God, I hope the internet at my new place is better.
Archive for October, 2010
Phones, phones, everywhere, and they are all terrible.
25
Oct
I have fairly eclectic requirements for most every product I buy, particularly electronics. I am loath to part with my money unless I am faced with a product that does everything I expect it to do, or I can hack it apart to make it do everything I want it to.
This is the reason I don’t have a "smart" phone yet. There are major problems with every single platform out there, and after a while I just get sick of running into roadblocks and give up in frustration.
My basic requirements for a phone are:
Communications:
Making phone calls is naturally of the first importance. But, as this is supposedly a "smart" phone, I also need access to all the methods of communication I normally associate with my computer, available over Wifi or cellular. That is:
- VOIP (Skype and/or Gizmo)
- Email (POP, IMAP, and web)
- IM (GChat, MSN Messenger, and AIm. QQ as a somewhat-necessary bonus).
- Web browsing, on a modern browser.
I also need well-implemented GPS, and the ability to tether my laptop to the phone, in case I need emergency net access somewhere I can’t get a wifi signal.
+ Nobody.
- Everybody. Android is probably the closest on this one.
Languages:
Being in China, having developed a rudimentary proficiency with the language, and most importantly, being in regular contact with people who have essentially no grasp of the English language, I need to be able to write, receive, and get help translating between English and Chinese.
Over here, any $50 Nokia cell phone has this capability, and I find it shocking that so-called "smart" phones generally lack this capability. The only phone OS that has excellent built-in support for this is iOS, which includes Chinese character handwriting recognition. Android basically has nothing that I can find or care to investigate further (everything I’ve found has been on the order of, "Oh, this project looks promising, you should try it out"). Maemo5 (for the Nokia N900) support, much like the expected longevity of the entire ecosystem itself, is laughable.
I want supported, retail-release-quality, first-party software. Right now only the iPhone has this that I can tell. The iPhone, and the $100 phone from Nokia I’m currently using.
Pathetic.
In an excellent illustration of what drives me further and further away from FOSS communities on a daily basis, one article, entitled "Full Chinese Japanese Korean (CJK) input on Nokia N900," recommends installing GNU Emacs, a full-featured text editor, typing the Chinese text in there, and then copy-pasting it anywhere you need it to. That’s not a solution, that’s a workaround, and a terrible one.
+ Apple.
- Everyone else. There are about 3 million third-party apps "in progress." None of them are good.
Battery life:
I need a phone that can, at minimum, last a full day of heavy use on a single charge. What genius thought it was a great idea, in this day and age, to build a cell phone that only lasted 3.5 hours on a charge? When my 3-year-old dual core laptop with a 14" screen lasts longer on one charge than your cell phone, then you have made a TERRIBLE CELL PHONE. If you have a giant screen on your phone, put a bigger battery in it. Nobody cares that it’s super-thin and sexy if you can’t take it anywhere because it’s constantly having to be charged.
I have a cell phone that lasts up to 3 days on a single charge, with regular voice and SMS use. It can also play and record videos, and plays MP3s with very nice sound quality. However, I still use my 5-year-old, AAA-using, Creative Zen Nano Plus MP3 player instead.
You know why?
Because, if I were to miss even the most trivial of phone calls, message, or meetings because my phone’s battery was dead, I’d feel enough of an idiot without having to explain that it was because I was listening to an endless loop of Baby Got Back while looking at kitten pictures on Facebook.
My cell phone is an important communications tool. If the battery’s dead, I can’t reach people that I need to reach, particularly since I haven’t memorized a single telephone number since the advent of the contact list.
So, seriously. If you put a 4" screen and a 1GHz processor in your phone, put in better than a 1500mAh battery or bundle an AA charger with it.
+ Nobody.
- Everybody.
User-serviceable battery:
If the battery in my phone craps out, I want to be able to put a new battery in it. I have three, count ‘em, THREE, Nokia batteries for my current phone.
The reason I have three? The first one died on me, so I bought a second one. The second one worked fine, but was a cheap knock-off, and was dropping in capacity, so I bought a new branded retail unit. After some time, I found the original and decided to try it, for shits and giggles, and it works perfectly. So now I have three Nokia phone batteries, each of which is able to power my phone for 48-72 hours without a break or a charge. I carry the two spares fully charged in my bag. They each cost less than $10 US.
They are also usable with about 90% of the Nokia phones I run into on a daily basis, so for example, if a friend’s battery dies, I can lend him/her one of mine.
If I owned an iPhone, in the above scenario I would now have two spare iPhones in my bag.
- Apple. Fuck Apple.
+ Everyone else.
