A Friday and Its Small Acquisitions

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoFriday again, and it arrives now with the quiet familiarity of an old acquaintance — the same face at the same hour, no longer surprising, still welcome. The week has a way of folding itself up by this point, and Friday is where the creases finally settle.

The morning clinic was a long one, but efficient with it, which is the best a long clinic can hope to be. There's a meaningful difference between a morning that drags and a morning that simply contains a great deal — the first wears you down, the second merely fills you up. This was the second sort. Names came and went in good order, the list behaving itself, and by the end I felt productively tired rather than simply depleted.

The afternoon turned to procedures, that more deliberate kind of work where the hands take over and the mind narrows to the task immediately in front of it. There's a particular focus to it that I've come to value — the world shrinks to a small, manageable size, and for an hour or two there is only the next careful thing. Then paperwork, inevitably, which has never once narrowed the world to anything but tedium, and I left late on its account, as one does.

Home, dinner, and then the proper business of a Friday evening: something to watch. We started Star City — the Soviet spin-off of For All Mankind, which Anita and I have followed faithfully for years now. It takes the same alternate history and walks it round to the other side of the Iron Curtain, all cold and watchful and grim in a way the parent show never quite was. Bleak, certainly, but compelling. There's something fitting about ending a long week in the company of people having a considerably harder time of it than you are.

And then the small triumph of the day, which had arrived earlier and waited patiently for attention: the Lofree Flow 2, finally here after its slow passage from China. I'd ordered it some weeks ago and half forgotten it, so it had that pleasing quality of a gift from one's past self. It's a low-profile mechanical thing, all milled aluminium and quiet, satisfying keystrokes, and I'm pleased to report it was better than expected — which, given my expectations, is no small claim. It types beautifully. It looks faintly too good for my desk.

This is, I should confess, the beginning of a plan. I've decided to buy one keyboard a month — a resolution I've dressed up as a measured, disciplined enterprise rather than what it plainly is, which is a hobby acquiring momentum. One a month sounds so reasonable. So sustainable. I'm aware of exactly how these things go, and I'm proceeding anyway, which is rather the point of a hobby.

So the week closes on a good clinic, a grim Soviet drama, and a keyboard I didn't strictly need. A fair haul, all told. The weekend can take it from here.

Movie to End the Year

I decided to stay in on the New Year Eve Night. Luckily there were no calls as well and I had a nice afternoon at home in front of the TV.

For a good few months, I really wanted to watch T2, the sequel to Trainspotting. And the best way to enjoy it would be to watch the original and the sequel back to back.

All the original cast were back. The original were darker compared to the sequel. The dialogue were sharper and the storyline tighter. A lot of clips were borrowed from the original in a kind of retelling of some of the stories through the eyes of Spud, one of the main original character.

Not quite the original classic but for the nostalgic, it brought some closure to some of the original storyline, explaining what happened in the 20 years between the two movies. If you were a fan of the original movie, T2 is definitely worth a look. If you haven't seen the original, you could do yourself a favour and watch both one after the other. You will understand the reason behind it afterwards.

4K Upgrade

While most of the crowd were excited about the iPhone 8, I was waiting for the Apple TV 4K. Finally I could twin it with my main TV and get HDR to boot.

I guess that I wasn't the only one looking for them. I had to go to a couple of shops before managing to lay my hands on one. And even then, I only managed to get the lower end 32 GB. But it was enough to do the trick.

As usual, getting it set up was easy and I managed to log into my US account within 10 minutes. Most of my old purchases had been updated to 4K and they streamed without a hitch.

The apps were still playing at HD though and those included Netflix and YouTube. Luckily I got 4K streaming directly on my TV for those. Managed to watch the latest episode of Designated Survivor before I called it the night. So far, so good ...

The New iPad

It's becoming almost a tradition now. Anita's birthday followed by Apple announcement. A birthday present for her, followed by a present for me! And this year's announcement did not show anything unexpected although there are three things worth mentioning.

First, the new camera for the iPhone. On the new iPhone 6S, Apple finally caught up with the competitors in terms of photo resolution was concerned. I was never that bothered with megapixels, but to see the Samsung Galaxy S6 edge camera trumping the iPhone hinted that something need to be done.

The new snapper shipped with a 12MP sensor. But it wasn't just the size of the sensors, it's the technology behind it, the Apple secret sauce. Being an avid photographer, I value the mobility and simplicity of the smartphone camera very much. I have toiled with the latest iPhone and Samsung's offerings as well as the Lumia 940 as well as the BlackBerry Z10 which camera was often under appreciated.

So far, the Samsung was on top. Let's see how Apple upped its game.

The second, was the iPad Pro. I have always felt that eventually a desktop-sized tablet would be in the market. Samsung had the 10.9 inch tablet, so was the Nexus series. And there are plenty of use-case scenario, coupled with the dedicated stylus - sorry, Apple Pencil - it could prove very useful in my clinic and for photo editing.

The keyboard was also a welcomed addition as since I had been using a keyboard with my tablet, it had transformed my productivity. Especially useful for attending conference although I doubt that the iPad Pro is mobile. At least it has a built-in LTE chip.

Last point was Apple TV. I had been using it for the last 4 years using a US account. I used it to watch the latest miniseries as well as movies. The latest Apple TV looked at disrupting the console market with many games and a Wii-like controller making playing social games enjoyable. You can also use your iPhone and iPad Touch as controller as well to join in. This is going to be big as you could download games on line from the App Store with close integration with the rest of Apple ecology.

All in all, it was one of those announcements well worth staying up for. I was expecting a new Mac Mini, but the new Apple TV might just beat that. No new standard iPad to replace the Air 2. But Anita had already asked me to get her the new iPad Mini. But before that, let's see how much of an upgrade the new WatchOS was going to be. It would certainly opened up the real potential of the watch.

Apple TV

It took a fair while before Apple TV was released in Malaysia. It was partly due to the limitation of Malaysian App Store, which until only recently sold songs and movies. It was only purely applications prior to that, although it did not stop me from having both the US and UK app store accounts for my fix of movies and videos.

The Apple TV was surprisingly affordable at RM350, but compared to Western Digital media hubs and the like, it was pretty limited in terms of what it could do. But what ever it could do, typically of Apple, it did them well. It could stream. From iTunes. And that was it biggest selling point. And it streamed media directly from the iPads and Macs very well, although at a very noticeable latency.

The unit was much smaller than I expectedAnd it came with a slick remote unitTypical of Apple, it came in a nice tidy packageIt could also perform AirPlay, a way of turning the TV into a computer screen remotely, but the latency and lag were just too long. It was unusable at best. I also suffered from limited bandwidth as my router was located at my study, and I had to use a repeater to get signals onto the Apple TV. Streaming YouTube was effortless, but anything from the iTune Store took a while to download. I ended up downloading onto my MacBook, then streaming it onto the TV.

The situation maybe a little better if the wifi signal was stronger, something I would try on a later venture. At the moment, I was happy with the YouTube streaming, and media from my iPad. And another thing to be aware, the Apple TV unit did not come with an HDMI cable. You would need to purchase that separately.