When I started blogging in 2011 I had actually no clue what is this all about. I just wanted to air my posts somewhere. It's 2014 and I still don't.
I've blogged in English for a number of reasons. I wanted to improve my English. I wanted people to see things I write, not having lived in Poland for a while. My English is better, some people read me.
But it's time to call it quits. I'm tired. Everything I post on MałyBiały I immediately translate to English and for some reason, I started dreading this. And there's no point if there's no fun.
I'll keep it online. It's a nice portfolio. A souvenir.
Intel on CES 2014: smartwatch and SD card-sized computer. Intel: Revolutions?
The CES 2014 conference is taking place since before yesterday. It's one of the biggest such an events in the industry, with many of the biggest tech producers taking part within. Including Intel, which some time ago started going out from the stricte PC segment and show interest in the mobile thingy. And, I gotta admit, it's classy how they do it.
The biggest news from the Intel's stand is for sure their new PC, obviously based on their chip, which is double-egged*, 400 MHz fast and called Quark. The PC is a size of an SD card, runs Linux and connects to the world via WiFi and Bluetooth. It even has its own app store, that is said to for sure offer Wolfram's app.
Its killer feature is of course the size. It lets for very wide use of the PC in a daily life. The good idea is even the Intel's alone example - Nurse 2.0. It's all pretty simple - an onesie has the Intel Edison computer and sensors installed at a stomach's level that are nonstop monitoring a junior's conditions.
Having the dedicated cup and warmer and the dedicated mobile app we can constantly monitor the child's conditions. The cup on its own screen uses two simple but symbolic emots for it - the green smiling - it's ok. The red sad - it's not. Again the warmer boils water when a child starts to cry.
As Intel says (see the cup&warmer link), the new PC is capable to cooperate with anything, anywhere - even a chair (I can hardly imagine this, though), cups and warmers of any kind. It all will rely on inventors' creativity, who are, besides, encouraged by Intel's Make it Wereable contest which is to give $500k as the main price.
Again, we don't know much about the Intel's smartwatch - except of the fact it's still a prototype. It's seems to be pretty logical it's going to be ran by the Intel Edison. We also know Intel started cooperating with some american fashion organisations - Barneys, CFDA (Council of Fashion Designers of America) and Opening Ceremony. It's then very likely the new Intel's product will stand out with style and more or less refer to actual fashion style. That's of course in plus.
Besides, Intel says their smartwatches are gonna be completely independent devices which don't need tablet or smartphone to show their all inner qualities.
All this sounds highly futuristic, but at once becomes more and more real. In the case of the Intel's computer and the Nurse 2.0 it's been even accused of spoiling kids, who'll eventually learn that cry = reward (boiled water = food = reward). At once the accusers forget the example with warmer is just one example, as Intel Edison can be used in many other things. It's also more than sure someone will develop more features for the Nurse itself - even if adding another devices to cooperate with or code reactions on a child's behaviour.
Intel Edison has nevertheless a big chance for big success, in particular if equally small price will come along its mobility. That can even more encourage tech maniacs of many kinds to exercise its capabilities, and bigger number of dedicated gadgets shall encourage the rest.
Similarly it applies to the smartwatch. That's very possible it'll be based on Intel Edison, and the app store will include some apps specifically dedicated to the intelligent watch. It is however hard to speculate about the price - nevertheless we can pay much for the style (and quality), like with iPhone.
We can see Intel has ambitious plans to keep up being that company of refreshing the market with new types of products and it's possible their dream will come true. Edison is genius in its simplicity, by offering many features in miniature size, just like the smartwatch, which will also most possibly be greatly and variously designed.
My Way - from marathoner to soldier and back [review]
The western cinematography has been ruling the world cinemas for years. For decades, both in Poland and Bahrain we're who idolized European and American* movies, with both their advantages and throwbacks. We've at once forgotten about the Asia's cinematography - nevertheless Korea, Thailand, Japan and China have their movie industries as well. The industries being not worse than Hollywood, and sometimes even having moments of being better. Though still underestimated, like Korean movie My Way - that's even without its official Polish release.
