Android TV Box In The House

The time has finally come for my Lioness and me to unsubscribe from our Smart TV and switch over to the Android TV box after weighing all the pros and cons. I've also combed the internet to find out whether Android TV boxes are legal here before this.

In a nutshell: they are still considered legal at the time of this writing, though they remain in a somewhat grey area of limbo to be reassessed down the road. If such TV boxes had been deemed 100% illegal already at the time of this blog post, then all the vendors selling them openly in high traffic shopping centres (and they seem to be all over the place) would have been busted by now, no?

So we both went to buy one today without worrying that we were doing something shady and not legit. The brand we ended up selecting is Mele, and we bought a 50 bucks 'Air Mouse' bluetooth controller to go along with it, since I've anticipated that it would be a pain in the butt trying to navigate the menus and such without one.

For me personally, I never cared for conventional TV since the 90's. Since then, I only watched TV like once or twice per year, believe it or not. I got the news I needed mostly via print media and after the internet hit us, the news I've needed was just a click or two away.

As far as I'm concerned, my 'TV' has been YouTube ever since 2007 when I first got broadband connection for my house. Then when I got my first smartphone in 2010 which allows me to be online wherever I happen to be from thereon, that was the final nail in the coffin for conventional TV for me. I'd rather be able to search for what I want to watch right now and right here, then wait for the TV to broadcast my targeted subject matter at goodness knows when.

And no, I'm not the usual TV drama series person. I am very selective when it comes to those since they mean a huge chunk of time investments, and the drama series that really had my attention, I can count with the fingers of one hand. Almost all of them were Japanese with English subtitles that I can still watch online if I wanted to. So no big loss for me when it comes to drama series that I hardly even touch.

I'd go so far as to say that I'd never have subscribed to our smart TV years back if it wasn't for the fact that my Lioness still likes to watch TV. But like me now, she agrees with me that going online is still the best way to go, so out went our Smart TV subscription (and its associated monthly fees) and in comes the Android TV box with no monthly subscription fees - that's just the reality of it, make of it what you will.

Note that this blog post is not to discourage anyone from zapping their smart TV subscription, no. We are all different and there's still something charming about going old school, laying comfortably on the couch and randomly surfing TV programmes instead of having an aim of what to watch. There are times when you stumble upon something that interests you while randomly switching TV channels, yeah? It's like a sudden pleasant surprise.

Also, depending on where you stream your programmes from, you might find that smart TVs (and even the old dodo non-smart ones) gives you a clearer picture.

Even though I personally wouldn't care if I owned no TV in the house (as long as I can go online) if I were living alone (which I'm not), what my Lioness told me is something I agree with: "家里没有电视机会不像家." (A house without a TV will not feel like home).

Our TV at home will be here to stay for a long while, it's just that we have decided to stream online instead of continuing with the conventional way. And I approve of the fact that YouTube comes with our new TV box and I can load apps on it.

Looking back, for better or for worse, the magnitude of changes that the internet brought about when it comes to watching programmes and such, in comparison to conventional broadcasted ways, are certainly nothing short of 'revolutionary'.

(Update from the future: we changed out our Mele TV box for Unblock Technology's which cater to our viewing needs better.)

A New Job

I got myself a new job that starts today, which job scope is something I've never experienced before. Because it's something new for me, I'm looking forward to this new learning adventure. Yup, I view every new job as an adventure.

An adventure is a venture that involves risks, which even if you've done as much calculated risks as you could about it all and asked as many prior questions before you decide to dive headlong into it, there will still be uncertainties you'll never be certain about until you get your hands dirty by actually experiencing the venture first-hand, which is how every new job is. The interviewer can only help you with this much, the rest will be up to you to discover for yourself.

Thus, going into a new job or a new company also requires a fair amount of courage to face that which is unfamiliar and unknown in the initial stages, just like in embarking on an adventure.

I can't reveal what my job entails because I'm a man who keeps the deal of my employment terms & conditions on my end. Every job that I've left, I've never revealed any of their confidential information or trade secrets that I've promised not to on black & white. I once had a colleague who said something way back in 2005 that I still remember till this day and always will:

"Even if your company has developed a rotten reputation in the industry, never allow your own reputation to go bad."

