Excessive Opinions

Shelf Stackers has a bit of a feel like the short, but brilliant, film “Cashback” and the relatively unknown and critically ignored TV show “Lunch Monkeys” accidentally merged together. Each episode has quite fun yet somewhat meaningless storylines which are mainly used to showcase the absolutely brilliant characters. They don’t care about their job, they fall in love, they make fun of each other, mess around and play jokes on each other; they’re normal people designed to be somewhat relatable and somewhat ridiculous. 

This show focuses on four shelf stackers and their likeminded laid-back boss. Danni is the tomboy controller who has a thing for Dan. Dan is a lover and not a fighter, totally in love with Alyssa and completely unable to confront her about it. This obviously is a form of annoyance for Danni and is quite fun to watch. Fitzy is portrayed as both the kooky dude and the lazy guy completely against any form of responsibility. While Fitzy, Dan and Danni are obviously all friends, Alyssa is the beautiful girl who seems to only hang out with the other three due to the job. They all have their hang-ups and are different in their own little ways; the show has a brilliant sense of humour portraying just the littlest thing. Their boss Roy is also quite an important character here and comes across brilliantly. A mix of the writing and the performance really makes you feel like Roy could be any of the four teenagers given twenty more years working the job. 

Beyond this, the director uses some quite good techniques to make this show more unique. Although sometimes it might seem a little forced you can tell that the creators here have put some real effort into making this show do well. I really love it when production teams put their own stamp on their stuff and it usually works well. Not only with direction but the sound affects and the way it is written just makes you laugh. It feels a bit much to call it inspired but the dialogue has been written in a way I wish I could write. It’s intelligent but doesn’t feel forced and whoever did the casting has done the best job in finding people who can pull it off. I don’t think I could imagine anyone else playing any of these roles and a weaker performance by any one character probably would have ruined the show for me. 

I can’t really find much about this show online anywhere, which is a tad annoying. It’s a new show and has aired three episodes so far. I wish I could say more but beyond what I’ve said already, there’s not really much left to say as yet without ruining the episodes. I totally recommend people check it out: BBC2 on Saturdays at 12:50pm.

During the announcement of this new generation of iPod Touch, Steve Jobs made it very clear that the intention with this design was to lessen the gap between the iPod and the iPhone. The good, bad and unexpected points here basically all originate from Apple filling where there was once a divide between two products and the differences which still remain. 

The addition of a camera exceeded our main expectations by having HD video included. This camera films video in the same quality as the iPhone, which many YouTube vloggers have been using lately to upload quicker-unedited clips of their day to day lives. The camera does film at 720p which seems to be fairly standard at the lower end HD cameras. Apple obviously included this to further the idea that “the best camera is the one that’s with you.” 

Now a rival product line, the Flip Video and Flip Mino have both done really well as a low-budget pocket video camera. Playing off this idea of easily accessible HD cameras; the fact an iPod Touch will have thousands of effects and editing Apps puts this product up as a strong contester. This camera, along with the apps, makes the iPod Touch great for shooting test footage or mapping out a scene, quick vlogs or clips for friends, etc. This is obviously aimed at mix of amateur and semi-professional video makers as it would probably work as a tool for simple YouTube videos and short clips for Facebook and MySpace. 

A final thing is that Apple really does try to push their iMovie App with this product. It does seem quite good, if a little expensive, offering you a simple way to edit clips, add basic effects and basically smooth out the edges a little before you export the clip or upload it somewhere. More so than that, the various other Apps on the App Store gives you a lot of different things you can do with your videos with your videos. Although not quite at the level whereby you can shoot an entire film, these do help put the iPod ahead of the Flip Video and other handheld cameras. I just had to mention this on the “good” section as it means you can basically prepare your clip without the use of a computer at all. This sort of helps widen the target audience of this product as it takes the fear away from being unable to actually edit what you shoot.

