Technology

Technology

Time flies when you’re early to bed (+ meet Rosie my vacuum cleaner)

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It occurred to me today as I was making my way home that I really don’t get that much time to do things at night. Disclaimer – I don’t have kids so I really shouldn’t be complaining, and I’m not really, just making an observation.

For example, tonight I was at home by 6pm. Mario had dinner on the table by 6.15pm, and by 7pm I was cleaning up. Then began the chores and the list of things to do. Tonight I have completely pulled apart Rosie, our amazing robot vacuum cleaner, and given her a thorough do-over in cleaning her bits (sounds a bit rude doesn’t it). I’m now about to update my budget and bills and see how I’m tracking for the month. By the time I’ve finished that it will be about 8pm. I get half an hour to do something, then I’m in bed by 8.30am. It’s really not that much is it?

 

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What I never leave home without (my running equipment)

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Garmin 920xt

At my recent triathlon, I was lucky enough to score a free shirt from the Garmin exhibit, which read: If you see me collapse, someone pause my Garmin Sadly, that sums me up SO well. There are some things that when it comes to training, I just don’t leave home without. The shoes This is … Read more

Cool kid on the block

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I am the cool kid on the block in our office at the moment. Why, you ask? Because this: My iPhone wears a leopard print g-string. So raunchy! A work colleague and I have challenged each other to buy the most pointless things we can find for less than US$10 on www.aliexpress.com.au, and gift it … Read more

Why don’t you drink my blue suede juice (MOG music)

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Disclaimer – I have been provided with free goods to review but was under no obligation to post a review on my blog. I have done this purely out of interest of sharing my thoughts with my readers and to encourage discussion.

Everyone has heard of the theory that music played to plants helps them grow.

A company called MOG believe it as scientific proof so have developed some systems around it. They have found a farm based in Australia, gathered the experts and played the tunes. They then used the fruit, created and bottled the juice, and now it's available for sale. You can literally drink blue suede juice (just don't step on it – ha, did you see what I did there?)

In addition to that they launched MOG, an online music streaming service designed to compete with other sites like the ever-growing Spotify.

The people at MOG asked me to trial the service for a month, and also sent me a complimentary juice to try. Given that I'm a big user of spotify, they wanted my opinion on how I found the experience in comparison.

The service boasted some great features:

  • Unmetered downloads for BigPond customers (including mobile)
  • Personalised recommendations
  • Share playlists
  • Music quality
  • Over 16,000,000 songs

For me, the unmetered feature is HUGE, and something that definitely makes me tempted to jump ship from my pro subscription with Spotify when my trial subscription with MOG is up. I have always been worried about streaming on my phone with Spotify purely because of the usage charges. As a Telstra customer, I wouldn't have to worry about that anymore, and I'm not going to be changing from Telstra any time soon (I have learned my lesson in trusting other providers, never again).

I know that both Spotify and MOG have the ability with premium subscription to download playlists so that usage shouldn't be a problem, but what if there's a new album that you just heard of that you want to stream? What if space on your phone/device is an issue, and you want to conserve it by not downloading the music?

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Bali preparation: technology edition 1

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When you travel, you take photos. Everyone does. It's a given.

When you travel, you want to tell everyone back home all about it,

When you travel, to share the photos with everyone back home means you have to have the gear to be able to send the pictures, and when you travel, how much gear you take requires serious consideration. No one wants to be lugging around heavy backpacks or suitcases, myself included. How inconvenient! Thus currently I'm going through the motions of figuring out what tech gear I want to take with me, and how I can get away with taking as little as possible. When I went to Thailand last year I took the following:

  • Dell mini laptop
  • External hard drive
  • DSLR camera (two lenses only)
  • Thousands of charging cables and accessories (slight exaggeration here)

All up, at meant it was quite the effort to get the photos from the camera onto the laptop onto the hard drive, plus blogging them (I discovered on the trip that my dell mini hated uploading to Facebook so had to download freeware apps to get the pics up, it was a nightmare). The only benefit to taking all of this stuff is that I had my partner at the time with me to help share the load of the backpack; he was actually pretty good, I don't think I carried much at all!

Going to Bali, when thinking about how much stuff I'm taking I need to factor in that I'm alone. That means no sharing th load, so whatever I take needs to be light, and I need to take the least amount of stuff as possible.

This year I now have an ipad, which means the weight issue of taking the dell mini has been resolved…sort of.

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