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Giving credit for Android app installs When an app gets installed on Android it is nice to know who the referrer was. For example it could be a ... (more)
I wrote about the nitty gritty details on #Android app install referrers, and dealing with the quirky behaviour of the Play Store code.
If you get a Lenovo T430s then you'll know just how bad the screen is. It seems very blue and washed out. It turns out that there is nothing wrong with the screen - it is just that the default colour calibration is wrong. Lenovo do ship icc profiles, but it was generated in 2010 predating the display by two years and just assumes a 65% gamut. I profiled the screen using a +ColorHug using the 20 minute detailed profile to get a correct icc profile - grab it from https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BzrFh8Gip8y-bzlDV0RyZ0ZFVE0
There is a good article about the ColorHug at http://lwn.net/Articles/499231/
My only complaint is that the British inventor has no excuse for leaving the 'u' out of colour.
Originally posted at Google+ where there are some good comments. It would appear the LG panels (which I have) and the Samsung ones (which you may have) also differ. See comments 6 onwards for more details.
+T-Mobile have tumbled in customer service and satisfaction ratings and from my own personal experience it is easy to see why. (See post passim for some older material.)
Here is a simple example: go to the website and try to get an individual value plan. Note how it makes you get a SIM card. Tmobile will snail mail the SIM card to you - in my case mailed by them in Texas on a Monday and being received Friday afternoon in California.
Imagine you are tmobile. When would you start charging for service?
1: The day you put the card in the mail 2: The day the customer receives it in the mail 3: When the SIM card is first used on the network
Tmobile's answer is of course (1) even though there is no possible way the customer could have gotten service. Their excuse is that you could have called to use an alternate SIM card, but if that was an option why does the website force you to get a SIM card?
I just finished a call with customer service that took 119 minutes. It took the first 100 minutes or so for the agent to work out what on earth was going on with my bill. It doesn't help that what Tmobile shows customers on their websites is completely different than what it shows agents. She eventually had to hand me over to someone else who could do anything about the errors.
And in the end I did get shafted, but Tmobile has completely drained me. Even the agents were admitting it didn't make sense but kept saying there is nothing they can do.
It is a really strange way to run a business, making customers very aware that everything is rationed (minutes, texts, data) thereby encouraging them to go elsewhere, and then being unable to present meaningful bills, mixed in with hostile policies and unempowered agents for when you do screw up.
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Under the influence It has been observed that software development is a biological process by which caffeine is converted into source code. As far as I can tell ... (more)
My responsible disclosure of the stimulants consumed while writing Appington's code (spoiler: #caffeine and +Matt Darey feature prominently)
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Wireless networking slow, flaky, or crashing your router? Have an Intel 5300, 5100, 6205, 6300 wireless chipset? Disable 802.11n! Has your Intel-based laptop’s wireless connection been bizarrely slow, ... (more)
Like any good free software/open source person I make sure my hardware purchases go towards companies that provide open drivers and specifications. For laptops that means Intel. However they make the flakiest wifi chipsets and their hardware only works reliably (and very slowly) if you disable wireless-n which is very annoying. They should be embarrassed!
Category: gplus
Google has a reputation for efficiency, but their appengine datastore must be the least efficient piece of code I've ever come across. Deleting 10,000 entities took 1,027 cpu seconds (17 cpu minutes). Each entity is 4 write operations (only one indexed property). (I used delete_async on batches of 1,000 at a time.)
It is way more expensive to do the deletion than additions of the same data which really makes no sense.
I have a line on a family cell phone plan and wanted to terminate that in favour of an individual plan (makes development and other stuff easier). This is staying with the same carrier. You can't do it online, so how many phone calls, representatives and being hung up on would you think a business like Tmobile thinks is acceptable? The final count was 5 phone calls, about 90 minutes in total, 7 different representatives, and being hung up on 3 times (they seem to do it when taking you out of hold). Almost half the representatives were barely intelligible and I had to ask them to speak slowly and clearly (and no they weren't in foreign lands). How do phone companies manage to run their businesses so badly? I'm glad the calls were recorded for quality and training, but it would be nice to see some evidence of that actually happening.
The irony is I barely use my phone for cellular services. The carriers make it quite clear that minutes are rationed, texts are rationed and data is rationed. So I avoid the phone in favour of other mediums that aren't rationed, and there are a heck of a lot of better alternatives (eg cellular voice quality is miserable). It is like they don't want to have long term customers! #tmobilefail
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Roger Binns - Google+ - I wanted a cable and monoprice seemed a good choice. Yet… I wanted a cable and monoprice seemed a good choice. Yet they ... (more)
Monoprice lost another sale today, and of course they don't even know. To quote the individual "ordered from amazon, didn't feel like registering to yet another service". I did take this whole issue up with their support who don't care and don't see the problem, and tried to find out if there was anyone higher in the chain I could contact, but didn't find any.
Category: gplus – Tags: rant, registration
A wonderful hidef video from an Avianca pilot showing the front view out of an A320 all over South America. It also becomes clear why some people would want to be pilots.
I also quite like the music. I found this when trying to find the official video: SAIL - AWOLNATION
(Source: This was posted on a few aviation blogs some months ago.)