Android Army
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About xMP44x
I'm 17, and my name is Paul. I live in Northern Ireland, and do things. I like history, cars, videogames, and computer keyboards. I'm not even kidding.
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Apple Core
All things Apple
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The Verge Book Club!
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Let your Microsoft flag fly
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The Lens
Calling all photo junkies
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xMP44x
On The Verge since Feb 25, 2012
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I play PC games mostly now, but I don’t lean towards any platform. There are fantastic games on every console available right now. I just play on PC at the moment for the convenience. I don’t have the room for my 360 with schoolwork and therefore it helps to have a PC that works for productivity and relaxation. Shame it’s not powerful (GT 220), but it handles most of the games I want.
I’m still a lot better on a controller than I am on a keyboard and mouse setup. Don’t get me wrong, I can play on either, but the controller is the method I’m much more familiar with. Typing on a keyboard comes to me just fine, but I’m simply not as good at gaming on it. Not a big deal though – I am a… gasps casual. I suppose.
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IMHO, it’s one of the best fonts the company has introduced. Microsoft has a load of fonts, but this is perhaps my favorite of their sans-serif offerings. It’s not Arial, Tahoma, or Verdana, so it has a bit more class. It’s modern, it’s understated, and it is refined. It meets my approval.
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Yeah, from what I can see Hyundai has done a right bit to improve its image. In the past it wasn’t really that well regarded, but with cars like the Atoz and the Amica that’s hardly surprising. The i30 and other newer Hyundais actually strike me as quite nice.
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I liked a part of Safari a ton. Remember the option to change the font rendering in Safari 4 and 5? That. It more or less emulated the OS X method of font rendering, which I prefer to the Windows system. Founds are more true to how they’ll look on paper, and I personally find it easier to read them that way.
Overall? I used to adore Chrome during its early days, but I’ve since converted to Firefox. When Firefox reached version 3.5, it won me over and I stepped away from Chrome.
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You know something? You’re more or less 100% right on point. I sat for a moment, trying to weigh up that correction but it’s pretty apt. Have a Recommend on me.
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I’ll agree the “Apple is doomed” sentiment is a bit ridiculous.
In this case, Apple’s a bit like BMW. They’re the standard choice at this part of the market, and that’s because they’ve built up a reputation for doing well. Samsung’s either the Maserati or the Volkswagen of this world, in that they’ve both tried to get on the same level (Quattroporte and Phaeton), but neither has reached the same success. But if an equivalent figure of either car shipped in a market sector that was absolutely dominated by BMW, it’s enough to notice. It could pave the way to future successes or it could be a flash in the pan.
It’s the best comparison I can really give. It doesn’t mean Samsung has suddenly overtaken Apple in terms of flagship devices; you’d be insane to suggest otherwise. If anything, all it tells me is that the market is accomodating both. Also, I had to use Volkswagen because Audi, a part of the Volkswagen Group, always does well in that sector.
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Recommended Brent Laverty's comment in Verge Zeppelin Logo?
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I’ve only grown to appreciate the value of the Mini Player with the update myself. It actually is a really versatile little window! If you’re right, and it is the exact same (which could well be possible, considering how little use I gave it), this should convince you that 11.3 is the best thing since sliced bread.
Actual differentation between discs. That’s all I needed to see to be 110% sold on it.
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I don’t really show my face online but yes, that would be the best way to remain completely unique. Unless someone steals your face for their own nefarious purposes.
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Very infrequently. If I change my mind and grow to dislike a picture I’ll change it, but I don’t change it every few days. Not even on Facebook, where the constantly changing pictures is more prevalent. I changed my Verge picture only a few days ago because I spotted someone else in the comments with the Abstergo logo from Assassin’s Creed.
I try to keep my profile pictures unique. If nothing else it helps me to spot my own comments.
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Can you post a sample picture or two from the two phones? Sample pictures I’ve seen from the S4 so far have been pretty stellar, but I haven’t seen many in direct comparison with the iPhone 5. Without a few samples I don’t know if anyone in the community can advise. tCynic’s post has some good advice in it. Use the S4 camera a bit and see how you find it after that.
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It’s actually very similar. I like this change quite a lot!
