Category: Tech (Page 1 of 2)

Listen to an Excellent Episode of the Esau McCaulley Podcast!

July 4, 2025 / Joseph Ginder

The last episode of the Esau McCaulley podcast (as of July 4, 2025) is really excellent. I highly recommend it.

There’s a wonderful discussion of patriotism with a really helpful metaphor – the best I’ve heard yet! You’ll recognize it when you hear it. That conversation is followed by a discussion of big church vs. small church – the advantages and disadvantages of each. (Spoiler: To be fair, it is a discussion weighted towards small church.) Lastly, there is a closing segment discussing Peter Thiel’s philosophy and what it means to be human – a certain kind of techno-false gospel.

Listen in your favorite podcast app or watch it on YouTube or listen here in your favorite web browser.

A Gentle Explanation of how Large Language Models are Developed

June 30, 2025 / Joseph Ginder

I ran across this helpful video explanation of how large language model systems are developed. ChatGPT and Claude and Gemini…. and so on that you hear about in the media are large language models – what passes for “AI” these days. It’s by Jacob Andreas of MIT CSAIL published in 2023. The explanation is light on details and does not assume a technical background. There are two youtube videos, a 16-minute part 1 and a 12-minute part 2.

Ted Chiang says “ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web”

June 16, 2025 / Joseph Ginder

Ted Chiang wrote an article on large language models a couple of years ago that was published in the New Yorker. It is a really excellent conceptual introduction to what passes as “Artificial Intelligence” these days. He is an outstanding writer, whether it’s technical writing or his world-class short stories. This time, it’s technical. Chiang clearly presents several fundamental concepts clarifying large language models in about as straightforward and clear a manner as I have yet seen. I highly recommend it.

(Note that the article applies to all large language models, not just to ChatGPT)

A Falcon 9 Launch!

June 24, 2024 / Joseph Ginder

This SpaceX Falcon 9 was launched at 8:48 PM on June 23, 2024, carrying 20 Starlink satellites.

There were clouds on the horizon as the rocket launched. The first portion of the video shows stage 1 streaking up through the clouds – focus was difficult. Then stage 1 stops firing, there is a pause, and stage 2 kicks in with the fan-tail plume. As the fairings that join the two stages and stage 1 itself drop back, there are two lights for the fairings and one for stage 1 behind the fairings in the exhaust plume.

About 48 seconds into the video and again at 56 seconds are what sound like sonic booms (amplified in my audio) – probably from stage 1 dropping back toward earth. I’ve not been able to hear these from Long Beach before!

After a break to walk around a tree (and bumping into my car since my eyes were looking skyward) there’s a bit more close-up video. A bit later, I took a still photo (over my neighbor’s house) of the stage 1 deceleration burn as it slowed preparing to land on a barge off-shore. Susie and I watched the SpaceX broadcast of the impressive landing.

Then I took another still photo of the exhaust plumes in the sky as they dispersed for some time after the launch. The plumes are brightly lit by the sun from below the horizon – pretty ideal circumstances for a good launch show! Notice the different color of the two plumes.

rocket launch exhaust plumes

I dreamed of seeing rocket launches as a boy watching Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo launches on TV! And now I’ve seen three in the past couple of weeks from my front garden. Wonders.

You can be informed of launches from Vandenberg by email. Subscribe to this newsletter; it is just the right information without baggage. The email alerting of a launch will have a link to SpaceX’s launch coverage at SpaceX.com or elsewhere for other launches, such as those from Firefly. The link in the newsletter mailing will be specific to the mission, and opens on live coverage most of the time.

The M.O. is to watch the launch coverage to see that the rocket actually launches, and then watch West Nortwest (from Long Beach) for the stage 1 burn to appear rising orange in the sky. (Well, orange for a Falcon 9….) It usually takes about a minute or a bit more for the rocket to rise high enough in the sky to be visible from Long Beach, CA where I live. The best time to watch is for launches just after sunset on a fairly clear night; they can be spectacular! Daylight launches are often invisible from Long Beach.

Five Reliable Online and Electronic Resources for Jesus Followers (2024)

March 22, 2024 / Joseph Ginder

Many Christians are making use of online resources to stay informed and grow their faith. There are many excellent resources online. I will offer five that I find I use the most often, aside from simple Bible software that I use to access Bible text and reference resources. (If you are curious, I use Logos and Bible Gateway – mostly I use Logos but Bible Gateway starts up faster for quick reference. Both of these have apps in addition to websites.) So, here are my five resources.

Bible Project – Everything they do is of the best quality, and free! Bible Project issues a weekly 20-30 minute playlist on a particular topic. In 2024, it is the Sermon on the Mount. It is available by email subscription or in their app. The app offers access to all of their material. Bible Project has a podcast with weekly episodes and many YouTube videos. If you know me you know that I recommend Bible Project highly – no reservations. I have listened to their podcast since its beginnings, and it is one of my most valued resources. Their videos are very useful in classes and even in Sunday messages.

