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Galaxy Nexus Rant

My first New Years Resolution: start writing on my blog again.

When I posed to folks on Google+ what they would change about the Galaxy Nexus I got a mixed bag of flame bait, fan boy (and girl) warfare and generally snark. I did get a few good posts that were constructive to my synopsis.  Generally what I gleamed from the feedback was a couple of area:

  • The camera ain’t all that
  • Why the fuck does it not have an expandable SD card slot?
  • The speaker is kind of weak
  • The hardware itself feels kind of cheap and flimsy

I have lived with this phone for about two weeks now and I’m inclined to agree with all the observations.  I love the phone, but there are some aspects of it that drive me a little crazy.

First, the media management is disjointed and awful.  Moving media on and off at first was kind of a pain in the ass. I have gotten over that (I had to break off my iTunes training wheels) now but boy was it hard. I hate iTune with a passion, but I have to give it to that slow, bloated ass piece of shit program, it works.  Now before you all start screaming Double Twist stop.  Double Twist can’t see my phone when I hook it up because it mounts as something other than USB storage so it renders the program worthless until I can find a work around (anysuggestions?).  I ain’t going to buy Air Sync. Fuck that!  I ran into the same problem when I connected the phone up to my friends Volt. It didn’t recognize it. Google decsion to use a MTP for media management has fuck those used to using Double Twist for now. Google should just buy Double Twist to make the media management component complete. Problem solved.

Google Music does work pretty well for what I need it to do, but it’s just a bit clunky to do what I am use to doing.  It randomly stops playing a track for odd ass reasons and that does irk me, but all-in-all it works as advertised.  Audio quality is great, but I do miss my pearly white iPhone earbuds with volume control and pause.  I’m sure that is coming soon in future updates. Right?

I don’t find the camera all that awful. What it may lack in quality for the image quality concise it more than makes up for with stupidly fast shutter speed (almost too fast) and instant uploads to Google+ photos. Couple that with the sharing, filters and effects and there is no contest.  I must grudgingly admit that my Wife’s iPhone 4 does better images in certain situations, but I get my picture up to Facebook and Google+ faster.  This came in really handy when I enable instant upload during Christmas.  That, in my opinion, is the camera’s killer app.

The Google services integration with the phone is like…….   It’s mother*&^****AWESOME!!  Everything is just there. The contacts with pictures and phone numbers, the Gmail archive, the smooth as silk Google Voice integration, Google talk, Google+, Reader, Music, YouTube, Picasa ,Photo’s and Calender. In a word: WOW!

When the Verizon 4G network is working, the phone is slick as snot and responsive as my iPad.  When I first activated the phone and began syncing with Google services in the Verizon store I was completely done when I left the store 20 minutes later.  I average 10-18 Mbit/s Down and 6-10 Mbit/s up and this makes life so much better when your doing things around town. However, that performance comes with a caveat; battery life simply sucks dick.  Get the bigger battery. It not only gives more heft to the phone, but it buys you a least 2+ extra hours of LTE usage.  The screen is gorgeous, but it ain’t helping that battery life either. Hopefully with some software updates this may improve slightly, but this is a radio problem and more specifically a problem in how Verizon implements its hybrid LTE/EV-DO network .

An lastly there is ICS.  I have played with many Android phones over the years and this is the first UI I’ve seen that made me happy I left the iPhone.  Even my friend, who is a wholly owned subsidiary of Apple Inc., loved the design and layout.  He’s creative you know. There are some areas for improvement. Not all the apps are optimized for it as of yet. The soft buttons need some tweaking and the menu structure is a bit disjointed. All things that software updates (or custom ROMs) can and most likely will fix.

So, I still have my Google+ thread open for what you would change about the phone so feel free to keep commenting.

