Announcement announcement!

So here's my deal:  I'm really wordy. I have a lot of thoughts in my head and I'm a fast typist, and I end up writing quite a lot.

I write quite a few blog posts.  You wouldn't know it from looking at this site, but I do write a lot of them.  Most of them don't get published.  Why not?  First line, second sentence.  I'm a wordy guy.  Shouldn't that work for my post count, not against?  Well, in theory...

More on the Galaxy Note

I've seen mention of Samsung's Galaxy Note in a few places online, and people seemed to look at it like it was a joke.  Reminded me of the way that reviews treated the HTC Flyer.  They looked at the specs and didn't understand the price, failing to see the value that a stylus could add. I'll admit, I wasn't sold on a 5" stylus-bearing device, until I saw this:

Image blatantly copied from Samsung's site (this page), which I assume they're fine with because a large chunk of advertising for the Galaxy Note involves the phone's users copying and pasting images from the web.

Look at the right side of the image.  The phone appears to be on a Moleskine-style notebook.  Brilliant. That's what this phone is trying to replace.  Sold.  Right there, I get it.

For those of you scratching your heads right now, Moleskine notebooks are those little leather-bound ones you've probably seen art students writing in furiously while out and about.  They're resilient.  They come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and a lot of different configurations.  They make books with blank pages for sketching, books with music staffs, books for graphing.  See image below (nabbed from this page on Moleskine's site).

I was once given a Moleskine notebook from a very close friend.  I liked it so much that I can never use it. Too much pressure.  I do too much crossing out, I throw too many pages away.  I prefer to type now, but when I wrote, I did it on legal pads, then later I collected individual pages in folders.  I write too much shit to put it in rugged notebooks with archival ink, saved forever as reference material.

I liked the size of the notebook, though.  I am a big fan of the form factor.  Hey, for years I've been begging for a phone the size of the Nokia N800 (5.7 x 3 inches, pictured below), except all screen, no buttons or speakers on the face.  The Galaxy Note is almost dead on (5.74 x 3.266 inches).

Wait a second.  I haven't seen a Galaxy Note in person, I didn't realize that their dimensions were so close until I just now looked it up.  The Galaxy Note is pretty much the same freaking size as the Nokia N800---THAT IS SO FREAKING COOL!!!  Bravo Samsung, you just made a 29-year-old boy's dream come true!

Anyway, the Galaxy Note is almost the same size as the N800, but it comes with an additional feature I don't think I would have asked for from a phone--an active digitizer.

There are some problems.  For one, it hasn't been released in the US.  It's rumored to be slowly making it's way here, but it needs to be sooner rather than later.  Processors are getting outdated faster than ever.  Also, I understand a delay of a few weeks or even a month, but why a delay of many months between releasing a device in one country and then another?  Wait, they have to physically manufacture these devices to work with different regional networks?  And there are oceans IRL (unlike in cyberspace)?  Okay then.

Another potential problem would arise if they don't stand behind this phone in the US.  Look, I have this phone I might have mentioned a few times, the Nokia N900?  Well even though it was fully compatible with T-Mobile's network, potential customers had to find this out through their own potentially complicated research.  This phone wasn't available in any T-Mobile store.  There were no tv commercials that I'm aware of.  It was Nokia's first (and now only) Maemo 5 device, and they dumped it.  That's right, for some reason manufacturers don't always stand behind their devices.  The N900 was kind of an odd duck (and an ugly duckling, thinking of it), but it could have done great with some muscle behind it.

The Galaxy Note may not be the jack-of-all-trades that the N900 was, but it still fulfills a lot of roles one wouldn't expect of a phone, and people need to see that in their advertisements.  The videos on Samsung's web site are doing a great job of showing the Note's capabilities, but if the phone is released in the US those ads need to be everywhere.  I'm not too worried in this regard, because reports from people in other countries say this phone is well advertised and it seems to be selling well.

