#on a smartphone though it's the bane of my existence

[coquelicoq]

Hi sweetie i hear you are sick i am so sorry! love grammy

text from my grandmother i thought was sweet, and then i discovered her cellphone has multitap texting, and now i think it's REALLY sweet. because this is what she had to "punch in" in order to send me this message:

44 444 0 7777 9 33 33 8 444 33 0 0 444 0 44 33 2 777 0 999 666 88 0 2 777 33 0 7777 444 222 55 0 0 444 0 2 6 0 7777 666 0 7777 666 777 777 999 0 555 666 888 33 0 4 777 2 6 6 999

and like if you've ever used multitap, you know that you have to get the timing perfect so that the phone knows you're trying to do, for example, "hi" (44 [pause] 444) and not "ggggg" (pauses between each 4). and she hardly ever texts anyone so it's not like she's super proficient, so it must have taken a lot of effort! i am feeling very loved right now!!!

[miharuhebinata]

monthly game tag time!

this is going to be a veryyyyy long post, so buckle in

may

1. Hollow Knight

[played on ps4.]

thoughts: i know i literally just replayed hollow knight back in like, what, last august? but i had a strong urge to play it again and after the shitshow that was my life in march/april, i decided what the hell. i'm probably going to be doing a yearly replay anyway, though i won't hold myself to any kind of strict schedule in regards to that. i'll just play it when i feel like it and keep track of when and how it goes with these posts.

but anyway, on to my thoughts (yes, i still have thoughts on this game lmao): the game is definitely getting easier with every replay, which makes me very very happy. don't get me wrong, there are definitely still plenty of challenging bits (looking at you, trial of the conqueror. bane of my fucking existence -_-), but apparently i've managed to memorize a good chunk of the attack patterns for most of the boss fights. hornet and the mantis lords are the most obvious example of this, as i literally beat both on my first try. which was a tiny bit disappointing, just because those fights are so fun, but also extremely satisfying. literally had me feeling like a pro gamer LMAO

2. Princess Peach: Showtime! (Demo)

[played on nintendo switch.]

thoughts: i've been so excited for this game ever since i saw the first trailer, and the demo certainly didn't disappoint! the two levels you get to play, as swordfighter peach and patisserie peach, were very fun, and just everything from the level designs to the gameplay to, of course, the costumes are so cute. i definitely want to play the full game! ....unfortuanately i've heard the game is actually pretty short overall? supposedly it's around 6-8 hours of playtime, which honestly just seems absolutely ridiculous considering it costs fucking $60 for a game i could (theoretically) knock out in a day but hey, that's nintendo for you 🙃 so, yeah. not entirely sure when or even if i'll get to play the full game. which is a damn shame.

3. Agatha Christie - Murder on the Orient Express (Demo)

[played on nintendo switch.]

thoughts: seems like a fun game! although i will say, it was quite jarring to realize it takes place in the modern day. hercule poirot does not look like a character who should know what a smartphone is, i'm sorry 😂 but yeah, i'm definitely interested in playing more, although i'll probably wait for it to go on sale. i liked it but i don't need to play it right now or anything lol

4. NOX

[played on mobile.]

thoughts: a quick little better-than-average mobile puzzle game. tbh i enjoyed the first half more than the second half. by the end i was just like meh, but i guess i still recommend it if you're looking for a decent puzzle game on mobile

5. Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion

[played on mobile.]

thoughts: i've been wanting to play this for a while, and it did not disappoint! such a fun, silly little game. pretty much my only complaint is that i wish it was longer, but apparently now there's a sequel? so i guess i can always try that! :)

6. Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King (Demo)

[played on nintendo switch.]

thoughts: seemed fun but also the demo was extremely short so idk. i liked the obvious zelda inspiration, but it mainly just reminded me of chrono trigger. honestly i think i'd be more interested in replaying that than in playing this, but who knows. maybe someday!

7. OneShot

[played on pc.]

thoughts: I ABSOLUTELY ADORED THIS GAME!!!!!!!!! everything about it is so beautiful, from the story to the graphics to the soundtrack (which, if you know me at all, i'm a sucker for a good video game ost and this one DOES NOT DISAPPOINT 🥰). i don't want to say too much, because i really think everybody should play this one for themselves, but i will say it is EXTREMELY meta. which is not a spoiler, as you find this out very early on, but again, the less you know the better. so i'll just say this: make sure the name on your computer matches your real name! i believe the game *does* give you the option to input whatever name you want (i'm not 100% sure, but i think so), but i feel like the story will hit harder if you use your real name. plus, if you've changed your name recently but forgot to update the name on your account (like i had), this is at least a good reminder to do so :)

8. Ib

[played on pc.]

thoughts: while i played the remake, i can definitely see why this is a rpg maker horror classic! like honestly, idk what else there is to say about it that other people haven't said already? it's not super long and though it's not pants-shittingly terrifying or anything, it's got a very strong, creepy atmosphere to it. now that i think about it, it actually reminds me a lot of alice in wonderland.... which is such a huge plus to me, you guys don't even know :3 i especially adored the character design, particularly ib who reminds me of one of my oc's <3

9. A Short Hike

[played on nintendo switch.]

thoughts: i want to live in this game <3 seriously, if you're looking for a nice chill game to play this one should be right up your alley! it's not long but i promise it is still so, so worth it. beautiful pixel graphics, lovely soundtrack, and a surprisingly poignant story....yeah i loved this one a lot. my one and only complaint is that the beachstick ball minigame can rot in hell LMAO

june

1. Moonlighter

[played on nintendo switch.]

thoughts: idk about the pc version, but PLEASEEEEEE DO NOT BUY THIS GAME ON THE SWITCH. IT SUCKS ASS. for as enjoyable as the actual gameplay is (which honestly, was not even that fun after the first couple hours), the game is buggy as hell. especially when rolling. do NOT roll near walls, or you risk getting stuck inside them. which is especially annoying inside the dungeons, getting stuck inside a wall on some random floor long before you ever meant to have to leave.... pretty much ruined my whole experience. i could barely even bring myself to finish the game, but i forced myself to do it, because i had been meaning to finish this game for forever, and i just wanted to be DONE with it, and so i did, and i was so SO happy....aaaand then i discovered there was a whole new post-game storyline to play through in new game+. -_- at first i felt obligated to finish that before i could say i completed the game, but after playing a few hours, i just said fuck it. honestly the new game+ stuff wasn't even that bad, but i was just so ready to be done with it by that point. fuck this game. absolutely adorable graphics and a nice soundtrack, but buggy-as-hell gameplay and an anticlimactic story. completed ruined it for me. boo. boooooooo. such a disappointment.

2. Another Code: Recollection (Demo)

[played on nintendo switch.]

thoughts: seems like a very fun game, and i really do want to play the full version! …just not for full price. especially because, after playing the demo, i already had some gripes:

the controls are kind of wonky and by that i mean this just feels like a game that would be better played on pc (yet it's a Switch exclusive).

the (english) voice acting is… definitely not my favorite, to say the least. (that scene of ashley crying as a kid was so fucking annoying, and it went on for wayyyy too long.) ashley does not sound like a 14 year old. which ties into my next point:

okay so i actually FULLY admit this one is mostly on me, but i legit thought ashley was college-age until she explicitly mentioned being 14. like, obviously i understood in retrospect that the story literally said she was 14 long before that (i believe the letter from her father mentioned her 14th birthday?), but because i was pretty tired when i played and also because the character model does not look like a 14 year old girl aside from her being shorter than the adult characters, the voice does not sound like that of a 14 year old, AND she was wearing a university sweatshirt, i thought she was, like, 19-21 and that she for some reason had only recently received her dad's letter? IDK DUDE I'M A LITTLE BIT SLOW 😭

honestly this just kind of made me laugh but i did think it was a bit silly how ashley made a big deal of "yeah sorry D, but i can't help you get your memories back. i've got my own problems. sooooo... yeah, bye." then literally she walks down some stairs, he helps her open a door, and she's immediately like "okay i'll help you and also we're besties, obviously 🤗" like, i'm not saying the game has bad writing (i didn't get to play enough to truly make an accurate judgement) but that felt like the kind of contrived thing i would have written when i was in middle school ngl. but maybe that's the point, since ashley's so young? idk

anyway, i know i've kinda been ragging on it, but like i said, i do still want to play it. the story seems interesting, and i really want to see where it goes! just definitely not for the price of $60 lol

3. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (Demo)

[played on nintendo switch.]

thoughts: it was fun! like a mix between immortals fenyx rising, hades, and trine. all of which are right up my alley! but also i was not very good at the combat, which definitely detracted from the experience a bit. i imagine if i was playing the full game i could eventually get used to the combat, but there just wasn't enough time for me to do that in the demo. but i did like it, and i'll definitely consider picking it up if it ever goes on sale for a more reasonable price.

4. Chants of Sennaar (Demo)

[played on nintendo switch.]

thoughts: i enjoyed it so much i actually bought the game. stay tuned for my thoughts on the full game!

5. Growing Up

[played on pc.]

thoughts: so, full disclosure, i only played through one of the routes in this game (richard). when usually i would play through all the route's (or at least more than one) before counting it as finished, honestly i just cannot be assed this time. which isn't to say it's a bad game! it was a very fun game (at first), with interesting stat-building mechanics. i especially enjoy that my previous character + whoever i ended up with become the parents in a new playthrough. however, despite the fact that i had already started having new events when i started a second playthrough, i don't think the gameplay is interesting enough for me to want to replay it multiple times just to see the new events/meet new characters, at least not any time soon. at the very least i wish there was some kind of carry-over bonus. for example, since my character ended up with richard, maybe my current player character could have a boost in empathy? or intelligence, since my previous character's intelligence was so high. something like that.

also the parents sucked, they had nothing to do with anything unless they were giving me their stupid parent expectations goals, which got really annoying by high school age because the goals often took up desperately needed schedule slots. also especially bitter because literally right after i had completed a goal of tutoring 10 times in a row, they gave me a goal of helping out some neighbors (aka buying groceries ten times in a row) and when i had my character be like "will i get paid?" stupid fucking idiot dad was like "omfg why are you so selfish??? 😤" BITCH I JUST TOOK UP A BUNCH OF MY VALUABLE SCHEDULE SLOTS TO DO TUTORING FOR ONE OF YOUR STUPID FUCKASS GOALS????? KYS YOU ANNOYING BITCH OMFG

6. Harmony: The Fall of Reverie (Demo)

[played on nintendo switch.]

thoughts: of the few (spoiler-free) reviews i've seen, reactions seem kind of mixed overall, but personally i really enjoyed what i got to play! the art is beautiful and the game mechanic of the augural is definitely unique and interesting. unless the story really starts to branch out though, i don't see there being much replayability; which makes me just a tad reluctant to buy it, even on sale, especially seeing as it's apparently only ~10 hours long. speaking of, i am VERY surprised the demo is as long as it is. hard to put it into hours, since i'm a slow reader, but you get to play 2 out of 5 chapters, i believe?? it certainly got me hooked and invested in the story, but that also just seems crazy, letting you play that much in the demo. so i guess, taking all of this into account, i think i'll just wait for a really good sale. like, i do want to eventually see where the story goes, but not for more than $10 lol

7. AI: The Somnium Files (Demo)

[played on nintendo switch.]

thoughts: seems like a fun game, but also kind of weird. one of the characters blew up a balloon to comical size and the main character's response was something like "i wish your boobs were that big" whshgsjsjlskdj ???????? still planning to play it eventually lmfao but i'm gonna play it on pc. definitely seems like a game that's better on pc

8. Chants of Sennaar

[played on nintendo switch.]

