I’ve been using it for a few days now, and I am happy to report that it is far less frustrating than the first model. All the major niggles have been fixed and it’s much easier to use. As a bonus – It’s also a lot more attractive! The device is now a lovely matt black on the front with a sparkly silver back, rather than having the slightly dodgy looking brushed aluminium plastic front and white plastic back of the first model.

Happily, it only takes one button push to get up and going, and there is a little light on the power button to show whether it is on or not – much easier! I found the three buttons of the first model really fiddly to use, and the symbols on the screen were so confusing I wasn’t sure if I’d managed to start the thing up properly.

The major change with this new model, is that the screen is much more informative – you can now see the connection info (including the number of wifi devices connected), the signal strength, a better battery indicator, and it also displays the session time & data usage. This is especially useful if you are low on data allowance and don’t want to use it all up by accident!

Also, you can now access the dashboard with any computer - instead of being via a windows program, the configuration for the gadget is a webpage located at http://3.home – which is really easy to remember. The dashboard lets you manage the device, view data usage and send & receive SMS messages. So as long as you have a browser, you’re good to go! This is great news because it means that you can manage the settings using an iPad or similar, and it even has an iPhone webapp version too.

Overall, the version 2 device is a big improvement on the first – my mind is now definitely made up about buying one, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to other people. I’m also really impressed with Three and Huawei – they have really listened to their customer’s complaints and made massive steps to rectify the issues people had with the first model. This kind of behavior from a big company is kinda unexpected nowadays, so it’s refreshing to see!

I’m off to Cornwall for a week on Friday evening, to celebrate my birthday, meet up with an old friend, and generally relax and enjoy a few day trips. I’m taking the MiFi with me, so I will be able to blog and stay in touch while we’re on the road & when we’re out and about.. it will be interesting to see how the network is down there. I’m really looking forward to having a great break!

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Post tags: geekiness, MiFi

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TV Guide for iPad - Free!

Released by tvguide.co.uk, this app is great for checking whats on the box, and the iPhone app by the same people even lets you use Sky Remote Record and also links to shows on iPlayer. I’m hoping that the iPad version will get these updates at some point… at the moment you can view the schedule, manage your channels and view show information.

Website ~ iTunes

Soulver – £3.49

I really love the mac app Soulver, and I have both the iPhone and iPad apps as well – it’s a calculator app with a whole different approach to the problem. Instead of resembling a physical calculator like most calculator apps, Soulver looks more like a notes app. You type in your problems on the left side and the results are shown on the right.

Website ~ iTunes

Terminology - £1.19

A beautiful dictionary and thesaurus app, Terminology has some really useful features; for each word there are links to several popular web sources including Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wolfram|Alpha and Google, allows you to star your favourite words & keeps a history of your searches.

Website ~ iTunes

Movies (Flixster) - Free!

I love this app – James and I really enjoy going to the cinema and this app lets us check up on what’s coming out (both at the cinema and on DVD), watch trailers, check the showtimes and see cinema details. It also shows ratings from Rotten Tomatoes, Flixster users and film critics.

Website ~ iTunes

iTeleport - £14.99

This app is great for managing our hackintosh server from my iPad (and our iPhones – it’s universal). iTeleport is pricey for an iPad app but it is really worth the cost, as it’s so speedy! I’ve never used a VNC client that is so responsive, with the exception of the Screen Sharing that’s built into OS X. The app has a great ‘function key’ keyboard which is very useful, so you can use keyboard shortcuts, etc. It’s also good for people with limited technical know-how, because you can just install their PC/Mac client and, using your google account, your iPhone/iPad will be able to automatically connect with no technical setup.

Website ~ iTunes

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Using it to browse the internet is great; you really feel like you’re interacting with the web pages themselves as the barrier of the mouse or trackpad is missing and you touch the links & images directly with your fingertips. Playing games on it is great fun – it’s a fabulous gaming device, with new great games coming out every week. And the myth that the iPad is for consumption not creation is completely shattered by the hundreds of apps that are already available in the app store that allow you to ‘paint’, sketch, create moodboards, wire frame diagrams, and so on.

Even though I enjoy all of the above aspects of the device, my favourite thing to do using my iPad is just to curl up with a good book. Only this way, I don’t have to keep James awake with the bedside light, or take a heavy bag full of books away with me on holiday. I can read 4 or 5 books a week without accumulating large piles of books all over the house! I’m finding it really convenient. I already have the iPad with me most of the time, so being able to pick it up, check my email and Facebook before settling down to read using iBooks is fantastic.

Bookshelf

The reading experience you get with iBooks is really nice. I even find myself fiddling with the corner of the page while reading a book! I love the brightness control, the navigation options and the whole look & feel of the app. You can see how many pages there are left in a chapter, ‘scrub through’ the book to find your page, make notes and have multiple bookmarks, and change the font type and size options. I think it is a perfect compromise, aesthetically, between a piece of technology and a real book – you have the advantages of the tech but you can also fade everything away to just leave you with the page and the text itself.

With & without controls displayed (portrait orientation)

Landscape orientation

Similarly to reading a real book, I can read for hours using the iPad without noticing any eye strain – the quality of the display is great so you don’t have the problems you do when reading ebooks on a PC. There was an interesting study conducted lately where people were asked to read using an iPad, a Kindle, a PC and a paperback. The PC had terrible scores but the iPad won on ‘user experience’, though it was only slightly ahead of the Kindle and the real thing.

Data Source

One interesting thing I’ve found is that I am actually reading more books than I had been recently, before I got the iPad. I think the convenience of having the book with me if the iPad is with me means that I’ve been reading more in my lunch breaks and when sitting on the sofa downstairs. I never really carried my books around too much as quite a few of my favourites are large and heavy hardbacks and I just couldn’t be bothered lugging them around everywhere.

iPhone app

A great example of this is the Harry Potter series, which I reread in 9 days using my iPad. I was reading at lunch time, on the way to & from work (using the fab iPhone iBooks app with its very useful current page & bookmark syncing!), in the mornings before work and in the evenings when I got home from work, in addition to my usual reading at bedtime stint. I never would have carried those heavy books around enough to squeeze all that reading in.

So… if you’re debating whether or not reading ebooks on the iPad is pleasant enough for it to be a major reason in buying one, let me tell you it is!