Holy Post and Holy Post Plus – Phil Vischer, creator of Veggie Tales, and Skye Jethani began Holy Post in 2012. It is in a sort of talk-show format to discuss current topics and conduct interesting interviews. The weekly show regularly includes Kaitlyn Schiess. Phil has moments of profundity in the midst of his general playfulness and humor. Skye is generally serious and has long experience as a Christian leader from which to comment. Kaitlyn is a good-spirited, quick, a serious scholar, and a well-informed commenter. And soon Esau McCauley will be part of the mix – one of my favorite Christian writers. The Holy Post has various videos, podcasts and educational material, some of it free and some available only to supporters.

Regent College Audio – There are several educational institutions with “Regent” in their name. I am recommending audio and other educational material from the one in Vancouver, B.C. This material is generally quite scholarly – not lightweight. The classroom audio they offer is top-notch. Some of it is free, particularly their chapel talks, which are more like short sermons by educators. They offer a podcast which is generally interviews of professors speaking on the topic of classes they are teaching.

Biologos – For the science-oriented Christian. Francis Collins founded Biologos and sets the tone for their material

Lectio 365 – This app offers a brief scripture-focused daily devotional, one in the morning to start the day and one for the evening. Many people have found this a great help in their devotional life. I use it most days.

My most useful Android apps in January, 2024

January 10, 2024 / Joseph Ginder

As we exit 2023 and enter 2024, I continue to use my Pixel 7 Pro. So far I have not been persuaded that it would be worth upgrading to a Pixel 8 Pro; though perhaps I’m not taking into account the extended software update period of the 8 or the trade-in value of my 7? Why Pixel? Because the Pixel phones receive Android updates sooner than other phones and because I want more of a stock Android experience and less bloatware.

Why Android? Because I started with Apple and their excellent engineering and innovation. Then they lost me with their marketing approach that disregards standards and uses unnecessarily different software and hardware to force customers to buy high-priced Apple products instead of more standard accessories and peripherals. Also, for quite some time it was not easy at all to use an iPhone like a computer, with straightforward file access and transfer! Perhaps this last issue has been mitigated. I don’t much care any longer. The Apple marketing approach remains arrogant and elitist. Just look at the iMessage debacle when it comes to interacting with Android phones. Apple won’t allow others to use iMessage protocols and they won’t use more standard protocols themselves, all in the interest of making Android users look bad to iPhone users to exert social pressure on teens (and others) to get an iPhone.

I don’t mean to say that no one should get an iPhone or a Mac or whatever. The quality of these devices is quite good. My advice is to get whatever sort of devices are used by those to whom you will turn for support – and that you can afford. If your tech-savvy friends all use iPhones and that’s where you’ll go for help, you should get an iPhone. If they all use Android phones, you should also go Android. If you’re an early adopter, trail blazer type, you don’t need me to tell you what to do.

In any case, I thought I’d list not all of the apps on my phone, which would be a lengthy list including apps that I rarely touch, but some of the apps that I really use a lot – and one lament/gripe. I found as I wrote that I also drifted a little into other cloud and computer applications related to my Android usage. For me, my phone is a personal computer and camera and network access device that I carry around with me in my pocket. That it is a phone is kind of incidental! I don’t think I’m particularly unique in this respect.

Oh, and before getting into apps, about charging my phone battery… I try to max it out at 80% or so. Charging that last 20% is bad for the long life of your phone battery. My Pixel 7 Pro will run for a very long time on an 80% charge even if I’m taking lots of photos. I confess that I still feel a bit anxious when the charge gets below 60%; but that’s a personal problem. I have a good charger and cable in the cars I use regularly and carry battery-powered chargers in my camera bag and backpack. I find that I very rarely use the battery-powered chargers now with my Pixel 7 Pro; it lasts. Also, the late versions of Android do a pretty good job of telling you what is sucking the power out of your phone: Settings -> Battery -> Battery Usage. I occasionally use wireless charging because it is convenient. However, it generates more heat while charging which is not good for your battery and uses more power per unit of charge (so if you are trying to be marginally more green…)

On to the apps:

Google Chrome – I continue to use Chrome as my main browser

Nova Launcher – While the Pixel Launcher is good enough that I might just use it and forgo the enhancements of Nova if I was starting now, I’ve invested in creating groupings of apps that I access from icons on the home screens of my phone that are not easily reproduced in the Pixel Launcher – there’s no way to easily export and import between these launchers. I don’t normally recommend that others get Nova unless they are tech nerds. And then I don’t need to recommend. The downside to this is that it makes it less easy to offer support to others who use the Pixel Launcher, such as my dear wife.

Gmail – I continue to use Gmail to access my various email accounts.

Google Photos – This is a good tool for less-than-ideal online backup and for sharing photos with family and friends. The automated gathering of collections that include certain people is very useful. This can be use to turn Nest Displays into picture frames to share photos with geographically distant family. The editing tools are pretty reasonable, too – particularly if you have a Pixel phone. I still like editing in Snapseed for some edits (like fixing white balance), and use ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate and Adobe Photoshop and Premiere products for sophisticated editing on my PC. I only let Google Photos automatically sync my phone pictures to the cloud.

