Android vs. Windows Phone

Now that I’ve had my (Chinese government-sponsored) Huawei P20 Pro phone for a few months, I’ve used it enough to judge it - well, its operating system - against that of my previous Windows Phones.

• Aesthetically, there's simply no competition; Android remains an ugly rip-off of Apple's iOS with a minimal attempt to do any more than just show apps; and, like iOS, it doesn't allow anything other than egalitarian, all-apps-are-equal mediocrity in which every app is allocated the same screen space, and the only way to delineate their importance is organising them onto different home page screens
• Windows Phone, by contrast, allowed app tiles to be a range of sizes, including with enough screen real estate to permit them communicate more completely with the user, it let the user tessellate them neatly into groups (e-mail, social media, phone functions), and allowed the user to keep all of their regularly-used apps on a single, elegant scrolling screen 
• Functionally, there's really nothing like the live tiles of Windows, you just get a coloured dot that indicates that there's something up with a particular app; as well as being less noticeable, the meaning of the dot colour is opaque much of the time; and sometimes a dot appears that just won’t go away; the notification pull-down does serve some of this functionality, but it’s just not as convenient as having a tile tell you directly what’s going on 
• While app overload is an issue with Android and iOS, there is, on my phone anyway, an attempt to stow away less-used apps via “Drawers”, but they're completely inelegant compared to Windows’ solution of having a full list of all apps (organised alphabetically, and with a neat way of skipping quickly) accessible to the right of the start menu; similarly to Windows, Android allows apps to alternatively be put in groups that occupy a single app spot on the home screen 
• Windows’ customisable start menu itself is something I really do miss; I'd got a nice set of differently sized tiles, arranged in a convenient order, and with a nice rhino-based wallpaper; Android - away from Windows launchers, which I've yet to try - looks positively amateurish by contrast; it's an interface designed by a committee, and so has achieved the lowest common denominator in appearance - actually, as it just ripped off iOS to get here, it's even lower than that 
• Doubtless in part because no one was writing apps other than Microsoft itself, the consistency and linking up between apps is much greater in Windows Phone than in Android; in particular, the contacts app is particularly good in Windows Phone, serving as a solid hub for managing communications across and between different apps or media; the corresponding Android app is relatively featureless, managed to mangle more than a few contacts when they were copied over, and still seems to forget contacts sporadically (it doesn’t know who C is, for instance); more generally, apps just feel isolated from one another 
• (As an aside, having used iOS quite a bit through an iPad, and more recently via C's new iPhone, it feels to me that Google just hasn't made as much of an effort as Apple have and (by necessity) Microsoft did in creating a joined up / seamless user interface experience; although I'm not a huge fan of iOS - and for some of the same reasons I'm irked by Android - it runs a much tighter ship than Android on this score)
• All that said, a healthy app ecosystem is a huge plus for Android; it's quite a change to finally know that there really is an app for that; Windows Phone’s coverage was always flaky, increasingly so with time, and even Microsoft bailed on some of its own apps (e.g. song recognition) while the platform was a going (if limping) concern 
• And all *that* said, my app experience to date is very far from frictionless; third party apps are routinely full of ads, lacking in expected functionality, expensive to upgrade, and of such uncertain quality that one is inhibited from paying to find out; the upshot of which is that I find myself sticking with apps from known providers; so, much as I'd always suspected, the so-called “app gap” that pundits would always dismiss Windows Phone for is, to a large degree, a tempting mirage and no more 
• But it is the case that it's nice to finally have apps for activities that I've hitherto missed out on, and even nicer to have familiar apps that are still being given the love and support they need; Google Maps, for instance, long used on my desktop, is a joy to use on my phone, while HERE Maps on Windows Phone was becoming quite dusty (e.g. it didn’t even have a way of selecting mode of transport - it was by road or nothing) 
• And I have really benefited from a few paid apps to move me across from Windows Phone, and get my music properly sorted (iSyncr); they’ve done a grand job in getting me seamlessly working in Android; although it’s still annoying that my Windows Phone WhatsApp account has to stay there 
• Notwithstanding all of the above improvements that my new phone has brought, I'd still prefer to be enthralled by Windows Phone's stylish and functional slickness; it's difficult not to see Android's persistence as another example of market share trumping product quality; even today, VHS can still beat Betamax 

I should add that, while Android is something of a Curate’s Egg, and largely a come-down from Windows Phone for me, the hardware of my new phone is really quite good. As expected, it has an excellent camera, but then I did buy it for just that. But it also handles Android slickly, and has an excellent battery life. Assuming I don’t hammer it, I can comfortably go 2 days without charging it.

