Samsung Galaxy SII Review

At the beginning of 2013, I upgraded my phone to a Samsung Galaxy S2, which is a fair bit more powerful and capable than my previous Google Nexus S. From that point of view, I'm very happy with it. It's got more storage and more memory, so it can handle video without choking, where my previous phone basically drew the line at audio. The screen is a bit larger, too, which is good, and the battery usually lasts me the whole day as long as I save battery-intensive tasks (such as aforementioned video) to the end of the day.

Almost everything else is a disappointment. Samsung, of course, loaded it up with their own inadequate launcher program and their decrepit bizarro-world Samsung Apps store, plus several crapware apps that can't ever be uninstalled and are difficult to distinguish from real apps.

The hardware leaves a bit to be desired, too. The phone will frequently turn itself off for no apparent reason (eg, sitting flat on my desk can trigger it) and the mic and speaker work just barely well enough for phone calls. It can't hold onto a WiFi connection to save its life, and just the other day it ignored my selected alarm tone and volume settings, electing instead to play the default alarm tone at full volume.

In short, my Android phone is less reliable than my desktop computer was in the 90s, with less control and more broken software. And you can't take it away from me, because now I feel as if I need it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I have been informed that some of these issues are due to a Samsung software update.
PPS - And the whole review is moot anyway since the phone is outdated now.

Friday Writing Update - I've been doing it wrong again

When I stopped posting weekly flash fiction here, it was so that I would not be putting half-finished, dodgy work out in public and ruining a nascent reputation before it was formed.

I also pretty much stopped writing weekly flash fiction. I took away my deadline, and I stopped doing work. I kept editing for a second draft of my first novel, but that's not so much writing. It's writing out again some of what I wrote before, and it's not satisfying in the same way.

I don't know if there's a good solution to both of those issues at once, but I think I'd rather be writing than not, so I may have to start posting stories here again. We'll see next week.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I did, however, write those two entries for the PodCastle flash fiction contest.
PPS - And I've already started completely rewriting one of them, because it was all tell, no show.

Rethinking what apps are for

When I see a Lifehacker article about a weather-aware alarm clock app that wakes you up early if the weather is bad (and hence the traffic to work is likely to be bad) I wonder whether we really need more apps at all. After all, this is not a complex task. If [local weather] is rain, set alarm minus 20 minutes. We don't need that app, we need better ways of using apps together. We need an excellent meta-tool that lets people use their apps in new and interesting ways, no matter what those ways are.

We need to rethink what apps are and what they are for, on mobile and on the desktop.

What if all our apps were either event triggers or event responses? Instead of every app needing its own alert system (I'm looking squarely at Windows here) it could just send out an alert event and let Windows handle it? Instead of needing a smart weather alarm clock to adjust itself in case of rain, your weather alerts could be channelled into an action to modify your alarm, no special app necessary.

We need IFTTT and general compatible APIs so that events (weather, location, Wi-Fi access, time) can trigger app actions (adjust alarm, remind me about my actions, turn down my volume, download my podcasts). We do still need some apps in the form of those triggers, and we need preconfigured recipes connecting those triggers to actions, but most of the time, this "event triggers response" pattern is all we need.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - There are some apps on mobiles that do some of this.
PPS - They don't generally have access to all the other apps that could be useful to them.

Browser speed dial page comparison

Compared to how other browsers handle it, Internet Explorer is pretty bad on the "speed dial" page. Firefox shows a full-page, 3x3 grid of your most frequent visited sites, and usually including thumbnail previews. Sometimes it doubles up on sites.

Chrome has 2 rows of thumbnails, titles below each one, with favicons in their bottom left corners, which looks pretty good.

IE, on the other hand, has 2 rows of 5 tiles, all white, and only seems to manage a favicon in the top left corner some of the time, plus a weird coloured bar at the bottom which I guess represents how frequently the site is visited. If they're already arranged in order of visit frequency, why have the bar at all? The text usually seems to be URLs rather than page titles.

I only use IE for work, and it does have all my most frequently-visited work-related sites listed, but because it's only text and the titles are rarely helpful, I find it much easier to bookmark them and use the menu instead. I think Microsoft have overestimated the usability of text vs pictures. Even their own IE add-ons gallery doesn't come up with a real title, just a URL.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If I had to award a prize, it would go to Chrome.
PPS - I've just found it the most usable and consistent implementation of the feature.

Water supply

We have moved so far from communal water supply and sanitation to private infrastructure that we don't have many options when that private infrastructure breaks down. If your home plumbing breaks and you can no longer get fresh water from the tap, you can't just wander down to the local well instead. There's no backup plan. You have your own water at home or you don't have water. You have a working toilet at home or you don't go, unless you have very understanding neighbours or a nearby shopping centre. I suppose, if you have your own back yard, you could dig a pit latrine.

In times of natural disaster, this becomes a wide-scale problem, and the only way I've seen it solved is with water delivery trucks and portable toilets. So at least in that disaster time, everyone has the same problem and it's able to be handled by a mass solution. If you're the only one with a problem, though, then your solution options are very limited.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Just don't let your plumbing break down, I suppose.
PPS - If it's up to you.

