The Final Score

Since this ridiculous July has dragged me away from the obsession of mastering new technology to the land of the lotus eaters (I.e. the local beer gardens) I feel I should round off with a summary of my progress to date.

 

OK; what we have here is a 58-year old sci-fi geek with an education in possibilities but a grounding in reality. For example: There is no AI. There is no honest government or trade union. Fusion power is still 25 years away. Women love to talk. And I've been drunk for a month! So. What have I discovered?

 

The tablet is clever! As is the smartphone (1 billion otherwise intelligent humans manically texting while they cross a busy street or drive heavy machinery can't be wrong!). No denying this. But I really, really do not like phones. So what do I get out of this?
 

In order of fun:

 

Music: Things I have discovered -- Organise your ill-gotten music library's metadata on your PC first of all with mp3tag (esp. all the artist, album & album artist fields); download the MixZing app to your tablet (the Nexus comes with its own music app but it's crap and you can't get rid of it); upload around 60 albums; then lie in bed attached to a cheap pair of headphones with the Nexus propped up beside you so you can play with each of the 10 graphic equaliser sliders until your latest David Bowie album Is-Just-About-Right!

 

Reading: I like the Moon+ Reader app. I've uploaded enough sci-fi novels for a two month boring stay on a desert island with a dearth of hula-hula girls. For good measure, I also uploaded around 3 dozen comics/graphic novels. OK for a good length holiday lacking in any other distractions, methinks. What's clever about this app is the quick ability to change font size and brightness with a swipe of one side of the screen (just gotta remember what drunken grope does what on what part of the screen!). The only downside is the tablet is not a great eReader in the bright outdoors. There is a tendency to get a reflection of a big bright red nose rather than the crisp white text of, say, a Kindle book. The Moon+ Reader does have a "Theme" gimmick to improve an outdoor picture though. What is cool is the offline and online link to  ColorDict, a dictionary/Wikipedia/spellchecker app. Just press on a word or term you are reading and up pops more than you'll ever want to know about it. So far, including the music, the books, and the other add-on programmes (sorry, "apps"), I've taken up around a half of the Nexus' (admittedly) limited 32 Gb capacity.

 

Films and TV: Tricky, this one. From my research, a single mp4 film takes up over 2 Gb of space, so not much room for a video library on a 32Gb hard drive, especially with all the other stuff on there. Again, the (non-deletable) Android movie app that comes with the machine is crap (just like iPad, they are only designed to part you from your money at the online store!). I use MX Player which handled a test feature film and two ancient (B&W) episodes of Fireball XL5 with ease. Have to try some more media in the coming weeks.

Admin: A boring subject unless you are OCD about your hard drive capacity. I use File Manager HD to organise all my tablet's files and folders. Works a charm. I also use Clean Master to get rid of all the crap that accretes in each of the app's caches (it frees up around half a Gb a time). Finally, I downloaded Kingston Office which handles all my Microsoft Office .doc documents and .xls spreadsheets uploaded from my PC. I'm currently drafting blog posts, creating a shopping list and checking my sci-fi recommended reading spreadsheet using it.

Other apps: Just started to play with all the other stuff. Google Sky Map seems to know where I am in the world and what each of those funny lights in the sky are. Google Translate seems to be able to translate 70 languages into 70 other languages. So far I can get the tablet to talk to me in Vietnamese but not Thai. Probably needs more work. Oh yes, and my on-board camera seems to be able to take fairly decent snapshots. The Poetic case-cum-tablet prop protects the machine and I'll get Linda to sew together a gay shoulder bag for transport.

So That's about it. From Confused of Totton to Adept of Suburbia. All in about a month. Next month I'm taking the Nexus 10 on its first holiday to Texas for four weeks. But for that I'll start a fresh blog.

Farewell.

Day 13: Case & Camera

Brilliant weather so little time to explore the Mysteries of the Tablet. It was, however, an opportune time to test the the 5 Megapixel rear-mounted camera. Since all my garden flowers are full bloom, the subject matter was easy. . .

