h. Play

Amidoinitrite

Anyway, millions of things to do. Also, never loan/rent your apartment to a dirty dude with long hair. Holy fuck.

Seven days with a new Windows Phone 7.

It’s a very interesting time in terms of competition in the world of smartphones. First despite the amount of hype and how everybody in California owns one, the smartphone market globally still barely represent a quarter of phone sales (20% of global sales mid 2010). It’s still the beginning. But the growth is on.

// Before

I used an Android Phone for a year. I had fun with it except that my HTC Hero had some issues with AES Wi-Fi encryption, making it kind of useless when it cannot connect correctly to the free wireless… I don’t know if I’m the only one but from my light usage (email/twitter/fb/sms/reading/maps) I can say that:

• I’ve pretty much never used the “killer feature” called copy&paste. I retype, save the link or use the “send by email”.
• I don’t play games or music because it ruins battery life. It’s a communication device for me first.
• What multitasking? I use an app. I quit. I launch another one. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
• Also, if I use six or seven apps very regularly, it’s a maximum.
• The free app with banner ads in your face model is getting annoying really fast.
• The Gmail app is plain sad.

Then the update mess. Holy shit it’s a mess. I started with  the 1.6, missing a lot of good stuff. Then last summer I finally got the 2.1 update which I already had tried with a custom ROM (I don’t want to do that kind of shit again, ever). Then nothing, change your phone. The 2.2 update brought speed improvements with JIT optimization and the Chrome V8 JavaScript engine, and added Wi-Fi hotspot tethering and Adobe Flash support. Flash that I had partially from the start with my phone but don’t care about (watching videos on a tiny screen? Really?). My HTC Hero could have used this update but no, I have to get a new Android phone so I can have the last updates and last apps. Or go through XDA.

So I said no thanks. Here’s the carrier update coming and I’m going to get this Samsung Omnia 7. BAM!

Nifty

// UI-UX

I was really interested into the new Metro UI. Now that I’m playing with it, I can tell that it’s fucking delicious, butter smooth and all. At first you think that it’s gadget, you think that it’s too edgy and unnecessary but everything makes sense after a while: all these words become data and you end up manipulating data instead of representation of data (icons and “app body”). With an accent on natural motion with less clicks and trees and sub-menus and dialog boxes, everything seems more… Relaxing and focused even if it sounds weird. And what I see works perfectly for business or personal use. Grids of icons don’t look mature or efficient anymore. Navigating on Windows Phone 7 feels like a background process more than any other UI I experienced before. You have to try it for a while to understand. It’s awesome.

Index to swipe. Thumb to get back. For everything.

It’s fast, integrated, minimalist, well done, data-driven: you don’t launch your sms app to type a text message, you swipe to your contact list where you can sms/email/facebook wall them in one click from the home screen if you pinned her/him. I could do that on my Android but it was so clunky and confusing. The button just for the camera –love it-, the left or right landscape mode with symbols within icons moving accordingly… They polished the shit out of their new platform. And Microsoft really has nailed and deeply thought something here with this fancy 2D layout. It’s so satisfying.

Now about the stuff lacking. Like being unable to update a status on FB/Twitter/SomeTrendySocialNetwork directly from the Me Tile. Everything is pretty perfect and they miss that for launch? Unbelievable. Or is it to favorite developers to sell apps? Or because –for example- the Twitter API is god-awful to deal with so that engineers pushed to wait before it’s sold to Facebook or Google? I guess it weighs in too. Microsoft took the liberty to create the little apps that count like the weather, translator or unit converter. They’re as polished as the OS. They didn’t want to allow the light smartphone user like me having to deal with shitty third-party apps for basics like that. It’s smart because it ruined my Android experience.

Bad: give me a tool-shortcut to take screenshots of this beautiful UI on my phone please. Let people spread the word MS.

// Marketplace

I think the trial mode –not really available on other mobile platforms- is a really good choice for both users and developers. It’s known that while Android is full of apps, nobody is making money. The growth in competition between developers is not going to ease this as we can see on the iPhone where a few make a lot and everybody else pretty much nothing.

For users on Android you have fugly apps with G banner ads everywhere. You don’t want to pay when it’s free and that well, it gets the job done. But you have to deal with all this web intrusion. On iPhone it’s hit or miss: you buy you’re happy, great. Otherwise you’re screwed and try to not tell anyone that you paid that corny Mahjong game five bucks.

Now on Windows Phone everybody’s happy in theory. I’m trying Wonder Reader these days and it works well. I’m willing to pay the developer for its work. I feel that it’s the most balanced relationship: trial without restrictions or ads, I like it I buy it, I don’t I uninstall.

