Personal Status Updates! (Page 10 of 13)

Finally got book 5 in my series published today! With the craziness of this year, it's been really hard to get these out, but I only have one more to go after this, so I can see the finish line! Eventually, someone will have to remind me why I thought it'd be a good idea to release six books in two years.
http://a.co/eUW1U2w

Damn, that sounds like a hot phone.
I'm not sure what else to add to the conversation. I find your phone stories fascinating, but I don't have much to add.

For the next week or two, I will be watching YouTube videos about the Note 8. I'm partly doing this because I am considering buying one (keep in mind, I don't replace phones often. This is a four or five year commitment), and I'm partly doing it because I have no gas for my car and every station around my area is sold out. People were convinced that Harvey would create a shortage, so they rushed to fill up. There is no real shortage because of Harvey, but the rush to get gas has resulted in a shortage that will probably last about a week. So... I'll be here... Waiting for gas...

I'm considering the Note 8, possibly going to the S8 Plus if I can find a deal that I like (trade-in, plus bonus accessories that I can sell on eBay). The 6GB of RAM and dual cameras with good low-light photos are big selling points for my use. The S-Pen is also something that I could probably use quite a bit with my work, and the screen resolution is pretty great too.

The Note FE (Note 7 rebranded) would be another option.

Like I said, for me it's about getting a phone that can last five years without falling too far behind. If I go for a phone that's already a year or two old, I'm cutting the life by about that much. The 6GB of RAM in the Note 8 should keep it in the race for a while at least.

I've been using my S4 for a good long while now, and it really only became a problem within the last year, and getting progressively worse. I haven't had a case on it for most of the time that I've had it, and I haven't dropped (severely), scratched or lost it, so keeping a phone for several years is doable for me. I just need to future-proof it as much as I can. I've looked at some other phones and I've considered some, but I just can't do Motorola again and a lot of the phones just don't fit my needs in terms of resolution, camera, future proofing, etc.

I think I could get a solid deal on the S8 Plus. I'm just hoping that I can work my way into a Note 8 instead.

FWIW, I was in the Toronto airport on Saturday morning, heading to the Fan Expo downtown, and spotted Jerry O'Connell there reading a script!  Briefly said hello and exchanged pleasantries.  A lot of science fiction is shot there now, so he could be popping up in something soon....

That's cool. He films in North Bay, Ontario (for a new series Carter), and I think he commutes back home every weekend, so he's probably in the airport quite a bit.  Did he remember your encounter with him at all for the broadway show? (Once Upon a Sandwich or something?)

A guy with a Sliders t-shirt outside a broadway show?  Seems pretty memorable to me   Although you are right, he does meet a ton of folks. 

Carter is a series from Sony that went into production for their international TV channel. It actually got picked up by Bravo not long after. It's a different sort of thing for Bravo to do but Jerry got a lot of exposure and interest from his Live with Kelly gigs, and Andy Cohen seems to love him, so I guess they are taking a chance on it for him.

I dunno what Apple thinks they're getting away with in claiming that this thick-framed phone has no bezel.

I continue to be happy with my Moto G4 on Nougat, which stood in for my DSLR camera last week due to a crisis and acquitted itself rather well. That said, if the Samsung A5 ever drops to a much lower price...

I'm with Informant regarding iPhones. And for awhile, I was against expensive smartphones anyway. They are too expensive and too easily broken or misplaced, so I buy decent budget models like the Moto G4 and have a tablet like an iPad Mini for luxury mobility. Except my service provider is now offering a replacement plan. For a monthly fee, they'll give you two replacements a year for accidental damage, loss or theft. I still don't know if I'd spend iPhone money, but I might be willing to get a mid range phone instead of sticking to budget models.

That said, the Moto G4 is mostly of flagship standard. I have no trouble reading the screen on direct sunlight. The camera is excellent in the day and good with flash at night. It never freezes or labs and all games play great. It lacks a good low light camera, it's splashproof rather than waterproof and it doesn't support mobile payments or have a fingerprint sensor, but it's a very good phone. Best unlocked model on sale at brick and mortar retailers at the time I bought it.

**

About a year ago, I updated my iPad Mini 2 to a new version of iOS because the new version was needed to run Google Keyboard and I wanted the swipe typing. I figured that when a jailbreak was developed, I'd use it to prevent any subsequent upgrades and dodge having my iPad getting a new OS that wouldn't run well on older hardware. Except the jailbreak never came. And then Apple started forcing iPads to update while in sleep mode and despite my efforts at round the clock monitoring, I passed out one night and awakened to find my iPad running iOS 11 and so slow that it couldn't fully load webpages -- they'd cut off to blank whiteness when scrolling -- and the screen can't seem to maintain the finger tracking needed for swipe typing. The keyboard loses the gesture trail halfway into words and often crashes.

