I was reading some articles about Google Nexus One vs HTC Desire to see what people thought about HTC Sense on a device as powerful as the Nexus One when someone mentioned the website GelaSkins.

This is SO tempting (I'll have to do a proper image as this was just a very quick mock up to test it out)

Having customisation like this is godly for a high-end phone. Certianly makes it stand out of the crowd and couldn't mistake it for anyone elses!

 So I finally submitted the score to my piano instructor whom asked if I would play it in the minor. I've not been able to do that before and it came out perhaps not as good as in A-Major, but none-the-less interesting when played in A-Minor. You can listen to it below.

- in A Minor

I finished most of the new tune. Not thought of a name yet, and there is still plenty to do yet. Some parts I'm not totally happy with, but its getting there. It's called Unknown #2 because I haven't thought of a title yet. You can also hear what the first written score would generally sound like at the bottom of this post.

Here is the score:

Unknown #2 - By Adam Saunders

You can listen to it below.  The second one is played at a more intermediate speed. Its very difficult to play this piece at the faster speed. It's technically possible, but would require a lot more practice and experience. I've created the second one to show how it would sound at a more honest tempo, and its also the speed I've actually put on the time signiture of the score.

- Quick tempo

- Intermediate tempo

I've also added what the previous tune "Commencons" sounds like. This is played by a computer so not quite as good as a human playing it. It really needs the flow and variable tempo a human can add to it.

If you have any feeback, think any part you just aren't sure about, be sure to leave a comment. I can't improve without knowing what people think.

I'm currently going through the process of writing my next tune. Been trying different scoring software and ended up using Sibelius which is actually an app used a lot in schools. It takes a lot of practice to start writing music quickly. I'm not totally convinced on the interface. An opensource application called MuseScore has a much easier input method but it was just too buggy unfortunately.

Next thing to get is a MIDI to USB cable so I can make note entry easier. (At least I hope). This week is getting rather anxious for me as I've got to play my first scrored music in public and to someone from the Royal School of Music. So I'm spending all this weekend writing up my second piece and practicing the first one... and biting nails of course..

There are a lot of Android phones coming from HTC and the Nexus One is a big deal when it comes to the progress of Android as a smartphone platform. Google are so "in to" the Nexus One they want to call it a superphone, but I'm not buying into that term. Its a smartphone, because it can do much more than a normal mobile phone. It doesn't matter how powerful the device may be, its actual functionality hasn't changed.. It just does it quicker and with more pizzaz. That isn't a new breed.

It hasn't been long before the Nexus One is out that trickles of information about the HTC Bravo are hitting the tech blogs and from what has been rumoured, the HTC Bravo is exactly the same as the Nexus One except it has a track pad rather than a track ball, and it has the highly regarded HTC Sense installed.

That does sound like a recipe to quickly top the Nexus, but I'm questioning if that really is the case. I have to say that I do like the idea of a track pad instead of a track ball mainly because of its aesthetics. Functionally however they are merely identical, and as a long term HTC Hero user I do think its an important feature as it does make the finer selections (esspecially inputting text) far less frustrating than using a chubby finger to hit that 1mm² block between characters, and more accurate when selecting items in a list whilst on the move. So I suppose what I'm saying here is that the Bravo has Sense and the Nexus One does not... Is this a reason to go for a Bravo.. Perhaps not, and I'll explain why.

Sense made absolute sense for Android 1.x. The platform was lacking in style and user functionality and friendliness. 1.x was a platform for the geek, and as such Sense gave the lick of paint and additionaly functionality such as multi-touch to everyone else. Basically, it made the HTC handsets attractive to the world. Now comes along Android 2.1, and Google have done a great job in improving the interface to attract the wider market. They've added more panes on the home screen and improved on the overall feel of the OS.

So this is the important stuff. Sense gives you the built in apps, but in all honesty I've stopped using almost all of them. Within the market there are better apps. I use K9 for email, Handcent SMS for text messaging and Mixzing as my media player. Now 2.1 gives contact integration and the photo/video album gives improved integration with online services, I simply find it impossible to see what Sense is really giving me.

One thing for sure, however, is that Sense is probably giving me more of a headache. I've had the HTC Hero for quite some time, and because it has Sense the firmware updates need to comes from HTC (I don't want to use baked ROMs). This should have been all fine except HTC have become TOO slow in releasing updates to the handsets meaning that I can't get to use the new Android 2.1 when everyone else is. I can't see this changing for the Bravo, and hence why at this time I actually thing getting a Nexus One would be a smarter move. The focus by Google on user friendliness and funtionality blurs the lines of Sense, and the quick over-the-air updates mean that you'd get all the latest as it happens.

 For a little while I've been taken piano lessons to learn to read music. I've been composing my own music for a long time, but I've never been able to write it before. It was an interesting challenge set by my teacher to take an intro from a Yann Tierson piece and compose my own based on his influence. I've played a few of his d'Amelie film score tunes and built a liking to his style.