Healing

"The only cure for a broken heart is time". Sounds nice, but I think it might matter what you're doing in that time. No, you can't fix it right away, and some coping strategies will be better than others, but that also means that some strategies will be worse and some will be downright bad. So when someone asks how to cure a broken heart, they really want to know what is the most effective coping strategy. You're going to feel rotten for a time - maybe a long time - but how can you make sure you're moving forward instead of staying still or going backwards?

It's probably a personal thing. What works for one person might not work for you at all, so you just need to pay attention to it. What did you do today, and how did it make you feel about your situation? If you felt worse, don't do that again. If you felt better, keep doing things like that. If you felt better for a little while, then much worse later, that's probably an addictive practice and you should run away from it as fast as you can.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Telling the difference between long-term happiness and short-term highs is tricky.
PPS - But you can learn it if you work at it.

Friday Writing Update - submission formatting

As I start looking into submitting some of my stories for publication, it strikes me that it would help authors in their submissions if there were some standard way of describing formatting requirements. Most publications have their own preferences for submissions, including fonts, spacing and such, but all are just slightly different. Rather than spending the time reading, interpreting and implementing each subtle difference for every submission, it would help a lot to have one basic format (say, MarkDown) that can be compiled into any publisher's preferred format as specified in a particular style sheet.

However, this might just be the programmer in me, wanting to reduce effort, recycle input and encode processes. Also, I believe this is the rabbit hole down which Knuth disappeared when he invented the TeX formatting tool and language.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Or a similar one, anyway.
PPS - I don't want to get lost or sidetracked on this.

Threat prevention

When someone says that the intelligence community really dropped the ball by not recognising the threat of this or that person in advance, ask them which threat is currently being ignored. The question is not whether some other "preventable" horror will befall us, but when and who will do it. Chances are there's someone out there right now who is giving off "all the telltale signs", but with the mountain of data to sift and any number of crazies who will never do anything dangerous, picking that needle out of the haystack is not easy.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And reacting to every one of them is out of the question.
PPS - Nobody has that kind of time, money or energy.

Google Glass

I'm kind of fascinated by the Google Glass project. I wanted a wearable computer a long time ago, back when that would have meant a backpack, an industrial headset and learning to use a one-handed "chording" keyboard. Now it means a pair of glasses you talk to.

I would love to have one, because I think it would be more convenient for me, especially when looking up facts online or watching and listening to podcasts on the train, or navigating. I have a feeling it would revolutionise the way I interact with my phone.

The one place I feel it would go backwards, however, is in sharing what I find with others. Right now, if I find something interesting on my phone, I can turn it around to show to someone else. With Glass, I would either have to look them up and send it to their phone or their Glass somehow, or I'd have to take it off my head and let them look through it. It does come up now and then, so I'd be interested to see what day-to-day usage turns that into.

Also, if we are all forever running around with cameras strapped to our faces, will that change how we feel about privacy? Will there be places like that where it becomes socially unacceptable to wear them, like change rooms, restrooms, government buildings? With the awkward shape, how will you put them away to show that you're not recording everything someone is doing or saying?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - All questions that may be answered sooner rather than later.
PPS - We've developed an unspoken mobile phone etiquette already.

Servant's passages

If I built a mansion, I would want it to be full of servant's passages, for two reasons. It would give them the ability to appear and disappear from rooms without the need to pass through other areas, and it would also give them their own space, the shadow house, where only the servants go. It would be tricky to design such a place without appearing to have done so, but I would like to try.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Anyone want to give me the money to try?
PPS - Maybe I should just try it in The Sims.

Compatibility for progress

Technology working together is what enables big leaps and bounds, but that requires compatibility, which is hard. It also requires sensors or triggers and actions that can be programmed in some way. We can have some form of glue-ware in between all our systems, like IFTTT, as long as they expose the right programming interfaces, or we can depend on each device or app to interact directly with others.

Also, however, if you don't provide a way for users and developers to extract and work with your data, someone is probably going to do it for you, only a little bit worse and without your permission. You can either provide those features your users want, or you can let someone else do so. What you can't do is be deliberately incompatible in a way that nobody can work around, ever.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - People want compatibility enough to break in and steal it.
PPS - It's much easier all around if they don't have to.

USB and backwards compatibility

I suspect that USB 3.0 is likely to be the last iteration of that brilliant standard. There just doesn't seem to be any way to cram more bandwidth into the cables and sockets while maintaining backwards compatibility, and even version 3.0 was a bit of a stretch. We may still get USB 4.0, but it will probably have to break the backwards compatibility of the standard. Whenever that happens, whether it's version 4.0 or later, it should be given a different name to avoid confusion.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It will feel like a sad, strange day when USB is obsolete.
PPS - It's going to happen, though. Someday.