There’s no “I’m trying to scam/spam you with a lite version and really try hard to sell the full version to your contact list” way of doing business. Since the trial model is proven and always has been strong in digital distribution businesses (ask Steam these days), I feel that it’s going to be the same for smartphones. Remember, apps are bought once and for all, if you don’t like it it’s like you just dropped money on the sidewalk. After a couple dozens or more of not expensive apps, people are going to really want to try before hitting the “buy” button.

The one in the middle is the official Android app. Looks designed by/for a 7 year old. 

About apps quality I think it’s already way better than Android. I already have all the apps I had on my Android: Flickr, Amazon, Foursquare, Wikipedia, Chuck Norris facts… Kidding. Though they’re available too. Some  apps are a bit slow but they’re all enjoyable to use, much more than their counterparts on Android and iPhone thanks to the sweet UI. I have experienced one app crash so far, a shady Flickr uploader (a Flickr API problem I suspect). Also, apps are all available in France too. For the life of me I couldn’t get the Android Amazon app even with my European unlocked phone, in Paris or L.A. And it happens a lot, even for free apps like Google Reader. So weird for Google the global company.

Bad: get the Zune Music out of the search please.

// Development

Maybe nobody has noticed but the pace at which people port iPhone games to Windows Phone is quite insane. Like ten times faster than to port on Android. Thanks to minimum specs and great dev tools and being a bit late to the party which is an advantage in this fast-moving hardware mobile market.

This tool is creepily efficient. It’s called Expression Blend 4.

Anyway I’m saying great dev tools but I should say really great. I did iPhone development saw Interface Builder Xcode, I tried Android and the AppInventor, Eclipse and all the endless annoying Android SDK installation…

Here you download a small exe file that gets everything you need at once and five minutes after finishing the download, you can fire the emulator and have an app page running. How about that.

It’s been a week that I use Expression Blend 4 and I already have two apps navigation flows running smoothly in the emulator. I just need transition effects, binding real data and I’m almost done with solid alpha beta versions.

That’s an amazing achievement and because MS is full of engineer once again, they communicate on the technology making this possible –Silverlight– when they should introduce people from a product point of view first. Microsoft can’t get PR right, we all know that.

I don’t want to use Silverlight for anything but for Windows Phone for now. But using it through Blend 4 is quite awesome I can’t deny. The product MS, the product attracts designers. Technology, not so much. Remember, the code is behind. (not saying that it’s less important, but it’s not the best bridge to consumers right?)

Bad: None really, absolutely no crash at all with the dev tools… I’d like to be going even faster to build a complete app with Blend 4. Enough about visual stuff like FXG import and Photoshop shit. Let designers build the entire app with real data (at least for the reading part) with a few wizards, give more pre-made transition effects templates etc Ease and fasten the real creation process, it helps so much to not only see the design but the data in it. But it’s just been 7 days with the tools so maybe everything is here and I have yet to find it. Also, make it easier to download tools updates please!

 

Overall:

Best mobile experience ever. Minor issues (OMG I don’t have copy&paste bullshit included) about to be fixed. I thought my camera button wasn’t working well but it’s actually because I’m lefty and leave my hand on the proximity detector. So it’s all good and works perfectly now.

Best dev tools ever. Really hard to not fall in love with them. Productivity and classiness to the max.

From my simple and honest experience, I don’t see how Nokia made a mistake. You should really try a Windows Phone if you’re about to get a smartphone. I’m totally serious.

I knew his death would trigger something or put me into another perspective.

Now I look at my legal family, dad mom and sister and I need to face it.

I just feel totally off them. Not like stranger off, more like alien off. I have this memory of an evening where for the first time I cranked up the volume of my radio to blast What’s Going On. Of course I didn’t know what it meant, I just loved the voice, the feeling and the music. My parents went apeshit telling me that we were not in the ghetto so I had to turn that down. Damn I was like eleven or twelve and never thought that I would remember this forever.

It was telling a lot about how I’m different from them  -they don’t care about music like I do and don’t know shit about black music at all, they’re talking about people of my color like they’re bad and just a little bit of excess is not allowed- but of course, I was just confused. Now I know why I’m still confused. Because I see how by having a typical stuck-up white intellectual family on one side, a really divided and discriminatory society on the other side, I feel so screwed. Neither of them are satisfying. And yet by my position, I have it all but. Fuck.

BlackGoldOfTheSun

I have to recognize that overall it always felt artificial with my parents, from the beginning. Like an industry contract: you help me out in life, I’m a good son to you. Nothing too personal, just business. I mean, it started with them coming to visit me, offering me presents at my foster family house and when you’re a kid you go where you can have more of these. I call that business. Then I just learned and soaked up knowledge they were giving me like a sponge. Looking back on it , that’s all I did, sharing emotions, love was more than rare despite trying and create awkardness. It’s hard to admit it and I’m sure they would be sad but hey, letting me do what I wanted to do without support, like an obligation they have to fulfill, does that too. That’s ok.

