Sonos Plus Spotify - a Killer Combination.

I have always been a huge fan of the concept behind Sonos. Wirelessly streaming music all over your house and being able to play different music in different rooms. I have a friend who has be raving about it for years, however he had to have a media server, essentially a crappy old PC, running in his loft to serve the music content. Although loving the concept I never really wanted to leave a PC permanently on in amongst the loft insulation to play music.

This is where Spotify, for me, turns the Sonos into a killer music combination. Spotify basically rocks. A streaming music service that allows you to create playlists of you favourite music and chair dance you day away while at work. With access to something like 10 million songs, you are pretty much well guaranteed to find what you are looking for, although dissapointingly, when in a fit of nostalgia the other night, I was unable to find any tunes by Cold Chisel! Sure there is heaps of Jimmy Barnes stuff, but come on! No Cold Chisel! Dissapointing! Do you really want to listen to Jimmy Barnes? ;-)

Spotify has a free and premium service with the free service interrupted by ads. Think of it as radio where annoyingly ads interrupt the chat and music. I seriously hate radio advertising, although in the UK if you a BBC junky you don't really hear any! Tidy! Oh it should be noted that the free service is actually being limited further now, to encourage you to to become a premium subscriber, however I never felt the need to upgrade my account and pay for Spotify. I listened to Spotify at work but really that was it. Most of the time, dependant on what I am working on at home, I don't sit in front of a PC at home. Also I don't have a PC sat in the corner of my living room that is permanently turned on allowing me access to Spotify. As Spotify it is an internet based product it firmly lived, for me, in an at work stuck at my desk and stuck on the internet kind of way!

With the Sonos S5 though the game changes. As mentioned above the Sonos streams music from whatever source it has access to. This might be that PC you leave turned on in the loft, but not for me! It does however also stream music from the Internet. Very tidy. So you have access to pretty much well every Internet Radio station and also Spotify.

Access to Spotify, for me is the game changer. Now I have access to the 10 million odd tracks that Spotify has access to through a very cool and non intrusive Sonos S5 that sits tidily in the corner. It's trivial to use and set up, and although you might have to buy a remote control, handily there is a free iPhone and Android app that lets you control the system through your phone. A screenshot of the iPhone app is included above.

You do have to have a premium Spotify account, which costs you £10 a month, but with access to the volume of music that you have, this is peanuts. Since having access to Spotify through the Sonos S5 I have deleted every album on my Amazon wish list that is available on Spotify. that has saved me about £100 right there.

i find now, I want to turn on music and listen to that before turning on the TV and becoming a vegetable as well. There is something just right about having music on instead of the TV and the Sonos S5 sound, although I am not the greatest Audiophile in the world, is fantastic. To me, at least, it sounds great!

Also in terms of music discoverability it simply rocks! I love watching something on TV, or listening to the radio on the drive home, and hearing a track from ages ago and being able to search for it on Spotify, add it to a playlist and listen away. It has been a great deal of fun trying to figure out the names of artists and tracks that I used to listen to as a kid and see if they are available on Spotify. There is a lot that isn't as the afore mentioned Cold Chisel example highlights, but the sheer volume and choice that is available gets you past the slight dissapointment experienced when you cannot find Khe Sanh ;-)

Seriously love it!

There is a potential flaw in the whole concept though. Once you have one Sonos you want more! For some reason you start to think about all of the other rooms in your house and how you could stream music there! Also you then want to set up a NAS so, without having to leave your PC running permanently, you can have access to all of your own music as well that you have patiently been collecting for the past few decades! This is when the Danger alarms start ringing!

Cheers

m

Addition: Classic. As I was writing this and mentioning about hearing something on the radio or TV and then trying to find it on Spotify, I was thinking that a Shazam/Spotify integration would greatly help this discoverability use case! Well low and behold the good folks at Spotify and Shazam have been thinking the same thing! Information about that here.

Oh and for those of you who want to know what all the fuss SHOULD be about Cold Chisel ... enjoy!

Spring Waits For No Man - Not Even Peter Marius!

So gardening opportunities have been rare since the arrival of Peter Marius! Not that I am complaining what so ever! Running around like a headless chicken for the past month has been the most pleasurable headless chicken running EVA! You know its true if the word EVA is used over ever ;-)

A couple of pruning sessions, a couple of mowing sessions and some quick dashes to take a few photos when the light has been right. That being said it has been a real magical experience watching the garden evolve during the Spring, not that I have had a great deal of time to watch it that much. You turn your back for a day or two and all of a sudden another group of flowers has burst onto the scene.

So although I have not been able to spend a great deal of time in the garden I have been able to enjoy the fleeting glimpses I have been able to make! Although I have not been able to download all of the photos yet, here are a few that might brighten your spring day! Oh ... at some stage more about the results of the lawn scarifying as well. It has worked well! For now though ...

Forget me nots invading the garden

The Daffodils singing in the Spring!

