I entered SJSU in fall 1983, with a declared major of B.A. Physics. But I assumed that I would probably go into computer science. I had spent much of my high school time with my nose glued to either one of the Apple II+’s in the computer lab, or the Atari 800 system (that I was able to afford on my paper route money) learning programming, computer technology, and lastly 6502 machine language.
So, when I began school, I took the basic physics and physics prep (Calculus, Differential Equations, Vector Calculus) and mixed into that introductory programming classes. I started with Basic (and it was a lot different than the Basic on my Atari), then Fortran, and then I moved to Assembly language. It should be noted that at this time, there weren’t microcomputers on the campus, and all our coursework was done on the time share mainframes in the various CSU schools.
I actually did well until I hit assembly language. We learned it on a PDP-11/70, and the language was called Macro 11. I took it at the same time as I took Ordinary Differential Equations, and the second semester of the introductory series of physics, so it was a pretty heavy load.
I thought that my experience with 6502 assembly language would pave the way, but I was mistaken. Up until this point, I truly thought that my calling to computers would guide me to change to computer science as a degree, but that started the doubt.
The other thing that caused doubt was that a pretty foundational course was learning to program in Lisp. I took it upon myself to try to learn it myself, but it was pretty intractable. I just couldn’t get a grasp of the structure, or the logic of Lisp (List Processing). That was the final nail in the coffin of my aspirations of a career in computer science, and I meekly continued down the path of Physics.
Lately, I have again picked up Lisp, and am working my way through the MIT text, “Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs”, and I am finding that Lisp (as part of the Scheme environment) is not as intractable as when I first tried to self teach myself. I don’t hope to become a software engineer or a computer scientist, but it does keep me occupied.
In my career, I have done a fair amount of programming, mostly in Matlab, but some C as well, so my computer interest wasn’t entirely extinguished.
About 7 months ago, I splurged and bought a Nexus 7. Ostensibly, I bought it to test the websites I work on in an intermediate resolution (I already use an iphone and an iPad to test different mobile sizes). I figured that I would give Android a fair shake, but alas, I have used it sporadically.
Nexus 7 – Google’s 7″ tablet with ANdroid
Naturally, I used my gmail account to set it up, and I have done my best to set it up, and keep it up to date. It is still stock, I haven’t rooted it or sideloaded any apps or changed the rom’s. I wanted to get a good feel for Android, and I thought that using a stock Google branded device would give me the best of the experience. (I hear that for those who want to keep Google at arm’s length, you can set it up without a Google account, but I am already in for a pound)
The Nexus 7 isn’t a bad piece of kit. It has a rubberized plastic back, and 16G of flash memory (32G was an option). It was one of the first devices shipping with “Jelly Bean”, and it has had several updates. I must admit that Google does a good job distributing updates, and keeping it current.
The Apps. The Gmail application and integration is pretty tight. Really easy to use, and I will admit that it is a hair better than on my iPhone. It just “fits”. It comes with gtalk (now Hangouts), Google Earth, among other Google standards. Of note is the Music application. I liked the fact that it picked up on my collections that I sync’d with Google, so I had access to all my tunes (more on this later).
I did add some applications, a solitaire game (I tend to piss away hours playing solitaire, a weakness), an eBook reader (Aldiko) and applications for 1Password, Dropbox, some other games (angry birds space, monopoly etc), hootsuite for my Twitter use, and Facebook. They all work OK, and I can’t complain too much for the integration and interface. However, one thing that was somewhat annoying is that at times, the UI gets balky. What I mean by that is that it just becomes unresponsive. It can take 2 or three “taps” with the finger to get the application to respond. There are some threads out in the world on this, it is just different how Android prioritizes UI actions than iOS. (Naturally, I am an Apple fan, and I have both an iPhone and an iPad, so there is definitely some bias here.)
The past week, I have endeavored to use my Nexus more. It does have a better display than my iPad, and it is a convenient form factor (my iPad is a second generation, non-retina display version). Of course, I could use it to be a little bigger. My eyes are not young anymore, so I would appreciate Google using their resolution to make larger text a joy to read, but that is hardly a fault of the device.
Unlike many Android devices, it lacks a SD card slot to increase memory. However, I haven’t found a reason to need more memory.
Google Play.
