Category Archives: Society

Gadgets, Society, Tech, Work

Adventures With a Chinese Android

It all started eighteen months ago…

Cheap, small, curvaceous but not as slender as more expensive models my droid arrived late and wasn’t quite what I’d ordered…

Chinese Android

Chinese Android (image credit: Andy Vickers)

The picture showed a proper USB port, this didn’t have one but never mind.

I’d been contemplating a tablet computer for a while but wasn’t sure I’d get much use from one so I didn’t want to splash out on a Samsung or Asus I might regret getting.  I could see the advantage of a handheld, touchscreen computer for web browsing, picture and video viewing, quick email or Facebook viewing and so on especially since Apple and Google had managed to make operating systems that suited the way people would use them, i.e. with fingers, and because unlike previous tablets they ran smartphone software not desktop software they could be smaller and lighter.

My MID Epad looked like a shrunken iPad and even came in a very nice, Apple-esque box with a magnetic closure and it was packed with technology that iPad owners would snigger at; old-fashioned resistive touchscreen, an old processor, little memory, low-res screen, plastic back – PLASTIC!  Short battery life.  Not being a perfectionist and being careful financially with such experiments I accepted that what I had wasn’t cutting edge, so far from cutting edge in fact that you could butter bread with it.  Anyway, it was quick enough to play videos, the screen responded well enough to flick through ebooks.  I could even play Angry Birds.

The first problem was that these tablets come with Android but are not approved by Google so can’t access many of the apps in the Play Store, the default Google apps such as the contacts app won’t synchronise properly and often you don’t get updates.  For some these are not problems, if all you want is to browse and get email and read ebooks.  Gizmodo UK recently proclaimed that chinese tablets were all “crappy” and that Google was having to keep Android open to support this flow of effluent but it depends on how you define crappy, what you find acceptable and whether you’re looking at your £65 tablet from the point of view of a well paid tech journalist, someone who just wants to look at the odd web page or a blogger on the minimum wage.

It niggled me admittedly but again I lived with it and was able to get round the issues in a way that isn’t possible with out of the box Apple devices – I put apps on manually, sideloaded them, having downloaded them from app sites.  Most were old versions and again they wouldn’t get updates.  Playing videos from the computer required some research on how to make the software access a shared network drive, though as usual the net provided excellent step-by-step guides, though if anyone mentions the word Samba near me I may cry.  Ok, so it didn’t “just work” as certain fruity products are supposed to do but as a bit of a geek it was interesting.  The hair I pulled out has grown back.

It was a challenging device all in all – it had to be charged after a couple of hours use so I had to make an adaptor lead so I didn’t have to sit two feet away from where the power supply plugged in and so I could have a right-angle plug into the device.  Sometimes the internet browsing was painfully slow.  I loved reading books on it, even using it in a tent in the middle of the Lake District until the battery died again, though using it outside in sunlight was out of the question – one-nil to Kindle and paper.  Being non-approved some of the apps I wanted I just couldn’t have, and the dream of sharing data across computer, phone and tablet would have to wait a while.

The more I used it though the more I saw that the arguments of those people on gadget blogs who complained that tablets were too simplistic, that you “can’t code on them”, and so on were wrong.  The tablet is the perfect consumption device, I can lounge on the sofa and read the news, read a book, browse a website, check mail, listen to music or watch video streamed from my computer, I even have apps filled with tasty recipes which I haven’t yet got round to cooking.  I can share things I’m interested in there and then, add to my read it later.

Now, of course, this is well known and Kindle Fires, Nexus 7s and iPad Minis have been this years big Christmas gift – my mum got a Kindle Fire for her birthday last week because it was the perfect computer for her; so simple to use, just point and tap to read, browse the net or get more books or games.  I now have an Sony Xperia Android smartphone and a Nexus 7 tablet myself, both have newer versions of the software, I can listen to music via bluetooth from either and do even more than with my Chinese Droid, my emails, contacts, to do lists, notebooks, reading lists and bookmarks are automatically synced and available wherever I want them, all from small, thin light devices.