Writing music has taught me a lot of music theory. Here is my first composition!

Commençons - By Adam Saunders

The reason for the name is that as a tribute to the influence of Yann Tierson and this is my first written composition I've called it "Let's Begin" in French, "Commençons".

This isn't too difficult to play except a couple of bars and would probably be classed at only Grade 4 or 5. None-the-less I'm playing this to an instructor at the Royal School or Music next month. Extremely nerve racking.. not only because its my own composition but I've not played in front of strangers before.

Some of the old team met up for an experimental, but excellent "all you can eat buffet" at Dragon Grill, Bristol.

 I was really looking forward to seeing Law Abiding Citizen for a while. I love "clever" films that uses more intellect than high explosives. Unpredictable, smart movies get me on the edge of a seat, and I'm sure that is the same with many others.

So when such a film comes to the silver screen I look forward to the first opportunity in watching it, and this film certainly started on the right rails. It looked to be a thoroughly well thought out and one to twist and turn and take you one of those "how" journeys.. How disappointed was I when it slips into quick and unsatisfying ending. Without spoiling the plot, I can see what it was trying to do, but it seemed to lose out on the mystery with too much explained too quickly.

Perhaps I went with too much high expectations, but I was at least hoping for a little more.

Oh well.. at least I've still got my most anticipated film of the year to look forward to. Avatar! 

Got to cinema with tickets for nice seats to find people in them. We arrived almost last thing as the seats are reserved (you have to pay extra for them)

The people in our seats had tickets for another set of seats with two people in them, who had tickets for another set of seats with a woman that immediately says "I'm not moving..."

Oh boy, how much fun was this going to be! Highlights of the "conversation"

Woman: There isn't anywhere that says these seats are reserved
Me: Except all those notices as you walked in and sat down?
----------------
Woman: I'm not going to argue
Me: That's fine, you don't need to say anything you only need to move
----------------
Woman: I'm NOT GOING TO MOVE
Me: You sure? How do you think this will actually end. You haven't paid for the seats, the cinema is completely full and someone else has come along that have paid for the seats you are in..
Woman: I'm not moving
Me: Yea, that's likely....
----------------
Steward comes along to check everyone's tickets moments later.

Steward: You aren't meant to be in those seats... please move to the other seats
Woman: No, I'm sat now and there is no where else we can all sit together
Steward: Please move now or you will be asked to leave the cinema.
Woman: ............ *takes that walk of shame with everyone starring after making such a scene*
----------------
Nearby Person: You know the cinema was mostly empty when she walked in and sat there.

Why don't people learn! :-)

Oh, and the film was.... Disappointing, mainly because it was so flawed. Excellent effects, but storyline tried too hard. As a geek, I'm still wondering how they managed to completely rewrite the laws of physics throughout the entire film.

Like everyone I like good news, so this week has been a double wammy of smiles in the phone area for me. Firstly is the announcement of Android 2.0 (code names Eclair).. Ok, so the version wasn't announced this week, but the official video was released which demonstrates some of the major new features that the Android team have added to the mobile OS.

The video probably doesn't do the update as much justice as it could be worth. The bluetooth API alone is something I've been really missing with my Android and wasn't expecting to get it so quickly, and they've kept it open for some really innovative app developers to use in very imaginative ways... Imagine a game of virtual ping-pong between two devices where you use the phone as a kind of bat, or a form of two player curve ball. Although for now, just being able to send files and data over bluetooth would cover a very important missing device feature.

The multiple accounts with sync support is a big deal too. I can see an amazing array of uses including an outstanding integration with Neetrix. I'm looking forward to seeing just how far that new area has been pushed.

Google haven't stopped there either... for "with Google" devices (these are devices that include Google apps such as Google Maps, Market place etc) there have been a number of big updates.

The second piece of good news was that this update is coming to the HTC Hero!! This means, arguably, the best phone currently on the market is going to get a voice recognition, text to speech support as well as the bluetooth updates as above, plus updates to the Google apps like the following amazing update to Google Maps allowing for Navigation by natural voice.

This is a really impressive navigation system simply because of the monolithic amount of information Google holds on what seems like everyone and everything. Who could possibly fault the satellite view, or the street view to aid with turns and destination? Potentially very useful indeed.

Slightly less to smile about was Garmin and TomTom stocks plummeting when the news of Google's new Navigation update was announced. However I think this is pre-emptive, as the really important point missed here is that Google Maps is a cloud application. That means it requires an internet connection in order to send and receive the data it needs. Possibly not the same in the US as it is in the UK, but I can't imagine it could be that different, where mobile network provide far from 100% coverage, and its more than likely you won't have the coverage just as you need it the most. What is the point in a navigation application that could suddenly just stop feeding directions as soon as you start leaving towns or hit a grey or black area? Sounds risky to me, and it's going to be sometime before the mobile networks improve their network coverage to such a level that you could totally rely on them for a fully connected application like this.

