Year: 2021

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 Why a portless iPhone would be a nightmare

Reading this, I kind of have to ask myself: how many people actually use their phone’s port for something other than charging?

I’ve used the Micro-B ports on my phones to mount a monitor, flash drive, or use a keyboard, but this has been a rarity. Most times I’ve used the port for debugging Android applications with logcat. Since I strongly prefer a tablet, the monitor, drive, and keyboard stuff usually fell to that rather than my phones.

In terms of what my iPhone SE 2020 offers, I can’t say I’d actually give a flying floop if it was wireless charging only. In the sense that Lighting already declares I am unlikely to do anything more complicated than mount it in iTunes and copy ringtones, lol

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“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

— from Dr. King’s speech in St. Louis on March 22, 1964.

Not the first time I’ve added something Dr. King said to my quotes file, but I have to admit this one is well worth the adding. H/T to The NY Times.

 

 

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What happened in the capital was pretty terrible. Well worthy of condemnation, and more than a little messed up. In that vein, as I have a sense of humor I parse this article with tongue very much in cheek.
When I see an interesting article from The Atlantic pop up in my feeds, I usually question whether or not I have time to read twenty pages of article. In this case it was more like an awesome series of giggle snorts describing a day that will reflect poorly in our history books. Thank goodness we still have the right to a sense of humor 😂.
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Here’s why everyone should own a cheap Android tablet

An interesting if unusual line of reasoning for a site full of nerds and shifting attention spans.
Tablets are often more natural to repurpose than other computing devices. Phones are often too damned small or the only size you need. Laptops are often too damned big, or all you really want is the keyboard input. Tablets strike an excellent size between being so compact you can Velcro it to the wall, and being large enough to prevent and interact with globs of data like videos and web pages.
Kitchens, bathrooms, garages, craft rooms, head boards, et.al. often have space as a premium. If not at first then eventually, lol. If money grew on trees instead of being made from trees and tears, I’d probably have a dedicated tablet just for scribbling notes.
One of the open questions I’ve had since my Tab S3 -> iPad Pro conversion is what do I want to do with Scarlett. The cracked screen works fine most of the time, but I’d largely prefer to avoid putting it in a position where fluids and cleaning are regular needs. The old HDX7 has principally become a clock now that it’s long form reading duties have migrated to a conventional Kindle.
Currently it resides near the charger cluster of /dev/headboard. Which has shown promising possibilities as an electronic picture frame or clock in either room. Mounting it on a kitchen wall or the side of my refrigerator would readily solve the problem that I’ll need to update my grocery list for something, but don’t have the time to leave my kitchen to go get a phone or tablet. There’s also the perk that the S-Pen still works pretty well as long as you don’t rest your hand too heavily on the screen, or need fine lines near the cracked part.
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Going on somewhat of a cleaning kick, I managed to sort through and clean various artifacts that haven’t really been gone through in a few years.

Along the way I decided to put some stuff with my treasures box. Not sure if everyone does, but ever since I was little my mother had these jewelry box like things for us. Mostly made up of artifacts from when we were born. Like buttons or coins with our birthdays, or stuff that was my father’s. Various stuff has been collected here since I was a kid. Troll dolls, a folding paper fa from Chuck-E-Cheese’s arcade, etc. More recent additions include a Pokemon TCG coin, my wristwatch, yadda yadda.

The box also contains various things like my dad’s driver’s license and registration. Can’t remember how much has been there next to forever, and what has been merged into that over the years. Most of Dad’s personal artifacts are in one of his old containers. Likewise my mother’s are in various containers she kept her personal stuff in.

In debating where to put some of my mother’s stuff, I opted to put it in my box with some of my father’s stuff. Makes sense to me that her driver’s license would end up next to his. While I was at it, also incorporated are things like the fob and last registration from my first car.

Also a little happy. Looking through my parents things, I found dad’s other dog tag in one of my mother’s boxes. Next to important stuff of her father’s. Last time I moved, I had feared I might of lost it.

And then of course there’s irony. In knocking the box with comments that I should really get something bigger to store this stuff in the frame of the lid finally came unglued. Considering it’s at least thirty years old, I suppose I can’t complain, lol.

Think if I was smart, I’d find some time to clean and organize that entire shelf and make it more orderly. Family albums on the bottom shelf might even be worth the sneezing attack.

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Revisiting the problem of sending custom alarm tones to iOS, this time around I opted to save myself some pain. The first thing I did was locate where I stuffed my audio file; the second was plug my iPhone in to iTunes. Because when you utter enough profanities doing a thing it tends to leave a mark 😛.

I’ve been thinking for a while of setting a new alarm for the weekends. Presently, Misty’s morning meds rely on the fact that I’m usually awake around that time and if not, Corky makes sure I am; much as he made sure my mother didn’t dose off instead of testing her sugar in the morning. Habitually waking up around the same time has been useful, but lacks fail safes. Thus the alarm clock.

During the week it’s kind of wrapped around my trifecta of alarms. One to wake me up, so I can’t sleep through the others; one to tell me to get my ass out of bed; and the third to tell me I better damned get my ass out of bed if there isn’t a tooth brush in my mouth yet 😲. Each of these have different tones to help know the pattern. Normally on the weekend there’s just a late alarm in place to make sure I don’t literally sleep the day away, and I’m usually up long before then.

In thinking about whether I want to put the extra alarm on my phone or my tablet, the notion hit me. Separate device, separate why the frak am I waking up reason. I might even migrate that time slot from tablet to phone during the week as further reinforcement that it’s time for Misty’s meds.

As such the time frame overlaps with the first weekday alarm, as that’s the most convenient time to give Misty her meds, and bribe Corky into letting me go back to sleep. Peanut butter is important here, lol. In much the same vain: I’m inclined to use the same alarm tone for the same time of day and purpose.

That just so happens to be the protagonist’s morning alarm from Pixel Fade’s Ace Academy. Which is a heck of a lot more pleasant to wake up to than the 90 dB alarm clock I had as a kid, lol.