Terry Poulin

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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.

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 Kind of a mess made from leftovers and culinary heritage, it worked damned deliciously.

Leftover rigatoni, a few leftover cheese tortellini, scraps of meatloaf, last of the fresh mushrooms and some grilled chicken strips. Combined with shredded carrots, lettuce, green onions, and a can of great northern beans. Various seasonings, and a few spoonfuls of gravy leftover from the meatloaf.

My mother often made beans and elbow macaroni. What she dubbed Italian peasant food, and what I dubbed delicious. Once in a while she also made spinach and beans. Thinking of these, and being rather in the mood for the latter, I opted to make a mess inspired by those meals of my childhood. Both are excellent delivery vehicles for grated Parmesan cheese.

Oddly, the carrots and green onions were something that rarely found there way into such meals. But being the one in front of the sauce pan, I get to pick what goes in 😋.

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Signs that this iPhone thing is going to workout:

  • Use of three and four letter expletives to describe messaging from my phone is down by 90%, effectively now at the level of autocorrect.
  • Use of same to describe messaging from my tablet is now down 70%, and is no longer filled with pain and agony whenever I do more than type.
  • I haven’t felt the urge to break the damned thing.
Part of the value here also lay in the use cases. Typically my tablet screen on time can be measured in hours per day. More if I’m using it, less if I’m mesmerized by some video game or book or Netflix or whatever. By contrast my phone screen on time can probably be measured in tens of minutes per day, unless someone sends me a lot of text messages in the middle of the night.
Which is a pretty stark contrast to years past, where I used my phone pretty significantly. Over the past five years or so, Android’s evolution and my usage patterns basically killed my phone use in favor of tablet use the rest of the way. While the transition to iPadOS was rather rocky, given my heavy demands in tablet: the transition to iOS has mostly been trivial.
You could say that my life around Android largely caused me to bypass the long ass wait for decency in iOS features, after eons of going “Huh, how the frak have people lived without that all these years?” whenever a new iOS release happens. Likewise the tablet use killing phone use, basically means I don’t give a frak. Jelly Bean was still a thing when I used my phone heavy enough to care as much about my phone, as my tablet keeping pace with my computing needs. So by now, iOS easily handles my demands upon a phone and mostly fits my demands upon a tablet or desktop.
Sigh. Here’s to hoping someday Google returns to producing software that I can depend on instead of software prone to pissing me off more often than not.

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Searching for an image of Penny’s computerized book, I was delighted to come across: 16 REAL MODERN TECHNOLOGIES PREDICTED BY INSPECTOR GADGET.

While I might choose more modern analogs; like a tablet rather than a laptop. I’m still thrilled that someone actually wrote such an article. And to be fair nearly a decade ago, phones and tablets were still quite young when it was written.

Don’t think I’ve really watched the series since the early 2000s or late 90s, about the last time I can recall the reruns being in the air back when I watched normal TV. But still bugs me that I couldn’t recall much of what Penny’s book looked like without looking it up, lol.

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 In the words of a literary character, “Mischief managed.”

Managed to be smart and both warm up the oven AND the ground beef, and leave the other stuff set aside. With plenty of time to let the oven do its thing. The number one reason I’ve rarely made  meatloaf I’m recent years, is it takes a good while to cook if you do it right. On work days that usually means an hour later than empty bellies want to wait.

Willow and company of course hate that the pecking order is dinner, and then their nest treats.

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 “Why am I never that comfortable? I must be doing this wrong…”

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 Overall Dragon Quest 11 has made me chuckle more than a few times in the course of its story. Especially involving Rab.

Most of the best chuckles have been somewhat out of place bits involving bunny girls. Well, depending on whether or not he already reminded you of Master Roshi by the first gag.

The bit with the naughty stick however is just so deliciously fitting and humorous!

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Google’s solution to the end of Hangouts is Messages. My solution to this problem has been, “Screw that”.

For the majority of my use case my SMS roll through my tablet. A process that Hangouts, as meh as a chat app is it has always been: handled well. In the years prior, I had relied on a Bluetooth connection between my Android phone and tablet to make the magic happen. In the post Hangouts world, I pretty much just relied on its integration.

Google Fi and Hangouts started the GTFO and use Messages push a week or two ago. Since Hangouts ends in January, I decided to give it a go and see how good the results would be. Well, an iPhone SE is how well that experiment went.

Using the web version on my tablet shifts from how Meh the current iteration of Hangouts is to “And why the frak am I using this?”. I figured, at least, it had to be worth while on my phone. Whether it’s the natural way it works, or an aspect of Google Fi: Messages sucks ass on my Moto X4. I dislike using the web version; I despise using the Android version. Even more so where the combination of web + phone often leads me to to using multiple profanities when the phone eventually catches up.

Originally, I had assumed that I would be using android messages when I upgraded from my old Galaxy S5 to the Moto X4. But most messages arriving through Hangouts rather than that, pretty much lead to me ignoring it. Not broke, don’t care. Well, at least for a few more years at that time.

My primary computer when I’m not doing real work is a tablet. Many of the Android tablets I’ve used ended up full blown keyboard/mouse/monitor driven workstations on top of being my general purpose tablet. Thus my phone doesn’t really see a lot of use.

Typically I use my phone when:

  • Checking off my shopping list at the grocery store.
  • I’ve gone to bed, and it’s easier to reach for my phone than my tablet to answer messages or read Wikipedia with one eye open.
  • I’m standing in the checkout line at the grocery store.
  • Waiting on food at the microwave at work.
  • Suddenly need a calculator or a stop watch, and other things that were cool on a wristwatch when I was a kid.
  • The rare times I actually want a one hand device more than a better device.
  • The few times I rely on Maps to make sure I don’t take a wrong turn.
  • The every few years I’m driving out of range of my favorite radio tower, and choose to jack a playlist into my car’s head unit.
In effect this means my phone represents 10 – 15 % of my non-productivity minded computing, and aside from answering messages in the middle of the night: I’m usually found on my tablet or I’m occupied and not available. Since I’m usually using a tablet, my phone’s data use represents an average of up to a hundred megabytes of cellular data. Drastically down from the years where I averaged several gigabytes.
Apple’s iMessage doesn’t really interest me. But it does two things for me. It fixes the suck-ass experience of using my iPad Pro with Google’s new plan for my Messages, and it makes me not want to flip my phone out a window whenever I wait for messages to sync back up 🤣.
Thus Bean Sprout has been retired in favor of Benimaru. So named because the Project (RED) design reminds me of Rimiru’s commander in chief in TenSura.