Hey, even if the phone doesn't get released in the US, even if they don't stand behind it, I can still buy one. I'm just thinking of the future.  If this gets mishandled, what about the next generation's stylus phones?  Will there be any? Will there?  Think of the children!!!

Very rarely I see a device and it's love at first sight, so to speak.  Most of the items in my "Things I Have Loved" post fit that bill.  The Galaxy Note hasn't been love at first sight--I saw it weeks ago and wasn't impressed.  It's been love at first advertisement, strangely enough.  Usually I skip the marketing bullshit and go straight to the specs.  This time, I actually needed the marketing bullshit to make me see the potential.

Now I wonder how long it'll take for me to actually get my hands on one.  Ho hum.

Till then,

David

Samsung?

There was a time during and directly after high school where I used Minidiscs (and for a while, they were the best portable music solution).  Then, all of the sudden, nobody else seemed to be using CDs either--except they had all migrated to iPods.

I never bought a classic iPod.  I like the way the click-wheel works but I hated the look of them. They looked like retro washing machines.  I ended up buying a Cowan X5.

Now I find myself looking around and seeing Samsung everywhere.  True, the Galaxy Nexus looks cool, all my friends and family have heard me talking about it for the past few weeks, I'm sure.  Still, I haven't really considered Samsung past the coolness of that one phone and the Ice Cream Sandwich update.  I mean, they look cool, but I'm not into Android phones, so whatever.

Time for Android? Part Two

I touched briefly on why I'll probably switch to an Android phone soon, though really all I said was that Maemo and Meego are dead, and that Android can do most of what my N900 can, hardware limitations aside.

Wait, there's Windows Mobile 7, which I've heard is a decent OS,  Sorry but it's not for me.  Android is more open.  For all it's faults, it has a good community and a lot of apps.  It's maintained by Google, and I use and like a lot of their products and services (this blog is currently hosted on Google's Blogger, for instance).  I use Windows, I liked my old WinMo 6.5 phone, I just like what I've seen and heard of Android more.

Okay, okay, here's why I'm really considering the switch:

Time for Android? --Nokia Troubles

I have a Nokia N900.  It is one of the greatest phones ever made.  I wish that the mobile phone industry were moving in it's direction, but they aren't.  Still, I'm going to need a new phone sooner or later, probably sooner.  Not only that, I find myself wanting a new phone.  I want a bigger screen.  I want better battery life, and okay, better compatibility with a multitude of cloud services.

I seriously can't be the only one, can I?

Whether I'm in Chrome or Firefox, and in a dozen different sites, I click in a search box, type in my query and hit enter.  The result ends up a little like this:

Type yFinnegan's Wakeour search here.

I would be hypothetically searching for info on Finnegan's Wake, for some reason the default text in the search box doesn't disappear like I assume it should, and I get twenty seconds of my life wasted. Not a big deal, the first dozen times it happened.  Now it seems to happen at least a few times a day.

Consider the Minidisc...

 I know it sounded like I was paraphrasing the Bible, but in fact I was paraphrasing TMWRNJ.

As I mentioned in my previous article, I got a Minidisc player because of an absence of technology to fill a certain need.  Mp3s were starting to get popular.  When I bought my MZ-R50 (just about to get my wisdom teeth pulled before getting braces, I remember that much), I lived up in a fairly small town.  There were two places in town where one could buy CDs, if I remember correctly, and they were general stores.  The nearest decent record shop was an hour away.  Downloading mp3s was pretty much the only way I could get music at that time.

Things that I have loved...

Hello there, faithful web audience.  Or not-so-faithful web audience.  Hello there me, the only person who regularly reads this blog.

I'm thinking about pounding out a few blog posts about things I want.  I've done similar posts in the past, about certain netbooks or phones.  Today though, I'm writing about things I have owned and loved.  Not romantically, just out of the utility they brought into my life.  Sure, I'm a weirdo, but not one of those weirdos...