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Post tags: ibooks, iPad, reading

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• I didn’t want the additional ongoing expenditure, just for 3G internet speeds.
• I have my iPhone for googling and twittering on the go.
• It’s, um, a bit ugly. I’m a bit shallow sometimes.
• The availability of free wi-fi hotspots means if I really need the net while I’m out I can usually find it.
• I could always just tether it to my iPhone or get a MiFi unit in future (we were already considering this option anyway).
• I wanted to have an additional 32GB of storage more than an expensive 3G antenna.

Since using the MiFi I’ve been feeling a bit spoiled, however. The ability to just be able to connect up to the net (almost) anywhere I go is great, and I think I’m going to end up buying the v2 model when it comes out in a few weeks time. Although I’ve been glad to be able to get online out & about with my iPad, I’m still pleased with my decision that I didn’t opt for the 3G model. The MiFi unit & iPad setup has a couple of advantages over the 3G model iPad on its lonesome. To me, a couple of these advantages are high priority, although I understand that some of these might not be as important to other people. They are:

• The MiFi unit is faster – it connects to the HSDPA (3.5G) network in addition to the 3G network. Where I live in South Birmingham the HSDPA coverage is excellent, so I can take it to the park or to work and have great speeds.
• You can connect up to 5 devices to a MiFi network – this is a big one for us as we have two laptops, two iPhones, and one iPad (with a possible second iPad in the future). You can’t use an iPad to tether a laptop, or a second iPad.
• Available on Pay as You Go on Three – no faffing with a rolling contract (I am the kind of person who would just leave it going, even if I wasn’t using it). Just top up when you need data, and leave it alone when you don’t.
• It is cheaper (up front) than the price difference between the wi-fi only & 3G models of iPad.

I’ll let you know my thoughts on the unit itself next week after I’ve played with it some more!

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In Letters to Juliet, a young couple from New York head to Verona for a romantic pre-wedding honeymoon but end up spending time apart due to Victor visiting suppliers for his new restaurant. His fiancé Sophie, a budding writer, is left to her own devices and makes a visit to Juliet Capulet’s house, where girls leave messages to Juliet about their love life tangles. Sophie finds a 50-year-old letter & answers it, which leads to a scavenger hunt for the original letter author’s lost love.. With an attractive, gentlemanly, and rather stereotypical English grandson in tow. I’m sure you can guess the rest…

The plot was predictable but enjoyable; yes, you could make stabs rather accurately as to how things were going to turn out and what was going to happen next, but it was fun to watch all the same. The characters were nice enough, although maybe lacking a bit in-depth (not that I was expecting much!). I especially liked the grandmother, Clare, who was caring and a little bit whimsical at the same time – she put me in mind of a toned down version of my own Nana. The scenery throughout the film was utterly stunning, as you would expect from any film based in Tuscany.

The comedic moments in the film were of average standard for a romantic comedy; some of them had me giggling out loud, and some just made me smile. Unfortunately there was a little bit of a smattering of rather corny lines and cheesy moments, but I didn’t really find myself too bothered by these!

If you are like me, and like to zone out of the real world for a bit on occasion by curling up with a bit of classic romantic comedy, then you’ll probably enjoy this film. I liked it, despite it’s shortcomings – it kept me entertained for a few hours and left me with a nice ‘feel good’ feeling while I was walking out of the cinema. This one is likely to make its way into our film collection a few months after it is released on Blu Ray, to be popped on and accompanied with a bar of chocolate and a Homily cuddle when I’m feeling in need of some relaxing escapism.

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I will do separate posts for ‘creativity’ and ‘entertainment’ apps, as the list for this post is big enough already, and I haven’t even got started on apps for working on graphics, design apps or games! The ipad is a really great games device and brilliant for drawing etc, so i want to give those app categories the full attention they deserve, rather than lumping them in with these apps, which are mainly content consumption and personal utilities. So, without any further ado, here are my current top 10 iPad apps:

1. iBooks

I’ve been reading ebooks on my iPhone for about a year using Stanza, and iBooks on this massive, beautiful, display really blows that experience out of the water. It is really easy to get lost in a book the way I do with a physical one; I have read 5 or 6 books now and each one has been really enjoyable to read. I haven’t experienced any eye strain at all, and prefer it to reading a physical book sometimes – especially in bed when James doesn’t like me having me bedside light on!

The bookshelf is really nice, though you can also display a list of books & sort by title or author to find the book you’re after more quickly. One of my favourite touches is that when you are reading a book the controls can be hidden away to leave a much more distraction free experience. You only have to tap the screen to bring up brightness, font & search controls, along with links to the table of contents and the bookshelf, and information about your progress overall and the pages left in the current chapter (a really nice touch!).

Reading books on the iPad is easily a nicer experience than reading:

• any book by torchlight.
• a heavy hardback in bed.
• a cheap quality paperback.

2. Simplenote

I’ve extolled the virtues of Simplenote before, so I won’t go on about it too much. The iPad app is easily as well designed as it’s iPhone counterpart. The wireless syncing works marvellously, you can create and edit notes offline, and I’m very happy with the overall experience. The beauty of Simplenote is in the name: it’s simple. There are no frills here, but instead you just have an incredibly easy to use notes app, with no Marker Felt in sight!

3. Dropbox

Pretty much everyone has heard of Dropbox, but just in case you are one of the few who haven’t, it is an absolutely fantastic online storage service that allows you to sync files across several devices & access them online as well. You simply save a file in your dropbox and it is uploaded to their servers, and the accessible via the web or the iPhone/iPad app, or any other computers who use the same dropbox.

This app is great because I can upload or drop a file into my dropbox from my MacBook or the iMac, and I know I will be able to access that file from my iPhone and iPad whenever I need it. The iPad app works really well & has a good user interface. It enables you to open your files in your other apps to edit them, which is a really nice touch – I can have a spreadsheet sitting in my dropbox and edit it using the Numbers app on my iPad.

4. Articles

Articles is a fantastic wikipedia app that I really like using. I have had the iPhone app since it came out, and the iPad version was one of my first downloads. It presents the wealth of information available on wikipedia beautifully, with nice understated controls & search.

You can look at nearby articles, have several pages open at once, bookmark articles, and so on. The nicest thing about articles is it is fairly feature rich (considering it is, as all wiki apps are, just a skin for the online database) for a wikipedia app, whilst still appearing fairly clean and tidy. It’s a really pleasant reading experience too.

5. Sorted

Sorted is a really pretty and intuitive todo app, which is something I’ve been after for a while. The developer has promised to add wireless syncing to the app, which will be the killer feature for me, especially if I can access my list via the web & therefore on my iPhone and any other computer hooked up to the net.

