does anyone really want to navigate through a 9×10 of sharing services just to find the only relevant ones? I think we can all agree that you either share on Facebook or Twitter. If you need to share anywhere else, there’s always copy-and-paste.

XOOM website

Sat, 05 Mar 2011 03:52:55 +0000

The XOOM really feels like it is for Android geeks or people who want a hybrid tablet-PC. It doesn’t feel or seem to be a tablet aimed at people who don’t care about dual core CPUs, RAM specifications or some advanced operating system and just want a tablet to runs apps and browses the internet. I think the Motorola’s website for the XOOM especially speaks to some sort of sci-fi nerd fantasy.

vs.

introducing lightpanel.

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 15:32:56 +0000

I’ve always been interested in building things off the desk or off the computer in front of us; that’s why I love building mobile products. But I’ve always had a passion for visual display through lighting, so with that I’ve been working and revising lightpanel for the past year.

Lightpanel is a project I’m building that comprises of three LED (7 column, 9 rows) Phidget boards that are connected to a computer over USB and exposed over the network by a lightweight and fast Java server that accepts commands over socket connections. For example if I want to switch on row 2 and column 5 at 100% I just send the command “2 5 100” to the server over a standard socket session (telnet works great)

Here is my latest demo which is a snake simulation where the snake moves around the 3 boards with its tail decaying as it moves along. Because of the great framework I’m using on Java end I actually have 5 ruby clients running an instance of the snake resulting in a pretty crazy visualisation.

Source on Github.

introducing the Motorola Xoom

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 14:51:51 +0000

It may be sporting a pretty competitive tablet OS but all consumers are going to see is

Introducing some thing that looks like an iPad, does the same stuff as the iPad but costs $100 more than an iPad.

People may argue “but it has higher specs, 3G LTE, etc etc”. No consumer cares about what gigahertz are in the thing, all they care about is whether it can do “The Facebook” and play those cool games like “Angry Birds”.

Also what do mean by fully Flash enabled (ASTERISK)? If by that you mean that Adobe is still working on a good version of Flash for tablets, then you lied it isn’t fully Flash enabled. It’s Flash ready, just like my care is not Spoiler enabled but Spoiler ready.

the audi quattro, a beautiful car

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 12:41:00 +0000

Boxy square cars are amazing.

A remote I could actually use.

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 03:57:02 +0000

We recently got rid of our old but well built and well designed Loewe CRT TV Everything about this TV was the reason you can’t fault the Germans/Europeans for building great products. The menus on the TV explained everything in full English sentences, no abbreviations. The thing I’ll most miss is the simple and easy to use remote that shipped with it.

Notice there isn’t any buttons for switching digital/analog, switching on subtitles or going to “theatre” mode. It’s just the buttons everyday people need to use their TV without looking at a remote. Why do Sony or Samsung feel you need every aspect of the TV at your fingertips? All I want to do it change the volume, change the channel or switch off the TV!

Toshiba to release Windows 7 tablet

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 15:16:57 +0000

It will have some battery sucking Intel chip in it, some over the top amount of RAM and a terrible price. This will join the number of successful Windows 7 tablets, where the tally is currently sitting at

0

Seriously, please take MinWin or Windows Phone 7 and build it especially for a tablet device. The Windows desktop user interface was not built from the ground up to support input from touch or gestures so why does it make sense to slap some stupid custom Toshiba software to bandaid the problem?

The real value is in .Net + Silverlight and the powerful as well as flexible Windows kernel (MinWin or Windows Server Core) to bring the affordable and powerful tablet computing to the Windows ecosystem. Could you imagine a great and well thought out touch based UI built in Silverlight and leveraging .Net? It’d be a very compelling device for developers selling the embedded market.

It's just not the same anywhere else (iOS accessories)

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 15:12:24 +0000

One of the more exciting parts of the iPhone and iPad family is the well designed and useful accessories that are built specifically for that. I don’t see that excitement in Android or WP7. Is the extensibility and popularity of iPad/iPhone/iPhone accessories a factor?

Android and WP7 diversity in terms of hardware is also its weakness, manufacturers need to invest a lot to build accessories for a broad range of devices. In the end they’ll just pick the most popular such as a HTC Desire or Xpera. Something like an iPhone is great to build for as you know your product is at least valid for a year.

Intel. I think you're exaggerating MeeGo a bit

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 13:28:47 +0000

Given the state of MeeGo, are Intel allowed to use plurals in their advertisements? Or is that what the asterisk is for?

versus.