I sold it for $200 today and bought a Samsung Tab A 10.1 for that same $200. *sigh*

Nice to hear you're happy with your hardware. How's the Samsung version of Android compared to the S4?

I was very reluctant to buy a tablet. The truth is that while I liked the iPad Mini 2 (until iOS 11 was forced on it), I was using it less and less. I had a tablet because web browsing on a phone used to be unworkable with fonts too small and data too costly, meaning it was best to read all my news feeds at home on wifi and do all my research and planning on my tablet. But data's gotten cheaper. Websites are built for mobile phones and smaller screens. So, while I might have preferred the tablet aesthetically, it was faster to do look things up and read news and messages on my phone.

Eventually, I found myself removing all my social media and email apps from the tablet because I wasn't using them enough and the tablet became a Netflix and PDF machine and a second screen for my online courses. I would play the tutorial videos on the tablet and execute the assignments and take notes on my laptop. If I were at home and were looking something up, I'd use the tablet.

But after the update, iOS just couldn't function. Udemy kept freezing up on me. Netflix would crash. I couldn't type. Websites wouldn't load. But because tablets have become so limited in their purpose, I couldn't justify buying another one. I couldn't justify buying an iPad Pro or Mini that I couldn't stop Apple from upgrading to an eventually unusable OS.

I switched to using my laptop for all my webwork, films and TV and used my phone for the online video courses. But I just couldn't maintain workflow with videos playing on a smaller size; I needed them on a larger screen so I could make out the details. I decided to get by with the phone and laptop combo, but if a new tablet could be purchased for the same money earned from selling the old one, that was acceptable.

There's this place in my town that sells open box tech. Recently, they got a bunch of Samsung Tab A 10.1's. I'm quite impressed with the polycarbonate casing and 1080p screen. Samsung's build of Android on this tablet is very restrained; it looks almost like the Google version once I replaced the launcher. The hardware is powerful.

It's a little cumbersome in that on the iPad, you could rest your fingers on the edge of the screen and the OS would know you weren't doing a long-press. Android isn't so clever and there are also capacitive buttons that mean you can't hold the tablet from the bottom frame. But I've figured out how to hold it on the buttonless edge with one hand and at the edge with another.

Android apps are almost all all 5.5 inch phone apps stretched out to 10 inches and some look downright silly -- but I don't really need it to do much more than run Chrome, Netflix and Udemy. I'm going to wait until the 14 day return period has ended before I root it, but I only need to do that to install a bluelight filter.

I can't exactly recommend any tablet given how it's a limited, luxury item and you can't do anything this 10-inch slab that you couldn't on a more compact phone. I just need one for my peculiar workflow.

I do feel Samsung's Android is now good, based on this Tab A 10.1. They've left Google Material design alone or kept close to it in modifying the toggles. It's so close that by installing Google's launcher and keyboard, the only hints of Samsung skinning are in the lockscreen, settings, toggles and status bar. I don't think I'll install a custom ROM on this. I just found an app to remap all the buttons, too. I set the buttons to take action only on double tap, so I can rest my fingers on them without triggering the back or recent apps functions. And I've found a bluelight filter that doesn't need root, so I might never root the tablet.

This open box tablet was about 1/5 the price of an iPad Pro and considered a budget model, but it was a good trade fot the sluggish iPad Mini 2.

So, I'm pretty happy with how the Tab A 10.1 is working out as an instantly on bedside computer. It's superior to my iPad Mini 2 by performing smoothly and having a bigger screen to justify picking it up over a phone. But. Occasionally, as I grip it to type or rotate it in my hands, there's a click or a creak, like the casing seal isn't entirely rigid. Even though Samsung did a great job of making the plastic have a faintly metallic feel, plastic just doesn't feel as solid as the aluminium of the iPad. But... tablets just don't do enough to justify spending more (or any) money on them.

It'll probably feel fine once a case comes in the mail and I grip the outer frame of the case instead of the tablet.

March 31, 2016

TRANSMODIAR: "Hey, check out the redesign at www.earthprime.com/reborn "

ME: *begins weeping*

TRANSMODIAR: "Zuh!?!?"

ME: "It is beautiful."

TRANSMODIAR: "You're crying FROM THAT?!?"

ME: "It's a dream come true."

TRANSMODIAR: "Well, I'm glad to be your genie. And once it's done, you can move on with your life!"