The Furry Pulsatilla Vulgaris - Pasque Flower

and the glorious tulips!

and the pink tulips ;-)

OK more later, but there are more here on my Flickr Stream if you need another fix ;-)

Spring has been so special in the Garden and even more special as we have been able to share it with Peter Marius! That being said the little blighter is now making noises! Must sign off and see what the little tacker needs ;-)

Have fun and more later I hope!

Cheers

m

A Manic Weekend Of Gardening! So Good!

After finishing up the DIY in the babies room, the results of which you can see below, I finally managed to get to spend some time in the garden! And what a weekend it was as well. Although a heavy frost greeted Saturday morning, it was clearing going to be a corker of a day. It didn't let us down. Bright sun and blue skies all day. In fact in the backyard, out of the very mild breeze, it actually felt warm! Warm enough to have lunch outside. Tidy!

The Frost, in the morning, see below, quickly gave way to warmth, so after a trip to the garden centre for 100 liters of organic compost, it was time to get busy in the garden. The first task was re-potting all of the hedge cuttings I took last year. Most had survived the winter so transferring them to some bigger pots was required. They are not quite ready to go out into the hedge row yet, although there are a couple of gaps screaming out for their need.

After a required break for a little flat pack manufacture, thank god for IKEA - or not ;-), it was back outside and into the garden to enjoy the sun. The lawn has been slowly growing since the end of winter and in the past couple of weeks it seems to have decided to burst back into life. Happily I am glad to say Toby Buckland from Gardeners' World does know what he is doing! The lawn looks great after scarifying last Autumn following Toby's guidance. In that blog entry I did say " don't find out until Spring so by then they will probably be long gone anyway so I won't be able to chase them down ". After scarifying the lawn looked so bad I was worried it wouldn't come back. It has, and seems to be better than before. Unfortunately despite the lawn surviving Toby Buckland, from Gardeners' World hasn't. He is no longer on the show which is a real shame, but I think that's a story for another blog.

After mowing the lawn for the first time this year, for some reason this is a great thing ;-), that was that for Saturday. More flat pack manufacture called which alas forced me back inside! Oh there was a bit of weeding thrown in for good measure as well. Although the lawn does look as though iut has struggled through the winter well there is a little bit of moss that needs sorting, as well as a few small bare, shady patches that will need reseeding. All in all pretty good though.

Sunday was not as bright as Saturday but still such a beautiful day. This meant spreading the rest of the compost around the hedge boarders. I got through about 8 meters before what was left over of the 100 liters of compost was gone. 100 liters doesn't get you too far. It'll be back to the garden centre next week to get probably 150 more liters for the rest of the garden and hedges.

Glad to see the Peonies are coming back as well. The first shoots, see below, are poking through. Hopefully, in a few months, they will look like what you can see below!

Below are the peonies in bloom last summer.

Anyways to top the garden work off for Sunday, in between helping Mon make curtains, I had to sort out the cleaning of the BBQ! It was so warm and nice this weekend I was almost tempted to have a BBQ this evening. Although the nights are still far too cold, as Saturday's early morning frost clearly highlights! Still it cannot be too far off for BBQ season to officially start! Fingers crossed ;-)

Oh that being said, as I have now cleaned the BBQ, in preparation for a summer in the garden, that probably spells the end of summer! It'll probably rain for the next 4 months ;-)

Have fun

cheers

m

A Translation App and Something to Save Your Petrol Bill!

I really love the Google Translate iPhone app. I also like the Android version but for me the iPhone one tops it due to the spoken translation results. So far there is support for 23 languages including Hungarian, as can be seen above. Please excuse the Monty Python reference ;-) This can get you into no end of trouble! The App is great for me as the spoken translations, to the best of my limited knowledge are incredibly accurate. Helps me when trying to decipher Danish words and how they are spoken. Rest assured, very oddly! Ooops now I am in trouble ;-)

Actually it probably doesn't help but it gives the perception of helping. I know if I was a Google engineer I would be trying to build all sorts of Easter eggs into the product to drop the unwary into :-). OK not professional, but a little bit of fun. Perhaps the Easter Eggs should be widely publicised to avoid embarrassment.

This app has always been a dream of mine since starting to work in mobile. Having been an avid back packer in my day (not that I am over the hill yet, although in a month or two I should be ;-)) and not being tremendous with spoken languages I have always been in need of a translation service. Being a fan of Hitch-hikers guide to the Galaxy, with its translating Babel Fish, I always thought that something like this should actually be achievable. A mobile device, initially is such an obvious candidate to target a translation service at. Always within reach with the available hardware - speaker, microphone and processor, to provide a needed phrase in case of emergency. Although not giving my age away, when I was backpacking mobiles weren't really around, so this wouldn't have helped me then ;-). Perhaps in the latter days of my travels and my current non backpacker travel.