The app allows you to have several lists, and doesn’t insist on every task having a priority or due date, which I like. I want to use the app for all sorts of lists, not just todo ones. Adding new items is just as simple as typing a list in notepad; once you’ve added your first item just hit return to start typing in a new item. You can then rearrange the list items to suit you by tapping & dragging the item’s ‘move icon’.

You can add a priority, due date and notes to each item if you need to, via a popover that comes up when you tap on the arrow to the left of the item. You can view the list in its original order, by priority or by due date. Once you’ve added a note to something, a subtle icon is added to the list to let you know to check the notes for more info. Priorities are displayed via pretty colours, and due dates are displayed when you are in the ‘sort by date’ screen. Items are marked as complete (or deleted if blank) by swiping them. You can view a list of completed items for each list, and delete items entirely from this screen – always useful.

Overall, it’s a well designed and easy to use list app, and I eagerly anticipate the promised updates!

6. BeejiveIM

Beejive is a multi protocol instant messaging app; basically this means that you can use this app to chat to people on different networks at once. I have friends who use msn, some that use gtalk/jabber, others that only use Facebook, and so on. Beejive allows me to be logged in to all these networks at once.

I’ve been using the iPhone version of Beejive since it first appeared on the AppStore, and have always been pleased with the app. It’s supports push notifications so you can set it to leave you logged in after you quit the app, and it will let you know if anyone talks to you. I have always found the iPhone app to be feature rich and stable, and the iPad version is no different.

The iPad screen is perfect for this app; it allows you to see you buddy list, ongoing conversation and list of current conversations all in one screen, as opposed to the iPhone app where you have to switch between these three display options.

All in all, a nice chat app, and perfect for talking to my family & friends while I’m on my iPad!

7. Instapaper

Instapaper is one of those really simple, but really fantastic ideas. The basic concept is that you use a bookmarklet to send something to Instapaper, to be read later. You can access your Instapaper account on the web, or via the apps that are available for iPhone & iPad. A lot of apps now have Instapaper support built in, allowing you to send links and articles that you want to read at another time to Instapaper, from within their app. This is great for those moments when you see an interesting looking link in Twitter but don’t have time to check it out right then.

The iPad app is a joy to use, and I love having the ability to just send an article or webpage to Instapaper, and then being able to open up the app and have it all right there in a beautiful & very readable display. If I’m on my way out somewhere or about to go on a long journey, I can send a load of interesting reading to Instapaper, then sync it all onto my iPad to read while I’m on the Internet.

Instapaper is a really great tool, and I’m really pleased it has such a fantastic iPad app available from the word Go.

8. CaptainsBlog

CaptainsBlog is a very silly app really, but is ideal for Star Trek fans such as myself, as it makes your iPad look just like a PADD from Star Trek! You can keep a log, and then send your log posts to twitter, Facebook, or via email. It’s silly but fun, and it actually quite good for shooting off a quick tweet when you don’t want to wait for your twitter app to load up.

9. The Early Edition

This app is great for all those websites that you like to visit but don’t want clogging up your rss reader. You add rss feeds to different categories, and then each of those categories or feeds is displayed in newspaper format. The app scrapes the title, photos and content of each feed and arranges them on the page so that it looks like as close to a proper newspaper as you are ever going to get on an iPad.

You can you view feed items just from the current day, since your last fetch, or alternatively all the items available. Once you see an article you want to read, you just tap it and a page like display of it replaces the newspaper ‘cover’ so that you can read the full content. A built-in web browser allows you to view the original item at its website, and you can mail links to people, and of course send them to Instapaper.

I think I will find myself making less visits to my favourite news sites, and will favour getting an overview of the news via the Early Edition instead. Rather than visit each site in turn, I can flip through pages of content from all the sites at once. This is a rss app with a difference for me – it’s not one for hooking up to my Google Reader account (although you can) and then going through my favourite feeds, making sure I don’t miss anything, but one for amalgamating content from all over the web in an enjoyable format, without necessarily reading every post in every feed.

10. AirVideo

Again, this is another app I have blogged about previously, and I am happy to say that the iPad version is just as good, and in fact even better, than the iPhone app that I love to use. The quality of the video is outstanding, especially when you consider that the server application is converting the original video on the fly. The navigation is great, the controls are great, and the ease of use is great. This one is definitely a winner.

Honourable Mentions

For managing our TV connected hackintosh/server: iSSH (for VNC), FileBrowser¹ & Rowmote.
For recipes: Epicurious, Big Oven & Betty Crocker’s Cookbook.
iWork: I’ve installed Numbers & Pages, and enjoy using them both. Haven’t bothered with Keynote yet because I don’t use presentations very much.

Also, all of the ‘default’ apps that ship with it are great – Mail is a delight to use, Safari is really nice and nippy, the Maps app is very well done & the Contacts & Calendar apps are delightful.

However…

There are still some gaps in the AppStore as far as my needs are concerned. The two main things I am missing is a decent Google Reader application, and a Twitter app that suits me.

As far as Google Reader goes, I hope I won’t be waiting for long; Reeder for iPad is currently held up in the Apple app approval process, but nobody is sure why. The screenshots and reviews of it look great, and I haven’t found a better app for Google Reader on the iPhone since I started using the iPhone app. I’m chomping at the bit for the iPad version! The selection of apps for this currently available are disappointing – my priorities are speed, sharing capability & Instapaper support – three things which Reeder does brilliantly. I have very high hopes for the iPad app, but I think it will live up to its little brother’s reputation.

Where Twitter is concerned, however, it’s a different story. I’m currently using Twitterrific which is ok, but not great. A lot of the other apps that have come out have UIs which I just don’t like, so I don’t want to spend my pennies on apps that I won’t end up using. Twitterlator looks interesting, and I might look at some reviews of it & consider buying it to try out… But not until the guilt from my latest AppStore shopping spree has worn off! With luck, Loren² and the rest of the Twitter development team are busy creating an iPad app to match their amazing iPhone one.