ME: "I was thinking that after SLIDERS REBORN, I'll turn my attention to REDEARTH88."

TRANSMODIAR: "What is that, a video game?"

ME: "It's this unfinished web series about a video blogger who's unknowingly the center of a mysterious espionage operation involving two rogue spies. The fun thing about it is that the vlogger's videos tend to be very dramedy and romcom-esque while the spies' videos are a mix of paranoia and surveillance footage and intense action. I think maybe I could convert the existing vlog entries to blog format, then spin the story in a direction where -- "

TRANSMODIAR: "Stop."

ME: "I'm thinking one of the spies is actually an artificial intelligence developed by -- "

TRANSMODIAR: "What the **** is wrong with you?"

ME: "What?"

TRANSMODIAR: "Jesus Christ! Would you take a good look at yourself? You are not ******** patron saint of every unfinished story ever **** out there and left to rot. You have wrapped up LONELYGIRL15. You have wrapped up SLIDERS. Now you're doing SLIDERS again -- like once wasn't enough! Stop writing fanfic, you ******** moron. Finish this ridiculous twentieth anniversary special you roped me and Nigel Mitchell and whatshisname Informant into with your ******** Status Updates thread -- and move the **** on. Why do you spend so much time and energy on writing you can't sell?"

ME: "I think you fail to understand the joy and pleasure of writing a pastiche, of recreating -- "

TRANSMODIAR: "You've done enough recreating! Isn't it time you actually created? SLIDERS REBORN was supposed to be three chapters, now it's six parts, four hundred ******** pages of script, that novella, the posters, that stupid social media campaign -- enough is enough. If you devote your writing skills to fanfic, I swear to God that I will start to hate you. I will have to hate you if you keep doing this."

**

June 2, 2016

ME: "Could use some advice here."

TRANSMODIAR: "WHY?! Every time you ask me to do this, you ignore what I say and do what you want."

ME: "That's not true. I didn't write the REDEARTH88 story."

TRANSMODIAR: "I did not know that, kudos on your restraint, what's up?"

ME: "So, when Quinn asks Mallory if he's really there or if he's just a hallucination, is it really Mallory or is it just Quinn's survival instinct?"

TRANSMODIAR: "Oh for ****'s sake."

**

December 22, 2016

ME: "It's done! It's all done! I finished the last SLIDERS REBORN script! Now you'll never have to hear about it again!"

TRANSMODIAR: "Music to my ears! Congratulations. You did what no one else except for Chris Carter could do -- you put a bow on a 90s cult sci-fi series long after everyone stopped asking for one. Time to do some original work!"

**

I continue to agree with Transmodiar about the importance of original work, but I constantly feel like SLIDERS REBORN was the greatest (and only) achievement of my life.

Anyway. I have bought Informant's last three books.

One of the fun things about being a SLIDERS fan is looking at other shows and movies and trying to find glimpses of the original sliders in other characters. Ever since MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: ROGUE NATION, I've seen Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt as the perfect distillation of what Quinn Mallory would be in his 50s: a cunning, resourceful, hypercompetent, unstoppable force of limitless knowledge and ability whose absurd proficiency at everything is balanced by... actually, I dunno. Ethan Hunt never seems to have any weaknesses, Quinn would have lots. Ethan Hunt is really the hyperathletic and heroic aspects of Quinn.

On the other side of the spectrum, we have Chuck from CHUCK who is without question what Quinn would have been had Jerry played the character as scripted rather than as himself: an awkward, insular, troubled, lonely geekboy thrust into situations of danger and peril that bring out his inner Ethan Hunt, but it's always an uneasy fit.

Sorry. I meant fun for me.

That's awesome! Congrats!

Congrats! 

and while we're at it, congrats to Charlie O'Connell on his engagement.

While I'm happy for Slider_Quinn21 to have wedded, I wonder if we as a community should have weighed in on this life decision and discussed it amongst ourselves and arranged for the wedding to be held at the Alamo Drafthouse with Informant officiating.

So, my sister recently demanded that I stop dressing like Clark in Season 1 of SMALLVILLE and start dressing like, um, Clark, but in Season 8 of SMALLVILLE. During a recent visit, she threw out all my old clothes so that I'd have no choice but to wear the new ones she got me. I now have a collection of men's suits and sport jackets.

I have this one very classic cut suit with somewhat wide lapels and a window-pane black, and it's been tailored to drape well on my figure while still looking quite traditional. It reminds me of the suit that Lois stole for Clark to wear on his first day at the Daily Planet when he walked in wearing flanel, jeans and a knapsack. I call this suit the Clark.