Google Messages – I use this for standard messaging. (I use Signal for secure messaging; but not very often.) I don’t care about the color of bubbles that iPhone users see and I use Google Photos for sharing photos with iPhone users instead of sending photos via messaging. What? They don’t have Google Photos and don’t want it? OK, I’ll send the photo as an email attachment.

Google Meet and such- I use Google Meet to call my Dad on his home display. I use Zoom for meetings. I use FreeConferenceCall with a paid private-to-me phone number for straightforward conference call meetings, audio only. For privacy, consider Signal.

Google Maps – I use Google Maps every day. I tell it to save my location history. I use it as a kind of journal of where I’ve been. I’m not very nefarious, so I don’t worry too much over the potential privacy issues. I don’t share my location with others except temporarily or with close family members.

Pixel Camera – The camera on Pixel phones is a major motivator for my choice of Pixel phone. If the camera was not excellent I would consider other phones. I chose the Pixel 7 Pro over the Pixel 7 purely due to the 5x optical telephoto camera feature that the 7 lacks. Otherwise I’d have gone with the smaller form factor of the 7. Having this phone with good-enough zoom for most stuff means I don’t lug my real camera around nearly so often. I even travel without my real camera most of the time. Convenience! Less shoulder and back strain! But if I want to take a picture of a soaring hawk or an air show, the real camera with a good telephoto lens is a much, much better choice.

Cloud Storage – I use Google Drive quite a lot, and have a Google One subscription. I also have OneDrive through Microsoft that comes with my Office 365 annual subscription. I find OneDrive excessively clumsy to use. But hey, there’s a terabyte of storage for me there. I try to keep it from doing anything automatically because a terabyte isn’t enough for anything automatic with me and OneDrive seems unreliable even when I configure it for background tasks.

Evernote – Sigh. This is my lament. I have appreciated Evernote quite a lot over the years – enough to pay around $30/year to use it. But the new pricing since Evernote was acquired is more like $130/year! That’s too much for what I get out of it. So I’m saving my notes elsewhere. So far, I’ve saved my old notes to OneNote through a complicated process that I am not yet sure was reliable. I still have access to my old notes through the free Evernote account I retain. I find that I’m saving new notes in Google Docs in a designated folder tree. We shall see where this goes – if OneNote can capture my note taking attention or if Google documents prevail. FYI, OneNote uses part of my OneDrive terabyte for what it keeps in the cloud. This is fine by me, since OneDrive isn’t so useful to me otherwise.

Office 365 – This is good software. I like it and use it a lot, particularly Word, Powerpoint, and Excel. I also like Google apps – particularly Google Documents on Google Drive. So far, I’m not a fan of Office trying to push me to OneDrive instead of local storage. I have my local storage system worked out already, thank you, with good backup and sharing solutions in place. I really like that Word in Office 365 online will transcribe audio files. This is very helpful to me since I tend to combine study using audio classes and lectures with exercise.

Weather apps – I have Accuweather, 1Weather, The Weather Channel, Wunderground…. and others. I sort of like Wunderground even though it has never really recovered from being purchased by IBM some years ago. I use Chronus Pro to display weather info on my home screen. Also, I’m checking out the Windy app and find it sometimes useful – the free version only so far.

TV Apps – Pick what you subscribe to, be it Netflix or Britbox or Acorn or AppleTV or…. There’s nothing interesting to see here. They’re all kind of bad at user interaction but adequate for showing TV shows. Some allow downloading for viewing offline. The offline experience is iffy at best for all of them, in my experience. Sometimes it works ok. Other times… Oops, that show is “expired” or it just won’t play. I use VLC for viewing video files and sometimes for listening to audio files from my private library.

Adobe Acrobat – Yeehaw! While there are other good PDF file readers, Acrobat will audibly read your PDF to you. And the Liquid mode, or whatever it is that makes PDF files more readable on a phone screen is kind of nice.

Adobe Scan and Google Photoscan work well for digitizing documents into pictures. I haven’t done a lot of converting scanned images to text, but Google Lens does the trick for me in simple cases I’ve needed.

Google Lens – Speaking of Google Lens, this is a really useful tool for identifying whatever you just took a picture of or extracting text from a picture. You can access it from Google Photos or the Camera app or even Chrome. Google image search is also pretty good at finding the origin of photos on the web.

Travel Apps – It’s generally worth having the app for the airline that you are traveling on and the car rental company that you are renting a car from. The airline apps keep you officially informed and can be used for checking in, digital boarding passes, etc. The car rental apps are often helpful in bypassing the rental counter (and the associated long line) and going directly to your car. For generic flight tracking, I use Flightview Elite in addition to airline apps.