It would have done a great job with Windows Phone as its OS ...

March's calendar slot

One of the things I'm most lucky with in my job is the opportunity to travel. The furthest points east, west and south that I've ever travelled to have been through trips to scientific meetings (Dubrovnik, Victoria and Ubatuba respectively). Often followed up with piggybacked holidays, to be fair.

Sometimes I even get to go to Scotland!

One of the major ongoing programmes I'm involved with is Changing Arctic Ocean, an interdisciplinary (aren't they all?) affair to study the ecosystems of the Arctic. In any case, two of its projects shared Oban for their kickoff meetings, so I duly travelled to the Motherland.

I have a bit of mixed history with Oban. Although it can be beautiful when the weather's nice, on one of my first holidays as a child, we stayed in a caravan there and endured a whole week of rain. Fortunately, this past May was balanced at the sunnier end, and I was able to enjoy a couple of nice days in between the town and the neighbouring village of Dunbeg where my meeting was taking place.

The photographs from March are all from my last morning in the area, when I walked the coastal path from Dunbeg (where I was staying) to Oban. While prominently labelled up as "3 miles", my phone's GPS exposed that particular untruth (see below). However, it was a really nice jaunt, taking in woodland, the shoreline, and great views over to Mull and Lismore. And, before the rain finally did settle in, I was even able to pop up through the town to take in McCaig's Tower, a fabulous hilltop folly with great views over the town.

February's calendar slot

Some photographs from another coastal jaunt on C's coastal quest - this time from its western limit. Durdle Door is one of those places that's very close to Southampton, and that I've heard a lot about down the years, but never managed to get to in 20 years. Until now.

As the photograph shows, it's a classic limestone arch, with an associated beach that's a magnet for visitors. Not quite so much when we visited first thing in the morning in April, but it was already getting quite busy when we passed by it (careful use of Photoshop's spot healing tool gave us the view more to ourselves).

To my mind, much more impressive is Worbarrow Bay, just to the east. We'd reached this at the very end of 2016's conquest of the Isle of Purbeck, and it was quite a sight. Getting itself justifiably used in 2017's calendar. The photo here (top right) doesn't do it quite as much justice, but it's still gorgeously coloured.

In terms of walking, this part of the coast is nicely undulating, so much more of a test than the eastern limit of C's quest (though that's got shingle to contend with). It's still not especially difficult, but it makes you feel like you're achieving something, and it gives nice views of the coast. Through most of the two days walking here, we got great views of the approaching Isle of Portland, one of our future targets.

While the walking's good here, the public transport isn't. On both days, we had to rely on local taxis to get back to our car after completing our day's walking. The excellent public transport in Brighton and surrounds really spoilt us.

January's calendar slot

Some snaps from a segment of C's quest to walk the UK's coastline. This time between Bexhill-on-Sea (hence the De La Warr Pavillion) and Dymchurch. Due to shingle (mortal enemy of the amateur beach walker), slightly dodgy weather and crappy bus services (but not the worst we've had), we didn't quite manage the stretch around the Dungeness headland, past its eponymous nuclear power station. It's only a few miles, so we'll save that for our next jaunt to Kent, at which point we should finally be clearing the eastern edge of the south coast and turning to head northwards.

Highlights of our trip were definitely Bexhill-on-Sea - although that's a given - and also Hastings. The latter was surprisingly nice, to the point of catching us off guard a little, as we'd previously been appalled by its shoreline run of penny arcades and their slot machines. But, as it turned out, these were much less dominant than we'd feared, and the town additionally benefited from its new pier (bottom right in the collage).

