janewilliams20

For a while now, there's been a tendency for F2F Rpers to have a netbook, or tablet, or smartphone with them at the table. It's easier than carrying a ton of books, and easier to search than the dead-tree version, too.
Since the thing's there, it can also have a dice-rolling app - saves forgetting your dice, or having them roll under the table, or accusations of cheating.

And now there's this. It's a D6, and it'll cost you a penny under £35. Why? Because it'll link by Bluetooth to your smart device of choice. The numbers light up. It'll act and feel just like a traditional "dice" (no, get it right, the singular is DIE)  for 20 hours, until it needs recharging via its micr-USB port - but costs about £34.50 more.

Why? Why not just use a D6?

But a Tweet from a fellow-coder pointed me at
this (View in a modern browser - Chrome is good, FF works, IE you'll need v10) Chart here.
That's done in CSS.
Yes, just CSS.
I "need" to learn CSS3. Not that it'll be of general use just yet (see  note above about modern browsers), but that is so elegant!

I may rave in more detail about my Jellybean update at some point, but for now: I wanted to send a text to Dave saying "Did any shopping happen that I need to know about?"
I had to type the first two letters of "did" and "any", and the first four of "shopping". After that, it correctly predicted every word I wanted to type.

We have a new, modern coffee machine. To obtain coffee, I go to the touch-screen, and press

• Coffee
• Strong
• Go

It produces coffee, and also tells me that I could, if I wished, use a short-cut combination for this drink. The code would be 032.
So to use that, I'd press:

• Shortcode
• 0
• 3
• 2
• Go

This would save me time how, exactly?

There's also a shortcode for water....

mind you, the previous machine asked me how strong I wanted my water....

Surprisngly well, actually. I got a lot of things done that weren't in the plan, mainly because I had a Dave around to enjoy, so we did things that it made sense to do together - like eating lunch out. Saturday he was working days, but Sunday he was on change-over, and Monday he managed to wake up much earlier than usual, so that was a day and a half of "ooh, look, I have a husband".  Lunches have occurred at the Lounge and at a Toby carvery. We also went to the Homebase 15% off day and got a new strimmer, a new laundry basket, and some more plants (aubergine that already has small fruit on, my one having failed due to neglect, and some herbs to go in the front bed), acquired and used bird food, watered everything that needed it, and on Monday, investigated a furniture place near the Toby and may have found a new 3-piece suite that isn't too expensive.

Despite two meals out, I've stayed in WW point limits, not even using exercise points or weeklies, and have lost 2kg this week. No major milestones, but I am now on less points per day than before. I'm feeling healthier - bouncy and efficient, with "brisk" being the default walk, rather than "amble" or "plod".

Techy stuff - both the new phone and the tablet now run Android 4. Ah, yes, new phone - Dave and I now both have phones from Virgin Media, same people who supply our broadband, TV, and landline. It's a pretty good deal. MIne's a Samsung Galaxy 2, and so far, I like. I'm very impressed by how easy transfer was - once the PAC code was in, and the number switched to the new phone, all my apps, wallpaper, everything, transferred itself automatically. Well, all except the WW app I use, that isn't on Android Market any more, so I had to re-download.
Also discovered that if I load Dropbox to the phone, it'll automatically upload any photos I take to my Dropbox account, so they're waiting on the PC for me when I get home. Handy!

Sewing? That kirtle has gone from a length of fabric and a cutting diagram on the back of an envelope to an almost-complete garment. Side-gussets, facing for the neckline (it's  a good job I never throw anything away, if you were to lay that facing out flat on the inside-out-kirtle so you could see the shape, it would look a lot like a linen trouser-leg, and for good reason).
I need to do some hand sewing where the gussets meet, to get the seams to work, and to finish off the ends of every seam so I don't have dangling threads or a tendency for things to come undone.
It would be a good idea to either finish all the seams properly (no chance) or to run the zig-zag machine over them (some chance) before they fray to death. It would be nice to hem the bottom, and the ends of the sleeves, rather than rely on the selvage to do the job.
What I've absolutely got to do, to make this usable, is the eyelets so the front opening can be laced up. Before that, I plan on sewing that facing seam in place on the outside - hand stitching is probably easier than the machine, as well as looking better.
Three evenings, plus some of Friday (morning before I leave the house, probable hand-sewing time in the hotel Friday night/Saturday morning). I'll do it.

One of my colleagues/users today was trying to describe my role to the rest of her team, by comparison with someone else they used to know in IT. "She's like X, only more helpful," she began, then reconsidered. "She's like X, only with a user interface".

OK. I can cope with that :)

I actually want more than just an e-reader, I think, so this doesn't help me directly, but here's a review that compares two e-readers.
http://www.computing.co.uk/v3-uk/review/2110424/amazon-kindle-wi-vs-sony-reader-wi-prs-t1-head-head-review
From the look of that, if an e-reader and surfer was what I was after, I'd be going for the Sony.