I marked spoilers with [s][/s] and distinguished it with color. You'll thank me later ;)
My Way is somewhat like Oblivion. Je-gyu Kang, just like Kosinski tries to make something more than just a bloody carnage for the masses. And though the movie still remains one to a certain degree, it's still obvious the team behind it ambitiously aimed on a better level.
Photos
My Way is, first of all, greatly directed. The photos are dynamic, stylistically awesome and most of all - brutally real. They don't show events as a squeaky clean series of incidents and accidents related to the war. They rather focus on the very center of its face. The real, bloody and rough one.
Screenplay
My Way is a story of two Asian marathoners - Korean Jun Shik and Japanese Tatsuo. Both's way to the top gets disrupted by the War World 2, when they join the army.
My Way is also to some degree similar to The Way Back. [s]Yet here we have run for freedom, for the motherland. [/s] Besides of showing the great pictures of war, the movie largely focuses on people. On what the war does to them, how diametrically it can change them. It all is still served in quite an accessible form, without overcombining and unnecessary philosophizing. In fact the movie is balancing between a light kind of movies and the more serious ones and it mostly succeeded.
For all the showing we do also see more or less literal references to the passion of the protagonists, what besides of uniform stylistics and variety of languages (English doesn't practically exist here), maintains consistency throughout the story.
However, Byung-in Kim and Je-kyu Kang didn't avoid few mistakes. First of all, Jun Shik and Tatsuo seem to be completely death-proof. After events that would kill many immediately, they just stand up and go. There is also no consistency in the case of Jun Shiks' hearing problems - once he hears, once he doesn't. Complete randomness.
There's also little time spent on their mountains travel. It looked like the authors finished the movie, after what they cut all this part off, because it'd be too long (My Way reaches almost 2 and half an hour anyway) or had completely no idea for it. It unfortunately looks completely unrealistic, because the omission of this issue makes the impression the protagonists went through the mountains without any major adventures along the way.
Summary
My Way is a very good movie. In a way similar to the mentioned Oblivion, I'd even say that much better. In a neat, though imperfect way tells a story of two runners sucked in the vortex of war ([s]Completely unwillingly![/s]) and willing to survive this period in accordance with their own moral backbone.
Christmas after us, stomaches are fullfiled, wallets are emptied - in general, gifts are given. So are iPhones. For many it might be the first iOS smartphone or the first smartphone at all.
This post is for them - it's the list of apps I recommend. All of them are, obviously, avalaible for iPod Touch and all of them are iPad compatible, too.
WriteRoom
Free. Though writing anything long on 4-inch screen is a veritable perversity, WriteRoom can be used as a nice notepad with Dropbox synchronization, so far the best cloud on iOS. It's minimalistic, devoid of unnecessary text formatting and the texts can be segregated into folders.
SoundHound
Free. You often hear a song in a radio or at friend's. A times it's a fabulous piece, but you've no idea of the title. Here SoundHound comes. It gives you the title, the singer and the album. Just put your phone near a speaker and hit the orange button. Miracles :)
Remote
Free. App by the Apple alone. It lets you to remotely play music, audiobooks, podcasts, movies and videos you're keeping in your iTunes. Works fastly and smoothly, but needs a while for loading the list of all files. Also, give it a moment when you decide to turn visualisation on.
Snapseed
Free. Handsomely comfortable and easy photo editor, when you need something more than just simple filters. It gives you a chance to manipulate eg. saturation, brightness, shadows and wamth, but also includes few editable filters like drama and vintage.
Kurrency
Free. A minimalistic currency converter, working also in the offline mode. It has most of the world currencies avalaible, including Bahraini Dinar and Polish Złotówka*. Works fastly and smoothly, and when you shake the phone it changes colors.