In terms of walking, not the most challenging of coastal segments, with even the shingle relatively restrained (or avoidable). The missing section around Dungeness promises a more trying journey, however.

My 2018 calendar

In an attempt to start getting content back into my blog, I'm going to take an easy route and shove in monthly entries based on the calendar I prepared for 2018 for family and friends. It's scraping the barrel in terms of content, but should at least give me an opportunity to test my memory on the photographs as they roll up. And give me 12+ entries for 2018 to boot.

This first snap is the cover image, and technically a cheat from 2016. We walked the Seven Sisters at the very end of the year as part of C's coastal quest, so after 2017's calendar had been pulled together - so justifiable use. The photo was actually taken on Beachy Head Road as we began our journey home. The local weather had conspired to have a local mass of air over the land that created the front that these clouds were stuck at. Or so we were told by one of the many the parascenders taking advantage of the conditions. Combined with the clear, calm weather, and a well-timed journey back, we got a spectacular view of the sunset over the Seven Sisters, and this photograph.

Number 4

WP_001226, a photo by Dr Yool on Flickr.

My post-Christmas stash ... every last calorie must go!

Number 3

WP_001215, a photo by Dr Yool on Flickr.

C's last Christmas mince pie ... shortly before its demise.

Number 2

DSC06708, a photo by Dr Yool on Flickr.

A rather glorious Southampton sunrise.

A new project

WP_001191, a photo by Dr Yool on Flickr.

Prompted by a friend who previously had a go herself, I've begun a new photography project: 365 days of photographs. They're quite a common pursuit on Flickr, and while I've thought about it before, it's tended to be a week or two after January 1st when, somehow, it feels like I've missed the boat. Anyway, my January 1st is shown above - appropriately the spent top of a champagne bottle. Here goes nothing!

Click here: 365, 2013

Oligarchic Overlords in town

For some unexplained reason our dock is currently hosting an enormous yacht. It is graduation today, and UoS does have something of a (unwarranted?) reputation for hosting some of the UK's wealthier students, but the boat's on such a scale that it being "daddy's" for one of our students seems unlikely. Whatever the reason for its appearance, its shockingly large size certainly provokes dark thoughts about the 1%.

Pallant House

WP_000449, a photo by Dr Yool on Flickr.

Out today to a Peter Blake show over at Pallant House in Chichester. A nice little show, though while interesting in terms of pop cultural history, not quite the best we've seen at PH. Well worth it though, not least just to see the gallery's permanent collection again - including this work, Gladrags, by Susie MacMurray.

Olympic tickets!

WP_000440, a photo by Dr Yool on Flickr.

I think that the title of this post, plus this picture, about covers it.

No feet of clay

Finally caught up with another of my long-term musical heroes last night. Previously I've seen R.E.M. and David Byrne (ex- of Talking Heads), and this time it was the turn of Suzanne Vega.


I've been following her since I first got a taste back in 1992 while I was working out at Occidental College in Los Angeles. She released her album 99.9F° in early autumn that year, but in the run-up to this a couple of tracks made it onto the rotation of KROQ, our lab's favoured radio station that summer. Now, an alarming 20 years later - but only 3 more albums later - I finally got a chance to hear what she's like live.

On which point, I have to say that, going in, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. She's a bit of an odd artist in that she comes out of a somewhat folky place, but has also at times embraced - after being embraced by - an almost industrial aesthetic. I arrived on the scene when she first took the plunge with a more production-heavy style, so have always quite liked it. But I'm also aware that she still tends to folky, and has even begun a project in the last couple of years to re-record many of her songs in more pared-back arrangements. As such, I did wonder how songs that I've loved for years might turn out.


