Andreas Gohr: Weblog [splitbrain.org]

Birds of Prey

andi — Sat, 18 May 2013 17:17:43 +0200

Birds of Prey

On Mother's Day my Mum took us to Plattenburg (careful: automatic background sound) - an old castle from the 13th century. Besides eating some good food, we attended a falconry show. It was fun to watch even though some of the birds preferred to roam free instead of doing the tricks they were asked to do . And of course it was a good opportunity to try our new camera:

Tags:: falconry,; birds,; photos

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Google IO 2013 Verdict

andi — Thu, 16 May 2013 09:50:48 +0200

Google IO 2013 Verdict

I initially posted this on Google+, but why not make it a proper blog post?

Yesterday Google IO 2013 started and as usually came with a whole bunch of announcements. My general verdict: nice but often half assed.

Let's have a look at the details.

Google Play Books allows you to upload PDFs and ePub. That's great and what I asked for two years ago. Unfortunately there's no way to organize your books. No sort by author or title, no way to edit book metadata or the cover image. Many Android ebook readers do a better job here. And again a new quota was introduced (1000 books) instead of adding the books simply to your Google drive (and be able to sync them to your Desktop that way).

Google Hangouts replace Google Talk. It might be the unified messaging we've been waiting for? Only that there seems to be no Google Voice integration or integration of SMS services (or at least phone number matching similar to Whatsapp). And Google Voice is still not available outside the US. At least you finally can share photos to your contacts. But it's still rolling out so I couldn't try it yet. Biggest question remains: is it still XMMP based and works with 3rd party clients? We'll have to see.

Update: The Verge writes: With Hangouts, Singhal says Google had to make the difficult decision to drop the very “open” XMPP standard that it helped pioneer..
Fuck that!

Google Plus' new layout was an unnecessary change IMHO. The three column layout is somewhat harder to scan and the single column layout looks just broken. And sometimes the three columns simply won'T work at all and you get a huge gap in your stream. The delay in the sidebar revealing is most annoying. You tend to click, then suddenly the sidebar pops up and you're taken to a place you didn't want. Being able to post without scrolling up would be nice as well. But I guess I'll get used to it.

Photo Auto Awesome tools I haven't tried yet, but unless I have space in the range of half a terabyte at Google it won't become my primary photo storage anyway. So I don't really care at all.

Send money via Google Wallet. Yeah finally a Paypal competitor. But wait it isn't. It's fucking US only. Useless.

Google Nexus S4 (not listed yet). Uhm, a rebranded Samsung S4 without the Samsung crap. Hmm, nice but at the price tag of $649, I'm not sure why to bother when the excellent Nexus 4 is so much cheaper. But hey, the more Nexii, the merrier.

Speaking of Nexii. I was really hoping for an updated Nexus 7. Nothing there it seems. Too bad.

Android Development Studio based on IntelliJ. Yeah! I love IntelliJ and having this download and start, all-in-one package should make Android development much easier than before where the set up of the whole Android Eclipse tool chain took some time. Though I wonder if this somehow integrates with an existing IntelliJ Ultimate install.

PHP for AppEngine (not sure if this was announced at GoogleIO or before). Still an exiting new platform, though I don't think we'll see DokuWiki on AppEngine soon, since the one thing we really need is a file system. Still interesting but currently invite only.

Google Music now has some kind of streaming service. At least that's what a large popup says when I go there. But all I get when clicking the “Try now” button is “Server Error”. Same in the Android App. Is this even available outside the US? It's priced in USD only, so I wonder. The new Android app looks okay'ish, not sure if the card metapher is the best way to represent artists or genres though.

That's what I think about this year's announcements. I can't help to feel a bit underwhelmed. What about you?

Tags:: google,; googleio

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New Wallet

andi — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 13:10:10 +0200

New Wallet

After I successfully revamped my key ring it was time to have a look at another part of my Every Day Carry: my wallet.

Until now I used a typical leather wallet with a lot of space for cards, coins, cash and whatever else you tend to cram into it. An always bulky thing, not too comfortable to keep in your jeans pocket.

So I was looking for something new. My requirements were simple: the new wallet should be smaller, be able to carry a lot of cards, able to hold cash in bills but not necessarily in coins. However the amount of cards I tend to have with me made it it quite hard to find something fitting. Most minimalist wallets go for 3 or 4 cards only.

But then I came across this blog post by Brian Green which recommended the Butterfly Wallet. For $12.95¹⁾ it was a no-brainer to try (unlike some other real leather wallets I considered).

Just like Brian I was pretty skeptical when I got the flimsy looking nylon thingy. But after having it used for a week I'm convinced. The butterfly is a trifold with three pockets for (credit) cards and one large pocket at the back for cash. The following pictures should give you an idea of its size compared to my old, empty wallet.

As you can see, each of the pockets hold several cards easily. The trick is to put the most used cards either at the front or back of the stacks for easy access. Here's a list of what I put where:

Left pocket
- Debit card
- Credit card
- Car2Go membership card (car sharing)
- Public transport ticket
Middle pocket
- Video store membership card
- Health care ID
- ID card
- Drivers license
- Rail card
- Sixt card (car rental rebates)
Right pocket
- 2 business cards
- Organ donor card
- Barbershop bonus card
- Restaurant bonus card
Large back pocket
- Cash ²⁾

My new wallet and key ring both fit comfortably in the same jeans front pocket, leaving the other for my mobile phone. So now I'm well prepared for the Summer when I can leave the house with no need for any extra pockets – jeans and t-shirt only. Did you hear me, Summer? I'm ready! Come on now!

Tags:: edc,; wallet

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¹⁾ includes international shipping

²⁾ note that it easily fits Euro bills without folding, even though they are a bit larger than Dollar bills

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