I have another suit that is black with pinstripes and it's a slim-fit suit with skinny lapels that, instead of draping, wraps around my body and sits rather closely for a lean, streamlined fit that looks very modern and casual while technically meeting all the requirements of a formal business suit. I call this one the Quinn.

While clothiers separate suits into classic, modern and slim fit, no two manufacturers ever have the same measurements in the same divisions. I’m not sure what you mean by trouser legs being too short as most ready to wear trousers are deliberately too long — so the customer can have them hemmed for their height.

Slim fit generally refers to clothes hanging close to the body in contrast to a more loosely fitted design. If you watch FRASER or a Sean Connery Bond film, jackets and trousers were large and wide whereas on SMALLVILLE, Clark’s suits were very fitted to his figure. The latter is how most modern suits are cut for average sized men. Some manufacturers call it slim fit.

https://ezrapaul.com/blogs/news/are-you … -too-tight

Courtesy of my sister:

Some slim fit suits have trouser legs that taper, narrowing from thigh to calf. However, this can cause problems where dress pants that feel great when standing feel tightly constricting when sitting. An alternate approach is trousers with a crease down the center of the pants to create a tapered look. These days, there's the supercrease technology which uses a line of adhesive to make a permanent crease that doesn't need to be maintained with an iron and can survive laundering and dry cleaning.

What you're referring to in terms of leg length has nothing to do with slim/modern/classic fit. Trouser length is addressed regardless of the fit. It's the question of whether to have a full break (the trousers drape over the shoe), a half break (the trousers make slight contact with the shoe) or no break (the trousers don't touch the shoe). This is adjustable when you first buy ready to wear pants which are sold too long so that you can choose, and you can have whatever break with whatever fit.

A full break creates 'ripples' in the pants when clean lines are preferable, a half break has a good effect and no break can make your legs and pants look oddly short (but gives you a clean trouser line). The half break is probably best.

ME: "How does THE KARATE KID get a revival with #COBRAKAI when #SLIDERS gets nothing?"
LAUREN: "People actually watched THE KARATE KID and the sequels and the reboot and nobody cares about SLIDERS and are you CRYING?"
ME: (shaky) "No!" (quavering voice) "Not yet!"

My Moto G5 Plus started freezing up and crashing and I got really excited -- I thought I'd have an excuse to buy a new phone! But then, it turned out that the Google app was being a memory hog and ripping it out of the phone freed up about half a gig of RAM, so it's all fine now.

**

I feel the need to build a website to prove that I can do it. Except -- there's only one thing I can think to build a website around right now. I could build a website for SLIDERS REBORN -- a site that presents the content in a format that is suited to reading on the webpage itself without needing to download PDFs (although you could). Plus a side blog in which I'd present all the behind the scenes discussions that Transmodiar, Nigel Mitchell, Slider_Quinn21 and I had regarding the project.

I just wonder if I *should*. I've made no secret of how I often feel like SLIDERS REBORN is the crowning -- and only -- accomplishment in my life to the point of writing faux-web articles and pastiches of real-life reviewers reviewing the series and writing imaginary podcast transcripts and even roping REWATCH PODCAST into performing a REWATCH segment where they presented the REBORN storyline in their review format. I don't know if I should sink any more time into it. Except... I guess, since all the content is written, it would merely be building the structure of the website. Is that okay, or is it a backwards step when I should really be moving onto newer (if not better) things?

Don't know. I've actually been considering taking down my someplacethatiselse.net site lately. I always say that I'm going to do something productive with it, but I'm too busy to actually do anything. Next time it's up for renewal, I may just archive it and let it go. Buffy Season 8 was a huge accomplishment for me. It was a great learning experience and it proved a lot for me, in terms of what I could accomplish, and what I could do on a strict deadline. But it was a stepping stone.

That's just me though.

Coffee with a new lady friend:

ERIN: " -- and my dream's to become a rich dental hygenist and then a really big name stand-up comedian and then move somewhere warm but cheap. Do you have a dream?"

ME: "Hmm. No."

ERIN: "What? You have no dreams?"

ME: "Uh. I had one. But... I mean... I achieved it."

ERIN: "You achieved your dream?!? What was your dream!?"

ME: "When I was a kid, my favourite TV show was SLIDERS and it had a really troubled production history where by the fifth season, three-quarters of the original cast had been fired and killed off and the original creator had fled the series after the second season and the show ended on an unresolved cliffhanger. And my dream was always to bring the show back somehow -- and I wrote six screenplays that resurrected the original characters and gave them a new adventure and a happy ending and I put it all online and now I'm happy."

