Welcome to this week’s casual kōrero thread!
This post will be pinned in this community so you can always find it, and will stay for about a week until replaced by the next one.
It’s for talking about anything that might not justify a full post. For example:
- Something interesting that happened to you
- Something humourous that happened to you
- Something frustrating that happened to you
- A quick question
- A request for recommendations
- Pictures of your pet
- A picture of a cloud that kind of looks like an elephant
- Anything else, there are no rules (except the rule)
So how’s it going?
Finally got annoyed enough with google at a glance and it’s inaccurate weather that I downloaded Nova launcher so I could banish the widget. I hadn’t bothered before because the latest Android versions had most of the same functionality
I’m a weirdo and so I use a launcher called KISS. There are different options but how I have it set up, it’s mostly a clear screen except a search bar at the bottom with some favourites pinned above it. Then if you tap the search bar, it fills the screen with a list of the most commonly used apps. Or you can tap a button on the side of the search bar to see all apps, or start typing the app you want.
I also have gestures set up, so I swipe different directions on that blank home screen to open different apps.
I was previously using Pie Launcher, where there are no apps or widgets on your screen until you tap and hold and a circle of your pinned apps appear, then you swipe to the one you want to open. KISS was a bit less frustrating for others to use, but still a bit haha.
I love it though. For a long time I had the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day on my wallpaper, so having a clean home page meant I could see the picture really well.
That sounds fun actually.
I just have some folders with frequently used stuff, and one whole screen devoted to a non crap weather widget (Weawow) a search widget, and Agenda Widget.
I use persistent notifications for a few things, and occasionally apps get promoted to the home screen temporary, for example when I go to the USA in September I’ll dig up the airnz app out of the app drawer.
Some of that’s general laziness but also at some point I just lost interest in customisation for the sake of customisation and I tend to only go looking for options when I’m annoyed with something or if the amount of slack I can gain from customising will outweigh the effort.
I had the same background picture for like 6 years. Got bored enough during lockdown that I changed it, but then had to redo my colour and icon scheme.
I had the same background picture on my phone for about the same amount of time, whenever I tried to change it, it didn’t feel like my phone anymore.
That phone still has the background picture, but I got a new one last Christmas and now that one has become the phone for playing podcasts for the kids (and occasionally Minecraft).
Oh wow, I forgot about APOD!
I loved some of their colourised nebula images
Yeah lots of cool stuff. You can use Muzei and the Muzei APOD plugin to automatically change your background each day.
What would your ideal hold ‘music’ be?
I’ve always hated these things and think music is a terrible choice as it can only ever reinforce the ‘middle of the road’ tastes (something I have big problems with in NZ).
But the ringer sound just reduces your brain to mush after a few minutes as well…
Would silence work, with the occasional ‘you’re _n_th in the queue’ update? I think that’s my best choice
Not silence, then people will think they got cut off.
Ambient and soothing sounds. Like waves on a beach or something.
Yes! Beach waves and bird noises or something? Sounds great!
Probably lofi or classical music but silence also works well.
I like music. You can put the phone down and still hear the constant “still on hold” sound, when it stops you know it’s being answered.
Given to me it’s a tool for that purpose, the actual music doesn’t really matter as long as it’s constant and lound enough. Probably best not to be any music I like, I’m never waiting on hold for good reasons so best not to associate songs I like with a bad experience.
I hate how the music gets stuck in my head or has associations I’d rather not mix with my displeasure when dealing with.
That and my cynical view of aussie companies trying to look local using kiwi music (while the call taker is wherever is cheapest)
Thanks to 2degrees broadband call centre wait times, I can not listen to Radioactive by Imagine Dragons without becoming annoyed.
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Does anyone know what happened to kbin.social its been down for weeks and im missing my UFC threads.
After a lot of research I can say no one knows, Ernest who runs and develops it hasn’t been heard from, and it may well be dead. Ernest had health issues he talked about last year, and there has been no activity on the Kbin code since last year. No one else has access to do anything with the site. Many people are giving up.
Were the UFC threads specifically on kbin.social? Or just something you accessed through Kbin? A team forked (copied) the code and have been developing Mbin as an alternative to Kbin. You can see servers here, including many that used to run Kbin. That won’t help if the UFC stuff was in kbin.social magazines, though. I didn’t work out where the UFC content came from.
It was a community on kbin social but i think someone made a Lemmy community for mma to replace it.
Hmm I can see [email protected] but it’s not very active. Maybe you can change that!
Yeah UFC cards have been very shit lately so maybe it can be revived once a good card is put on.
Went to see Twisters. Needs more tornado, less pointless romance.
Seems to be getting decent reviews. Was the plot decent?
Depends on what you consider decent. Plucky science girl has bad tornado experience, 5 years later she returns at the behest of an old friend. She’s there to science but hello loud but attractive rival storm chaser. The plot you would expect from this set-up ensues.
Ah right. Standard hollywood plot applied to a twister theme. Enjoyable enough if you’re in the right mood but nothing special and nothing ground breaking.
It really needed like 30% more tornado and better cinematography. Oklahoma big sky did not get the screen time it could have had…
OK yeah if you’re gonna spend $150M making a film about tornados, I’d better not leave wishing I’d seen more tornadoes.
I’ve been looking at our electricity usage and discovered our meter stopped reporting it’s usage a few months ago - that really skews things!
I chucked in a manual reading which wasn’t too far off their estimate, but I’m irked that ‘something’ has stopped talking. Gave it a few pokes to see but no new data. On the ph to provider now, jooyyyeeee. Powershop really do have some strangely funky hold music, it’s quite enjoyable - pity it’s mono and basically 8kHz or whatever the phone lines do to muddy everything!
Also, is it just me or have many of the gentailers stopped publishing their actual rates / seeking new customers?
My son bought a cold home last week which is working it’s way through the house. Sucks…
A few years back we would jump broadband and power companies every 12 months because there were always great signup deals. These days it’s really hard to find great deals! Plus the move to having plans between providers all slightly different so you can’t directly compare them.
We also have a cold going through the house. My brain hasn’t been working since last week so I’m guessing my body is fighting (and maybe losing) a battle against the cold.