And that, ranks as the best advice I've ever heard in all my years of working. To make this work, my philosophy is: always respect your clients and customers and never promise anything that you know you and your company cannot deliver. Trust is not a given, it's something you have to earn. Honesty builds trust and empty promises break trust. That's how it goes.

Regarding my new job, all I can reveal is that my new company is doing a joint project with the government, which accounts for things being classified. After the initial on-the-job training, I will be going lone wolf all by myself to do my job, and mondays to fridays will see me travelling about the south-western part of the country as I go to my different daily allocated areas in said sector to get to my work sites. The job ad did mention "work near home", which is why I got assigned to the south-western team.

I've always gone for jobs that require me to travel about alone, which is something I've grown to love and already grown accustomed to for years. Besides helping me to keep fit since I'm not stuck on a chair in a cubicle for the whole day but have to be on the move constantly (with all due respect to you cubicle warriors out there), such jobs also teach me to be self-reliant and independent. Since you are going at it alone, you are also your own on-the-spot problem-solver. My only nemesis is heavy rain, which impedes movement speed.

As you can imagine, one has lots of freedom doing such travelling lone wolf jobs and I love that freedom and not having to deal much with the politics back in the office I don't care about, since as far as I'm concerned, I've been hired to work instead of being paid to play games.

In my opinion, some office politics are unavoidable sometimes, but any company that allows their office politics to go seriously out of hand has lost focus and not worth working for, since an out-of-focus company won't last for too long with all the nasty internal power struggles that are detrimental to the united growth of the company as a whole in the long run.

Back to lone wolf travelling jobs: such jobs also mean the need for self-discipline, since when you go about your job alone, you are the only one who can make sure that you are doing your job properly and that you are not abusing your freedom.

Throughout my working life, I've seen people getting fired because they abused their freedom: they got caught skipping work secretly for multiple days and such. Why ruin something good for yourself and have your freedom taken away from you just because of complacent laziness?

Even if you go for multiple coffee breaks and make pit-stops at shops in the mall to check out some goods in-between visiting your clients, customers or work sites, just make sure you deliver what you are being paid to do for the day and go home with peace of mind, even if you go home earlier than usual because you happen to complete your work for the day at a faster rate and you don't have to report back to the office at the end of the day. This is what I mean by 'self-discipline'.

Speaking of going home earlier once you've completed your job for the day, my new job officially allows me to do just that and my pay will not be affected in any way. So I have to make sure that I do my job properly to the best of my abilities and not have this privilege taken away. Since my work time is entirely in my own hands and I can go home once done, I won't complain at all should it happen that I be required to work till later than usual occasionally. Give & take.

In actual fact, based on what I've been taught and shown so far, the tasks required of me is nothing too difficult at all, so it would be stupid to turn complacent and ruin the privileges that come with the job. I'm hoping that the colleagues in my team, who have their own assigned work areas, have the same line of thought - the worst thing that can happen to any team is to have black sheeps that ruin everything for everybody else.. but I'm not holding my breath on this just yet even though I'm hoping for the best; as I've said, trust is something to be earned and we don't know one another well enough yet.

However, I already know that there is just one particular aspect of the job that I hate while everything else seem ok, but you gotta take the good along with the bad and there's no such thing as a 100% perfect job without flaws that rub you the wrong way, yes? So far, it's just this one thing that I don't like, but I can live with just one single bad issue if everything else holds up to be continuously ok. We shall see.

But ugh, me having to deal with a slight fever and cough is not helping me much during my first day on the job. Still, I shall survive.

Lim's New LG V20

Setting up
Lim's LG V20

At my suggestion, my friend Lim bought his LG V20 on contract subsidy price from his telco. Prior to this, he's been using his Tab S tablet to take over his smartphone needs from his old Note 2 he gave away which had this long, ugly crack running down the screen - something which I told him won't cut it for him after seeing how he had to go around with a bluetooth earpiece stuck in his ear all the time for his phonecalls, which he admitted was a hassle he has grown tired of. Some folks are ok with that but it wasn't for Lim.

Lim actually had his eye on the Galaxy Note 7 but unfortunately, that phone turned out to be too hot to handle. I told him that a non-Sammy phone could be a breath of fresh air for a change if he's so inclined. I made it clear though, as I always do when people ask me to recommend them anything; that the risk is theirs to take and I'm just weighing the pros and cons for them in line with their needs and wants - if they should end up with buyer's remorse, it's not on me. I think that is fair enough.

