David Allen Wizardgold's posts

Bluetooth switches by Flic I also mention the iPhone and how I'd like to get the new Nissan Leaf

Sounds of bread being delivered to the campsite and sounds of seagulls and campers looking for a croissant. Young ones just come back from the bars and have the munchies because they've been drinking a bit. And crickets

Music is quite repetitive but it's enjoyable all the same and the dancing is absolutely completely boring.

I enjoyed the story and I thought a talk about it on this audio boom. There was lots of action shooting and people get smacked in the face and it was completely Fast and Furious from start to finish. At the end of the story the other guy was in a book to read and a couple of other extra bits and pieces to enjoy as well so I'll probably end up buying one of his books later on.

Sheltering from the rain next to the beach. Having a chat about using my iPad through and my iPhone to go post-PC. This is due to the iMac hard disk thing broken. I'm going to have two weeks of using just iOS.

A Good and Geeky look at comments I heard in a discussion about whether we are getting too much screen time. There are some people who are complaining that we spend too much time hooked up to our iPhones, iPads and computers and that it devoted ourselves from real life. There are videos on YouTube of people walking down the street so engrossed by what's happening in the iPhone that they managed to walk directly into a bear. Screen time doesn't have to be that dangerous though you could just as easily walk into a lamppost or fall down a hole in the street. Are you becoming divorced from real-life because you have your head in the cloud? Maybe you're becoming a bit of a robot because you're always using your mobile computing devices to enhance what you do with life and how you do it? I like to think that it is good to use technology to Record a Life in a good and geeky way. Record your life in something much more than a boring old journal filled with scribbled writings. We can now make videos, record audios to add to our photographs and about writing. Some of it which make public input into the social networks and some of it we can just keep to ourselves. I'd like to think about technology in an optimistic way in that it will make lives better for us overall. It doesn't have to turn us into thinking robots and it can enhance our lives in so many different ways. What about you? Are you into technology as much as I am and eager to incorporate it into your life as much is possible?

Down by the beach

Mac20Q Podcast 125 Talking about what is coming up with the Good and Geeky books with a book about life logging. The application I like to use for this task is Day One and it will be covered in detail in the book. The book will also look at how to use applications which will do a certain amount of automatic journalling for you. There are applications such as #Chronos and #Heyday. I was trying a system which is called Gift Today which automatically brought in posts made in Twitter and Facebook and put them into Day One. It was working for a couple of weeks but something must have changed in the settings and I need to get back in again to reset it up. What's coming with IOS 9 and El Capitan in particular i like the keyboard improvements to the standard keyboard. i can't understand why it is taken so long for Apple to give us pictures of the letters we are typing lower case or upper case. This has been available already on other third-party keyboards such as #Swiftkey and #Swype. These are the keyboards are great to use as swapping from letter to letter is easier than tapping them. The problem comes with the fact that you can't see the microphone button to let you use every dictation in the third-party keyboards. I do prefer to dictate as much as possible and so I ended up using the standard keyboard even though it wasn't the best. I'm looking forward to this news application coming from Apple. It's going to be interesting to see how it worked out in comparison to Flipboard. I will probably have to install the beta of IOS 9 so I get early access to the news app. I want to be up to see how it works out with my news channel for all of my websites I have set up already. There is a hint that we might get a separate application we can use to create posts directly to put into the news application. Then again, it might just be the ability to export out of something like Pages or even iBooks Author. #iOS9 #ElCapitan #GoodandGeeky

I have been using the Apple Watch for a couple of weeks now and loving it. I use it to control audio on my iPhone, for making timers and alarms. Great to see the notifications coming in and to use to make the quick and dirty journal posts in apps like Heyday and Day One. I can go into the apps on the iPhone or on the Mac later and add more with these Apple Watch posts used and markers to remind me what to write about in detail. A bit of waffle about my new car. I have a Renault Clio and I think it would be great if I could upgrade it to Apple Car Play. I love to be able to interact with the car like I do with the Watch and the iOS devices - By talking to them to make them do my bidding. I don't have adaptive cruise control on the car and wish I did. I'll get that on the next car for sure. That's when the car uses radar to match the speed of the car in front, slowing you down to keep the distance. I love technology.!