I have a connection with my foster family that looks like the “default family connection”, like most of you have. Because I grew up there I guess. It feels natural. Despite the same physical differences I feel connected in a way that I have never been able to reproduce with my parents. I tried, I hoped, it was bullshit. You don’t really create that, it exists or it doesn’t.

They warn people that old –that is, any baby after 12 months- adopted child integration into a family is complicated. Since the beginning I feel being a character, playing a role. For a long time I thought it was going on pretty well and felt real but it honestly never felt true. There was a big “…and scene” moment when I was at last, alone. 25 years like that.

What is left when you don’t connect at all emotionally with your family? What’s like to talk about black hair with your black dad? Damn I wish I knew. It’s terrible when people including the closest are both pointing at me as black while saying I am not black because I don’t act like a black dude kind of sending the message that I’m neither black or white and so I don’t belong anywhere. Guys, I am black, dark skinned or chocolate if you want. Visually I can’t hide it, hence the classic “where you’re from? I mean, ethnically” I get all the time in France la Rude. Otherwise I’m just Harold. I don’t fit any of your boxes. Even when I want it.

The terrible under representation of black people in circles I’ve been involved in didn’t help feeling comfortable. Don’t laugh at it, a lot of white people get totally depressed living in Japan and I remember this black Katrina refugee sent to Utah, 1.4% of black people there (compared to 12.9% nationwide). She went crazy. Well I’m doing that since day one so in some way it’s easier but it’s also much heavier. I grew up being the 1% black stat and when I saw a lot more black people I was twenty something and they were friggin’ undereducated 99% of the time. France, US it’s all bad. WTF am I supposed to do with that. It feels like it pushes me into craziness: being all the time the exception and wanting to be more in the pack –but which one?- while still wanting to be different because it’s a positive value. Often. But not too much? How much then? I’m confused.

Recently in the past few years, it feels too much. Probably because of the depressing state of work and business in France in which I sank myself in for poor benefits but anyway. I can’t take looks people are giving at my family and me when we hang out in public. I can’t look at my parents, sister, in the eyes anymore. I kind of don’t want to see the extended family despite the fact that I miss them a bit but man in the south they don’t like guys like me and I still have painful memories of escaping looks when I was taking pictures with my beautiful deep blue eyed white cousin. I can’t take that shit anymore, having to explain how the fuck I am related to him her or them.

It’s easier to connect with friends because the relationship“doesn’t have to be”. No question asked. It’s easier with women because they deeply know even if they say that they don’t, what discrimination and living in a world that looks ok but is totally fucked up are. It’s easier with people who happened to have a not so conventional personal life. But even in these cases, I’m  dealing with my quite unique paradigm which draws me away from everyone.

I guess that’s why I appreciate so much to be alone, to be myself by myself. I worked on that, how to be happy alone since forever. I’m good at it now, thanks to OCPD tendencies, music and games. Oh and the internet.

And that’s also why I love so much improvisation: a set of rules and total freedom around it. No judgment, no why, it’s on the fly. Can’t stop won’t stop. It’s also one of the rare, universally appreciated skill.

That’s what I always did. And that’s probably what I’ll always do.

Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one’s immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or new ways to act.

It’s maybe because my not-so-private life is shacking or because there are too much networks to follow at the same time but I feel that all these services offered for free in exchange of scanning our lives are going to witness a slow down in registration. So much privacy issues. But yes, I just signed up for Quora. <sigh>

A lot of services get me with stats. From views to plays to followers, of course it’s addicting. But sometimes it just feels so useless. The real value of networks is what I get from people and what I share. It will never change.

It’s amazing how a blog, on a server you rent, feels so much more cozy and at home than Facebook despite the fact that both are equally public. Except that Facebook technically does own what I share where on my blog, search engines give access to it and that’s it.

So even if this is kind of true, I guess I will do it over and over. Blogging freely.

PS: the import closed all the comments, sorry. Also, you might need to update your rss with the same address as before, it has to be done, sorry for the inconvenience. The feed address: http://har0ld.com/playground/feed

The kind of day you never forget.

Of course we were late for the ceremony. Searching for parking when people were entering the church. Being at the door away from the family and the coffin felt so painful. I am part of this family too, I should be there. I close my eyes and try to get the anxiety away, listening to the church dude. “He’s been living here for 41 years” 10 years later I was a baby in his life. “He was involved in different local organizations”. I can see him play petanque, getting ready to go hunting or fishing, his perfectly organized workshop. “He was in pain, which reminds us of Jesus on the cross”.

What the fuck is that. I forgot about that disgustingly lame behavior. Fucking church  you ruined it I fucking hate you.

