Saving your iPad's home button with Multitasking gestures

Today, I attended an iPad training day run by Joe Moretti, which focused on using iPads in education. We explored a bunch of interesting and useful Apps, which I am sure will be the subject of few future posts. One useful thing I learnt, however, was just about the iPad itself.

I often have multiple apps open at once and copy/paste stuff between them or otherwise want to switch from one to another at reasonable frequency. Most people know that you can use double-press the Home button to reveal a bar of recently-used apps that you can swipe through. What you may not know (and I didn’t) is that you can use a single four-finger gesture to reveal this, saving time as well as wear and tear on your Home button. Likewise, a single gesture will return to the Home screen. You can even switch apps directly and bypass the Home screen or multitasking bar altogether. The gestures are in the iPad user guide:

You can use multitasking gestures on iPad to return to the Home screen, reveal the multitasking bar, or switch to another app.

Return to the Home screen: Pinch four or five fingers together.

Reveal the multitasking bar: Swipe up with four or five fingers.

Switch apps: Swipe left or right with four or five fingers.

Turn multitasking gestures on or off: Go to Settings > General > Multitasking Gestures.

It makes me wonder what other useful gems I have missed!

Help the Tigers with Whiskas and WWF

Shockingly, there are about 10,000 tigers being kept as pets worldwide, which is more than three times as many as there are in the wild. Some sub-species are already extinct in the wild. To help, Whiskas has teamed up with WWF with their “Catservation” project. If you are a cat owner, you can upload a moggy mugshot and Whiskas will donate a £1 to tiger conservation. Pick a territory and your cat will contribute to a tiger mosaic in the shape of that country.

Below the picture, you get some tiger facts for the area:

Although it’s possible to add a cat on the mobile site, the desktop version has the added bonus of being able to choose the square, which makes subsequently relocating your kittie much easier.

Warning: you will be asked to leave a message, “My cat is a catservationist because…” - I wasn’t prepared for this, hence the rather lame message above. Some of the others are better!

Visiting the Liberty Bell

I didn't get round to visiting the Liberty Bell during my time in Philadelphia. I did, however, see the Lego version in the airport, which surely counts for something.

Wagamama for breakfast!

I know it’s a but cliché to take photos of your food and blog about them but sometimes you just feel compelled to - and this is one of those times! I did not realise that Wagamama did breakfast until I was passing through Heathrow Terminal 5 this morning, looking for some sustinence. It turns out that not only do they do breakfast but they do a wide range of interesting and tasty dishes.

I had the okonomiyaki:

a japanese-style egg pancake filled with bacon, chicken, prawns, shitake mushrooms, red cabbage and leek, served with aonori, katsuobushi, spring onions, wasabi mayonnaise and okonomiyaki sauce.

It was amazing - as pretty as it was delicious!

Next time we're considering brunch in Southampton, I'm going to hope that Wagamama is serving its breakfast menu!

Senseful Solutions: iPhone Email Image Sizes

I often set up draft posts by emailing pictures to my blog to add text etc. later. If, like me, you sometimes email multiple images from an iOS device and wonder what happens to the resolution if you resize it to Small/Medium/Large. Happily, a post at Senseful Solutions on iPhone Email Image Sizes has the answers, some of which are summarised below:

Size	Picture (JPG)	Screenshot (PNG)
Small	320 x 239	213 x 320
Medium	640 x 478	426 x 640
Large	1296 x 968
Actual	2592 x 1936	640 x 960

iPad screenshots are 768 x 1024 PNG files.

Hugh's pasta with new potatoes, green beans and pesto - a one pot classic!

We’re fans of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Veg Every Day cookbook in our house and yesterday saw another fine discovery from within its hallowed pages. If you are after something quick, easy and delicious, look no further than Hugh’s “Pasta with new potatoes, green beans and pesto”.

As the name suggests, the main ingredients are new potatoes (about 75g per person), pasta (about 75g per person), green beans (about 50g per person) and pesto. He has instructions to make your own pesto but we just used Sacla and it was delicious enough. The final ingredients are a handful of green olives, a good grating of parmesan and a healthy dose of black pepper.

One of the best things about this recipe for me is that it is all cooked in one pot and can be prepped at a leisurely pace as you go. Simply set a large pan of salted water boiling and chop the spuds while you wait into “thin chip” sized pieces. Bung in to boil with the pasta (10-12mins) and chuck in the green beans about 4 minutes from the end after trimming and halving them. Drain, allow the steam to evaporate for a couple of minutes and then mix in the pesto and season with black pepper to taste.

To finish off, roughly chop the green olives and sprinkle on top, followed by some parmesan. Delicious! (And only one pot to clean!)

Science blogging is hard!

My last post was number 400, which has caused me have a reflective moment about my blogging. (And the 87 drafts in various states of incompleteness!) One of my New Year’s aspirations was to blog more original science papers. Half a year on, I’ve not really done that well, to be honest. (Nor on my other aspirations, to be honest: Mystic Mog and the Exploding Tortoise has been on hold since Jaunary!)

Part of the reason is the impending move to Australia and all the organisation and house-selling that goes with it. A bigger part of the reason, though, is that (for me, at least) science blogging is hard! I have a lot of respect for those who can do it well, like Jacquelyn Gill and her ecology & climate change blog, The Contemplative Mammoth. (Her most recent post, The many scales of climate change, part 1: Tectonic timescales is well worth a read and I am looking forward to the parts to come.)

I consider science communication to be an important part of my job and I really want to get better at it. Happily, it is not too late. We are about half-way through 2013 and so there are 25(ish) weeks left. The only way to improve is to practice and rather than risk upsetting anyone by getting their science wrong, I have therefore decided to aim to blog one of my own papers each week to see how that goes. It may not happen but by making a public declaration of sorts, I am hoping I will get the extra motivation boost needed to make it happen. (Embracing Markdown should help too!)