I just added my pics of the Ecclesia stained glass window to the photography section of my site:
http://groovechickenstudios.com/Photography/Ecclesia.html
September 24, 2011
September 17, 2011
Motorola Photon 4G for Sprint Review
I just posted a pretty extensive review of the Motorola Photon 4G over at gdgt:
http://gdgt.com/motorola/photon-4g/reviews/f44/
To summarize, this phone feels like the future. Go check out the full review and feel free to join the community over there if you like discussing gadgets.
http://gdgt.com/motorola/photon-4g/reviews/f44/
To summarize, this phone feels like the future. Go check out the full review and feel free to join the community over there if you like discussing gadgets.
June 19, 2011
The Diamond Mako - A love story in five acts
Act 1: Love at first sight
In thinking about my answer to "What are your favorite gadgets on your gdgt lists and why?", I had so many thoughts about the device at the top of my list that I decided to make it a full-blown blog post. If I seem to ramble, I apologize in advance, but this is meant to be an ode to the one device that I loved more than a person should ever love inanimate objects. (feel free to skip to the "Epilogue" if you want a short summary)
I remember the day I first saw it. I was on my way out of Circuit City and made my customary pass by the last row of the computer section, where they kept the hot items to make them more visible. When I got to the last item, I stopped dead in my tracks. I couldn't believe my eyes... a folding device, with a full keyboard, that would fit in a pocket. I slowly moved up to it, glancing at the product placard on the way... Diamond Mako. How had I not heard of this before? I immediately started operating the touch screen and found the interface to be completely obvious and familiar. I opened the word processor and was delighted to find that it was a fairly competent piece of software. I started testing out the keyboard and found that I could type perfectly well in the word processor with it... not as fast as a real keyboard, but fast enough to do real writing, especially after a little practice.
This was like a revelation. I had been trying to finish my book about my journey to Ireland for years, and found that I could never stay on task when trying to write at home. Much like in college, I did my best writing at a coffee shop, away from the distractions of my daily life. I immediately began to have visions of finishing my book in the local coffee shop and beginning my next project. I couldn't justify the cost of a laptop at this point and none of the PDA type devices I had looked at before really intrigued me. I needed something mobile desperately, though.
The only problem was the cost... $299.99 is nothing to sneeze at even now, and it felt like a lot more back in 2001. Yes, it was a lot cheaper than a laptop, but still expensive in relation to my budget at the time. I left the store without it, of course, but I couldn't stop thinking about the possibilities for the next several days. After discussing it with my wife, I started saving money and managed to scrape enough together after a few weeks. While I was saving, though, I started doing some research online and discovered that the Diamond Mako was an American repackaging of the Psion Revo Plus. I started bookmarking pages of programs I planned to install when I purchased it. Of course, this was building up quite a bit of anticipation in me and I was hoping I would not be disappointed when I finally got it home.
Phase 2: To know the Mako is to love the Mako
The day finally arrived and I rushed home with my prize. I read through the manual while it was charging and installed the sync software on my PC, checking out the options to convert documents from the device over to Word format on the PC. I was stoked.
When the charging was through, I sat down and started writing the next section of my book. This was going to work. I then started entering my calendar into the calendar program on the Mako and setting alarms. I was thrilled to discover that the alarm would ring indefinitely until you told it to stop, even if it killed the battery in the process. I needed this to keep me on task. Over the course of the next few months, the calendar feature proved itself to be an even more valuable feature to me than the word processor, as this was a very busy and stressful time in my life. The calendar program worked exactly the way I think and made the Mako worth its weight in gold to me. I have never found another calendar program that I like as much or that is as useful to me. Everything I have used since feels like a clunky collection of half-solutions to produce the same results I got in one simple place on my Mako.
Next, I found myself loading up text files of things on my reading list, which allowed me to start getting reading done that I had been putting off. Being able to pull the Mako out of my pocket any time I had 10 minutes to spare and pick up where I left off was like adding another hour to my day. Granted, we have better dedicated reader programs now than we did then, but it worked, and it changed my vision of what a portable device should be.
The pinnacle of my Mako days was when I finished the first draft of my book, at long long last, while riding on a train returning home from Christmas vacation up north. The Mako had accomplished its goal admirably and helped me to complete my long-procrastinated work. I could have kissed it that day.
Act 3: Infidelity
About this time, another thing was happening in my tech world. I had discovered the Mac by using one at work and began longing for an end to the misery of dealing with Windows 98. I had reached a point where I hated Windows and couldn't wait for the day I shut that machine down one last time. Through some video work I was able to do, I finally managed to buy my first Mac. All was well with the world... almost. Only after the Mac was in my possession did I bother to look for Mac options for syncing up my Mako. It was not pretty. There were two Java-based projects I found, but neither was complete or bug-free, and I only managed to get one of the options to even pretend to work. This was a huge blow to morale. It meant that I had to fire up my Windows machine, the one I wanted to get rid of, every time I needed to sync my Mako or move files on or off.