Expandable memory:
If my phone’s memory is full of Lady Gaga music videos and Snuffleupagus porn, I want to be able to throw in a microSD card so I can continue stockpiling digital perversions of questionable legality. When that card fills up with dolphin snuff films and movies painstakingly tailored to induce grand mal seizures in dogs and small children, I want to be able to swap another one in… and so on.
If I take a whole series of pictures of homeless people selling me a dead dog, and my subsequent Thanksgiving dinner spread, I want to be able to pop out the SD card, throw it in my laptop, and copy the files over at full USB speed instead of having to fuck around with idiotic proprietary software and wifi or Bluetooth transfer speeds.
Most people are pretty good about this. Of course, by "most people" what I really mean is some Android phone manufacturers, and Nokia.
Windows Phone 7 lets you add an SD card… once. It is then rolled into the internal memory as a single integral file system. If you take the card out, it won’t work anywhere else. This is basically so the music and movies industry won’t take their balls (tiny and withered that they are) and go home. Thanks, DRM.
+ Everybody but Apple, and Windows Phone 7, with some exceptions based on phone model and OS.
- Apple, and Windows Phone 7.
Finally, a word on functionality. Phone and mobile OS developers: right now you are doing everything you can to make cell phones into little portable computers and entertainment media centers.
This is fine.
It’s also monumentally stupid.
I know that’s what sells units; I understand your average consumer loves to see little shiny UI elements fly around on their screen, spends hours playing Plants vs. Zombies while calls go to voicemail, and uses their monthly data transfer quota more for downloading Youtube upskirt video archives than sending and receiving communications with actual people.
I’m just saying, enough is enough.
Your phones all play music and video through painstakingly thought-out, beautifully designed, and precisely tuned interfaces, and have giant glossy screens and slide-out surround-sound speakers. You’ve spent countless man-hours developing the absolute best-looking way to have a UI element fade off screen after being dismissed, and different algorithms to index and search MP3 files on a memory card.
Fine.
Wonderful.
Just please, please spend some time now working on stuff that actually lets people get things done.
Picture time 10/2010
15
Oct
JJ came to visit for a few days, and we managed to grab some quality time together (at the expense of some of my clients’ sanity… sorry guys). Anyway, the vacation’s over and I’m back in the saddle.
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I’ve been fortunate enough to have become acquainted with several supposed five-star hotels; when I was young, our family vacations usually consisted of month-long jaunts to Europe, Southeast Asia, or the like, doing the tourist circuit and generally being frustrated with each other. The only definitive conclusion about five star hotels that I have been able to draw from this experience is that the value of a star is immensely variable, completely subjective, and often negotiable.
So, when I was making arrangements for JJ and me to celebrate our 1-year anniversary (short a week, but close enough), I figured I’d try to give her something she’s never or only very rarely encountered before, namely a taste of luxury. She’s stayed in upper scale hotels before… possibly once or twice, on business trips with her father… but the aforementioned variability is particularly evident here in China, and a five-star hotel somewhere like Wuhan may not rate much higher than a motel with a fancy lobby in the States.
And then there’s the question of… well, of class. In most higher-end hotels I’ve seen in China, they have two baskets of items that a customer might need. One is free for use; toothbrushes, shampoo, conditioner, hand soap, and so on. The other is kind of like a minibar, with a price tag stuck on each product, usually in unobvious places. They also consist of items that, when needed, customers in a bind would usually be willing to pay the exorbitant prices; things like condoms, lubricant, feminine hygiene products, and various kinds of OTC medication.
Not classy.
So, I opted to book a place I’d seen once before, visiting a friend who was staying there. Long story short, it was probably the best hotel I’ve ever stayed in from a design standpoint, but it was lacking in the service department. I posted a long and boring review on TripAdvisor, but here’s 6000 words’ worth for you:
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We hit up a massage parlor that Christine recommended, and it was amazing. After having experienced massage at the hands of this guy, I can honestly say that I have never really had a massage before.
We also went to Din Tai Fung (by pure chance, we were walking past it and I remembered Jishnu mentioning it), a Taiwanese restaurant. The Taipei branch has a Michelin star. I don’t know what to expect from Michelin ratings, really, but I certainly hope this branch is not representative of the one in Taipei. Every dish we tried was overpriced, under-seasoned, and overall a major disappointment. I would not visit that restaurant again if the food were free; the flavors are not worth the trip to their door.
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And we went to my favorite Indian restaurant in Shanghai, Lotus Land. JJ never had Indian food before, and she loved it all. We ate like maniacs and lived to regret it. We ordered the yellow dal, and it is the only place anywhere I’ve found that even gets close to the flavor of the Palace Restaurant (a.k.a Paki Palace) of my youth in Yanbu, K.S.A. Even at the tourist prices they charge, I’ll be back at the next opportunity.