1. This is fairly ugly, but great for fetching files from the server and saving them, or opening them in apps on my iPad
2. formerly of atebits, which developed Tweetie for Mac & iPhone – which has now been bought by Twitter and renamed Twitter for iPhone

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• It’s an absolute joy to use – the device is brilliantly made, and feels sturdy in your hand; closer to a MacBook air than an iPhone, yet really thin and light.
• When you’re using it, it’s all about the screen. The minimalistic design is just a frame for the gorgeous display, which changes completely from app to app. It can become a blogging tool¹, an absorbing article or magazine, the complete distraction that is the Internet, a fun game, a notebook, and so on. Videos look just amazing on this thing, and the speaker is surprisingly great – much better than my 13″ MacBook speakers.
• I’m getting used to the keyboard quicker than I expected. Typing is already quite speedy, it’s just getting used to the placement of the non-alphabet keys that is taking a few days.
• The iBooks app is really, really nice. I have read an entire book on it so far² and it was a very enjoyable experience. I didn’t want to put the book down last night when I was going to sleep! I’m a voracious reader and was already using my iPhone to read ebooks in bed, so the iBooks app was one of the main draws for me. It’s great that you can load your own epub files onto it as well – I already have quite a collection in calibre & I think it will continue to grow now I have such a fantastic ebook reader!
• Taking it out in public is going to be like accompanying a mildly famous person to the shops, for a while at least; I’ve had it out in McDonalds³ and at a service station cafeteria so far, and had people ask me “is that the iPad?!?” with starstruck looks on their faces at both places. It’s kinda embarrassing. But I know perfectly well that if I didn’t have such a wonderful husband I would be staring lustily at every iPad I saw out in the wild too.
• I love the ‘lock screen orientation’ clicker on the side⁴ and I’m already finding myself using it automatically when I’m lying in bed, or using the device flat on my lap. I hope that iPhone OS 4.0 includes an easy way to lock the screen orientation on the iPhone, because I’m getting spoilt with this thing. One of my pet peeves on my phone is the lack of a global setting to lock it, and the inevitable situations where I would be lying in bed holding my phone at a bizarre angle to avoid it flipping into landscape mode.
• I find it annoying when apps and games that should work well in both portrait and landscape mode only work in one of them, causing me to change how I’m holding the iPad. Some games are landscape only for good reasons, but others like Words with Friends, which is stuck in portrait, could probably work out a nice landscape layout – that one in particular is annoying me!
• The battery life is brilliant – I used it for more than 10 hours straight on Saturday before it ran down, and it wasn’t just light use; I was downloading apps and books, playing games, playing music, reading and sending emails, and so on. If you put it down with 30% remaining and pick it up hours later it seems as if it hasn’t gone down at all – even if you have it fetching data from your email account every 15 minutes.
• I already love this device, and in a way that I could never love a netbook. The beautiful design combined with the easy to use OS just makes using it a real joy. Netbooks feel physically cheap and tacky to me, with an operating system that’s designed for notebook & desktop p.c. displays crammed into a screen half the size. This doesn’t try to be a small computer, but it’s something else entirely, and I love it. Also, no crummy plastic in sight! I have a feeling I will only pick my MacBook up once or twice a week now, as opposed to every day – the iPad is a perfect ‘sofa device’ for me.

1. Yes, I am writing this entire blog entry on my iPad
2. Airhead, by Meg Cabot – I love a bit of escapism chick lit!
3. Hello, free wifi!
4. It’s positioned where the mute button is on an iPhone. To mute the iPad you just hold down the volume down clicker for a beat longer than normal.

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Short version of this blog post: I really enjoyed it – and you should go see it.

Ok, long version (and I apologise in advance for the rambling nature of this review. It’s late!):

I find the origins and success of this film really fascinating, as it’s both the most successful of the UK Film Council (national lottery) funded films after only a week at the box office¹, and it’s also the first British made 3D film to hit the cinemas. The budget for the film was relatively tiny (£4.5m), especially compared to the rest of the summer releases which typically cost more than 20 times more than that! StreetDance 3D is a real success story for British cinema, so that’s pretty great.

The film itself is based in London, telling the story of a ‘dance crew’ that begin to fall apart thanks to their team captain² quitting only a few months before the UK Championship Final. Carly (Nichola Burley) steps up to take over the group and they eventually end up being thrown together with a group of ballet students headed up by a rather sexy Tomas (Richard Winsor). The predictable conflicts between the two groups crop up, and of course there are bits of romance, betrayal and general comedic moments going on as well.

The film is peppered with familiar faces, including the Britain’s Got Talent winners Diversity & George Sampson. Akai Osei, the winner from the Sky One program ‘Got to Dance’ earlier this year, also had a small cameo appearance (that I have a feeling was slotted in at the last-minute) which is quite a funny moment of the film. Flawless, BGT 2009 finalists, were renamed ‘The Surge’ and played the reigning champions³ who were bent on defending their title. I actually really loved George Sampson’s character the most out of all of the ‘famous characters’ as the character isn’t pushed into centre stage but instead adds comedic value throughout the film, along with his trademark cheeky smile.

If you go to see this film, don’t expect an absolutely spectacular storyline as parts of it are rather predictable – but it’s still a nice feel good story despite that. The acting performances aren’t amazing Oscar worthy ones, but they do improve as the film goes on and I found the characters likeable on the whole. As James said as we walked out of the cinema, the acting was a bit soap opera-ish for the start of the film but gets better after about 20 minutes! The dancing, however, is utterly amazing all the way through the film – as can be expected from the groups and individuals involved.. and it looked fantastic in 3D.

Basically, if you enjoy a nice feel good film & you liked watching Diversity in BGT, go see the film – you’ll enjoy it!

1. side note: I love that it’s beaten the blockbuster ‘Prince of Persia’ in the UK box office this week, even though it was in less screens!
2. I have no idea if that is the right term to use for the leader of a street dance group. I am lame.
3. Not much acting required there, since they have actually won the title before!

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Little Miss Perfect is a reality show about child beauty pageants in America, and is aired on bio.HD in the UK.  It is, of course, completely ridiculous. One little girl had a spray tan, a ‘flipper’ (fake teeth) and a huge hairpiece the other day. She looked like an orange barbie girl.

James’ opinion goes something like this…

“it’s like a bloody dog show”

This coming from the man who spent his childhood at dog shows… he’s sort of an expert on these things. But he likes it really, and bitches about it with me while we watch it & giggle.

“Wow Wear” is the absolute BEST category. The only rule for this section of the  pageant is that the little girls have to wow the judges. This has resulted in roller skating, karate, swimwear modelling, singing, and pretty much anything you can imagine 5 year olds doing that results in them looking utterly insane on television. One girl fell off the stage this week… what was worse though was that her Mum didn’t go to her straight away and told her off when she did go to her! She just told her to get back up and finish her routine. Good parenting that, considering she was crying her eyes out and was complaining about her legs hurting.

