Friendly suggestion to Android OS developers

I don't know if for my frustrations with my phone I should say thanks to Motorola or Google software engineers, but I do have my frustrations. Big time!

As you can see from earlier posts I have a Motorola Droid 2 Global. And I can't wait for November when I'll be eligible for an upgrade! I'm sooooo gonna switch to another phone, yet another manufacturer!!

I used to have Motorola phones before (StarTac (yeah, I'm old aren't I), v50, v600) and they were full with stupid, mainly usability issues. I swore I was not gonna buy another Motorola one, and yet I did it again. They do design good looking phones... I give 'em that much!

My suggestions is to look up these terms and get familiar with them! ASAP!

If my phone is downloading and installing an app, why wouldn't anything else be working?
If my phone is busy doing anything why wouldn't it respond to any user interactions?

Yeah, fundamental questions and yet they happen all the time. I have the idea that a) prioritizing running processes/tasks is not possible in Android OS, or b) they just didn't care and run everything on the same priority. But if the user would like to do anything, than leave other stuff and get busy! Why shouldn't I be able to write a text message, while Angry Birds is being updated? Why shouldn't the on screen keyboard react to my typing while the phone is busy getting the contact image from the local cache, LinkedIn, Facebook or any other source! If I chose to send him/her a text I probably know who she/he is, and the picture wouldn't help much. And probably not my top priority. My top priority is to figure out if I mistyped anything. But usually I'm done with the first 2-3 words by the time the keyboard shows them (little popup of the letter), vibrates and puts them in the text box... Nice design, now innit?

My only hope is that the Nexus phones are not f*cked up by any manufacturer's sluggish add-ons, so I'm really tending towards getting the latest Nexus in November. But whatever I'm getting appears to be this crappy I'm gonna send it give it back to Verizon on the spot!

My other hope is that by the end of the year Sony comes up with something good and they sign up with Verizon, too! The only phone I loved from the ones I had was the Sony Ericsson W910i. Ah man, that was a great phone!

Week two was a disaster

I rode the elliptical for a total of at least 23 miles in 5 days. That's 5km less than a marathon... But I ended up with more or less the same weight. I have no idea why food has a drug effect on me, but I like eating good stuff, even though I'm not hungry, and when my wife tries to guard the fridge I act like a drug addict... Strange.

I started playing with one of my Christmas Gifts: Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony. There's one song on the radio station 'Electro Choc' that kinda got my attention:


If anybody knows how to get the extended version of this song, or even better the LP, contact me!

Anyways I'll try to get myself together this week, and somehow keep myself busy during the evenings so those cravings don't ruin my efforts. I'll try to get below 220lbs by Friday morning.

Annular Eclipse in Northern California

This evening we watched the annular solar eclipse with my wife. We already saw a total eclipse a bit more than a decade ago back in Hungary in 1999. We feel really lucky to see such phenomenon more than once in a lifetime. We didn't travel to Eureka or up to the Rockies to see the perfect ring of fire, but watched it from our own home. Amazing how bright the Sun can be even though 90% of it was covered by the Moon.

I took some pictures using my IR filter to make a stop motion video of it. Even though Youtube's stabilize function can make magic I should have used a tripod. I might take the time and align the pictures by hand some time and recode the video. It's only 107 pictures, I'd be done in a couple of hours probably...

Until then here it is:

Americans and their trucks

It was bothering me for a while now why are Americans so obsessed with pickup trucks. Apart farm workers, ranchers and landscaping professionals (gardeners) nobody else really needs them. And yet Silicon Valley is full with them. However the ratio of soil and plant related professionals per computer science related professional does not justify the amount of trucks on the roads.

Even my neighbor has a truck and he's retired. It's big as f*ck, and he only drives it to go to the doctor in the morning as I've seen. Apart from that it parks in front of the house all day all week. Never have seen him hauling something big and heavy. Ever.

But look at this. What's common on these vehicles:

Well , both of them are:

• Dodge (irrelevant),
• big,
• powerful,
• big engine,
• loud,
• and have lots of chrome.

Problem solved! Poor Americans like these qualities in a car and yet automakers give them this:

They simply have no other choice but driving trucks. This on the picture looks like a European car. Not American. Kapish?! Leave the wanna-be-boy-racer cars to Europe, Japan and Middle-East! They have high enough gas prices to not to get any better... 1.2L, 4 cylinders, turbo 160 HP @ 7500rpm. It's a joke! Sport-compact my a**!

ばんかい！

After 8 years and 366 episodes ブリーチ (Bleach) anime series ended. I got the feeling that the decision was made quite quick for some reason. They've just started a new story line and after a couple of episodes they quickly solved the problem and ended the show. But at the end how Ichigo says good bye doesn't exclude anything... He might be back.

This was my favorite anime series, and I guess I'm not alone with this feeling. I have mixed feelings about ending this show. The story was agonizing quite a bit in the last couple of years. The original idea was however great. And they managed to come up with new and new story lines after every 50-100 episodes to keep the it interesting, but some of them was a bit ridiculous and when a  fight lasts through dozens of episodes that's just not good enough.

I figured that the best series usually have 20-50 episodes. The ones below 15 episodes are based usually on a bad idea or the artwork is crappy and they failed. The ones over 100 episodes have usually a great story base and good artwork and everybody got carried away and they just don't know when to stop.

Japanese have quite a colorful imagination and quite a a few taboos... I guess this is why from time to time a great anime/manga series emerges.

Since with one exception of Cowboy Bebop the dubbing of any anime series is just awful! I always watch them in Japanese with English subtitles. Otherwise it just cannot be enjoyed. So I picked up a couple of very 'useful' words and expressions that might come handy one day (implied irony):

たたかい	[tatakai]	battle
大丈夫	[daijōbu]	Are you all right?
馬鹿	[baka]	idiot
手前	[temae]	you (Usually translated as 'Bastard', probably not a nice thing to call the other ^.^)

Probably there's more, but I can't remember right now :)

Now I have to finish up Naruto Shippuden (bout 200 episodes are left) and I can start looking for something new. Probably there's at least a couple of series on my hard drive I still haven't seen...

You live in the USA for too long...

... if you

• Prefer soda over water
• Have ice in the freezer
• Regularly make or buy ice
• Drink most of your drinks with ice
• Take your car for distances you rather walked before
• Spend extra 5 minutes to find a parking spot that's closer to the mall entrance, even though walking the extra distance wouldn't take more then 1 minute
• Use voicemail
• Cut coupons out from the Sunday paper
• Start to believe conspiracy theories
• Walk into non automatic doors (ouch, happened once to me...)
• Think it's rude nobody greets you went to walk into a shop
• Actually want the clerk (sales associate) to help you finding something
• Greet people with 'How are you doing?'
• Or 'Sup?
• Reply with 'Hi, how are you doing?'
• Or 'Yo yo, 'sup?'
• Need to snack while watching TV
• BBQ burgers, and you're proud what delicious burgers you can make even though you bought the patty
• Consider check a payment method
• Rather change lanes than switching off cruise control
• Can pronounce 'water' correctly
• Say 'I appreciate' a lot
• Think Budweiser is a beer
• Drink the light one

The workout plan

In case anyone interested in my detailed workout plan that helps me losing weight here it is.