Apple Watch

Having a chat about Email security and the Good and Geeky book on Amazon. More about what is coming next with Good and Geeky Books. Will it be Good and Geeky Art or Good and Geeky Life Logging? Just got the third chapter of the Smoking Zombies published on Wattpad.

Talking about writing and building up the audience. Finding readers and using the Print Friendly website to turn a web page into a PDF. I also introduce my zombie novel which I'll be publishing as a serial on Wattpad. https://goodandgeeky.com/good-and-geeky-podcast-number-2/

Good and Geeky Books Working on building up the author platform by giving my first Good and Geeky books away to find my audience. The internet is a crowded space and authors have to find their readers. Loving the experience of doing the geeky set up of my web sites to draw in mores fans to my email list. On the fiction side of things. Today I published the first chapter of my zombie novel on Wattpad. Now I have to come up with a new chapter every week. I have some of the second chapter written already so I am a little ahead of myself. Good day today - Wrote about 2000 words. Mostly for a blog post that I turned into this Podcast, but I did write 400 words for the intro to the zombie story.

I talk about the publication of my book into the Kindle store. Delighted to have for to the point where I could submit it. I had to make a couple of updates with readers pointing out a couple of typos. There will always be some niggles hiding. Looking forward to making an iBooks Author version of the book to send to the Apple Book Store. It will have to wait because I went with KDP Select which is a 90 day tie in. I comment about the moaning from the guy that makes the Overcast app. He says Apple software is worse now and should be better. All this wee Overcast has been crashing my iPhone. Irony overload there! Hopefully this week it will be better as he finally got an upgrade out to users.

Off to the writers group tomorrow and the word to start us off with some ideas for a story is Harmony.

Talking about Tutanova encrypted email service and How I prefer to use GPG.

Alistair is an amateur photographer and we talk about using the application from Apple, Aperture and what is going to likely happen when the new Photos application comes out. Both of us are quite optimistic at the moment that Apple will be able to bring us some think that will be as easy to use as iPhoto but will have the power of the professional application.

Mac 20 Q Podcast talks to Mac and iOS users about how they use their computers. This episode is with Allister Jenks, a Podcaster from New Zealand. We talk about his favourite apps for the Mac and for iOS. Get tips on how to use good apps to get things done with your Apple computers. Part Two coming.....

Here is the second part of the podcast with me and Bob having a chat about what we do with our Apple computers.

The first part of a podcast in which I talk to Bob who lives in Japan. We talk about various software. He likes to use OmniGraffle to make flash cards for the Japanese children to learn English. We also chat about art apps for the Mac and iOS. Bob mentions Manga Studio application and I talk about what is going to happen with Aperture when the new Photos app arrives early in 2015.

I recorded how I start my day using Siri. While I am still in bed and my eyes have not yet opened I can find out if it is too early to get up or if it is time I got my butt out of bed. Before I have even started to get the sleep out of my eyes I have asked Siri what time it is, if there are any messages, events or emails waiting for me. When my eyes have decided to join the land of the living I can check out the social networks with Twitter, Facebook and Google plus. I can use it for the dictation to reply to messages and she even understands my Brummie accent. Starting the day this way is so much better, especially in the winter when it is nice and warm in bed and the day hasn't yet warmed up.

Starting when your eyes are not ready for the day they are still partly closed and there is nothing better than to get a few things done by talking to Siri. IRI ball to first of all find out what time it is I am first of all able to then I can see if I have any appointments for the day, check my messages and my email. The curtains are still closed, the room is still dark and I haven't even opened my eyes it. In this podcast I talk about starting the day with Siri and then I talk about the application I bought yesterday called Workflow. Workflow gives us automation on iOS and I am impressed with the new application that only came out yesterday. Already I can see I will have lots of uses for it. It is especially good when I combine it with Launch Center Pro.

The Mac Podcast where enthusiasts talk about what they do with their Macs and iOS devices. Mike is a video and movie guy interested in the audio end of making movies and we talk about movies he has made and how he is going into making videos with a new business venture. All done using Mac computers and other technologies. One of his favourite apps to use is Fantastical. Great for organising his life and of course we chat about FInal Cut and other options for editing video.