The music player, and media player are based on the Google Play service. It comes with a full length movie (Transformers 2, not really my type of movie) and it streams well (WiFi to a Cable modem with a business class bandwidth package). I haven’t felt the need to rent or buy any more videos, and I haven’t bothered to figure out how to play a media file from my extensive collection on it (I am sure it is possible, but I usually don’t watch videos on my devices).
The music player is nice. I find that the navigation and creating/managing of playlists is a bit cumbersome, but that is likely because I have become immersed in the iOS (and iTunes) way of managing my music, so I won’t hold it against Google.
However, there is a wart. I have mentioned in other posts that one of my reasons why I don’t rely on Google Play to stream music to my work PC (since it is limited in storage, I prefer to keep it media file free) is that it stutters, stalls, and in general is a poor (and distant) second to my go to streaming service, Spotify premium. I gave it one more whirl this weekend with the launch of Google’s “All Access” streaming service that is similar to Spotify’s service. However, I am sorry to report that on WiFi, on a great cable connection (plenty of bandwidth and low latency) it still stalls, hiccups, and stutters. It can go 2 – 3 songs perfectly, then it will be really crappy for a minute or two.
As a book reader.
The Aldiko application, combined with DropBox, and I have all my (DRM Free) ePub books on hand. I like that, no need to sync like I do with iTunes. I have bought several books from the Google Play book store. find their selection excellent, and the price fair. It uses the standard Adobe Adept DRM, so it is easy to strip (I use Calibre) and then I load them with Aldiko. I also use the Google book reader application, and it is quite good (and it is just like the Google book reader on my iPad.)
Lastly, I was an early Sony Reader adopter, and I have probably 40 – 50 books I have bought from the Sony store. There is a Sony application that makes it trivial to access my library.
The hardware does quite well as a book reader. It is a good size and form factor, the text is crisp, and the applications let me scale the text to be friendly with my gradually declining eyes.
Observations.
The hardware is pretty solid. It is light, and easy to hold and carry. When you plug it into a PC (or my Mac) it is mounted like a file system so you can poke around. It does have a front camera, but I haven’t used it. With the new Google Hangout application, I suspect I will have some occasion to use it. Even with moderate use, I still have plenty of flash storage remaining. I am not missing the SD card slot.
Gaining root access is trivial. It is in the setup, and easy to find. I haven’t felt the need to allow applications loaded from stores/repositories other than the official Google store. I am at a point in my life where I can afford to buy my software, and I prefer to not have to worry about malware.
The battery life is so-so. On my iPad (now more than 2 years old), I get 4-5 days on a charge, using it a couple hours a day. Even light use of the Nexus 7 seems to drain the battery much quicker. I haven’t timed it, but I figure that if/when I start to use it more I will be charging it every other day or so.
I hoped that using the Google app on a google device, with a good connection would make the music streaming much more robust, but alas, it is not to be. I will probably not be replacing Spotify with All Access.
My iPad has the cellular option, so I can get data when I am traveling (it is disables now, but I can turn it back on), and I probably would have bought this with a cellular radio for that same access.
Summary
I have dabbled with the Nexus 7, now that I have spent some serious time with it, I can say that I like it. But I am probably not going to be giving up my iPad or iPhone anytime soon. I am probably not ever going to be an Android fanboy, but I now have a better appreciation of the ecosystem, and the charm.
A joy from my childhood was watching reruns of the The Avengers. Much later in life I bought the DVD’s on a whim, and I will admit to enjoying watching the old episodes.
I have two years form the “pre Diana Rigg” Avengers. Honor Blackman (who was a Bond girl, Pussy Galore) did a fine job. It was clear that the production quality was a bit thin, and that showed through, but still they were enjoyable romps. Starting in 1965, Diana Rigg took the place of Ms. Cathy Gale (Honor Blackman) in John Steed’s new partner, Miss Emma Peel, and the series was in full cult mode. There were 2 years of Diana Rigg episodes filmed in black and white. and they were awesome.
Then in 1967, they went to color. While the production values improved year after year, and the writing, one thing was lost in the transition to color. Miss Peel began wearing colorful pant suits and similar attire. Gone forever was all the black leather that graced the show in the B&W era.
Pity, that was definitely one of the charms.
(For the record, like most cult classics, the plot lines were contrived, the action cheesy, and almost all episodes had Miss Peel in a catfight. Hence, I will continue to watch the episodes.)