Financial Apps – I use the apps from my Bank and Credit Card companies. When anything is charged to my card anywhere, I get an immediate notification on my phone. I mean, while I’m standing in front of the cash register even and the clerk is processing my payment (whether touchless or by handing over a card), I get a notification that my charge account has been used. And yes, I use GPay (aka Google Pay) so I don’t have to even carry my wallet or hand over a card to a cashier when I can avoid it. Google Wallet is a good way to slim down what you have to carry in your physical wallet.

Bible Software – I use Logos nearly all the time. I also use Bible Gateway occasionally, and also the YouVersion Bible app. The YouVersion Bible app is quite good if you don’t have something like Logos. I am a big fan of the Bible Project; they also have a nice app.

Social Media – Blah, blah, blah. Use what you use; don’t let it use you… too much. I’m not going there, but I will mention Substack and Flickr. Flickr is more of a place to share and curate photos without the ads of that other more popular place.

Pocket Casts – I started using Pocket Casts long ago. Back then they had a lifetime deal on the better pro-like version. Then they were acquired and that wasn’t really honored so now they have a higher cost tier. I’m not paying them any more money but I continue to use the version that doesn’t cost. It’s quite good.

Audio – I pay for a Spotify subscription to avoid commercials and listen to whatever I want to listen to. I also use Amazon Music because I have quite a lot of past purchases of albums that I can listen to online and download to listen to offline with Amazon. And I have an extensive library of MP3’s made to back up my old CD and Vinyl library. There are many apps for listening to MP3’s on your phone. I sometimes use PowerAmp; but it has become cluttered with features. So often I just use VLC for audio. I use Smart Audiobook Player to listen to my downloaded talks, classes, and books that I have saved as MP3 files in the past – things like Regent College classes. I use Audible for audiobooks. LibriVox is pretty good for listening to audiobooks made from stuff that is out of copyright. Sometimes I resort to Patreon to listen to podcasts that are exclusive to paid subscribers. Lectio 365 is a really good audio daily devotional app; there are devotionals for morning and evening with parallel text of what you hear in the audio for reference. Logos also does audio and I should probably make more use of it. I listen to lots of podcasts using Pocket Casts and “Hey Google, play the news” through the Google assistant. Be sure and configure what news sources you want Google Assistant to play.

Video – I use VLC to play my video files. You know, MP4’s and the like. Home video and other non-streaming video. Streaming video needs an app determined by the stream you are watching, like YouTube.

Google Home, Nest, and other Home Automation – I use Google Home and the Google Assistant for smart home stuff. I don’t like that internet connectivity is required for controlling my devices; but Google Home is easy. Sigh. Since Matter came into use, the need for other home automation apps is fading. But I still have the Philips Hue and the Kasa apps on my phone. There are fairly easy ways to get home automation without the cloud using open source software (like Home Assistant). (I am experimenting with Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi as of March, 2024.)

DuckDuckGo – DuckDuckGo includes a browser that is pretty good for looking at things you don’t want to influence ads and the other things trackers do. They also have software that disables tracking from all apps on your phone. Some apps really don’t like this and stop working, like the ESPN app. For most apps you just stop being tracked. I appreciate being able to throw a wrench into the tracking gears; but I’m not really fanatic about it. The DuckDuckGo anti-tracking software reports the tracking that is undermines. (It is kind of stunning how much tracking Google does through apps that are not Google apps!)

Passport – You need this app to park in some lots and along some streets around Long Beach, CA. Why does it tell me that my parking spot at Seal Beach from months ago is expiring every time my phone is restarted?

Peakfinder – What’s that mountain over there called? This app will tell you. Point your phone at the horizon with the mountain on it. You can set it up to have offline information.

FlightRadar24 – You use this app to find out what that airplane is (or those airplanes are) that are passing overhead – not private airplanes.

BackBlaze – I use Backblaze to back up my PC. The app allows me to access the backed up stuff from my phone. I use client-side encryption.

Brother Print Service, Brother iPrint&Scan – I have been purchasing Brother printers in recent years. They work and are not too expensive to keep in supplies.

Authy and other Authenticators – I use authenticator apps when available for two-factor authentication. I prefer Authy when an authenticator app is needed.

Battery Widget Reborn – I use this widget on my home screen for high-visibility battery level display.

Astro Clock – I like the plethora of location, moon, sun, and planetary information this app squeezes onto one screen! OK, this is for astro-nerds.

Sky Map – there are a lot of apps for helping you identify things in the sky at night. I’ve been using Sky Map, which is usually good enough for me. There are other, more sophisticated apps and apps that will avoid messing up your night sight (and that of others nearby) by using carefully selected colors on your phone display.

Information Apps – There are many apps for specialized information: Tide tables, tying knots, First Aid, trail maps, recommendations for craftsmen. I have some of these. Choose those that tell you what you want to know and avoid excessive ads and costly or unfair marketing strategies. I don’t have much that is interesting to say regarding these apps. I’ll just recommend that we all pay to eliminate ads as appropriate. Programmers deserve compensation like any other laborer.

