K-Squared Ramblings

Suburbia

How appropriate: “Barons of Suburbia” while driving through Irvine. #

Opera Mini on Android

Now there’s timing: Just two days after I bought a G1, Opera has released a beta of Opera Mini for the Android platform. You can find it in the Communications section of the Android Marketplace. Amazingly enough, on its first day out, it’s already #2 by popularity.

For the most part I’m happy with the built-in browser, except as I mentioned for sites that don’t translate well to the small screen. Sometimes panning & zooming isn’t the best solution, but that’s the only solution on the default browser as near as I can tell. Opera Mini gives you the option of choosing a “Mobile view” which will reformat the page.

It’s a bit rough around the edges (but then it is still a beta). In particular, the touch screen sometimes works for following links, and sometimes I have to use the track ball. Also text entry is a bit inconsistent: when you navigate to a URL, you can finish by hitting Enter, but when you fill in a single-line form field (say, a username), Enter takes you to a new line. You have to hit the Menu button to get an OK/Cancel dialog. And passwords remain completely visible, rather than obfuscating to dots one character at a time.

Of course it’s always good to have alternatives, plus it’s got the mobile display option and it’s blazing fast. It was designed to deliver performance over slower networks, after all (by compressing the heck out of everything at a proxy), so on the 3G network it just screams.

The G1: First Impressions

You may have noticed I’ve been looking for a smartphone for a while, and looking at the T-Mobile G1 more or less since it was announced. Well, I finally went for it. I was going through piles of papers on my desk and realized I had almost enough cashback bonus on one of my credit cards to cover the upgrade cost. And I was already seriously considering adding a data plan in order to put Opera Mini on my RAZR.

So I went down to the nearest T-Mobile store, asked about a couple of issues that hadn’t turned up in my previous research, and got the last one in stock. There was a couple there before me looking at them, but they said they weren’t ready to buy, just researching.

It took me about an hour to activate the phone, mainly because I didn’t have a data plan beforehand and it can take that long for a new plan to take effect. Once I did, I started playing around experimenting with it. (Unfortunately this meant a lot of the things I was going to do this afternoon…didn’t get done. Oh, well.)

Good Stuff:

• I really like the keyboard. Even though I’m using my thumbs, just knowing where the keys are (and not having to do any kind of combos for letters & numbers) means that I can type much faster than I could on the RAZR. I’m already starting to get used to some of the secondary characters, like dashes and such.
• Real web access! The web rendering is very nice. But then it’s WebKit, so it’s basically the same as Chrome or Safari, so that’s not a huge surprise.
• Twitdroid (a Twitter app) and Quickpedia (an optimized front-end for Wikipedia) have impressed me so far.
• There’s a tip calculator app called BistroMath. I had to pick it up or the name alone. (Sadly, it doesn’t seem to work as an FTL drive.)
• I absolutely love being able to look things up online instantly!
• Wi-Fi was easy to set up, including WPA2 security, so I can use our wireless network at home.
• Wallpaper selection is very nice, with a built-in crop & resize function.
• Plain old USB charging, which means I can still use the car charger I got for my last phone.
• The WPhone alternate interface for the WordPress admin area, originally developed for the iPhone, is fantastic on the G1! (Too bad they aren’t developing it much anymore.)
• The built-in calculator app includes limited scientific capabilities (trig, logs, roots, etc.)
• My bank has an app that will look up the nearest ATMs or branches to where I am.
• Scrolling by dragging the actual content instead of the scroll bar is surprisingly easy to get used to. Actually a lot of stuff about the UI is like that: awkward at first, but in just a few hours it becomes second nature.

Minor Issues:

• Our apartment is right on the edge of a cell coverage area, so I haven’t had a chance to try it out on the 3G network yet. But that’s not the phone’s fault.
• It took me a while to figure out how to sync transfer data via the USB cable, since they’ve changed the way it’s handled since the manual was printed. The manual lists it as a system setting, but it’s now an option that pops up in the notification area when you connect it to a computer.

Not So Good

• The touch screen isn’t always responsive, but that may be because I haven’t removed the screen protector that ships with it. I wanted to pick one up that’s actually designed to be used before I pulled this one off.
• The covers on the USB port and memory card feel really flimsy.
• Battery life doesn’t seem to be terribly great. In fact, the clerk at the store suggested I charge it nightly.
• I’ve only played with the camera a little but seems slow and isn’t great with artificial lighting.
• Playing around with WordPress and Wikipedia shows how valuable it is to have a layout optimized for the small screen. The Android browser seems to rely entirely on zoom to handle large-screen layouts, and it would be nice to have something like Opera’s fit-to-width option. Update: It seems to ignore handheld stylesheets, which IIRC is true of the iPhone as well. When website providers try to help you with the small screen, maybe you should let them? *sigh* Need to see if it handles media queries, at least for screen size. Update 2: It does have a fit-to-width option, but I’m not entirely sure what it does, given that I keep running into layouts that end up scrolling horizontally.

Stuff I Have Not Tried But Intend To

• Anything involving GPS. I’m inside right now and it can’t get a signal.
• I don’t know how fast the download speed is over 3G. (Wifi is quite nice!) Update: 3G speed seems pretty decent, actually!
• Map directions. But it’s Google Maps, and those are generally quite good.
• I haven’t hooked up my Bluetooth earpiece yet. Update: Pretty simple. I just needed to remember how to put the headset in pairing mode.
• I haven’t tried connecting to an open WiFi network/hotspot.
• I need to do some more testing with the camera, see how it handles daylight, check out image quality, etc.
• I haven’t really messed with voice dialing.
• Email. It automatically links to your Gmail account, and has the ability to access POP and IMAP accounts, but I haven’t tried out any of the above yet.

