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Usually stuff I’ve written personally, stuff I think is pretty good.

Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner With Android

There’s this little blog called My Dinner With Android that received some media attention a few months or so ago, and it attempts to detail one iOS user’s journey with the Nexus S. This post is where I will attempt to do the same, with a few exceptions: his previous smartphone is an iPhone 3GS, my previous smartphone is an iPhone 4. He is from the US, I am from Australia. Everything else is fairly similar. For the sake of your sanity and length, this will be yet another two-parter — the first part, this part, will focus more on Android as something to live with every day, with a few comparisons to iOS and WP7 along the way. The second, more ranty part, will probably be about how much I hate Android and all of its crazy user interaction methods — either that, or a few more details on things I’ve said here, as well as more critical look at Android as a smartphone platform and an Apple iOS competitor.

Yes, I’ve done it again. Changed smartphone platforms, at least temporarily. After my experiments with WP7 I figured I had to give Android another go, a more serious one this time. Like I said, Android is my poison of choice this time around, and the Nexus S is the chalice from which I drink. I realised my previous attempt at Android was little more than a ranting tirade about everything that was wrong about the platform, so this time around I’m going to take a more objective view.

First, the hardware. So, what is the Nexus S like? It’s alright. Not fantastic like the aluminium-and-glass of the iPhone 4, but still alright. Plastic feels somewhat cheap, but overall the whole kit is passable. The most defining feature of the Nexus S is that the front glass is curved – people have said that the inwardly-curved front glass fits better against the face when you’re on a call, and it does. Oh, and the screen is a little larger than what I’m normally used to, which, when combined with the hardware navigation keys (back, menu, home) means that apps have a little more breathing room.

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Razer Onza Tournament Edition

Short, mini-review: works well in Burnout: Paradise. Trigger design a little weird, sometimes a little uncomfortable. Hyper-response action buttons (X Y A B) have almost zero travel, but feel crisp. Backlit keys are cool. Cord is fantastically long. Can’t really tell the difference between the most and least resistant of the adjustable-resistance keys. Shoulder buttons are super-clicky, like clicky in the extreme. Haven’t tried the programmable buttons.

Overall: it’s different. I think the next controller I buy might be the standard controller (the new one, with the ultra-cool transforming d-pad).

Update! Apparently I’m an idiot who doesn’t know how to work technology, because I only figured that the clicking sounds the adjustable-resistance analog sticks were making were it actually, um, adjusting the resistance, and not breaking all the things. With the resistance now adjusted, I can definitely feel the difference between settings, and it definitely makes a difference in twitch-reaction games, or games were precision is necessary. Recommendation upgraded from “meh” to “actually not bad”.

What I don’t like about the Dell Venue Pro

Selling off my HTC 7 Mozart and going back to my loaner Venue Pro (portrait WP7 slider) made me finally realise why I don’t like it: it has a curved screen.

The curve on the Venue Pro is convex, meaning that it’s got a very slight bulge outwards; exactly the opposite of what you really want on a display. When the iPhone 4 came out, many tech pundits harped on about how the glass on top of the display was fused to the LCD underneath, and how that made the content appear that much closer to your finger whenever you touched it.

The Venue Pro is the opposite; the horizontally-convex (that is, bulged outwards in the middle and less so at each side) display means that content feels further away from your fingertips, which makes for a weird touchscreen experience. On a display that already feels sub-par, it’s exactly what you do not want.

Anyway.

Heaps of posts upcoming. There’s something special coming up very, very, soon, and then there’s the big ol’ MicroServer write-up I might do, oh, and a HP TouchPad review-slash-webOS extravaganza somewhere in the middle. I wouldn’t expect the TouchPad review until early October, and the MicroServer sometime after that. Uni will get really busy really soon, and doubly so for me, procrastinator extraordinaire.

