Let me start with a question, do businesses care more about disability than the Church? Perhaps some do, but it’s much more likely that many adaptations are made due to obligations and carefully planned and costed strategy.

Should the church follow suit? Does it already? Some churches operate as a business, with a large staff and budget who can be fully aware of and actively pursue accessibility compliance, so what sets them apart from companies like Coca Cola, or Apple?

One of the things I’ve learnt, especially in the last few years, has been the importance of empathy. This Christ-like heart is the one great advantage that the Church has over the world.

When it comes to adapting to disability, businesses have regulations, but families have needs. We certainly weren’t prepared for a child with special needs; we had to adapt quickly and still are. We had to learn fast, change on the fly and learn not be disappointed when things inevitably didn’t go to plan. Sometimes we might learn from the example of others, other times it’s Petey himself who teaches us, like when he sat on stage for 45 minutes at his nursery school nativity and took part in every song.

Families have needs. What is the Church if not a family?

Just as we weren’t prepared, it’s ok that the Church isn’t either.

If you don’t have have congregants in wheelchairs then there’s no need to put an ugly wheelchair ramp out front?

If no one in your church suffers from epilepsy, are strobe lights and laser shows during worship fine?

These statements might be true for you and that’s ok! The important thing is that we are aware of others, sensitive of their needs and have empathy with them.

While it’s easy to think that we don’t have congregants with a specific need and therefore don’t need to make adaptations, chances are we don’t have those people because they’ve went elsewhere, or worse, nowhere.

More than anything the Church needs to reveal the Father’s heart to the community; it’s ok to not be prepared as long as we have love. We’ve already talked about how difficult it is for us and for other families of children with special needs, to do something new. Almost a year go we came here, to morning service backed up by nothing but Google and prayer and were welcomed and loved immediately. We didn’t judge the church because they didn’t meet every single of of Petey’s needs, because how could they prepare for a child they’d never met.

That’s not to say that we’d just visit anywhere. What brought us to our current church was prayer and Google. We had to make a shortlist of churches that had certain facilities and at least one was dropped from the list for having no useful information on their website.

I could talk for another hour about the importance of having a relevant church website but you’ll be glad to know that now is not that time! A church website only can take you so far, to the door. What made us stay, even in the face of David McBride’s hugs, even when people didn’t completely understand, was that we felt accepted and loved.

What good is the great commission without love? If we go in obligation and not love, then what good can we do?

The Church is stronger as a family. As family we can adapt to changing needs through love and as a family we can bring the kingdom to all around us.

This article was originally published as a podcast, for Grace Community Church.

At first glance people with Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia, Depression or Anxiety may appear “normal”, leading to that all too common moment when we suddenly realise and quickly followed by us becoming awkward and uncomfortable; unsure of how to behave around them. The end result? Adults may ignore the person altogether while children may resort to insults or bullying. For the person with the disability just leaving home can become a massive challenge; an obstacle course of uncertainty and judgement that you have to navigate whilst carrying a ticking time-bomb.

A few years ago I used to dread going to church. Trying to handle that with a toddler with ASD was just too much. There was nothing motivating me beyond obligation and even that wasn’t enough when a simple trip to Tesco could be as tiring as a day out.

If I was to ask ask you to think about people in the Bible who have a disability we’d probably end up with the same list of obvious candidates, but there are others that don’t often get considered because perhaps their disability isn’t outwardly visible or immediately apparent.

One example was a man who was called of God to carry out a very important task. To the outside world he was well educated, rugged and probably had an epic beard. He had no statement of special needs, or parking permit but when given a mission for God he argued with Jehovah himself saying that he couldn’t do it. Not arguing against the seemingly impossible task at hand but that he just couldn’t say the words God wanted him to speak. That man was Moses

Exodus 4:10,15
But Moses said to the Lord, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.” You shall speak to him [Aaron] and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth and will teach you both what to do.

We don’t normally think of Moses as having a disability and people may say “it was in his mind” mental illness is a real problem and for Moses it was so big that God had to send Aaron, Moses' brother, to speak on his behalf.

Throughout history people who suffered a neurological or developmental disability were seen as unsafe, possible criminals and best to be avoided and t’s very easy for that sort of negative attitude or bigotry to spread. In Bible, time and time again we see shocking examples of bigotry in how society’s outcasts were treated. People continually took customs into law and then turned it up to 11.

People often wonder what Jesus looks like, I imagine most of the time it was like this: ‍♂️ After all he spent a great deal of his ministry course correcting daft customs that followed that letter of law but forsook empathy.

One really interesting example of bigotry in the Bible comes from an unlikely source. Job, destitute, penniless, sick and alone and with some of the worst friends in history contemplates his lot.

Job 30:1-12
But now they laugh at me, men who are younger than I, whose fathers I would have disdained to set with the dogs of my flock. What could I gain from the strength of their hands, men whose vigor is gone? Through want and hard hunger they gnaw the dry ground by night in waste and desolation; they pick saltwort and the leaves of bushes, and the roots of the broom tree for their food. They are driven out from human company; they shout after them as after a thief. In the gullies of the torrents they must dwell, in holes of the earth and of the rocks. Among the bushes they bray; under the nettles they huddle together. A senseless, a nameless brood, they have been whipped out of the land. And now I have become their song; I am a byword to them. They abhor me; they keep aloof from me; they do not hesitate to spit at the sight of me. Because God has loosed my cord and humbled me, they have cast off restraint in my presence. On my right hand the rabble rise; they push away my feet; they cast up against me their ways of destruction.

This is Job, a man described as “a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?” in Job 1:8 outraged that the outcasts of society mock his situation. This same Job in Job 29:12-16 says:

I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; my justice was like a robe and a turban. I was eyes to the blind and feet to the lame. I was a father to the needy, and I searched out the cause of him whom I did not know.

How can a man who has done all these good works, a man that God says is blameless, have such an attitude of elitism even now?