I'm excited to try this out, but I've no regrets with the Copilot Live I already have on my Android HTC Hero!

UPDATE: It is infact Android 2.1 that will be coming to the HTC Hero. Even more to look forward to!

Whenever you sign up to a website to buy goods or set up an account for one reason or another, I can't think of a single example that have not asked for an email address. Most of the time email addresses are required to be provided for the service. Many people don't think about what happens to that information once they press the submit button, especially after they have ticked all those boxes to request the company to not provide their details to any other third parties and partners, we all would presume that this information is now safe and secure.

Unfortunately these things are not perfect. So my trick is to create an email address or use plus addressing* to ensure that each time I provide an email address to a website, it is unique and therefore traceable.

In this instance I have been receiving a number of spam and viruses from an address that I had setup to only use on the confused.com website. The problem with such a company is that it is the core of their business to forward your information onto other systems that store and use your data. This makes it very hard to work out where a leak of the addresses would have occurred, but none-the-less it would have originally started at confused.com.

I strongly believe that the measure of a good company is not by the problems they will inevitably face. Every single business will experience problems like this at some point, and no matter how much planning is put into place, something will inevitably get missed. It's just the nature of tech, and an element of sods law. What makes a good company is the way they deal with the problems and I have to say I am impressed/surprised with confused.com.

I think is only fair to let a company know of problems that they may be unaware of. I'd expect the same for my business, So I proceeded to let confused know via an email address they issued on their website regarding any reports of problems regarding privacy. I even attached the original spam/virus (cleaned) emails, but to find that their own messagelabs spam filter bounced the email back. Out of a little frustration (I was only trying to help) I placed a message on twitter last night, mentioning that the spam was coming from the confused.com email address. To my shock, within THREE minutes a polite Kelly from confused.com PR messages me asking if they could help. So a few messages back and forth and I send details about what had happened. This morning I get an email from the CEO of confused.com (Carlton Hood) acknowledging the information I sent with a promise to try and track down any leaks they can find.

I dare say, that would be a difficult task to undertake. I know that the email hadn't come directly from confused.com, but likely a bot net that had already obtained the email address lists either from a compromised address book, badly issued mail list (everyone in the To or CC lists), or a compromised system on a partners network.

I do know that the last emails came from machines on the BT network through the BT SMTP services. BT should REALLY do something about tracking spam and letting their customers know that they could have been subjected to a virus or trogen that is using their machines to send unsolicited email. But that is a different story.

It is unfortunately common for some businesses to just play the naive game when it comes to issues like this. I was surprised to find confused.com so active around the report. Meanwhile I'll continue using unique email addresses for websites in order to track where my spam originated from, and would recommend the same with others if you can.

* Plus addressing is supported by a number of email services and when enabled will allow you to add additional address information on to your email address in order to differentiate where the email is from or what the email is for. You do not need to set up individual email addresses which makes this an ideal solution for problems as discussed above.

For example if I was to use adam@mydomain.com, with plus addressing I can have adam+confused@mydomain.com or adam+anything@mydomain.com that will all still be delivered to the inbox of adam@mydomain.com automatically.

I love to jump to conclusions about a forthcoming update to HTC's Hero phone, but the evidence does seem to suggest that the universal moaning surrounding the device "lagging" has driven HTC to pull their finger out and do something about it.

I have to say, as a HTC Hero user, I'm not finding this lag a problem, just an annoyance. An update to resolve this would in fact have a massive impact in those choosing to compare the HTC Hero with the iPhone, where their only difference is the responsiveness differences, and that's down to the way the two devices operate. HTC Hero can run many apps at the same time (multi-tasking) and iPhone cannot except a few core apps of its own. If the Hero can run as smoothly as the iPhone, then that will be a massive one-up on the much more expensive counterpart.

This video by Paul from Modaco shows an early release of the ROM, and although short, shows a pretty much lag-less HTC Hero.

I'm staying sceptic at the moment as there is a little lag showing up on the device at around 1:22 where the widget loading gives a VERY SLIGHT jigger, however reports from others that have managed to get their hands on the pre-release ROM such as Evan Selleck of the HTC Hero Facebook group, seem convinced that the update is a winner.

My scepticism in these reports is that the most noticeable lag only comes up after extended period of use, and I've dealt with most of mine through the experiments I've been running. These people have just reset their phones, which always seems MUCH faster after doing so and for a few days. Time will tell exactly how much this update improves the performance, and I'm sure HTC will have been on the case, and will continue to be as long as people have a need to report the problem.

When is this update expected? Rumours say mid-September, which would be about the right time-scale considering the timing of these leaks put out for people to test and report on.