thoughts: ah, what a fun game, and such a beautiful artstyle too (it actually reminded me a lot of sable!); however, while i did really like the game overall, i will say that— as with most people who have played both games— i can't help but compare this against heaven's vault and, personally, even with all the issues i had with it, heaven's vault is definitely the better game in my eyes. while i wouldn't say the translation mechanics in this game are at all easy, it was easier than in heaven's vault. in this game, all you really had to do was match the right glyphs to the right pictures. which, obviously was often a challenge, don't get me wrong, but it was at least somewhat easier than i originally thought it would be: i thought i had to get my guess at the translation right too, but that part of it mainly seems to be so you can remember what the glyph means (or approximately what it means) before you actually verify it. so that was a little disappointing, although it certainly helped make things easier in the long run. which turned out to be a good thing that was actually a bad thing, because i'm not gonna lie, i played the majority of the game over the course of a single day. this was not a good idea (obviously), because it resulted in sleep-deprivation and me hurting my wrists/palms from holding the Switch for so long. clearly this was my own fault, but it did still detract from the experience, unfortunately. the inability to fully concentrate really kept me from fully immersing myself in the latter half of the game, which is likely why the ending fell a tiny bit flat for me. also, i have to mention. there was one puzzle i had to look up a guide for how to solve it, and even now i still don't get it and idk if i ever will. so, i'm kind of bitter about that 😭 but yeah, i don't want to keep ragging on the game, because overall it was great! definitely worth the hype imo. and if the core game mechanics of translating made-up languages sounds fun to you, i definitely recommend checking this one out! just maybe remember to take breaks and get some sleep so that you don't ruin your own experience like i did mine :/

9. The Roottrees are Dead

[played on pc.]

thoughts: if you like mysteries, difficult puzzles, or even just family drama, this is the game for you! it's actually been compared to the likes of return of the obra dinn and the case of the golden idol, and that definitely holds up imo. not in terms of graphics, but just in that you are given a mystery that you need to solve (or an extensive family tree that you need to fill out, in this case) and the game does not hold your hand. i will say, although it's been a while since i played either return of the obra dinn or the case of the golden idol, i think this game was definitely easier than those two (shorter, too). but it was still very rewarding! like i said, it was easier, not easy. honestly i really hope this game gains some traction, because we definitely need more difficult mystery puzzle games like it!!!!

10. Unpacking

[played on pc.]

thoughts: don't really have much to say except that it was a nice chill game 👍

11. Tunic

[played on nintendo switch.]

thoughts: i actually started this soon after chants of sennaar, but i finished it last (the roottrees are dead and unpacking serving as breathers). i really REALLY liked this game at first. it was different than i thought it was going to be, but i was still enjoying the challenge even when i wasn't, you know? aaaaand then i kind of hated it, because certain parts of the puzzle you have to solve in order to achieve the true end were extremely frustrating and overly convoluted imo. but overall, after seeing the end credits you get after the true end, i think i left off on a good note. at the very least i would definitely recommend this game to anyone who enjoys a difficult challenge not just in terms of combat, but in solving deep intricate puzzles as well <3

started but not finished yet:

Sea of Stars (Demo) - started in june. won't be finishing, but only because i decided to buy the full game!

Neo: The World Ends With You (Demo) - started in june. won't be finishing, because the gameplay just seemed a bit monotonous.

Paleo Pines (Demo) - started in june. won't be finishing, because the artstyle was not very appealing to me.

Tangle Tower (Demo) - started in june. won't be finishing, but only because i think i'd prefer to play it on pc.

Who's Lila - started in june. probably won't be finishing, because it just didn't seem like the game for me. which sucks, because i had been looking forward to playing it for a while :(

[chargetheintruder]

I'm Back.

Let's see . . . nope, I didn't die, my laptop did though, and I nearly did, and had to do some surgery? And then therapy to get my head on a little bit straighter? That's it, the shortest version.

Oh, so you want details? More of those below the break.

It started the week of January 10th, into the 11th. Comcast was having a data breach. And somehow, between them and Google? You know, the company openly PROMISING to update and protect Chromebooks through 2026, and Samsung devices in particular, through 2028? Those guys?

Somehow, a virus got through and knocked out the Wi-Fi. At first I thought it was the cable room's problem, that's how bad it was. Nope, it wasn't that and Comcast swore up, down and sideways that it wasn't their router at all (*eyerolls*). So I did what any Chrome person does and did a Powerwash, and . . .

Somehow, restoring everything to FACTORY DEFAULT didn't restore the ability of my device to find or use Wi-Fi. Yeah.

Then from mid-January to mid-February, my life wasted away as I tried three times, over three weeks (so no, not stalking) to contact my out-of-state best friends in hand-written snail mail through the Postal Service. I was living off of stuff from the vending machines and shredding old pants I didn't wear any more to use as backup-backup-BACKUP toilet paper of LAST resort. (not flushing it but otherwise, you know).

Either NONE of the three letters went through at all (which means the USPS wasn't doing its job) or my friends gave up on me.

THEN, on the 18th of February, late night, into the morning of the 19th, the bane of my existence, my bladder/prostate issues, got too severe. I was down to the last 2 to 3 percent of my urinary function again, couldn't pee or poo to save my life, and was in blinding pain. I had to decided: die in my apartment, surrounded by enemies or die in the hospital surrounded by "professionals."

I chose the latter, nearly died in blinding, howling agony anyway, then had people torture me for an hour-plus trying to put a catheter in me (the first 3 times without ANY anesthetic, mind you, and the 4th with only a numbing gel) before finally deciding I needed it done surgically. One surgery (WITH anesthetic, thank goodness), a cystoscopy, a urethral stent and a Foley implant later, and well, yes, I still had to fight DAILY to have any time to recovery from SURGERY in this hospital, and still had to fight for a pen and paper to write things down with so I could try to arrange for a safer place for me to recover than the public housing mess I'm stuck with now.

So you know, I did what I had to do: get released after the 6th day in the hospital to the local Respite Center to also get titrated on something for the depression while my body tried to heal up (or kill me four more times with pain issues in multiple places). Good times, (sarcasm), and I had to ask for a third week in a two week program to get anything done. Like a new State ID and/or a free "government phone to get back on the internet with. And well . . .

I have the temporary ID, will get a real one sent to me in about a week, and the phone? It came with a bad SIM card and is useless, so far, as a phone. But with a LOT of struggle (tiny screen, bad eyes and big fingertips) I was able to get online and pay some bills, and thanks to the money I had "saved" from not being online at all for 2 months, I was able to start the "pay bills, hurt, then die" cycle over again with a newish Samsung Chromebook. Because the smartphone sucks? Yeah. :-p

And yeah, this includes a bladder infection (taking care of that) and having the Foley implant swapped out manually for a new one (the nurse I saw at the Urology department Wednesday was good, and so was the stent at keeping me from feeling much). Things are weird right now, my body's still in more than occasional pain, and It's bad that I've lost my besties of more than 15 years . . .

