Progress, probably

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Passing thought on browsing the World Wide Web:

In the ‘90s my greatest bane was pop up ads and file transfers.

In the ‘00s my greatest bane was browser plugins and crashes.

In the ‘10s my greatest bane was cookie notices and on boarding.

As the ‘20s begin, I would like to think this is progress as far as getting pissed off at surfing the web goes. It’s abnormal to have to close a half dozen (or over a dozen) windows when leaving a website, and file transfers tend to complete instead of hoping no one messes with the phone line. Browsers rarely crash, and plugins from hell are mostly a relic today. But pretty much every freaking website puts up a hey pal, we’ve gotta mention these cookies notice, and far too many put up a near full screen pop up asking you to sign up for something.

I honestly have no idea why Don’t Copy That Floppy just started playing in my head.

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A Decade of iPad
https://flip.it/bBeP6L

Personally, I think that netbooks worked out far better than anyone should have expected; and I feel that the rise of the iPad and Chromebook is due to realizing that you don’t need to make a netbook that is a piece of crap. Nor do you necessarily need to spend several grand of laptop just to update Twitter.

Tablets are a remarkable option that is mostly hamstrung by software and accessories. As a docked machine, it’s just a matter of software. My iPad Pro runs circles around my aging Core i5, but docking an iPad doesn’t change the software into a Windows desktop, nor should it.

I find that tablets tend to serve best when you are doing general computery things rather than highly focused tasks. If you’re a heavy user of keys other than alphanumerical, such as modifier based keyboard shortcuts then you’re not going to like typing on tablets. The more efficient you must be at manipulating text: the more you will require a full sized physical keyboard, regardless of your device’s form factor. Likewise if you need pixel precise interaction, you’re probably going to make a middle finger gesture if anyone tries to replace your mouse or track ball with a touchscreen, lol.

In many cases, throwing a keyboard and mouse, or even an external monitor works far better with tablet or phone like software than desktop like software. Don’t believe me? Try using Windows 95 with only your fingers, and then try using your phone with only a keyboard and mouse.

The whole windows desktop paradigm and software designed around a desktop PC does not adapt to a tablet as well as it did to notebooks. But software that doesn’t suck on a tablet, does not necessarily suck on a delete desktop. Software is what you make of it but hardware determines how you physically interact with it.

Most of the negative aspects of my relationship with desktop oriented software is mired in antiquity. I’m sure we would all have done things differently if you landed an Intrepid class star ship on earth in the 1960s than if you tried to grow CP/M into NT, and a host of other histories.

Most of the negative aspects of my relationship with tablet oriented software is mired in quality. I’m sure bug free software does not exist, and will never be the result of Google or Apple, lol. Typically my groan at my iPad is the buggy operating system, much as with Android my problem tends to be Google’s additional  software.

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Convenience in race conditions: when the power blips in and out, after you save the game–not before.

On the flip side, most serious file system’s developed since circa 2000 tend to handle “Opps, power pull” pretty well, or had already grown things like journaling support by the end of the ’90s.

Which is why I expect my game save to actually load instead of shouting crap, crap, crashola.

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Somedays, I feel inclined to ride, boldy ride in search of El Dorado and get things done.
Somedays, I feel inclined as much as a sea slug feels to get up and dance the the hula on the beach.

Today is definitely one of the latter.

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Positives:

  1. Misty’s feeling better, now that the knock out juice is out of her system.
  2. Willow’s sleepy, and not complaining about rained out walks.
Negatives:
  1. I’m pretty sure I could fall asleep right here.
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Chrome OS has stalled out
https://flip.it/ung6rA

Personally, I’ve come to have mixed feelings about Chromebooks but that mostly owes to a mixture of my own tastes and Google’s performance.

Pretty much if you’re happy to live in a full screen browser session, or can’t remember the last time you dragged anything other than a browser window around—Chrome OS is for you, and the appliance factor is a win. Just buy a better model with a better processor than average.

By contrast I’d like me, your interest is largely in an Android powered laptop: you will be disappointed or suffer the same slings and arrows that iOS users do. That is to say things work pretty well but you must avert your eyes from the problems more often than you should have to.

Android actually works pretty well with a monitor, mouse, and keyboard. I’ve done that a crap fuck ton since Honeycomb. Chromebooks offer an easier path to the docked experience, and a tremendously easier path to a laptop style form factor.

But by in large Android on my Chromebook has been far more buggy and glitchy than any Android tablet that I’ve ever connected to a monitor, mouse, and keyboard; and I’ve done that to more than a few! The flip side is that the hardware strain of running Android apps tends to be less than heavy, complicated web applications.

So there are times that a cheaper Chromebook running an Android app can be more ideal than throwing the web app at the same hardware, or more appealing than buying a Chromebook that has a Core M or i series processor instead of dinky Celeron and Pentium processors.

Combined with the limited choices for high end Android tablets, not to mention ones with a true hardware stylus, my Android experience on my Chromebook is chunk of why I decided to buy an iPad Pro—because a Chome OS tablet won’t replace my Android tablet the way it could most people’s Windows beater.

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Random curiosity, but it looks like more than a few pages about Pathfinder and the Sojourner rover are still online more than twenty years later, and probably last updated in ’97 or ’98 on average.

Here’s a neat one: https://mars.nasa.gov/MPF/roverctrlnav/rovercntrlnav.html

Many are also good examples of what the Internet looked like two decades ago :^o.

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After dropping Misty off for her dental trip, I raided Kroger to get the shopping done, and opted to pick up some softer soft food than the doggo’s usual special treat rations.

They still have a few Wellness CORE packs of meat/gravy “Toppers” from their Christmas presents; our usual stock of Pedigree meat/gravy bits that they get for a post-dinner treat a few nights a week; and now a few large cans of the ground/patte like version of that. In enough quantity that I don’t think there should be a problem. I also suspect, that like me: Misty not eating would be more of a question of “Are you still alive / is your jaw still physically attached?” kind of a problem than anything else.

When I had to deal with a bunch of teeth being out: I was stitched together long enough that food was generally painful until getting the stitches out. Hopefully, Misty won’t be that troubled.

On the flipside: pulling into Kroger, it was hard to keep my brain from thinking of it as my middle child joining me in the club, having been through a similar process. I’m not sure if that means I am definitely becoming the male/dog version of an old cat lady, or if I’ve just had too much dental work in my life.

Somehow, I don’t think the former idea bothers me as much as the latter. Willow, Misty, and Corky are my local tribemates. Much as Coco and my mother were in their lives. I’d also like to think the little sweet pea loves me more than my credit card company ever will.

A pup’s payback

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When Willow was a puppy, she liked to guard her extra treats waiting to see if someone would try to take them; or go running around like mad tossing them around playfully until finally eating them at her leisure.

When Corky was a puppy: she tormented him much like he is doing now. Sitting there, guarding the her treat while he sat there wanting to eat it. Thus when moments like this happen: I think of it as a Corky’s revenge. Willow taught Corky well, too well, in fact.

Coincidentally: Misty is the one who tends to sneak in and nab the threat, if Corky leaves instead of eats it, lol.

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It’s hard to tell, is the better part about giving Misty her medicine that she’s too small to be able to argue too much, or that she doesn’t have the ability to shove the bottle up my bum like a suppository?