Team this up with an AR concept like Word Lens, which translates text, and you have all you need right? Well almost. It certainly makes travel for the language-ly impaired a whole lot easier! OK the technologies are not 100% accurate but they are certainly a step in the right direction, and at the same time mighty fun to play with. An inner ear Babel Fish translation service though? Well maybe this is 10 years off :-). By then we will have in ear mobiles right? Well we are not too far off with Bluetooth headsets! Add AR glasses into the mix and you become a walking, listen and reading multi linguist. Talking .... well if the folks that you talk to share the same technology as you, then you're fine. Not sure how we get over everybody sounding the same though. As yet the Google Translate app only gives you a single voice for each language.

Another app that I am playing with at the moment is A Glass Of Water built by Toyota. See screenshot below.

This one claims that it can lower your fuel consumption by 10%. Given the price of diesel at the moment, hovering at £1.40 a litre, this is most welcome! Basically the smoother you drive, by managing your acceleration and deceleration, the more fuel efficient you will be! This app imaginatively measures this by spilling water out of the pictured glass if you drive erratically! The less water you spill the more fuel efficient you will be! As you can see by the picture below, the roundabouts near work have proven to be a challenge for keeping the inside of my car virtually dry, with a total of 15 cls spilt!

Have not been able to test the accuracy of the fuel consumption saving yet, but one thing is certain, having this app running in the car while driving does make you think about what you are doing. I feel the need to drive far less aggressively, not that I am an overly aggressive driver anyway. Although admittedly I did fire off a volley of abuse at a driver who nearly ran me off the road while I was testing this the first time! you know what though, I think I was far angrier at the amount of virtual water spilt because of the incident, than my actual safety! Odd! "You B"%#*%#! Do you know how much water you just made me spill!"

A word of warning though. You must ignore the app while driving! Looking at it constantly might make you save a little bit of fuel but it also dramatically increases the risk of accident if you take your eyes off the road! Yeah it's obvious, but I am surprised there is not a disclaimer in the app! To be fair there might be but I didn't see it as I was driving along ;-)

Have fun

cheers

m

As Winter Finally Closes Out The Garden Shows Even More Colour!

Finally winter is coming to a close. To be fair, after a brutally cold and snowy December it has not been all that bad, although there were a couple of damned cold weeks in January! No return of the snow, knock on wood! A couple of years ago it snowed at Easter! Fingers crossed no repeat of that! It hasn't seemed to be an eternal depressing season this year around ;-)

I noted midweek that the sunset in West London is now past 17:30 which means that there is enough working light until at least 6pm. If the weather doesn't freeze the hands too badly that leaves about an hour every day to get out into the garden ;-). Not that I have had an iota of time to do this at the moment. Too much DIY trying to finish off the nursery! That's not a plant nursery but rather a kids bedroom ;-). I figure I have 2 1/2 more weekends work there but if I spend a few evenings as well then in a couple of weeks I should have a little more gardening time. I need it! Despite all the pictures of flowers there are also plenty of weeds taking over the lawn! In fact I need to sort these out this week. Must take a break from the nursery to sort that out!

In the meantime I snuck out for 10 minutes today to grab a few more photos of the new colour in the garden. It is so nice after the bleak winter to see the garden really start to brim with colour again. Although this of course means that the lawn mower and hedge trimmer will soon have to make an appearance!

The picture above is of some mini daffodils. Below, even the Rosemary is showing a little colour after coming into flower

The Crocuses also putting on a fine show

If if yellow is your thing, here is a rather large splash of it!

Finally another few spots of purple.

Love that we are so close to Spring! Hoping that if I finish the DIY, that I might just be able to enjoy it in the garden! ;-)

Have fun

m

More Evidence Of The Garden Springing Back To Life

Yesterday was really the first day that I have been able to get into the Garden this year to clear out a bit of the chaff that has accumulated over the Winter. I am supposed to be sorting out the study and turning it into a nursery but after returning from the hardware store the Sun was simply too beautiful to pass up! Looking at the weather forecast for Sunday suggested rain all day so I simply had to down DIY tools to pick up the gardening ones for a while!

I should add I am glad that I did this when the sun was there, as within 2 hours there was more rain and even hail! Yesterday really did feel like a four seasons in one day yesterday. Grey and overcast, and due to the moisture in the air really cold as I wandered around London for 2 hours while waiting for my car to be serviced. This followed by a far warmer feeling afternoon due to the presence of the glorious sun. Followed by more rain and some hail as I then had to switch back into DIY mode to close out the day!

The title photo of this blog is of the Hortensia which I thought had perished during the winter. It simply looked so horrible and rotten that I thought I would shortly be digging it up! It showed it is made of far sterner stuff though and is coming on Strongly now!

Below are a bunch of Daffodils doing their best impression of B Of A Bang, a sculpture in Manchester

A couple more that I am yet to identify coming on strong and even flowering! Can't spend more time here now! Many chores to do! Will attempt to identify these correctly later on, when time permits. Been a crazy day already and only going to get more crazy!

Have fun

m

Report: Mobile App Market Will Be Worth $75 Billion By 2015 – Apple’s Share: 99%

Enough said really.