This got to be irritating enough that I started looking for Mako replacements that would work with the Mac. At the time, that meant Palm Pilots. That was all that would work very well. The more I looked at Palm devices and portable keyboards, the more I tried to convince myself that they would be better in the long run. Deep down, though, I felt that I couldn't really forsake my beloved Mako... or could I?
Then fate happened. My Mako developed the dreaded rechargeable battery death problem. It would no longer charge properly and I couldn't get it to run on battery. I was sad, but, at the same time, I was hopeful that my extended warranty might get me a new Palm device since the Mako had been discontinued for a while. After sending it off and waiting for weeks, I finally got the call from the warranty company that I would receive a full credit of the original purchase price since they could not fix it. Now that the deal was done, I got excited about a new Mac-friendly device and used my credit to buy a Palm m125.
Act 4: Regret
It didn't take long for the excitement to fade. In fact, I felt sick to my stomach within minutes of seeing the ridiculous Palm Desktop sync software at work. How much more convoluted could they have made it if they tried? The Palm's address book and calendar felt like pathetic Fisher Price "My First PDA" garbage after using the Psion software. Not having a physical keyboard began to grate on me within days. And writing while on the go? Forget about it. The only thing this was very good at was keeping a shopping list. I felt duped, then angry, then depressed.
I very quickly began to regret my decision to send in my Mako. I wished that I had kept it and tried to find a way to replace the battery myself. It took me a few weeks to get over this feeling and just accept my fate. I made due with the Palm as best as I could, but I never liked it.
Act 5: Nostalgia
To this day, I have never found a portable device that I have loved the way I loved that Mako. Losing my Mako sent me on a perpetual quest, like seeking the Holy Grail, that I am still longing to complete. I have since tried the Sharp Zaurus 5500SL, which I liked in many ways, the Psion Series 5, which couldn't compete in terms of pocketability and reliability due to the AA batteries, and several modern phones including the original iPhone, the Nokia e71x, the Samsung Moment, and the HTC EVO. None have inspired in me the love and appreciation I had for the Mako.
Granted, my attempt to use a Psion Series 5 after years away from the Psion software showed me that we had come a long way since the days of the Mako in terms of software, but it did not quench my nostalgia completely. The Mako had the perfect form factor for the tasks I used it for, and none of my devices since have given me such a perfect balance of size, shape, weight, battery life, and keyboard. I have been watching the gadget world closely for a modern Revo-inspired device, but every close contender falls short in one way or another. So my nostalgia remains, possibly to never be satisfied. Perhaps one day this nostalgia will inspire me to give up the search and take matters into my own hands by learning enough electrical engineering to build a replacement myself. Rest assured, though, any company that builds a device that can truly replace the Mako in my heart will be the recipient of my undying affection.
Epilogue
I think the reason the Psion Revo / Revo Plus / Diamond Mako was such a winner is that it was designed and built by a company who saw a problem and wanted to provide a solid solution, believing they would be rewarded by those who would buy it, love it, and promote it. As we know, those kinds of aspirations don't always work out in the marketplace. The best products often fail to be the winners in their categories, losing to the "good enough" alternatives.
The Mako really felt like it was designed to solve a problem, and, for me, it did so perfectly, inspiring the most devoted affection I have ever held towards a gadget. Most modern devices feel like they are designed less to be a solution to specific problems, and more like they are built to be just good enough and flashy enough to get people to buy them so the company responsible can use the device as an ad platform, content sales mechanism, or multimedia ecosystem lock-in. Some might argue that I am too cynical in this opinion, but I would only challenge them to show me some examples of modern portable gadgets that really do address specific, and possibly niche, sets of needs. Sharp may be the only company with any shred of that attitude left, but they seem to have lost their will to soldier on. I thought I had found my answer in their IS01, but it hasn't gotten any attention and seems to be too under-powered to really handle the demands that Android will make of the hardware going forward. If I find one cheap enough, I may give it a shot, but its cost in comparison to other modern gadgets that fill similar needs makes it hard to justify.
If any of you Psion hardware designers are out there and listening, please know that there are still those of us who would love a modern Revo running Android, with a small high-res screen. If you can wade through the present climate of ecosystem lock-in that threatens to kill problem-solving innovation, it's not too late to come out of retirement and fill that Revo-sized hole in our hearts.
Todd Russell
In thinking about my answer to "What are your favorite gadgets on your gdgt lists and why?", I had so many thoughts about the device at the top of my list that I decided to make it a full-blown blog post. If I seem to ramble, I apologize in advance, but this is meant to be an ode to the one device that I loved more than a person should ever love inanimate objects. (feel free to skip to the "Epilogue" if you want a short summary)
I remember the day I first saw it. I was on my way out of Circuit City and made my customary pass by the last row of the computer section, where they kept the hot items to make them more visible. When I got to the last item, I stopped dead in my tracks. I couldn't believe my eyes... a folding device, with a full keyboard, that would fit in a pocket. I slowly moved up to it, glancing at the product placard on the way... Diamond Mako. How had I not heard of this before? I immediately started operating the touch screen and found the interface to be completely obvious and familiar. I opened the word processor and was delighted to find that it was a fairly competent piece of software. I started testing out the keyboard and found that I could type perfectly well in the word processor with it... not as fast as a real keyboard, but fast enough to do real writing, especially after a little practice.
