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!