s4 to n5

i decided that enough was enough. even though samsung had made the last few phones i have owned, my most recent purchase in april as an upgrade to my nexus s 4g was not a google branded phone. and my experience with the samsung galaxy s4 has not been good enough for me to stay with it.

i think that even though some of the technical ideas built into the s4 are clever, it has been their tweaks to the operating system that annoy me the most.

things i have hated:

• choosing an app to launch file/object types has the usual prompt asking which one and how often. but samsung includes an additional prompt stating that the choice just made can be undone in the system application settings…EVERYTIME! how about a way to turn that off, k?


• they including a service/app which can’t be stopped or removed that puts an icon in the notification bar when the phone is fully charged. i believe one battery indicator is enough, and there is no need to turn the screen on when it’s fully charged. “hey, i am fully powered, let’s start running that battery down immediately.” if they didn’t also include led indicators for charging and full, the screen on might make a little sense.


• the biggest complaint i have is the bloatware samsung installs on their phones. not being able to remove or even disable the crap i don’t use or need frustrates me enough.


• unlocking/rooting the samsung phone requires a windows app. a WINDOWS piece of software for a linux variant operating system! i can’t emphasize the word “FAIL” strongly enough for that move.


• one preference i had some trouble getting used to was the tactile home button at the bottom rather than the touch counterpart found on other android devices. a power button the the side is one thing, but the need for an physical button seemed unnecessary. (what am i? an apple user?)

these items annoyed me. i tried to accept and power through them, but i couldn’t seem to live without the pure android os.

i did replace their limited touchwiz launcher with nova quite speedily. at least i could control that.

i started eyeing the nexus 5 around the end of last year. the design is very appealing and the display is very sharp! (it seems) the n5 is a bit faster than the s4.

my only complaint about the n5 is that the battery life isn’t as solid as i would have hoped for this generation android device. (the nexus 5 is an LG device.) add to the face that the battery isn’t removable and it might end up being a little frustrating. we’ll see. it wasn’t enough to stop me from switching.

in the end, i opted for the nexus 5. so far, i am loving it!

shiny

i had been talking about finishing some remodeling of my house for a while and finally started the weekend before thanksgiving.

when i was between jobs in september of 2012, i ended up painting my bedroom and the extra bedroom i use as an office. (the master bathroom had been reworked a few months before. it had been a hassle to remove the wallpaper, an activity i have decided to farm out in the future.)

i prepped the house by taping the other spare bedroom, the hallway, and the living room the eveninga before the weekend before thanksgiving. on saturday morning, i started painting. i finished up the last parts of the living room by midday sunday. now, all the rooms matched the dark ash color of the other two bedrooms.

for years i had needed new carpet. many spills had left stains, some i covered with the sofa. a friend of mine had put in new carpet which had anti-stain abilities. i knew that was what i needed and wanted when i chose to replace mine. i made a trip to frazier’s carpet one to pick out a dupont blend called triexta. that combined with their best padding which is also spill resistant is just what the doctor ordered. even though the lighter color seemed right, the shade darker was more appealing. ordered to be installed the monday before christmas.

a call from fraizer’s right after thanksgiving had me to reschedule to the friday immediately before christmas. it would be cutting things close.

next was replacement furniture. these four pieces i purchased from a colleague (at the time) when i first moved into the house  fifteen years ago. i had started looking at different furniture before thanksgiving but finally found what i liked the following sunday at ashley furniture store. i scheduled delivery the saturday after the carpet was installed.



all that was left was to find a home for the old furniture. i scheduled with karm to have them pick up the quartet the wednesday before new carpet. i wanted an extra day as a buffer to deal with getting more of the house cleared. this turned out to be necessary.

karm resells furniture so they need things to be in really good condition. i thought my stuff though with minor defects would pass, but i was wrong. they told me angelic ministries uses furniture for a different cause and was more likely to take it.

i had trouble contacting them in a short time. my anxiety of all the other gears in motion drove me to find some way to guarantee the lot out if my house by thursday evening.

i rented a truck on wednesday evening. with my brother-in-law’s arms, we loaded the truck and my dad was willing to drop it at angelic on thursday. problem solved.