Job compares these people to criminals, which suggests that they aren’t. Job 30:2 describes them as “men whose vigor is gone”, being unable to work with your hands in an agrarian society would certainly be classed as disability and not being able to work would lead to homelessness and exclusion from community. Job’s discrimination may not be out of malice, but based on social norms. That doesn’t excuse it but it also doesn’t mean that God will rebuke him for it.

Instead God takes a different approach.

Starting at chapter 38, God begins to work on Job. Not just to lift up his spirits but to set right as heart. By the end of the book, Job’s family and livelihood have been restored, but curiously there is no mention of his health. We don’t know if Job was healed but by the end of the book that’s no longer important. Although it was never the point of his suffering, Job’s situation and corresponding time with God, teaches him empathy to the point where his ability no longer mattered.

Job 42:5
I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you;

Job’s relationship with God changes and deepens, before he could only hear God, now he can see him too; he learns to have a heart like the Father.

We will likely all suffer disability in our lives at some point. For some it might be temporary, for others it’s a life-changing condition. We’re constantly looking for ways to prevent, treat and cure. Some people may be healed but ultimately the rest of us that are saved will have to wait until that last day to be gloriously transformed. Until then what can the Church do? In the same way that a pair of glasses or a hearing aid can help restore sight or hearing, how can the the Church assist in bringing people to Christ?

It’s really pretty simple - don’t get in the way.

That’s true if a person has a disability or not, nothing we do should putting up barriers that stop people reaching the gospel.

This article was originally published as a podcast, for Grace Community Church.

A peculiar people - 1 Peter 2:9 (KJV)

When you stop and think about it, the (big C) Church is a really odd place, full of peculiar people. Just take a look around you and tell me if I'm wrong?!

To the outside world, our customs, our order of service is completely alien. We live in a "post-Christian" world, where even here in Northern Ireland there are many people who have never stepped foot in a Christian church, even if only for a wedding, baptism, or funeral.

Many churches are now having to react and change tactics to reach a people that never had faithful parents or grandparents who sent them out to Sunday School or the Good News Club. They have no idea what we do or who we are.

If we get too comfortable with our own culture we can easily loose the empathy that we need to reach people who are different than us. Changing culture doesn't mean throwing out the gospel - just recognising that we can't reach everyone with the same tactics. The most common place we see that is on the mission fields around the world, but in some ways even that has become familiar. It's almost as though those big, grand acts of service have somehow become easier than small gestures of love. Is it really easier to tithe than showing empathy for people who don't look like, or act like us?

As a parent of a child with special needs appropriate I can confidently say, appropriate church behaviour went out the window a long time ago and Lila and I are both so thankful for the leadership team and congregation at Grace Community Church for making us feel so welcome; from the very first day!

You might be thinking:
> "Warmly Welcoming new people to church? That doesn't sound revolutionary!"
You'd be right, but for parent like us who have a child with special needs, or another learning difficulty or disability, that's not something we can take for granted!

We have family and friends that support us, but that doesn't mean they don't don't struggle to understand our needs and our patterns as a family. Sometimes a big gesture can have disastrous affects or friends get upset and confused when you have to cancel events because you haven't had a sold night's sleep in 3 weeks or you know that their house isn't prepared for a curious and energetic 4 year old who likes to disassemble everything.

When struggles or difficulties are hidden, even actions offered in love may not be appropriate and when it comes to the fulfilling the great commission of going into all the world and preaching the gospel we must do so in the light of the great commandments:

> Matthew 22:37-39
> And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

For the church to reach sinners, regardless of their socio-economic background, ethnicity or level of ability it must adapt its ministry, but it must never forget about love.

- How can we be inclusive as a church?
- How can we make the gospel accessible?
- How can we share with others without it being an afterthought?

As a father I ask myself these same questions and as a parent of a child with autism I say "how on earth can I do that?" Especially when, at times, it feels like my life is being held together by nothing but duct tape and prayer!

If I struggle with that balance, what hope is there for family and friends? What hope is there for the Church? The only way to adapt is to know needs of the people we're working with and have empathy for them.

Our son's behaviour, the way he lost the words he once knew and struggled to communicate with us, or maintain eye contact and the fact that he would rarely give hugs or kisses didn't mean that he had nothing to say. I remember very clearly how he used to climb up beside us on the sofa and while sitting there would tap gently on your arm 3 times. It took us a little while to realise what he was doing but then we realised, this was Petey saying "I love you."

Petey couldn't express how he felt in the same way as us, but he found his own way, he adapted and in turn so did we, but in order to do that we had to learn to "listen" to him.

This article was originally published as a podcast, for Grace Community Church.

A few thoughts on the new Apple TV

• The interface is very fast, the “parallax wiggle” on icons seems like a gimic, but is actually a really useful way to locate your position on screen.
• The remote looks more breakable in screenshots than it actually is. Thankfully it is pretty light and the trackpad does not have a glass top. If you have kids, you’ll understand this one. Turns out it actually is breakable but you can still use the old remote to some extent.
• The remote although faster to use than the old model is a change in paradigm that may confuse some users, initially. Or maybe it was just me continually holding it upside down.
• The app store is pretty spartan, but there are good apps in there, unfortunately discoverability seems to be a bigger problem than on iOS.
• MFI controllers work in the system menus, which is a nice touch
• If you have a USB-C to USB-A cable you can install additional apps from GitHub, like Provenance (a multi system emulator) and Auntie Player (Unofficial BBC iPlayer)
• Speaking of the Beeb, I know they say an iPlayer app is coming, but when consider the absence of all UK catchup streaming services I have to wonder if Apple could not have been a little more selective with who got the devkits.
• All the pre-installed apps from the previous model (Crunchy Roll anyone?) are available as downloads. That’ll save some clutter, thank goodness.
• No Podcasts app
• But Apple Music is finally here, to that’s good.
• But without Siri support sigh
• And there’s no support from the iOS or WatchOS Remote apps, expect updates soon I guess
• Simplex is a great termporary(?) replacement for Plex
• You can use Siri Remote like a Wii Controller which is fun and reminds me that the Apple Store is selling wrist straps that connect to the lightning port. Yes, serioulsy.
• There are a number of less-than-obvious controls/shortcuts on the remote that help when inputting text, such as pressing the Play/Pause button to change case, in addition those found here. You can also double click the display button to show the app switcher and quit apps with an upward swipe.