As last week was my better half’s birthday, and next week is our anniversary, I thought I would share what I have learned over the years in gift giving for the feminine half of the human race. I am sure this is out there somewhere, but I figure that it can’t hurt to repeat it ad nauseum.
First, buy big durable goods. Cars work if you can afford it (and in fact Lexus does some brilliant messaging around this) but I am not quite that rich.
Second, buy tech goodies. iPads, smartphone, computer, or if your other half is a video geek, AV gear works well.
Next up (and many might move this to the top) jewelry. I am fortunate that my spouse isn’t a fan of expensive flashy jewelry, so I get to rate this down the list.
Many other good ideas, spa days, fancy meals out, weekends at resorts etc are all great ideas (and some of them you might enjoy too.)
What you should never ever under any circumstances buy your woman any clothes. There are several reasons for this, and tripping on any of them is cause for time spent in the doghouse.
If you buy a size too big – Hoo boy, this is good for some fireworks. You become an instant insensitive slob who thinks your woman it too fat.
If you buy a size too small – Almost worse than going too big. Now you are expecting them to be something that they aren’t, and crying jags, followed by whole pints of hagen daz ice cream being consumed.
If you actually buy the right size, you might think that you are golden, but a fact I have learned in life is that a woman does not want you to know that she is a size 12. That is supposed to be a state secret, and not divulged.
If you must, note where their clothes come from (the label) and buy a generous gift certificate for that store. Or, better yet, go along and let them shop while you watch them model the clothes. (naturally, you bring the credit card)
I am an avid reader, have been since I was in my early teens. While most of my reading tends to favor the SciFi genre, I have developed a taste for history.
When I was in High School I had the usual US history, and with it a smattering of world history. Of course, my 3rd year of university, I took a college level US history course, and learned how badly we were lied to in high school. Since then I have read more granular accounts of the US experience, and I have enjoyed it.
Lately though, I have come to the realization that I have a severe deficiency in my knowledge of European history. Late last year, I was in Germany, and one of our local people took me to the Frankfurt Christmas market, and he was explaining to me about the history of the Frankfurt/Mainz area. I realized that I had almost no knowledge of the history of the Continent.
So I have resolved to rectify that shortfall. I first found a course on the Itunes university on modern European history, taught by John Merriman, professor at Yale. I also picked up his monstrous tome, “A History of Modern Europe from the Renaissance to the Present” (fortunately I was able to grab a used copy for $40 on Amazon). It starts with a smattering of important topics from the medieval time, as that laid a lot of the groundwork of the renaissance.
I am through the renaissance and into the Reformation. It is a riveting read, and John Merriman is a gifted story teller. The pace is good, and the illustrating stories are very helpful. As this book is more than 1400 pages long, I will take quite some time to read it, and thoroughly learning the path from feudal medieval Europe into the states that exist today.
(I also read a lot on the history of mathematics and physics, but reading about real history helps place the development of mathematics in context.)
I will drop back in and report as I am working my way through this.
Started the memorial day weekend well, took a couple extra days off, and haven’t wasted them.
I had a serious plateau at 220 and 219 #’s. I was stuck there for almost week and half. Nothing is more depressing than counting every calorie you consume, and every erg you expend in exercise to not see any movement of the scale. Last time I did this, I had several plateaus and I know I was able to work through them, so I stuck with it (to be fair, my birthday was in the middle of this and I had a major splurge day. Gordon Birsch Czech Pilsner. Yummy.
Fortunately, I finally broke through my plateau, and I dropped almost overnight to 216#’s. Back on the track of 3#’s a week of weight loss (that is fast enough that my diet tracker chastises me for losing too fast).
The real plus is that about a month ago, I got back on the bicycle. There are some great loops near my house, and I have been exploring. I have a couple of 25 mile loops, which equates to about 1700 calories burned in an hour and 40 minutes.
Last week, I posted about pitting spotify (premium) against the newly announced “Google All Access”, and today I am going to post an update.
To be fair, I have only been using it for 4 or so days now, but the one thing that drove me nuts about using my collection in Play was that it would skip, stutter and freeze periodically. And by periodically, I mean at least once an hour. I figured that Google would have addressed that by now, with their play to go large and challenge Spotify.