Feedly
Free. RSS reader. You might have already used Feedly, as it is also avalaible via web browser, but if you haven't, I don't see why didn't you start yet. It's first of all a greatly comfortable RSS reader. Lets to sort feeds in categories and has nice look.
WiFi Mouse
Free/$2.99 (Pro). App that connects wirelessly to your PC (or Mac) and pretends to be... a computer mouse. And a keyboard. You also need their desktop app to be downloaded from their site. Maybe it doesn't offer the best ergonomics and you gotta get used to the touchpad layout ('buttons' under touchpad surface), it's still pretty useful when you get your regular mouse broken. A good iOS's vertical keyboard compensates for poor and uncomfortable horizontal keyboard. The free version is enough for you.
That's possibly not everything, I might forgot about something or have no idea about - list is purely subjective and I could be missing something. I'll do my best to complement it every time I find something interesting. You can send your propositions here.
Today evasi0n published Jailbreak for iOS7. I would, however, wait with installation, as it looks very suspiciously.
First of all, the jailbreak installs Chinese alternative for Cydia, called Taig.
The Chinese, completely unknown to anyone store looks very suspiciously and evasi0n gives no word about it on their site and we don't know what else suspicious might be included in the jailbreak and can't be seen at the first sight.
Let's not forget about the Cydia alone - Saurik himself stated no one talked to him about the jailbreak, therefore Cydia and stuff it includes doesn't support the newest iOS - that only means not a single app it offers may work properly, or work at all.
I'm of course far from paranoic, and don't know how much true is that comment, but I'll give it up for now. And advice you to do the same.
Recently playing Mafia II (finally, isn't it?) I had a thought coming through me - not just about the way of leading an action, but rather of the story presented within.
The plot is usually adult, deep, absurd, or almost unnoticable. Some titles have some humorous elements implemented - GTA is all full of less or more humorous allusions to the real world, the Mafia also tells a few jokes, and Saints Row is all completely based on absurd humor (anyone remember penetrator?).
However, there are missing titles based entirely on a nice, intelligent humor, with gags on every corner and jokes matched to the context.
Do You remember Lethal Weapons with Mel? Move that to the field of computer games.
Despite the fact we can't revolutionize action games technically, we can bring something new to the stories they're telling. The matter is completely polarized - the concept is whether very serious or very not serious and there's basically nothing between.
Nothing, what would be based on humor which is more adult than the penetrator or naked protagonist. Such as examples are funny for a while only. I'd personally enjoy more playing a game full of wordplays, situational jokes and humorous allusions.
That of course requires a little more creativity, but if one can write screenplay for Heavy Rain, then one can also write screenplay for something much lighter, right?
Humorous elements in GTA - as they aren't anything more than just elements - aren't enough. Again, Saints Row is inclination to the other side - the game includes humor, which is maybe memorable, but because it's full of absurd and is boring in bigger doses.
No need to immediately go to extremes. Balance can also be fun.
For months, Windows Phone rules as the third biggest mobile operating system. Despite a relatively little age it has gained certain reputation and some fandom, and its biggest feature are the Live Tiles. However, there's a rumor, that Microsoft supposedly, on the occasion of WP9 update, would get rid of squares and rectangles in favor for something else.
That would be completely pointless. For at least a number of reasons.
Image & marketing
Windows and Windows Phone are strongly related to the tiles. Now, after three years on the market, even a layman reacts on Lumias with 'oh, are those the ones with tiles?'. Tiles are, so to say, Microsoft's OS hallmark, at least as much as diversity is Android's. Giving up squares and rectangles in favor of a new UI is a suicide for Microsoft, cause that would push Redmond's giant into building its brand from a definite zero.
Microsoft shelled out a lot of money on marketing around their new system, anyway. In 2012, the company spent $200m on it, what gives effects. Since its release in 2010, Windows Phone slowly but constantly climbs to the top and that's sure Microsoft can see it and isn't stupid enough for risking 4% market share and the money for reworked system, which popularity doesn't necessarily have to exceed the limits of statistical error.