What is uTorrent doing? (I like it)

Just updated uTorrent, which I haven't done since probably January of this year.  First, as I installed it, it asked me if I wanted to download some album for free, a sponsor of uTorrent I'm assuming.  I clicked yes, I'd download it.  That in itself is a really cool idea, a far better idea than browser toolbars and the like.

I can see this working in better ways too, if they get a lot of sponsors they could give you a list of albums or shows you could download for free for promotional reasons.  Or perhaps a "One day only, get this album for free!" type of deal.  (I listened to the album by the way, or a little of it.  Not for me, but still a cool idea)

Added Ads

Logged into Blogger to write a post, which I will do next, I promise, but I got distracted from writing by looking at my traffic.  Just making a note for my future self as well as all of you, finally got around to enabling ads for this blog.  More of an experiment than anything else.

I had ads enabled on this blog on my old site, and never earned enough to justify getting any payout.  Not that it mattered, this blog is an occasional distraction more than anything else, and now it doesn't even cost me anything for hosting.

Just the same, if you've just stopped by and realized something is different, it's the ads.

David

Super Mario Land

It might have been the retro warp levels in Super Meat Boy.  It might have been my listening to random Gershwin pieces(one piece of music in Super Mario Land 2 really reminds me of a song from An American in Paris).  Maybe it was just time to swim through some memories.  Whatever the reason, I dug out and started playing some Game Boy games tonight.

Not Game Boy Color games, or Advance games, or DS games.  Classic black and white (or yellowish and black) dot matrix Game Boy games.

Something More My Speed

It was about time for me to re-stage my netbook, and I've been looking around for more lightweight distros.  In an ideal world I'd go with Arch and LXDE or something lightweight.  In an ideal world I'd have time and energy for all that.

In this world I decided to go with Lubuntu.  I have to say, I like it a lot.

Weekend Update...Witcher

Weekends are for playing video games and catching up on a few small chores, not for painting, which is something key members of my family can't seem to wrap their heads around.  All joking aside, I was hoping to give The Witcher a significant portion of my weekend, seeing as the more I hear about it's upcoming sequel the more interested I am.  Looks like that's not going to happen.

I've only gotten an hour or so into it so far.  No impressions, except that it took quite a while to get cutscenes to show properly.  They were black (but I could hear sound) on my M11x R1.  To solve this, I had to find witcher.exe, right click it, and go to Properties.  Then I found settings to run in compatibility mode for XP Service Pack 2, checked "Run in 640x480," and checked "Run this program as administrator."

I don't know which of the three setting changes solved this problem, but it works now.  My problem was specifically presenting, by the way, as a black screen with text over it in the first cutscene.  Not the initial pre-game cutscene (which played fine), but the first cutscene after you start a new game.  There should be trees and stuff behind the text, not a black screen,

Hope this helps somebody out there,

David

Nokia App of the Day - Calendar Home Widget

One thing I'm constantly trying to describe to people about the N900 is the amazing community surrounding it.  It may not have as many apps as the iPod, but there's enough programmers using the N900 that if there's something I don't like about it, someone else surely has done or is doing something about it.

Case and point, Nokia shipped the N900 without the ability to send or receive MMS messages, nor could you set a different ringtone for certain contacts.  Both those things are possible now thanks to community development.  Looking at the fact that people are still tweaking and developing for the 4 year old N800, I doubt my N900 will ever stop surprising me.

Hey, do you have problems with the N900's calendar desktop widget?  Me too!

KompoZer as an outliner...

I told you in my last article that I'd found a new outliner-style-thingy that gives me rich text options and even allows screenplay formatting, though it brings with it a few limitations.  Here's the story:

Outliner Rundown

I've been using outliners for years now.  I could probably track down when I first started using them by looking at my backups and seeing when my first outliner files started showing up, but I won't.  It's not important.

I don't remember exactly what I was doing when I discovered the concept of software outliners.  I remember I was looking for a tabbed interface in word processors, ideally something that would allow me to have a different document open in each tab as well as letting me have the same document open in different tabs, each tab open to a different part of the document.  Great for writing long documents or reports (table of contents in one tab, bit currently being written in another tab, bibliography in another tab, for example).

