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[Thad]

Hey what's the nomenclature for the bar across the bottom of the screen that typically includes the launcher, phone, and browser?  Because the one that comes with Deck's Reloaded is some kind of horrific bullshit that is lime green, does not change color even when themed, and does not allow me to move or change the icons (eg swap the locations of the phone and launcher and replace the built-in browser with Firefox).  I've been looking for "menubar" but that hasn't pulled up any alternatives.

Also what's a good theme that resembles the Cyanogenmod default?  Because the default with Deck's Reloaded is, again, this hideous fucking lime-green thing, and for some goddamn reason I can't find a way to set my background to a solid color instead of a graphic.

On the whole I can't say I'm entirely satisfied with Deck's Reloaded, although it DOES come with a bunch of useful programs baked into it, is fast, and has so far not fucking locked up when I shut it down.  It is a conundrum.


EDIT: Actually I found that some themes DO change the appearance of the bottom bar so it's not ugly-ass-lime-green.  But I still don't see a way to modify the icons or their order, or change the wallpaper to plain black (without, say, a stupid kludge like making the wallpaper a 1-pixel black image).  I also can't find granular settings like for Rosie and such; all the other ROMs I've used (CM, MIUI, and MikG) all had a way to change my desktop layout from 4x4 to 4x5 but I can't find it offhand.  Maybe there's more info somewhere in that Deck's Reloaded thread but for Christ's sake it is 501 pages long.

[Lottel]

"Dock"

To get a new one, you usually need a new launcher. Everyone seems to love Nova Launcher.

[Thad]

I was afraid of that.  A search for "android dock" is going to turn up hell of ambiguous results.

Nova and Apex are both no-go on Gingerbread, but I'll see what I can figure out.  (Wouldn't mind a new launcher anyway; the one with Deck's uses this irritating OpenGL Cube effect when you scroll.)

[TA]

I found ADW to work pretty well.

[Rico]

Which is what cyanogen 7 uses if you liked that.

[Thad]

Yeah, I wound up grabbing ADW and am fairly happy with it.  Still haven't found a theme I quite like -- white-on-black with blue highlights instead of lime green -- but it's looking all right for the moment.

Used some Christmas money to pay the $6 for NewsRob.  I think that's a little excessive, but what the hell, I've been using it for months and like it pretty well.

BTW, Chu-Chu Rocket is Amazon's free app of the day.


-- MEANWHILE --

Spent most of today setting up the Nexus 7.  It's interesting so far.  I eventually found a simple rooting script for bash; ClockwordMod didn't work for some damn reason but fortunately it included Team Win and that one worked okay.  (Great, actually -- touch controls and all.)

mtpfs is the craziest fucking thing I've seen all...well, all week, I guess.  I was gonna say all month, but it's been a pretty fucking crazy month.

Anyway.  mtp.  There's an OpenSUSE package but it's a weird standalone command instead of using the mount command; I couldn't even cd into the mounted directory except as root, and that worked for about five minutes before it locked up, I had to kill the whole shell with sudo kill -9, and it wouldn't mount again after that.  (Which is consistent with complaints I've read from other users who said they could only get mtp to mount once per boot.)  Plugged it into a Windows machine and it worked better, but was still pretty eccentric; doesn't work for shit on a parallel filecopy, there's no "safely remove" option in the tray, and even on refresh it wouldn't show new directories that programs had added (eg after I ran fbreader it set up a Books directory, but I couldn't see it in Explorer, couldn't even access it by typing out the full path, but if I tried to create a new folder called Books it wouldn't do it -- no error, it just reverted back to New Folder if I tried).  Now, maybe this is one of those things that if I say "This is better than just mounting the fucking filesystem HOW, exactly?" I'll look like a fool in two years when it's well-supported and the answer is obvious.  (Like the mouselook/WASD control scheme in Marathon.  Or running system-intensive games in Windows instead of just dropping to DOS.  Or texting.)  But for now, I don't fucking get it.

[Kayma]

You know, I have never successfully applied a screen protector. I ALMOST got the Persona 4 skin on my Vita, but it had one tiny dust thing I tried to removed and made the whole underside irrevocably dirty.

Hell, just today I tried to put one on my fiancee's cell phone; it actually went on fine, but had a sticker that needed to be removed.... which left sticky residue everywhere.

Screen protectors...!!!!

[Brentai]

I swear by Realook simply because it's an uncomplicated piece of semi-hard plastic.  None of this solution-gack junk.

[TA]

I haven't bothered with a screen protector on my new phone.  Tempered glass is such that unless you keep your phone in the same pocket as your keys, you really don't need one.

[Thad]

Dunno, I've managed to rack up some light scratches on my/your old phone and I generally keep it in the same pocket as other soft things.  Like, I don't know how it got them at all.  They're not bad, but they're enough to make me think $3 for a screen protector (well, two, but I don't really intend to use them both) is money well-spent.