The host of the show, Michael Galanes, is absolutely hilarious. He says gems of wisdom such as “the judges are looking for a girl who is comfortable in her own skin.. the stage is their second home” and “to err is human, to get back up on the stage is divine”. And he sings a song during the ‘Crowning Ceremony’. A terrible song.

The little miss perfect pageant,
where all your dreams come true,
the little miss perfect pageant,
where the special one is you.

the secret of tomorrow
is to live your dreams today,
your memories and your friendships,
they’ll never go away.

If you think it and you want it,
dream it, today’s the start,
just feel it in your heart!

If you fancy a laugh, watch this show. It’s completely crazy. I love it, in a weird way.

1. they’ve been pretty much awful since before Christmas, and I had a week of clusters thrown in just for the giggles as well. Just GREAT. To make things worse, my daily headaches have gone up a notch or two as well, I think because of how stressed I’ve been.

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On this particular occasion I had finished my book, but didn’t want to start another one. I found myself wishing that I had a video to watch quietly on my iPhone until I remembered that “there’s an app for that”². I did a search on the net & found Air Video (iTunes link) – it is reasonably priced at £1.79 and I read a few good reviews before going ahead and downloading it onto my iPhone. I used the VNC capability of the brilliant iSSH app (iTunes link) to install the accompanying server app onto our hackintosh media server, added some folders & I was off!

Air Video is an iPhone/iPad app that allows you to watch video files that are on other computers in your wifi network. It works with both PC & Macs, and you can have more than one server set up to choose from. The iPhone app is very easy to use, with intuitive menu structures and a decent design. The best feature for me is live conversion of your files, so you don’t need to worry about what format the original video is in – we have quite a lot of DVD rips in avi format on our shuttle, so now they are only a few taps away on my iPhone when I’m at home³… I only have 16GB of storage on my 3GS, but the hackintosh has 1.5TB so it’s much more convenient to keep my video files there instead!

Performance wise, I haven’t had any issues with the app at all; the on the fly video conversion works extremely well, even jumping to another point in the file only takes a second or two to start playing again. The quality is brilliant, and from the looks of the iPad screenshots the videos look great on the bigger screen as well.

And of course, it is a universal app, meaning you get two apps for your money – one for iPhone/iPod Touch and one for the iPad. I do have a birthday coming up…

1. my headaches & painkillers make me very nauseous and dizzy, I have trouble staying upright/keeping my breakfast down – not fun!
2. sorry, couldn’t resist!
3. there is experimental over the internet access as well, but I haven’t tried that yet.

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It’s been a few weeks now, and it has to be said: I love Matt Smith as the Doctor.

This is something that really surprises me, but that I am very pleased about. When the BBC announced that David Tennant was leaving the show, I was not a happy bunny. Then they announced that Matt Smith had been cast as his replacement. To put it simply, I was completely shocked. After all, this guy is only 3 years older than me – that’s a bit young to play someone who is over 600 years old! Plus there was the fact that he’d hardly done anything. I had no idea what to expect, and I love this show, so I was scared. Change is scary¹!

Also, David Tennant is sexy. Losing the alien fighting eye candy was a sad thing indeed. I am a bit shallow sometimes.

If you loved David’s Doctor, then you must watch this video², because it is amazing:

So yes, although I really enjoyed DT’s Doc, Matt Smith is a Good Thing. He’s energetic and really fun to watch. I love the Amy Pond character as well – it’s good to see her tease the Doctor and stuff. If you haven’t seen any yet, here is the season 5 trailer to give you a taste:

1. but quite often a very good thing!
2. Details of Doctor Who: The Musical can be found in this Livejournal entry, including track list & downloadable file.

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These are a few of my favourite Mac utilities, that are almost always running when I’m on my laptop. They fall into a few categories; some are for social networking & email, a few for entertainment, and a there are a bunch of useful tools for a variety of things. So, from left to right, they are:

1. last.fm

Although I actually prefer using the iScrobbler plugin, since upgrading to Snow Leopard I’ve just had way too many problems with it & have had to fall back to using the official last.fm plugin, which is a little bulky for my liking. I love ‘scrobbling‘ my music to last.fm though – it helps me realise what music in my library I’m not listening to as much as anything, when I feel like I need a change. If anyone has any recommendations for a lightweight last.fm app that syncs iPhone play counts as well as iTunes, please let me know!

2. ByteController

Another app that runs whenever iTunes does, Byte Controller is a super lightweight way to control your iTunes music from the status bar. A number of different skins are available in the prefs, and it is great for pausing or skipping tracks quickly. It only takes up space whenever iTunes is open, which I love – last.fm doesn’t go away when I quit iTunes and I wish it did!

3. Adium

Adium is the instant messaging app for the mac. There is just no real competition, I’ve found. It is lightweight and can connect up to pretty much any chat network there is. I use it for gtalk¹, facebook chat², yahoo, aim & windows live. This is what happens when you have different friends and family using different networks! Although it does tend to mean that people assume that I am on facebook.com just because I am logged into their chat system. Adium is wonderfully customisable – you can change every aspect of the visuals, and there are some beautiful themes, icons & so on out there for it. I’m currently using a menubar icon from Vibealicious.

4. Skitch

This app is brilliant for super quick image capture, annotation & sharing. You can ‘snap’ images from your screen, or from your iSight. It includes a fairly standard set of basic annotation/editing options, including resizing, various shapes, arrows, text, freehand pencil & fill. With a built-in history feature & great sharing options, it’s a fast and easy way to get your images edited and up on the net asap. A nifty feature I use a lot is the ‘drag me’ button which makes it a piece of cake to drop an image into a new tweet, email, or just onto the desktop.

5. JustNotes

I love this notes app, because it is simple, unobtrusive and fast. I raved about Simplenote a few weeks ago, and this is the menubar app I use to view & edit my notes on my mac. The syncing to the Simplenote (powered by Google) service is flawless, and the style is beautiful. There are a few customisation options, so I am happily using Helvetica! I love having my notes available to me wherever I am, whether it’s on my laptop, my iPhone, or at any internet enabled computer!

6. Notify

After trying several different options for accessing & managing my gmail account, I settled with using the web interface in Chrome, which is now my default browser of choice. However, this doesn’t help if you want to keep a track of your unread emails! I use Notify Pro, which includes the capability to ‘quick look’ and reply to emails right from the app, and also to mark them as read or delete them. This speeds up the process of dealing with my email quite a bit! It supports gmail, google apps email, mobile me & any IMAP enabled account. And it’s very pretty!