Somehow in this search I stumbled across the idea of an outliner, and I've been a devoted user of them ever since.  Continue reading for a list of the outliners I've used and what I eventually landed on.

Testing an app.

Testing this app on my N900, called MaStory. It's awesome, at least if this post works it is.

To be honest, I would be happy with an app that just pushes posts from my phone to my blog. MaStory is quite a bit cooler. It lets you view and edit old posts. You view and edit the post as plain text (WYSIWYM), but it makes a handful of often-needed codes easily accessible through the GUI. It will upload images from your phone. It's linking is very intuitive ( select some text, hit the link icon, enter in the URL, it will apply the link to your selected text).

You can schedule posts to appear in the future!

It even has a preview--not a true blog preview, but a formatting preview that even shows embedded images. Really helps proofreading a lot.

One thing so far is missing. One thing.

That's right, dear readers, it's missing the tags for the "read more" link that keeps things short on your front page. Not a big deal. Makes no difference to the rss feed readers, but I'd like it.

Oh, also would be nice if CTRL+I made highlighted text italic, and CTRL+U for underlining, CTRL+B for bold. That would make things a bit easier as well. Maybe I'll send in a feature request.

All in all, if MaStory works (and you're out there reading this right now), I'm sure I'll be using it quite a bit.

David

This post was written on my N900 (duh).

As it should be...

Finally got a replacement N900 today.  Was planning on hastily throwing up some whiny posts trying to decipher tracking info, but didn't have the time.  Rest  assured, I handled the wait childishly.

So now I'm going through, changing all the settings back to what I'm used to and installing all my favorite apps.

Just started walking to a PC to do a quick Google search, remembered I had a N900 again, then instead made my search where I stood.

As it should be.

David


PS - This post was typed on my N900.

WAIT!

You know, it was only a few posts ago that I mocked my earlier self for freaking out over confusing tracking info.  You know, because I was really anxious to get my N900.  I have to say, some of those posts are embarrassing.  I was acting rather childish, right?

Except here I am again, waiting for payment from a warranty company who I will name and will talk all about in a future post, just not until we've actually finished our little transaction.

So I'm checking both my email and my dashboard on their site every few minutes.  Refreshing Gmail even though I don't think it needs to be refreshed anymore to update it.  I'm generally freaking out.  There's a 6pm cutoff here.  If I don't order a new phone before 6pm on amazon, I won't be able to get that phone next day.  No sir.

What the hell?

Anyone looking at my blog in the wee hours of the night might have noticed a bunch of gibberish-y posts disappearing and reappearing.

That was me, I admit it.  Admin stuff.  Oh, what was I doing?  Only this:

(this probably won't work if you're viewing this in a feed reader)

Click me
A sentence magically appeared!!!


If that worked, then you're looking at the product of hours of work.  A sentence was supposed to appear under "click me" btw. If you click on "click me" again, then the sentence should disappear.  Why hours of work, you ask?

Because, dear reader, I don't know javascript.  The last few hours involved me cutting and pasting bits from different scripts that basically worked but had little problems.  Most required a different script for each block of text.  For example:

Click this one now
Some scripts required multiple embeddings of the same script in order for multiple blocks of text to be shown or hidden in one post.  With the script I have now, all I have to do is keep a unique id in the text's wrapper (a new unique id for each block of text)


It wasn't easy.  I honestly can't believe it worked.  I literally tried one last thing, saying to myself "If this doesn't work I'm going to bed".  And I meant it this time.

Another good thing about this script versus others:  Other scripts will expand the text once the link is clicked, but if said link is at the bottom of a post, the browser will for some reason jump to the top of the page, losing your place. This one doesn't. Or shouldn't.  Hopefully it works for all of you like it does for me.

Well, bed time for me.  Time to get up I mean, but I think I'll go to bed instead.

David