*TLDR: Or at least a rough estimate of how long you've spent on a project.

It's very easy, even for the most disciplined of teams, to become so involved in a project that agile stories and time trackers go out the window; the only goal is to finish. We had this happen on a project last year and it made it very hard to see where the time went during our project retrospective. We knew we'd been working constantly, but on what? Knowing that we did diligently commit our code to Git made me wonder if there was a way to approximate time spent based on commit timestamps.

Turns out, several people had already been working on this and we settled on a ruby gem from Frank Rietta. You can read more about the assumptions used in calculations over at his site and GitHub, but it couldn't be easier to install:

Installing is easy from your computer with Ruby installed. From the command line, run: gem install git_time_extractor Then go one of your GIT project directories, and run: git_time_extractor > output_time.csv

The reason I picked this tool over others is that the spreadsheet generated can be manipulated in whatever way need for records, sort by employee, what took the longest, how much time did we spend in total etc.

Alongside the release of their new tabletop game, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Games Workshop have been promoting several new type of eBooks from their publishing imprint Black Library. For a company who already sell three distinct versions of their books, what does this mean, what is this “new” format and what does it mean for gamers?

First let’s look at the books we’ve seen to date, they fall into 3 categories, Print, Enhanced (iBook) and eBook (EPUB 3 and Kindle).

Print 

The print edition is exactly what you expect, the same hardcover format that we’ve known for years, or is it? Around the end of 6th edition and release of 7th edition 40K there was a shift in the design of the BRB and the Codexes. Compare the text heavy Codexes of 2nd edition to the new Codex Space Marines and you’ll see what I mean. The newer books are full of high quality, full page images, spacious type and high-res photography with a consistent styling between digital and print versions.

It seems as though the print version is now being designed alongside the digital editions, rather than being tacked on as an afterthought and shows that Games Workshop is serious about digital content. Perhaps they are even taking a “digital first” approach, it’s certainly possible as the print books now look a lot like the iBooks edition, but is more likely that they have well defined templates for both.

Digital First Design

A quick note on Digital First Design. Generally considered a good thing, there’s no denying that it can lead to a fresher, more modern looking book. That said, we’re starting to see publishing industry push-back, especially in education, as there is a definite feeling of sameness, even blandness to a lot of digital books that then migrates to print. eBooks are more or less packaged web pages, so some upcoming CSS standards should improve typography and layout options, allowing for much richer “print-like” designs in the future.

The problem with eReaders

Not all ebooks and certainly not all eReaders are created equal. In the “real world” we can classify books as hardback, softback, comic books, coffee table, reference and so on. Here in the Matrix they’re all just “eBooks” and all formats are expected to work everywhere; this leads to Lowest Common Denominator Design.

The latest James Patterson novel is ideal to read on your Kindle or Nook, but for anyone who’s ever tried to navigate Warhammer 40,000: The Rules on a Kindle Paperwhite mid game will find it to be a lesson in madness.

The layout is perfectly nice but this type of reader isn’t really designed for this type of content, it’s designed for novels. So instead we chop up our beautifully designed to make it linear. It’s like printing out the content of the rulebook on copy paper. I’m sure some people like it this way or have low expectations for the technology, maybe they just want an easy way to read the fluff, but for gaming it’s a horrible experience all-round. Why? Because any digital book creates an inherently poorer User Experience that the physical equivalent. We “know” how to use a book and use it quickly, in a non-linear fashion, as we jump from reference to reference. But this isn’t how a typical eReader works, as it’s primarily designed for novels, anything beyond linear navigation is a feature that’s been bolted-on.

This is a huge problem in Education as textbooks are also used in non-linear ways. eBooks that were initially seen as the way of the future, are now considered to cause more problems than the paper books they aimed to replace. This left room for companies like Apple and Inkling to come up with alternatives.

Enhanced (iBooks)

The most popular form of alternative eBook is the iBook working hand-in-hand with the iBooks application on Mac and iOS. The iBook format is a proprietary extension of EPUB 3 introducing some functionality unique to Apple WebKit and addressing the issues above by allowing richer designs and providing a more appropriate reading experience.

As with Digital First Design this was at first considered a good thing.

Introduced by Apple at an education-focused event in 2012 the iBook was designed to solve the problem of creating digital textbooks. It allows anyone to create beautiful content specifically for Apple devices by using a WYSWIG editor and embedding interactive widgets like quizzes and galleries and an interactive glossary. The big improvement over standard EPUB 3 was the custom reader that Apple included in the iBooks Application (yes the format and reader are called the same thing. Yes there was also a laptop by the same name too) which provided a more natural method of navigation that your standard eReader. Using gestures you can swipe between Chapters, Sections and Pages and pan and zoom in and out to jump around in content.

Games Workshop started publishing books in this format back in 2012 and it finally seemed that a perfect format had been discovered for digital gaming books. If nothing else it certainly felt premium, further cemented by the release of Codex Space Marines which included enhanced features like embedded audio and the Force Requisition army builder.

It was around this point that I switched from print to digital, but as good as the iBooks format is, it does have issues. First off it’s iOS only and until very recently was iPad and Mac only. Secondly it’s slow. So slow. Apple added animated book opening effects to the iBooks software meaning that jumping from one section of a book to another (without a hyperlink) can take up to 10 seconds; in the heat of a game, that is way too long.