Apart from the video camera, the major jump in technology here is the A4 processor chip. This is Apple’s baby and surprisingly fast compared to other mobile processors. I would put Apple’s future success in the market solely on the performance of this chip compared to other phones and tablets, it’s fairly clear Apple has the same confidence. The speed increase now makes the iPod Touch just as powerful as the iPhone 4; added to this the smaller size, increased memory capacity and lower price point makes this a very good product for people who can’t afford a phone contract, already have a phone without media capabilities or for those who only need a phone for work and want something separate for their personal use. 

Following on from the new processor, this new iPod Touch will continue on from the third generation with its “multitasking” capability. I use the term multitasking loosely as although it does now allow apps to run in the background you can’t really use two apps together yet. This ability is supposed to give App developers more leeway in how their apps function without too much of a strain on the battery power for the end user. With increased speeds this ability should have fewer issues and hopefully in a future iOS updates Apple will streamline the process. With the iOS 4 release multitasking was both the most anticipated and the weakest feature when it comes to actual implementation. I’m still putting this in the “good” section despite all this as the potential for improvements are quite strong. 

Still to come: posts on the bad and the unexpected points of the new iPod Touch and why the iPod Nano is once again a failed product. The iPod Touch posts will have more information on the front facing camera and FaceTime, taking pictures with the HD camera; Game Centre and the Retina Display. I’m thinking that the post on the iPod Nano will be more like that of the iPod Shuffle although this isn’t 100% yet as the generational changes have been a bit more drastic. I do have a post lined up on a new TV show which I’m kinda excited about telling people about.

It took four generations but it is finally here… Almost - I guess. I think this is what we want, right? Yeah. I mean it’ll do. Ahhh, fuck. 

Yeah, the iPod Touch is in its fourth generation and has now FINALLY got a camera. Ever since its first appearance we’ve just been waiting for Apple to finally announce this. There were so many rumours and apparent leaks and so forth; it was even in the design to have space for a camera. This has been expected for a while now. If you want a specific reason then I’ll point you to the thousands and thousands of unattainable photography and film based Apps on the Appstore; there is a large audience who over the last couple years have been able to look have not been able to touch. As soon as people update to this new model you can almost guarantee sales are going to rise. Getting off topic slightly but I’m guessing this is the windfall every photography and film app developers have been waiting for: a better screen, faster processor and now finally a drastically increased potential audience. 

Personally I have a second generation iPod Touch and I’ve loved it; it’s everything I’d want in an e-device bar two things. With the new version I’d now be at one thing. I can check my e-mail; I can update my twitter, listen to music and write down notes. All the games and utility apps are a massive gigantic plus. The two things I’ve wanted since getting this was a camera and 3G internet. There are many obvious advantages to having a camera with you; twitpic and Facebook generally improve the current web 2.0-y-ness of the iPod and the photo editing apps it would help with improving your average photograph. The only thing this new iPod is missing is 3G internet. With 3G internet I would have… well… 3G internet. A lot of the apps require an online connection and there are only so many Wi-Fi hotspots.

You had probably noticed that this post is entitled “iPod Touch #1” and have jumped to the obvious conclusion that this isn’t the only post I’ve got lined up for this new generation. I realize I haven’t gone into the changes as much as with the iPod Shuffle and so I’ve got a second post ready to be written which should be out in a few days or so. So keep checkin’ for that. 

I do feel with the Apple announcement and everything that I should have probably posted something sooner. I don’t want this site to just turn into an Apple news page and that sort of made me wait a while first. The main announcements at this event were the AppleTV revisited and an updated line of iPods. The AppleTV I couldn’t care less about but I’ll go into that a bit more later on. What I am excited by, however, are the iPods. Basically, just get ready for a couple posts focused on Apple and their products. 

iPod Shuffle 

The iPod shuffle was originally announced back in 2005 and it was rather pitiful. For a product which was designed to be small and simple its first generation just wasn’t. The USB connector took up a lot of space, many people lost the cap and I would go as far to say that it was ugly. The models available were 512MB’s and 1GB and it was the first iPod ever to use flash memory. Many people said it would never sell as it had no screen, even the cheapest throwaway mp3 players had a screen and they cost less than the bus ticket into town to get them. I personally didn’t particularity think it was an issue and I’m glad it sold enough that Apple deemed it was worthy of a second generation. 

