whup

partially posted elsewhere
xci. pulse, julian barnes

overall i would rate it as merely 'ok', there were a lot of words and the writing was pretty loose for short stories. there was a lot of continuous conversation quoting and no female inner voices to speak of, in either 1st or 2nd person. needless to say i do not really approve.

not posted elsewhere

xcii. men without women, ernest hemingway

seriously misleading title, not without women at all. in fact not much to do with men as 'men' or men 'without women' at all. in fact i would have read this collection much earlier if not for the title. good though, what's new? this is true succinctness of word, my friends.

return to regular scheduling

lxxxix. lost japan, alex kerr

very very interesting book about japan, the culture in different areas, and the interplay of history and western influence and the modern japanese psyche. 

xc. this book will save your life, a.m. homes

i guess this book was ok, the lack of chapters actually made quite an impact in a continuous storyline way and also because i don't like it when authors feel they have to end each chapter on a witty/shocking conclusion. i thought it would be a stereotypical story about a rich white guy's mid-life crisis but some characters as satire and some characters as extremely real make up for it.

a few more things then i'll shut up

the iphone has a better screen auto-brightness than the desire, definitely.
the hold-down button function on android is essentially a right-click for options, but nooo apple doesn't do right-click, does it. this explains everything.
safari may have unlimited browser windows but it's probably because it's like a normal web browser on a computer that you have to manually close each tab. the default android browser opens pages in new tabs and then on going back will auto-close the tab leaving you back at the original page, so you don't have 5 pages open at the same time.
i also take it back partially about the lack of finesse in scrolling, because speed makes a difference in the contact list. why not in safari as well. speaking of which..
goddamn why doesn't iOS allow copying new contacts onto the sim card from the phone? it makes no sense. what does apple get out of making it hard for me to access my contacts? and i don't want to connect it to itunes and sync and all that shit.

day 2, further iphone observations

- in safari, one can only scroll a specific distance with one flick regardless of speed. with android, a faster flick leads to continuous scrolling down with gradual attenuation, while a slow little flick will only scroll a little. more room for error, but more room for flexibility and developing scrolling finesse.

- another thing that the iOS likes to brag about (see screen orientation) - opening links in new windows in safari. no, it won't just open a new window right away. it has to retract to the window overview screen so you can see that there is another window opening, and then go into the new window. i can't tell whether it wastes time prior to starting the page load but that's the impression i get and it's annoying.

- one advantage to safari is that there are (so far) unlimited new windows to tab between, whereas the default android browser has a max of 5 or something.

- the customisation of icons on home screens is really annoying on iOS, what with having to move them to the common bar at the bottom before they can be transferred between home screens. compare this with android allowing icons to float in limbo while moving between home screens in the background.. no comparison.

- last thing is a hardware thing on the desire which is fantastic - the notification light. when i get a message or a missed phone call or my battery is running out, the light goes on in a colour of my choosing, so i don't have to turn the screen on to see if i need to turn the screen on.

android vs. iphone, the initial impression

so! my beloved htc desire decided to start shitting itself a few months ago, soon after i got the initial unstable release of 'words with friends'. on prolonged word manipulation it would get really hot and occasionally auto-shutdown and reboot. then it started happening when 3G coverage was spotty and taking a long time to load pages, with the bootup screen vibrating to life up to 10 times before it decided it was cool enough to proceed. in the past couple of weeks any time i used regular low-impact internet for more than 5 to 10 minutes the phone would auto-shutdown and try to reboot. finally yesterday i decided that the situation was untenable and required an intervention, before my warranty expires in august.

so i took it into the shop today and it will take 4-6 weeks (!) to be repaired. i hope to hell they do what needs to be done (replace the motherboard, apparently, according to 3 billion other people on the internet who have the same problem, and literally no other problem with this phone). and so i got a replacement phone for this period.. you guessed it an iphone 3GS. rather than being disappointed i have decided to really try and compare the two operating systems as objectively as possible.

impressions from the first day:

- the iOS is much more like a traditional mobile phone than the mobile computer that i came to regard my desire as. most obvious is the fact that all options are set in the phone's general settings, including importing contacts, notifications. there is no way to manage the settings for a particular program from within it, though this may be different with apps. the android system allows a lot deeper investigation into everything, and when it diverts you to settings to change something it will return you back to where you were! not so with iOS. leaving the impression that the iOS is nothing but a frontend, with many rounded square buttons to be sure, but a frontend nonetheless.

- keyboard - the iOS keyboard doesn't even compare with the old nokia keypads with the multiple characters per key, which is what swype is similar to with longer-hold keys. you have to press another key to toggle between letter/number/symbol keypads. also the spelling/autocorrect is pretty crap, no wonder fuckyouautocorrect.com exists. i much much much prefer tap-the-word-and-a-list-of-alternatives-appears on the android. NOT TO MENTION SWYPE WHICH I CAN NO LONGER LIVE WITHOUT, in which by 'live' i mean 'function at optimum efficiency'. so far on the iphone i haven't figured out how to insert the cursor mid-word to edit text.

- the picture of the clock app means that i have to tap the screen to open a large clock. this is where iOS can't compete - widgets. i like to have my agenda and to-do list open right on the home page, so i don't have to open the programs individually.

- iOS likes to show off that it can change screen orientation by slightly contracting the screen for 0.2 of a second during the process and therefore wasting my time! or it may just be slower. is the iphone 4 faster?

- iOS doesn't seem to have select-all as a function, whereas android has it everywhere that any kind of single or multiple selection can be made.

conclusion: so far i haven't found anything that iOS excels at over android. except that it stays on, but that's more a desire hardware problem than anything android-related. oh right, also probably 'words with friends', damn you.

recommendations from today: android phones could benefit from a physical mute button, a single hardware advantage of the iphone.

STAY TUNED, MORE RIVETING ANALYSIS TO COME!