Tag: You’re Doing it Right

More On the Recent Evo 4G Update

Well I have some additional good news in regards to the update released two days ago for the Evo 4G. The sound quality in Pandora is acceptable again. Sadly the song skipping is still plaguing Last.fm and Pandora has now gone from one song to another automatically before finishing the prior one. Alas my phone has become a usable piece of equipment again, huzzah!

Evo 4G Update

My fears of dropped support were alleviated this morning (roughly 00:32 this morning that is) when Sprint finally pushed out an update to correct some of the major problems on the Evo 4G spawned by the Android 2.2 update. I haven’t had time to test much yet but here’s what I’ve noticed.

Syncing multiple GMail accounts now works again. I could tell this right away as my phone rebooted from the update and notified me of four new e-mails in my secondary account. Huzzah! That was the biggest annoyance I had with the Android 2.2 update.

The calendar bug has been fixed as well. Good to know.

The microphone button is back on the keyboard. This button was replaced by a keyboard language selector in the Android 2.2 update which really irked me. The microphone button brings up a speech to text input mechanism that actually works fairly well (it doesn’t do punctuation of course and sometimes it selects the wrong word if there are multiple spellings though).

I’ll note there seems to be general performance improvements in this update as well. Various phone functions such as bringing up the application menu seem to work a bit smoother now. Of course that could all be in my head.

I haven’t testing the Pandora sound quality and Last.fm song skipping issues I noted yet. Those two problems are tied for my number two biggest annoyance in the Android 2.2 update. If those are fixed I’ll be willing to forgive the most likely broken VPN support.

I’m glad my worries were incorrect and HTC didn’t decide to just drop support for the Evo. I’ve dealt with too many companies (Palm, HP, Sony) who made hand held devices and then dropped support a few scant months after release. I wish HTC would have been a little more upfront about their work on these problems just so us paranoid individuals knew something was going to be done. Either way something is fixed now which is good.

Try to Top This

I personally don’t believe being knighted by a monarch is an honor but some people do. And one of these knighted people took the extra step and pretty much topped everybody. Author Terry Pratchett was knighted and decided he needed a sword. The means a trip to the sword shop right? Not for Terry Pratchett.

With help from his friend Jake Keen — an expert on ancient metal-making techniques — the author dug up 81kg of ore and smelted it in the grounds of his house, using a makeshift kiln built from clay and hay and fuelled with damp sheep manure.

Yeah that’s right he make his own sword out of fucking iron ore deposits dug up on his property. Just in case that wasn’t bad ass enough:

Pratchett, who has Alzheimer’s disease, also said he had thrown in “several pieces of meteorites — thunderbolt iron, you see — highly magical, you’ve got to chuck that stuff in whether you believe in it or not”.

Yes he did this while suffering from Alzheimer’s and tossed in a few pieces of meteorites just to show off how awesome he is. Of course he lives in Britain so:

Pratchett has stored the sword, which he completed last year, in a secret location, apparently concerned about the authorities taking an interest in it.

He said: “It annoys me that knights aren’t allowed to carry their swords. That would be knife crime.”

All that work and he lacks the right to show it off for the bad ass piece of labor it is.

Seriously you can’t top Terry Pratchett and neither can I. Also here is an article with a picture of the sword.

NRA Challenging Ban on 18-20 Year Olds Buying Handguns

The National Rifle Association (NRA) are challenging the ban on 18-20 year olds being prohibited from purchasing handguns from a federally licensed dealer:

The NRA is challenging federal laws that prohibit law-abiding Americans eighteen through twenty years of age from legally purchasing a handgun through a federally licensed firearm dealer. The case was filed Tuesday evening in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas Lubbock Division. James D’Cruz of Lubbock, TX is the plaintiff in this case.

Good on them. I’ve always found some things odd in this country. Take for example being an adult, in this country you are legally considered an adult at 18 years of age. Alas being an adult doesn’t mean you’re quite ready to be treated as such. In most states you can’t legally purchase or consume alcohol until you’re 21 and you are prohibited from purchasing a handgun from a federally licensed dealer until you reach the same age.

Strangely enough when you turn 18 you’re old enough to join the military where they often issue you handguns. Hell, at 18 you’re old enough to join the civilian police force who are issued handguns as well. Yet, even if you join military or a police force, you still can not legally go to a gun shop and purchase a handgun until you reached 21 years of age. Doesn’t make much sense does it?

I’m glad to see the NRA challenging this one.

More Android vs. iOS

Is it any surprise that I like Android as an operating system? Would you be shocked if I told you I despise Apple’s App Store practices and how they restrict iOS devices? If you answered yes to either of those questions you’re either new here or have problems comprehending what you read. In the first case let me say welcome and in the latter case let me question your intelligence.

I’ve made a few posts about my Android phone and a few posts criticizing Apple’s practices in regards to iOS. This post is quite an opposite because I must give Apple some serious credit where it is due, their support for older devices.

Apple does a pretty decent job of supporting old versions of the iPhone for some appreciable amount of time. For instance if you have the previous model of the iPhone you can install the newest version of iOS and get many of its features. This isn’t so true in the Android world. I have an HTC Evo 4G and a while ago HTC released Android 2.2 for the device. Unfortunately that update has some glaring issues, the biggest of which in my opinion is the inability to sync multiple GMail accounts. If you have two GMail accounts added to your Android phone only the primary one will sync automatically leaving you to manually refresh each other account. Couple this with non-functioning VPN and flaky Exchange support and you have a desperate need for a patch.

The problem is HTC has so far simply stated they are looking into the problem and have not released an fix. Why am I concerned? Because of the history most Android manufacturers have with dropping support for devices that aren’t that old. While an iPhone owner can expect to receive updates for a couple years after purchasing their phone most Android users are lucky to receive fixes for a full year. There are some exceptions such as Google’s Nexus One (which is no longer being sold to consumers) and Motorola’s Droid (which is obsolete) but for the most part it seems manufacturers are quick to drop support for their devices forcing you to either go without updates or upgrade to a new phone.

I will also note that Palm has done a great job at continuing to support the Pre and Pixi but that could be due to the simple fact those are the only two phones they have released. Previously they were fast to stop releasing updates for their Treos and PDAs.

Let me simple give Apple a big cudos