Anyway yeah the bubbles are mostly worked out now.

Put a few comics on there, both cbz's and the free first issue of Quantum and Woody.  (Obligatory reminder: Quantum and Woody is awesome and you should buy it.)  I'm surprised by how readable the things are on a 7" screen, though I don't think either the Comixology app or ACV is ideal out of the box.  I think that, in most cases, I'd like to read in landscape, zoomed to width, and scroll down -- guess that's not practical for comics with splashy layouts, which is most of them now (Batwoman: completely fucking unreadable on a tablet!), but for the good ol' simple grid layout it's not a bad way to go.

[TA]

Well, that's a 2010 phone.  Glass isn't as good as 2012 phones.

When I read comics on my tablet, I put them on there as folders full of images, and read them with Perfect Viewer.  Works, well, perfectly.

[sei]

On the note of comics, Mango is a fucking fantastic manga reader.

[Thad]

When I read comics on my tablet, I put them on there as folders full of images, and read them with Perfect Viewer.  Works, well, perfectly.

CBR/CBZ support, too, and there's a plugin for PDF.  (10MB seems a bit much for a plugin with PDF support, but what the hell.)  Looks like it's worth checking out; thanks.

[Thad]

Can anybody recommend a good cheap keyboard?  Physical keyboard, I mean; I do all right with an onscreen keyboard but I'd like to have something I can tap on if I'm ever stranded somewhere with too much free time and a tablet or phone.

Stross keeps talking about the iGo Stowaway Ultra-Slim; it looks a little cramped for my tastes but I figure a novelist/hacker with carpal tunnel probably knows what the fuck he's talking about.  They're no longer made and go for crazy prices at Amazon so I'm keeping an eye on eBay.

The ZaggKeys Flex seems to be pretty highly-regarded but it runs $70 (EDIT: $55 on Amazon, $40 on eBay); I know Logitech makes a good product but theirs is a little bulkier and still costs $50.  Motorola's is only $25 but there are multiple reviews complaining about connectivity issues.  Still might be the best cheap solution.

Course, it's not entirely necessary that it be Bluetooth; I can handle a USB keyboard with a dongle, too, if anyone can recommend a good portable usable one of those.

Keyboards are also one of those things I kinda hate buying without actually trying them out first, but the selection at the local Fry's is Not Great -- and probably still the best in town.

[Thad]

Is there a way to set DuckDuckGo as my default search engine in Chrome?  All I can find, including on DDG's help site, is how to do it on the desktop version of Chrome; I don't see a "Custom Search Engine" option in the Android version of Chrome.

And I've installed the DDG app.  It gives me a widget on the desktop but not a search option in the browser.

(I'm pretty sure I used to have it as my default search engine in Firefox but I don't see an option to set it there anymore either.)


EDIT: Found it in Firefox; for some reason it's not added as part of the DDG app installation, you have to go to Add-Ons and search for it.  Haven't found a similar option for Chrome yet and may switch back to Firefox if I don't.

[Mongrel]

I've been creaking along in the stone age with my Blackberry Pearl for five years now. It still works fine, though the screen's gotten a little pitted. Of course I use it as a phone and... that's it. Browsing with WAP2 on a two-inch screen is not something I do except under extreme duress.

But, something happened that never would have believed would come to pass: I... I... I'm actually maybe... excited about the new Blackberry.

It's the right size I've been thinking of, I don't care that their apps are knockoffs or have a shallower selection. I would be very surprised if I buy more than three or four, one of which will be a map app - when I want to do computing I am damn well going to use my home or work PCs, so a paucity of apps really doesn't bother me. And the battery life (which IS very important to me) just flat-out destroys the competition.

I always said I was going to wait until my old phone died, but I might just buy a new one. Also my current provider is crap (no service issues, but just way over priced for basically nothing), and I can either go to a discount provider or a work-subsidized one for easily half the monthly fees, but I need a GSM phone to move.

Apparently the flat cash price will be $550, but I'm sure there'll be a sale in a couple months (not going to be stupid enough to buy the thing in like the first two or three months).

[Thad]

Google bans adblocking software from the Play store.

Of course, the reason I'm an Android user instead of an iOS user in the first place is because when Google does shit like this I can just download apps from another store.

I use the Amazon store pretty frequently, and F-Droid is great for FOSS.  Haven't tried any others as yet; feel free to chime in.

[jsnlxndrlv]

So, the default internet app on my HTC One V has this annoying habit of blackscreening immediately after it loads a page maybe one in five times I launch it. What should I be using instead?

[Beat Bandit]

Unless you use Safari I'd say the mobile version of whatever you use on your computer. Chrome has always worked great for me and I'm pretty sure Firefox and Opera both share the features that let you keep one profile between devices.