Your Highness (2011)

Ooh, a movie review! Let’s get on with it, then…

Truth be told, my experience of Natalie Portman in movies has been limited to just the Star Wars franchise. Hearing her spout lines like “Oh Anakin, you’re breaking my heart” doesn’t exactly do things for me, but Your Highness changed all of that.

Look, I’m not a huge fan of stupid comedy. I prefer my stuff to be a little more subtle, a little more intelligent, and Your Highness was a perfect example of what I dislike about the genre. It’s trying a little too hard — a little too much sexual innuendo here, a little too much forced acting there. I like fantasy and the whole “sword/medieval/magic” genre, don’t get me wrong, but some of this stuff was just plain stupid, and not in the good way (if it tries to parody other stuff from the same sort of genre, it does a terrible job of it.

The only saving grace of this movie is Natalie Portman. She’s a badass, and that’s about as apt a description as I can think of right now. It also means I’m off to acquire more of her earlier work. She’s not the lead character, but far and away, she carries the movie across various terrible sub-plots.

Seriously, watch this movie, but only for Natalie Portman (or James Franco, if you’re a female).

The movie is bad, but Portman is a badass. There’s a difference.

Your Highness, 2011

One More Thing…

What’s the word for that moment when you realise that the work you do is appreciated by many, many people all across Australia?

Yeah, that.

This weekend was nothing short of amazing, all thanks to a little site called MacTalk.

Back in 2007, I joined a little site called MacTalk. Fast forward a couple of years, a few thousand posts, and many internet arguments later, and I come across a little post by then-overseer and hater of pants, decryption, asking for volunteer writers for some news posts. I put my hand up.

The rest is turtles all the way down.

This weekend was basically the culmination of all that; a dinner with most of the people who have contributed to MacTalk in some way, those who have silently decimated the not-so-silent spam, those who have kept things ticking over behind the scenes, and those who have written articles, reviewed products, or gotten on their perennial soapbox and given a few thousand listeners an earful about how non-developers shouldn’t be using beta releases on the podcast, past and present.

There were a few people missing, but by and large, most of the big players where there and a fantastic time was had by all. Putting faces to online personas is always good fun, even if it can be a little daunting at first. Once you get over that initial awkwardness of “hey, do I follow you on Twitter? What’s your name on the forums?”, then it’s apples, ladies and gentlemen, apples — which is lucky, because that’s pretty much what MacTalk is about (Apple, Inc).

At some point during the night, there was a thing where had to go around the table and tell everyone about ourselves — our Twitter or MacTalk usernames, what we did, and so on.

Some people were known simply by name or by reputation, others had to describe their role in MacTalk a little more. When it came around to me, I simply said “I’m Benny, and I write the news”.

Cue thunderous applause.

In all seriousness, I was kind of taken aback. Stunned, that people recognised me, just from what I had done. Little did I realise how far my daily news posts reached. Little did I know that people actually recognised —nay, applauded — my work.

This isn’t just me being naive, it’s a genuine realisation of the culmination of hours of early morning (and some not-so-early) news posts over last two years. It’s me realising that podcast topics which were formed off the words I had written, it’s about me realising that “whoa, people actually read this stuff — and they like it!” Me realising that the words I type into one of those new-fangled computers actually has some sort of impact.

One comment (from Chrome, I believe): “everyone sets their clock from Greenwich Mean Time, but Greenwich set their time from [me]”.

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of being appreciated and recognised for your work, which, I guess, was really the whole point of that night; everyone in that room had contributed in some way, shape, or form to MacTalk over the past few years.

This morning I considered writing a piece on Steve Jobs (you know, seeing as he stepped down as CEO) as a sort of editorial on MacTalk (like all the cool kids are doing), but as I thought about what I would write about, I couldn’t think of anything. Seriously, not a thing — not because there wasn’t anything to say, but because anything I wrote about would be so, so, insubstantial compared to the big picture.

And yet it’s times like the above, when I was applauded for simply saying my name and what I do, that make it all worth it.

Thanks guys 🙂