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I Am …

I am a conservative. There I said it. Not a full on Libertarian because I believe in might and a moral right. Not a Progressive because I reject the advocacy for paternalism of the state. So what does being a conservative mean?  A conservative, as I define it,  is simply a believe structure that serves a speed bump on the road to serfdom. The road to serfdom is paved with good intentions. What is the difference between an evil bank enslaving a homeowners in a bad mortgage and a government that enslaves current and future generations in debts based on good intentions? These argument always airs on the side of class whom would use the state to guarantee egalitarian outcomes.  How is that fair?  It is because fair is a relative term and not an absolute in which to govern the affairs of man simply because it is subjective.  What are these arguments? We are enslaved by Oil companies, mass media, drug companies, Wall Street name your favorite capitalistic entities.  Name any culprit that gets in the way of the fair redistribution necessary for a socialist utopia and you’ll see a familiar reframe for villainization.  But that elusive utopia must enslave to assist. I have seen enough of the world to know that man has a propensity to enslave his fellow man under the most benevolent of intentions (at first), but it boils down to enslavement none the less.  There is nothing wrong with compassion, but the rhetoric employed to guilt the majority to fend for the minority is morally suspect.  We must always be skeptical of those whom wish to or seek the power to lord over men; public servants, private entities or otherwise. The only lord over man is his GOD and from that GOD man derives reason. That reason has allow mankind to shape his environment to his comfort to survive. Conservatives are maligned and castigated because we believe in these things that work every time they are implement.   These believes are capitalism for good or ill as the greater generator and distributor of wealth in human history; religion as an anchor derived from our biblical text, which codifies our human morality utilizing that reason GOD has bestowed us to write “the rules” down; might, because a man has no rights for which he refuses to defend; and finally life and freedom to live it as one sees fit.  I will be the first to admit they are not always implemented cleanly or eloquently, but what is. This is my mantra. My manifesto. In my community this does not make me any friends, but every problem I see in the world and solution I suggests conforms to these beliefs. Remember that always.
Side note: I have not blogged in months but I feel I need to get something off my chest.  I was having a conversation with a colleague of mine about the benefits of blogging.  His parents had recently passed and he always wondered what his parents where doing or thinking as they raised him and his siblings. What were there thoughts and fears ans the years went on?  They left no diaries nor memoirs. Nor were there many letters written. We are blessed today that we have so many avenue in which to express ourselves for posterity sake. As long as data remains portable, I want something to pass on to my girls as they get older about the man I was and why I raised them the way I did. So this post is more for them 30+ years from now than for my many followers. 
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Jobs of the Future: Are We Prepared?

I’ve been thinking and writing about the jobs of the future in this blog first as an exercise in fantasy. Then when I read our local daily paper on Saturday morning, the the Valencia County News-Bulletin, I realize that fantasy and that post are materializing into fact. Case and point Brad Cordova, graduate of Belen High School class of 2007. After recently completing a degree in math and physics from the University of Notre Dame, he is on his way to MIT to study more advance topics in optics and quantum computational theory. He is preparing for the jobs of the future and let us all hope for the sake of technological progress forward that more follow in his foot steps. Besides all of us here in the county being extremely proud that a native is actually studying such advances topics, this got me to thinking. Is academia, as structured today, preparing the multi-disciplinary programs necessary to train our quantum information scientist, synthetic biologist, data scientist or cyber security engineers?

All institutions of higher learner boast about their multi-disciplinary prowess. However, short of doctoral students and multi-disciplinary fellowship programs for graduate level students, where are the programs that instill this multi-disciplinary approach to undergrads? Not courses in art history, philosophy and international studies (I frankly found those interesting, but a waste of my tuition assistance). Are we developing course that not only introduce these concepts for the sake of general core curriculum degree satisfaction, but how a math course and a computer course interact? In my previous post I posited that a lot of disciplines must be master for the application farther into the academic training. Just take data scientists. A computer science background with a strong core in math and statistics plus some background in graphic design. Currently most of these skills are acquired during a career not in academia. What if we change the paradigm? Start our future graduates in these fields from higher level of excellence. We give colleges a pass on this because they don’t want the moniker of vocational or trade schools. Today most of the institutions that cater to supplying technical training with real-world application are private or public community colleges and trade schools. Big universities seem to find these endeavors beneath them. University was meant for scholarship and knowledge pursuits. However, universities have long morph into vocational or trade training grounds because so many employers view a degree as certification to hire. Without it job applicants have to hope for the best.

We can debate about the merits of using degrees as job discriminators in another post, but now that is the reality. Most jobs require a multi-disciplinary mindset and approach when it comes to finger tip knowledge. In fairness to the universities we can’t expect them to train every individual for all possible contingencies. I’m saying that fact isn’t formally stressed to newly credentialed graduates as they enter the work force. I for one was lucky and knew this ahead of time. I am one part programmer, RF engineer, contracts administrator, orbital analysis and technical writer in my daily duties. None of these things I am an expert on, but had to learn just enough to be productive. My decade in the Air Force prepared me for that, not the eventual college education. But that has to change particularly in the careers I’ve been writing about over the past month. We should begin to demand more of institutions (and industry) for the price society is increasingly having to pay. Slowly society is starting to ask is education really worth the cost? They are asking for ROI on something that’s just as expensive as buying a house or saving for retirement. I won’t figure it out in this post, but something to think about going forward is how do we do go about this? I don’t know, but we need to seriously start thinking about it soon.

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Proto Podcast Show for June 6, 2011


Show Topic:

    WWDC
    E3
    Groupon
    AllThingsD (D9)