Author Topic: First-World Problems.  (Read 333805 times)

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: First-World Problems.
« Reply #1325 on: 11 August, 2016, 07:48:48 am »
White jeans today, nothing to dry my hands on.  Dog still wiped his nose, though.

Fondleslab...stubby peasant fingers...bah!

Shaky geriatric fingers, cretinaceous thing thinks I'm trying to move the page when I'm poking a link.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: First-World Problems.
« Reply #1326 on: 11 August, 2016, 12:59:42 pm »
Shaky geriatric fingers, cretinaceous thing thinks I'm trying to move the page when I'm poking a link.

That's a very good point.  Low-pass filtering the touch input would be a valuable accessibility feature.  (My family have a history of Essential Tremors, so I know how big a deal this sort of thing can be.)

I saw someone's research project some years ago in which they'd written software to filter Parkinsons tremors (which apparently have a very specific frequency) out of mouse input.  Sadly that idea doesn't seem to have made it to the mainstream yet.  Maybe when the current generation of software developers get old?

Otherwise, have you considered using a stylus?  You can get them for capacitive touchscreens.  Have a blob on the end that simulates a very small finger.  They're a good compromise between the frustration of finger input and faffing about driving a fondleslab with a mouse (and as a bonus, keep the screen smudge-free).

Also, on Android, there's a developer menu option you can enable called "Show touches" which draws a dot where the device thinks you're touching.  It won't do anything for tremors, but I find this gives useful feedback that improves touch accuracy when tapping small features on web pages.  TBH, I think it should be moved to the accessibility menu, as it's so useful.

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
Re: First-World Problems.
« Reply #1327 on: 11 August, 2016, 03:00:07 pm »
Friend Facebooked next MacBookPro will replace keyboard with touch screen.
DON NOT WANT!
Grossly inappropriate for silver surfers and crips like me!!!

Dibdib

  • Fat'n'slow
Re: First-World Problems.
« Reply #1328 on: 11 August, 2016, 03:11:54 pm »
Friend Facebooked next MacBookPro will replace keyboard with touch screen.
DON NOT WANT!
Grossly inappropriate for silver surfers and crips like me!!!

Not a chance in hell.

However, it's very strongly rumoured that the next generation of fruitphones will do away with the headphone port, switching to either Lightning-based earphones or Bluetooth only.

Re: First-World Problems.
« Reply #1329 on: 11 August, 2016, 04:42:42 pm »
Friend Facebooked next MacBookPro will replace keyboard with touch screen.
DON NOT WANT!
Grossly inappropriate for silver surfers and crips like me!!!

Not a chance in hell.

However, it's very strongly rumoured that the next generation of fruitphones will do away with the headphone port, switching to either Lightning-based earphones or Bluetooth only.
S'true. The people responsible for fruitphone have deemed the next one will be too thin to accommodate a 3.5mm jack socket.
It is no coincidence that they have also recently acquired a very popular headphone brand. Begins with a 'b'

Dibdib

  • Fat'n'slow
Re: First-World Problems.
« Reply #1330 on: 11 August, 2016, 05:06:49 pm »
Friend Facebooked next MacBookPro will replace keyboard with touch screen.
DON NOT WANT!
Grossly inappropriate for silver surfers and crips like me!!!

Not a chance in hell.

However, it's very strongly rumoured that the next generation of fruitphones will do away with the headphone port, switching to either Lightning-based earphones or Bluetooth only.
S'true. The people responsible for fruitphone have deemed the next one will be too thin to accommodate a 3.5mm jack socket.
It is no coincidence that they have also recently acquired a very popular headphone brand. Begins with a 'b'

Well it's all still rumours AFAIK, but rumours on Daring Fireball generally have a canny habit of coming true. My understanding was that it was less to do with thinness and more to do with the extra-thick bezel below the screen to accommodate the length of the jack, although I guess they're all intertwined to an extent.

Doesn't bother me, my go-to headphones are Bluetooth now anyway, but lots of people will be caught out by it I think.

ian

Re: First-World Problems.
« Reply #1331 on: 11 August, 2016, 05:22:49 pm »
Tis a cruel irony of modern life that the teensy headphone jack is about to become too big. Bring back my old skool Sony Walkman and sponge headphones, I say, and let's get wired for sound. I'm sure that thing ate no fewer than four AA batteries every two hours and was the size of a small hatchback car.

