Logbook: Reviews
Phone fun ∞+1xπ, The empire strikes back.
Awhile back I had gotten the Galaxy Nexus , and the phone through and through was a pretty good phone other than needing a small nuclear power plant to keep the battery up. While the nuclear power plant option was a little steep in price I did get a Satechi 10000 mAh Portable Energy Station, Its as close as you can get to nuclear power for a phone without the radiation hazards. Not to mention that the nuclear power plant has some mobility disadvantages.
Funny enough after a year plus with the phone I realized it had the same problem with its predecessor the phones antenna was not up to par, there were nights I was ready to eat my phone due to the antenna dropping calls or doing other strange shit. Alas though … the Galaxy Nexus met its end, While the phone was tough it was not tough enough when it picked a fight with a concrete floor and the floor won. While my comment about the back battery cover feeling like your going to break the phone is only partially correct. The phone itself can take some serious abuse.
The phone I chose as its replacement was the LG nexus 5 , It improves further on the Nexus line of phones with some disadvantages. You loose the ability to some degree to replace the battery on your own, while the battery is “non user serviceable” with a few tools you can get the battery replaced on your own. Battery life is improved a slight bit while 24 hours is still the high bar for keeping a charge on the phone with light use as I am looking at my phone now and with 38% of the battery left and 1day and 2 hours on battery.
Continue reading →Phone fun ∞+1 Just because its been awhile.
So, As we left off way back when in phone fun MMXXIV I ended up with the Nexus S 4g, Since I’ve had that phone it was pretty smooth sailing as far as a phone goes. The phone was durable to the point of being thrown into a wall multiple times.
This edition of phone fun has ended up with a mostly positive review of things since I decided to upgrade to the Galaxy Nexus , this phone is step above the nexus s and has more bells and whistles .. namely a FUCKING NOTIFICATION LIGHT!!!!.. Holy hell do you miss those when you don’t have one.
If is there is one thing a phone must be with it has to be a notification light because you become obsessive with checking if you have missed any messages.
There are a few complaints about the Galaxy nexus….
They are minor, Yet annoying..
The back battery cover feels like you’re going to break the thing when you try to access the battery, Also with the battery is its life , You feel like you need to carry around a small nuclear power station in order not to run the battery down. Phones are progressing at an amazing rate, but the technology for batteries are not. Going 24 Hours is the high bar for newer phones, if you lock yourself in a room for a day and ignore every phone call , You might get over one day. Even with batteries progressing at a slow rate why don’t companies at least mitigate with a small change to the the phone that would go many miles by simply putting a solar cell on the back cover. Sure it doesn’t solve anything if you live in a cave but what the hell .. Its a start.
The other minor issue is getting Google voice to work with the phone when transferring from one phone to the next, which seemingly has a strange fix. If you update your phone to the most recent version of Google voice you will have errors and the phone will never sync to it. The way around it seems to be using the stock version of Google voice which works out.
but so far this phone seems to be a win .
Phone Fun MMXXIV – thank you sprint….(nexus S 4g)
After Much Dealings with replacing my phone more times than the amount of explosions in a Michael bay movie, Sprint has worked with me and I have gotten away from HTC..
After going back and forth with the executive customer care since my phones kept having issues. they offered to restart my contract and pick up a phone at new contract cost, which was alot better than returning phone after phone. I tried to get a brand new EVO in hope of getting a phone without issue.
It just seems sprints flagship phones from the refurbished end are TERRIBLE.
From the B spot to random reboots and bad sound…
I wondered if HTC’s release products are the same – there is no way quality control should of ever let these phones back on the market. A refurbished phone is like a repaired car, It should look and act like NEW..
Anyways I am fully done with HTC.. the only way I’d use one is if one was given to me…
well, This time i’ve gone with a Samsung… though, The second phone problem going back to Phone fun 3 was a samsung. This time I’ve gone with a Samsung Nexus s 4g
Now in previous post I’ve had my “Requirements for my phone”.
- to make calls –
- The Phone is configurable
- good battery life
- add/make ringtones
- Applications that don’t cost a years pay for a small 3rd world country
- Durable
Basically The nexus S is as follows.