[caption id="attachment_10367" align="aligncenter" width="990"] This is a real-time animated gif of an iBook opening on a 2014 MacBook Pro.[/caption]

There are problems for publishers too, the books can only be built using Apple’s proprietary iBooks Author tool, effectively introducing an additional development track to the publishing workflow and only sold through iBooks, for which Apple take a 30% royalty. This is why publishers like Amazon and Comixology have removed all buying functionality from their apps, you can buy books from their online store and then download it to your device afterwards. It’s not a great experience for users but I can see why they do it, 30% is a huge junk wether you’re an indy publisher or a multinational.

I believe it’s been the dual pressures of providing high quality ebooks for non iOS users and a way to reduce the Apple tax on sales that has likely driven the creation of the new format released alongside Age of Sigmar.

eBook edition

The ebook formats, EPUB 3 and Mobi, get a bad wrap. If you’ve seen the digital version of White Dwarf magazine you’ll know why. This is the same format that publishers use for novels, which obviously works well there, but makes it impossible to create more than the simplest of layouts. Known as “reflowable ebooks” this content will “flow” from screen to screen allowing you to change the font to suit and making it readable on any size of device.

Reflowable EPUBs can be created easily in many word processing packages and desktop publishing tools like Pages and InDesign or generated from a folder of text files. Content is king which is why the focus is put on type in this format, but compared to the the print or enhanced edition it looks like something your Nan could do in Microsoft Word.

What it does have going for it is that it is quick to produce and can run on pretty much every device. If you’ve bought the DRM free ebooks from Black Library, you’ll get a Kindle edition too (most publishers generate their Kindle books from the EPUB 3, which is why I didn’t include it on the list of formats.) Publishing through Black Library also allows Games Workshop to save the 30% that Apple takes on fees. Some may ask why GW don’t charge 30% more for books sold through iBooks and I’m sure they would if they can but Apple’s T&Cs stop you from charging a higher price for the same product on their store. On of the disadvantages of the Black Library is that for less technical users it can be pain to download and transfer ebooks; the Kindle is so successful due to the tight integration of eReader and store.

New eBooks

Two weeks ago my article would have stopped with the eBook edition, however Warhammer Age of Sigmar brought along a new flavour of eBook; no longer would Android or mobile users have to suffer the poorly laid eBooks we’ve seen in the past.

The recent iOS 8.4 update means the iBooks editions work on iPhone, so there’s no reason for iOS users to buy multiple formats.

The first of the new books was the Age of Sigmar paining guide, you can and should grab a sample of this on the Black Library site and in iBooks, it looks lovely. Or should I say they look lovely because the tablet and mobile versions have appropriately different designs and using an app like Calibre or Kindle Previewer you can freely and legally convert them to work on your Kindle too.

Like the standard eBooks, these are also EPUB 3 but used the fixed-layout flag in their config, this let’s publishers set a page size in pixels and layout the content exactly as they want it to show. Beautiful looking eBooks and on mobile too, have we just found the holy grail?

No actually. The fixed layout format has fallen slightly out of favour with publishers for a number of reasons, the biggest of these is that eReaders treat this type of content like a PDF in a few ways.

• Font size: In fixed layout books you (obviously) can’t change font size, so you’re at the mercy of the designers, just like a PDF. You can zoom in and pan around though so at least that’s something.
• Annotations: If you want to make notes and scribbles in your eBook you’re out of luck beyond the most basic text, unless of course the eReader allows for something more. Compare that to the numerous PDF apps out there on desktop, tablet and mobile that let you markup the page however you see fit.
• Page size: The name “fixed layout" says it all, the page size is set to common iOS screen ratios. On older iPhones and Android you’ll likely find some some borders around the content.
• Treated like a PDF: If you compare a fixed layout page and a properly generated (with links and stuff) PDF you’d be hard pressed to see the difference. Open one of these books in iBooks and you’ll even see the same UI used to navigate PDFs with the added problem of performance issues

As each page in a fixed layout eBook is a single HTML (XHTML actually) page, iBooks uses the webkit rendering engine to process each page and generate a thumbnail, letting you scrub through pages quickly. However iBooks doesn't really cope with scale, possibly because people didn’t consider the 250+ page behemoths that we see in gaming and in education. Image trying to open 250 graphics heavy web pages at the same time, that’s what opening a large fixed layout book is like. Thankfully once it’s finished processing the book works great but on older devices like the iPad 2 or original iPad Mini you might find that iBooks crashes each time you try as it comes up against the memory limit on the device.

There’s nothing wrong with fixed layout EPUB 3 per se, it’s just that the eReaders let us down again; the portable reading experience is very different from the printed and should treated as such in both the design of the books and the eReaders used to consume them. So what is this format good for? In my line of work we use it a lot of kids’ story books and direct conversions of legacy books when stakeholders require a 1:1 match between print and digital; it’s generally considered as something of a step-backward in this case.

Unlike the iBooks (enhanced) editions the new fixed layout EPUB’s don’t require a separate development track, they’ve been generated from InDesign automatically, you can see this in the metadata section of the image below. For template driven content like this, once you’ve got a your first project set up, there is little to no additional work to generate fixed layout content for new books. Beyond clicking the export button that is.

So think about this, Games Workshop now makes a book once and can now export automatically to print, mobile, tablet and probably even ebook editions but instead of users buying a book and getting access to whatever format is necessary, users are encouraged to buy the same book multiple times generating almost pure profit for

I’ve said before that I have no problem paying the same for a digital book as the print edition, but this only applies to “prestige” formats like iBook edition, or Comics on Comixology, where care has been taken in the design and implementation to provide a better experience, e.g.. the special features added to the latest Codexes. Like many of you I’ll even go as far as to buy the print and digital editions of some books and the Horus Heresy series from Forge World is the type of book you’d only ever want in physical form but I have to draw a line at paying twice for what is the same thing.