Technical Information Apps – I’m not really going to get any deeper into my techno-nerd apps here. I have apps for network analyzing, monitoring wifi, mapping wifi coverage, checking what devices are on the LAN, managing my access points and network access, benchmarking connection speeds and processing speed, checking hardware status, etc.

Programmer/Developer Apps – I’m leaving all these out, too because most would not find them of interest. However, I can benchmark Lisp on my phone. Just sayin’. 🙂

At last! A Good Overview of the Kinds of Policies we Need Regarding AI and Trust.

December 15, 2023 / Joseph Ginder

Bruce Schneier is a respected computer security expert who lectures at Harvard’s Kennedy School. Schneier is one of those rare humans with deep understanding and competence in several areas of mathematics and computer technology and recognized ability to analyze and recommend policies that make the world a safer and better place to live. I just finished reading an essay he wrote entitled AI and Trust in his latest newsletter. It is quite good at analyzing trust relationships and recommending policy that reduces the negative impacts that AI would otherwise have on society. It’s nearly 3500 words, but not overly technical.

Here’s an extremely important point from Schneier’s essay:

AIs are not people; they don’t have agency. They are built by, trained by, and controlled by people. Mostly for-profit corporations. Any AI regulations should place restrictions on those people and corporations… At the end of the day, there is always a human responsible for whatever the AI’s behavior is. And it’s the human who needs to be responsible for what they do—and what their companies do…. If we want trustworthy AI, we need to require trustworthy AI controllers.

The opening portion of the article is a discussion of the difference between what Schneier calls interpersonal trust and social trust. I found his discussion of trust illuminating and important. This is a well-reasoned, articulate article that I will be recommending to thoughtful people. It is accessible to those who do not have deep technical knowledge of AI. As far as I can tell there is no paywall.

On a Shopping List, Somewhere

February 11, 2018 / Joseph Ginder / 0 Comments

A commercial came on during the Winter Olympics. Johnny Weir tried to get hair gel from an empty dispenser. He said to his Google home mini, “Hey Google, put hair gel on my shopping list”. The Google home mini on TV answered him appropriately.

My Google home mini, sitting in front of the TV, spoke up and said, “I’ve added hair gel to your shopping list.”

I said, “Hey Google take hair gel off my shopping list, that was the TV.”

Google home mini said, “I can’t remove items from your shopping list. You’ll have to go to the Google home app and remove it there.”

I said, “Hey Google, you are listening to the TV. Stop it!”

Google home mini said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know how to do that yet.”

I told Susie what happened; she had just returned to the room from somewhere. She said, I guess you’ll have to buy hair gel. I didn’t think you used hair gel…

I got my phone and looked at the Google Home app. I found my shopping list (of which I was previously unaware) to remove hair gel. There was nothing on my shopping list.

Ergo, somewhere in the cloud, Johnny Weir has a shopping list with probably about 28 million units of hair gel on it.

What do I run on my Nexus 5 in May, 2014?

May 13, 2014 / Joseph Ginder / 0 Comments

I received a Nexus 5 for Christmas and retired my Samsung Galaxy S2. It has no SD card slot, but has 32gb built in. So far, the space has been enough – though I fill it to 27 or 28 gb pretty easily. Most of that is audio teaching and books that I really could keep somewhere else most of the time. I have had no reason to root or run anything other than the latest Android from Google. That’s the beauty of the Nexus line! I get the latest Android quickly. That’s a huge benefit, in my experience. The performance of the phone is so good and the screen so nice that I’m finding I rarely use my Nexus 7 tablet. Another really nice feature is the wireless charging. After having so much trouble with micro-USB connectors growing finicky in the past, I really like just being able to lay the phone down on a charging pad. I keep one for nighttime charging and one by my desk at work. The camera is quite good, too. The Nexus 5 is an excellent phone: as good today as the Nexus One was compared to the competition when it was new… maybe better!

As I wrote before… I started using Android when the G1 came out and have never looked back to my blackberry or to Windows Mobile. I have T-Mobile unlimited everything service. (Actually, my data is throttled after 2gb… I mostly use wi-fi and have not seen a need to upgrade to more high-speed data.) It’s cheap and T-Mobile phone reps are pleasant and helpful to talk to. Neither AT&T nor Verizon can make these claims today. (When I talk to their reps on the phone, my blood pressure is up for a week.)

T-Mobile service works well for me most of the time, but not on Balboa Island or other neighborhoods where mostly well-to-do people live. Evidently rich people don’t use T-Mobile, so T-Mobile coverage is often sketchy in higher-income neighborhoods. It works great where I normally hang out, though. (Note: it didn’t work so well in South Dakota, and AT&T roaming access had a low cap that I exceeded quickly. I really hated that.)

So, what do I run on my phone and why? Here’s the list as of May 13, 2014.

