The Serpent's Toys
28/10/2017 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaIt’s been a year and a half since the serpent’s Sony Tablet entered the Twilight Zone. The crazy dancing light start up pattern just goes on and on forever and the home screen never appears anymore.
So got left with the monster 27 inch but very sluggish spinning beachball bouncing Big Mac and an itsy bitsy Moto Tweet stone and nothing in between
Getting a new tablet has been on the wish list for quite a while since then but the rule was that it had to be from a stash of savings and preferably snaffled in some stock take sale with at least 20% off.
So several post Christmas and Stock Take Sales later, still nothing of interest appeared or maybe I wasn’t properly looking.
But November is coming and going to Nanowrimo Write Ins with a bitsy phone connected to a proper keyboard using Bluetooth was just not going to cut it.
Tried it for last year’s Write Night and it was just so horrid and fiddly.
Of course Halloween would be the most auspicious day to acquire a new Precious but that leaves a very small learning curve before the serious squiggling begins
Also figured that a brown birthday envelope and a dividend “cheque’ have come and gone and nothing to show for them. So it would be crazy for the tax return to meet the same fate.
So I got the cheap and cheerful Lenovo 7 inch tablet - the one with the colourful boats on the screen. It was 96 silver sickles and had never ever been on sale for less than that ever since it first appeared on the radar about a year ago.
It was strange to slink to the cafe near the spooky house and take the bright shiny out of its box. It still had about 60% of its juice left. Turned it on and filled in some basic info for beginners before adding the serpent google email and then getting all the relevant settings and stuff transported to the new Portkey to Cyberia just like magic. Just as well because I have forgotten so many passwords and stuff.
But within 5 minutes out of the box was lurking in Cyberia and downloading the Duolingo app and for nostalgia sake the old Andoku Sudoku puzzle app.
While the tweet stone has very crispy pictures and graphics, it sucks on size and most annoying of all - in spite of adding a 16GB memory card, it always displays a sign saying “F$%^& off. We are Full” which means that I have not updated Google Chrome for a good 12 months, had to delete the Twitter apps and just use the web browser but worst of all cannot visit the Google widget store to look at all the interesting toys because there is no room in the ark for any of them
For some reason, there’s tons of room on the memory card but it lets me put only a handful of apps on there and it’s all the undeletable bloatware that is hogging the pissy 8GB of phone storage space.
The screen resolution of this baby tablet is nowhere as good as the phone but surprisingly good for the price and a lot better than the truly ghastly cheap and nasty Pendopad also marketed for cheapskates like Izzie.
It was so wonderful to play Sudoku again and to finally peek at the proper Duolingo app. Lots less typing involved than on the web browser and it gives you a running score of straight runs with bonus points (how many questions in a row you got before making a mistake) but you can also do stuff offline and you get more bonus points than with the plain vanilla web browser.
But best of all, I will now be able to do this week’s Nukes homework while out and about
The question of the week
Can a terrorist group steal a nuclear weapon? What state is the most likely to aid a terrorist group in this endeavour?
The Pakistanis are infamous for selling the things on street corners and I'm sure some of the old "Soviet" banana republics have quite a handy stash of the stuff just lying around waiting for some hooded hoodlums to snaffle them. No questions asked.
But still a bit wary. Was so very happy to finally download Coursera for the old Sony tablet for the very same reason and the very next day the tablet died and the last thing I had been doing before it happened was watching course videos
And now of course there’s no longer any need to squint the beady serpent eyes while not missing a minute of the Mueller action in Twitterland and peeking in the Play Store looking for new toys for the baby Precious
Any suggestions?
So got left with the monster 27 inch but very sluggish spinning beachball bouncing Big Mac and an itsy bitsy Moto Tweet stone and nothing in between
Getting a new tablet has been on the wish list for quite a while since then but the rule was that it had to be from a stash of savings and preferably snaffled in some stock take sale with at least 20% off.
So several post Christmas and Stock Take Sales later, still nothing of interest appeared or maybe I wasn’t properly looking.
But November is coming and going to Nanowrimo Write Ins with a bitsy phone connected to a proper keyboard using Bluetooth was just not going to cut it.
Tried it for last year’s Write Night and it was just so horrid and fiddly.
Of course Halloween would be the most auspicious day to acquire a new Precious but that leaves a very small learning curve before the serious squiggling begins
Also figured that a brown birthday envelope and a dividend “cheque’ have come and gone and nothing to show for them. So it would be crazy for the tax return to meet the same fate.