The second generation was a lot better: it had a better size and shape, was quite cheap and had just the right amount of buttons. I actually got one of these mostly because it only cost around £50 and was pretty much, in my mind, just an mp3 player which didn’t break after two months. This model had four revisions which mostly just worked on the colour schemes; the main focus of their advertising was about the colour and the clip so this sort of made sense. They included a USB dock to help with the size and generally made the product they originally intended to design with the first shuffle. 

The third generation was a bit shit, I thought, going back to the stick like shape it no longer fits on your belt and was a bit too expensive for what it was. It was nice and small but still just seemed worse than the second generation. A lot of people criticized this model for not having any buttons and although I’ve not used it; I think I would agree. It also seems Apple have taken this criticism and they’ve gone back to the second generation design, looking exactly the same but now being even cheaper and having twice as much memory (at 2GB) we have the fourth generation iPod Shuffle. If you want a simple mp3 player then I would 100% recommend this product. They have also included the VoiceOver feature which basically tells you the song title, playlist, artist name or battery status and should help people finally get over not having a screen. On top of that they have now included the ability to sync multiple playlists and not just random songs from your library. 

If you didn’t care about playlists then I would have recommended the second generation, now that they’ve included that in this model it really makes the iPod Shuffle the ultimate in audio for the average user. The only thing which you need to consider before buying this would be that it does have a 2GB limit. People will need to check their library and playlist sizes and get a good idea whether or not they’d need something bigger. This product should be useful for specific playlists but isn’t something which would hold an entire library. I’m sure the iPod Shuffle is even cheaper in America than it is in the UK and I’m glad Apple admitted its mistake and didn’t stick to the third generation design out of simple arrogance. 

Talking now about a new show from England, set in London itself “Rev.” is a comedy based on Adam Smallbone. Having moved from a more rural parish, the show centres on the difficulties confronting Alex trying to run a church in twenty first century East London. Technically a sitcom, I would say the shows strengths are the characters themselves; especially the main character. There is a lot of situational comedy but it’s fairly clear these are simply used as a means to give insight into the people involved than being the main point of the show.

The characters may fit into their own stereotypical roles but unlike other sitcoms you couldn’t switch them out with someone else and still end up with the same stories. (You can create literally anyone who is witty, sarcastic and has daddy issues and he’d replace Chandler in a second, you’d notice but it wouldn’t change the story’s outcome. - A situation arises based around Joey being stupid, Chandler makes a joke about it while Ross and Rachel play relationship tennis, meanwhile Monica is overbearing, controlling and loud whereas Phoebe is quirky.) 

Adam Smallbone is a reverend but he’s also a normal person; he drinks, he smokes, he watches daytime TV, has sex with his wife, drinks lots of tea and questions his position as a man of God. It’s a very real character with real emotions, a father who wonders what it’s like to be a Catholic Priest, fancies the parish school’s headmistress despite the before-mentioned wife and dances like a vicar once drunk. He has no real friends beyond his parish and wife, doesn’t like Facebook and has a normal hate-irritate relationship with his boss the Archdeacon. 

I am not a religious man, nor have I been to church on any two consecutive Sundays, yet I find I can relate. Through this character and his everyday life this show has drawn me in. It all feels so very real, I can imagine Adam sitting on a park bench being yelled at by hoodies outside any run-down London church. The overly pushy parents trying to suck up to him as an attempt get their kids into the local school, his ability to love his wife beyond any doubt while still finding the headmistress attractive to the point he might peruses a relationship with her. He is against strip joint opening up opposite a school, doesn’t mind the gays but is completely against those reverends that turn religion into “a show” you can simply watch while sipping a smoothie. This is a real person.

The first season had six episodes, as most good British shows do, which have just finished airing. I would recommend this to most people who have a good sense of depressing humour but would say this is probably aimed at those who’re less devout in their worship at best. As an Atheist who grew up in a largely Christian society I understand a lot of the references and the general consensus within the religious group and I don’t have the worry about the morality of making a comedy based in a house of god. What I’m saying is you might need a bit of background on Christianity and the different divisions within the religion to get all the jokes but that it doesn’t feel like it’s designed to convert or exclude anyone.