This was like a revelation. I had been trying to finish my book about my journey to Ireland for years, and found that I could never stay on task when trying to write at home. Much like in college, I did my best writing at a coffee shop, away from the distractions of my daily life. I immediately began to have visions of finishing my book in the local coffee shop and beginning my next project. I couldn't justify the cost of a laptop at this point and none of the PDA type devices I had looked at before really intrigued me. I needed something mobile desperately, though.
The only problem was the cost... $299.99 is nothing to sneeze at even now, and it felt like a lot more back in 2001. Yes, it was a lot cheaper than a laptop, but still expensive in relation to my budget at the time. I left the store without it, of course, but I couldn't stop thinking about the possibilities for the next several days. After discussing it with my wife, I started saving money and managed to scrape enough together after a few weeks. While I was saving, though, I started doing some research online and discovered that the Diamond Mako was an American repackaging of the Psion Revo Plus. I started bookmarking pages of programs I planned to install when I purchased it. Of course, this was building up quite a bit of anticipation in me and I was hoping I would not be disappointed when I finally got it home.
Phase 2: To know the Mako is to love the Mako
The day finally arrived and I rushed home with my prize. I read through the manual while it was charging and installed the sync software on my PC, checking out the options to convert documents from the device over to Word format on the PC. I was stoked.
When the charging was through, I sat down and started writing the next section of my book. This was going to work. I then started entering my calendar into the calendar program on the Mako and setting alarms. I was thrilled to discover that the alarm would ring indefinitely until you told it to stop, even if it killed the battery in the process. I needed this to keep me on task. Over the course of the next few months, the calendar feature proved itself to be an even more valuable feature to me than the word processor, as this was a very busy and stressful time in my life. The calendar program worked exactly the way I think and made the Mako worth its weight in gold to me. I have never found another calendar program that I like as much or that is as useful to me. Everything I have used since feels like a clunky collection of half-solutions to produce the same results I got in one simple place on my Mako.
Next, I found myself loading up text files of things on my reading list, which allowed me to start getting reading done that I had been putting off. Being able to pull the Mako out of my pocket any time I had 10 minutes to spare and pick up where I left off was like adding another hour to my day. Granted, we have better dedicated reader programs now than we did then, but it worked, and it changed my vision of what a portable device should be.
The pinnacle of my Mako days was when I finished the first draft of my book, at long long last, while riding on a train returning home from Christmas vacation up north. The Mako had accomplished its goal admirably and helped me to complete my long-procrastinated work. I could have kissed it that day.
Act 3: Infidelity
About this time, another thing was happening in my tech world. I had discovered the Mac by using one at work and began longing for an end to the misery of dealing with Windows 98. I had reached a point where I hated Windows and couldn't wait for the day I shut that machine down one last time. Through some video work I was able to do, I finally managed to buy my first Mac. All was well with the world... almost. Only after the Mac was in my possession did I bother to look for Mac options for syncing up my Mako. It was not pretty. There were two Java-based projects I found, but neither was complete or bug-free, and I only managed to get one of the options to even pretend to work. This was a huge blow to morale. It meant that I had to fire up my Windows machine, the one I wanted to get rid of, every time I needed to sync my Mako or move files on or off.
This got to be irritating enough that I started looking for Mako replacements that would work with the Mac. At the time, that meant Palm Pilots. That was all that would work very well. The more I looked at Palm devices and portable keyboards, the more I tried to convince myself that they would be better in the long run. Deep down, though, I felt that I couldn't really forsake my beloved Mako... or could I?
Then fate happened. My Mako developed the dreaded rechargeable battery death problem. It would no longer charge properly and I couldn't get it to run on battery. I was sad, but, at the same time, I was hopeful that my extended warranty might get me a new Palm device since the Mako had been discontinued for a while. After sending it off and waiting for weeks, I finally got the call from the warranty company that I would receive a full credit of the original purchase price since they could not fix it. Now that the deal was done, I got excited about a new Mac-friendly device and used my credit to buy a Palm m125.
Act 4: Regret
It didn't take long for the excitement to fade. In fact, I felt sick to my stomach within minutes of seeing the ridiculous Palm Desktop sync software at work. How much more convoluted could they have made it if they tried? The Palm's address book and calendar felt like pathetic Fisher Price "My First PDA" garbage after using the Psion software. Not having a physical keyboard began to grate on me within days. And writing while on the go? Forget about it. The only thing this was very good at was keeping a shopping list. I felt duped, then angry, then depressed.
I very quickly began to regret my decision to send in my Mako. I wished that I had kept it and tried to find a way to replace the battery myself. It took me a few weeks to get over this feeling and just accept my fate. I made due with the Palm as best as I could, but I never liked it.