Hmm . . . not the most exciting picture in the world but it obviously works on the fly (I'm also writing and uploading this blog from my tablet for the first time, too). It's a slow process, though. With the virtual keyboard taking up most of the screen, the blogger input window is not easily visible and my touch typing is inept at best. It also doesn't help that missing the space bar jumps me out of blogger altogether and back to the tablet's home screen. Therefore, I have to t-y-p-e  v-e-r-y  s-l-o-w-l-y.

The other thing I did was to buy a Nexus 10 cover. After watching this video, I opted for the Poetic. It's a snug fit, is light, and it no longer feels like I'm carrying a tray of eggs around.

Day 7: Struggling with the Internet

Back to the problem of having a Wi-Fi enabled tablet and no Wi-Fi in my living room. What's the point of being a retired couch potato when you have to move to get something?  Last week I order a wireless repeater which arrived today so, not only do I have to combat the magicks of Android, I have to master the intricacies of IP protocols and home networks. Amazon's WS320 Repeater is a simple plug with a single push button light on it. How difficult can it be to get my PC, router repeater and tablet to talk to one another? Fairly difficult, as it turned out. Might as well throw away the manual for all the sense it made. Luckily, Amazon have a very chatty forum section to each of their purchases and one guy in particular made perfect sense. So, for a paltry £24, there is a plug in my kitchen boosting the signal from my office to the couch potato in the living room. Success.

I also bought some ear phones while I was at it so, eventually, I was lying on the couch reading a Watchmen comic while listening to my own constructed rock music playlist, occasionally being interrupted by incoming e-mails. Ah! I think I'm getting there.

Now, I wonder what I can make it do next?

Day 5: managing my stuff

Unusually seasonal weather for this time of year has dragged me away from the Lure of the Tablet to the cold beers of the nearby Pub Gardens. I have made some progress, though. Going back to the buying criteria of Day 1, and now that I have said tablet in my hot, grease-dripped fingers, I am at the point where I need to "put some stuff" on the damn' thing in order for it to entertain me.

So, what do I want? I want a) an eReader (tried a Kindle last year but realised that, if I was going to be precious about lugging an expensive slab around foreign countries, it should do more!); b) listen to music on the road (or in the front room without extremely annoying adverts -- does anyone NOT want to murder Gavin from Autoglass?); c) maybe play some films on an American airplane that hasn't caught up with the new, and better, Arab Airlines; d) read comics (someone told me this is actually possible); e) and, finally, do all the stuff that obviously enraptures everyone else in the modern world (except me, of course).

Oh yes! And I really, really want to control my tablet instead of letting the "apps" and the Amazon/Apple/Microsoft/Google inbuilt software control me! (And forge a direct line to my credit card, of course!!!)

Now to the stuff! Since I paid an exorbitant price for an obsolescent Kindle last year (the Kindle Keyboard, if you're interested - a fucking waste of overpriced money they used to funded their Kindle Fire range) I did discover a wonderful PC program (or should I say "app") called Calibre. Not only does it provide a catch-all conversion software for eBooks but seems remarkably agile in detecting and uploading to my Nexus 10. As I said in Day 3, I downloaded Moon+ Reader so, to test it, I uploaded two books via Calibre via the USB; one in .mobi and one in .epub formats. Both work on Moon+ but, what became interesting is the control I never had with a Kindle. On Landscape I can view an open book (without breaking the spines as I hated doing with my physical library). After a bit of jiggery-pokery with the settings I could tap right to page-on, tap left to page-back, slide down left to increase brightness, slide down right to increase fonts, tap centre to bring up more options. Enough already! Already sold! But what's more, I uploaded a slew of comics in .cbr and .cbz formats and Lo and Behold! I CAN READ COMICS ON MY GODAMNED NEXUS! Wow. Haven't been impressed so far but, with this . . . Me Like!

The other minor success was the video. To my shame (Nah! Not really) I am an aficionado of obscure sci-fi and have a collection of black and white Fireball XL5 tapes in .avi format. To complete the test I uploaded that and a recent MP4 film and Lo! the MX Player app handled both admirably. OK, I am not a connoisseur of any kind of app at this stage but, the fact that they both worked without fuss made me a happy bunny.