Fortunately, I needn't have worried in the least. Though she performed with only a single accompanying musician, and occasionally did numbers solo, she still managed to pull a pretty impressive range from her songs. In the main, the arrangements were unsurprisingly pared down, but they didn't suffer for it in the least. Even my (probably) favourite song, the infectiously upbeat if surprisingly short When Heroes Go Down, came off brilliantly. Only one or two songs suffered from being (to my mind) pared back a bit too much, and even then it was still enjoyable to hear new interpretations. And with one song, Blood Makes Noise, the arrangement was actually amped-up (via a pedal-based sequencer?) to something almost more industrial than the original.

On this point about arrangements, one particularly interesting choice was how Vega chose to handle one of her most famous songs, Tom's Diner. This was originally an a cappella song when it was recorded back in the early 1980s, but it's probably more famous now for a 1990s remix that reworked it almost into a dance track. I've even got a cover version of the song by R.E.M. that covers this remix rather than the original. Anyway, last night Vega herself travelled this same route, and performed the song in its remix flavour rather than in its more stripped-back original flavour. I guess that she now prefers this version too, or must at least prefer performing it this way - certainly it went down well with the audience.

Leaving aside her old familiars, Vega introduced a number of new (to me) songs. Most were actually from a play that she co-wrote recently on the life of the US writer Carson McCullers. When she introduced these, my first reaction was to get rather apprehensive because of this stage source, but, again, I needn't have gotten concerned. They were a little too, well, factual compared to her usual, more everyman-ish work, but they were still really good. And quite funny too. Curiously, she mentioned an imminent and wholly new album in passing, but I don't think we got anything from it. That'll have to wait.

Anyway, overall another personal icon survives intact. I should be getting used to this by now, but I can't seem to get over an instinctive "shields-up" response to ward off potential - but unfulfilled - disappointment. What was also pleasing was Vega's manner and her chatting with the crowd. She was easy, amusing and even apologised mid-song when she got a lyric wrong at one point (we'd never have noticed - it was Blood Makes Noise!). So it was nice to have my 20 year crush validated. ;-)

Warwick reunion (with added cricket)

After a heavy funding meeting in a small, subterranean dungeon at the Royal Society, I had the good fortune of a Friday night out with some of the EAMG crowd. Our get-together was triggered by a rare(-ish) visit from St. Ben of Cooper to viva a thesis in Brother John's group (though not one of his students, fortunately).

Because the evening began with the same group engaged in a cricketing deathmatch against hated institutional enemies (social scientists of all things), we arranged to meet in the "sports section" of Regents Park, and I planned to finish reading my book while they knocked chunks out of each other. Unexpectedly, however, John's team was down a player, so I wound up taking to the field for my first proper game of cricket ever. They even had shin pads and gloves! Anyway, while I was only able to contribute a handful of runs (4, I think), I did manage to bowl out one of the rival batters. Embarrassingly, it was his first game too, and I put him out immediately - not very sporting of me. However, it was a necessary breech in the "have a go" spirit, and led - in a small way - to the defeat of John's hated rivals. Hurrah.

Anyway, we finished the evening off in a good nearby pub, broaching traditional topics of conversation such as "yes, you could see them from behind" and "what, you voted for Boris?". Happy days.

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About to take the stump

Glowering, but not blinking

Wishing Chris were here

Fresh from a triumphant viva

Daffodils

While I've taken the odd movie of phototropism, I've not had a look at flowers before. (Pedants: I am aware that the opening of flowers is not an example of phototropism.) But some cut daffodils that C bought the other day are perfect ...

2012-04-10 daffodil time-lapse a video by Dr Yool on Flickr.

Thanks be to Tumblr

Thanks to continued interest from the good folks at Tumblr, C's photograph has today crested 1K hits and is comfortably (possibly forever) the most viewed item in my Flickr collection.

Destination Docklands

DSC02807B, a photo by Dr Yool on Flickr.

While at the Planet Under Pressure conference this week, I took a bit of time out to explore the dockland surrounds of the ExCeL Centre. It's built on the northern margin of Royal Victoria Dock, and while a lot of the original buildings have been swept aside for expensive-looking condos and hotels (one of which provided my digs), there's still quite a lot of the older stuff to see. And, what with it juxtaposed with various modern buildings, there's plenty of photo-ops going. Which, needless to say, I was unable to resist. My full set of photographs can be seen here.