There is no technical reason that the mobile, tablet and ebook editions shouldn’t all count as the same purchase, there’s even an argument that they should be available as a download with every print book or perhaps even charge a small premium like Marvel do with comics. I can’t help but think the iOS 8.4 update came at a bad time for GW, you’d think that with the number of iPhones in the market they wouldn't miss out on telling people that their books now work on iPhone too. Unless of course they want mobile users to buy another copy. (Of course they do.)

For my money I’ll continue to buy the iBook (enhanced) editions, the app may be slow, but it’s improving and as eReader designed for education its support for annotations and glossaries is second to none. The fact that I can now get these books on my iPhone only helps seal the deal. If I ever move to Android, yes that means I’d loose access to my books, but as it stands now I’d need to pay twice to have the appropriate book on both my Android tablet and mobile.

A Note on eBooks

As someone who makes eBooks for a living, this might sound like I’m shooting myself in the foot, but be careful when buying eBooks, not only are you subject to lock-in in various book stores, but the terms and conditions from some publishers may mean that you never own the content and trying to convert from one format to another may mean you are actually in breach of their terms.

Always look for DRM free options where possible never be afraid to push back on publishers to improve the quality of their ebooks. You wouldn't stand for a brand new printed Codex if the cover was hanging off and the ink smudged on a bunch of pages, digital products should be no different.

We have three published apps in each App Store, iTunes, Amazon App Store and Google Play, they’re published by our account but use licenced third-party IP.

We’ve had two apps rejected on first pass by Apple only to be accepted at review when we proved we held the necessary licence, a third because of an issue with a demo account that we fixed and they re-reviewed the same day.

On Amazon an eBook reader app for a tabletop games company was rejected with no reason other than “Amazon deemed it unsuitable for Kindle” but was allowed on other Amazon devices; we eventually made it onto Kindle too after some tweaks. Just like Amazon removing IAP in Comixology and leaving it out of the Kindle App, we had to drop IAP in our ereader on Amazon.

On Google one app was actually pulled after being live for months, this is something not many people see or hear about. Pulled, no warning, black mark against our developer process and a very closed appeals process. Again we provided details of our licence and after 10 days it was restored. We all hear about Apple’s “draconian” review/rejection process and maybe it’s just because there are so many iOS developers it feels familiar, but it is miles better than both Google and Amazon currently offer and feels like there really are humans making the decision.

What I find interesting about both Apple and Google here is that we had to prove our rights to an IP but yet the stores (especially Google Play) are full of clones and skeevy fakes, some of which have been around for years. Just type “Frozen” into Google Play and you’ll see what I mean.

Like all the best posts this blog started life as a tweet in response to @imyke and episode 30 of Inquisitive.

Apparently 2013 is the year of the smart watch. Back in April one in particular caught my eye Pebble, by the aptly named Pebble Technologies took Kickstarter by storm raising  $10 million (!!), well over their initial goal of $100K.

The Pebble uses Bluetooth 2.1+ EDR and 4.0 to pair with your phone an receive notifications, paired with an e-ink display the drain on both watch and phone is very low, unlike last year's Sony Xperia Smartwatch.

Out of the box (and on iOS especially) the Pebble doesn't do much more than show the time and weather, but on Android (and  iOS 7) it can be set up to receive custom notifications, receive navigation directions from Google maps, control music and more.

Honestly, it takes more work than most people would be bothered with, but I don't mind. I even took to creating my own watch face, combining the popular split-screen look with Calendar events. That might not be for everyone, but being able to look at my watch and see when and where my next meeting is, is a small win in my book.

For anyone else wanting to download the "Fancee Watch" face, you can grab it here http://archive.andrewgribben.com/oldblog/oldblog/fTMz and install it on Android using Canvas for Pebble.

Tablet form factor is an interesting thing; an iPad user since day one, I sold my iPad 2 after using the Nexus 7 for a week last year, but once the iPad Mini was released I jumped at the chance to own an iOS device in the 7" form factor. I am a Mac user, my primary phone is an iPhone, and regardless of how good the Nexus 7 is , the iPad fitted with my workflow, seamlessly. Setting the availability of certain apps aside (OmniFocus, OmniGraffle are both Mac apps that are available on iPad too) I'm not saying I can't use anything else, but at the moment, I don't want to, but that doesn't mean I won't try.

Through my day-job at Purple Guerrilla I've had the opportunity lately to test on all of the major 10" tablets. Despite going in with some pre-formed opionions about what I would and wouldn't like, I found the results quite surprising.

Apple iPad

First up, the "New" iPad, not the newer iPad, commonly referred to as the iPad 4. The differences are minor enough that for the purposes of this test, I'll consider them as one and the same.

The 10" iPad is a beast. I remember when the first iPad was released, it was like something from sci-fi, the iPad 2 form factor slimmed this down further, but compared to an iPad Mini, it's still huge. If you don't have an iPad Mini you have to understand just how slim a device it is. I was watching actual, near future, sci-fi a few weeks back and an iPad Mini used as a prop, looked so futuristic that I found it jarring.

There's something about the iPad's "premium" build quality and weight (slightly heavier than iPad 2) that make it feel very fragile; like handling your Granny's best china. Nexus devices get a bad rap for feeling cheap, but I have no qualms throwing one down on a coffee table; if I tried that with an iPad it would probably slide right off.

Microsoft Surface Pro

I really wanted this to be good, I genuinely mean that. I'm so divorced from the Windows way of doing things (since I installed that first free Red Hat CD from PCW Magazine) that I actually like Windows 8 and its Modern UI. The problem is that despite all the marketing and posturing, the Surface Pro is not a tablet. The Surface RT is a pretty lack-lustre device, but at lease it is a tablet, the Pro, despite the name is a completley different device. The closest comparison that I can make is that this is Microsoft's MacBook Air, it's a fully featured, Intel based, ultra portable notebook.

The problem's started when I was first handed the device. The Surface Pro is so heavy that you wonder what they've filled the device with. (This article is not about facts and figures, but about experiences and sensations; the things that actually matter when using these devices.) I know from The Verge's excellent review that the Pro is half a pound heavier, that makes this 10" "screen" it heavier than my 15" Macbook Pro.