Air Droid – This app lets me connect to my phone as a web server using a web browser. I can get files from it, copy files to it, install apps, and more. Nice. However, the file browser does not handle large lists of files in one directory very well; it is far too slow. I find that I have been using file managers on my phone and an FTP server more than Air Droid. Still installed, though.

Amazon Kindle – I use my phone as my kindle. It works well enough to read books on my phone.

Amazon MP3 – This would be a waste for me save for the Amazon Cloud Player features. It is nice to be able to store music in the Amazon cloud and play it anywhere. I have the unlimited audio track storage service from Amazon.

America’s National Parks – An info app.

APG – There are certain files on my phone that I don’t want others to be able to read – like files that have personal data in them that would be useful for identity theft. So, I encrypt them. This is a tool that does that. You can encrypt your entire phone file system, but I think that would be so invasive that it would be self-compromising. This allows me to pick and choose so that stuff I protect is really protected without slowing down access to other stuff.

Audible – I am an audiobook junkie. Folks who say reading is not the same as listening are right. I usually do better listening, even though I love to read. Good for the gym and for walking. And driving.

Authenticator – This is a way to use the Google two-factor authentication system for many other security purposes. It is not useful unless you use stuff that supports it. My ISP supports it and I use it.

Barcode Scanner – Scans bar codes. Useful for many things, but I don’t use it as frequently as one might expect.

Battery Solo Widget – For displaying battery status on a home screen.

BatteryGuru – If you have a SnapDragon processor, you probably want this. It learns how you use your phone and then configures the system to conserve battery life. I have found it to be effective.

Beautiful Widgets and Beautiful Widgets Animation add-on – Very nice home screen information display. I use it for time and weather and battery status with nice appearance. This hasn’t changed much in several years. But I have not found a better alternative.

BeyondPod – This is an excellent podcast app. If you listen to regular podcasts, consider it. I paid for the unlocked version.

Bible – This is the Android app from Logos. I use it almost exclusively for Bible study. I have some Kindle bibles, also. Logos has deep features but doesn’t do simple reading well since Libronix 3 on the PC.

Bible Gateway – This is a nice fast lightweight app for Bible reading. I find it is crisper and easier to bring up quickly than the Logos app. So I use it for simple Bible reading.

Camera Zoom FX – This is a highly-rated camera app for Android that purchased to overcome the weak cyanogenmod camera app. However, the Nexus 5 native camera app is fine, so I don’t use it any more. Still installed because I paid for it, just in case.

CamScanner – This is a convenience app that packages up using your camera to capture images of receipts and labels and business cards and so on. It straightens, crops, processes, and turns them into nice images in a pdf. The images and pdf can be shared gmail and and other means. I use this to capture handwritten notes, nutrition info from labels, and any written material I want to save and not have to carry with me on paper. It’s quite nice for straightening and flattening pictures of flat things taken with weird perspective.

Carbon – This is the Twitter app I use.

Circa – a news reader that I rarely use.

Chrome – The Chrome web browser for Android phones. I use this almost all the time now, after recent performance improvements. The time I don’t use it is when I need flash, as when watching Amazon video. (Amazon, why not have your video app on Android? This is silly.)

Clojure – A Lisp for your phone. How cool is that?

ConnectBot – I am geeky enough to need an ssh client on my phone. If you know what that is, this is a good free version.

DashClock Widget, Moon Extension, Sunrise Extension, Battery Extension – This is a good lock screen display widget plus modules that I use.

DMAC Screen Lock – This is a widget that you can put on your home screen to turn off the screen and lock your phone. It’s much nicer than finding the power button.

DropBox – Cloud storage app.

Duolingo – I’m kind of sort of attempting to learn some Spanish.

Easy Screenshot – This is an app that lets you capture what’s on the screen of your phone and save it as a picture.

Earth – Explore the earth using Google’s software.

Elixir 2 and various add-on modules – Excellent window into everything on your phone. High nerd appeal. I install some of the extra modules; but not what requires rooting (so far).

Email My Texts – Does what it says. It’s a way to backup or save your text messages.

ES File Explorer – An excellent file system browser with root capability and good SMB support for network browsing.

EverNote – I am using this as my standard way to take notes and save them. I don’t like that it is not integrated into the rest of my filing system. But it is very good. Still considering where this goes long term. I think Google should buy them and integrate it with Google Drive instead of pursuing Google Keep.

EveryTrail – Cool software that allows you to download maps of hiking trails to carry and access from your phone. Also capable of tracking hikes and saving the tracks in the cloud.

ezPDF Reader – I want to read PDF files. This was my solution. So far, so good.

Feedly – a news aggregator – but I don’t read it much

Fing Network Tools – an excellent tool for exploring LAN’s. Wish it were this simple on my PC!

FIOS Mobile – Verizon finally found someone who can write an adequate Android app. Previous versions were very frustrating. This one is so much better it has reaching OK status.

Firefox – I only use this for flash content. That’s all. Rarely used these days at all.

First Aid – An info app that is a first aid guide.

Flickr Folio – the new Flickr app may be slick, but it doesn’t let me set the title, description, tags, and album of photos to upload as easily as this app.