- This phone makes calls and does it well with one small stipulation.. in some areas the antenna for the phone is lacking.
- Configuration on most android phones is your mileage may vary.. but this phone you can configure it pretty much ANY way you please… rooting is fairly simple. reflashing is simple.
- This point Really needs a to be explained, since any smart phone will not hold a candle to a “dumb” phone , On average a smart phone lasts about 1 day on a decent charge. The EVO on average would require charging after about 18hours. The nexus easily passes the 1 day marker and most days it gets close to 2 days before requiring to be charged.
- on android phones this is a dead simple process.
- Android Market has all kinds of applications- but, Its now not cost … but moreover privacy with apps now.
- While this phone feels very light its fairly durable. the EVO in comparison weighs alot more.
So far this phone has served me extremely well .. and hopefully (knock on wood a tree or something) I will not have any issues with this.
Im leaving this post fairly short.
Hopefully I will not have to go back to this post and make phonefun MMMXXXVI
Mini review: Racing games (agravations in racing games)
As a Semi fan of racing games I tend to pick up a racing game or a kart game now and than. I used to pick up every need for speed game in the past but as the quality of the programming slipped into oblivion I stopped picking up those games. Need for speed was fun in the terms of you could Race your cars around Smash things and generally just play the way you wanted .. After hot pursuit 1 they tended to close alot of doors with the game. Gone was Car editing and adding your own cars. Things really went downhill with Porsche unleashed. Signs of bad programing and shoddy programing were starting to appear than in hot pursuit 2 it seems EA just gave up the ship and decided that shit was good enough to send out, Sure it looked like a Need for speed game but it stunk badly in ways that just piss people off to no end.
My thing with racing games is if the AI is good the game is good, with poor AI the game severely takes a hit. the AI in Hot Pursuit 2 was an abortion. The developers seemed to never thought through the whole process and shortcutted the AI massively in some areas. Since the game had stats at the end of each race it showed how poorly the AI was done. If you raced as an Enzo Ferrari you’d thing you’d leave a ford Fiesta in the next area code, not so much, there was a chance that fiesta would win against you – since the game once the opponent got off the mini-map would engage nothing short of the enterprises transporter and rubber band to just outside of the mini-map. At the end of the race it would create some pretty funny statistics such as.
Enzo: top speed 202MPH – Average speed 168 MPH
Fiesta: top speed 72MPH – Average speed 142MPH
WTF? Not only has that car just broken laws of physics but it manages to do something impossible unless the car managed to actually teleport to another dimension and have Time/space/speed laws revoked, If you did not run the perfect race it would also give the computer opponent A chance to win since the AI was magically rubberbanded to behind you. Using that kind of trick in programming a racing sim should be a HUGE NO NO. Even though that the need for speed series borders on not being a racing sim these days, More over it plays like a quarter eater you find at an arcade.
You don’t need a game that has shortcomings that affect the outcome of the game due to poor programming versus the outcome based on your driving. with the advent of consoles I know programmers are under pressure to port games to each system as fast as they can but the quality takes a tremendous hit. The console specific games tend not to suffer as much as games that are whored around. Most Mario karts always have a sound racing game, Gran Turismo has a sound racing game. Even Test Drive unlimited had a sound racing game since it was based around the PC than ported down to the console level, there is one exception that should be noted- burnout paradise was a “racing” game that was on every system just about without much problems but they thought round some of the issues and made the game based on fun.
As more companies take to the “Open World” concept of racing it comes to mind that the open world needs to be open. With burn-out paradise the openness just was not there, Test drive unlimited had a extremely open world but a poorly implemented system where aggravation would set in trying to find your friends in the game even though you were actually on top of there car but due to the server running multiple sessions you’d spend 20minutes trying to get into the same play area.
Originally I was going to say something about one racing game but i changed my mind to a critique rather than a one game review.
The state of gaming.
Ever had one of those days where you look at something and say hmm. Well, I’ve been doing that for about a few months. For awhile Now I’ve been wanting to spread out my gaming more than just between the WII and the PC. Both platforms in my opinion are suffering from bad development and bad companies. Well, After long thought and wondering if I’d be better off with a Bluray Drive for my PC or Some other upgrade I finally decided against both and went with the black sheep of the decisions.