I thought the rumour was that the next iteration of Macbooks would have touchscreens (of course they won't replace the keyboard, otherwise they'd just be iPad Pros). Personally, while I'm happy to prod my iPad and iPhone screens, I've never wanted to jab my Macbook screen with my grubby fingers, but then I'm getting old.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: First-World Problems.
« Reply #1332 on: 11 August, 2016, 05:54:58 pm »
The cruel irony of modern life is that by removing the headphone jack they pave the way for DRM-to-the-headphones.

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: First-World Problems.
« Reply #1333 on: 11 August, 2016, 07:01:24 pm »
Otherwise, have you considered using a stylus?  You can get them for capacitive touchscreens.  Have a blob on the end that simulates a very small finger.  They're a good compromise between the frustration of finger input and faffing about driving a fondleslab with a mouse (and as a bonus, keep the screen smudge-free).

I have one for use with my phone since my stubby peasant fingers can scarcely cope with a fondleslab, never mind the titchy "keys" on the phone (I am not one of those people who believes in mobile phones the size of car number plates, y'see). The only problem with is it this: where do you put it when you're not using it?  ATM it lives in my wallet which, more often than not, is in a different room from the phone.

I imagine that ten minutes after the next-gen Jesusphone hits the shelves some clever bugger in China will be flogging Lightning->3.5mm headphone adaptors, which the Mega-Global Fruit Corporation of Cupertino, USAnia will then replicate at five times the price.
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: First-World Problems.
« Reply #1334 on: 11 August, 2016, 07:47:21 pm »
Otherwise, have you considered using a stylus?

I have one for use with my phone since my stubby peasant fingers can scarcely cope with a fondleslab, never mind the titchy "keys" on the phone (I am not one of those people who believes in mobile phones the size of car number plates, y'see). The only problem with is it this: where do you put it when you're not using it?

Mine seems to migrate back to the magpie collection[1] of random objects that lives between my keyboard and minotaurs.

This is obviously suboptimal, as if I'm within arm's reach of that, I'm also within arm's reach of a proper computer with a menagerie of meece.  Which means it only tends to get deployed for the aftermath of firmware upgrades and the like.



Quote
I imagine that ten minutes after the next-gen Jesusphone hits the shelves some clever bugger in China will be flogging Lightning->3.5mm headphone adaptors, which the Mega-Global Fruit Corporation of Cupertino, USAnia will then replicate at five times the price.

I assume the Mega-Global Fruit Corporation of Cupertino, USAnia have done focus groups, and concluded that their customers just *really love* dongles.


[1] This came up - appropriately enough on twitter - ages ago.  The magpie collection being where you deposit all those random pleasing and/or useful small items that you collect while around and about.  Mine currently sports: an assortment of dongles and adaptors; a pirate RADAR key that's too small for canal gates; several keyring rings; a radiator key; a little LED torch; a couple of dozen googly eyes; two cable-ties (one used); various important-looking screws; a York Rally pin; some tweezers; a Scharader valve cap; a Bikeregister sticker; a 555 timer chip; a bisexual identification card[2]; some mouse feet; a lanyard (Garmins for the use of); some more tweezers; the little screwdriver for putting your glasses back together when the lens falls out; an LED with bendy legs; an assortment of obsolete flash memory; a lump of blu-tac; a 15cm steel ruler bearing the name of a popular 1980s antibiotic; some CP44 hearing aid batteries; the keys for the upstairs windows; a strip of NFC tags; a buffered analgesic and no tea.

[2] All card-carrying bisexuals have one.

Eccentrica Gallumbits

  • Rock 'n' roll and brew, rock 'n' roll and brew...
Re: First-World Problems.
« Reply #1335 on: 11 August, 2016, 08:10:58 pm »
Tis a cruel irony of modern life that the teensy headphone jack is about to become too big. Bring back my old skool Sony Walkman and sponge headphones, I say, and let's get wired for sound. I'm sure that thing ate no fewer than four AA batteries every two hours and was the size of a small hatchback car.

I thought the rumour was that the next iteration of Macbooks would have touchscreens (of course they won't replace the keyboard, otherwise they'd just be iPad Pros). Personally, while I'm happy to prod my iPad and iPhone screens, I've never wanted to jab my Macbook screen with my grubby fingers, but then I'm getting old.
Did you pay the extra tenner for the rewind button?
My feminist marxist dialectic brings all the boys to the yard.


ian

Re: First-World Problems.
« Reply #1336 on: 11 August, 2016, 10:53:12 pm »
Tis a cruel irony of modern life that the teensy headphone jack is about to become too big. Bring back my old skool Sony Walkman and sponge headphones, I say, and let's get wired for sound. I'm sure that thing ate no fewer than four AA batteries every two hours and was the size of a small hatchback car.

