I am not good with games especially on a phone. But since I have got loads of time to kill waiting for my flight, I decided to give this one a try.
Let’s see how long I can play. I am sure I will switch to my kindle after a few minutes.
Tag: apps
Pairing
I was telling you recently about how my iPad had some audio troubles and I have almost stopped using it. When I was back from the service center, I got myself thinking. I am able to use my Wii console to watch my Netflix (I have disabled my set top box account so no more TV). People must have had some solutions already available to be able to stream my contents from my iPad to the TV. So I checked out the free apps that are available on the console and saw that YouTube was available. I downloaded it. But it was asking me to login. So I checked online if there was a way and voila! there is was. Its like the Bluetooth pairing. You open the YouTube app on the Wii console, go to the settings and get the pairing code. Open the YouTube app on your phone or iPad, go to the settings and click on the Connect to TV option and enter the pairing code and after that you can use your Wii Console, and in turn your TV, as your screen. I was able to use that and play one of my saved videos for workout. It was cool.
Now, wouldn’t it just be easy to login to my YouTube account on Wii Console and go from there? It would but the keyboard typing is too difficult in that and would take me a long time to get to a YouTube video I am looking for. Using my iPad or my smart phone to type and get the video is quite faster. Now I have to check if I can do the same with my Skype. That would be amazing 😉
Article Reference: Use Any Smartphone to Remotely Control YouTube on a Computer
Post for this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt.
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “screen.” Use it any way you’d like. Enjoy!
Cars and games
I almost forget that I own an iPad. Because ever since the speaker stopped working all of a sudden (the voice is very very feeble) , I haven’t been using it for my Skype calls. And since Kindle replaced my iPad as my reading device (I did use my iPad for almost 3/4 years as my reading device) I hardly find any use for it. But the only ones who have been using it are my nieces and nephew whenever they visit me or I visit them. Recently when I took it to a service center to see if they can fix the speaker, which apparently they cannot and suggested me to do exchange it for a latest version…..No, Thanks!, I realized that most of the apps that are there in the iPad are all games and none of which I play. I am not into games. I don’t have any game on my phone. I did install some during our Bali and Cambodia trip but those were mostly puzzles and were used only in groups. When I took stock of the games on the iPad I was surprised to the see the number of games related to Cars. Yes, those belong to my nephew.
I don’t know what I expected from the kid who has this collection at his home.
Can you count the number of cars in this photograph? And this is just a small set of the ones he owns. My sister didn’t find a big enough table to display the whole set. 🙄
I can’t wait for him to come visit me next weekend and he has already told me that he wanted a Thomas and Friends set and like a good aunt I have got it ready for him 😉
Nope, that monster is not in my car.
For almost a week, one of the news that is making waves is Pokemon Go. Everytime I see a news headlines with that word, I wonder what the hell it is all about. I remember hearing about Pokemon and I thought that was a cartoon character in a TV series. At least, that is the extent of my knowledge about Pokemon. Remember, I am neither a comic book nerd nor a gaming person. And I don’t collect information in my head just because. So yeah, I have no clue about the game or the TV series or whatever that is. Finally after seeing so many news healines going around, I went and checked what Pokemon Go was all about.
Augmented Reality? Really? Not that I have any problems with it. It is all cool, but I am not sure about people going around trying to catch Pokemon’s ( I sincerely hope that is what they are trying to do) albeit it is still on their phones even though the environment is close to the real world (because it is the real world reflected on the game). Technically, it is an awesome thing. Once in place it will pave way for lot of such stuff (more so than what is has already in that area). Remember touch screens? I remember my mom trying so hard to play Tetris (that was the only purpose of her having a phone other than to make or receive a call which we had taught her to do) in the keypad based phone. Now with her smart touch screen based phone she plays Subway Surfers, Temple Run, Angry Birds and may be some Bubble Shooting. Now I am worried about her finding out about this game or worse, my niece or nephew learning about it from my brother and teaching my mom. With her bad knee and ankle along with the already very bad back, I don’t want her roaming around the house (since she can hardly go out for a longer period of time on her own) trying to catch Pokemon’s. Even though it might be a fun thing to watch her learn it (she is very cute when she tries and eventually learns stuff. She can now WhatsApp very well, but that took her an year) I don’t want to take risks.
Also what about the security risks? I assume it (the game) uses almost all the permissions that it can avail from your phone. Isn’t that huge security risk? I am not very good with security details and have always found it hard to comprehend other than the basics of it. I have totally nothing against the game but am worried about this huge popularity of it and its negative effects on the day today life. That is all. I hardly play any game on my phone so this game won’t change anything for me but sometimes we have to wear the safety gears like helmets or seat belts not because we are being reckless drivers but someone else might be.
As if it wasn’t already bad enough earlier with people walking around looking at their phones and crashing into the traffic, now I have to pray that they don’t see Pokemon’s in the middle of the traffic or worse on the top of my car or worse inside it. 🙄 Can we develop an app or a game to revolutionize humanity instead?
What’s that app?
I ain’t on Facebook, irrespective of the fact that I am there as part of my friend’s posts, but then since I ain’t being tagged and for the fact that I don’t have an account over there (pseudo or not) I can claim that I am not there, yet (even in spite of being pressured a lot recently). But ever since I joined gym last year, I am on Whatsapp (even when I had my old phone with access to very less data using 2G) because the timings or any updates to my classes were done through Whatsapp. I am not fond of texting and try to avoid it as much as possible. That in turn means that I don’t take part in the Whatsapp conversations unless and otherwise it is necessary.
I literally groaned my frustration when my brother created a Family Whatsapp group and included all of my family members (yup, the only one who was left was my Mom who got an Android phone as a gift from my brother for her birthday last year and he set it up for her with an email account and loaded it with enough games for her to spend her free time). My brother is too much into all these social media stuff. He is the one who introduced me to blogging (even though he doesn’t do it anymore) and I will be grateful for that. But he texts too much for my comfort. But imagine my surprise when my sister also gets a little bit more involved in texting in Whatsapp, sharing the photos of kids, their daily activities, their fights, normal chit chat of the day and this inspite of them being in the same town and much closer to each other. No wonder my dad went running for the hills in a day or two , in other words , it means he left the group 😉 My mom is still figuring stuff out and I haven’t spoken to her yet on this to get her feedback on her view of this whole new text world. So yeah, suddenly everyone is on Whatsapp (well because every one has a phone now, duh!) irrespective of whether they are on Facebook or not. There are lots and lots of groups created to communicate (my brother told me that there is a 60+ member group he is part of , which consists of members of a whole village, imagine that), people share forwards and all those stuff they did earlier through FB using Whatsapp groups.
And not to mention the famous blueticks and the set of jokes and repercussions that it triggered when that got enabled. Blueticks should be used only when you really need to know if the other person received the message or not and not for why they haven’t replied. If you are able to disassociate receiving and replying you can live in peace with it. I just don’t care about it, blue or gray. What triggered this rant like post on Whatsapp ? Well this article, where they were talking about the growing numbers in Whatsapp. If every single person who has a phone and with the data getting cheaper (comparatively) start using Whatsapp instead of texting over Facebook it is obvious the numbers will grow exponentially. And I know I am already part of that when I got added to the Family group in Whatsapp. And I am already considering the mute option on them.
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