Continue reading →Phone Fun IV: A New hope.
In our last episode of phone fun I had got an HTC TOUCH , Well…… That didn’t work out so well. Exactly 360 or so days the HTC touch Starting having issues with the screen and Calls. Now, from trials and tribulations with sprint I learned the last thing you want to do is call *2 on your phone. Doing that is like crank calling the deathstar while its in orbit around your planet. Sprint Over the phone support basically told me I had to buy a new phone. Which I don’t have money I can magically pull out of my ass. So I did the next best thing, I headed down to a sprint corporate store. Since I pay my phone bill locally by walking into these stores I figured I’d get a better idea of what to do. After a short talk they sent us down to Boxboro Massachusetts. They have a repair depot up that way, anyways after a 30minute drive and a 30 minute wait they told me the phone was shot(radio was damaged). After a short wait they sent me on the way with another HTC Touch(#2), After getting that home with-in a few hours the audio on that phone sounded like a cat barfing in your ear. Called *2 and sprint offered to send out yet another HTC touch(#3). They shipped it overnight which was very nice and it arrived on monday.
I had that phone no more than 48hours when the phone would just lock and gave a screen of death, Now I am fairly careful with phones and use screen protectors and such. After wasting 3 of them I was not exactly happy. That Phone went back to sprint. To make a long story short, I’ve gone through alot of HTC touches and as Far as my last post about this phone in 2008 . How does the phone rate up?
A bit of a learning curve which kind of surprized me but none the less I like it so far. As far as my requirements for a phone
Requirements for a Phone
- to make calls
- The Phone is configurable
- good battery life
- add/make ringtones
- Applications that don’t cost a years pay for a small 3rd world country
- Durable
Well… After a year with one phone and 1 to 2 months on 4 others.
1 The phone defiantly passes on. For a refurbished HTC-Touch that is debatable.
2. Again you can’t knock the touch on this, its extremely configurable once you figure out the interface.
3. battery life… That is actually pretty good. Although using the GPS Or other intensive options I would recommend a car-charger.
4. You can make ringtones till you puke with this thing rather than jumping through hoops trying to convert soundfiles into strange formats.
5. As Far as applications go, you can find most of the common apps you need on the phone although I’d recommend downloading Google maps. With enough looking you can find pretty much any app you want for the phone but, this is where i’d give the Iphone or palm pre a small advantage with an “app store” for centralized buying of applications although the Iphone is more like Locked into the app store which I believe you can not install any 3rd party apps w/o jailbreaking the phone.
6. Lastly durability I seriously question, as the phone did make it One year. as Far as the refurbished HTC-Touches.. Those sucked ass.. there’s not enough swears in the English language to say what shit the HTC Touch Refurbs are. I may of run into a bad line of them but that is hard to believe that i’d of gone through that many phones.
as far as my current phone, Sprint has offered me a HTC Diamond, Again i leave this post open till the next time I come back to phones.
As far as sprint is concerned – It seems they are OK as far as support as long as you get the right person.
I’ve quit smoking* (part I)
Since Feb 8th I’ve not actually smoked one cigarette. Although, I digress to say that I’ve not quit cold turkey. I’ve done cold turkey quits twice in my life and people say I become Hulk angry when I do. My Cousin had bought in e-cigarette which i was highly skeptical about when I had first seen him with it but, after 1 month it passed what I had called the Timmy test.
At the beginning of the month i had purchased an E-cigarette after watching my cousin and friend use one with no issues with leaving the conventional cigarette behind. when I had received ordered this it was actually February 1st, little did I know I’d end up in the perfect storm of clusterfuck. When I had ordered from Volcano there shipping department had moved so my order was delayed, not only that there shipping computers had crashed. Usually USPS tracking takes a few days to update- You can often receive packages while tracking says otherwise. After stalking the mailman for a week – I started to email support for volcano, to which they will actually find time in there day to reply to you, well to find out my package was like alice in wonderland. Figuring i was in for the long haul I had made a second order. which in the end that was the best thing i could of done with out realizing it.
