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!
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