But I'm still around for people to pick on, I guess. (*shrugs*)

[wolfliving]

Stacey switches Amazon Alexa for Google

*What a brave woman!  Everyone should benefit from her sacrifice.

Life in a Google Home and what it says about the smart home

By Stacey Higginbotham

In mid-December, my family went cold turkey on Alexa in both our kitchen and living room. Alexa still reigns in the bedrooms, but we removed the Echo Show to try out life with a Google Home, as we had been growing increasingly frustrated with Alexa's inability to answer our dinnertime questions. The results of the Google Home experiment, however, have been even more frustrating.

Google is awesome at answering weird questions. And it does a better job than the Echo Show of "hearing" us when we make requests from across the room. But it has become the bane of my existence because it is glitchy as all get-out. For example, when I say, "Hey Google, turn on television," sometimes it can turn on the TV. And sometimes it can't.

When it can't, it reports back with, "Sorry something went wrong. When you're ready, give it another try." If instead, I say, "Hey Google, ask Harmony to turn on the television," it will often work. But why will one command work only part of the time? I have no idea. This seemingly random ability to work also extends to other connected devices in my home.

When I decided to go all in on the Google Home in our main living area, I unlinked all of my linked accounts and relinked them to give the system a fresh start. Yet, just a week into the experiment, Google stopped being able to reach my Lutron lights. One day they worked, and the next day Google was telling me that it had trouble reaching the "Lutron Caseta RA2 system."

After hoping this would fix itself (yes, I know, but that's what normal people would do), I went back into the app and unlinked the account and relinked it again. Now it works. But for how long? And why did it stop in the first place? Ugh.

So integrations need work. Or maybe they just need regular attention. In the meantime, there are two other areas where Google Home has let me down. One is around voice recognition. Google wants users to train the Assistant on the use of their voice. So when I ask for my calendar, the Home shows mine; but when my husband asks, it shows his. This is a really cool feature. If I suggest that Google call Mom and it recognizes my voice, it calls my mom. If my husband does the same thing, it uses his contacts to call his mom.

That's magical — when it works. But it doesn't always work. Apparently, Google doesn't like my voice, because roughly 30% of the time it won't recognize me. If I take a particular tone with Google I can be recognized more often, but sometimes that doesn't work, either. And that means that I don't have permission to do certain things around my home, such as turn on the television. Google lets you train the Assistant as many times as you want, and I have done so countless times, but it still presents a hurdle.

Yes, I could turn the voice permission feature off, but getting my calendar when I ask for it sure is handy, so I keep trying. And that leads me to the second problem. We have a 12-year-old child. Which means that with voice permissions turned on, she's also incapable of doing a variety of things around the home.

The catch is she doesn't have her own smartphone, which she needs to train her voice and control the Google Home. To get around that, we used a Gmail address I created for her and let her sign in using an app on a spare iPhone. Another way to do it would be to download the Google Family Link app and create a Google account and permitting for specific devices. But if I went this route, only certain permissions and apps would be available to her. Additionally, at the age of 13, when the law in the U.S. deems her no longer a child (in 8 months), the permissions I set would go away.

Given her age and my trust in her judgment, the best way to go was to set her up as a third adult member of the household. Which means that — just like my husband — she got an invite to train her voice and control the Google Home. As one of my Twitter followers pointed out, those permissions are also a pain to set up.  

There are a few other niggling issues that frustrate me with the Google Assistant set-up, such as the inability to put one device into multiple rooms and the fact that when I put several devices in a room and then ask Google to turn on Kitchen, everything in the kitchen turns on when I really just wanted to the overhead lights. Ironically, naming each device for the room it's in works well for the Amazon Alexa ecosystem but is frustrating for the Google Home.

But I promised to tell you what Google's challenges here say about the smart home. Anyone who gets deep into this space begins to recognize that smart homes are still stupid, requiring the user to program the devices or command them via voice. The smart home, despite five years or more of effort, is still not intuitive. We are starting to see what we need to make it intuitive though.

To make a home intuitive, digital assistants need to understand who people are in the home because those people have different needs and requests. They may also have different rights, such as a parent's right to turn a thermostat up while a kid might be told to "put on a sweater."  An assistant also needs to understand where people are in the home. So far, some devices have presence sensors, and facial recognition to offer this, but digital assistants aren't yet taking advantage of it.

For example, a few days ago on a whim, I asked the Google Home if it had seen Anna on the Nest Hello doorbell this morning. I didn't think it would work, and it didn't, but it's an example of information that requires both the context of where a person is and who they are. The Nest Doorbell can actually show me this in the app, but it can't yet offer the information verbally through Google Home.

Finally, these devices have to be much easier to program. They should do a better job of helping people understand how to name a device and why they should place it in a room. If you look at the two leading companies in this space, Google, and Amazon, it's clear the things Google has decided to tackle are very different than the problems Amazon has tried to tackle.

Amazon is working hard to make it easy to set up a smart home using your voice. It makes it easy to control devices and bring them onto your network and even allows you to build really complex routines if you know what you want and you're to invest time in programming them. It's also trying out Hunches, which will offer a suggestion if you make a request that is normally paired with another request or action that Amazon deems obvious. For example, if you tell Alexa Goodnight and it runs the command but also sees another light on, it might suggest you turn that other light off.

Hunches are still rolling out, so we'll have to see if they are a gateway to the intuitive home, or merely an annoyance.

Other than a pretty easy-to-bypass security code, Amazon doesn't provide much in the way of barriers to controlling the device from a permissions and identity perspective. You can train Alexa to recognize your voice, but it only uses that recognition for message playback and calling. On business accounts, you can restrict calendar access by voice, but on home accounts, my husband can ask to see Stacey's calendar and get it.

Google cares more about the identity of people in the home and is clearly envisioning far more complicated interactions. Unfortunately, as it tries to showcase those use cases — such as the ability to call the right mom depending on who is asking — it has let some important usability elements slide. As such, it's really hard to set up a Google Home device and quickly experience any of its benefits. The barrier to entry is higher. You do get access to some cool features once you've breached that barrier, but you're also limited in scope by fewer apps and glitches that make commanding a smart home a challenge.

I suspect that for many people the Google Home Hub, the JBL Google display, and the Lenovo Google Smart Displays may be fancy picture frames that let people ask questions, play music, and see shared Google albums. Meanwhile, Amazon is letting Alexa run away with the smart home and a digital assistant that provides a lot of assistance when it comes to taking basic tasks and making them hands-free.

It's a shame because I see where Google is trying to turn its devices into assistants that can do a lot more than pre-heat your oven or turn off your upstairs lights. It wants them to notify you if your commute will be longer or help you spend less time on your phone by scheduling meetings and reminders with your voice. It wants to make an intuitive home. But while Amazon is trying to address the difficulty of setting up and programming these devices, Google is tackling user identity and rights. Both may get us to the intuitive smart home, but Amazon's approach definitely feels more user-friendly.

[topsmartwatches-blog]

Top 5 Smartwatches

Right out of the box, you can tell that the S3 is a top smartwatch; released earlier this year, the S3 focuses on everything that was right in the previous versions, and adds even more features than before. Sure, I know it costs comparatively higher than some of the other options on the list, but it is okay.S928 Sports Watch – Affordable Although smartwatches have existed for a long, long time, their foray into the mainstream is only recent. With companies like Samsung, Apple, Asus, Huawei, and several others are working day and night to improve the watches, and truly make the experience a lot better.

Amidst all this, there lies the consumer mindset that still believes that the traditional, analog watches are way, way better as they are crafted with great precision, as well as perfection. This has led to numerous debates how smartwatches shouldn’t exist, or are considered bane of the wrist watch concept.

S928 Sports Watch – Affordable

If you are looking for a great smartwatch that does not cost a lot of money, the S928 Sports Watch might be a great option. It is one of the cheapest smartwatch on my list, and while I am normally adamant when it comes to testing such items, it intrigued me to the core.

The watch is designed rather simply, and instead of having a fancy display or high resolution, it uses a simple, monochromatic display. Honestly, I do not mind that at all, smartwatches are all about being simplistic in my opinion, and the S928 Sports Watch does a great job at that.

Where it lacks a display, the S928 Sports Watch makes up by providing some of the best features that you can want in a smartwatch. In order to make things easier for the reader, I am listing down the features below.

Heart Rate Monitor: The watch comes with a heart rate monitor that is able to provide real time heart rate updates. GPS: The S928 Sports Watch also come with a built in 3D accelerometer + gyroscope3D, allowing the users to be able to track every move they make throughout their workout regime. Outdoor Data: The watch is also capable of keeping a record of the outdoor data, meaning that you get real time updates on how the weather condition is outside. Allowing you to be able to plan your workout carefully.

Pebble Time Smartwatch –Cheap and Simple

While several companies are trying to create a breakthrough in the smartwatch market, Pebble is keeping things nice and simple for people like me who prefer simplicity over anything else. I say hello to the Pebble Time Smartwatch, a very simple, and probably amongst the cheapest smartwatches in this list.

Opening the box surprised me through and through, the watch was simply put in the box, and looked very minimal. It comes in a rubber band strap, or a steel strap for those who want to have a choice. The watch I have comes with the steel strap, and I must say, it looks premium for the price.

I am pleased to say that the watch also happens to have a pretty decent battery time, it lasted me 4 days. However, I have to point the fact out that the use was not constant since I charged the watch in between the days but never charged it to the full. Still, it goes without saying that the battery timing is good.

Samsung Gear S3 – Modern with Lots of Features

For years Samsung’s Gear series of smartwatches have been dominating the market for all the right reasons. This is what happens when you take clever marketing and amazing products in order to combine them together. The Gear S3 is definitely one of my favourite smartwatches.

Right out of the box, you can tell that the S3 is a top smartwatch; released earlier this year, the S3 focuses on everything that was right in the previous versions, and adds even more features than before. Sure, I know it costs comparatively higher than some of the other options on the list, but it is okay.

Luckily, upon using the watch for a week, I can say that the OS is promising, however, the severe lack of apps may keep some users at bay. Samsung recently pushed an updated to this watch, allowing you to save offline Spotify playlists onto the 4GB of storage.

Motorola Moto 360 Sport– Good for Sport

To this very day, the original Moto 360 remains among the list of my favourite smartwatches, the understated and minimalistic design is something to die for. After several years, I am looking at the Motorola Moto 360 Sport. A newly released version that is more suitable for sporty users.

I am glad to see that Motorola is still following the design language of the original Moto 360 with some minor tweaks here and there. This was one of my biggest concerns when Lenovo acquired Motorola a few years ago, but after seeing the Moto 360 Sport, it is no longer there.

I do not play much sports, and despite that, the watch welcomes me with good amount of features. The design is still understated, and looks good. However, I cannot bring myself to understand the presence of that small chin that still resides on the watch face.It is something that has always bothered me, and even though it is no longer as prominent as it used to be, I can’t help but wonder the reason for it. Now my favourite thing about the Moto 360 Sport is obviously the screen, and not just the screen itself, the tech that goes into it is amazing. 

Xiaomi Amazfit – Budget-Friendly with Great Battery Life

Xiaomi has been one of the best companies out in the market releasing some fantastic budget friendly products. Their smartphones, as well as other accessories have always been budget friendly. Today, I am looking at their take on a smartwatch. The Xiaomi Amazfit is here to see if it can find its place.

I love how Xiaomi designs their products, making them look and feel high end. For the most part, they do use high end components and materials. This removes any doubt as to whether or not the overall quality is good.

The Amazfit is carrying a nice design, and build quality as well. It is just the right amount of classy with flashy elements and I do not mind it at all. It uses the same transreflective display that is becoming more and more common in the majority of smartwatches that come out.

[lia-nikiforov]

Nendoroid Yuri Katsuki & Victor Nikiforov

.At long last, after an earthquake delayed the post by like a whole month, my Victor Nendoroid finally arrived, and I finally had time to open him and Yuuri and play with them a little bit. i mean technically I don’t have time since I have like 10 days to read the entirety of the Genji Monogatari and I’m zero (0) pages ahead. So I thought I’d show you some fun pics and talk about these adorable figures

Yuuri’s nendoroid comes with three faceplates (smiling, Eros face, and blushing), two sets of hair (normal and pushed back) 6 different arms, a spare leg with a small bend in the knee, three(!) hands with accessories (katsudon bowl, chopsticks, smartphone) plus two pairs of hands and his blue-frame glasses (and the standard extra neck joint)

Victor’s Nendoroid has three faceplates (winking, neutral smile and #iconic heart smile), 5 different arms, an extra hand making a peace sign, an extra hand that points with the index, an extra hand holding a flower bouquet, plus two pairs of hands, an additional leg with a slight bend at the knee, a gold medal and of course, Makkachin! (he also includes the extra joint, it just doesn’t appear in this photo because when I took it, it had fallen off the package).

