Some monospace fonts

Being the monospace font freak that I am, I recently found PT Mono and have fallen in love with it.  Turns out, I’ve been liking the PT family of fonts for a while: I have been using PT Sans for this blog’s headings.  You can download PT Mono (and others) for free from ParaType’s web site.

If PT Mono is my newly found attraction, I have been really liking Envy Code R for its extreme readability.  If I had to pick a single monospace font to live with for the rest of my entire life, I’d choose Envy Code R.  You can download Envy Code R for free from Font Squirrel.

If you’re into serif monospace fonts, give Verily Serif Mono a try.  This used to be my favourite font until I stumbled upon Envy Code R.

Poor battery life after Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) update?

If your Android phone was recently updated to Android 4.1 (aka Jelly Bean) and you have been seeing really bad battery life ever since, read on.  It could be that Google+ sync has been enabled by the update and that’s using up a lot of power.  Go to your phone’s Settings > Accounts > Google settings screen.  For every Google account listed, deselect the Google+ option.  This should bring back sane battery life to your phone.

See Demystifying Android power usage for more generic tips on saving battery life on Android devices.

Kovilpatti boy

It’s been 5 weeks since I came to India.  I have been living in our new house since my arrival, and it’s been pretty good.  Wide open sky with almost no light pollution.  This time of the year is usually windy, and I quite like the weather.  Being with my family has always made me happy.

Went out on my bike (a motorcycle) to a few places.  Even after seven years, I think my bike is pretty good and I like it the same.  The reason for the possessiveness I have about the bike and my riding gear has been unfathomable.  I just don’t want to share them with anyone!  Have a slightly longer ride coming up tomorrow; looking forward to it.  Want to take some pictures during the trip too; let’s see how that works out.

I would have liked to be a bit more productive at work, but the lack of productivity hasn’t made me very unhappy.  My mind keeps telling me that this is my place.  I really want to come back here and start living here again... like the Kovilpatti boy that I am.  There’s something magical about this place... maybe.

Better than animals

“Even when they don’t know much—or not at all—about Americans, many Indians think that Indians are generally better than Americans.  Do you think it’s correct to think that way?”  When I ask people this question, they almost always say “No, it’s not appropriate to think ill of others without knowing them well”.  Or they’d say “It’s incorrect to generalise all Americans or Indians that way”.

However, when I discuss morality with them, an argument they love to put forth is that “We are humans, shouldn’t we be better than animals?”  I just don’t understand why.  Vast majority of us don’t know much about the lives animals live.  We don’t know why individual’s free will should yield to society’s morals.  We can’t be sure if we are actually better than animals to begin with.  But somehow we as a society have to live “better” than animals!

Why I think new Android menus are broken

Up until Android 2.3, Android devices required a hardware “menu button”.  Pressing the menu button was the standard way of accessing the functions provided by apps.  Quite a few people  complained that this model is broken because sometimes users wouldn’t think that they can press the menu button to find actions they can perform.  Google “fixed” this problem in Android 3.0.

In Android 3.0, menu button became obsolete, and Google asked developers to use other on-screen UI elements to provide access to app features.  But the issue now is that actions are in two different menus.  Take Google Maps, for instance. If you want to check into a place, that option is available from the drop-down on the top-left:

But let’s say you want to change the Google account used for Latitude.  For that, you’d need to choose Settings from the bottom-right menu:

Similarly, Google+ app has its options split across two different menus.  Some options on the left:

And some on the right:

I know this is not plain madness, and there are reasons behind this UI change.  There are recommendations in Android Developer (or Design) Guide to help developers decide which options belong in the top-left menu and which options on the other one (called Action Bar).  But the issue is, any large app like Google Maps or Gmail or Google+ is going to have a large number of possible operations, and only when you know a good amount of it you can correctly guess which menu has the option you are looking for.  Expecting a common user to guess that correctly is unfair.

After having used my Android 4.0 phone for about 6 months, I’m giving a Thumbs Down to the new menus.