7. Pastebot Sync

This is a companion app to its iPhone conterpart, Pastebot. These two apps combined allow you to transfer information from your clipboard on your iPhone to your mac, and visa versa – very very useful! The iPhone app also allows you to save items so you can retrieve them again later, organise them & even edit them (including some basic image editing with more on its way).

8. ShoveBox

This app is exactly what it sounds like – a place to shove all the debris and random information you pick up around the internet and seem to accumulate while you are using your computer. I use it for storing random images, files, snippets of text & links I want to remember. I hate to have a cluttered desktop so a place to hide all this randomness is great! What’s great about this one is that there is now a matching iPhone app so that you can sync your random collection of information over wifi to your iPhone and carry it about with you. I also find this a great way to keep useful files on my iPhone, rather than having to email them to myself all the time.

9. Tweetie

My all time favourite twitter app for both iPhone and Mac is Tweetie, without a doubt. Unfortunately this is getting a little out of date now, so I am eagerly awaiting the release of Tweetie 2! This app is intuitive, fast and has a brilliant multiple accounts setup. The fact it’s not an Adobe Air app wins it big points too! Again, I’m currently using a menubar icon & custom app icon from Vibealicious.

10. Facebook Notifications

Facebook Notifications does exactly what it says on the tin.. it notifies you.. about stuff that happens on facebook. It is actually surprisingly useful, with a list of your recent facebook notifications and another of your recent messages. There are also quick links to the news feed, your profile, to compose a new message, as well as a built in status update function (the latest update includes link & photo updates too). It plugs into growl to display new notifications³, which is always a nice touch. This app has definitely reduced my wasted time on the facebook homepage!

And a bonus! 11. Eject Applet

The eject applet is actually built into Mac OS X – you just have to know where to look. I find this incredibly useful, especially since I spilt water on my keyboard and my physical eject button no longer works! It’s also great if a disc is playing up and refusing to eject – quite often this method works when nothing else does, short of a reboot.

Also, if you’re interested, the wallpaper I am using is Bokeh by Sparcy86, and the desktop icons are ColorStroked Freehand Icons by mfayaz. I love them!

1. jabber
2. also now jabber
3. last.fm, ByteController, Notify, Shovebox, Adium & Tweetie are also all growl enabled

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This film is everything it is billed to be: a romantic comedy packed full of big names, with plenty of scenes to make you laugh, and even one or two to make you cry. Thankfully they don’t overdo the gooeyness though – it manages a great balance between comedy and romance! With some of my favourite stars in the cast, I had looked forward to watching it since I first saw the trailer a while a go.

It has McDreamy AND McSteamy¹! Julia Roberts! Taylor times two²! Topher Grace! Jennifer Garner! Bradley Cooper! Queen Latifah! Anne Hathaway! The list goes on…

From the director of Pretty Woman, Valentine’s Day uses a Love Actually / He’s Just Not That Into You type concept; with many characters’ stories and relationships intertwined with one another. The biggest difference to these films is that the stories are told over just one day – February 14th. I actually thought that the whole film had a similar ‘vibe’ to Love Actually, by telling the story of love & its many forms.

There were relationships between friends, the blooming of first love between teenagers, strangers on an aeroplane, and so on – beautiful stuff! I really enjoyed the characters that were in this, so many of them actually seemed to be realistic, which is one area where Love Actually falls a little flat – some of the characters in that are a little far-fetched (since when does England get such a fun Prime Minister)!

I won’t give away any of the storylines, but I do recommend that you go and see it, especially if you’re a fan of rom coms (and Love Actually or Pretty Woman in particular). I am a self-confessed chick flick/lit fan, and I loved it. This will definitely be one for the DVD/Blu-Ray collection – it’s going to work fantastically as a feel good film for cheering me up when I’m having a bad day.

Go watch it³!

Official Website

1. this is a Grey’s Anatomy reference for those of you who are confused
2. Taylor times two = Lautner (mmmm you’re sort of beautiful) & Swift (love her music)
3. and hang around for the first part of the credits – especially if you’re a Pretty Woman fan

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I use Simplenote for all manner of things – draft blog posts, lists, random titbits of information I need to remember, which songs I want from the SingStore, etc.

I have tried a lot of notes apps from the app store, but this is easily my favourite from all of the ones I have tried. A lot of the other apps that I tried were overcomplicated, difficult to use & had annoying methods of syncing/backing up your notes. Simplenote syncs with their own servers which means you can access your notes in various different ways.

In their own words…

Why Simplenote?
Simplenote is a free replacement for the Notes app on your iPhone or iPod touch. It has a great interface, awesome web syncing, and it works with a growing number of desktop apps.

Everything you need, nothing you don’t
Don’t let unnecessary features get between you and your notes. Simplenote’s interface is designed specifically for text notes. It gives you fast, clean, synchronized access to your thoughts, dreams, musings, and masterpieces.

Syncing without thinking
The Simplenote app works together with our free web app and a variety of third-party apps to keep your notes in perpetual sync. No cables, no hassles, no fiddling. Automatic, over-the-air, and fast.

As well as being a super easy app to use, there are some really great extras for you to download. My particular favourite is JustNotes which allows you to read, add & edit notes from your OS X taskbar.

There is also a fantasic webapp to allow to access your notes from your browser – this is great if you just need to check something while at work, or if you don’t have your iPhone with you while you are at a friend’s house, etc.

If you are like me, and get frustrated with the looks & inconvinient syncing of the built in notes app, then this is the perfect app for you.

ITunes Link

1. Yay, helvetica! No more Marker Felt

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James & I went to see it with a few friends on Saturday night, and we both loved it. In fact everyone but Victor really enjoyed it.. and Victor doesn’t ‘get’ a lot of things so it’s not that surprising! The man collects stamps for goodness sake, he can’t be expected to understand a science fiction love story like Avatar!

I won’t repeat what many of the ‘great critics’ have said, or try and deconstruct the film for you. I just wanted to tell you I loved it. The characters are fantastic, and the imagination it took to create this film is amazing… let alone the technology behind those special effects. Go see it. If you like science fiction, or if you like love stories, or even if you just like a great battle scene, then just go see it.

I want to go see it again, soon!

