Comments were hosed for a while; now they are back.
New phrase: “I shoot/shot them with my sword”
I’ve used this on Facebook referring to people who claim to blog or have a blog because they use Facebook. Of course, since Facebook is invisible and merely repackages and resells anything I post to it, I decided to coin it on the internet as well:
“I will shoot them with my sword.”
“I shoot them with my sword.”
“I shot them with my sword.”
There, I feel much better.
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.
First day of School
Today marks the first day of the regular term. Max and Mina both went to summer school, but it was more casual and the days were shorter. Today is the real deal. Nam left on a trip to Burma (what an ideal example of poor rebranding – what’s the adjective for “Myanmar,” anyways? What language do they speak there?) yesterday, so the kids are totally on their best behavior because they are with Bad Cop. No crying, no pleading, no nonsense: “Are you guys ready to go to school?”
FUCK YEAH, DADDY!
Tablets and tablas
Just bookmarking this one here for future chillaxation reference, since you can’t bookmark playlists in YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoVkReLGpBk&list=RD03qsnwftjlW5o
Windows 8: Face Thump
Humor transcends language.
I will definitely use this clip in one of my classes.
what’s going on
So I took the fam on a trip with my coworkers from the English program last week. We went to Hua Hin, which I had passed through but not enjoyed since our honeymoon. We saw the resort we had stayed at (Nern Chalet) and the massage parlor my dad got groped at, and the kids had a great time at the beach. Max learned how to stay underwater at the hotel pool, and was very proud of himself. Mina could put her face in the water, but is still scared to put her ears in, I think.
I have many photos, but alas, the start of the new term is imminent, and I have a textbook to write and several orientations to attend/help with.
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
What to do if you can’t find Developer Options in Android settings
In Jelly Bean 4.2 and higher, if there is no “Developer Options” shown in the “Settings” menu, go to Settings –> About Tablet –> Build Number and tap on it 7 times to unlock/unhide it.