I thought the rumour was that the next iteration of Macbooks would have touchscreens (of course they won't replace the keyboard, otherwise they'd just be iPad Pros). Personally, while I'm happy to prod my iPad and iPhone screens, I've never wanted to jab my Macbook screen with my grubby fingers, but then I'm getting old.
Did you pay the extra tenner for the rewind button?

Not on the first one, which was still way cool, rewind was for backwards looking squares. A few years later I got the one that could play either side of the tape without removing and flipping it (though I think that only had a fast forward, you had to rewind by fast forwarding the other side of the tape). In practice, pressing the buttons too fast (i.e. without pausing for thirty entire seconds) would result in thirty frustrating minutes trying to piggle the tape from the head and respooling it. Whereafter it would woo-wooo-woo as it dopplered through the scrunched up tape.

And then there was the gradual battery decline as the music slowed down to the point you couldn't bear it.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: First-World Problems.
« Reply #1337 on: 11 August, 2016, 10:56:47 pm »
And then there was the gradual battery decline as the music slowed down to the point you couldn't bear it.

Interestingly, just last night I was wondering whether someone's written a hipster music player app that simulates this.  It could also have a 90s mode where the playback skips in response to the accelerometer.

Re: First-World Problems.
« Reply #1338 on: 12 August, 2016, 10:10:46 pm »
The telly in the hotel room is 17", 4:3
Quote from: Kim
Paging Diver300.  Diver300 to the GSM Trimphone, please...

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: First-World Problems.
« Reply #1339 on: 12 August, 2016, 10:22:04 pm »
And then there was the gradual battery decline as the music slowed down to the point you couldn't bear it.

Interestingly, just last night I was wondering whether someone's written a hipster music player app that simulates this.  It could also have a 90s mode where the playback skips in response to the accelerometer.
That's how The Bristol Sound was created; students lost on the Downs unable to find a shop for new batteries (cos it was past midnight and they'd been hiding in the bushes for weeeeeeeeeeed and badgering (dogging having yet to be invented)) were trying to recreate that sound ten years later. Yes, Beth, we mean you.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Re: First-World Problems.
« Reply #1340 on: 13 August, 2016, 08:59:29 am »
Otherwise, have you considered using a stylus?  You can get them for capacitive touchscreens.  Have a blob on the end that simulates a very small finger.  They're a good compromise between the frustration of finger input and faffing about driving a fondleslab with a mouse (and as a bonus, keep the screen smudge-free).

I have one for use with my phone since my stubby peasant fingers can scarcely cope with a fondleslab, never mind the titchy "keys" on the phone (I am not one of those people who believes in mobile phones the size of car number plates, y'see). The only problem with is it this: where do you put it when you're not using it?  ATM it lives in my wallet which, more often than not, is in a different room from the phone.

I imagine that ten minutes after the next-gen Jesusphone hits the shelves some clever bugger in China will be flogging Lightning->3.5mm headphone adaptors, which the Mega-Global Fruit Corporation of Cupertino, USAnia will then replicate at five times the price.

Like so?
The acquisition of Beat headphones is no rumour. It has already happened.

I still have one of these:

And it works.
Only I don't have any cassettes.

Dibdib

  • Fat'n'slow
Re: First-World Problems.
« Reply #1341 on: 13 August, 2016, 10:39:28 am »
Sorry, I only meant that Apple ditching the 3.5mm socket was a rumour.

As Beats is a Monster-Cable-Esque example of celeb-centered marketing over objective quality, I can't imagine Apple bundling some Beats-branded headphones with the next iPhone. Similarly, I'm sure there'll be lightning-3.5mm dongles, but I can't imagine Apple bundling one in the box either. Not when then can charge  £15 for it.

My bet is on lightning headphones in the box, and an optional-extra Apple branded headphones.


The only problem with is it this: where do you put it when you're not using it?  ATM it lives in my wallet which, more often than not, is in a different room from the phone.

Mother Dibdib has one on a little string with - ironically - a headphone jack on the end, so it lives attached to her phone (like so).