Too heavy to use as a tablet and with an active battery life of no more than 4 hours, it seems that the Surface Pro is designed to be used at a desk. The inclusion of a Display Port for video out only reinforces this, as does the inability to charge via USB (like every other tablet), both Surface models require a reasonably large power brick. Whilst chained to my desk via power cord I noticed another problem, the Surface Pro comes with a stylus which clips limply into the side of the device, using the same magentic port that is used for the power adapter. So, that's going to get lost soon.

As metioned previously the Modern UI really appeals to me, so nothing is more frustrating that launching an app and being kicked straight into "Classic" or Desktop mode cough Office cough. I wish there was a more clear division, even a switch to disable the traditional Desktop and the apps that require it, however it seems most long-time users have more of an issue with Modern UI and want to kill it and reclaim their Start button.

Microsfoft like to compare their devices against those from Apple, recent ads have shown off the Surface's true HD (1080p) display and 64GB storage as standard, so it was a little surprising to find that roughly 40GB of that storage are taken up by Windows 8 itself. 40GB, just think about that for a moment. Imagine buying a 16GB iPad to find you have only 6GB of usable space, people are already outraged by the 1GB or so that they currently loose to iOS,

The Surface Pro could be a successful device, if I was working in a Windows environment, I'd certainly take it over a Lenovo Thinkpad, but as a tablet it would be easy to carry around one made of stone. It's also prohibitively expense, £719 without the essential keyboard/cover.

As some people will think that there was no chance I'd find any redeeming qualities in the Surface, I made this list of things that I do like.

• Windows 8 - Modern UI
• Touch Cover
• The trackpad on the Touch Cover
• The premium build quality
• I actually like the little flap!
• Internet Explorer 10
• Accounts sync across Windows 8 devices via my Windows Live ID
• The Pro runs desktop games pretty well; there's something cool about being able to plug my Xbox controller in and have it work automatically.

Google Nexus 10

I know it's been out a while, but the Nexus 10 (or any 10" Android) was never really on my radar. Thinner and lighter than the iPad and with the a 300dpi display, the Nexus 10, despite being made by Samsung (I generally find Samsung devices to be plasticky) is easily the best Android tablet I've used to date.

Android Jellybean 4.2.2 is not all that different from I last remember it, it's an incremental release, but one that makes the OS feel a little more coherent. For example calendar events from my Exchange account show in Google Now, previously Exchange email and calendars were left out in the cold; I guess Google thought no one in business would use a Google device. The "holo" interface, introduced in 4.0, brings coherency to what was a very fragmented UI (similar to what iOS 7 will hopefully do for Apple), Android looks futuristic, but is still very useable; not an easy feat to manage.

The device itself is strange, while the iPad is very uniform, the Surface solid (like the 2001 Monolith) the Nexus 10 is a bit "wobbly". With rounded corners and a asymmetric thickness, the Nexus 10 looks soft and friendly. It's also remarkably easy to hold in one hand, like a book. Something which I find painful with a large iPad and impossible with a Surface Pro. Sideloading of content to Google Books, extended Google Drive functionality, better Exchange support and a beautiful 300DPI display have made the Nexus 10 a real joy to use and I've found myself reaching for it over any other device

The one thing (literally the one thing) that lets the Nexus down is the fragmented Android development environment. When Apple released it's retina devices, with much fanfare, it provided the tools and incentive to developers to make their apps retina ready. Whilst almost all (citation needed) new iOS apps are built with retina support and pixel doubled graphics, most apps on Android that operate without the "Holo" UI have yet to be updated. The worst offender, Comixology, who already have HD comics on iPad but on the Nexus with an even higher dpi count, we're still looking at the low-res version. Digital comics may not interest you at all, but the principle is this, that the world leader in this vein of digital media, 5 months after launch, has not updated their app to support the Nexus 10's screen. My suspicion (based on limited Android development) is that the problem is not with Comixology, but with the Android SDK and the difficulty inherent with developing apps at multiple screen densities, for countless variations of device.

Result

The best bit of yesterday's WWDC 2013 keynote had to be the change of tone within the address itself. This was a side of Apple that we rarely see; aware of its criticism and the ecosystem in which it exists. I don't see Steve Jobs doing that, but I don't necessarily think that is a bad thing either.

I've had around 24 hours to review and play with iOS 7, although my initial reaction was akin to a religious experience, the lustre quickly wore off when testing on a phone filled with third party apps. Much like the Microsoft Surface ads, the iOS 7 video had lots of shots of Apple's own apps (and Jony Ive in a white room), but back in the real world, what were once beautifully designed third party apps, now look heavy and out of place; an artifical barrier now wedged between the old and new design paradigms.

I love the new design language, unlike The Verge I don't mind the icons and I can accept that this is a beta, but I have to wonder how this will affect app development.These days the best Android apps use the "holo" design language, the same with Modern UI on Windows 8. iOS, on the other had, has a history of strong third party UIs, so it will be interesting to see how developers take to, or even adapt the new interface.

Parting thought: OS X Mavericks - Calendar and Maps seem to conform to the new design guidelines, should we expect a complete overhaul by the time it is released?

I've watched the coffee pod wars with a kind of bemused detachment. I don't need another way to brew coffee and the Nespresso and Senso brewed coffee I tasted was pretty bad.

The last thing anyone needs is an expensive way to make flavoured Nescafe

You'd think that'd be the end of it, but I really wanted to play around with one of these machines.

I love plans and meetings and email invites and cashflows and budgeting, but every once in a while I start to think too much.

I think about how my life is nothing more than a leaf on the wind and as I consider this spinning ball of rock we call home, hurtling around the sun at 70,000mph with nothing but invisible forces holding us together and I COMPLETELY FREAK OUT! Seriously, If I close my eyes I can almost feel the earth moving.