ERIN: "SLIDERS -- that's that time travel show, right?"

ME: "Sure."

ERIN: "So -- you have no more dreams. That was your one dream and you did it. And now you have nothing to live for any more."

ME: "Nothing at all! It's why I thought I'd start dating again. I seem to have a thing for stand-up comedians. I've been trying to date a stand-up comedian or two."

ERIN: "Oh, I don't see us dating. You're nice and honest and easy to laugh with, but you're like ten years older than me and you dress like my dad."

ME: "Well, that is heartbreaking, but I really like talking about SLIDERS, so I'm pretty satisfied with this outing."

ERIN: "We can still, like, hang out and be acquaintances if you don't try to hit on me after this."

ME: "I'd take that deal. You're very funny. I'm a fan. I'd like us to see each other socially; I'm not concerned with the details. My clothes are based on Tom Welling in Season 8 of SMALLVILLE. Do I really dress like your father?"

ERIN: "Yes."

As far as I know, Tom has no children and also as far as I know, Tom doesn't dress like Clark in any season of SMALLVILLE. He seems to alternate between sweatshirts and T-shirts and either shorts or jeans. He always looks like he's going jogging. I imagine that having spent most of his life being coiffed and primped for modelling or TV, he prefers to keep it casual. I recently met Erin's dad and it was hilarious to observe that we were both wearing the same red dress shirt, black trousers, formal shoes and a sport jacket.

I like formal menswear. Or at least I like mine; it's all been altered to fit how I sit, stand, walk and move, so these clothes always feel like my second skin.

To be fair, dress shirts and dress pants are a pretty uniform and narrow range of clothing for me; I just found two labels with shirts and trousers that suit my body type and have enough shirts, pants and jackets to rotate so that I can wear something different each day of the week. If you want to dress well, it's less about trends and more about finding items that have a shape and colour that suit your body and complexion -- and having the lengths and widths tailored to your size whether it's sweaters and jeans from Wal-Mart or a high-end suit.

The other side is having enough items to rotate (so that each article of clothing has a few days to hang and regain shape after a wearing) and being able to maintain them. I didn't wear formal wear until this past year because, even though my sister bought me some suits, I didn't want to spend the time and money constantly getting jackets and dress pants dry cleaned. I hated spending hours ironing shirts each week.

But I bought a steam cleaner to sanitize my stuffed animal collection and I discovered that it also did a great job of cleaning jackets, shirts and pants, and not only did the steam kill bacteria and loosen dirt to be brushed off, it removed wrinkles and left garments smooth and clean with 4 - 5 minutes of steaming and brushing per item. And a local dry cleaner now offered supercreasing -- in which a line of resin creates a permanent center crease in dress pants that will survive washing and dry cleaning, eliminating the need for an iron. I only need to spend a half hour every three days steaming what I've worn, and easy maintenance was the main reason I finally changed my look.

I'm told that this subject is extremely tiring and a total snooze to hear me talk about, and the universe seemed to agree with me because I wanted to get a few new shirts on the weekend and went to my favourite menswear shop and found it was now a mattress store.

Matt, I would appreciate it if you would take your mockery of anything and everything you find absurd about me and apply it to critiquing:

a) My obsessive comparisons regarding Tom Cruise/Jerry O'Connell/Ethan Hunt/Quinn Mallory

b) My nervousness over a SLIDERS REBORN website and that it could be a backwards step

c) My inability to stop talking about SLIDERS even on dates

And if you wanted to just pick out sentences and write "lol" after them, that'd be fine. Thank you.

I had a look at the iPhone X recently. A guy at work has one. The look is great -- a black frame around a front surface that is entirely a screen -- as opposed to a conventional phone where the screen is a rectangle in a rectangle. Samsung's curved screens also eliminate the rectangle look.

But these cost at least a thousand dollars without adding much function. I don't see myself spending more than a couple hundred bucks on a phone because they're easily lost and broken. Despite a reputation for destroying phones (two Samsung S3s, a Samsung S5), I've been good for the last two and a half years. The Moto G4 I had was randomly rebooting; I switched to a G5 Plus that's going eight months and counting. But I'd still rather buy a phone that, if destroyed, could be replaced once a year at a reasonable cost.

If I needed a new phone, I'd want a minimum 5-inch screen, octa-core processor, 32GB of storage and 4GB of RAM, a microSD slot, a 3.5mm audio jack -- a bezeless look is not a priority. I'm also not all that fussed about a camera: I'm fine with using a flash in dark situations, I have no interest in dual-camera setups -- I just want something to photograph documents (receipts, business cards).