I last got talking to Michael about five years ago and since then he's added a trashcan Mac Pro and also the latest iMac with a 5K display to his Apple stable. He tells me about how his house and he burned down alongside telling me what he does with his Mac and his iOS devices. You could say that we had a really good chat and that we got on like a house on fire! The good thing is that it wasn't his house. He does also use a Microsoft surface tablet, but we won't hold that against him. It seems that most of his business end of things could be done with whatever sort of technology even though his offices dominantly Mac-based. Some software that is required for the business is either Windows or Android. For his personal computing needs he uses Mac and IOS and is still using Aperture for his photography as he was when I first spoke to him. Like many people that are used to using professional applications for photography and in particular using Aperture is considering moving completely to Adobe Lightroom due to Apple stopping work with Aperture. We don't know yet whether the application that will be in place instead of both Aperture and also iPhoto, the Photos app will be any good. It could be better than any of the previous Apple applications for dealing with photos. We will have to see, but in the meantime it does leave a certain amount of uncertainty. I have to admit to being jealous that Michael has bought himself one of these new iMacs with the 5K display. I would also be jealous that he has also got one of these trash can Mac Pro computers which will also be rather good for working with 4K displays and doing video work. In any case it seems Michael has it all sorted out in terms of which hardware and software he wants to use and balancing that with some of the constraints with the technology that they has to use.

I love reading and my latest book is the book River God by Wilbur Smith. It is extremely entertaining and I am enjoying the story. I know that as soon as I finished this one I will be moving on to the next book in the series. I am back at home in Spain, in Catalonia and the weather has been a little bit cool and wet. So I'm keen, even desperate to get out for a ride on my bicycle but in the meantime I have been making video tutorials showing Mac users how to encrypt emails. While working on this video I upgraded some software and had some difficulties and had to try other software and continued having more difficulties. These are the difficulties only arose because of me not being used to using that software for creating tutorials. It made me think that I need to spend some time relearning and reacquainting myself with this software. And then I will be to make some more tutorials! My latest tutorial shows Mac users how to sending encrypted emails using certificates from StartSSL. It is not too difficult to set up and once it is done it is so much easier than using GPG or PGP encryption.

People watching in the airport. Sheridan cheese market for tea and samosas Grandson time and a visit to Cavan court.

I am in the Apple Community after being half in and half out by using an Android phone for 16 months. Added to the stable today with the arrival of the latest iPad. Easy set up which I could have made go faster if I had thought about what I was doing step by step. I started downloading apps to the iPad that I could have just synchronised from iTunes. Pretty pleased with the iOS device from Apple and I know it will serve me well for two or three years now. The screen is excellent and it looks like the text and images are right on top of the glass front. Less reflective than the screen on the previous model. I am finding it great for reading books. Trying out a load of camera and photo apps and I can't wait to get into the Replay app I saw demoed on the stage at the Apple event last week. Pixelmator is an app I love using on the Mac and I have just bought the new iPad version. It will be a favourite along with Procreate which I like to use for drawing and painting digitally.

I hesitated before I am graded my Mac to Yosemite and this is because I always use DragonDictate rather than using the keyboard. I reckon I can write about three times faster using the dictation rather than using typing. In the end I decided to take the jump and give it a try. Of course I had a whole load of backups completed before I did anything. I use the application Superduper to create two separate backups of the system drive. And I also have Time Machine backup to fall back on if necessary too. So I am quite pleased with the new operating system for my Mac even though there are one or two things that are not working on it and will never work on it probably. The reason that some things will not work is because of the absence of Bluetooth low energy version 4 on the Mac. So whichever way I tried to get it to do the job with the handoff and also with connecting up the phone for the SMS messages on the Mac it was no good at all. Tomorrow I will be getting my new iPad air 2 and I will be held to try out the hand function from the iPhone 6 to the new iPad. Same thing with the SMS messages where I will be able to see text messages that were destined for my phone on my new iPad. I don't plan to upgrade my Mac for a year or two so I'm going out to stick with what I've got. I did toy with the idea of getting a USB dongle for the new Bluetooth for low-energy. The only thing is, that I heard on a podcast that this possible solution to the problem is not going to work.