Flickr – nice for looking at Flickr, but not as nice as the old version for uploading.

Flickr Mobile – Another Flickr app that I am experimenting with.

FlightAware – nice app for tracking flights

FlightTrack – Easy real-time flight tracking for all the flights that matter to you. Not free.

Friend Locator – Share locations between friends.

FTP Droid – An FTP server for Android. Works well and does fast file transfer. I use the paid version.

FX – This is the best file manager for Android now. SMB access works well.

Gas Buddy – Find the location and price of gas nearby.

Gmail – Indispensable. I recommend the two-factor authentication for Gmail and Drive, but only if you take the time to understand it in advance. Be sure and get the emergency access codes for your account if you set two-factor up, even if you don’t know how to use them. And be sure and set up an emergency contact number for backup delivery of access codes. If you ever need them, you will be very glad to have them. Also, you should find a way to backup your messages locally. I use Mozilla Thunderbird.

[NOT] Go – I have removed all things from Go. They were free and worked pretty well, but became too invasive with too many messages trying to sell me things. The invasive messages require me to dismiss them, too!. So, no Go. Gone. Not missed.

Google Drive, Docs, Sheets – Google Drive is very convenient. This is usually better than using it from the web browser; at times the web browser can display tables that the app cannot.

Google Sky Map – Cool map of the sky… “Where’s Orion’s belt again? Oh, over there.”
Google Voice – Stop using your phone service’s voice mail and start using Google Voice. It will transcribe your messages and email them to you. T-mobile’s visual voice mail is problematic; I gave up on it.

GPS Status – A way to find your GPS coordinates.

Groupon – I don’t like the app for anything except saving the offers I purchase and showing them to vendors.

GPS Share – Decide to share your location with other people of your choice. “Where are you? I’m HERE! (send location)”

Hacker’s Keyboard – You too can type like a programmer! If you ever want to run emacs or its ilk on your phone, you need this. If you never heard of emacs, then you probably don’t need this. It’s kind of a full function keyboard instead of the stripped down keyboard for texting and data entry.

HBO Go – If you have HBO, you can watch HBO programs and movies on your phone. On demand. Cool. I login with my Verizon FIOS ID.

History Here – An app that lets you find sites of historical interest wherever you are. Great for history nerd vacationing.

iBird Pro – Want to know what that bird is in your North American yard?

Instagram – Easily share pix on social media sites. Very popular, but has limitations.

KD Collage – Make those photo collages on your phone. This is an OK app for that.

KeePassDroid – This is a password keeper that supports Android and Windows and more. It provides a good way to keep track of your passwords and use different passwords for your various logins.

Kingsoft Office – the free version reads Office docs on your phone – but without editing.

Lookout – This was the best security software for Android when I needed some and checked it out thoroughly, which was years ago. Still working well. It scans apps for safety. It can track down your phone from the web when it is lost and lock it or wipe it clean if it is in someone hands who shouldn’t have it. It also does backups; but I don’t use it for backup.

LoseIt! – a calorie tracker

Maps – Google Maps is great. Who needs a separate GPS? This is one of the best features of a good Android phone.

Meridian Player – This is a good media player. No EQ. Great features and stability for people who have their own media files and want to manipulate and play them. Updated frequently.

Messaging – I don’t like using Google Hangouts for text messaging. So I loaded this.

MoboPlayer – plays the most video formats of any video player I know of.

Ol File Manager – This file manager was required in order to select files in some other app. I don’t use it otherwise.

Photo Grid – Make photo collages on your phone. Lots of features. Works very well. I use this one.

Pinterest – Occasionally I use this app instead of the web browser.

Pixlr Express – A reasonable picture editor.

PowerAmp – This is a really nice audio app. I find that I use different apps for different listening or watching contexts. This allows me to resume one context while leaving another context in place. I listen to audio on PowerAmp. Then I can stop and watch video on Meridian. Then I finish listening to audio on PowerAmp from where I left off without searching. This should just work in one media app! Context is lost too easily. Poweramp gives much of control over the sound. I purchased the full version.

QuickPic – Fast gallery replacement for viewing photos. Not so necessary in the latest Android but habits die hard…

RadarNow! – A weather radar app. That is all.

Screen Filter – If you use your phone at night and want it to be less bright, use this.

SlingPlayer – Watch your Slingbox on your phone.

Smart Tools – Measuring tools for your phone. Very cool to play with. Useful? Hmmm. Soft of, if you don’t need precision. “It’s about 12 feet to that wall over there.” But it has a nice LED flashlight feature.

Snapseed – This is my preferred phone editor on Android.

StopWatch & Timer – Just what it says it is.

Storage Analyzer – a good tool for figuring out what files are using up your memory.

Study Bible – A Logos study Bible

Subsonic – I am such a nerd that I run a freeware subsonic server on linux to serve my entire library of audio and video. This is the client for Android. So why do I use the Amazon Cloud, you ask? I do. But, redundancy. (FYI, you must restart the linux server with a cron job every few hours or it will go belly up and stop responding.)

