https://kotaku.com/report-burglar-stole-40-000-worth-of-games-accessori-1838890402
Sometimes the response to a headline is both ROFL and WTF.
Year: 2019
Sad truths: when things needed on your shopping list are both on sale and have a coupon, very happy feelings should follow.
This is what happens when you cross a tablet with a 1980s phone
https://www.techradar.com/news/this-is-what-happens-when-you-cross-a-tablet-with-a-1980s-phone
Kinda instantly snickered slash rolled on floor cackling as I saw this. Apparently, being a real product it sounds like the only thing missing is the ability to plug it into a phone jack.
Amazon updates Fire HD 10 tablet with USB Type-C and Android Pie
https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/10/07/amazon-updates-fire-hd-10-tablet-with-usb-type-c-and-android-pie/
When even the cheap option goes to USB-C, I kinda feel less sad about how much MicroUSB-B has died out in my home. Pretty much I keep one on my charger for powering my Bluetooth speaker, and still need such cables for my Xbox controller and one of my Bluetooth keyboards. But pretty much everything around here is built around USB-C, or requires something other than USB for its supply of go go juice.
iPadOS review: 50 percent more computer
Little surprised to see the top note about bugginess, which has been something more experienced than heard about from things I see or read on the Internet.
It does amuse me though that this article’s leading beef is the lack of multi user support. Which I think is only half valuable.
On our side of the coin, or at least mine: it is a Personal Computer world. A large part of the success of the microcomputer owes to beefing so cheap that we can all have our own instead of time sharing a larger system with our peers. In fact, PCs were really damned slow to become multiuser if you ran something closer to DOS/Windows than Xenix/SCO. But hey, even dumb ass Windows people had to get with that program by the 2000s 😜.
For me, my iPad is probably far more personal than my desktop. Much as your desktop is probably more personal than a corporate main frame. It’s just that like laptops, most tablets aren’t cheap enough to use as a frisbee.
Where multiple users really make sense to me on tablets, are the case where you may have a communal tablet on a counter or table somewhere. In which case, I’m sure Apple would rather you buy two iPads for more than one iPad Air, or better yet just buy a new higher end model and repurpose your old model 😄.
For business and class room use, I think you can make the case for multiuser support far more seriously than with tablets in people’s homes. Where it may be more important that a device remain on the premises and within a certain area of operation. Not sure about commercial uses but to my understanding Apple already has some kind of multiuser stuff if you’re using a school provided iPad.
Think I may have finally found how Apple Notes could fit into my world.
My notes typically take two forms: Evernote and Nebo.
Pretty much if it’s important it will be in my Evernote, behind 2FA and such. While it doesn’t take as free form a view as OneNote or Apple Notes, so much as a Word processor like one, I have found that Evernote makes a great backbone for collection and organizing notes regardless of source. It’s also pretty affordable in terms of large, long term storage compared to a cloud drive full of regular files.
One of the sore spots however is the handwriting support. The magic for that is better suited to bar coaster length diagrams and the occasional sketch than being a notebook. Plus unlike Android there of a tendency to erase the drawing area content when multitasking between Evernote and other iOS apps.
If it’s something that I want to do by handwriting , I’ll usually use Nebo, which lets me readily convert handwritten text to typed text, as well as sharing individual pages. So great at collecting random shit for thinking or having a document with fairly simple structure (headings, lists, images, etc). But you probably won’t want to write a novel or thesis in Nebo.
Apple Notes offers a kind of nice canvas approach, much like OneNote but without being forced to store the data in cloud drives. Is able to store notes on my iPad, much like Nebo; where the cloud sync is purely optional. The difference is Apple Notes lends itself to generating a PDF for printing or clipping to Evernote, for when handwriting or highly free form is the desired format. So in cases where I want to preserve rather than convert, I think it’ll work.
Where with Nebo, unless it’s pretty fancy: you may as well export to text, or be generating a PDF of a diagram. Stuff like the HTML and Word export is more useful for work stuff than home stuff, and Evernote collects all eventually.
Thinking about reusing some of the containers from storage, I did a search for how long stuff takes to decompose, because I’m pretty sure the plastic containers we bought when I was like 5 will outlive me by multiple generations. Plastic like that does pretty much last forever, and will probably be found in the rubble of some post apocalyptic event.
Strangely, the note that styrofoam doesn’t biodegrade, just makes me remember stories I’ve heard over the years from people’s childhoods, which I’ll just describe as why you shouldn’t try to make Greek Fire at home….lololol
What’s wrong with me versus what’s wrong with me
What’s wrong with me versus what’s wrong with me:
It’s not moving my grandmother’s commercial sewing machine and squeezing it into a tiny storage room on my patio that bothers me. Fair enough if that shouldn’t be stored on my patio.
It’s finding a garbage bag full of Disney VHS tapes, that the machine kept snagging on, that really bothers me. Because why the fuck do I still have that!?
Between my mother’s passing and the last time I moved, things were pretty much sorted into four groups: thrash, keep, brother’s attic, and defer. I’m pretty sure it’s time some defers become trashed. On the flip side, I’m pretty sure that I found a cache of DVDs that I know I have but haven’t been able to find since I moved in, lol.
Before heading to visit friends over the weekend, I opted to plan ahead and download a few choice albums. So I could set my phone to playing Google Play Music in downloaded only mode without worrying.
Seems like a lot of the music from my Hackmode 2017-01 playlist ended up there, as well as various cached music. I had created that playlist as I was going into crunch, that became a 15-day straight bombing run. Filled with music for the various emotions that go with working much overtime and the need for deep focusing.
Combined with the various files, Play Music opted to make a surprising mixture. On one hand, music like Alan Jackson and Ritchie Valens on one side, P!nk and Queen on the other, bracketing sound track made for The Hero of Fereldan descending into the hell to fight the Darkspawn and Faith doing the whole parkour across totalitarian future metropolis thing.
This kinda worked out better than expected, so I saved the queue as a Playlist: Roadtrip 2019-10.
In retrospect, I have to admit that the sound track from Dragon Age: Origins works for driving, as well as a fantasy RPG and focusing. Like, we don’t have John Williams and this isn’t Star Wars, but it better be damned awesome was probably their yard stick for composing the game’s score.
Hmmmm
Sad truths: when your tablet doesn’t come with a calculator and you don’t mind, because you end up in Safari so much that you may as well use Google as a calculator.