Goldring G101
For a while now I have been looking for the ideal device to play music at home. I have an old fashioned stereo system with a record deck, a broken CD player, an amplifier and speakers. I need to go digital but I don’t want to replace my amp and speakers so what do I do? I have been plugging my phone into the stereo and this works fine. I have also plumbed my PC into the stereo and this also works. The problem with these two methods is that they are fiddly. If I crack open a beer and sit back and want to put on some music I do not want to be either booting up my PC and clicking away at a keyboard or fiddling around with a device with a screen the size of a postage stamp.
I’d looked at some of the products available such as the hand held controllers from Sonos but they don’t seem to get it. When I am relaxing I don’t want to be reading a lot of bloody menus.
Get an iPod? Well, maybe, but the screen is still pretty small and even then I would have to plug it in….or so I thought.
Recently I went downstairs. The pop star who lives there is into Apple macs in a big way and I asked him what h does. He showed me that he had plugged a little gadget known as an Apple Airport into the back of his amplifier and now plays music direct from his macbook. Hmmmm….wireless ay? Very interesting. He had a spare airport which I hooked up and sure enough I can play music direct from my macbook. Hmmm……we were getting there.
I am still left with a fiddly interface but if I got an iPod this could also play music wirelessly but I want a big screen.
Kapil Sibal and the £23 computer
The latest useless device that Apple have just launched might fit the bill. Since it’s launch I have not been inspired by the iPad. I am not going to carry it with me on a train as it’s too big. If I go on holiday I wouldn’t take it as it has no keyboard. OK, if you have too much spare cash, it’s a fun device but I can’t see a market for it. Then the penny dropped.
One could get an iPad, load it up with music and hang it on the wall. Whenever you want to play music you rub your fingers over the iPad and hey presto! This scenario is almost possible. I am told that, as yet, the iPad does not have that nifty interface for music that the iPod has. The one when you can flick through the album covers. I’m told that this interface will be available in the next version of the iPad software.
So is that it? Is the iPad the answer to my music playing problem? Has the iPad found it’s niche?
Not quite. It is odd just how much we are prepared to pay for this sort of technology. A modern amplifier costs about £150. A speaker system perhaps £200. A CD player about £75. So why would I spend £500 on a control panel?
This is also my main gripe about book reading devices such as the kindle. They are so expensive that you would be scared of leaving it on a bus.
Well India may be about to help us out. The Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi and the Indian Institute of Science in Bengalooru have developed a touchscreen device similar to an iPad but costing around £23!
Photography
travel photography – Objectifying the subject
Tags: Andaman Islands, Art, cameras, developing world, flickr, human safaris, India, Jarawa, Jarawa people, photographer, photography, The Guardian, The Long Way Home, Tourism, tourists, Travel, Uganda
The Long Way Home
Recently The Guardian ran an article reporting that India is to crackdown on what are termed “human safaris” where comparatively rich tourists visit the Jarawa tribe people of the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal.
The Jarawa people have long been isolated from the rest of the world and are now being affected by a major road built across their land by the Indian government. A video accompanied the report showing Indian tourists getting the tribes people to dance for food.
Of course we sympathise with the Jarawar and abhor the idea that tourists casually throw them food in order to capture a few second of video footage.
But are we so very different? As a keen photographer I keep an eye on Flickr and, today, I came across this picture which appealed to me. The picture shows a couple of Ugandan children walking down a dirt road carrying baggage on their heads. The girl also carries a large container probably for water. It’s a nice shot. The colours are subtly beautiful and the girl’s expression is interesting.
But take a step back here. How would we feel if tourists wandered around poor areas of America with expensive cameras, capturing images of people struggling with bags and then drove back to their hotels in the evening to eat and drink too much?
I am in no way condemning the photographer of this shot. I have taken similar pictures and have to defend photography as an art form and state that, while the streets of western countries are fantastic subjects for photography the scale is less and less human. The beauty of pictures such as The Long Way Home may be related to their simplicity and humanity.
I guess there have always been disparities in wealth and power between the haves and have nots but these days cheap air travel seems to allow we who live in the rich world to objectify people from the “developing world” without a thought.
Vietnamese Girls