smartphones – hannah ananas

Apps

I suppose most people organize their phone applications based on frequency of use or date of download. I organize mine partly by frequency of use, but mostly just by color.

I have my main screen, which is the functionality necessities. Those icons, of course, are arranged by color. Then, on my second screen, and every other screen, I have the application icons all arranged by color within each screen. Even the first page of a group/folder on a screen matches up with the icons around it. Every so often, I rearrange the icons, because the app developers decide to rebrand a bit and change their icon and its color.

I enjoy the satisfaction it offers the eyes upon viewing, and also the fun letter combinations that turn out from the apps that have their first letter showing. Until today, I had a line that read “FOWW”, and it almost always made me smile. But I rearranged today, and it has changed to “FOLr” and “W–W” on separate lines. Oddly enough, I have three apps, and on the same page, that read “W”. Fun, huh?

Now, do tell me, can you possibly take me seriously after this? 😛

Post-a-day 2020

Packing with my Butler buddy

Siri is a great buddy, but occasionally gets the message a bit mixed up on the butler/personal assistant front. I’m staying temporarily at my mom’s house right now, because the hot water went out at my new place, but won’t be finished for another few days…, and it’s gotten really cold out, so I didn’t really want to take freezing cold showers. Therefore, I gratefully accepted my mom’s offer to stay here until the hot water was returned to the new place.

That being said, let us turn to the fact that I had already had a bag packed from various stays elsewhere in the previous week-ish, due to Thanksgiving and moving and all. I did have some clothes to wear still, but I had now run out of underwear in that bag. So, I planned that on my way home (to my mom’s house) from class, on the first night that we’d determined that it wasn’t just a one-night deal but a several-undetermined-number-of-nights deal with the no hot water, I would stop at my new place to dig up (almost literally, since I’d done a terrible packing job and nothing was unpacked yet, really, and most of everything was pushed together in a currently un-useful fashion in this one room) whatever I would need for the now-extended stay. I could borrow socks from my mom, and I already knew that a bra was in my dirty clothes there (so I could just wash that), and I had clothes and could borrow clothes. So, all I really needed was underwear, when it came to clothing. And then I needed to bring my laptop for the various things I would need to do on it this week.

Naturally, I was brainstorming all of this while driving to class, and so couldn’t write anything down. But I knew I would forget if I didn’t have a reminder after class somehow. And so, I asked Siri to remind me. And I cracked up when I happened to glance at a stoplight at what she was writing.

I didn’t need to correct it, because it was clear to me, anyway, what the reminder meant. Plus, I enjoyed laughing at it, and knew I would enjoy it as a reminder later on. And, sure enough, I was right – I loved it later. More than that, even, was how much I enjoyed getting to mark as completed the odd task.

This is not the first time I’ve had an odd accidental reminder, and not even the first in the past week. Add to that the actual odd reminders that I ask Siri to give me (and on a somewhat regular basis). We now have some really odd data to be going back to Apple for stats and improvement… I regularly wonder what the people who see these Siri conversations think when they see how absurd people are with her at times. And I always enjoy the thought that my silliness and absurdity, both accidental and natural, just might bring some utter joy and delight to their lives here and there. It definitely does to my own life, anyway. 😛

Post-a-day 2018

Nerd-ing

I am years into having a smartphone, and my most visited webpages remain almost exactly the same as when I started using one. They are translation websites and dictionary websites. Originally, it was wordreference.com and dictionary.com. Wordreference.com was an easy one, because I had already done the research for my preferred translator for French, Spanish, and German. But, after some research into different dictionary websites, I found that I preferred merriam-webster.com over dictionary.com. So, today, my most visited webpages are wordreference.com and merriam-webster.com. (I would add in Google Translate, because of my constant use with Japanese on it for kanji translations and photo translations, but I had to download the app almost immediately, when I moved to Japan, so that I could use it almost constantly to understand things around me. Therefore, it isn’t a website I’m visiting, but an application I am using.)

I’m just a word and language nerd. It’s like that day at work, earlier this year, when I spent an hour looking up information on certain punctuation marks – I am a word nerd, and there is ample evidence to support the claim.

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Post-a-day 2017

Magic in our pockets

Tonight, I have dance class (at long last). But that is not exactly the point… merely a piece of the mix. I am on my way to dance class now, writing this, as I listen to the lady’s voice coming through the hidden speakers on the train, announcing clearly, “Please off your seat to those who may need it,” at which I inwardly chuckle/cringe each time.

Before I left home for class, however, I was baking cake cookies, while watching a film. The film was “Kate & Leopold”, and it was showing on a laptop near me at my convenience. It was well past time to leave, but the film was not quite finished. However, I had finally finished my cake cookies, and so had no real excuse to delay my departure – the film could pause and wait just as easily as it could continue playing… Perhaps even more easily, as it required no power source from my apartment to do that. Though, that is not the point here.

So, I paused the movie, once I saw that it had a good ten minutes remaining in it, and it therefore would not finish in the time it took me to go to the bathroom and put on my socks. Now, I know how the movie ends. That, too, is not the point. The point, my dear readers is this: I didn’t have to stop watching the film, despite my then immediate departure.

How crazy a world is this one in which we now live, where I don’t have to stop watching the film that is at home, when I leave my home?

I could have easily pulled up Netflix on my phone, just as easily as I checked the time when I was slumbering down the stairs outside – which was, indeed, how Inhad even had the idea – , and immediately resumed the film where I had paused it. Just by opening the website (or app if I’d bothered to download it), I could have simply clicked the play button and continued my film as I was heading to the train station.

It seems so simple and normal and standard, because people do this all the time. I see people watching TV shows and movies almost every time I am on the train. And yet, having experienced this particular situation tonight, I suddenly see how bizarre and futuristic a concept this is. A movie can travel with me in my pocket, even if ten seconds ago, it was on a huge TV screen or a computer or wherever. It’s like shapeshifting or magic, and we’re all carrying it around with us, as though it’s a cup of coffee or a slice of bread. Or an apple. Literally, I guess. (Though I’d definitely intended that one to be a reference to its connection with the magic of physics.)
Post-a-day 2017