Design and user friendliness
Windows Phone is the best visually designed OS I have seen. It looks beautifully, and it's additionally well-tailored for touch devices. It gives some basic information already on a tiles in the menu - say, for battery and weather. Without opening a single app. The Live Tiles are readable and the interface itself minimalistic - you see only what you need.
I'm not then much surprised it still goes up in market share. Because, more or less consciously, we decide to choose the OS with the suitable approach for showing information. The OS which is still needing some improvements, but is on the good way.
Microsoft would really frivolous if now it decides for the redesign. The company finally has a real chance to bounce back from the mobile depression and certainly doesn't want to miss it. But by giving up the tiles, Microsoft would lose too much - in my eyes, its fans' and, obviously, antifans'.
Spotify expands: mobile listening for free and another 20 countries with official access
Until now using Spotify on smartphones with Android or iOS was an exclusive for the most expensive edition of the service. However, since two days Spotify resources on the mobiles are avalaible for free. And, in bonus, Led Zeppelin's discography, too.
The payable editions are untouched. While in the free one, we can listen to all the playlists and artists accessible on your PC. Additionaly, we can listen to any music by the genre.
That coudn't be more perfect, could it? Yes, it could - first of all, there are still some ads between songs. Also, it's still online only. And the last, but not least - songs are shuffled. They can't be played as they are in the playlist, but randomly.
Beware, the app automatically switches you to Spotify Premium's 2 days trial, that can be extended to 30 days free. After the time it will possibly play the music with the abovementioned limits.
The another nice news is the Spotify's premiere of Led Zeppelin albums, which are as follows:
Wed, December 11 - Led Zeppelin (1969) & Led Zeppelin II (1969);
Thu, December 12 - Led Zeppelin III (1970) & Untitled fourth album (1971);
Fri, December 13 - Houses Of The Holy (1973) & Physical Graffiti (1975);
Sat, December 14 - Presence (1976) & In Through The Out Door (1979)
Sun, December 15 - The Song Remains The Same (1976), Coda (1982), How The West Was Won (2003), Mothership (2007) & Celebration Day (2012);
Additionaly, with the day of December 11, Spotify comes in to following countries:
Bolivia, Bulgaria, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Malta, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Slovakia, Uruguay
That means Spotify is now avalaible in 55 countries of the world. I'm still waiting for the Bahrain edition - as for now no Middleeastern country has received the honor of official access to Spotify. That can be irritating, but at least don't hear ads in Arabic ;)
I've waited for the news like this. I don't like using another person's money for my own pleasures, therefore has been using the free Spotify. For the perfectness, I'd missed the free Spotify mobile player, when I hugely listen to music outside. I'm of course aware of the limits, but aren't they too irritating to make me sacrifice one of the biggest ever pleasures - listening to music.
Xoia Classic - Polish try for gambling Tetris - review
I have no experience with gambling or bookie and don't even see a difference between the two. I do however know and like a 'diamond' games, played by the youth on uncles' previous centuries computers, including arranging diamonds in rows.
XOIA Classic is a mix of the both. As a player we gamble if in the next 'round' are any diamonds in rows going show up. One row must count at least three diamonds. The more diamonds and rows, the bigger win price that can be spent on later gambling. The stones can't be moved an are randomly scattered about a 7x7 board.
If that was so easy...
Cause the game can kick your dick, since after a row of wins there can be a row of losses and we lose all, or big part of, money.
That randomness has its good and bad things. It makes you think of what you're doing, so you don't randomly hit buttons.
Again, it can be frustrating, especially when you lose everything and forget to 'recharge' your account in main menu (every few hours you can take some amount of money) and sometimes I have even felt like gambling strategy doesn't really hasn't anything to do with reality, whatever it was.
There are, however, in app purchases for that:
Ouch.
Looks how it should
Technically game is well done. Works smoothly and fast, what shouldn't surprise - the game, in spite of good enough graphics (and climatic interface) doesn't offer any super über audiovisual features.