The battery of my iPhone is just not lasting today. So it is a good job I have an external battery coming so I can charge it up when I am out and about. Getting an extra charger too - One for carrying with me to use elsewhere and the other to leave beside the bed. Two more lightening cables - One for the car and one for connecting to the Mac. Now I am sorted. I should have been working on the book today - It is a non fiction book about how to beat writers block with technology and a good and geeky writers workflow. I have been testing out apps on my iPhone and iPad to use alongside the apps I use on the iMac so I have a funnel of ideas and words that go into the writers app Scrivener. Scrivener is the best place to do professional quality writing like a book or long articles. My book goes into depth with the testing I have been doing on outliner apps and getting the data moving in between specific apps on the way to Scrivener. Then in the last chapters I have the final workflow which works for me. I have it laid out bare so that people can grab it and use it and suddenly get good at beating writers block. I also got a new case for the iPhone 6 it has a clip on it so I can keep it on my belt. So I have no need to put it into a pocket where it could accidentally get sat upon. It also has a little clip on the back of the bumper style part of the case that goes round the phone, so that I can prop the phone up. I could use a small Bluetooth keyboard with it to have some mini workplace if I fancied doing some typing. I actually prefer to do as much of my writing using DragonDictate, but it is good to have options.

I got the e-bike out and hit the road. Some errands to be done first but the beach and a dip in the sea beckoned. Trying out the MapMyRide app this morning. It isn't working as well as the Map my Walk app that I have been using. Something is not quite right. I have been fiddling with settings and I will sort it out so that it records my position with GPS as does the other app. First day of my holiday following a long old time at the campsite for the summer.

Waffling about the goings on at the campsite. A couple of Swedish girls arrived on bicycles looking sweaty. It's a tough trip from Tossa de Mar to Plato's d'Step on bikes. I talk about other happenings in the campsite

Sort of happy with the iPhone 6 - All of the features are great and the phone is lightening quick in comparison with what I had before. The battery is draining too fast for my liking and I will have to get a back up battery to use to save me on the days of heavy use. #iphone6

after using android devices for just over a year I have been tempted to go back into the Apple fold. I have ordered a new iPhone 6 and I can't wait to get my hands on it. There are loads of new things in iOS eight which have brought me back such as the extensibility feature which allows me to work with the features of one application while still in another application. I can do things in the Paper Camera app from within the photos application which is pretty handy. I like that we can have widgets that we can drag down from the top in the notifications area although I don't think it's quite makes up for what I have been using with the Google Now. I'm looking forward to using my favourite applications that are only available on iOS. These applications would be Drafts, OmniFocus, Clear and Day One. There are a number of other applications that I'm pleased to be using gain over on the iOS platform and the applications in general are better on the Apple side of the fence. This is one of the reasons why it sometimes seems that I was getting a second rate experience by using android. The biggest problem with using Android was the fact that with my Galaxy S3 I didn't get any updates from the carrier to be to upgrade it to KitKat. I had to do some upgrading by using rooting and CyanogenMod and to be honest it was a lot of messing around that I didn't really enjoy doing. I have already been trying out some of the new features in iOS 8 using my iPad and loving them. I can't wait to get my hands on the new iPhone 6 to be able to take advantage of the connections between iOS devices and there will also be the connection between the Mac when Yosemite becomes available. The added security that I will get by having Touch ID is going to be pretty handy especially seeing as they have been extensions being made across from my passwords application 1Password. So they go this is David Allen Wizardgold having a bit of a chat about switching back over to iOS from Android.

Podcasting for authors and writers A short podcast discussing how to get started with podcasting with hardware and software. I demonstrate the difference between using an internal microphone and an external microphone. There is information as to how to have a good microphone technique so that you sound as good as it is possible. I talk about the microphones that I use for studio recording and also the one that I use when I am out and about. #Podcasting #howto #writers #authors

#AppleWatch - I want one. I just can't help myself because I love technology and the thought of it being like living in the future. I watched the Apple announcement this morning on my computer and before I knew it I was lusting after one of these Apple watch devices to put on my wrist. It's going to seem a long wait between now and the beginning of next year when it becomes available to the general public.

Now it is not me talking in a camp way. Just chatting about the goings on at the campsite where I work and also about my latest writing project.