And it's not even mine

Courtesy (probably) of the chaotic intricacies of the interweb, this past week has seen this photograph ...


... shoot up the popularity charts of my Flickr account. Prior to last week, it was sitting on only a handful of hits, but something happened on the 15th March and since then it's sky-rocketed to 720 viewings (the "second best" photograph in my Flickr collection is sitting at 298 viewings) ...

It's all calming down now, but along the way the photograph has also been "favourite-ed" 30 times by a slew of Flickr members I've never met before (thanks, by the way).

So, what gives? The clue [*] seems to be in the appearance of Tumblr in the referring website list. While I'd only faintly heard about this site before, a perusal of one of the referrers reveals it as some sort of recycler of images, where people can repost things they've seen and liked into a stream of (visual) consciousness. Or something.

Anyway, it looks like this image of Skógafoss has been sucked up into Tumblr and passed around various of its members, many of whom have kindly visited the original and bumped up my Flickr viewings count (not that I'm counting, OK). But, like the epidemic of an infectious disease, this surge has now run its course, and the photograph can probably now pass into oblivion once more.

The worst bit is that it's not even one of my photographs (... as is probably obvious from the fact that I appear in it).

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[*] It can only reasonably be described as a "clue" by those, such as me, who are generally clue-less about social media sites such as Tumblr. Everyone else would just view that as an indication of the bleeding obvious.

Twin Peaks twenty years on

Alarmingly, it's more than 20 years since David Lynch's acclaimed foray from the big screen onto television, Twin Peaks. Until then, the latter was easily the more conventional of the two media, down, in part, to its generally broader audiences and its significantly greater content restrictions. But Lynch clearly failed to read the memo that explained all of this when he created his Pacific Northwest-set surrealist-horror-comedy-drama.

Instead, he blended conventional elements - such as murder mystery and folksy Americana - with those less familiar to television audiences - such as dream interpretation and supernatural horror. And all, unpredictably, to great success, both critically and commercially. While it didn't attain quite the hold on popular imagination of, say, Who shot J.R.?, the murder of Laura Palmer became a massive mainstream phenomenon. And even after Twin Peaks ignominiously left television screens in 1991 (only to further disappoint cinema screens in 1992), its themes and style cast a long shadow over subsequent television series. For example, Northern Exposure amped up its quirky folksy elements, while The X-Files both played on its horrific aspects and even borrowed its central motif of a heroic, if unconventional, FBI agent.

After watching the more recent - and certainly more limp - series Carnivàle, which both plays on similar supernatural aspects and even borrows the Man from Another Place, we reflected on how, even now, Twin Peaks is still leaving its mark. Which led, seamlessly, to a glaringly obvious birthday present purchase when C's birthday rolled around last year. So, though it has remained emblematic in our memories over the past 20 years, does Twin Peaks stand up to a second viewing?

The short answer is "yes". Though I've praised it above, going in I was concerned that its then-originality might since have translated to now-overfamiliarity, and that its unusual blend of genres would now seem positively stale given that a whole slew of subsequent shows have followed in its wake. But - with a few caveats - I think we both really enjoyed our second visit [*] to Twin Peaks, and I reckon that it still holds up despite the years.

In part, this is simply because there's never been anything quite like it since. As already mentioned, lots of subsequent series have adopted elements from it, but none - at least, none I've seen - have tried to be quite so ambitiously off-the-wall. Another aspect that still stands out for me is how expansive the cast is and how well-drawn the characters are. Sure, quirkiness is definitely valued above realism, but the principal characters - of which there really is no shortage - are pretty well fleshed out, and all are given time in the limelight. Even sporadic characters like Gordon and, especially, Albert are given enough screen-time to be discernibly more than scenery.

And one shouldn't underplay the central mystery. Though this apparently wasn't quite resolved in quite the way that Lynch and his co-writer Mark Frost originally intended - which is to say not resolved - it's still a satisfying tale. Which is a surprising thing for me to say given that it hinges on the show's strongly supernatural elements - not usually my favoured way to resolve, well, anything. The series does slip a bit coupling this storyline to that of Windom Earle, but I think it gets there by the end - well, what passes for "the end".