Then I am not listening anymore, so angry (and then you ask money huh? I hate you church). Before the incense thing someone from the family sees me and gets me a place with everybody in front. Bursting in tears seeing her and others, I feel so embarrassed. After all I am the only black man in this all white crowded church. But one of the closest person of the dead. It’s kind of overwhelming.

We all follow the coffin outside. I say hello to everyone, some I had never seen again since being in my “current” family 25 years ago. My dad is chatting a little bit with her but he’s keeping it simple. After all he barely knows more than my foster parents which is a number reduced to one now.

We’re the first at the house. She arrives, I think she looks amazingly kind and pure. Exhausted too. Quickly everybody is here in the living room, starting to put on the buffet on the table. Smiles, tears, everybody is here and it’s beautiful and warm. But it’s also unbearably awkward with my dad, the stranger to whom no one talks to almost. He’s in the corner, sitting down with a plate I made for him and as pretty much all day, I can’t look in his eyes at all. I can sense that everybody is like “keep the bad language down, there’s Harold’s dad listening what would he think then huh?”. I feel bad for him. I feel bad too.

I just try to get to chat a bit with everybody, following cigarette breaks outside, getting back for more coffee to fight the jet lag and the cold thick fog of the afternoon. As much fog outside and inside my head.

It’s 2pm, the family leaves for the crematory later and while I would love to join, we have some road to hit before the Parisian traffic. It’s like I’m staying 5 minutes saying we’re leaving and doing nothing, just enjoying to have them all around me. I feel so lucky and proud. They say they put a picture of me in the coffin too. Humanity at its roots. For what it’s worth…

I think the hardest part is to stretch out my mind in order to include everyone I love. So many different worlds, so many differences, so many unique connections when in some ways, I’d like to be in a “normal“ situation with “normal” connections.

What “normal” is, what family, love, friends are. Sometimes I don’t fucking know. I just freeze.

What a crazy year.

It feels even more crazy by standing here, between Christmas and New Year’s Eve in underwear in sunny Los Angeles when I always been calling names the lack of sky in Paris and the fucking cold weather.

I’ve been busy transferring at last this blog to a WordPress engine on a new server. Nothing should change for you but I’ll let you know if it does.

–insert paragraph about how it’s pretty complicated to move 1,000 posts from Windows Server to Apache and how I did it all by myself with the help of the interweb-

Also these Steam sales are insanely satisfying. I hope Valve will release the numbers because they must be the best ever.

But back to these crazy twelve months. I think I got enough emotions and ideas to create and build stuff for the next decade.

Peace out, reader. And have an outstanding next year.

There’s so much going on about Wikileaks. It was going great, bringing transparence through a thick coat of BS, revealing what we could guess or what we were totally suspecting. It was nice in terms of public image for the White Knight.

Obviously with Julian Assange’s sexual assault charge it’s less the case. We don’t know everything yet but it appears that the Whitemare like Jon Stewart called him really did some bad things. The all “sex by surprise” thing.

I don’t know what is going to happen with his arrest but the fact that a lot of people find normal that once you say yes to have sex automatically means that whatever happens after saying no is invalid ,really confuses me. The dude has to finish is that it? Seriously, WTF.

The thing is if Julian had been a bit more of a gentleman or let’s say if he hadn’t been a complete douche on a booty call, Wikileaks and him would be in a very different –and I guess better- situation right now.

Bummer.

People are not stupid.

First, we always say “never underestimate your enemy/opponent” but we’re still so eager to consider that a vast majority of people are dumb? It doesn’t make sense and I always had a hard time to deal with this stereotype. And something is always going to remind me that now.

It was two years ago or so, I was visiting my foster parents in the countryside. One of my foster dad’s friend was coming over. He’s a farmer, he looks like a farmer, smells like a farmer and never drinks water if you know what I mean. I swear you would think he’s straight out of the Middle Age with his tanned face and bad teeth (for the ones still here).

Anyway, he’s having his glass of Pastis 51 (sans water) and we’re chatting briefly, I’m saying that I’m about to go for the first time in the US. He’s looking at me, his iced-blue eyes wide open.

And there, I’m an asshole. I think that I made him dream, I think that he obviously never left the region in more than sixty years, maybe went to Paris.

He’s telling me that he’s been to Chicago once. I’m like, maybe a trip to see a John Deere’s convention. But he’s explaining to me that he went there to bail out a cousin, who had been in jail after some serious problems with these people. So he had to bail him out, drive him back in Chicago, deal with the lawyer…

I know. I was amazed in every way. That he could do that, amazed at how I felt superior and so shitty so rapidly there after.

I was happy. Not just for the slap in my ego’s shitface, but simply because it gives hope and trust that people are capable. People are capable and not dumb. They learn.

After they know, it’s all about persistence.