The campsite is heaving this evening with loads arriving from Barcelona. There are people leaving and people arriving and it is the height of the season. I talk about apps I have been putting on my iPad and iPhone. Molto - An email client that is a bit different and Overcast - A podcast player that is kind of innovative. I don't go into a lot of detail but give a bit of an overview

I like to make recordings for the Audioboo while I am sitting in my car or maybe on one of the park benches having a break from work at the campsite by the beach. It can be quite interesting at times to sit there and watch the world go by, including some of our guests at the campsite. Today I talk about an old lady at the campsite who has a boyfriend who is actually ancient. He always looks completely unsteady on his feet and he looks like he might get blown over by the smallest gust of a wind. As I record this podcast they are out walking their dog called Boira which is the word in Catalan for fog. There are groups of kids walking around on the beach and I talk about how I find it interesting to watch how individuals operate within a group of people. I prefer to interact in smaller groups of people rather than larger groups were I find that nobody really gets to do anything that they want to do. To a certain extent people in large groups are like sheep that will follow around the dominant person in the group who chooses and decides for everybody else. I think I must be more of an individual for me to be able to bear that type of group arrangement.

Learning what I can do with Siri. Found out that I could get directions to work from Siri and that I could correct the way it pronounces names when it gets it wrong. Mind you, even after getting it to correctly pronounce the name in the system when I asked it to send an email message to that person again it managed to get it wrong what's more. I suppose Siri is still in the infancy stages of its development and is going to be getting better bit by bit so we will have to give it some leeway. Even so despite this small problem I have been very impressed in the way that it works and I expect to use it more often.

What a June! I had a party to organise for my wife and my mom came for the party and my son was supposed to come too, but the bloody French air traffic controllers put a big spanner in the works. The birthday party turned out te successful and my wife had a great time, Our friend Karl came to the party and also had a great time - Only thing is - Karl died from a heart attack the next day. So the end of the month was all about dealing with th eloss of my very best friend

I work at a campsite in the town of Platja d'Aro on the Costa Brava Catalonia and here are a few snippets how things work in the campsite. I am a dog person and I talk about the german couple with the blind dog that left this morning and also about a Swiss couple with a lovely German Shepard type of dog. The dog is a big baby and cries when he can't see his owners.

it is fairly inevitable that if you get into photography you're going to be a bit of a geek to. There is so much good technology that you can use and play with them making your marvellous photos. You won't be able to resist using the manual settings even though 95% of the time you would get good photographs by using the automatic settings. There will be new lenses that will tempt you and you software that you can use to creatively enhance your photos before you share them. I say that digital photography is now at a point where it is complete and utter fun being a geek photographer.

Listening to a radio play written by Jessica Brown, it was called Lost or Stolen. It made me think about what it is like to be a teenager and learning to get along with other people and working out how other people think and operate. Much of the dialogue was of the inner voice of each of these two characters and the conflict came from the difference between what they were thinking and what they ended up actually saying. I also listen to other podcasts such as the Science Weekly, the Mac Cast, Wired Magazine Podcast and even the agricultural drama, The Archers. I am working on writing my own stories at the moment and so I find it very interesting to see how other writers, authors have put together their novels or plays. It seems that to be a writer you have to be a cruel son of a bitch to your protagonists to create as much conflict as possible in the passage to the climax of the book.

I had a great year finding out how to do things with Android devices and I wrote an article the other day which was very positive. Then since then I have been tempted back to the iOS Apple way by some applications that I can only get on Android. I have Omnifocus on the iPad and there is now a new version for the Mac which syncs across. Not ever going to be on Android. I miss Twisted Wave and other audio apps on iOS and of course there is the fact that the movie editing on Android is rubbish. I would be tempted by a Nexus 5 for a new phone but what if Apple come out with a bigger iPhone later this year, I do like a bigger phone as I have with the Galaxy S3. Then there is the iPad Mini which would do everything I need. less messing about sliding between platforms. Having said that, sometimes it can be good to have choices of which device to use.

Taking a photo of the moon and making some adjustments to it in applications on my Mac. I used Intensify Pro and also Pixelmator. Pixelmator has some great tools that you can use to do all sorts of things to bitmaps converting photographs into digital art.