I remember seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Trek and similar, seeing those little pads of information and thinking how great it would be to have all that in your hand.  And it is.  Amazing.

Standard
Society, Tech

Tweeting 999 – No Laughing Matter

Texting on a qwerty keypad phone

Texting on a qwerty keypad phone (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Recently in both the USA and UK emergency services have announced plans to allow people to inform them of an emergency via other modern communication methods like texting, Facebook and Twitter.

Cue howls of laughter and derision from writers about how it’s typical of our lazy society that people can’t be bothered to look up from their phones for thirty seconds to phone 999 or 911.  For once I partly disagree.

Normally I too would think it’s another example of people’s disconnection from others, that they wouldn’t want to actually speak to someone, they’d be happier texting etc.  And for some that may be true.  It could also be open to abuse by those who already troll the existing services using fake accounts, names and addresses.

But consider someone who can’t use a voice service – someone in peril and hiding; someone unable to speak or hear whose only form of communication at that moment is a mobile or a computer; someone who has no phone available but does have, for example, a 3G tablet; even someone who for perhaps psychological reasons can’t talk to someone on the phone.  Any communication would be better than none.

The emergency services have said that this is an attempt to enable communication with them through modern technology – this forward thinking should be admired not laughed at.  Or maybe we should abandon the new-fangled phone too and go back to bells and whistles.

Standard
Found, Funny, Society

Tinsel and Biscuits

English: tinsel

English: tinsel (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With a couple of days before the big day I bring you some advice from Book View Cafe on being careful this Christmas.

The list of past holiday season injuries is staggering (as are many of the people involved it seems) and includes injuries from plastic parts of toys on the floor; Christmas pudding lighting – more than just singed eyebrows; eating inedible decorations and trying on new sweaters while smoking, another good reason to quit.

For good measure they also outline the injuries caused by the humble (sneaky) biscuit (or cookie) which includes the man who got stuck in wet concrete trying to save a lost biscuit and the many scolded while attempting the tricky art of dunking.

Have a Happy Christmas and be careful out there.

Standard
Meta, Society, Uncategorized

It’s The End of The World As We Know It…

Sandwich Filler of The Apocalypse

Sandwich Filler of The Apocalypse (C)2012 Andy Vickers

That will be the most played song on any radio station today, how long Michael Stipe and Co have to spend the royalties is up for conjecture.  I do feel fine, by the way.  I am however currently sheltering under my desk and posting this just as the new day, the 21st of December 2012 begins over the international date line, if the predictions are true then it may be too late to worry about your to-do lists.

Here in England it’s Thursday the 20th at lunchtime, and I am eating the sandwich filler shown above which as can clearly be seen needs to be eaten before the end of the 21st.  (I actually tried to find a product with a best before date of the 21st December but failed, by one day.  N.B. if the world does end, I assume no responsibility.)

Fortean Times has been running a regular column throughout the last year to record the wide range of theories about just what is supposed to be happening on the other side of the world at the moment.  As the day has approached some of the doomsayers have changed their opinions, under a barrage of arguments along the lines of “and how, exactly, is the world to be destroyed” or perhaps a fear of total destruction to the view that it will be a “spiritual end of the world” which will lead us to be a more enlightened world filled with peace and harmony come tomorrow morning.  I suspect, and I know this is controversial, that after the 21st guns will fall silent, enemies will look at each other across borders…  and then all will continue as before.

I should have, perhaps started this earlier but it might have been a bit long then.  Some highlights of the last year’s theories (culled from Fortean Times’ 2012 Watch) include:  William Roache from Coronation Street believes that the world will move into a “higher vibration” and many of the Earth’s inhabitants will discover the energy and love in the universe and that they are spiritual beings, Daniel Srsa agrees though believes that the cataclysmic end for us all will in fact cleanse the Earth of all the negative karma we’ve built up. Barbara Hand Clow, an Astrologer, firmly believes that only those who embrace the “Nine Realms of Consciousness of the Pleiadians” will be saved for they will be in “ecstatic communion with nature and the creator” – she has courses to help you to embrace.  The Pleiadians say that “harmonic biology” from Earth will be spread across the galaxy on 21st December.