E-cigarettes are a different experience of sorts but it keeps the feeling the same so to speak. When you have smoked for a long time and a lot of people that fail quitting end up smoking again because of the fact they try to treat the chemical end of smoking without treating the mental end of smoking. If you have smoked and you have quit you’d know what i speak of. if you quit its best to find a bic pen or some other object in your hand to emulate that cigarette or you will be beyond hulk angry and quite possibly rip some walls out.
I’ve put the title as “i’ve quit smoking*” but I used the barry bonds method of scoring here Notice the *. Because to a point i am still getting some level of nicotine, but No fire ,no combustion, no dirty ashtrays , No butts. I am quite happy with this E-cigarette after a rough start from the company I bought it from.
bing? bing.. Its just uhh.. yeah..
Microsoft has been flapping there PR mouth over there new search engine bing. After the failed livesearch and another companies shit fest of a search engine. It seems like Microsoft has learned a thing or two about search engines but, not much. It was more like “lets just rip off another popular search engine. ” Microsoft has been smearing there new Bing.com everywhere, Hulu is running ads , likely there is ads on TV . but, it appears that bing will be not ignored like cuil was, Microsoft will likely force bing down our throats every way possible. Just to give an idea how microsoft will pull is.
- Windows update will force some update as “critical” to internet explorer forcing bing to the front
- Update MSN clients to have bing built in
- Windows 7 will likely have it forced on the desktop
- Come out with some goofy firefox plugin (maybe already done mystery plugin for firefox had come out *cute stealth install too*)
hemantm writes “A routine security update for a Microsoft Windows component installed on tens of millions of computers has quietly installed an extra add-on for an untold number of users surfing the Web with Mozilla’s Firefox Web browser.”
Looking into the name bing the first definition that comes up on dictionary.com is
bing
As funny as that is , Bing is almost an identical ripoff of Google.
here’s the same same search in google .
the result pages look almost EXACTLY the same. Microsoft has made an attempt to make a search engine but, its a blatant ripoff of Google. Playing around with Bing it seems alright but, again looking at the search engine there’s no fucking difference. The supposed Smart search engine that bing is just tries to give you the same results. Yes there are features in this search engine but Google already does 99.99% of bings search results.
Do we need another Google? NO, if Microsoft actually made something unique it would be one thing, At least cuil made an attempt at being unique. In order to do something better with the search engine Microsoft should try something different than work from there with a dynamic interface that takes opinions from users.
But my vote on this search engine is no , its a shamefully blatent ripoff of google. Its insulting, microsoft has billions of dollars yet they can’t come up with there own search engine?
Chuck Keep it on the air!
I don’t watch too much TV but, the one show I have been following is Chuck . At first I watched a few episodes but, the series proceeded I really began to like the show. The show has a serious but not to serious side and plot that you can follow without having to watch the whole series. After a two season run the fate of the show is up in the air.
the amount of meta-humor in the show is halarious, In Chuck versus Santa Claus Big mikes cousin is Al powell , to movie buffs that would be none other than Al Powell from die hard.
another episode mades a reference in one of chucks flashes to the “great outdoors” with the ol 96’er
With the show in the great unknown of being canceled out not , I really hope they keep the show on the air , this show is too good to be canceled.
Logitech MX 1100 (review)
After dealing with so many logitech G7’s , I’d finally given up on them as logitech has sent me a Logitech MX1100.
After almost a month of using this mouse its a fairly good mouse , it has more buttons than you know what to do with (10 buttons). The most noticable thing is the grip on the mouse it forms to your hand fairly well compaired to the g7 , A handshake would best explain it as it conforms to your hand.
As for mouse speeds its right up there with the G7, Maybe a tiny bit slower but barely noticable. My only peeve with the mouse is when you use the mouse from an idle state after leaving the mouse for awhile and you first move it after an extended period of time its slow to come alive, its like you shake it awake literly. but, after that the mouse works extremely well.
For now I’ll give this mouse a thumbs up but we will see down the road if the mouse will follow the same path as the G7 …