So yeah, I've been reading a lot on the LG V20 and following its progress ever since the V10 piqued my interest on the V series which I actually liked, and the best thing about LG's phones is their wide-angle camera lenses, in my opinion. Also, I like how the V phones allow you to customise the navigation bar and add stuff to it on their default launcher (especially adding a button that lets you pull down the notification panel without minimizing your onscreen app with just a click; such a simple thing that actually goes a long way to making it so much easier to use a big screen phone where notifications are concerned), as well as the ability to theme the phone on a system-wide level.

And oh, there's also their DAC which supposedly gives you a better music listening experience if you use a good enough pair of headphones.

However, what has kept me away from LG phones are 2 things: their LCD screens and their battery capacities. My eyes just prefer AMOLED screens and when it comes to smartphones, my philosophy is: what good are all the bells and whistles if the battery can't last the distance before you need to reach for the charger.

Yes, the V10 and V20 do come with removable batteries and that's all well and good but in my book, there's no such thing as having enough battery juice - the more the merrier and if I can cut down on the number of times I need to swap batteries or charge up, the better.

As a power user, I can't help but feel that LG has always been stingy about battery mAH capacities. I'm saying this as a lopsided praise for the V series though, since I consider them to be powerful phones in their own right for what they can do, but when it comes to power, you can't skimp on battery capacities.

These are the main things I've highlighted to Lim before he bought the phone, and I sent him links to reviews of the phone. Finally, I told him to just go to the stores to play around with the display sets first to help him formulate his own purchase decision, which to me, is the most important step since nothing beats hands-on personal experience (and I reminded him to close out all active apps running in the background FIRST before playing with the display sets). I left it at that, the final decision was his to make and I considered my job done.

As you could already tell from the pic up top, Lim ended up buying the phone after all is said and done. So I helped him to update and set up his phone, his apps and theme according to his preferences, as well as helping him connect his phone to WiFi networks he uses.

But it didn't stop there - I also helped him to sideload apps like TubeMate which he loves, and disabling stuff like opting out of Google's ads personalisation (which you should be able to hunt down under Settings ==>> Google ==> Ads, or something similar depending on your Android phone), among other nitty gritty things.

After all these, I went into his phone's recovery and cleared up the cache before doing a reboot.

TL;DR: I helped him to optimise his phone.

One may think I've performed an overkill, but when you have to do a job only once for the best optimisation down the road, you may as well do the job properly from the get-go. I consider skimping on the initial hassle just to have an unoptimised user experience with hiccups frequently down the road to be a much bigger hassle.

Besides, taking the time to help out a childhood friend or a loved one is what I will always consider as time well spent. I do the same for my Lioness and for myself too whenever we get new phones. One has to be willing and happy to contribute one's time and effort to people who have stuck with you through life's thick and thin.

Does LG even know their own product?

You know what baffles me about what LG bundled with their V20? When the V10 was launched back in 2015 last year, LG bundled with it an external battery charger (different from a powerbank) and a spare battery with it, which was not just appropriate but also well and good. I couldn't believe my eyes when Lim showed me what LG bundled with his V20:

A Samsung power bank - no external battery charger, no spare battery. A Samsung power bank. Let that sink in. Sure, the B&O earphones are there alright, but the LG V20 has a removable battery. And for that, they are giving out a competitor's power bank instead? Does LG even know that their V20 has a swappable battery?

I'm not sure if this is just a local thing or a global bundle across the international board and I don't care to find out after expending my effort to set up Lim's phone, but this makes me question LG Mobile's product knowledge about their own product, be it localized or international. This is just weird. Imagine buying Dove's shower cream that comes bundled with a Lux refill.. And no, Dove and Lux don't do such a thing.

But whatever, the important thing is that Lim told me he really likes his V20 thus far. We shall see whether the same holds up after his honeymoon period with the phone.

(Update from the future: It's been more than a year since and Lim tells me he still enjoys using his V20. Good on the lad.)

Google Assistant vs Siri

The battle of our imaginary friends:


Boy, that was some contest. Arguably, I think Siri has the prettier UI screen while Google's assistant wins out in other areas. Pros and cons for both sides.