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There is no doubt about it, the iPhone is of the most popular cameras used by flickr members, and it’s not hard to guess why. It is far & away the most popular cameraphone, and for a brief period this summer actually topped the charts as the most popular camera overall.

Despite the improvements to the camera in the 3GS, it still doesn’t match up our point ‘n’ shoot camera, the Sony Cybershot T77 – but I take far more pictures with my iPhone 3GS than I used to when I had a seperate phone & camera.

When something happens – if Homily is being extra cute or James is doing something silly, my first reaction is to pull my iPhone out of my pocket and capture the moment. Simply because it’s there. I don’t have to root in my bag for a camera, and I can upload the photo straight to my flickr account straight away – no need to find cables and plug it into my laptop.

Flickr & the iPhone are a great match, especially with the apps that are now avaliable on the App Store. I have been using Flickr on & off for several years, but it is only since I got my iPhone that I’ve been uploading photos on a regular basis. I take far more photos than I used to, and the Flickr apps I have on my iPhone make it really easy to upload & share these photos within minutes of taking them.

I recommended my favourite photography apps for the iPhone some months ago, but Yahoo have now released a Flickr app & there have been some welcome updates to my absolute favourite (and free!) Flickr app, Flickit.

The official app is gorgeous – the UI is far nicer than my Mobile Fotos, which used to be my no. 1 pick for browsing Flickr photos. It feels polished & is very easy to use – all of my favourite iPhone apps are intuitive, and this one is no different. When you load it up, there is a slideshow of your contacts photos with a ken burns effect – this is a nice little touch.

I haven’t removed Mobile Fotos from my phone, because it still has more functionality than the official app – but my first choice to show someone one of my own Flickr photos has definitely changed.

Flickit has recently been updated to include twitter support, using the Flickr & Twitter APIs. I prefer to use Flickr rather than TwitPic if I want to put a photo on my blog or keep it in my photostream as well as showing it to my twitter followers. Flickit now makes this easy as pie. Another welcome addition is the ability to upload 3GS photos at their full resolution, which is something I’ve been hankering for since I got my 3GS.

If you like taking everyday photos & sharing them with your friends – then I can’t recommend the iPhone enough. The camera in the 3GS is a lot better than it used to be, and I’ve taken some gorgeous photos with mine. The autofocus is intelligent and easy to use, and the video capability is great.

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I will be reviewing 7 apps – and they are all apps that I would recommend to anyone who takes a lot of photos with their iPhone, as I do. The apps I am reviewing are: AutoStitch, Photogene, NightCamera, Mobile Fotos, Flickit, ShakeItPhoto, and HP iPrint.

I already have a fairly good point and click camera – the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T77 which was a wedding present to James & myself. However, I don’t always have this with me, and if I do it is no doubt sitting at the bottom of my bag. More often than not, I will find myself pulling out my iPhone from my pocket to take the quick snaps of everyday life – the blink & you’ll miss it ‘kodak moments’. As a result, about half of my photos are probably taken with my iPhone.

Warning! This post is very image heavy.

AutoStitch - £1.19

AutoStitch is a photo-stitching app, which stitches several photos together to create one large panoramic image. I found it very good – it is very good at recognising the features in photos to stitch them together in the right order. It worked fairly quickly, considering the task – and despite me throwing a lot of photos at it with some of my tests, AutoStitch never crashed on me. It is very simple to use and does a great job!

For this kind of app, it’s really better to let the photos speak for themselves…

Selecting photos to stitch:

Original photos & panorama:

(download zipfile of all images)

(original size)

Panorama after cropping in Photogene:

(original size)

Edit: Auto Stitch now includes a cropping tool built in. Yay!

Relevant Links:
iTunes link
App website
Flickr pool

Photogene - £1.79

Photogene is a very well rounded photo editing app, which runs well on my iPhone 3G. It has a wide range of editing tools, including: crop, rotate, filters, borders, etc. You can even adjust the sharpness, contrast, colour levels & exposure. This is a great app for the moments when you take a photo but need to adjust it slightly before uploading – Photogene saves you the hassle of getting the photo off your iPhone to make changes before uploading it.. no computer required! The filters/changes I applied to the image were applied quickly & the photo saved to the camera roll in good time.

Start page, crop & rotate:

Filters:

Colour adjust – Levels, Exposure, Colours, RGB (not pictured):

Symbols:

Frames:

Starting image & final result:

Relevant Links:
iTunes link
App website
Flickr pool

NightCamera - £0.59

NightCamera is a great app for low light situations where the slightest shake of the hand as you take the photo blurs your photo. It has a built in shake detector using the iPhone’s accelerometer which snaps the photo at the optimum moment, as your hands are still. I’ve actually found this app great for self portraits as you don’t have to press the camera button to snap a pic, you just have to point it at yourself & wait for the camera shutter sound to tell you your photo is done! The latest version of the app also includes a timer option and a fullscreen shutter, which allows you to use your whole screen as a shutter button.

Shake detection:

Photo with regular 3G camera:

(original size)

Photo with Night Camera:

(original size)

Relevant Links:
iTunes link
App website

Mobile Fotos – £1.79

Mobile Fotos is a well rounded Flickr application. Preferring Flickit (see below) for uploading apps, I tend to use Mobile Fotos primarily to browse Flickr. You can view your photos, your contacts & groups – as well as exploring the ‘Interesting’ and ‘Most Recent’ photos. This app has twitter integration & also allows you to view nearby photos based on your location, which is cool.

Start page, your photos, twitter integration:

Nearby photos:

Relevant Links:
iTunes link
App website

Flickit – Free!

I really don’t know why you wouldn’t want this app if you are both a Flickr & an iPhone user. This app beautifully melds the two things together, with a gorgeously simple interface. It only does one thing – upload photos to Flickr – but it does such a fantastic job it doesn’t need to do anything more than that to be great. You can do all the usual things when you upload the photos; add them to sets, tag them, set the privacy level – even geotag them with your current location. This one is an absolute must for any Flickr member.

Three steps – Add photos, Add details, Upload:

Relevant Links:
iTunes link
App website

ShakeItPhoto - £0.59

ShakeItPhoto is a Polaroid style app for the iPhone, similar to the Poladroid app which is available for Mac & Windows. It basically applies filters to your photo to make it look like an old style Polaroid photo – you can even shake it while it develops! The finished photos are very well done, and much nicer than any of the other similar Polaroid apps I’ve tried/looked at.