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I didn’t know 11.0.3. was out. I’m downloading that now for sure. I thought the Mini Player in iTunes 11 was a bit crap before to be honest, but that looks nice. I can tell it’s a Mac screenshot, so if anyone’s interested I can fire a Windows screenshot up. I know I’m curious, since Apple’s design on Windows never looks as slick as it does on OS X.
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I just checked: this was partially included in the older versions of iTunes 11. You can see the time remaining and total track length at the end of the slider. Admittedly I did this in the full size player, so I might be looking at it the wrong way.
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There is no fun at 2fort.
Try an Ullapool Caber and Sticky Jumper combination. Zip across to the enemy Snipers, one shot them, then fly home for a resupply. If you’ve never done this then you’re missing out on the fun of 2Fort.
If you’re not a fan of Demoman, become a Pyroshark. Get the Neon Annihilator and lurk in the water under the bridge. Hit people who go into the water. It’s basically a one-hit kill. Team it with the Flare Gun / Detonator so you can burn people on land, forcing them into the water… and into your Neon Annihilator. You’ll get a few giggles out of that, trust me.
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This video should help you to strip the phone down.
LE55ONS does some great videos on the topic of tearing phones down, and I’d recommend them. He recommends some tools you might not have, but as long as you’ve something equivalent for the most part, it’ll be fine. By that I mean you could probably use a credit card instead of a plastic knife, but you couldn’t use a sledgehammer. Fairly obvious, really.
I haven’t watched through the entire video, but if you watch closely you should be able to find where the Power button runs to.
Honestly, stripping a phone down isn’t incredibly difficult if you’re careful and you have the right tools. Take your time, and you could potentially fix your phone on the cheap. In truth, this is probably what phone shops would do themselves.
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Recommended DJFM's comment in Which default ringtone is more iconic at this point.. iPhone Marimba or Classic Nokia?
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I’ll be honest: I don’t think it’s an offensive question.
I can understand how some people might, but to me personally, it’s not a big deal. I’m accepting of all religions and views which challenge the existence of a deity. It seemed to be more of a light-hearted question than anything else, and I am impressed by Katie’s handling of it. She handled it very diplomatically. Her reply wasn’t likely to cause offense.
This is the kind of question, I think, that can be offensive depending on what you want to hear. I’m not saying this is what you’re doing Lyserberg, but it’s the sort of thing I imagine can happen.
Religion is an immensely personal thing and I’d never begrudge anyone the right to their faith, but it is very important to some people, and I imagine they’d like to see their views affirmed elsewhere. I’m not saying you’re doing that, but I imagine devout religious believers feel good when someone they know – and a big name, at that – follows the same faith as them.
Now, it would be very possible to make a question like that into something offensive, but the manner in which Katie replied stopped anything like that happening. I have to commend her for that, because while I found the question quite amusing, it doesn’t always go down well with others. Nevertheless, it’s a solid question to ask and I can definitely appreciate how different people feel about topics like this.
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The name isn’t that bad. At least it gives you an idea of what it does. Plus, a URL shortener can be a handy thing to have.
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There’s no ‘right’ way to use the forums, but it’s good to see you’re keen to contribute. I’m not sure what to tell you, though. Jay had good advice in the first post: that link will let you get a good overview of what is active and what’s new, so you can find conversations quickly and easily.
Actually clicking into forums will help you find ongoing conversations that might otherwise be missed. Sometimes you can find discussion in there that might appeal even more to you. One great thing about the design of The Verge’s comment sections, I think, is that they don’t have the same mentality as a forum. Since posts aren’t made visible outside of user profiles, your views are just as valued as anyone else’s.
There aren’t really any dominant voices, just other voices within the community, and that’s a great thing since getting involved can be intimidating otherwise. The easiest thing to do is think about what interests you, and see if you can contribute based on that.
Contribution comes in different flavors. If you’ve done something awesome yourself that you’d like to share with people, that’s possible. If you’d like to find out about things other people have / their own stories, then that’s cool too. Contribution is very open-ended, so do what you like and in time you’ll feel more like you’re in the middle of things.
Personally, I’m into some really niche things in the world of technology, and I like to converse about them when they come up, but I do like to discuss all angles since I find differing viewpoints great opportunities for meeting people.