So I got the cheap and cheerful Lenovo 7 inch tablet - the one with the colourful boats on the screen. It was 96 silver sickles and had never ever been on sale for less than that ever since it first appeared on the radar about a year ago.
It was strange to slink to the cafe near the spooky house and take the bright shiny out of its box. It still had about 60% of its juice left. Turned it on and filled in some basic info for beginners before adding the serpent google email and then getting all the relevant settings and stuff transported to the new Portkey to Cyberia just like magic. Just as well because I have forgotten so many passwords and stuff.
But within 5 minutes out of the box was lurking in Cyberia and downloading the Duolingo app and for nostalgia sake the old Andoku Sudoku puzzle app.
While the tweet stone has very crispy pictures and graphics, it sucks on size and most annoying of all - in spite of adding a 16GB memory card, it always displays a sign saying “F$%^& off. We are Full” which means that I have not updated Google Chrome for a good 12 months, had to delete the Twitter apps and just use the web browser but worst of all cannot visit the Google widget store to look at all the interesting toys because there is no room in the ark for any of them
For some reason, there’s tons of room on the memory card but it lets me put only a handful of apps on there and it’s all the undeletable bloatware that is hogging the pissy 8GB of phone storage space.
The screen resolution of this baby tablet is nowhere as good as the phone but surprisingly good for the price and a lot better than the truly ghastly cheap and nasty Pendopad also marketed for cheapskates like Izzie.
It was so wonderful to play Sudoku again and to finally peek at the proper Duolingo app. Lots less typing involved than on the web browser and it gives you a running score of straight runs with bonus points (how many questions in a row you got before making a mistake) but you can also do stuff offline and you get more bonus points than with the plain vanilla web browser.
But best of all, I will now be able to do this week’s Nukes homework while out and about
The question of the week
Can a terrorist group steal a nuclear weapon? What state is the most likely to aid a terrorist group in this endeavour?
The Pakistanis are infamous for selling the things on street corners and I'm sure some of the old "Soviet" banana republics have quite a handy stash of the stuff just lying around waiting for some hooded hoodlums to snaffle them. No questions asked.
But still a bit wary. Was so very happy to finally download Coursera for the old Sony tablet for the very same reason and the very next day the tablet died and the last thing I had been doing before it happened was watching course videos
And now of course there’s no longer any need to squint the beady serpent eyes while not missing a minute of the Mueller action in Twitterland and peeking in the Play Store looking for new toys for the baby Precious
Any suggestions?
no subject
Date: 2017-10-28 07:32 pm (UTC)What app do you use for writing? My latest pick is Writer Plus, not that it gets much action, because a cellphone is a poor alternative to a computer with a proper keyboard.
I agree that Duolingo for Android has a lot more bells & whistles than the web version. Although the typing exercises IMHO are a much more useful practice than the point&click jobs. (At least when translating from English; typing in English is not that educational.)
Btw it seems we're not friends, want to add me? (https://www.duolingo.com/shadowfire) even though there's no interaction between friends anymore, after the removal of the friends' feed :/ but maybe the leaderboard will shame me into being more diligent ;)
One more of my favourite toys is News360. You can select your interests (from many, many choices) and get the custom-tailored news feed full of relevant articles nicely formatted for a small screen - a great way to waste time when there's nothing more inspiring to do ;) provided there's the Internet connection.
Good luck with nuking these nasty terrorists!
no subject
Date: 2017-10-29 02:29 am (UTC)I can add up to 64GB with external card and only hope it actually lets me put stuff on it
Just realised on reading my post again that it was quite ambiguous about where those 8GB were located. Silly serpent
Thanks for the app tips
Since there's no Android Scrivener must find something with word count and autosave that works while offline as there's no built in SIM card
For now Evernote is OK
A news app!!!
Already on information overload with Twitler's musings, a Twitter list of snoops and spooks and a dirt cheap Digital subscribe to the Washington Post ;)
The speakers on the new toy are terribly tinny but the rest is surprisingly good for the price
no subject
Date: 2017-11-02 12:37 am (UTC)My latest acquisition is a Samsung Galaxy S7, after smashing my S5. It hurt the pockets to upgrade to this rather than a more affordable device, but I love the Galaxy Androids, I'm used to them, and paying top dollar is what happens when you break your toys and cannot live without them.
I've never owned a tablet. Just writing that makes me lol, I've always wanted one, but they're low on the wish list of acquisitions. In any case, I do love my large easy-to-read 22" screen and keyboard.
The next toy on my wishlist is a standing desk - that would be "the bomb" :)