Shouldn’t they first be focusing on this whole threat with ARM first before going off on some wacky adventure trying to create yet another platform? Competition is great, but not when consumers will have the choice of “open” Android, “open” MeeGo, “open” Playbook/QNX, “closed” iOS and “closed” Windows.

zonda r. powered design

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 12:21:05 +0000

Some of my favourite designs are the ones that express the power they produce; the Mac Pro, AirBus A380 and my favourite car series: the Zonda R.

This design is beautiful because it reflects what the Zonda R deserves: a great street presence, when you walk past this car you know that this car is one of the fastest in the world. It doesn’t try to be reserved or refined, from the front to the back it demands attention. Anything with a Mercedes Benz AMG V12 should be respected.

source

the best day: waking up to this, coming home to this

Sat, 12 Feb 2011 17:11:24 +0000

After working at an amazing startup for a bit, I’ve come to love big open spaces with just the bare essentials in terms of the room. It doesn’t really feel like work when you’re in some amazing building with big open spaces.

iTunes is not a reference for a class of UIs

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 12:09:11 +0000

I don’t really understand why some companies or designers feel the need to use popular and well designed applications as basically carbon copy reference designs when building their applications or user interfaces. Take this interface for MeeGo tablets, doesn’t the music application look vaguely familiar?

This seems to be happening more and more often, even the Samsung Galaxy Tab had a keyboard and browser reminiscent of the iPad. The whole point of design is to make something new and unique that sounds out from the crowd.

Would’t the world be a dull place if we all did what Apple thought was best for design?

source

Cleaning up my menu bar

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 12:16:22 +0000

Once upon a time I was absolutely obsessed with how much I could cram into my OS X menu bar. I always wanted to know what temperature my processor was at, how much memory I was consuming, what the time was, how fast my network travelling. All real bullshit things that A) don’t contribute to what I’m doing B) or just serve as way too much distraction as the graphs just dart around.

Now that I’ve started working again, I always need focus on what I’m producing to ensure I don’t break my train of thought. To do that, I’ve taken to culling the distracting items in my menu bar as well as removing the menu items that just contribute to clutter. With the power of Spotlight it’s fairly easy to gain access to an Application or System Preference.

The clock
I was recently inspired by this article about switching off the clock in the menu bar and making it somewhat of a chore to check the time forcing you to work on longer sprints with about being distracted by thoughts of “gee, it’s a long time until lunch” or “I’m a terrible developer, I’ve been working on this problem for ages”. I’ve really found myself to be working faster and harder with the clock gone.

Skype
That thing just looks plain ugly being the only coloured icon on the whole menu bar. At least Dropbox has the right idea to give you the choice of choosing coloured or black icons in the menu bar.

Twitter
This is more because I have Twitter completely shut off when I’m working away during the day; especially with the new release of Twitter streaming it can be too mesmerising watching the live news of what everyone is thinking. Leaving the Twitter icon up there makes it too convenient to switch over to Twitter when something gets too hard in development land and I need my Twitter nicotine to relieve it.

Bluetooth control
Since I have my mouse and keyboard paired with my Mac I really don’t have any need to configure those devices further at any given moment. This is really the approach I’ve taken to some of the other menu items; if they have an edge case where they need to be configured once a month then there’s no need they should be in easy reach at point of using my computer. It’s just clutter.

Sound control
Once necessary, the need to control the sound levels has been taken over by keyboard controls but still being left in the menu bar. It’s very rare you need to get a quick glimpse of the sound status and when adjusting the sound level OS X gives you a great heads up display of the current volume level. is there ever a time you’re worried about the current volume level before you go to change it by one point?

Sync services
The whole point of the cloud (MobileMe, Google Apps, Exchange) is that I just want it to work in the background while I continue on with my work. No user should care what status their Contacts are in the sync process; no should they need to force a sync. It’s just too distracting when you have both the Time Machine and the Sync Services icon spinning away.

the amazing mercedes grill

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 14:49:19 +0000

Its the only grill on cars that I truly admire. Unlike the conservative grill on base Mercedes Benz cars; this beautiful but balanced grill is a symbol of a great car.

Ferrari may have the striking colour of red, but seeing the Benz grill front on is something that really makes you stop and appreciate great German design and engineering.

gimme shelter, stripped into its bare essentials

Sat, 05 Feb 2011 03:12:36 +0000

There’s something amazing about Gimme Shelter when it’s stripped into 3 parts; vocals, lead and rhythm guitar. Really makes appreciate how simplicity done when well can produce such amazing things. Even when played along, each of these parts still sounds absolutely amazing.

Imagine the crap that would result from something by The Black Eyed Peas or K$sha. Yeah, that’d be enjoyment right there.

Gimme Shelter. Islocated tracks @ Studio Multitracks

Here’s my favourite: