Congratulations to India for this development.  Having a cheap, easily-charged “tap” into the fountain of knowledge that we call the Internet is exciting.  To me, the opportunity for a billion people to reach potential data parity with those of us in the west is an incredibly development.  

I got a Galaxy X S2 today from work, as I’m programming and planning the future of an Android application.

Some quick thoughts:

- The phone itself is wonderful, but the experience thus far has been akin to pulling teeth. The way it comes initially configured is akin to putting a supermodel in Walmart rags; various unnecessary applications clutter the visual experience, while stuff you may need (ie: Text Messages) are hidden.

- The Launcher Pro application is a gift from God Himself. It solved the biggest, most irritating problem of all – Docomo’s launcher applications that are not removable. (On a side note, isn’t that the very definition of treacherous computing? My purchased device refuses to comply with my instructions. Sure, I can overcome that quite easily, but why should I have to depend on the grace of a 3rd party?)

- Docomo’s One-Seg application doesn’t work very well. No surprise there. There are complaints about how quickly the Docomo email program is filled, but I’ve already complained about that once above so…

- Developing on it is a dream, except that Java interprets dates differently from the other phone I have (HTC Desire HD). I can’t explain how that happened. It doesn’t even happen in the simulator. I had to redo the entire date input methodology, as the date.rfc(something) command was returning null from the string, instead of returning a proper value.

It is a great phone for me, but I’d buy most everyone else an iPhone, and I say that as someone with a vested interest in the success of the Android platform.

I’ve been using Ubuntu for the better part of 5 years now, from back in the 6.x days.  For the most part, it has been the best thing I’ve ever done as an IT engineer (including getting my bachelor’s degree).  I was able to experiment with a lot, learned a LOT about programming and servers, and moreover, the OS was ALWAYS fast and well-behaved.  Sadly, with the release of 11.10, that is no longer the case.  In my case, Ubuntu couldn’t decide which of my 4 HDs needs the boot sector installed onto it, even when I selected the proper drive.  After three install attempts, I removed the other 3 hard disks and installed Windows 7.  (No problems)

Call me crazy, but Windows 7 is impressing me.  Yes, command prompt is awful, but it can be overcome with Console & GitBash.  Instead of relying on the hacky “bluetile” window manager, I have useful tiling built right into the OS (window-left / window-right).  Yes, I miss workspaces – but if I really want them, VirtuaWin can provide it to me.

I do really miss package management.  I also really miss easy deployment of applications.  Finally, I really and truly feel conflicted about not having the faintest clue about what’s going on under the box.  Richard Stallman’s “The Right to Read” is still burned in the back of my mind somewhere; I can’t really trust an OS built by a company that has trotted out horrible DRM schemes over and over again. 

I probably will end up spending a few months in the wilderness, trying out different OSes in virtualbox.  I’ll probably end up with Debian, since I really do love the aptitude package management system.

After the radon scare, a sudden (unfounded) belief that my Android app’s video features were fubared, dreams of earthquakes, and a meeting with my future parents-in-law on Saturday, it’s nice to know life can have simple joys too.

Some

This is a font Koreans ALWAYS use when they try to show something “Fun and Hip” in Japan.

The Japanese writing used in this bottle is a classic Korean design decision; it is playful to a foreign eye, but it is quite disconcerting to Japanese designers who I showed it to. It seems to arouse the same feelings as Comic Sans does in English.

That entire bottle design is terrible, but I plan on talking about that in more detail when I have a better picture :/

-edit- Got rid of the link to a blog with an image that got pissy about hotlinking. No google juice for you, good sir.