Good. No need them here.
There's some music playing during a game. Sounds good, but gets monotonous with time. Luckily, can be turned off in settings, just like other game sounds, that with time stop to liven the game.
Worth it?
I feel confused. I basically had fun playing it, and it all works somehow smoothly, but I haven't experienced "yet the next round" syndrome, when gotta do something else. The game misses something characteristic, thanks to what you think of the game anytime you reach for your phone and can't stop playing it when you already started. I have dispassionately been turning XOIA Classic off and switching for something else, forgetting the game until playing it again.
It is therefore quite hard to give any specific rate, but it might swing between 70-75%.
The game is avalaible for free at AppStore. The developer behind XOIA Classic, GameCon, shared it with me for tests. They had no influence over this review.
I don't want. I've had enough of all the smear campaigns and political games each on each side. I've had enough of morons' antics, setting rainbows to a fire and attacks on embassies.
No for scuffles, or fights for who's fault is this. We have holidays, gentlemen.
Behave like gentleman. Be an example, not a reason for shame.
Politics. Scary, but somewhat appealing at once. Often it is necessary to try hard to even understand it.
That's why I usually avoid it. It needs lots of time, and I'm usually too lazy. Konrad, however, had led me to some reflection. Read more.
I hate judging. Again, I've noticed great Poles' love for it. Islam=terrorism. Gamers=perverts. Priests=pedophiles.
Even I'm judging right now.
Woops.
I'm not the PiS's electorate. Nor PO's. I'd lived in Poland with no right to vote. In Bahrain, being apolitical is even desirable. Political aligness can get you in trouble.
But a choice of a party because of its electorate is stupid. You don't vote for the electorate. You vote for the party.
And there are fanatics on the other side, too ;-)
Like always the most radical part gets the most in your eyes. Al Qaeda. Taliban. Feminists.
We can't forget people are different. Categorization by political views is at least unjust. Political racism, that unnecessarily divides people.
I won't vote for PiS. I've got some understanding for Jarosław, who've lost his twin brother, sister in law, many his party's members and, later, also his mother, but they still got so bad PR they own thanks to their own politicians.
But I don't give a rat's ass about their electorate. I don't vote for electorate. I vote for a party.
As we came to elections - usually the frequency is about 50%. Those who don't vote say there's no one to vote for and nothing changes, those who do, vote for the same, because they don't feel like changing anything or are neither aware of a choice they have.
According to the Polish Electoral Commission's site, there are 82 legally working parties.
Generally, how Poles behave about politics is disgusting me. Meddling it in every aspect of life, like it was something we can't breath without and typically Polish complaining instead of literal moving own ass to change anything.
I don't like piracy. It's immoral, is a regular theft and spitting in the face of a creator, who deserves a payment like anyone else fairly working. Piracy is yuck, but so to say shows a problem we all have.
We are lazy. As a society. We like comfort, and piracy, as a distribution feed for media like movies or games, is the most comortable.
A pirated content is avalaible all over the Internet at your fingertips. For free. In any moment I can search for a movie and after few hours of downloading, watch it, burn it on DVD / pendrive / external HDD and share with friends. Still having a copy for myself.
Internet made us used to have everything avalaible immediately, because that's what it was made for. Distributors don't make use of it and that's the problem.
An offer must be better than what piracy gives. But it isn't. Not with troublemaking anti-piracy security or geographical restrictions. Having a pirated piece I can do with it whatever, whenever and however I want.
We of course have Spotify, that's awesomely comfortable, but still not avalaible in some countries. A different pain is troubling Netflix, despite the fact it's everywhere, it hasn't edition in local languages. Again, Polish VOD services aren't avalaible outside Poland.
Besides, just look at games, mainly the big ones. How many of them does even have trial? Why on earth have you got to buy a pig in a poke? Piracy comes with help. You get a game from torrent, try it, and do you like it? Then buy it. Stop. Exactly, people having an illegal copy doesn't usually buy the legal one.