Vince

  • Can't climb; won't climb
Re: First-World Problems.
« Reply #1342 on: 13 August, 2016, 11:13:29 am »
Talking to the course leader for a music production degree, he said that should someone turn up with a pair of Beats, they will be pointed at and laughed at.
216km from Marsh Gibbon

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: First-World Problems.
« Reply #1343 on: 13 August, 2016, 11:31:09 am »
The only problem with is it this: where do you put it when you're not using it?  ATM it lives in my wallet which, more often than not, is in a different room from the phone.

Mother Dibdib has one on a little string with - ironically - a headphone jack on the end, so it lives attached to her phone (like so).

So, I now discover, has mine.  Thank you, Sirrah!
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: First-World Problems.
« Reply #1344 on: 13 August, 2016, 01:05:03 pm »
The only problem with is it this: where do you put it when you're not using it?  ATM it lives in my wallet which, more often than not, is in a different room from the phone.

Mother Dibdib has one on a little string with - ironically - a headphone jack on the end, so it lives attached to her phone (like so).

That's wrong on so many levels.  And not just because it looks like a cyberpunk Tampax.

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
Re: First-World Problems.
« Reply #1345 on: 13 August, 2016, 01:07:24 pm »
Otherwise, have you considered using a stylus?  You can get them for capacitive touchscreens.  Have a blob on the end that simulates a very small finger.  They're a good compromise between the frustration of finger input and faffing about driving a fondleslab with a mouse (and as a bonus, keep the screen smudge-free).

I have one for use with my phone since my stubby peasant fingers can scarcely cope with a fondleslab, never mind the titchy "keys" on the phone (I am not one of those people who believes in mobile phones the size of car number plates, y'see). The only problem with is it this: where do you put it when you're not using it?  ATM it lives in my wallet which, more often than not, is in a different room from the phone.

I imagine that ten minutes after the next-gen Jesusphone hits the shelves some clever bugger in China will be flogging Lightning->3.5mm headphone adaptors, which the Mega-Global Fruit Corporation of Cupertino, USAnia will then replicate at five times the price.

Like so?
The acquisition of Beat headphones is no rumour. It has already happened.

I still have one of these:

And it works.
Only I don't have any cassettes.

I think my partner has the cassettes, some blank and some of which contain recordings of performances of music he composed, but his DAT Walkman has died....

... Maybe we should meet up when all parties have the time and tuits.

barakta

  • Bastard lovechild of Yomiko Readman and Johnny 5
Re: First-World Problems.
« Reply #1346 on: 13 August, 2016, 04:38:16 pm »
The only problem with is it this: where do you put it when you're not using it?  ATM it lives in my wallet which, more often than not, is in a different room from the phone.

Mother Dibdib has one on a little string with - ironically - a headphone jack on the end, so it lives attached to her phone (like so).

That's wrong on so many levels.  And not just because it looks like a cyberpunk Tampax.

I thought it looked like a buttplug... Can I blame having been at BiCon in the last week?

Dibdib

  • Fat'n'slow
Re: First-World Problems.
« Reply #1347 on: 13 August, 2016, 05:13:57 pm »
The only problem with is it this: where do you put it when you're not using it?  ATM it lives in my wallet which, more often than not, is in a different room from the phone.

Mother Dibdib has one on a little string with - ironically - a headphone jack on the end, so it lives attached to her phone (like so).

That's wrong on so many levels.  And not just because it looks like a cyberpunk Tampax.

I thought it looked like a buttplug... Can I blame having been at BiCon in the last week?

Someone pass the mind bleach please!

Re: First-World Problems.
« Reply #1348 on: 13 August, 2016, 10:45:20 pm »
The only problem with is it this: where do you put it when you're not using it?  ATM it lives in my wallet which, more often than not, is in a different room from the phone.

Mother Dibdib has one on a little string with - ironically - a headphone jack on the end, so it lives attached to her phone (like so).

That's wrong on so many levels.  And not just because it looks like a cyberpunk Tampax.

I thought it looked like a buttplug... Can I blame having been at BiCon in the last week?

What happens at BiCon , stays at BiCon.....
Not fast & rarely furious

tweeting occasional in(s)anities as andrewxclark

barakta

  • Bastard lovechild of Yomiko Readman and Johnny 5
Re: First-World Problems.
« Reply #1349 on: 13 August, 2016, 11:01:49 pm »
Heh, if only you knew ;)

Admittedly my friends are all a lot more boring than they were 10 years ago when young. 

I have however always been square and boring, even at BiCons.