Nancy Leider claims that Planet X or Nibiru which has been orbiting opposite the Earth for many years will approach soon and will cause Earth’s poles to flip – she received this information from the Zeta Reticulans, the idea of a pole reversal is also shared by Patrick Geryl who foresees this leading to “pure, unimaginable horror…  terrible hunger, cold and pain.”  All our electronics will be fried, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes will destroy all buildings, transport systems and books.  As Peter Brookesmith says in his FT article, Geryl’s version of the apocalypse is one of many new New Age visions of a future less based around peace and love but more scorched earth and burned sinners.

Of course we had the 2012 Olympics which it was predicted would be interrupted by a UFO and was interrupted, by an airship.  However there are still those who believe that the games were riddled with “Zionist conspiracy” symbols not least the logo itself which could be rearranged to spell ZION.  Must be true then.  David Icke still believes that our world leaders are reptilian aliens so hasn’t had much to say to date.

Most of the ideas are pretty much the same as these – a natural event will destroy the world literally or a consciousness shift will destroy the world we know figuratively.  Of course there have been many, many books, courses and DVDs sold either explaining the coming apocalypse or offering advice on how to survive it.

Meanwhile NASA have had to repeat messages that the world isn’t going to end, even resorting to a video explaining why the world didn’t end which they’ve released ten days early.    In Russia there has been panic over the coming end of days.  Microsoft have noticed many signs of the apocalypse on the internet including a lack of food photos on instragram and Internet Explorer 10 being good.  Finally the peaceful French village of Bugarach has been beseiged by hordes of people who believe that the mountain on which it sits houses a “UFO Garage” and tomorrow this will open up and carry all those present away to salvation – shades of Close Encounters of the Third Kind?  The film was, it is said, inspired by a visit to the village by Steven Spielberg.  Once a magnet for walkers and climbers now the tranquility of the Pic de Bugarach is punctuated by esoteric visitors chanting and leaving statues and artifacts on the rocks.  Locals do feel there is something special about the mountain, a kind of feeling about it but not that it’s an alien hideout.  As is often the case a number of “gurus” have moved to the area and charge up to 800 euros for a course to help you commune with the mountain, it’s energy and its aliens.  Understandably the mayor has now closed off access to the mountain altogether and locals have pleaded with visitors not to come on the 21st.

As for me, I’ll just wish my mum a happy birthday for Saturday while I’m here, just in case but I don’t think anything will happen.  Having said that though with how our world is at the moment perhaps we will start to see a change in attitudes away from greed and violence but often such changes happen in cycles anyway and as this article on I09 tells us we could bring about our own destruction.  If I’m wrong then feel free to say “ha ha, I was ri…”

[Fortean Times – see issue 285 for their 2012 Special and from 286 onwards for monthly updates, unless, well, you know.]

Standard
Psychology, Society, Tech

Let’s Talk About Stats, Baby

The Runner.

The Runner. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Some people are willingly having their lives tallied and quantified via their mobiles.  The stats are everywhere, how many Facebook friends have you got?  How many Twitter followers, how many likes on that post, how many retweets?  Fitness trackers like Endomondo, Nike+ and Strava let you post your times for the walk to work or that bike ride and compete with your friends, the site Fitocracy even lets you directly battle against others for who gets fittest first by completing challenges against each other.  Where have you checked in on Foursquare?  When and where you have you used a condom? (the latter could be open to exaggeration).

Almost every part of your life can be tracked, logged, rated and compared with friends and strangers, your whole life becoming a competition without a prize other than feeling that you’ve achieved more than someone else, the bragging rights rather than the rewards of the enjoyment of the exercise, the outdoors or just feeling better in yourself (exercise has been shown many times to improve peoples’ mood).  On the other hand studies have shown that such competitive apps can also encourage people to exercise, and of course it can be useful to keep track of your fitness.

The other side of the coin are the stats that tell you whether you’re reaching people with what you want to say.