Halo & Sundog

While driving toward the sun a little after 1:00 this afternoon, I noticed a faint reddish, slightly upturned patch in the sky ahead of me, and realized it was probably the bottom edge of a 22° sun halo. I was surprised, since the cloud cover looked too heavy for it, but it was there. At the next intersection, I looked out the side window to see if I could catch anything above the sun, and there was a clear arc running left of the sun, from a little below sun level to as high as I could see.

We stopped the car, found a tree to block the sun, and both looked. There was so much glare it was easier to see with sunglasses on, so I lent mine to Katie so she could catch it. Finally I grabbed the camera and took a few pictures, most of them using a gate post instead of the tree.

We ran some more errands, and I caught up with her at the grocery store. On my way from the car, I looked up and saw a perfect bright sundog to the right of the sun, much brighter than the clouds around it and showing the full red-to-blue spectrum. I should have gone back to the car for the better camera, but I used my phone camera instead, and got this shot.

I got to the edge of the lot just as Katie was leaving, and immediately said something like, “Look! Right above that palm tree!” Then I took off my sunglasses, realized that it was completely washed out without them (though it seems to have come out all right on my cheesy phone camera), and handed them over again. It continued to be visible, though less well-defined (it was a lot sharper than this photo shows) for at least half an hour.

A circle around the sun, and a bright rainbow-colored spot in the sky. I wonder how many people walking around never even noticed.

Linkrot & Scam Lameness

• Lots of broken/moved links on my site. Didn’t realize how much I’d been neglecting that. #
• Amusing: savethedevelopers.org now redirects to the IE7 download page. Oh, well. #
• Lame 419 scam: How likely is the FBI Director to contact someone using a GMAIL address? #

Twilight Line & Conspiracy Theories

• Lunch at mall w/ movie theater. People in line for 12:01 Twilight. 1 when I got there, 2 when I left, both seemed to be saving spots. #
• Must read this later: Top 30 Conspiracy Theories (via Bad Astronomy Blog) #

Personality “Type”

I tried out the Typealizer, which purports to analyze the text of a blog and determine the author’s personality type. Interestingly enough, it came up with different results depending on which of my blogs I pointed it to.

LiveJournal: ESTP – The Doers
K-Squared Ramblings: ESTJ – The Guardians (technically this one’s a group blog, but it looks like the tool only grabs the front page.)
Speed Force: ENTJ – The Executives
Opera Community blog: ISTP – The Mechanics

I seem to recall coming out as INTJ the last time I took the Myers-Briggs personality profile. The funny thing is that 3 of 4 classified me as extroverted. If you’ve ever met me in person, you know I’m not an extrovert.

(via Laughing at the Pieces)

Docs and Cheese

• Latest spam trend: Word docs in Chinese. No clue what they are – I’m not going to open them! Also: Make Money Fast seminars…in Shanghai. #
• Making a list of my allergies. And I keep thinking I’m missing something. #
• I still find it amusing that caminobrowser.org focuses on a picture of the browser showing the Wikipedia entry for Cheese. #

Nofollow Targeting

Sad: I disabled nofollow on my blog because it doesn’t solve the problem. Now comment spammers are trading lists of “do follow” sites.

Attack of the Clone Vans

There were at least five of them, but I could only fit 3½ in the photo.

Jupiter and Venus

This is actually from a couple of nights ago, but the view as I left the office tonight was about the same (though the lights were just starting to turn on in this picture).

It’s really odd to walk out of the building into a lot that’s normally lighted (even when I head in to do emergency server maintenance at midnight) and see it completely dark.

Well, not completely dark. There was a little light leaking from windows behind me, and streetlights filtering through trees, and what I could see of the sign on the building across the street. Nothing compared to some of the camping trips I’ve been on, or the drive through Ka‘u at night. But for a suburban office building, it was a change.

Edit: Oops! For some reason I’ve been convinced that this was Saturn, but it’s actually Jupiter.

Hot or Not?

• Switched to long-sleeved shirts & started wearing sweaters this week. And now it’s supposed to break 90 DEGREES today and all weekend. WTF? #
• Must sleep. Saw spam title “Wanna burn movies?” and first reaction was revulsion against gleeful censorship, not “look, more piracy spam.” #

Cross-posted at LiveJournal.

Smoke Plume Above Trees

Smoke Plume Above Trees, originally uploaded by Kelson.

Smoke from various fires up near Los Angeles and Corona, creeping across the sky into Orange County.

Picard’s Pills

Just got spam from “Patrick Stewart” for body-part enlargement. Reminded of that one SNL sketch with the cake shop. #

Exoplanets: Say Cheese!

I remember being bowled over when astronomers first detected planets around other stars. Nowthey’ve actually managed to get pictures!

Of course, they’re about as detailed as pictures of the stars at a science-fiction convention panel taken from the back of the room, or the band on stage from the upper-top-fifth-tier seating (see! that dot there is so-and-so!), but still…it’s a start.

There’s one photo from Hubble of the planetary debris disc around Fomalhaut, with a little dot that apparently has been tracked in other images, consistent with being in orbit around the star. It’s estimated at being about the size of Jupiter and about four times as far out from its star as Neptune is from the sun.

Meanwhile: consider that we can see something the size of Jupiter even though it’s 25 light years away!

Then there’s one from the Gemini North telescope that has actually caught two planets in orbit around a star called HR 8799 — a photo of a planetary system!

Update: Hubblesite has more on Fomalhaut including this image showing Fomalhaut B’s location in 2004 and 2006: