Ideas from Mark Stout

Four weeks before the Pixel 4a's rumored announcement date my Pixel XL OG died, as I described in my last post. I really didn't want a non-Pixel phone so I waited for the Pixel 4a announcement. Thankfully it was made on August 3rd, the rumored date. I ordered within minutes of its appearance on the Google Play Store and it arrived on 8/19.  This is an awesome phone. At $350 it has 80% of the value of $1400 dollar phones. At that 20%, are things I do not care about. This review summarizes my feelings well. And in adding apps to my new phone, I just found out Automagic has stopped development. That is sad. It was my go-to automation tool for making my own widgets and more.  So I'm biting the bullet and finally learning Tasker. I had bought it years ago, but found the learning curve steeper than I wanted to climb.  It is still steep but there are now videos and more help documents, and I've already had several "ah-ha, that's how it works" moments in the firs...

Funny how tech priorities change. In the first 30 years I lived from one PC to another. Starting with a Radio Shack Model I, then an IBM PC, then a long, long succession of PC compatibles; each faster than the last with ever increasing hard drives. The change from one PC to a new one was a sea change. Each so much faster and smoother. Now, I've been content with a laptop built in 2013. It has an i7 processor and 12 gigabytes of memory, so performance wise it is fine. I admire my foresight then to go big.  I do not game play or do high end video processing. I rarely use it as a laptop. Its hooked to two monitors and Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.  My sole tweak to my home setup when quarantine and working from home started in March was a docking station so I could switch easily from work laptop to personal laptop. If I covet anything, its more and larger monitors. You can't go too large, or too many. After the fever of wanting a new PC passed from a every two year event, to thre...

Every morning I wish my phone good morning.  Well, sort of.  After my shower, as I dress, I say "OK Google, good morning." It then wishes me a good day, tells me the time, temperature, weather forecast and information about my commute.  It then plays the BBS Minute newscast, and an NPR news summary. A couple months ago, the BBC came up very slow speaking. I thought it was just a case of wacky Brits. Maybe there wasn't enough news copy for a minute so they were being silly. Then NPR's came up, also slow. This has persisted through two monthly security updates and multiple restarts of the phone.  So today I'm putting in feedback to Google Assistant, and wanted this blog post to point at with more details then they might want in a feedback. I know it is 50% because this morning I recorded to Audiology on my PC the full two minutes of the BBC Minute playing through Google Assistant, and then again through Pocket Casts.  And yes, Pocket Casts is set to n...