Category: Toys & Tech

Sony hates you.

“Last Friday, Sony Music sent Gummy Soul a cease and desist order for Amerigo Gazaway’s “Bizarre Tribe: A Quest To The Pharcyde”.”

LINK

Sony just doesn’t get it:
They don’t know how to make good products anymore.
They don’t understand “fair use.”
They don’t know how to get back all the loyal customers they chased away over the years…
It seems they only want to make a last few bucks before Samsung and Apple and all the other companies who do get it (a little better, at least) collectively piss on their grave.

Die, Sony, die.

By the way, the album mentioned above is simply sublime.

Line seems to be the best option for Burma telecommunications

Like it says in the title, Line.

My wife is in Myanmar/Burma for a week. I looked up the best options for calling to/from that country before she went, but the telecom market is in a state of constant flux and it seems they the government controls the sales of SIM cards. What sad state of affairs: Third world telecom service with first world bureaucracy!

As it turns out, most of the airports and hotels she’s been to have had barely decent wifi, which has left us experimenting with voice/video chat services. Here are the results for using chat apps on Android to/from Yangon, Mandalay, and maybe other places in Burma:

1st place: (Naver) Line
Excellent voice quality even on weak connections. If there was a major disaster, this is the app I would rely on (oh yeah, that’s why it was made in the first place).

2nd Place: Google Hangouts
Fairly stable, but laggy with both voice and video calls. Consistently laggy, though (about 1/2 second), so usable if you want to speak slowly and wait for responses.

3rd place: Skype
Skype changed my world, then abandoned it. I still have most of the money I put into Skype credit 7 or 8 years ago. TOTALLY UNUSABLE FOR ANYTHING UNLESS YOU LIVE IN KANSAS CITY AND GET FORCE-FED INTARWEBS FROM GOOGLE. Seriously, I’m going to uninstall Skype from all my devices. So fucking sad.

Accidentally turned my Tilapia into a Grouper

It took a few hours to research and get a custom ROM installed (SmoothROM v5.1), so I was dismayed to see that it lacked 3G support. Oops. So I started over again using Nexus Root Toolkit and pushed the latest cyanogenmod nightly for Tilapia (Nexus 7 3g) and gapps via my laptop. Success!

cyanogenmod is kind of boring because it’s so stable – and that’s a good thing.

Regarding the title above,

grouper = Nexus 7 wifi
tilapia = Nexus 7 3g

Thailand’s True Move H APN settings for internet

Truemove-apn-android

So basically create a new APN with the following settings:

Name: TRUE-H INTERNET

APN: internet

User name: true

Password: true

MMC: 520

MNC: 00

APN type: internet

Personally, I think anyone using MMS in this day and age should just give up and go back to using a typewriter, so I won’t cover that.

You can find device-specific info on the True page from which I borrowed the above graphic: http://www.truemove-h.com/helpsupport_apnsettings.aspx

True seems dedicated to the curious corporate tactic of changing the location of any helpful information on their website every few months, to the point where I can no longer find it. Anyway, the settings described above are still valid as of February 27, 2014.

All hail Nexus 7

I have started down a new path on the way to tech happiness by (almost) throwing away my smartphone and replacing it with dedicated tools: a dumb phone, a tablet computer, and a camera (when I need one). I am tired of carrying around a device that is a compromise in every area it was designed to cover – a smartphone is the Swiss Army knife of handheld devices, and while it can be used for many things, it does none of them as well as tools designed for those jobs. A smartphone, in general:

  • Is too big, complicated, and laggy to be considered a good replacement for a simple mobile phone
  • Has too small a screen to view many webpages, documents, etc., especially for an extended period
  • Usually takes crappy photos compared to a dedicated camera
  • In its latest and greatest form, costs more than a dedicated camera, tablet, and dumb phone combined

For these reasons, I have decided to go back to carrying more devices, perhaps until smartphones can be had with better features at a reasonable cost. This is an experiment.

I have cameras, so that is covered.

I went to buy a dumb phone, but the color I wanted (a small black Samsung flip phone) was out of stock at Tesco, where it was on sale. They had one in Ruby Red with sequins, but I’m not ready for that quite yet.

As for a tablet, I got a great deal on a Google (ASUS) Nexus 7 3G 32Gb at the Tesco Lotus five minutes from my house. This model can use wifi and a 3G sim card, so I signed up for an unlimited True H promotional deal for 499 baht/month (discounted iSmart 699 plan). I don’t plan on using the sim that often at home or work, but it will prove useful when my wife and I go on trips. The 400 voice minuted bundled with the plan will go to waste, since the tablet does not have phone functionality. Oh, well.

My next few posts will be dedicated to the rooting, modding, and set up for the Nexus 7.

 

There is only one true replacement

I really don’t know why everybody is suggesting exotic alternatives and roll-your-own solutions… If you want a replacement for Google Reader that closely replicates it in its prime – social functions and all – do not pass Go, do not collect $200, go directly to The Old Reader and get in line to import all your feeds.

Everybody who suggested any other sites without mentioning this one needs their web pass revoked.

I got an e-mail telling me my import was finished, and within 5 seconds of logging in, I knew this was the best choice for me and probably any other Google Reader addicts not using a touchscreen. ’nuff said.

 

Homeland Arrival, Imminent

The Old Reader

I guess it takes a long, long time to import RSS feeds.

Yahoo JP’s feeble attempt at getting fugee traffic from Google Reader is laughable with a 300 feed limit — webnerds eat 300 feeds for a light snack, you fools!!

The Old Reader, please be good to me.

 

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UPDATE: I signed up for updates regarding an upcoming alternative I hadn’t heard about until recently, Hivemined.

I also feel like I got scammed by NewsBlur, which claimed to offer free accounts and then  took me to a page that said: Due to overwhelming demand, free accounts are temporarily suspended. By going premium you get full access to NewsBlur.

Oh, and it also filled out part of a credit card payment form for me, from the “free account” info I provided:

NewsBlur

Dicktards. I’ll try and cancel that account as soon as possible, but don’t expect much from liars like these.

UPDATE 2: By visiting the root address, I was able to get as far as importing my OPML file, which allowed me to update 64 feeds (!!) after clicking through a full-page nag screen with another credit card payment opportunity… This guy wants money and not much else, it seems (somebody has to feed his dog you greedy fuckers). There’s nothing wrong with that in itself, but he should at least be up front about it and not pull this bullshit temporary suspending of free accounts. I was able to cancel my account, at least, which the site says is “permanent,” but considering his definition of “free,” I won’t hold my breath.