An embarrassing surfeit of forward

I celebrate 50 years of computer use this year. In all that time of dealing with computer character sets I and my fellow computer users have been using the word 'slash' for the '/' character, technically a solidus, and a very ancient character from ancient Rome. We can blame Microsoft for widening the use of the backslash character '\' in the 1980s for DOS file paths although backslash itself dates from the 1960s.

For a couple of decades happy computer users in the main used slash and backslash as the common names for the two characters. Then in the late 1990s, as web page addresses that use slashes became popular, TV announcers took it upon themselves to start using the term 'forward slash' for '/' much to my extreme annoyance. I would dearly love to know who in the TV industry perpetrated this calumny that sadly persists to this day showing no sign of lessening.

How many millions nay billions of surplus uses of 'forward' have been forced on TV viewers in the last two decades? Let us all agree to ban 'forward slashes' and drop the 'forward'.

Liquid foods

At Barcamp Gold Coast this morning I attended a talk about liquid food typified by the well-known solvent. When your nutrition is in balance there is a perceptible increase in your physical feeling of wellbeing which leads to a more contented life.

The speaker Mike Ando freely admitted though that the number one benefit of liquid foods is the saving of time. Giving the example of two liquid meals a day this can amount to almost a month of full-time work each year.

This was definitely food for thought!

I later tried a liquid food prepared by the speaker with a chocolate flavour. The base taste of liquid fibre was improved by the chocolate. I found the very small cup remarkably filling, although I had just consumed a large cookie. I will definitely be checking out the recipes for liquid foods at http://diy.soylent.me/

Breaking the Apple/Telstra Nexus

Like many of my friends and colleagues over the last 7 years I used iPhones 3, 4 and 5 on Telstra 24-month plans with varying upfront payments. iPhones 3 and 4 suffered from the barely tolerable intermittent home button problem and iPhone 5 from the increasingly intolerable battery fail problem.

During my iPhone 5 ownership it became clear that Android and Android phones can match and sometimes exceed the iPhone performance. As well my average of 50 minutes of calls and 20 SMS messages per month meant I was significantly overpaying in my $55-70/month Telstra plans, and had to live with a meagre 1 GB of monthly data - very restricting. When Telstra's hugely expensive iPhone 6 plans were announced it was time to search for much better value for money. I was also determined never to be manacled to a 24-month contract again which meant the upfront purchase of an unlocked phone.

I researched iPhone 6 Plus equivalents (from among Samsung, Google, HTC, Sony, Motorola) and eventually settled on a 16 GB LG G3 which has equal or superior hardware specifications. The screen resolution, SD card and camera are the standouts for me. Since I keep the vast majority of my content in the cloud I always choose the phone with the lowest memory (and lowest price). With iPhones 3 and 4 this worked well but the Apple faux pas with the memory-hungry iOS 8 upgrade meant I had to delete some stuff from the iPhone 5 - really annoying.

The outright purchase price of my LG G3 was $499 as opposed to $969 for the iPhone 6 Plus (Kogan prices). Then it needed a shop around for pay-as-you-go bring your own phone plans which can be cancelled in any month. All major carriers and MVNOs offer prepaid plans. I looked at Telstra, Optus, Vodafone, Amaysim (used for my mobile hotspots), Aldimobile and others. My phone usage is data heavy and voice/SMS light. I effectively use it as a handheld device for accessing Internet services like email, web, news, social media, Skype and a big range of other services. Most prepaid plans emphasize voice/SMS with pitiable data allowances.

I eventually settled on the 4G Spintel service (uses Optus) shown on the left where you can choose the mix of voice, text and data to suit your needs.  Compare the $86/month Telstra iPhone 6 Plus plan which, had I followed the herd, I might be using now. It allows $550 voice, unlimited text and 1 GB data - unsuitable for my needs. The relative costs over 24 months are:

After 9 months I will be ahead in expenditure with the option to switch to a new phone and/or a new carrier. The phone came with Android 4.4 but was updated over the air just after Christmas to Android 5.0 Lollipop which was welcome.

I am 3 months along this trajectory, very much enjoying the phone and thinking of lowering my monthly cost as I predicted I am using only about 15% of my voice minutes and about 10% of my SMS. Typically using the phone's hotspot from other devices in the last days of the month I have been consuming just over 90% of my data. I would like more data but after 2.5 GB Spintel charges $15/GB or part thereof. I prefer to wait until later in the year when my second choice carrier Amaysim will have 4G and their $44/month includes 5 GB data with unlimited voice and SMS.

Yes, there are downsides. Five weeks of my trial have been in Tasmania where Optus signal very occasionally is absent (that can also happen with Telstra although rarely). The G3 has no fingerprint reader but I find the knock code feature a great substitute.

I am extremely happy and my initial nervousness with adopting Spintel has been completely dispelled. Therefore I thoroughly recommend my LG G3/Spintel combination.