Swype + Dragon – Was the best keyboard for Android. Now I’m having problems with freezing. The stock keyboard swipes now, so less critical. Until it starts working better, I’m using stock.

Sygic – This is navigation software from eastern Europe. Cheaper than other offline alternatives and works OK. I prefer Google Maps and Nav when available, but they are not operable offline. Yes, I know about downloading Google maps for offline access. That’s nice, but not good enough.

SystemPanel – A very nice app backup and management tool. Somewhat redundant with Elixir. Will also do app backup.

T-Mobile My Account – check how much you’re using your features. The health status of your phone is junk; it assumes you are a dweeb.

Tape-a-Talk Pro – Record extended audio with this app.

TextWarrior – Geeky test editor. Not super fast, but works well enough for me to search files and update my text file notes.

TiVo – This is the remote from my Tivo. Very nice. Not from the Tivo company; not free.

TVFoodie, TVFoodMaps – This is how you remember and find all those cool places to eat that you saw on the Food Channel. It is easier than the web.

Tumblr – Micro-blogging app. I have it but have not started using it.

TuneIn Radio – For listening to radio broadcasts over the internet.

US Army Survival Guide – another info app

USB Host Diagnostics, USB Stick Plugin – trying to use external USB sticks from my phone.

Ustream – a Ustream client. I watched the Mars Curiosity landing coverage from NASA using this, for example. And this is how you check what is going on in the LBFC sanctuary on Sunday.

Wifi Analyzer and Wifi Connector Library – I maintain wifi networks. I like being able to find out what is happening in wifiland around me. And so…

Wunderground – a nice weather app – lots of info.

Yahoo Weather – another nice weather app. Pretty.

Yelp – Find good places to eat.

YouTube

Zoom Camera Pro – Another replacement for the weak Cyanogenmod camera that I paid for but don’t use much any longer.

Installing a Screen Protector

December 29, 2013 / Joseph Ginder / 0 Comments

After less than stellar results from recent screen protector installations, I think I have figured it out. I just accomplished putting on a screen protector under which I can find no imperfections! (For the techno-challenged, a screen protector is a really, really thin layer of clear plastic that you put on the face of your smart phone to protect it from skin grease, dust, and other nastiness.)

Here’s how I did it, if you are interested.

First of all, I purchased the type of protector that comes with three layers. The outer two layers protect the middle layer that ends up covering the screen of the phone. The general idea is that you peel one layer off, apply the newly-uncovered middle layer to the phone, then remove the outer layer. Done! Simple. Except that you end up with little bubbles from dusty whatever is floating around in your air.

So, I did some reading and watched this video to learn some new tricks, particularly the “masking tape hinge” technique:

Start by taking all your installer paraphernalia and phone into the bathroom. Tturn on all possible lights for maximum visibility, close the door, and turn on the shower – hot water only. Leave the shower open to steam up the room. When your glasses and mirrors start to fog, you are close to ready. This fog is purported to make the air less likely to carry dust or make the dust less sticky or something. I don’t know why exactly, but it sort of makes sense and it seemed to help. A lot.

Next, clean your phone. Use one of those little blower bulbs like you use to blow dust off of photographic negatives. (See attached photo.) Or use a compressed air can. Rubbing alcohol helps if your screen is dirty, but I didn’t use it. Most protectors come with one of those microfiber clothes that help, too. I also used a negative brush from my negative-scanning days. A piece of masking tape can help to clean dust off the screen, also. Using all of these, get that screen crystal clean in the steamy room.

Clean the outside layers of your screen protector using these same tools. You don’t want it to deposit dust on your screen. If there are holes, make sure the holes are punched out now because you don’t want little circles of plastic in the way later.

Now, position all three layers of the protector on the phone in just the right way.Hold it down with one hand. Along one long edge use masking tape to tape a hinge holding the protector in place. This is demonstrated nicely in the video. When you are done, you have a flapping 3-layer protector that flaps into just the right place on your phone.

Now, just to be sure, blow out the area between the protector and the screen. Brush it. Gently wipe it with masking take. Do what it takes to get that area clean!

When it is clean, hing the protector up away from the screen and remove the inner protective layer from the protector. This is nicely shown in the video. Then, using a credit card or Aquarium membership card as a smoother (as you prefer), begin to hinge the protector down onto the screen where it will stick. Make sure you do not have bubbles from dust particles!

If you have a dust particle bubble, use a piece of masking tape to lift the protector up. Then remove the dust with a brush or another piece of masking tape. (The video demonstrates this, too.)

When you are done de-bubbling, gently remove the masking tape hinges. Then debubble some more, as needed.

Finally, remove the outer protective plastic layer from the protector and inspect the wonder of your handiwork. Debubble again, as needed. Emergency lifting of the protector can be accomplished with masking tape again to get that last piece of dust.

Look kids, no bubbles!