My main criticism of the app is that you can’t use photos from your photo library, only direct captures from the camera. Also, it would be nice if there was an option to save the original photo to your camera roll as well as the finished photo. Edit: You can now use photos from your photo library.

Photo developing:

Example photos:

(original size photos: desk, tree, Homily)

Relevant Links:
iTunes link
App website
Flickr pool

HP iPrint – Free!

This app is another simple app that does one job – it allows you to print your photos straight from your iPhone to your HP printer. You select the photo you want from the standard photos interface, and then tap Print. Easy peasy – another app that saves you having to connect your iPhone to your computer to do what you want with it.

Interface:

Relevant Links:
iTunes link
App website

Conclusion

Well, there you are – hope this has been useful. I figured the photos mostly spoke for themselves – they are photo apps after all!

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Post tags: iphone, recommendations

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It’s a sort of keyboard which lets you type glyphs not available on any of the standard iPhone keyboards. These glyphs include , ☂, ☺, ✔, and even ♫.

Basically, you launch the app, and you can copy the glyphs you want to put in your blog post/tweet/email, and then you can navigate to whichever app you’re using and paste them in. It even allows for a string of glyphs to be copied, by offering a sort of ‘scratch pad’ where you can collect them together.

To get Glyphboard on your iPhone, just use this handy link (and don’t forget to save it to your home screen as a webapp for future use!).

This is going to be very useful for fun tweets!

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James & I went to see Counting Crows last week at the Birmingham NIA, on Wednesday 13th. As per usual, they were absolutely fantastic.

It was a brilliant set list, a really nice mixture of their old & newer songs (full list at the end of this post). We arrived early enough to see the support acts, Blind Pilot and The Hold Steady. Both were enjoyable, and they warmed the crowd up nicely for the main attraction! I actually preferred Blind Pilot who came on first, and will probably be buying their CD as soon as a few pennies hit our bank account!

Blind Pilot

I’ve managed to get a bootleg recording of the show from CrowsTown (if you want a copy of this, let me know), so I can listen over and over and over to the beautiful arrangements of the songs they played. There is something quite special about having a recording from the night we were there.

Counting Crows

After all, there is nothing quite like being at a Counting Crows gig where the music just flows and they just do whatever the hell they feel like. Adam conducts the rest of the bad with hand gestures that he weaves into his surreal dancing & the whole thing just works together perfectly somehow. With every live band it’s true that no two live performances of the same song are ever the same, but this is especially true with Counting Crows – their songs have evolved and grown over the years until they are almost unrecognisable compared to the original studio versions. They continually experiment and grow as a band, and it’s fantastic to see them continually breathing new life into their oldest tracks.

Colorblind (video improves as it goes on!)

Adam was (as ever) completely nuts – you only have to listen to his chatty ramble to work that out! This was the third time I’ve seen them live & I will continue to jump at every opportunity to see them again. I love their studio albums, but their live stuff just completely surpasses it – they are simply amazing live.

The night was a great way to celebrate 10 years of Counting Crows being my favourite band – I’m very pleased with my Christmas present from James – I loved every second!

Setlist

1. Intro (Lean On Me)
2. Hard Candy
3. Mrs Potters Lullaby
4. New Frontier
5. Rain King (Get Out of Bed/Wake up/Small White Box alt)
6. Colorblind
7. Adam Chat (losing his mind! & having a conversation)
8. Omaha
9. Richard Manuel Is Dead
10. Mr Jones
11. On Almost Any Sunday Morning
12. Children In Bloom
13. Black & Blue
14. Daylight Fading
15. Miami (Murder Of One/Hanginaround/What Would You Do alts)
16. Hanginaround
17. Encore
18. A Long December
19. Washington Square
20. Come Around
21. Outro

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Post tags: Counting Crows, music

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This was my first 3D film with the new RealD technology, so I’ll talk about that first. My memories of going to see 3D films still involved the cardboard glasses with red & green flimsy plastic lenses that were so dreadfully uncomfortable throughout the entire film! The new style glasses with their stiff plastic frames were comfortable and you could actually see (almost) properly through them, which made it hard to believe that they were going to actually work.

Being the geek I am, I immediately whipped out my iPhone while we were waiting in the cinema for the film to start, and looked the technology up on wikipedia, whispering the details to James¹. Anyway, As soon as the 3D trailers began, I started to get excited, waggling the glasses up & down my nose to try and observe the effect. Needless to say, technology has come on in leaps & bounds since the days of the old 3D method, and the 3D effect you get from the polarised glasses is brilliant – it had me jumping in my seat as objects leapt off the screen at my face. You really do feel as if things are jumping out right to your nose!

The film itself was absolutely brilliant, and I expected nothing less from the Dreamworks Animation gang! As always (just like with Shrek), they managed to make the film appeal to all ages – the kids in the cinema were loving it, and the adults enjoyed it even more! The storyline is a touch predictable at times, and (of course) the good guys come out on top, but it’s a very enjoyable film – and one you should watch while it is still at cinemas, even if you don’t have a child to take as your excuse!

The film is based around a young woman named Susan, and starts on her wedding day, as she is getting ready to marry the love of her life – weatherman Derek Dietl. However, something rather large comes in the way of this (not quite true?) love and the wedding falls to pieces fairly spectacularly. Having rather outgrown the sleepy town she lives in, Susan goes on to join a team of Monsters – some of whom maybe slightly familiar to the older viewers (The Blob, anyone? Or The Fly? How about Attack of the 50 Foot Woman?).

With Dreamworks’ new take on these old characters, you can’t help falling a little bit in love with the Monster gang as they go about their adventures, succeeding only through a mixture of skill and pure luck. Add in the rather sinister yet strangely adorable aliens, and the film is a fun mixture of personalities brilliantly animated & brought to life by the fabulous actors providing their vocal chords (does a blob have vocal chords? Who knows).

The cast were brilliantly suited to the characters - Reese Witherspoon, Seth Rogen and Hugh Laurie shine particularly bright. With the usual sly pokes & references to other popular films that Dreamworks excel in, even taking the piss out of themselves at one stage, Monsters Vs Aliens had James & I giggling from start to finish. If you haven’t seen this film already, I suggest you go while you still can – and I would definitely recommend paying the extra few quid & seeing the 3D film – if you’ve never seen one before then you won’t be disappointed!

1. Of course, this was much annoyance of our neighbours – really, who is that interested in a blank screen that they get wound up about some talking before the film; the adverts hadn’t even started yet!

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