Once you start blogging, or sharing your pictures on Flickr or videos on YouTube something strange often happens.  You start out thinking “I’m not bothered if nobody reads it, well, I’m happy if just one person sees it.”  Soon though you see the stats page and out of curiosity you look at it.  The first time you see a blip on the line your heart jumps a little as the thought that you’ve made a connection with someone, then comes the wonder of the fact that the person who looked at what you’d posted isn’t your mum or dad, your friend down the road or anyone else on Facebook but someone on the other side of the world.

Then there’s the first “Like” or first follower which gives you the knowledge that you’re doing something right.  You naturally value what you’ve created but now someone else does too.  Once you have followers you start to feel the need to give them something in return, to create something they’ll appreciate.  You could experience the rollercoaster of emotions; maybe anxiety that you haven’t posted in a while, doubts about what you’ve created when you don’t get any views but then your next post receives a flurry of likes and comments and that warm feeling of contributing to the world in your own way returns.

There’s no escaping the stats, they’re everywhere.

Standard
Meta, Psychology, Society, Work

The Silly Season

English: Christmas Dinner for the sheep at Edd...

English: Christmas Dinner for the sheep at Edderston, Peebles, near to Kings Muir, Scottish Borders, Great Britain. I wasn’t here early enough to see if the farmer was wearing a Santa outfit on his tractor. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ll be honest, I dread this time of year.  Before you go all Bah, Humbug on me I don’t mean Christmas – I enjoy the week off, the Christmas dinner, presents, twinkly lights etc – I mean the two weeks before it.

The number one topic of conversation amongst my trade customers at the moment is the phrase we all hear “but I’ve got to have it before Christmas, I have people coming round, IT’S IMPORTANT.”  You’ve just told them that it’s not physically possible to produce the glass tabletop, the bespoke timber windows, the wardrobe for their spare room, the new dining suite in the four days left before closing for the festivities.  You’ve just ruined their lives.

Or so you’d believe from the wailing and gnashing of teeth some of us get.  Each and every one believes they’re the only customer you have, that they’re more important.  “Look, you say it takes five working days to get it from the supplier”,  they reply “can’t you, have a word with someone?”  You want to lean in and whisper, “who, Santa?”  But you can’t, you just say sorry, it’s just not possible.  And they slink away to ask someone else.

And for some reason everyone decides they need this stuff a week before Christmas, when they get the lightbulb over the head, as they start planning where to put Auntie Marge when she stays.  Instead of a steady flow of orders we all get hit with a deluge, some we can meet, some we can’t.

Our trade customers are split between builders and furniture makers and it’s the latter who have to contend with their own trade customers who have promised their own customers that they could get it for Christmas, they’ve said yes to the “can’t you have a word with someone?”  And not wanting to let anyone down we all end up trying to get it done if we can.

So my pre-Christmas message is this, if you’re buying something that might have to be specially made either order it earlier, like you would with the Turkey, or just put it off till next year.  Sometime around August will be fine and don’t worry about remembering, the supermarkets will remind you that Christmas is coming.

Standard
Business, Random, Society, Transport, Uncategorized

Parcel Farce

PACKAGES

PACKAGES (Photo credit: marc falardeau)

This week has been one of problems with parcels.  Firstly a delivery driver who couldn’t grasp why I was asking how big and what type of parcel he was delivering – he hadn’t brought it into the building – and after asking what company we were every time I said, “yes, that’s us, what type of delivery is it?”  he said it was a sheet of plastic so I sent him to the back door of the factory where sheet plastic goes.  It turned out to be a small package that he could have carried in the front door in the first place.

Then I get home on Tuesday and find a parcel outside my front door (but inside the enclosed hallway, not in public view).  Trouble was there should have been two.  Worse still when I checked on Amazon both parcels were shown as being delivered at exactly the same time.  I have no way of proving that they weren’t both there at some point before I got home.  Thankfully the parcel I did get contained the Christmas presents I’d ordered for family.

I contacted the carrier by email, they mailed back saying they’d investigate at the depot.  Today (Saturday) I received the missing parcel through the letterbox where it could have been put on Monday when they’d first tried to deliver it.  Lucky I didn’t need it in a hurry.