The boys straight out of the box with their standard poses. So as to not overspam this with photos, I’ll do both of them at once showing off different poses. Something I noticed with these two is that there’s a small gap between the sideburns in the hairpieces and the faces. They’re not too noticeable at a distance and most of my other Nendoroids have them (except the ones with long bangs on the front), but they are a little wider than any other Nendoroid I own. Also of note, replicating the box pose for Victor is a little harder than I expected because the angle of the arm is a little tighter than it needed to be.

Skating poses! I’ll admit I dn’t care a whole lot for Victor’s neutral smile faceplatem but I ended using it for a lot of photos so it’s okay. I really love the bent legs because they give you a huuuge range of posability that other Nendos don’t have. Of note, while Victor’s bent leg can be used for either side, Yuuri’s is meant to be used as a left leg because it has a squiggly decoration that isn’t present in the right leg. Of course, I’m sure from afar you wouldn’t be able to tell anyway.

Seductive poses! BTW, Victor’s blades are gold and I love everything. A small thing to note is that Yuuri’s waist is a little more flexible, Victor’s has a peg rather than a joint so it basically doesn’t move at all. OTOH, Disassembling Yuuri’s waist is pretty much impossible (it can be done, I’ve seen photos, but I’d advise against trying unless it gives way easily, I struggled with it a bit until I felt I’d break it off if I kept tugging it)

Accessory time! First of all I wanna say Victor’s #iconic heart smile is literally the best faceplate ever made, period. Everyone else can just stop trying. Makkachin is adorable and can move his head from side to side, though his tale won’t move. For Yuuri, the smile face is extremely adorable and versatile. The chopsticks are stuck to the hand that holds them, but the katsudon bowl isn’t, it has a peg to keep it on its corresponding hand. This theoretically means you could put it in other hand parts with a similar peg,but the size of it is so specific I’m not sure any other Nendo has such a hand.

Like with the katsudon, the flowers aren’t glued to the hand but instead there is a peg that holds them. It’s a super tiny peg though, and the flowers will fall off easily. Yuuri’s smartphone is glued to his hand and for that I’m grateful because I’m pretty sure I’d lose it otherwise. BTW something I really appreciate about these nendos is that 1) most arms don’t have sleeves (the bane of my existence with Haikyuu Nendos) 2) Because for both of them, each arm has different colors, it’s impossible to mistake left and right arms and left-right sleeves which makes it so much easier to assemble them.

Of course the best part about them is that they can easily be made to interact. I also haven’t mentioned that Yuuri’s blushing face is extremely adorable. I think in general Yuuri’s faceplates are better (and more diverse) than Victor’s, but Victor has the #iconic heart smile, so they’re even.

this is how the show should’ve ended give yuuri his gold medalfuckdamnit

Ehem ehem, so when do we get Nendos with rings to properly make this into a proposal scene?

Because of the size of their heads, posing them into figure skating positions can prove tricky which is why we need figmas, wtf are you doing orange rouge, but it’s still pretty doable and can bear lovely results.

Also, when are we getting Duetto figures, literally why are all toymakers so stupid why won’t they give us what we need instead of figures of Victor sitting on his ass and wearing boring black clothes orz.

Not a super successful attempt to recreate their Sochi dance, but I tried. seriously give us figmas i will literally giv you my firstborn child if you give us figmas

It’s not really designed to do this, but you technically can, with some struggles, make Yuuri wear his glasses with the hair-back piece. It doesn’t fit as well as Tsukki’s glasses on Oikawa’s Nendoroid, but it can be done

Selfie time! (yes, they are wearing each other’s hands #romantic) 

Yuuri has been waiting for so long, he was desperate to get Victor out of the box

As I posted a few days ago, I also recently got my Makkachin tissue case and he’s the cutest, fluffiest, cuddliest shit ever, I love him too much and Victor and Yuuri (and smol Makkachin) look adorable with him

The floppiest ears

I already showed it a few days ago, but for the time being I’m going with this pose of Yuuri jumping into Victor’s arms, welcoming him home. They look so adorable and I love them so much ;------;. I’m using the Kubo illustrated BD box as a base because I can and it’s beautiful.

A lot of the stuff from my shelf got knocked over by the earthquake and I haven’t had time to fix it, but for now this is how they look right now. I’m eager to have more free time and play mix up with my other Nendos and with different poses plus all the other versions they’re doing *----* Can’t wait for FS version Yuuri to come either. BUT PLEASE GOOD SMILE MAKE FUCKING FIGMAS FOR CRYING OUT LOUD WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR

[mindthump]

Oppo Find X review: unrefined ambition https://ift.tt/2BOIBXq

Every year, Samsung spends untold amounts of money on ad campaigns more concerned with bashing Apple’s iPhone than promoting its own Galaxy phones. In a two-horse race like the US phone market, that makes sense: slowing your archrival is not meaningfully different from speeding yourself up. But Apple has been selling the iPhone for a decade now, and that’s hardly prevented Samsung from selling tens of millions of phones every year. No, it’s Chinese Android manufacturers like Huawei, Xiaomi, and OnePlus that have emerged as genuine threats to Samsung’s mobile sales around the world.

Oppo is high on the list of serious Samsung rivals, and it’s making its biggest push outside of China with the unique Find X. This smartphone won’t ever be accused of being perfect, but it will also never be guilty of inciting boredom or showing a lack of ambition. The Find X is Oppo’s most memorable device, its most aggressively forward-thinking product, and the latest poster child for the speed at which Chinese companies innovate. At a price of €999 and with a heavily laden spec sheet, the Find X is audaciously positioned as a super premium flagship, and it’s being promoted in Europe and across Southeast Asia with as much enthusiasm as in Oppo’s home market. This device is a signal of future intent just as much as it is a technology showcase for the innovation Oppo is capable of today.