Act 5: Nostalgia
To this day, I have never found a portable device that I have loved the way I loved that Mako. Losing my Mako sent me on a perpetual quest, like seeking the Holy Grail, that I am still longing to complete. I have since tried the Sharp Zaurus 5500SL, which I liked in many ways, the Psion Series 5, which couldn't compete in terms of pocketability and reliability due to the AA batteries, and several modern phones including the original iPhone, the Nokia e71x, the Samsung Moment, and the HTC EVO. None have inspired in me the love and appreciation I had for the Mako.
Granted, my attempt to use a Psion Series 5 after years away from the Psion software showed me that we had come a long way since the days of the Mako in terms of software, but it did not quench my nostalgia completely. The Mako had the perfect form factor for the tasks I used it for, and none of my devices since have given me such a perfect balance of size, shape, weight, battery life, and keyboard. I have been watching the gadget world closely for a modern Revo-inspired device, but every close contender falls short in one way or another. So my nostalgia remains, possibly to never be satisfied. Perhaps one day this nostalgia will inspire me to give up the search and take matters into my own hands by learning enough electrical engineering to build a replacement myself. Rest assured, though, any company that builds a device that can truly replace the Mako in my heart will be the recipient of my undying affection.
Epilogue
I think the reason the Psion Revo / Revo Plus / Diamond Mako was such a winner is that it was designed and built by a company who saw a problem and wanted to provide a solid solution, believing they would be rewarded by those who would buy it, love it, and promote it. As we know, those kinds of aspirations don't always work out in the marketplace. The best products often fail to be the winners in their categories, losing to the "good enough" alternatives.
The Mako really felt like it was designed to solve a problem, and, for me, it did so perfectly, inspiring the most devoted affection I have ever held towards a gadget. Most modern devices feel like they are designed less to be a solution to specific problems, and more like they are built to be just good enough and flashy enough to get people to buy them so the company responsible can use the device as an ad platform, content sales mechanism, or multimedia ecosystem lock-in. Some might argue that I am too cynical in this opinion, but I would only challenge them to show me some examples of modern portable gadgets that really do address specific, and possibly niche, sets of needs. Sharp may be the only company with any shred of that attitude left, but they seem to have lost their will to soldier on. I thought I had found my answer in their IS01, but it hasn't gotten any attention and seems to be too under-powered to really handle the demands that Android will make of the hardware going forward. If I find one cheap enough, I may give it a shot, but its cost in comparison to other modern gadgets that fill similar needs makes it hard to justify.
If any of you Psion hardware designers are out there and listening, please know that there are still those of us who would love a modern Revo running Android, with a small high-res screen. If you can wade through the present climate of ecosystem lock-in that threatens to kill problem-solving innovation, it's not too late to come out of retirement and fill that Revo-sized hole in our hearts.
Todd Russell
June 16, 2011
May 23, 2011
Why I hate Android...
Anyone who talks tech with me should be scratching their heads at the title of this post. "Hates Android? I thought he was an Android fanboy?" Actually, yes, I am... which is why I am hating Android. No, I'm not bipolar, but I can see how you might need this statement clarified.
I absolutely adore Android. I have been using computers and gadgets since the 80s and have experience with a wide variety of operating systems. Android is, by far, my favorite "small form factor" operating system from the list of those I have used regularly. I even like it better than some of the desktop operating systems I have used. I'm even crazy enough to have tried running it on my netbook.
The problem comes in when that operating system I love gets put into use by the current cabal of hardware manufacturers. If only I could get a pure, unedited version of Android on hardware that is nice and actually works as expected, I would never be able to write such an opening title.
My first Android device was the Samsung Moment. It was running Android 1.6. It was a pure Android, with no custom modifications by Samsung. I adored this phone. The keyboard was great, and Android lived up to almost all my expectations. When Android 2.1 arrived on it, I loved it even more... Well, mostly.
You see, there was this one "small" issue. I call it small because Samsung has never been bothered to treat it as anything more than that. Unfortunately, for those of us who live in areas with meager signal strength, it was rage-inducing. Whenever the phone would switch from a 3G signal to a 1X signal then back to 3G, it would cause the cell radio to lock up. No calls, no data, and no way to fix it but a reboot... Which would take at least 2 minutes. In our area, this would happen almost every time you entered a large aluminum-roofed structure, a.k.a. a store.
The day I stood in Office Depot rebooting my phone 3 times in a row before I could make a call was the day I gave up on this phone that I otherwise loved.
I suffered with this until I could get an EVO, which took a while due to the supply shortage. Within days, I was almost willing to go back to the Moment. You see, HTC, in their infinite wisdom, decided they could make a better interface than Google, which they call "Sense". After having spent almost a year using a stock Android install, I hated every change HTC had made. The music player was downright ugly and looked like something designed by a honky disco king. I despised it. Unfortunately, you can't just download Google's stock music player. I finally found a slightly modified version of the stock player in the Marketplace, which relieved most of this annoyance.
