Hand-computering, nickels and dimes

[rebeccmeister]

The new swab-n-dab sure comes with a lot of pre-installed junk, argh (note: it's a Samsung Galaxy S4). It's taking me a little while to figure out how to manage it and such, seeing as I have to get it to talk to Mac OS 10.8 and learn about its creeps and beeps. On the same day that I ordered the SIM card for it, I ordered a nano-sd card that has almost as much memory as the laptop I owned previous to this one. I also went ahead and ordered up a case for it that should protect against getting caught out in thunderstorms without a ziploc baggie (supposedly waterproof to a depth of 6 ft). Not quite a Pelican case, but close. Hopefully that will all suffice for the initial money-hemorrhage.

I think this swab-n-dab cost less than the first digital camera I ever bought, the one that lasted a good six years before it died utterly and then got stolen. It appears to have as good a camera, although it's going to take some fiddling to learn about macro photography options with it.

The second I turned it on, it got super-nosy about my personal business (no thanks, device). I've observed many people who get almost-constant notifications from their devices, which seems like a horrible form of self-torture. I wonder if there are apps that notify you when you have notifications. (I don't actually wonder that.)

Any suggestions on good ways to think about managing apps? I'm considering writing out a list of the things I want this hand-computer to know about and manage as a starting point (e.g. pictures, music, gups-nagivation for bicycling [i.e. GPS navigation], phone calls). I don't want to throw money to corporations that are lame about personal privacy and advertising (e.g. the Googly, Amazonia, snApple).

It needs some stickers on the back.

Comments

[twoeleven.livejournal.com]

The new swab-n-dab sure comes with a lot of pre-installed junk, argh (note: it's a Samsung Galaxy S4). It's taking me a little while to figure out how to manage it and such, seeing as I have to get it to talk to Mac OS 10.8 and learn about its creeps and beeps.
:) You're getting close to the Official Conservative Motto: Change is bad, "progress" is a myth, and "innovation" is a threat to the proper order.

Out of curiosity, what technological era do you think you'd be happy in?

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

"Pre-installed junk" is software applications that I haven't asked for. I don't think I'm going to go so far as to root the device, but I'm going to perform fairly major app-surgery on it.

I understand that computers generally require some level of configuration and babysitting, especially during the setup phase. When I got the present laptop, I had a prior machine from which to transfer over many settings and preferences, and the transfer process has been streamlined by commercial OS developers like Apple and Microsoft. I've had many discussions with scrottie about the benefits and drawbacks of switching over to an open-source OS like ye olde Linux-based Ubuntu, but for desktop computing I eventually decided that OS X is adequate for the majority of my purposes, and after all, it's also a Unix-based system.

Regarding technological eras: More than anything, I'm curious to learn whether scrottie's observations about technological trends continue to be true - he's paid pretty good attention to the history of touchscreens, PDAs, 3D graphics, et cetera, over the past 30 years, and has noted cyclical patterns in the popularity of particular "innovations" (hey there, phablets and netbooks!).

I'm tremendously grateful for the digitization of academic literature, that's for sure.

[twoeleven.livejournal.com]

Sure, there are cycles, early flowerings, abortive attempts, and all sorts of other goodies superimposed on continuous but erratic technological advance.¹ "Cloud computing" is YA variation on client-server architectures in my lifetime, and Mr. Musk's "Tesla" is the third or fourth attempt/flowering/cycle of electric vehicles. And yet there's something different about them from the last go round...

1: What I mean by that is something like punctuated equilibrium in many traits at once, but of course, technological advance is (more or less) intelligent design.

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

Flowering cycles, I love it!

[twoeleven.livejournal.com]

Oh, please don't get me started on "why I junked L*n*x for OSX". I could go on for pages, and you don't want to read it any more than I want to write it. :)

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

Yes, you can stop there. I have peered far enough into the darkness enough myself, and I already hear plenty about it from one grouchy programmer who has to deal with it on one end, and Internet Explorer on the other.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

One of my coworkers has a sticker that looks just like a Memorex tape cassette on the back of his phone. I love that.

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking I might go for some of the wacky reflective stuff I put on everything, but I do appreciate the cassette tape look!