Videotaping plutonium on Back to the Future

I had a thought while watching Back to the Future the other day. We see Marty with an 80s-era video camera filming Doc Brown inserting plutonium into the time machine's reactor. Both he and the Doc are wearing radiation suits, but the camera is not shielded. So here's my question: would the radiation from the plutonium have any effect on the magnetic recording heads in the camera? Judging by the thin suits Doc and Marty are wearing, I'd say it's likely the camera's case would be protection enough, but I'm not sure. If those suits are not accurate for the amount of plutonium being handled, then it might have an effect, right?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Obviously I can't test this myself.
PPS - I also can't find whether anyone else has tested it.

Windows 8 is for touch screens

I think my first piece of advice about Windows 8 to everyone would be this: if you're going to buy a Windows 8 machine, get a touch screen. Microsoft has really bet the farm on touch screens this time, and without that mode of interaction, you'll be frustrated or, at best, missing out. The mouse and keyboard might still be necessary for ordinary desktop mode, but when the Start menu thinks all computers are tablets, you'd better get on board.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I've had trouble deciding how to replace my netbook when it dies.
PPS - It's not an issue yet, but if it were, I might pick a Microsoft Surface RT.

File sync should be an operating system feature

Every program should not need its own internet-enabled sync feature. It should be provided via the operating system. And even having said that, the OS should not be the only possible provider of file and data sync services. It should be something you can do with any third-party service if you want.

In my system tray at the moment, there are six different apps whose job it is to sync some data or files from one place to another. Do we really need so many different apps to accomplish pretty much the same goals?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - At the new office, some of them don't work.
PPS - So I guess you could make the case for redundancy.

R.I.P.D.

Is R.I.P.D. a kind of extreme Ghostbusters reboot? It's almost the same premise, except instead of being a small group of underdogs trying to catch ghosts in the open, it's a massive supernatural organisation catching ghosts in secret. So, a bit, maybe, I guess? When I see it, I'll let you know, if I remember.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I also see shades of "Dead Like Me".
PPS - Which, in turn, was a loose adaptation of Piers Anthony's "On A Pale Horse".

Friday Writing Update - Confidence

I've been putting (almost) all my writing time lately into entries for the PodCastle flash fiction contest. This week I submitted my first entry of two (allowed and intended) and as soon as I hit "send" on that email, I lost confidence in the work. The twist is at the beginning, then it's awkward, awkward, bland and ends with stupid. I don't like it any more, but I suspect that's just ordinary lack of confidence as a writer in general. People have liked my work in these contests before, though not enough to win, so objectively I know the chances are that it will be well-received when it goes up for voting.

Still, there's that little voice in my head that says "This time, you've blown it. They liked everything else, but this? This one is rubbish." It will continue to undermine my confidence until proven otherwise, then it will go sulk in the corner until it gets another chance.

The important point is that, despite that self-doubt voice, I have written and submitted a story for judging by a small group of strangers. However well it goes, I've at least done that.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Oh, and I have the other one on the way.
PPS - Assuming I can compress it down another 150 words.

Loosening up

One of my personal growth goals is to loosen the hell up already. Everything in my brain is a Big Deal and SERIUS BIZNESS, and I really don't like making even little mistakes.

So that's step 1. I admit I have a problem. As for the rest of the process, I'm a bit stumped. How exactly does one go about lightening up and not taking everything so seriously? If I knew that, I'd be on my way already.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Really, I'm open to suggestions here.
PPS - Suggestions and cake. Always open to cake.

PowerPoint differences

You know, despite being a standard file format, PowerPoint presentations are surprisingly incompatible across different computers, even when those computers are running the same version of Office. I get that it's difficult to create a file format that can be reliably reproduced on any screen resolution, with any file system arrangement and with any level of computer power, but it still surprises me that the same PowerPoint file, on two very similar computers, will work just fine on one and struggle on the other. Judging by how many versions of Office Microsoft has gone through without getting it right, this must be a crazy-difficult problem.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Though I haven't done much testing with Office 2013.
PPS - Maybe it's gotten a bit better.

Three Thousand And Three!

Somehow I missed my 3000th post here, letting it slip by without a mention, so I'm marking this one, my 3003rd blog post! Is that too many? Not enough? How should I know? I just work here. It's been over nine years writing here, and I'm still going strong. I haven't run out of things to say yet, obviously, though sometimes I feel like I'm repeating myself.

Anyway, here's a quick thought about laziness and technology.

Any technology that makes it easier to be lazier will be misused, no matter its original intention. If we develop an "exercise pill" that gives you the same benefits as 30 minutes of vigorous exercise in order to maintain the health of people who can't do so, that exact same drug would be used by far more able-bodied people instead of going to the gym. It would be taken with dinner by sedentary loners, popped to maintain health during long study binges by students, laced into fast food and junk food to counter the effects of the fat and sugar, even ground up into baby food for fretful parents who think their kids should be crawling or walking by now. It's not just going to stay confined to astronauts, the elderly, the immobile and the unwell.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I heard about such a pill "in development" on some current affairs show.
PPS - At which point I thought "yeah, right", and thousands of people immediately stepped off their treadmills.