Then there was the browser. Try as I might, I could not figure out how to make the thing stop running in fullscreen mode. I must have gone through the settings 10 times desperately looking for it. I finally accepted defeat and downloaded Dolphin Browser, which was good enough, but sometimes just didn't feel as snappy. While the gestures can be useful, there were enough accidental triggers of features in my daily usage that I could just manage to tolerate using it, but never liked it.
Then there was the modified calendar app. I liked the clean look of the stock one, but this was ugly in the same ways the music player was. Worst of all, though, were the bugs. I experienced constant syncing problems with it. I would add an event to my Google Calendar at work in my browser and set a reminder, only to get angry hours later when I realized I had forgotten something important because the phone never picked up the new item. It would go the other way, as well. Sometimes, I'd add something from my phone and it would never make its way up to Google. Other times, I would add an event from my phone, then, when I realized I had missed the event I would check to see that the event had mysteriously vanished from the calendar on the phone altogether. It was so bad that I stopped using the calendar app and started using the browser version of the Calendar site, with reminders being sent to me from Google by SMS.
Then there were issues with the wifi radio that would cause connections to mysteriously stop working properly even though the phone still indicated that it had a working wifi connection. I would often have to turn wifi off then back on to get it working again. It would also cause weird issues with downloaded audio files (whether through the browser or Google Listen) where the audio files would have missing bits throughout them. It was as if wireless packets had been dropped and the OS did not realize it, and just treated the file as if it had been fully downloaded. I never experienced issues like this on the Moment.
After about 9 months of this pain, I decided to root the EVO and put CyanogenMod7 Beta on it. I loved Android 2.3 and the additional abilities that came with having a rooted phone, but there were so many bugs that I decided to go back to version 6 until the final release of 7, which I am on now. Throughout all this, I have continued to experience the wifi radio problem, though not always, just on certain update versions. So, even Cyanogen can't seem to save me from HTC's radio engineers.
I have looked at the other Android options on Sprint, but they haven't been much better. At first, I had thought about switching to the Samsung Epic, until I read about all the GPS problems with it. Then I thought about the successor to the Moment, but the keyboard on it was terrible, the hardware was actually lower specs than the Moment, and... big surprise... I was reading a lot of complaints from users due to major bugs. There was the Hero, but that had its own set of issues, in addition to having too small a screen to want to use a virtual keyboard on a daily basis.
And so the story goes. Even now, all this time later, it seems like every Android phone on the market has some ghetto custom skin on it from the manufacturer and / or some fairly major hardware problem of one sort or another... or it is an AT&T phone, which I won't even consider. At this time, the Samsung Nexus S is the only fairly stock build of Android you can get. After all the other problems with Samsung's radios in the past, can I really have any faith that the Nexus S will be any better? I'm looking into the EVO Shift, which looks nice from a hardware perspective, but has Sense on it... oh, and of course, I have found a lot of complaints from owners of fairly major bugs.
And this is why I hate Android. It's not that I hate Android itself, but that I can't actually buy what I would consider a "real" Android phone from a company that makes reliable hardware. It's really Android in its current state in the market that I hate. All I want is a phone that is well-built, with a nice keyboard, that has no radio issues of any sort, and that runs a stock build of Android that gets its updates immediately after they are released by Google. Is that so much to ask? Apparently.
Will this utopia ever exist? It is starting to look as if it will not. The few attempts by Google to work closely with hardware manufacturers to make something like what I want haven't turned out to be huge successes. I can't see Google ever making their own hardware, and I guess I wouldn't really recommend that they do, either, since they have bigger fish to fry in the software and platform arenas. So, I am left with a thirst that cannot be quenched, living with compromises and daily annoyances, clinging to the hope that some company will finally decide to stop counting pennies and just do the right thing. Until that day, I am left with my bitterness... hating not the Android that should be, but the Android that is.
Todd Russell
May 24, 2011
I absolutely adore Android. I have been using computers and gadgets since the 80s and have experience with a wide variety of operating systems. Android is, by far, my favorite "small form factor" operating system from the list of those I have used regularly. I even like it better than some of the desktop operating systems I have used. I'm even crazy enough to have tried running it on my netbook.
The problem comes in when that operating system I love gets put into use by the current cabal of hardware manufacturers. If only I could get a pure, unedited version of Android on hardware that is nice and actually works as expected, I would never be able to write such an opening title.
My first Android device was the Samsung Moment. It was running Android 1.6. It was a pure Android, with no custom modifications by Samsung. I adored this phone. The keyboard was great, and Android lived up to almost all my expectations. When Android 2.1 arrived on it, I loved it even more... Well, mostly.