But the skips, pauses, stutters, and even long freezes (up to a minute at a time) are still plaguing the service. I have submitted feedback, but naturally no response (I expect none, as Google is notorious for their lack of direct support).
I am not sure how much this is caused by it running in a tab on my Chrome browser, versus Spotify’s dedicated application. This is all on my PC (HP Elitebook 8640p, core i5, with 16 G ram, and my work network). But Spotify either does a better job of routing packets to me, or queuing up a buffer to avoid the follies of internet packet delivery.
It is a shame, as I was grooving on the All Access radio stations. Their matching algorithms aren’t as good as Pandora, but they aren’t bad. And having my 18K files in their storage means that even the artists that don’t do streaming will be mixed in with my radio selections. (I could do that with Spotify, but I would need to dedicate 120G of disk locally for it, a big negative).
So, I am back to Spotify, and enjoying their service, and performance. I will continue to try the Google service, on my Nexus 7. Maybe with an Android native app it will be better?
Nothing screams the 1990’s like every time you install a piece of software that it puts an icon with a shortcut on your desktop. I know that most software asks you if you want one placed on the desktop, and I ALWAYS uncheck that box. But all too often, the software installs it anyway, or it doesn’t ask and just drops one there.
I know this is a minor rant, and I also know people (more than one) who manages their workflow via piles of files on their desktop, and for them, it makes perfect sense to put shortcuts on their desktop (although, for me it is always faster to tap the Windows key and type the name of the program I want to load). Fine, ask them first, and then drop the shortcut.
But many times, the program doesn’t ask, and just places it. Or, it asks, you can unselect it, and it will STILL drop it on the desktop.
This is one reason why I prefer the Mac. Beyond the fact that installing applications is usually no more complicated than copying it into the “Applications” folder, there isn’t a paradigm of putting shortcuts on the desktop to foster quick launching.
Needless to say, I have over 30 shortcut icons on my desktop, none that I put there intentionally, and most of them placed even though I selected to not have one copied there on install. About 2x a year, I go and delete all the useless desktop icons.
I have been using Survey Monkey for a few years. Great product, and for simple surveys, it really can’t be beat. But I stopped using it at my last job (we had a high buck license of Eloqua which pretty much kicks all asses).
Flash forward to today. The non-profit that I work with (Southern Arizona Greyhound Adoption) needs to replace a couple of board members who decided to resign. Perfect use of a survey to get a tally of yay’s and nays’ from the membership.
But now Survey Monkey has changed. First, my old account disappeared. Not a big deal, I hadn’t used it in a couple of years, so I wasn’t upset. I sign up again, and go to create the ballot as a survey. A lot of the nifty functionality that I used to enjoy for my simple surveys is now an “upgrade”. Boo.
The biggest limitation is that you can only use it to gather 100 responses. Since we have over 200 members, and expect 80%+ to vote, that is not a good solution.
I took the plunge and subscribed to the first tier of premium (I have some work surveys to do as well, so I will get a fair amount of use for my $17 a month), and I have an even chance of being reimbursed for the subscription.
On my professional blog, I have done a few entries about the “Fremium” market strategy, and how you need to make sure that there are reasons for a casual users to “pay”. Survey Monkey certainly has applied similar learning, and it encouraged me to open my wallet to get the better version.
I will come out and say it, I love Netflix streaming video. I like being able to watch what I want, without having to fiddle with the queue to get the right disk sent next.
I have really enjoyed watching some of the series I used to watch while growing up, and that is where the “bad” comes in. Of course, I remember Knight Rider being pretty awesome. But it is completely ‘meh’ now. Cheesy special effects, and David Hasselhof is an annoying a-hole.
I did enjoy watching all the “Rockford Files”. I loved that show when I was a kid, and I still enjoyed watching the episodes. Lots of fun.
But it isn’t all roses. I was a huge fan of the X-Files when it was first run. I kind of drifted away after the 4th season, and sporadically caught an episode or two. Lately, I re-watched them on Netflix, and being able to get through 2-3 episodes at a sitting, you can almost see in real time the Shark being jumped. Of course this reminds me of why I drifted away (it had become all too predictable, and boring) in the first place.
I just wish that they would get the agreements in place to greatly increase the available movies. For one, I hate not being able to queue up all the James Bond flicks for a marathon. But even some old classics like “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff” aren’t in their library, except by disk.