I just wish it was a more refined consumer product.

6.5 Verge Score

Good Stuff

Best face unlock system among Android phones

Gorgeous and notch-less

Slider is a cool gimmick

Battery lasts a reassuringly long time

Bad Stuff

Countless software annoyances

The most slippery phone of the year

Oppo App Store spam is insulting

Slider mechanism undermines phone’s long-term durability

The Find X has one particular design highlight, which, when you first see it, incites delighted gasps and exclamations. I still remember my expletive-laden thrill upon seeing the top of this phone slide up to reveal the selfie camera and face ID system before casually sliding back down after authenticating its user. Combining that mechanical motion with a complementary on-screen animation amplified the effect and made the Find X feel instantly cohesive. Cohesive and otherworldly, because who the hell expects their phone to just open itself up like that?

Oppo is the first Android phone maker to use the same face ID tech as the iPhone, and it’s great

Sure, the Vivo Nex beat the Oppo Find X to the pop-up selfie-camera trick, but the Nex has none of the elegance of the Find X’s design. Or the same structured-light face authentication system, the sort of which we’ve only seen on the iPhone X so far. Oppo’s implementation is the same as Apple’s — albeit hidden inside the slider — and its function is at least as good, if not better. I was able to effortlessly unlock the phone in both very bright environments and pitch-black rooms, and the Find X even outdid the iPhone when it came to ID-ing me from an oblique angle. It’s possible Oppo has favored convenience over security with its face unlock, though I wasn’t able to fool it with photos, the faces of friends, or my own face with my eyes closed.

Every occasion I had to unlock the Find X or use its camera was a tiny delight. Humans just like mechanical things that work well, I guess, or maybe it was because this slider triggered memories of my PC’s CD drive sliding open before I put a game in it. Whatever the explanation for why I love it so much, Oppo’s mechanical engineering with the Find X’s slider is undeniably impressive.

As well as it may function mechanically, the whole feature still feels like a gimmick, something that exists for its novelty more than for its function. The very good face unlock system could have been accommodated in a bezel or a notch, for instance. And while you may argue the slider protects your camera lenses and privacy — both the front and rear cameras are hidden inside the phone when the slider is down — the design does expose the phone’s internals to the danger of dust and moisture ingress. I haven’t been unlucky enough to get any grit trapped inside the phone yet, but it’s a genuine hazard that more conventional smartphones don’t have to deal with.

Like all other phones in its price class, the Oppo Find X is clad in glass on both the front and back, with the rear panel getting a handsome gradient color treatment in either a purply red or a greenish blue. I’m a huge fan of the discovery of gradients by Android phone designers this year, as also exhibited on the Huawei P20 Pro and Motorola’s upcoming iPhone X clone. The Find X’s striking look gives it a distinctiveness that’s hard to find these days, which will matter to you since your options to customize the exterior with a case will be limited, at best, given how the phone extends itself.

I have to commend one especially thoughtful design detail in the Find X: the bottom edge of the phone is slightly concave instead of flat. This eliminates the baneful pinkie terror of having a rough USB-C port rubbing against your finger, and it also opens up a space in front of the bottom-firing speaker so you don’t muffle it when holding the phone. This concavity is mirrored at the top of the phone purely for the sake of design symmetry. Honestly, it’s the sort of thing that everyone should copy.

This might be the most slippery phone I’ve ever reviewed

Oppo doesn’t get full marks for its industrial design, however, and a big reason for that is just how slippery the Find X is. This might be the most frictionless phone I’ve ever reviewed; I certainly can’t recall anything recent that has been quite this slippery. The Find X has managed to slip off the edge of desks, coffee tables, mouse pads, basically any flat surface I placed it on. I’ve even put it five inches away from the edge and then watched it slowly slithering its way to the abyss. This problem isn’t as pronounced when holding the phone, I haven’t dropped it (much), but it’s a pretty major issue for an all-glass device, all the same.

Disregard the dotted pattern on the screen; it’s only visible to the camera, not the human eye.

Photo by Vlad Savov / The Verge

Coming from a Pixel 2 XL, I initially found the Find X’s display intolerably garish and oversaturated. If your point of reference is something like Samsung’s Galaxy range, you’ll be quite at home, and I did adapt over time. Still, I would have liked to have the option to tone the artificially boosted colors down a little. The Find X is a hair shorter and quite a bit narrower than the Pixel 2 XL, however it fits a whole 6.4-inch (2340 x 1080) OLED screen within its frame. That’s the advantage of having scarcely any bezels around the display — though I should also point out that the Find X screen never actually felt meaningfully larger than the Pixel’s. Many people will appreciate the absence of a notch at the top of the screen, which contributes to the clean and attractive look of the Find X.

Oppo’s Find X has made me aware of a subconscious habit I’ve developed of periodically wiping my phone down, both to eradicate fingerprint marks and to ensure a clean lens on the camera. The latter is not an issue with this phone’s design, though the former most definitely is. It’s sad to think that once Google updates its Pixel in a month’s time, we’ll be left with practically no top-tier aluminum smartphone options; it’ll be all glass all the time.

I had low expectations for the cameras on the Find X but was proven wrong by the highly competent performance of this phone. When you consider that Oppo crammed its cameras — 16-megapixel and 20-megapixel f/2 cams on the rear, 25-megapixel f/2 imager on the front — into a much shallower space than the typical smartphone’s depth, and that many of its rivals still allow themselves a camera bump, the images you get from this phone are downright impressive.

Oppo’s camera system produces consistently pleasing colors, has good enough dynamic range to rarely blow out any scenes, and it even performs decently in low light. Although it has two lenses on the back, the Find X’s system doesn’t offer a dedicated zoom lens in the way that the iPhone X or Galaxy S9 do. I would advise against trying to shoot any zoomed photos with this phone, you’re just not going to like or want to keep any of the smudged-up imagery it produces when zoomed.

Both front and rear cameras surpass expectations, but video is shaky

The selfie camera’s output is soft by default, but it has enough detail to let me churn out some good shots by amping up the contrast and sharpening. Its portrait mode is good, handling the edges of faces and hair reasonably well. Even the beautification feature, whose very existence offends me, earned my grudging respect by removing facial blemishes without destroying other detail like stubble or pores (unless you crank it up to the max) or making the subject’s skin look waxy.