You see, there was this one "small" issue. I call it small because Samsung has never been bothered to treat it as anything more than that. Unfortunately, for those of us who live in areas with meager signal strength, it was rage-inducing. Whenever the phone would switch from a 3G signal to a 1X signal then back to 3G, it would cause the cell radio to lock up. No calls, no data, and no way to fix it but a reboot... Which would take at least 2 minutes. In our area, this would happen almost every time you entered a large aluminum-roofed structure, a.k.a. a store.
The day I stood in Office Depot rebooting my phone 3 times in a row before I could make a call was the day I gave up on this phone that I otherwise loved.
I suffered with this until I could get an EVO, which took a while due to the supply shortage. Within days, I was almost willing to go back to the Moment. You see, HTC, in their infinite wisdom, decided they could make a better interface than Google, which they call "Sense". After having spent almost a year using a stock Android install, I hated every change HTC had made. The music player was downright ugly and looked like something designed by a honky disco king. I despised it. Unfortunately, you can't just download Google's stock music player. I finally found a slightly modified version of the stock player in the Marketplace, which relieved most of this annoyance.
Then there was the browser. Try as I might, I could not figure out how to make the thing stop running in fullscreen mode. I must have gone through the settings 10 times desperately looking for it. I finally accepted defeat and downloaded Dolphin Browser, which was good enough, but sometimes just didn't feel as snappy. While the gestures can be useful, there were enough accidental triggers of features in my daily usage that I could just manage to tolerate using it, but never liked it.
Then there was the modified calendar app. I liked the clean look of the stock one, but this was ugly in the same ways the music player was. Worst of all, though, were the bugs. I experienced constant syncing problems with it. I would add an event to my Google Calendar at work in my browser and set a reminder, only to get angry hours later when I realized I had forgotten something important because the phone never picked up the new item. It would go the other way, as well. Sometimes, I'd add something from my phone and it would never make its way up to Google. Other times, I would add an event from my phone, then, when I realized I had missed the event I would check to see that the event had mysteriously vanished from the calendar on the phone altogether. It was so bad that I stopped using the calendar app and started using the browser version of the Calendar site, with reminders being sent to me from Google by SMS.
Then there were issues with the wifi radio that would cause connections to mysteriously stop working properly even though the phone still indicated that it had a working wifi connection. I would often have to turn wifi off then back on to get it working again. It would also cause weird issues with downloaded audio files (whether through the browser or Google Listen) where the audio files would have missing bits throughout them. It was as if wireless packets had been dropped and the OS did not realize it, and just treated the file as if it had been fully downloaded. I never experienced issues like this on the Moment.
After about 9 months of this pain, I decided to root the EVO and put CyanogenMod7 Beta on it. I loved Android 2.3 and the additional abilities that came with having a rooted phone, but there were so many bugs that I decided to go back to version 6 until the final release of 7, which I am on now. Throughout all this, I have continued to experience the wifi radio problem, though not always, just on certain update versions. So, even Cyanogen can't seem to save me from HTC's radio engineers.
I have looked at the other Android options on Sprint, but they haven't been much better. At first, I had thought about switching to the Samsung Epic, until I read about all the GPS problems with it. Then I thought about the successor to the Moment, but the keyboard on it was terrible, the hardware was actually lower specs than the Moment, and... big surprise... I was reading a lot of complaints from users due to major bugs. There was the Hero, but that had its own set of issues, in addition to having too small a screen to want to use a virtual keyboard on a daily basis.
And so the story goes. Even now, all this time later, it seems like every Android phone on the market has some ghetto custom skin on it from the manufacturer and / or some fairly major hardware problem of one sort or another... or it is an AT&T phone, which I won't even consider. At this time, the Samsung Nexus S is the only fairly stock build of Android you can get. After all the other problems with Samsung's radios in the past, can I really have any faith that the Nexus S will be any better? I'm looking into the EVO Shift, which looks nice from a hardware perspective, but has Sense on it... oh, and of course, I have found a lot of complaints from owners of fairly major bugs.
And this is why I hate Android. It's not that I hate Android itself, but that I can't actually buy what I would consider a "real" Android phone from a company that makes reliable hardware. It's really Android in its current state in the market that I hate. All I want is a phone that is well-built, with a nice keyboard, that has no radio issues of any sort, and that runs a stock build of Android that gets its updates immediately after they are released by Google. Is that so much to ask? Apparently.
Will this utopia ever exist? It is starting to look as if it will not. The few attempts by Google to work closely with hardware manufacturers to make something like what I want haven't turned out to be huge successes. I can't see Google ever making their own hardware, and I guess I wouldn't really recommend that they do, either, since they have bigger fish to fry in the software and platform arenas. So, I am left with a thirst that cannot be quenched, living with compromises and daily annoyances, clinging to the hope that some company will finally decide to stop counting pennies and just do the right thing. Until that day, I am left with my bitterness... hating not the Android that should be, but the Android that is.
Todd Russell
May 24, 2011
March 3, 2011
January 23, 2011
Love covers a multitude of sins
Recently, my wife's grandmother passed away. To all of us in the family, and many outside it, she was "Gram". Everywhere she went, she made connections with people that they would never forget. To this day, there are still people who met Gram at our wedding that will ask me, "How's Gram?", whenever I bump into them. And as I relay the news to those people the next time I see them, there will be genuine disappointment in their eyes as they say they are sorry to hear it.