What I have to try and remember is that with or despite my plans the wind will blow and the world will spin and it's God who controls it all. God who created the very laws of Physics that hold reality together and whether I think I'm in control or not, He knows the destination, all I have to do is let go and let him take me there.

Watch how I soar.

The next time a client asks you to cut corners, or blames you for the the fallout of a late stage spec change, just remember Thomas Andrews.

Born in Comber in 1873 and a pupil at RBAI (Inst to locals), Thomas designed and project managed Titanic for the White Star Line, an impressive accomplishment in my opinion. During construction, his plans for additional life boats and extra safety features were overruled, resulting (or at least contributing greatly) to the loss of life and sinking of the ship on it’s maiden voyage on 14th April 2012.

Sadly Thomas Andrews died onboard Titanic when it sank. A telegraph after the tragedy reads “…ALL UNANIMOUS THAT ANDREWS HEROIC UNTO DEATH, THINKING ONLY SAFETY OTHERS…” What a legacy to leave behind; despite his warnings being ignored and the ship sinking fast, Andrews still thought of the passengers (users) first.

So how do we build “unsinkable software”? We can’t, that’s impossible, but we can try. Even if we don’t convince clients to do the right thing, then we should still do everything we can to help the user. Our code/designs will be the better for it and people will take notice.

A few weeks ago on twitter I passed remark to Matt Johnston that it would be great to have Industry-funded, STEM-focused schools in Northern Ireland. Yesterday, Matt put me in touch with  Denis Stewart and his wife, who between them have more experience of the education system than everyone I know, combined.

In the IT industry we love to rail on the "failings" of the education system and think if only we had the chance we could do it better. There are so many factors involved in changing education that it become much more than just changing education; cultural factors, family pressures, financial implications and job vacancies all have to be taken into consideration. There are already schools in NI, who receive funding from Industry and who have specialities in a range of STEM subjects, who I have no doubt are very good at what they do. Innovation is contagious; I'm sure many of these schools developed their speciality from one teacher, passionate about their subject who drove school policy forward.

I don't pretend I can fix things or that I have all (if any) answers. My school has been very good in giving me free reign, setting IT policy and testing out new systems, but we're part of a very small sub-group of a much larger system and as someone put it yesterday in "the Tasmania of Northern Ireland."

Is it enough to have a few specialist schools and a few innovative teachers? What about those who are still unreached? Mostly working class boys, whose career aspirations are either professional footballer, reality TV star, claim benefits, or "get out of school at 16, join a trade and make some money." I'm not being elitist; if I'm honest this is my cultural background. Neither am I saying everyone should go down an academic route. What I ask is, how many of these students would be potential innovators, if we could only get them past, "maths is hard" and "science is boring." How can we show what will be out there in ten years time when to them school is so irrelevant; they have more technology in their bedroom than most classrooms and they make better use of it too.

How can we better connect technology? Not just connect different elements of technology but how can we connect with teachers and students and get them engaged with it. Napster was one of those moments when society became truly engaged with the Internet; I knew it had made a difference when my 70 year old Aunt began using a Napster clone to download knitting patterns.  Education needs it's Napster. Not a way to illegally download music in class, but a way to connect existing technologies; meeting a need which it's users may not even realise they have.

Whether it's debating the need for STEM schools/STEM in schools, developing Jotter or teaching, I want to make the best of technology that exists, which we may even have, but aren't using in a useful way. Aspiring that my software project, Jotter be like Napster is perhaps a very lofty ambition; but is it not better to set a high goal and fall short, achieving something, than not set any goal or try at all. Is that not what we keep advising our students and if it isn't, why on earth not?

It's been a little while since I've blogged, but I've picked up quite a few new readers lately and thought it only fair to share a bit about me.

In case you hadn't guessed, I'm Andrew Gribben and yes, I write all my own posts. I don't have the luxury of having someone write for me. This causes two things to happen:

1. For someone who prides himself in proper spoken english, you'll find far too many spelling and grammatical errors.


2. Posts come randomly, when I have time and when I have inspiration.
   This helpful Venn diagram explains my thought process.

Handy Grib Facts

• I live at the sea-side with, my beautiful wife Lila and daughter Tamar.


• I finally created a LinkedIn profile, which you'll find here and my slightly less-than useful Google Profile is here.


• I'm responsible for http://jotterapp.com. If you don't know what Jotter is, you will soon.

If you came here looking for my address, date of birth and phone number, they're not here. I don't give that sort of information out over the internet and nether should you!

My move from developing software to teaching high school was extremely enlightening; working and socialising with a tech savvy crowd had made me ignorant to how IT was perceived by users in the "real world."

After watching Objectified I began to think about how you don't need to know about all of your users to make a good product, just the extremes; the middle will fall into place by itself.

On one end there are some really switched-on people in education, Fraser Speirs and David Cleland, to name but two, who are pioneering the use of technology in schools.  At the other, you have teachers who have don't have an internet at home or know how to use The Google and who reluctantly go along with new IT policies that come across their desk, they'll need help, but have no other choice. To them IT is an unnecessary inconvenience. In the middle you have teachers who are IT aware, they can send emails, use a printer and probably have a Facebook account, but it's a means to an end. As long as things work they're happy to make use of it.

As software is developed, we not only need to ensure it is relevant, functional and well designed, but that it is usable even by those who have very little IT experience; there's no age barrier either, graduates can have worse IT skills than veteran teachers; none of them will be installing Moodle. Users in the middle might not spend time online searching for a new piece of software (although now that "apps" are such an embedded part of culture, perhaps I'm wrong) but if what they use works, in that it works how they work, then the software itself will melt away.

As I see it, a huge problem with how ICT is used in education is that is still isn't seen as an infrastructure, like the building or the electricity. We get a pile of computers and throw them into a classroom and tell the teacher to work away. In Northern Ireland, C2K has made huge leaps forward, but there are still too few teachers who are happy, willing and/or skilled enough to innovate with the resources they've been given.