the rest went as planned. carpet in friday, furniture on saturday. new and shiny. all done.

i am very happy with it all. my family loved it too on christmas eve.

candied bacon

last year, i made candied bacon for our family christmas eve gathering. this year, my brother-in-law requested i make more of it for this year’s event.

the recipe can be found many places online. it’s very simple.



ingredients:

1 pound of bacon
1 pound of brown sugar (a regular box or bag will be enough)
1 pound of confectionery sugar (again a regular box or bag will be enough)



directions:

• preheat oven to 350°f


• on a cookie pan with edges, spread aluminum foil down to cover including the inside edges (to make clean up easier)


• spread brown sugar on the foil


• lay the bacon strips out the full length of the pan, overlapping them just barely


• spread another handful or two of thr brown sugar on top of the bacon


• cook in oven for about 40 minutes on one side, then flip and cook another 15 to 20 minutes on the other side

spread out wax paper on a flat surface and sprinkle some of the confectionery sugar on the paper. then lay the bacon strips freshly out of the oven on the sugar. this will keep it from sticking to the wax paper and give it a wintry look, candy look.

let it cool for about 30 minutes and then serve or refrigerate for storing.

shut up, wesley

saw this retweet from patrick stewart this morning:



that could not have been more perfect!

the video of reference is this one:

sacrificing my 50mm

i had to use pliers and a screwdriver to remove my 50mm lens from my dslr tonight.

the lens wouldn’t come off after a quick swap at my niece’s concert. a quick search online revealed this happened more often than i would have imagined. for that, i am both happy and sad.

i used the guide here to remove my lens without damaging my camera: http://www.theroastedroot.net/removing-a-stuck-canon-50mm-f1-8-camera-lens/

fortunately, it is one of the cheaper lenses. i like my 50mm a lot. i will replace it, but i am leerly about having this happen with another canon lens.

non-credit photography class

this fall, i signed up for a photography class through ut. this class has been long overdue for me. even though i’ve had my dslr since 2008, there were many things i needed to and did learn from this course.

the course is six weeks of evening classes and two field trips. several of the things i learned included:

• the whole stop points for both aperture and shutter speed adjustments


• how to shoot with shallow depth of field


• what to look for when buying a flash and a tripod


• setting a custom white balance, how to use accessories like extension tubes


• the concepts of composition

the timing of the class was perfect too. fall colors were in full effect for our second field trip.



i’ve been practicing the techniques taught for photographing family events. i believe i’m going to be carrying my camera around more to social gatherings.



i would recommend this class for anyone who has recently purchased their first dslr. it would be great to start with practicing good habits from the start. there are so many places i would love to take over knowing what i know now.

these are some of the photos i took and submitted for the class:

ut photography class, a set on flickr

i plan to add to this set with other photos as i go through them.

disabling suspend/hibernate/shutdown for all users but root

my situation:

we have a screen along with a keyboard and mouse in a scrum room at work. the computer is in a locked rack closet on the other end of the floor. i do not have direct access to this room. this computer serves as a portal for internet access and conference calling. i installed fedora linux on the system.

because of the remoteness about it, the keyboard was one that had a power button on it. occasionally, it would get bumped and shutdown the system. this meant we had to find someone to unlock the door to physically power the computer back up. we were successful in disabling the power button on the keyboard, but we still had a problem with being able to shutdown the machine from the gnome interface.

my solution:

i probed in #fedora on freenode and was pointed to using a policykit policy to limit suspend/hibernate/shutdown access to root only. the first link i found was this one:

http://superuser.com/questions/453002/how-to-achieve-users-are-no-longer-allowed-to-shutdown-the-computer-in-gnome-3

the syntax for the first response was for an older version of policykit. a little further investigation led me to this link:

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1274130

the reference in the last post indicated this file has the control i needed:

/usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.login1.policy

using the values in the first link, i plugged them into that policy file and was able to get it working.

i didn’t adjust the media seating or flushing, but all the power controls were set for allow_any to be “auth_admin,” and the allow_active and allow_inactive to “no.”