Gram lived to be 92. She saw a lot in her lifetime. In all the years I knew her, the one thing that most defined her to me was her interest in people. When I first met her, she had me take her arm, and we went down to the family room to sit by the fire and chat for what must have been nearly 2 hours. What she did to me, and to so many others that she ran into for the first time, was to ask a lot of questions. She always wanted to know who you were, where you were from, where your family is from, what you do, and a whole host of other questions that would spring from those. And then she would tell you about herself, which inevitably led to some funny story about the latest event in her life. When I met her, she was still telling the story of "the shawl". I think that is the story that made her the life of the party for a handful of the attendees at our wedding.
No matter what you talked about, though, there was sure to be laughter. Gram loved to laugh, and she had one of the best laughs I've ever encountered. She would tilt her head back, lean toward you, put her hand on your arm, and dive right into this great big belly laugh that would shake her whole body. It was contagious.
Over the years, we often chuckled at the many times Gram would start asking questions of perfect strangers, leading them into a series of laughter and funny stories that those people would always mention if we ever saw them again. Door men, flight attendants, friends, relatives... it didn't matter who you were, she'd ask you questions and tell you stories and make you part of her life.
Even to the end, this trend held true. A doctor who came to check on her in the last days at hospice got "the grilling" about who she was, whether she had any family, how old she was, etc.... And she wasn't afraid to give her advice either. "You've been doing this for 35 years?! You need to retire and live life a little. It's later than you think." In that brief encounter, even that doctor was so touched by Gram's interest in her as a person that she later referred to it again. And that is why people everywhere never forgot "Gram", or "Anna" as many of them knew her.
A few nights after we arrived in Pennsylvania for the funeral, Mary Beth's family was all gathered in the family room to go through the questionnaire that the parish sends out to gather info about a deceased person so that a priest will know something about them before the funeral. The resident priest, who certainly knew Gram well enough not to need this, was out of town and we would have a visiting priest to do the funeral, so we needed to go through this. Although we were going to go around the room and give answers to the questions for Kerry to record, we ended up just telling stories, reminiscing, and sharing the things that we had learned from Gram. It was a great bonding experience. And throughout this time together, there was a lot of laughter.
Certainly, like every one of us, Gram had her rough spots and faults. Everyone in that room knew most of them, some all too well. However, as we talked and laughed and cried, all those things were forgotten and forgiven... passed into memory like the leaves of autumn. And what remained was the laughter, the love, and the memories of generosity, care, and concern. To be quite honest, it all felt like a foretaste of heaven. I couldn't help but wonder if, somehow, our individual times of judgment would be like this... with Christ, the angels, the saints, and perhaps some of our deceased loved ones gathered around to discuss with us what our lives had become in our time on earth.
I suddenly understood the passage from the Bible, "love covers a multitude of sins", in a whole new light. While there were hurts and faults that each of us remembered, the love and laughter she had shared far outshone those things, for we all have faults and sins, but not all of us have love. That love was what we remembered and shared as we discussed Gram's life.
This had an impact on me and made me reflect on my own life. Everywhere Gram went, she left behind a trail of laughter. What kind of trail am I leaving behind? If I died today, would my loved ones sit around and forget my many faults and failings, telling stories of the times I had made them laugh or feel loved? Or would they sit around and talk about the weather and the sports for lack of anything positive to say?
For, while we were passing over Gram's rough spots in light of the far greater memories of love and laughter, surely there are many who leave behind nothing but a trail of pain, sorrow, and bitter memories. And now I realized how sad it must be at their passing, for if there is no love to cover their multitude of sins, is that the surest sign that their salvation is unlikely? Some theologians say that, in heaven, we will not mourn the lost because it will be to us as if they never were. Is this experience the key to understanding that assertion? We forgot Gram's faults, or at least found the lesser ones cause for further humor and laughter, and we were left with many happy memories. But what of those for whom there are only unhappy memories? As the memory of those faults passes, and there is nothing left afterwards, will it be that they will pass entirely out of memory as their loved ones go on to heaven, so that it was as if they never were?
So I ask myself (and I encourage you, reader, to do likewise): what kind of trail am I leaving behind? Will there be a gathering of friends and family to laugh and share stories of me at my passing, or will they simply forget me and move on with their lives, with no hope of ever seeing me again? What in my life is of lasting worth, that will live beyond the passing of this frail, temporal frame? Love covers a multitude of sins, and there must I begin, keeping the end ever in mind.
That night after having that discussion, I had a vision flash into my mind of Gram seeing her deceased daughter and husband in heaven, letting out her "belly laugh", filled with unspeakable joy, and running to embrace them. I pray that when I pass from this life, there will be enough love in my life to carry into eternity, that there will be someone waiting to embrace me as well, and that there will be those who sit around together and laugh, looking forward to the day when we will be reunited.