Because they like comfort. They still have a working piece of game / movie for free, so from their view buying a legal piece doesn't compute. But that ain't their fault. Cause distributor and creator have got to adapt to the trends created by the consumers, not the opposite.
Distributors, by signing agreements with creators, are to take responsibility of encouraging customers to spend money. If the distributors don't feel like making the effort, why should consumers do?
In April 2013 I've started to move my creativeness to Tumblr. Most of my projects evolutioned rather than just went to a waste bin, TheLittleWhite is to some extent still World of Miczkus, but in new, better edtion.
There've been few reasons. I briefly described them in the welcome post, and will expand them today.
Tumblr's simplicity brought me here. WordPress is a harvester, with tens of options and settings you gotta focus on and that make you focus on. That of course has its advantages, but I don't need it. WordPress works greatly for stuff like Mashable or TNW, with many authors and few posts a day.
Again, Tumblr is perfect for a personal blog led by one person, when you don't need bells and whistles of portals and blogportals. Tumblr at the same time has also simplified the features it has common with WordPress, like post formats. When you use WordPress, you gotta install a theme with post formats support, Tumblr has them all in basic. The same with a theme's edit - everything's in one file and if you have few blogs, they are all avalaible for you by one click. That simple :)
I'd needed a change anyway. Change is good, refreshes mind, makes room for new ideas and lets to "unlock". At the beginning of the year I'd been definitely knocked out of the rhythm due to server breakdowns (later about this one), and for another months a creative crisis got me, so I couldn't push me to post in a 2-3 days period. Now, the true is, I still do "collect harvest" of the first (still write much less than before), but I don't have to push myself to write, because I kinda started over and "it somehow all happens itself" :)
The servers. Tumblr works great, much better than ugu.pl (a free Polish webhosting, besides of language barriers - don't use it). Besides the fact the servers are fast themselves, there've been no breakdowns so far, what all the free hosts are missing. Already once a shitty server badly influenced my creativeness, I don't need to repeat it and will stay at New Yorkers'. I of course could stay at as safe wordpress.com, but even the free Tumblr offers more.
I could also buy domain + hosting, but - as there's always "but", just like butt - using Tumblr I can only buy a domain (as I already have space), so it comes cheaper, and the other thing is I don't like to ask people to waste money on my stuff1.
The only thing my causing my heart bleeding is no horizontal view in quiet good Tumblr iOS app.
So, in April I got rid of a well positioned blog with many posts and started over with a new brand in a new place. And you know what? It's worth it. Now it's simplier, faster and more stable, and I'll just catch up any deficiencies in popularity here and there. It's gonna take some time, but I've got lots of it. Success is a process, not a surprise party.
// WordPress in the title actually stands for something more than just blogging engine. Here it's all I'd done using it.
Apple finally revealed dates for another two turns of 5C's & 5S's releases. Only few weeks left!
The first turn is set at October 25th, 2013 and includes the following countries:
Belgium, Austria, Croatia, Poland, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia Finland, French Antilles, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Liechtenstein, Latvia, Luxembourg, Macau, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Reunion Island, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Thailand.
The second turn is set on November 1st, 2013 and includes that countries:
Albania, Armenia, Bahrain, Colombia, Salvador, Guam, Guatemala, India, Macedonia, Malaysia, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
Now only waiting for official prices. Stay in touch. Will update that post.
Amwaj Islands - beach on a day, the Lagoon on an evening
Amwaj Islands is a group of man made islands in a northeasternmost corner of Bahrain, near to Muharraq. It was opened in 2001, though many buildings are still being built. It covers an area of 2 790 000 m² (30 million ft²). It offers many restaurants, hotels, flats for rent, a school (International School of Choueifat-Manama) and a hospital. It's 8 kilometers (4.97 miles) to the International Airport. That are few photos from a local beach and the Lagoon, a cultural center of Amwaj Islands.