When I taught my sister how to utilize Google's assistant, she was beaming from ear-to-ear, which inevitably led to her hammering on the assistant with.. well, weird questions - something which I was guilty as charged too when I first had a go at it as well. #CheapThrills

Throughout the years, I've tried other third party assistants, one on my jailbroken once-upon-a-time iPhone and a few on Android thereafter. The Android ones eventually got as good as being all completely wiped out by Big G's, though some of them actually turned out to be pretty good and functional for what they could do in their time, albeit being slower in response speed. But that was then and this is now.

Oh well, our imaginary friends have come a long way and I wonder if anyone still asks Siri where they can hide a dead body in jest now in 2016, which was the trend during 2011, remember?

What if, based on the rate that things will be going on both fronts, Siri eventually finds itself turning out to actually be that dead body everyone's been pestering her about way back in 2011? That would be tragic but morbidly funny at the same time. Maybe I'll fire up Big G's assistant and ask it just that, since I've never seen a virtual assistant rolling its virtual eyes at me before.

Introducing The New iHole

Introducing the new iHole (aka: taking the 'smart' out of smartphone users).

I've seen many things on the net that had me baffled, as I'm sure you have too as well. "The human experience" has morphed into the Internet experience for the most part anyway, considering how being online consistently has become an integral part of our lives and heck, that's how we're letting it run our lives.

Funny thing is, some of us are fully conscious of that while others aren't - as exemplified by those who post things about themselves online that made them regret it or which landed them in hot soup as an aftermath. If you can't have the foresight or common sense to tell that what you are posting online will end up an attraction for unnecessary trouble, then that runs parallel with you not being conscious of the power of the Internet, of which privacy is just an illusion or fallacy.

Actually, that's a common mistake we all have the potential of forgetting sometimes, since it can be human nature to take for granted that which has become an integrated part of our daily living. We humans have been programmed with full of complacent bugs.

But you know what? In regards to this blog post's subject matter which highlights how some iFans have apparently been drilling holes into their new iPhones in an attempt to bring back the headphone jack, part of me refused to believe it. I mean, how could anyone be this dumb naive? You don't even need to be an expert techie to realise that that in itself, is an impossibility without perhaps some pro circuitry wizardry that will boggle the mind of a layman who knows next to nothing about hardware modding and such.

An open mind says that almost nothing is impossible when it comes to tech, but just drilling a hole and expecting it to power your earphones to blast music is akin to having sex and expecting a baby immediately right after. That was a really crude analogy, I know and I apologise for that, but it serves to accentuate the ludicrousness of it all. Sometimes, you just have to give a stupid reaction in response to a stupid question or subject matter.

For me personally, I prefer not having to deal with cords and cables, but if you know you will be inconvenienced by the lack of a headphone jack, then why give Apple your money by buying their new iPhone in the first place and then complain about it? That's what baffles me. Can people really be that oblivious to their own actual needs and wants and plonk down their wads of cash at the cashier without any thought?

The only explanation I can think of to explain this is that perhaps, some people buy the iPhone thinking that it will elate their social status by flashing it around to show off (how very 2010 stale). For such people, I have trouble mustering up the sympathy for them when they realise that their new flashy gadget actually inconveniences them by having a feature they've needed all along removed. They are just crippled show-offs that's all flash and no substance as far as I'm concerned.

And yes, Apple wants your money by you buying their new wireless Airpods. It's not that hard to put 2 and 2 together and see through the reality distortion field. Apple's abuse usage of the word "courage" to justify their removal of the headphone jack is just a gimmick that covers up the fact that it's all about their sales and money for their new Airpods as the denominator.

Again, I support tech going wireless, but their hypocrisy and treating their customers as naive cash cows easily swayed by some word-smithing simply stinks. I guess actually having the "courage" to be honest, upfront and transparent can be a tough call for some companies.

If you want me to part with my cash to buy something, just say so straight to my face and tell me the facts upfront instead of trying to serenade me with tired, flashy gimmicky wordplay; at least your transparency about it can still earn my grudging respect - and I'll salute you for not treating me as a gullible fool.

At the end of it all, despite the jokes made about sheepish iFans that bring into question their capacity for rational thinking (which I always try to take with grains of sodium chloride because my best friend loves his iDevices and he happens to be freaking intelligent), I will give the side of me that doubts the authenticity of this whole 'iHole' incident some breathing space. Why?

