The crux of the matter

Here we are at a nexus...

Literally. A Nexus 7. Following the rapid and unexpected demise* of my iPad on Tuesday last, I was faced with a dilemma. Stand and fight (aka get it mended) or run (to Android, or away from Apple).

A friend of mine has previously been heard to say "I haven't picked up my iPad since I got the Nexus." Well… I've now had mine for almost a week. Long enough to get over both my initial flush of enthusiasm and the almost immediate early disappointment at the reality of its limitations.

There's no doubt that once you're used to the differences, the Nexus is a lovely device. With my limited experience with this month's book club book, I'd have to say the reading experience is better. The Kindle app is identical on Android, but the Nexus is more book-sized, easier to hold, and altogether more comfortable. And it has auto-brightness, so you don't need to keep adjusting it to read in bed vs daylight. It's also (hardly surprising) beautifully integrated with Google. Google Now and Google Play, to name only two, are really cool.

Much of the other stuff that I did regularly on the iPad is pretty similar. With dedicated apps for sites like eBay and Facebook - their image is *almost* identical. The few games I play (Sudoku, Spider Solitaire) are available on both platforms (same app in each case) and perform pretty much the same if they're not hampered by the smaller screen size. For sudoku, particularly, the smaller screen isn't really an issue and I'm even beginning to get used to the small cards on Spider, although it IS easier to play on the iPad. And I'm loving the Android 8-ball pool game that lets you play in real time against a real human opponent selected from those who happen to be online at the same time. That was quite a find.

The major drawback I've found is with browsing. Much of the time, Chrome on the Nexus delivers you to the "mobile" version of a website owing to the smaller form factor. I've always utterly hated this image and find it next to unusable in the majority of cases (especially Facebook, eBay, Amazon, searching, etc). The iPad gives a more "regular" browsing image, much more acceptable for me. I discovered today (thanks Annie!) that there's a setting to force Chrome to serve up the desktop image of a website rather than the mobile version, so I'll be trying this out later.

The only other slight niggle is with the Metro. I got into the habit of reading the daily Metro via the iPad app rather than the printed version, and it is a REALLY good app. It exists for Android, but has a number of limitations including being stuck in portrait format, and displaying one article per page. So LOTS of scrolling on the Nexus. iPad better. I hope the developers will sort out the portrait/landscape issue soon. I'm sure it would be more readable/usable the other way round. But for now, not so good.

So in summary, I'm currently leaning towards keeping both devices. Horses for courses. If I'm reading, or out and about, the Nexus is the stronger candidate. If I'm browsing, at home, or playing games with fiddly pieces, the iPad wins out. I don't think I want to adopt my mate John's "Nexus for everything" approach, especially if I can wangle a cheap fix for the iPad (thanks AGAIN Annie! :o))

Could that have been any easier?

Nikki's been talking for a few weeks about what a good idea it would be to take some of our films with us when we go away, just in case (unlikely I know *cough*) the in-flight movies suck. I've been procrastinating, because all our media - both DVDs and BluRays - are ripped to MKV format and this won't play natively on the iPad, but with the trip imminent the time for procrastination ran out yesterday and I started doing some research. It didn't take me more than a minute or so to find GoodPlayer.

With a "best video player for iPhone" recommendation from Lifehacker, many positive forum postings and a price tag of only £1.99 it wasn't a hard purchasing decision. Little did I realise that the traditional simplicity of getting my hands on an app from the App Store was only the start of this easy ride.

I launched GoodPlayer and it instantly found two media sources. Well actually it's the same source but GoodPlayer supports a variety of access formats, so it gave me the option to connect to our film collection via SAMBA/CIFS or UPnP/DLNA (apologies to those of you who don't speak geek).

Clicking on the first took me to the file share list and I navigated quickly down through the folders - multimedia / video / movies - to our list of 400+ movies. Choosing one at random, GoodPlayer asks if I want to stream it, or download it. I chose stream (for now), and the movie started playing.

Just like that.

The whole process from finding the app to watching the movie took less than five minutes. Sometimes, computers and related technology get in your way. Sometimes they can even make you tear your hair out. Other times they *just work* and this was one of those times. Brilliant. Vibrant colours, crisp almost-high-def stream (from a standard definition movie file) and no buffering or streaming problems at all now that our downstairs network has been boosted by the TPLink Powerline adaptors.

It took Nikki less than five seconds to declare she wanted a copy too, and half an hour later we both had a download queue of 4 of 5 films which our NAS was happily serving up to the iPads at 3MB/sec (download time for an average film about half an hour) as well as delivering a film to the TV. Should help the flights pass more enjoyably :o)

Gardening with a crow bar

In preparation for new front windows and front door arriving any time soon, I've been waiting for a fine day to take down the pergola. We've always hated the damned thing - an ugly erection of tanalised timber beams with a stunted *something* growing up each side that puts out weedy flowers once year but otherwise just looks untidy. No idea what it is, but we've lived here more than five years and it's barely grown a foot in all that time. Not exactly the greenery of choice to rapidly cover a pergola in a shock of colour, it being neither rapid nor any colour more shocking that insipid white.

Fine day duly arrived, yesterday, so out I went armed with stepladder and screwdriver to disassemble, de-erect and knock down. Some of the screws were a bit rusted but through a combination of brute force and ignorance (my favourite tool) I got most of them out and the rest gave up when I pulled the beams about a bit. The main uprights posed a brief problem but I soon discovered that if I leaned my enormous bulk against them they'd snap off just below ground level.

So no probs with the pergola, but what was I to do with Mr & Mrs Weedy-Growth? At this time of year the shed door swells up to the point where locks are not required as a barrier to entry, and all gardening implements remained inaccessible behind that swollen edifice. I set to with the only tool (a) available and (b) strong enough to deal with weedy roots that were, as it turned out, anything but weedy. A few well-placed strokes and a bit of subterranean leverage and out they popped and straight into The Green Bin.

Mission accomplished. We are now growth- and pergola-free at the front and much nicer it looks too. It'll be even nicer when the old worn out drafty blue porch door is replaced with a stunning new one.