But before I get carried away, the over-arching priority was to control my device. I downloaded Astro File Manager and, after a few hours of following the online video and playing with it, I decided it wasn't for me. The interface is NOT intuitive for a Windows-educated boy. I downloaded File Manager HD and that, I found almost immediately, is the bee's genitals. Everything I can do on a PC is easy on Android too. And logical, Captain! Having worked out where everything is (who'd of thought that the path "/sdcard" was the equivalent of "C Drive"?). File Manager HD allowed me to create folders, delete (oh the POWER!) and move stuff around without panicking. Flushed with my newfound abilities I destroyed everything in my path and re-installed my comics and books and TV shows again. And they work! (With appropriate apps, of course.) My Tablet Is Mine To Control! MUHAHAHA!

Day 3: Getting control

First order of priority: where is all the "stuff" and how do I delete it? Take browsing history, for example. I know the URLs and Cookies are retained somewhere but where? And how do I delete them? Found it eventually -- open Chrome, go to Settings in the top right hand corner, choose Advanced, Privacy, and you'll see a label at the top saying Clear Browser Data. Glad that was simple!

So what about all the other junk. It's here I realise how different this architecture is from Windows. Windows provides a one-stop, integrated system for managing your files and folders, copying, deleting, uninstalling, etc. while Microsoft plug-ins like Office, Media Player, Explorer and the like seamlessly integrated into the OS (it's only buying third party games that things start to unravel!). Android appears to be more of a platform: if you want to do something specific, you'll need an app.

So its time to download a few free apps. First off was Clean Master which is supposed to get rid of junk in your various caches (this word, I am beginning to assume, means "history" or even "recycle bin"). Next, because I think I want a Windows-like Explorer, I downloaded Astro File manager. While I was on a roll I downloaded Moon+ Reader for my eBooks, MX Player for my video, and Wikipedia for Android ('cos it was there). Have to say: impressed with the ease and speed you can acquire this stuff.

However, since I'm not brave enough to actually upload any stuff from my PC yet (y'know -- music, films, eBooks, documents, that kind of thing) I still haven't a clue how they work. *Sigh*. Three days now. Am I having fun yet?

Day 2: Getting started

Okay, time to stop being a wuss. I made a list: 16 things I want to do with my new tablet. Where to start? I Googled the N10 and found a site: 50 Great Tips & Tricks for the Nexus 10. Good a place to start as any. Item 1 -- upgrade Android. Think I did that by accident during my random perambulations earlier. Can't remember how, though. Item 2 -- Choose you screen orientation. Hmm, not sure I want to lock the screen yet. Dunno what I'm going to use it for predominantly. Activate Google Now. Okay, I remember seeing that when I set the machine up and disregarded it. What to do? Advice from the Net says "swipe upwards from the bottom centre screen". Okay, doing that but all I get is the Google search screen and the virtual keyboard. No icons to press at all. The Android forums all say there should be a menu with which to open reminder cards. Seems like a gimmick but, hey, I paid for it so I want it! After a hour of fruitlessly swiping, stabbing and otherwise performing arcane supernatural gestures on the screen I put the tablet away for the night. Aarrghh! Bloody useless machine!

It's now 0400 hours on day 2. Can't sleep. Can't let machine beat me! Must.get.out.of.bed.and.find.tablet. One hour later -- still trying to find a clue from the Android forums when, almost by accident, I find it. Swiping upwards gives me the usual search field and the keyboard. BUT, removing the keyboard shows an almost invisible three-dotted icon in the lower right corner. Aha! Clicking that restarts the Google Now process off again. So far: my upward-swiped Google Now has the search field, some prettier colours and two "cards" (one for the weather in Totton, England and one for my miserable shares investments. Never mind: I got there. Yay for me!).