After our dinner at Lotus Land, we cruised around the Tianzifang area… she bought me a hat, which was supposed to keep my ears from freezing this winter, but so far has just been used to make me look even more ridiculous than normal. I wore this hat during the check-out process at our hotel, which was great fun. I also bought her a hat, which is no use at all in cold weather, but I think looks great on her.
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And finally, after eating all that food, it turns out she likes the stuff I make the best, which I find very gratifying, but bodes ill for time away from washing dishes.
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Also, after decapitating, flaying, and disemboweling two or three pounds of live shrimp, feeling the tails push weakly against my hand as I peeled off the shells, and watching the internal muscles twitch madly after I butterflied them, I can honestly say that I am edging ever closer to vegetarianism… or at least, buying my shrimp frozen.
Seriously. Fuck everything about that.
Body Parts ‘n’ Crafts
03
Oct
I went to IKEA today to pick up some more coffee, having drunk (drank?) the last of mine yesterday. I’m down to finishing the espresso Christine left in the freezer. She thought it was instant coffee… connoisseur that she is, she enthused about the taste but declared it was strangely gritty.
Cowboy coffee made with espresso grounds is actually not that bad, especially if you’re patient. The fine grounds eventually settle to the bottom of the cup, where they form a thick muddy paste that is reluctant to budge even when you’re tipping the cup back for the last dregs of — admittedly sludgy — coffee. Yes, I am actually too lazy to decant into another cup. Nevertheless, effete as I am, I prefer normal coffee grounds that I can put through my Swissgold filter to effect that marginal, but essential, degree of separation that keeps me just above "hobo" status.
IKEA, being fairly nearby, stocking halfway decent coffee grounds, and not least having 3RMB hot dogs that are actually discernibly made of Meatâ„¢ rather than the slightly gluey, spongy concoction that normally passes for sausage filling around here, was the natural choice.
Incidentally, I still haven’t been able to figure out what’s inside the Chinese version of hot dogs. The flavor is not unlike an American hot dog of the lowest possible order, but the sensation is acutely peculiar. The entire experience is somewhat like eating a wet, hot, Saran-Wrapped, meat-flavoured sponge cake. I have also seen lifelong vegetarians (a couple of whom who are vegetarian for religious reasons) tuck into these with aplomb, which just adds to the mystery. But I digress.
I hopped the subway, worked my way through the crowds, got some coffee, a couple of kitchen implements, and a hot dog. Perfectly normal, aside from the 300,000 or so Chinese shoppers who accompanied me on my expedition; which, this being a Shanghai IKEA, does not quite lie outside the norm.
So, nothing special.
Fairly ho-hum.
Outside, on my way back to the subway, I walked past some guys crouched on the sidewalk, selling feet.
This is also not actually an unusual occurrence, given certain specific thresholds of unusuality and foot origin. Feet are a regular appearance on menus here, and chickens, ducks, and pigs regularly sacrifice their lower extremities for the ravenously snackaholic Chinese public.
These, though somewhat dessicated, were the size of saucers. They had large, black claws, along with some patches of dark fur and stringy-looking flesh. There were three sitting there on a yellow towel, one just a stub with all of the phalanges missing.
I glanced briefly at them and moved on, not really registering what they could be. Then, halfway across the street, I stopped and thought for a moment, then turn around. Pulling my camera out of my backpack, I started recording video and held it casually as I walked back towards them.
Sadly, there were now a couple of cops approaching as well, and the men were being harangued by a guy in a slightly pink shirt, possibly an incensed citizen or some kind of official in plainclothes. The paws had been packed up, and the men were looking distinctly shifty and eager to get away.
The policemen seemed uninterested; I am willing to bet all the coffee I have in the house that the poachers were simply lectured for a while longer by the Man In The White Shirt That Was Washed With A Red One By Accident At Some Point, and then skulked off to find some other Scandinavian big box home goods store outside of which to vend toes.
I made two passes with the video camera and walked away; I didn’t get any good footage, but I was able to pull a couple of barely usable stills.
So that was my weird story for today; i.e., I’m Pretty Sure I Saw Some Guys Selling (Panda?) Bear Feet Outside IKEA.
———————-
When I’m not coding all night and sleeping for two hours and then coding all day, or surreptitiously videotaping poachers, I have to occupy my time. My latest little obsession has to do with my Kindle 3, which has arrived thanks to the good graces of my parents’ friends, who were kind enough to bring it in their carry-on luggage from the States.
My obsession is actually not with the device itself. While I’m happy to be able to read long-form documents in comfort again, what I’m actually obsessing about is the fact that it didn’t come with a case.
Even my old Sony Pocket Reader, which I partly picked because it was the cheapest reputable one I could find, came with a basic but perfectly serviceable neoprene slip cover.
The Kindle, despite supposedly being a "premium" reader, comes with nothing. I suppose this is in order to help defray hardware costs by way of increasing sales of their self-branded covers, which by all accounts are satisfactory in that they perform the function they are meant to, but provide little in the way of real value to justify their cost. They’re also fairly bland, and have some serious flaws; for example, you can apparently crack your Kindle if you try to open the cover the wrong way.
So, even though I’m using (and quite happy with) my velcro wrap for the time being, I decided I wanted to try and make my own cover. I mean, I have an entire fabric market next door, complete with two tailor friends, and I just met a custom leatherworker down there the other day.
Making a case should be the easy part; I’ve made some cardboard cutouts from the Kindle box for the covers, and have mocked up a basic pattern already. I just need to set the measurements, ask the leather tailor to make a rawhide back and a suede inner, and stitch them together over the cardboard. Believe it or not, the Kindle box was the stiffest cardboard I could find; ‘hard-back’ books and journals here are about as robust as an unwrapped Kraft single, and I can’t find classic 3-ring binders with chipboard inserts anywhere, they’re just sheets of semi-rigid plastic.
The conceptual problem I’ve been having is how to attach the Kindle itself to the cover. Most commercial solutions I’ve seen use elastic bands, but I feel like they’re kind of flimsy, don’t hold the device in place very well, and cover up parts of the interface. Plus they look kind of ugly.
Most DIY solutions I’ve seen just make a big pocket for the Kindle to slide into, which is even worse, since it covers up most of the keyboard and all the ports/switches/buttons on the bottom. And it’s hideous.
Up till now, the front-running candidate for me was adhesive velcro strips; stick one side to the back of the Kindle, stitch or stick the other side onto the case, and you have a velcro-attached Kindle. The problem is, that glue is industrial strength, and I’m not at all sure I want a permanent velcro strip on the back of my Kindle. There’s also no telling how well the glue would hold on the suede inner, and the solution is far from elegant.
Other options seemed unlikely to be effective and/or outside the scope of my capabilities. Ryan C. suggested fabricating some metal pieces, but I seem to have temporarily misplaced my metal shop. I briefly thought a grippy silicone back with retaining tabs and snap fasteners would be perfect, but of course I don’t have any silicone, molds, or knowledge of how to even begin going about anything like that. Most other options would have required drilling holes/notches/grooves/slots in the Kindle, at which point having some permanent tape on the back of it started looking pretty attractive.
Today, walking through the supermarket, I think I found my answer. It was so simple, I was shocked it didn’t occur to me earlier:
Baoke brand "Sagacious" ballpoint pens.
They have 0.5mm tips, black gel-based ink, cost 4.9RMB per pair, and they’re made in Shantou City, Guangdong. Appropriately for their stature, the words "FINE PEN" are etched into them in no less than two places. They are, by far, the pinnacle of gel-ink based writing technology that can be had for 4.9RMB at the Nanpu Bridge branch of HaoYouDuo Supermarkets (a Wal-Mart company) in central Shanghai.
Yeah, I don’t care about any of that. I just want the pocket clips. Note the little plastic bumpers on the end, those are important too. Maybe. I originally bought these because the standoffs would help prevent scratches, but now I think I may remove them and epoxy on a piece of rubber to help grip the Kindle in place, or cover the whole thing in leather or fabric and stitch/glue on some kind of grippy surface.
I bought a pair of pens (5RMB), long-nose pliers (10RMB), and shuffled off home to… actually screw this, I’ll just post a few pictures, this should make sense:
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I was initially pretty dumb about bending the clips, I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to get the right kind of leverage. Luckily, the bottle opener on my Gerber Curve ended up being the perfect size and shape for the task.
I’ll eventually need six of these for a secure fit, two pairs on the sides (I may Dremel two clips short to fit in the pre-cut slots on the Kindle’s left side) and one slightly off-from-center pair for the vertical. I’ll have to sacrifice use of either the USB or headphone port while the case is in use. Since I don’t intend to use the headphone port, that’s probably what will get blocked.
Then I’ll find an old seatbelt (or a new one, it’s not like anybody uses them here anyway) or some kind of good strappy material, and cut it up to make straps; cut slots in the suede inner, ask the tailor to put buttonhole stitching around the slots for reinforcement, and thread the straps through them. Attach the straps to the clips, slide the Kindle onto the clips — which I will also wrap in something for appearances/scratch proofing (heat-shrink tubing would be perfect, if I could find it), and that should do it.
Anyway, I mostly posted this part for Ryan to see, since he wants to copy me.
Nerd love, bro.