Because if it actually turns out to be true, then my hope for humanity will take a huge plunge towards the direction that gravity likes to go.

Apple's Airpod Tickles

Tampons in the ears

Original, unedited photo from Cnet

(I had to censor this photo like this because it is my policy to never embarrass any innocent individual by revealing their identity in my blog posts.

I can't speak for this guy of course, but if it was me posing for the pic, I personally would be embarrassed with those tampon-lookalike thingies in my ears.)

Trying hard to look ridiculous? You don't have to put in so much effort to achieve that nowadays, since it's 2016 afterall. Just get yourself a pair of Apple's new airpods and you're good to go.

How does it work? Well, just pop those suckers in your ears and have people around you wonder why you'd walk around with tampons stuck in your ears. Easy. Just don't mind them asking whether you're suffering some rare and new medical condition that causes you to menstruate from the ears. Watch them widen their eyes in awe as you tell them that those tampons have the capability to blast music. Neat.

I'm always looking forward to the Apple keynotes because the best thing about them is the inevitable humour that follows. You just have to put up with cringeworthy marketing bullshit like "it's magical!" done to death over and over again ad nauseam - akin to puking out fruit juice you drank, swallowing the puke and then puking it all out again to be reused onstage every single time. Don't rinse, don't wash, repeat.

Just keep hammering the same marketing one-trick-pony into their heads and they will eventually believe it and kachink, in rolls the cold hard ca$h, eh? Marketing is essential, yes, but discerning consumers ought to find too much of the same wordplay gimmicks to be a tiresome earache by now, cringe?

And there's this thinking that since the airpods are truly wireless (which is a feature I really like), one can lose them too easily. If I were to go off my nerdish rocker and get mean, I'd say:

"So apparently, Apple's new wireless AirPods are like tampons missing their strings. So I'm gonna look down at the ground more during the coming months, expecting to find dropped AirPods so that I can sell them to iFans so that they will lose them again, after which I can find them again and re$ell them back to the same iFans. Kachink. Sounds unapologetically lucrative."

But I won't say such a thing even though I just did. That's because I do not like dealing with pesky cables myself if I can help it.

While it may be true that you could lose the airpods easily because they are small and separate from each other without wires connecting them together, when it comes to safeguarding one's possessions without losing them, it all boils down to user responsibility and some prudent common sense. Hell, you even run the risk of losing your phone, your relationship with someone or anything else for that matter if you're careless and not mindful and sensitive enough. Such a thing comes down to the individual.

Compare using wired earphones while watching a movie in bed and you will value a truly wireless set when you toss around in bed. A crowded bus is also a good place to realize that, as yours truly have lost count of the number of times I've muttered curses under my breath whenever my wires got snagged on somebody's bag or whatever and watched my earphones go kaplunk onto the dirty floor.

Credit where credit is due

As much as I don't like Apple as a company because of their holier-than-thou arrogant attitude towards their own customers and their hypocrisy towards their competitors, along with their trigger-happy litigation fingers which to me as a fan of mobile tech, impedes the progress of the industry, I would be adopting the dreaded and myopic ostrich strategy if I were to ignore the actually beneficial implementations of Apple that truly benefit the consumer.

What Apple nailed right with the new Airpods is just how easy and hassle-free it is to pair them up with an iDevice, along with how the airpods can tell when you pull them out of your ears (just pulling one out will do), at which point they will automatically pause the music. Now these are nifty and useful features in my non-fiction book, I'll give Apple that.

So in conclusion, despite their fugliness, the airpods certainly have their usefulness. If you happen to buy them and you really really end up liking them, don't let anyone or anything including this blog post tell you differently. If you find them truly a joy to use, just enjoy them and I'll be happy for you, really..

..even though I still think you have tampons in your ears.

The Rattata I Encountered Today

How.. befitting.

Besides having a quirky name that sounds like machine-gun chatter, PoGo's rodents sure have the knack to know just where to spawn, eh? But nah, it's more like these things are every freaking where in the game, just like the Pidgeys.

If only the Rattatas ate the Pidgeys on the map, I'd have had less of the same Pokémon I keep coming across ad nauseam.