Standard
Health, Psychology, Society

57 Channels and Nothing On

WATCH TV

WATCH TV (Photo credit: Martin Ritter)

Today’s talk is about 21st century distraction, and repeats on tv – two for the price of one.  Ok, settle down, stop checking your notifications.  Oh, for goodness sake.  Thank you, now…

Ooh, an email…

It’s too easy today, you get home, put on some food, put on the tv for some background noise while you eat and bang, before you know it you’re laid on the sofa watching a repeat of Top Gear, Man vs Food, Mock The Week, Letterman (your country/mileage may vary).  You start to feel a bit tired because of the meal you’ve eaten and think I don’t have time to do what I’d intended to do.  The thing is though that when the UK first got digital terrestrial tv it seemed to offer so much, so many new channels, so much choice for everyone.  What we’ve got is occasional new content but mostly repeats and we watch them anyway.  How right Bruce was.

I don’t read or listen to music as much as I used to and for me the reason is that with only five channels there were large chunks of time when there was nothing remotely interesting to me on, so I had to go and find something else to do.  Now there’s always something I can watch even if it’s a repeat, and that’s the lazy, easy option.  Often the tired feeling vanishes when I start something more interesting.

But it doesn’t end with dragging yourself away from Mountain Pies and Aston Martins, I sit down here to write a post and there’s other enticing options – my mouse drifts towards Hot UK Deals, the National Lottery, shopping sites, other blogs, for you it may be Twitter or Facebook, iPlayer or YouTube, comics or news sites.

So think “am I really tired or is it boredom, how much more satisfied will I feel if I get on with a bit of that project, how will I feel if I just sit here for the next three hours?”  Sometimes the answer will be “I’ll feel fine with that, thankyou for asking” in which case grab a cuppa and stay put, else just get up and do something, you’ll feel better for it.

Standard
Society, Uncategorized

Celebrity Culture Crosses The Line, Again

One phone call from 2Day FM in Australia to the hospital where the Duchess of Cambridge was being treated for acute morning sickness that shouldn’t have happened is now worldwide news for the wrong reason.  The DJs impersonated the Queen and Prince of Wales and were put through to the Duchess’ nurse who revealed medical details.  The call was recorded and authorised for broadcast by the station management.

Soon there were two professional, caring nurses humiliated, no doubt also fearful of disciplinary action, one takes her own life, lives are left devastated and a shadow is thrown over what should be a time of anticipation and joy for the royal couple.  For what?  The radio station involved can say “it was just a prank” all they like but it wasn’t, a prank would be ringing a random hospital pretending to be the Queen, this was simply an attempt to pry into a private life, to satisfy the need to know every last detail of famous people’s’ existence, to feed the obsession, to get listeners, ad revenue, notoriety.

Some have defended the DJs saying they couldn’t have foreseen the outcome, but surely they could have foreseen that at least someone could have lost their job.  Maybe it’s another case of how people are becoming increasingly disconnected from the feelings of others but in the end the result was a tragedy.

[BBC News]

Standard
Business, Society, Tech

The Internet Isn’t Free (of Charge)

Credit Card

Credit Card (Photo credit: 401(K) 2012)

We take it for granted today, we sit down, fire up a browser on our computer, tablet or phone, load up our favourite news site, tech blog, webcomic or whatever and for most of these we don’t have to have ever entered any credit card details – unlike buying a magazine or newspaper.

And then many people complain about adverts and install ad blockers without considering one important thing; without the ads the website wouldn’t be there, or you’d have to pay for it yourself.  The other problem with this expectation of no-cost browsing is that sites like Wikipedia which don’t have ads still have to pay for servers, offices and the staff who look after the site despite having an army of volunteers but don’t receive enough donations to keep going.

This blog is provided ostensibly free of charge via WordPress but has adverts (visible to non WordPress.com users) which I have never seen myself but have been reliably informed are there, I couldn’t justify paying for the ad-free version at the moment.  I personally only block adverts on other sites I visit that cause problems with my browser as I appreciate that ads are a necessary part of our free and open internet, just as regular users of donation-based sites aught to donate.

Someone once said there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and for the moment this one’s no exception.

[How Much Would You Pay For a Wikipedia Subscription]

Standard