The next advice is download the official Guidebook. I had found that last week during my OCD-driven search for buying criteria. I'd skimmed through it a few times but since I'd actually paid for the Nexus I figured I'd better have it for easy access on my new machine. Using Chrome I tapped on the .pdf header but, unlike similar actions on my trusty PC, nothing happened. Did this a few more times until I gave up. So, lying in bed (the sun is up now at 0400 hours and the birds are cheeping their dawn chorus -- damn! I never get up this early since I gave up working for a living), I query the ever-more-dependable Android forums. Like: where's all my stuff? Unlike the familiar Computer tag in Windows, there's no over-arching program for keeping track of your stuff without resorting to an app. To cut a long story short I found the Downloads app. And, yes, there were four iterations of Nexus-10-guidebook(1) & (2) & (3) & etc..pdf. Which brings me to the next question: How the flaming fuck do you delete anything from this device? It's only got 32 Gb of space for crying out loud. How do you get rid of the junk? (I'm getting the feeling that the catch phrase "there's an app for that" isn't going to be as cute as I first thought).

And on that thought, I decided to pass on #5 - "Download some tablet optimised apps". This is altogether one of the biggest jumps from the Microsoft PC concept, methinks, to the tablet genre. And I'm not too sure that Flash Player is a priority, either. I did, however, successfully "Expand my Keyboard" to the custom PC design. Oh God, some familiarity in a crazy universe. One more thing happened. Somehow I'd triggered an automatic upload of patches for the dozen or so apps I already have. I watched this happened with some bemusement and noticed a "swipeable" thingy in the top left hand corner of the screen. Notifications! Great. Something else to think about. It must be important to the "tablet experience" so I'd better keep an eye on it.

Enough for today. I've just discovered another problem. My Wi-Fi doesn't extend to my living room so any idea of a couch-potato-like existence with my new toy is doomed at birth unless I grasp some network hardware ideas. Is nothing simple?

Day 1: Opening the box

Having spent the preceding week like a 6-year-old suffering sleepless nights in anticipation of a new toy, I finally placed the order for my first tablet. OK, being a 58-year-old retired civil servant with copious amounts of OCD meant that I'd already trawled the Net looking for the device that met my usage criteria: once I'd worked out what that criteria would be, that is. After all, I didn't really need a tablet. My gaming rig PC (bought and paid for at great expense only two months previously) would more than accommodate my obsessive needs to play games and access the Internet for the next half-decade. So why do I feel the need to buy a tablet? The embarrassingly honest answer is: "Because everyone else has got one!". And not only everyone else! A lot of people I know don't even understand computers! But here I am getting e-mails with the subtext: "sent from my iPad", or somesuch! And, to boot, I am a devoted science fiction fan! I have lived with the concept of personal devices that enhances the knowledge base for years before this technology arrived. Everything from Jack Kirby's "Mother Box" in the comics to Charles Stross's "Singularity" in the hard Sci-Fi literature. Intolerable that I should do without when everyone else is playing with the new toys!

So, with consummate efficiency, it arrived. Ordered on Tuesday morning from Google Play, arriving Wednesday morning courtesy of TNT. Shakily breaking the seals, what do I find? One tablet. One micro-USB lead. One USB adapter. One plug. Two bits of paper: one legal warranty that no one reads; one "quick start" guide that comprises of two technical bits of advice (recharge the device and turn it on) and endless pages of Health & Safety instructions (don't use this near explosives, don't use this if you have a pacemaker, don't upset airline staff, don't pour acid over it, don't give it to kids, don't wipe your ass with it). All of it useful, I'm sure but none of it actually telling me how to use the damn thing!

So, you do what any chimpanzee does. You turn it on. Then, in the absence of the oh-so-familiar mouse and keyboard, you stab at the flat, glossy surface with your monkey fingers. And, because you believe yourself to be more evolved than said primate, you start running your greasy digits backwards and forwards over the screen in the same manner as you've seen the kids do (but without the easy, slick confidence of said teenagers, methinks). Accidentally tilting the screen, causing the gyroscope to do things that you absolutely KNOW a TV or a proper PC monitor doesn't do, you see a revolting film of skin grease and fingerprints that would give the average CSI operative an orgasm. Finally, after a few hours of making the pretty colours race backwards and forwards, and up and down, across the screen, you admit that you will NOT be the master of this particular device in a single day. With a sense of defeat you put the new toy to bed and, with the simplicity of the aforementioned 6-year-old, play with the cardboard box for a bit before returning to Skyrim on your beloved PC. Round 2 tomorrow.