Peace,
Todd Russell
January 23, 2011
Gram lived to be 92. She saw a lot in her lifetime. In all the years I knew her, the one thing that most defined her to me was her interest in people. When I first met her, she had me take her arm, and we went down to the family room to sit by the fire and chat for what must have been nearly 2 hours. What she did to me, and to so many others that she ran into for the first time, was to ask a lot of questions. She always wanted to know who you were, where you were from, where your family is from, what you do, and a whole host of other questions that would spring from those. And then she would tell you about herself, which inevitably led to some funny story about the latest event in her life. When I met her, she was still telling the story of "the shawl". I think that is the story that made her the life of the party for a handful of the attendees at our wedding.
No matter what you talked about, though, there was sure to be laughter. Gram loved to laugh, and she had one of the best laughs I've ever encountered. She would tilt her head back, lean toward you, put her hand on your arm, and dive right into this great big belly laugh that would shake her whole body. It was contagious.
Over the years, we often chuckled at the many times Gram would start asking questions of perfect strangers, leading them into a series of laughter and funny stories that those people would always mention if we ever saw them again. Door men, flight attendants, friends, relatives... it didn't matter who you were, she'd ask you questions and tell you stories and make you part of her life.
Even to the end, this trend held true. A doctor who came to check on her in the last days at hospice got "the grilling" about who she was, whether she had any family, how old she was, etc.... And she wasn't afraid to give her advice either. "You've been doing this for 35 years?! You need to retire and live life a little. It's later than you think." In that brief encounter, even that doctor was so touched by Gram's interest in her as a person that she later referred to it again. And that is why people everywhere never forgot "Gram", or "Anna" as many of them knew her.
A few nights after we arrived in Pennsylvania for the funeral, Mary Beth's family was all gathered in the family room to go through the questionnaire that the parish sends out to gather info about a deceased person so that a priest will know something about them before the funeral. The resident priest, who certainly knew Gram well enough not to need this, was out of town and we would have a visiting priest to do the funeral, so we needed to go through this. Although we were going to go around the room and give answers to the questions for Kerry to record, we ended up just telling stories, reminiscing, and sharing the things that we had learned from Gram. It was a great bonding experience. And throughout this time together, there was a lot of laughter.
Certainly, like every one of us, Gram had her rough spots and faults. Everyone in that room knew most of them, some all too well. However, as we talked and laughed and cried, all those things were forgotten and forgiven... passed into memory like the leaves of autumn. And what remained was the laughter, the love, and the memories of generosity, care, and concern. To be quite honest, it all felt like a foretaste of heaven. I couldn't help but wonder if, somehow, our individual times of judgment would be like this... with Christ, the angels, the saints, and perhaps some of our deceased loved ones gathered around to discuss with us what our lives had become in our time on earth.
I suddenly understood the passage from the Bible, "love covers a multitude of sins", in a whole new light. While there were hurts and faults that each of us remembered, the love and laughter she had shared far outshone those things, for we all have faults and sins, but not all of us have love. That love was what we remembered and shared as we discussed Gram's life.
This had an impact on me and made me reflect on my own life. Everywhere Gram went, she left behind a trail of laughter. What kind of trail am I leaving behind? If I died today, would my loved ones sit around and forget my many faults and failings, telling stories of the times I had made them laugh or feel loved? Or would they sit around and talk about the weather and the sports for lack of anything positive to say?
For, while we were passing over Gram's rough spots in light of the far greater memories of love and laughter, surely there are many who leave behind nothing but a trail of pain, sorrow, and bitter memories. And now I realized how sad it must be at their passing, for if there is no love to cover their multitude of sins, is that the surest sign that their salvation is unlikely? Some theologians say that, in heaven, we will not mourn the lost because it will be to us as if they never were. Is this experience the key to understanding that assertion? We forgot Gram's faults, or at least found the lesser ones cause for further humor and laughter, and we were left with many happy memories. But what of those for whom there are only unhappy memories? As the memory of those faults passes, and there is nothing left afterwards, will it be that they will pass entirely out of memory as their loved ones go on to heaven, so that it was as if they never were?
So I ask myself (and I encourage you, reader, to do likewise): what kind of trail am I leaving behind? Will there be a gathering of friends and family to laugh and share stories of me at my passing, or will they simply forget me and move on with their lives, with no hope of ever seeing me again? What in my life is of lasting worth, that will live beyond the passing of this frail, temporal frame? Love covers a multitude of sins, and there must I begin, keeping the end ever in mind.
That night after having that discussion, I had a vision flash into my mind of Gram seeing her deceased daughter and husband in heaven, letting out her "belly laugh", filled with unspeakable joy, and running to embrace them. I pray that when I pass from this life, there will be enough love in my life to carry into eternity, that there will be someone waiting to embrace me as well, and that there will be those who sit around together and laugh, looking forward to the day when we will be reunited.
Peace,
Todd Russell
January 23, 2011
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