Now, for some convenient resources. Jay has already posted that RSS link, and you can use that to monitor conversations and the like, for the site doesn’t have notifications at the moment. You can check user profiles for updates and the like, but some people don’t find it that convenient. Here’s a picture of a post I made, as viewed on my user profile, to show you what I mean.
Another user in the community produced the Notifications app that’s on the Play Store right now.., but there’s no version for iOS. Shame, but it’s a community product so unless someone else makes an iOS version it’ll stay Android for now.
Hopefully this hasn’t been too long, and it has given you a bit of an idea of where to go from here. There’s no answer apart from “anywhere you want” (as long as it’s acceptable in the Community Guidelines!)
Welcome to the community, I’m sure you’ll enjoy yourself here!
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I believe that was set up by theaolway. :-)
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Great find! +1 Recommend, mate. You’ve earned it for finding that. I knew I’d seen it somewhere, but I just couldn’t think of where it was.
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Recommended kool_dude's comment in What happened to the BlackBerry forum?
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I’m 17, so I’m not exactly old enough to tell you when it changed over, since I’m guessing you mean academic essays. Nevertheless, I’ll give my rundown of how things happened for you. We have primary schools here in the UK, and for the first five or so years you didn’t need to type a thing at all.
It was in year five at primary school that changed a little. You’d do better on the more creative stuff if you typed it up, but there were exceptions if you did a huge amount of work otherwise. It was at that point more people began to type stuff up, and it was roughly around then my family got a first computer. I didn’t type stuff up though.
High school was where that changed a good bit. We had actual classes on how to use Microsoft Office and the like in the first year. It’s basic stuff you’d find dead simple but at the time it meant more and more people were getting an idea of how to use computers for their schoolwork. From this point on more and more projects were being typed up, and some of them you had to type up whether you wanted to or not. It was around this time I got a lot more interested in computers and the like, so I suppose I’m a real newcomer to computer technology compared to some people.
As for cursive handwriting, it was taught around the fourth or fifth year of primary school. We were taught how to use cursive handwriting with Berol handwriting pens (plastic-nibbed). For the most part that was fine, but with any amount of pressure you’d flatten the nib down and get very thick, bold lines.
On the upside, those pens worked well for me. I’m left-handed so one problem I do have is smudging ink. Depending on the pen, and as often as not on the paper, that can happen. Those Berols normally worked quite well for me apart from specific books or papers that I could make blotchy. Nowadays I tend to use a Fisher Bullet Pen or a Parker Vector that works fine on 99% of papers.
But that’s not telling you a vast amount, is it? Better put my money where my mouth is, and try cursive for the first time in ages.
And… anti-climactic, huh? It’s not great and my photography doesn’t make it any better.
My everyday writing:
Cursive hasn’t been entirely useless for me; I do some joins in places I find to be efficient, and the whole thing did help me to find a quicker, more convenient method of writing in longhand. It changed how I shape ’T’s and other such letters, adding more of a slant to them.
Hopefully this has been interesting, because it has been a lot longer than I’d originally intended.
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The Mobile forum is standing in for the BlackBerry Juicers. To my knowledge this change was made when the Science forum was added. Someone (Chao Li, I think) wrote a post addressing this. I’ll see if I can find it again.
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After finishing an exam yesterday, that infectious 1990s hit ‘Return of the Mack’ played on a constant loop in my head. I don’t even know why, but I always wind up with a song on a loop in my head.
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The Verge released Jesse Hicks’ article Research, No Motion to the Kindle last year. You can read the entire thing on The Verge as it is, but I did think this was an unusual move to make. I’ve no idea if other editorials were published as well, though.
From what I remember, as well, that’s the longest article on The Verge. I could be a bit off now but I remember checking that once before, and it was something like 11,000 words. Might be inaccurate though since I copied other elements of the article’s body to reach that figure.
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Recommended jmlares's comment in The Verge $0.99 YouTube Channel
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I’m a big fan of Sony’s phone design, and the Xperia Z was, for a time, the phone I was most interested in picking up next. When it comes time to change phones I’ll be giving the Xperia Z and ZL a good look. Thanks for taking the time to write this up – having used an Xperia T for a short while, I was genuinely impressed by Sony’s Android skin. It’s not quite stock, but it’s non-intrusive for the most part.
I’ve long used Samsung’s phones, but this time I actually do want to go for a Sony device, and the high-end Xperias have been taking a lot of my attention lately.
