Simon's Blog

Monochrome – slowly coming together

Posted on September 24, 2013 by Guthlac

Still one or two issue to address but the painting is coming together nicely.

Simon Marchini
http://www.simonmarchini.co.uk

Posted in General | Tagged Brushes, Digital Painting, iPad, monochrome, portrait | Leave a comment

iPhone 5S’ Fingerprint Scanner Can Also Recognize Your Nipples

Posted on September 24, 2013 by Guthlac

I think this beyond belief..

iPhone 5S’ Fingerprint Scanner Can Also Recognize Your Nipples
http://designtaxi.com/news/360850/iPhone-5S-Fingerprint-Scanner-Can-Also-Recognize-Your-Nipples/

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Sent from Zite, available for free in the App Store.

Simon Marchini
www.simonmarchini.co.uk

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Monochrome – progress

Posted on September 24, 2013 by Guthlac

Day two working on the monochrome painting and I feel I’m starting to make progress. Still not there but things are starting to come together.

Sent from Yahoo! Mail for iPad

Posted in General | Tagged Brushes, Digital Painting, iPad, monochrome, portrait | Leave a comment

Making slow progress but things are starting to come together a little more. However, now is the time to leave things to settle, have a spot of lunch and see how I feel later on today or perhaps tomorrow.

Simon Marchini
http://www.simonmarchini.co.uk

Posted in General | Tagged Brushes, Digital Paining, iPad, monochrome, portrait | Leave a comment

Monochrome

Posted on September 23, 2013 by Guthlac

So it is Monday and I am now starting to get back into the routine of life after a week of travelling. What better to get back into the swing of things than to produce a Brushes painting. I have also decided to try and limit my pallet to a significant amount.

This is the first run at the portrait and there are a number of things that I need to address but somehow I get the feeling that monochrome really is where my future work may go towards – perhaps.

Sent from Yahoo! Mail for iPad

Posted in General | Tagged Brushes, iPad, monochrome, portrait | Leave a comment

Living with iOS 7 for 24 hours

Posted on September 22, 2013 by Guthlac

So I have now had iOS 7 installed on my iPad for 24 hours and just less than that on my iPhone 4 and so I feel I’m in position to offer my first impressions. So here goes….well there really isn’t much to report. It installed with few problems on both devices, the iPhone 4 took about twice as long to install as the iPad 3 or retina display or whatever Apple has decided to designate the machine. Apart from that nothing to report about the installation.

As for use the new interface seems to work much the same as the last. It looks new and refreshing and a lot of the functionality has had a good scrub up but within 10 minutes of use it just seemed very natural which, I suspect, is a real compliment to the designers. It seems to run alright on my iPhone 4 which was a big worry before hand as I feared I might have to update in the near future. Now I can take my time about this.

The only negative I’ve noticed so far is that there seems to be a slight increase in power usage compared to iOS 6. However, this is only anecdotal so might not actually exist in anything other than my mind.

So what conclusions to draw? Well the biggest one is that the interface doesn’t look a bit of a mess which iOS 6 did. This has a clear design approach running through the it which makes things appear more harmonious – whether they work any better is another point – but then I’ve spent a good portion of my adult life dealing with nonsensical OS so perhaps I’m not the best person to judge whether a clear design strategy is good – it certainly seems to be. The updating was a breeze, although this was in an Apple environment so I couldn’t say what it would be like outside of this but I guess it should be OK so long as you have a the latest versions of the OS etc. The big bonus was the lack of impact it had on the iPhone 4 which means I don’t have to rush my upgrade choice which somewhat reinforces my view that it is the iTunes/Apps world that is the real driver for Apple and the hardware is secondary – something you wouldn’t pick up on if your were to read the tech blogs who seem fixated with hardware, hardware, hardware.

So if you haven’t upgraded then do it as overall it will make things a whole lot better. Well that is my view 24 hours in. Now lets hope that Maverick is as painless.

Sent from Yahoo! Mail for iPad

Posted in General | Tagged Apple, iOS 7, iPad, iphone, upgrade | 1 Comment

Back Home

Posted on September 21, 2013 by Guthlac

After a long day of travelling we got home around about 9pm last night. Actually the drive back from Ashford was really uneventful apart from some lunatic driving along the M11 at night with no rear lights. Luckily he didn’t cause too many problems.

To day it is time to start to take stock and the first thing I want to report on is the bizarre treatment of first class passengers on Thalys.

I am not joking…this is the first class waiting area for the Thalys train

I suspect that the train is configured for Gard de Nord in Paris so the first class are closest to the station when it arrives. What it does mean is that the first class is way outside the covered area of the station and you have to wait in a bus shelter. The weather was fine yesterday but I guess in the middle of the winter it wouldn’t be too much fun.