One thing I'd sort-of forgotten about, but which seemed much more noticeable on this repeat viewing, is how prevalent and effective the music is. For a TV series, especially one from two decades ago, it's got a great soundtrack, one that wouldn't be out of place in a film. Which, given Lynch's background, isn't too much of a surprise I suppose, but its presence does make the corresponding absence in successor series quite noticeable. It'll definitely be getting rotated back into my iPod listening.

All that said, there are a few places where I think Twin Peaks sags a bit. These were issues even back when the series was originally aired, but - being less "culturally experienced" - I just didn't register them then. For instance, it does, at times, run some fairly incompatible material back-to-back. So we have serious scenes concerning murder juxtaposed with broad (and sometimes flat) comedy scenes with the likes of Andy and Lucy. This comes across as tone-deaf and it tends to weaken the series' darker themes. A lesser flaw is a related juggling of "serious" characters with comic relief ones - which tends to work up to the point where they intersect in scenes. A case in point are the husband-and-wife characters of Pete and Catherine Martell, where the former uncomfortably straddles comic scenes with most characters but serious ones with his wife.

A more serious problem is the obvious one that the series was axed with a stack of plotlines left dangling on cliffhangers. There's no getting passed this, but it's still infuriating - even 20 years on - that we never get to find out the fates of any number of characters imperilled at the close of Season 2. Obviously, the plan was that the series would be picked up for a third season, but Lynch et al. put so many eggs in that basket that one can't help but be let down by the slew of incomplete storylines. More recent series, perhaps cognisant of Twin Peaks' fate (and what it might mean for DVD sales), tend not to leave quite so much at stake when a season ends. Of course, Lynch didn't do himself any favours by singularly failing to make the most of his cinematic follow-up, Fire Walk With Me, pick up the slack. But I'm going to overlook that - though we've got that to watch down the line if we can face it.

Anyhow, once again, it seems possible to "go back" to a classic, and have it still hold up. I am now left slightly deflated by the fact that, 20 years on, Twin Peaks is clearly never going to have a proper ending, but it's still a ride I'd definitely recommend.

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[*] As it happens, we had something of an earlier second visit, technically to the setting rather than the series, back in 2002. After attending a conference in Victoria, we spent three weeks driving around Washington and Oregon, arriving in Snoqualmie for what we thought would be a quick tour of the pop cultural sights. But the area was so nice that we wound up spending three or four days in the vicinity. Among other sights, we visited the Salish Lodge - pictured left - which stands in for the Great Northern Hotel in Twin Peaks, and the town of Roslyn which stands in for Northern Exposure's setting, Cicely. Needless to say, there are a considerable number of photographs over at Flickr.

Pallant House and Chichester Cathedral

Pallant House and Chichester Cathedral, a set on Flickr.

Travelled over to Chichester today to catch an exhibition by the UK artist Edward Burra (1905-1976) at the Pallant House Gallery (which we became members of last year for a Frieda Kahlo / Diego Rivera double-bill).

Burra isn't someone whose work I've hitherto been particularly familiar with. I did recognise one or two of the pieces on display at Pallant House, but it would be fair to say that I was mostly drawing a blank up until today. Which made it quite a pleasant surprise to discover how accomplished Burra was. The most obvious way to describe his work is "colourful", but that would seriously underplay the range of subjects from urban scenes to landscapes, and from heavily-stylised representational art through to surrealist musings on war and death. He apparently didn't favour the surrealist label, but it's hard not to see some of his work in this light. That said, much of the work on display dealt more directly with experiences of working life in Britain, France and Harlem, New York. Overall, he's easily the most interesting painter that I've come across in quite a while. No Picasso - but then, who is? - but well worth checking out.

Post-Pallant House, we sought out lunch in a converted church, before seeking out (needless to say) photo-opportunities in Chichester's (unconverted) cathedral. Another great, and cultural, day out.