You can shoot up to 240fps 1080p video with the Find X, which benefits from the same good color reproduction as the phone’s still photos. Oppo claims the phone has optical image stabilization, however I don’t see much evidence of that during video recording. The Find X is notably shakier when shooting handheld video than other recent flagships like HTC’s U11.

If I could end my review of the Oppo Find X right here, if I could just say, “it’s an Android phone and you know you’re getting a great user experience when you buy an Android device,” my final score would have been much higher. But, alas, Oppo felt the need to tinker with Android in a few fundamental and highly annoying ways. The software experience counteracts much of the goodwill earned by the Find X’s design and camera. Oppo also copied the iPhone’s gesture-based multitasking, which I approve of, but let’s talk about the bad stuff first.

The worst sin of Oppo’s ColorOS Android variant is the inability to swipe away notifications. When I get a notification and try to swipe at it, I get a couple of action icons, one of which is to dismiss the notification. By being so precious about the importance of each notification, Oppo is doubling the amount of effort I have to put into a task that I repeat dozens of times per day. This issue is compounded by the Oppo App Store, which pushes vibrating, audible notifications to my lock screen with utterly atrocious pick-up lines and literal ads to apps inside it. I understand that there’s no Google Play Store in China, which is why the Oppo App Store exists, but there’s a vast difference between offering alternative apps to Google’s and forcing them in my face with annoyingly persistent notifications.

The Find X is riddled with self-inflicted software wounds

In its effort to imitate iOS, Oppo doesn’t provide the option for an app drawer in ColorOS. So enjoy your setup time of shuffling banal apps like the Theme Store, Usage Tips, and Game Space around home screens. I’ll never understand why companies charging such vast sums of money for their phones don’t pay more attention to the experience of those same devices when they first come out of the box. Everything cohesive and beautiful about the Find X’s exterior shatters into a litany of microaggressions of bad software design once you start using the thing. China’s Android phone makers are today where Samsung was four or five years ago: at the cutting edge of hardware, but desperately out of their depth when it comes to crafting software to match.

The Find X’s settings menu will forever have a big banner at the top telling you to sign in to your Oppo ID. Your contacts list will insistently advise you to sync them with Oppo Cloud Sync, which is a thing the gallery app will also suggest incessantly. I appreciate Oppo’s optimism in believing people would invest quite so much trust and faith in its unproven services, but I don’t think all this nagging to lock you into its ecosystem is constructive.

So what did Oppo do right with the Find X’s software? Well, the gesture-based multitasking is really quite nice. It’s optional, you can still use the familiar Android buttons, but I see no reason to stay attached to the old. This new stuff is superior. I’ve set it so that a swipe up from the middle gets me back to my home screen, a swipe and hold gives me the multitasking view (which is identical to the iPhone’s), and a swipe up on the left or right functions like a back button. It’s well implemented, even if it is a total rip-off of what Apple has done. You can still use third-party launchers like Nova to customize your home screen and address some of the usability issues of Oppo’s ColorOS, though you’ll lose the sweet card animations when using gestures to navigate.

I also like (some of) Oppo’s aggressive power optimizations. The company sandboxes apps and prevents third-party apps from consuming resources in the background, which results in laudably good battery life. After a full 24 hours of intensive use that includes gaming, photography, YouTube, messaging, and web browsing, I typically still have 20 percent of battery left. A lot of phones last a long time when you’re frugal with their actual use, but the Find X is reliably impressive even on busy days. What I don’t like about Oppo’s obsession with energy efficiency is that Google Photos — which I guess counts as a third-party app, in Oppo’s mind — doesn’t automatically sync in the background and requires me to open it to get it to sync up my pictures.

An epic spec sheet doesn’t translate into flawless performance on this phone

The Find X’s performance is similarly spotty. It has the Snapdragon 845 that has quickly become ubiquitous among 2018 flagship Android phones, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. The smoothness of its UI animations is imperfect, however. The Find X copies the look of the iPhone’s gestures, but not the fluidity or responsiveness. Oppo has also implemented a gaming mode on this phone, which is ostensibly supposed to reprioritize resources and ensure smooth frame rates, but I didn’t see its effects in Egg Inc., a game that doesn’t have intense 3D graphics but still managed to drop frames when I played it on the Find X.

On the audio front, Oppo has shamelessly copied Apple’s EarPods design, with the only difference being the USB-C termination. Without a headphone jack on the Find X, you’ll either be using these earbuds, Oppo’s provided dongle, or some wireless alternative. The encouraging thing is that the wannabe EarPods actually sound decent, if a little grainy. They’re not something I’d urge anyone to buy in a store, but they’re also not a weakness for this phone. They do the job. Voice calls with the Find X are super clean and clear.

No wireless charging, no fingerprint sensor, no stereo speakers, no waterproofing

I can’t quite say the same about the Find X’s loudspeaker, which never gets very loud and exhibits unevenness in the high frequencies, making human voices sound shouty and grating at higher volumes.

The absence of stereo speakers joins the absence of a fingerprint sensor, wireless charging, and waterproofing on the list of notable omissions from the Find X’s spec sheet. Each of those features is now something of a standard expectation, but such are the trade-offs for the extra slick design of this phone.

If this review leaves you with the impression that I’m ambivalent about the Oppo Find X, that’s because I am. Every good feature about this device seems to have a contradicting negative weighing against it. It’s a novel phone with a cool design, but it’s also slippery as a fish and incompatible with most cases. It has great battery life and nice multitasking gestures, but it also has the worst notification system I’ve seen in years.

Many of the Find X’s failings can be ironed out with better attention to detail and more time for refinement. The English-language Music app, for example, can stop using the French “Artiste” as a label for its artists tab. The minimum auto-brightness of the phone can also be reduced for more comfortable use in the dark. But all these follies, big and small, eventually add up to a product with more downsides than upsides. I can’t excuse that with something that costs a thousand euros and comes from a manufacturer without an international pedigree like Apple or Samsung’s.

I wish I didn’t have to conclude every review of an Android phone with the thought that the hardware shows great promise, but the software lets the whole thing down. But here I am, writing those words yet again. Building great hardware is hard, but it’s not enough.