The iPad, solution or not, is seen as the "microwave" of the computing world and, what many don't realise, is more cost effective than netbooks, which, my school at least, thought, would be good value for money. If you count up the cost of repairs, and reinstalls we could have bought an iPad and still had change. Its not the only way either, I have high hopes for Google's Chrome OS; I customised Ubuntu on our netbooks so that they don't even have a traditional GUI, only the browser and I've never looked back.

While many in the IT industry (myself included) have called for the death of the traditional IT Teacher and instead have IT as an integral part of every subject, it isn't possible; not until hardware and software become invisible, just like an everyday appliance. I can only hope that Jotter will be invisible to its users.

As the project continues, I'll release more information about exactly what Jotter is. At the moment I'm still not sure how to describe it myself, but hopefully from these blog posts you'll at least see the reasons behind what we are doing.

Andrew Gribben

If there is one thing I won't tolerate in my class, it's sectarianism. Pupils who ordinarily show the utmost respect for teachers, can suddenly get riled up, treating you like a traitor, should you dare challenge them on what can only be described as a sin. It’s a touchy subject and the possibility of angry letters and phone calls from parents always seem a possibility, so it’s important to tread carefully and appropriately.

Many humanists would have us believe that religion (of any sort) has been the cause of war and misery throughout time, they aren’t wrong. Christians shouldn’t be “religious” at least not in the way the Pharisees, of Jesus’, time were. We need to interpret everything we do and believe through the lens of scripture, as means of self diagnosis to see if what we are doing is right. However the pattern throughout history is of people claiming who outwardly claim faith but inwardly harbour sin which they use to twist and warp scripture to suit their purpose.

Current day examples include “Protestant” paramilitaries, who don't know what the reformation was, or Christians who exclaim that immigrants should go back to their own countries and stop “stealing our homes and jobs.” Where’s their Christ-like nature; welcoming in strangers and those less fortunate?

The Bible must be taken as whole, not select random passages, not taken out of context, not adapted to fit our agenda or mindset. Just because a sin is traditional or cultural in its basis doesn’t make it OK; tradition and culture are not bigger or more relevant than scripture itself. Christians, not just in Northern Ireland, need to actually apply the Bible to their whole lives, not just choose parts of it as it suits.

What are your thoughts?

Expecting something else?

Yesterday was a somewhat productive day for me; with the school was closed due to weather I got all the network and computer upgrades finished off early.

With all my free time that evening I decided to try making a batch of frozen yogurt, or froyo;  the codename for Google's Android 2.2 operating system </>

So if you want to make a batch at home, don't want fruit and haven't got an ice cream maker, then follow these simple steps.

You Will Need

• 2 cups (500ml) natural yogurt


• 1/2 cup (125) water


• 1 cup (250ml) full fat milk


• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract


• 1 cup (200g) white sugar


• Blender


• Shallow metal dish or tin


• Plastic tub

Steps

1. Stick everything in the blender, and turn it on.
   Be sure to put the lid on the blender!


2. Blend for approx 5 minutes or until your wife complains about the level of noise.


3. Pour into the shallow metal tin and careful place into the freezer.


4. Wait two hours, remove from freezer and scrape, the now slushy mix, back into the blender.


5. Blend for another 5 minutes then pour into your plastic tub, cover and allow to freeze overnight.


6. Eat.

A few weeks ago I asked on twitter if anyone would have any old laptops or netbooks which they would like to donate to our school. I got a few very generous offers of machines which I hope to collect shortly. That said we still need more, so if you have some old tech lying around, gathering dust and bothering the wife, why not give it to us?

You're probably asking why you should give something to a school for free, school have lots of money! Not exactly, our school is a registered charity and receives no money from the government; every penny comes from fees, gifts and fund raising, so you really would be helping us out.



We're going to load up the machines with Ubuntu Netbook Remix so all pupils have a consistent and familiar platform to work on, now that we're running Ubuntu on all the school computers. We'll try and upgrade the RAM as much as possible in all the machines tom make them a little more useable and then just hand them out to Year 11 and 12 (GCSE) pupils to use in whatever way they wish. As well as the standard web and office apps, Ubuntu is packed with creative apps too and it'll be nice to see what they can produce and how they will fit a laptop into school life. Come September we hope to have all the laptops we need, it's a small school so we actually only need 10 computers to cover both year groups. There are only 23 pupils in the whole high school!

If you'd like to donate a spare laptop, just leave a comment below, the form will take your email address, but not publish it. Alternatively if you have any questions or tips on 1:1 computing I'd love to hear from you.

As we approach the end of the school year and classes are thinned out for various practices and events, I realised that I won't get much regular teaching time over the next three weeks. This morning I decided to introduce my Year 8-10 group to the work of Nicholas Felton, namely his annual reports. Although most thought he suffered from some sort of OCD, they did pick out useful and interesting facts and information about his life; how far he travels, where he eats most etc.

None of them could see where this was going.

Wowed by the beautiful info-graphics and under the threat of algebra worksheets I convinced the class that over the next two weeks we will keep track of where we go, what we eat and any social activities, at the end of which we will compile the information and create our own Feltron report. Using individual and combined data they will all get the chance to create graphs and charts, which will be put on display for the end of term Praise service.

I have the added benefit of using Foursquare to check-in as I go; the kids however will be limited to a notepad and pen, although some of the more tech savvy plan to send text messages to themselves. All the information will be put into a spreadsheet on their Google docs account, with Google maps used to calculate distance travelled. Tomorrow we'll make a Google Docs form to help enter the data and start discussing the types of charts we can create to display the information.

Although not pure maths or directly on the syllabus, this should help them develop a more real world understanding of what can be done with data and graphs as well as learn some useful IT skills along the way.

Let me know what you think, or any suggestions on other information that could be gathered or things to do with it.