Found a few things out today, so let's make some notes.
What am I missing?
The netbook is good, well worth the cash, but not really ideal for my original purpose. It's too big and heavy to go in a handbag, and doesn't have a dongle, so can only go online where I can plug it in or use WIFI - handy in the kitchen, but not on a train. It doesn't really replace the laptop as a PC on holiday, as the screen isn't big enough for sensible photo-editing. It won't run the latest version of Yahoo Webmail due to screen size limitations. It will do document editing for me. It's a semi-laptop replacement for holidays where I'm limited in luggage weight, and handy around the (Wifi-enabled) house, but that's it.

The phone is great as a phone/diary (syncs with Google Calendar without me even having to tell it! perfect!), and as a mapping/GPS device (though not as good as real sat-nav). It isn't up to the job as a means of reading PDFs, as the screen is too small, and a combination of small screen and on-screen keyboard means I can't use it for writing. The mobile version of YMail doesn't let me reply to group mails (it sends to "from", not to "reply to"). It can do most web browsing, but not all - small screen, and only one window (mainly due to screen size). It's a good music player: I drop files to it, it plays them. The camera is adequate for happy-snappy.

Some sort of e-reader would let me read my PDFs and other e-documents, but not write to them. A Kindle, for instance - Amazon have them, they're beautifully light and easy to read. But I still don't get mobile writing ability, and that would be very handy when on the train, or in cafes when touring. It does its one job very well indeed, but misses a few others. Apparently the more expensive version (£152 rather than £111) has 3G, and will to some extent web-browse as well as download more books to read - and the data connection comes as part of the price!
247g, 190*123*85mm, for future reference, and micro-USB, so same cable as everything else.

Today I met someone with an iPad. Physically, it does look slim and light, and not a bad screen at all. So far, so good. I'd been told elsewhere that Apple have improved their devices and all the problems with them had gone - too vague a statement to be useful, and their website is useless (Apple, I don't CARE if it's "cool", or what colour it is, I want to know what it can DO!). So. How do I get my existing PDFs and MP3s on there? Previously the reason I stopped using the iPod as a music player was that it would not let me simply copy files on, it insisted on holding a complete copy of the iPod content on one PC, and "synching" with that - this meant all the files were duplicated for no reason, and it would only let me "sync" with one PC, not the three, or four, or just "the nearest" I actually needed. Almost entirely useless. Does it still do this? Yes, apparently it does. Same idiotic limitations. The iPad is bigger than the iPod, or any phone - how about an SD-card slot? No. I'm told they may consider it for the next version (or they may not). The netbook lets me plug in my portabel hard drive, with all the files on, or a USB stick - no, you guessed it, I can't do that,  either. So, that's a tablet-style device that won't let me put the files on there that are its entire purpose for existence....  very clever! I can download (and pay for) whatever limited selection of things they deign to supply on their iShop (whatever it's called), but using my own files - no. Price - starting at £399. OK.... but the base version has no 3G!  Wifi, yes, but.... so we have a supposedly mobile device that can't under normal mobile circumstances go online??? They won't admit to a price above that "from" one, and want me to choose colour before amount of memory. I haven't yet checked out whether it can usefully browse the web (yes, obviously this includes being able to run Flash), but since it fails on the basic functionality so far, it hardly matters.
edit: from comments from an iPad user on LJ, no, it won't usefully browse the web. It can't handle scrolling down in a text entry box.

Next up will be to investigate the various other tablets and e-readers: Android, maybe the latest Windows offerings. But not today.

A serious coding mailing list pointed me here, and I thought I'd repeat a few while waiting for some code to run. Yes, it's Friday.

Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen. (Edward V Berard)

The best method for accelerating a computer is the one that boosts it by 9.8 m/s2. (Anonymous)

Ready, fire, aim: the fast approach to software development. Ready, aim, aim, aim, aim: the slow approach to software development. (Anonymous)

It’s not a bug – it’s an undocumented feature. (Anonymous)

A good programmer is someone who always looks both ways before crossing a one-way street. (Doug Linder)
(Oh good, I'm a good programmer. Been almost run down a few times too often.)


Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live. (Martin Golding)
It'll be me in six months time - and I know where I live

In order to understand recursion, one must first understand recursion. (Anonymous)

And one the source missed:
There are 10 sorts of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don't.

We have a copy of the main, live DB on another server, for test purposes. It's rather out of date, and could use a refresh. I've got some test tables and data in there that I'd rather not lose until I've checked them, so what I want to do is rename the old copy rather than dropping or over-writing it, then import a new copy from last night's live backup.
( how to, how not to )