gifly delights

[dragonlady7]

making, help request

via https://ift.tt/3mLUlz2

So I did finally get my new phone.

In the meantime Mom had given me her old phone to use, a Samsung something or other with a curved screen that she’d stopped using when Dad died, instead taking over his phone because the battery on his was better.

I almost immediately discovered that part of the reason for her battery problem was that she had not understood Chrome’s tabs feature, and so had opened a new tab every time she used the browser, meaning every website she had ever visited was still open in a tab. I closed untold numbers of tabs before I discovered the ‘close all tabs’ button, and then closed 75 at one go.

(Mom, your google searches are adorable. And usually she’s quite good at technology, but if you’re not used to the concept of browser tabs, it’s easy enough to overlook. I showed her and she was horrified and immediately closed all the tabs on her current phone, and won’t have that problem anymore.)

So I found the phone to have a perfectly adequate battery life, and so today I am going to mail it to the Farm-fam so they can use it to replace the elderly phone they use for their market cash register, which by now has a battery life in tens of minutes. (Not very many tens of minutes.)

The new phone is…. vast. I got a Google Pixel 5a, because I was looking at older models and they all cost almost as much as the newer one, and I decided I didn’t want the 5, I don’t remember why now, and some reviews said the 5a was bigger and I was like oh I don’t need big, but, I don’t mind big, so I looked and was like oh that’s not that big, and then I got it and was like “oh that’s not so big it’s fine” and then I realized I was comparing the naked phone to the existing phone in its case.

Anyway then I put it in its case and. Well. Listen. I could have bought an eco-friendly case, or a case an artist had designed, or something, but I uh. I didn’t do that. I bought… well… cut for photo, if this works, and a request for help if I’ve got any whippersnappers on here who know about these things. [image: image]

a case with moving glitter in it, because I am eight years old.

[Image description: a gif of my hand moving a large but not ridiculous phone, showing the back of it with silver holographic glitter cascading in front of the black surface of the phone.]

Anyway. Listen it’s fine, that’s not even the biggest phone I’ve had.

But. This leads me to another point.

As I was using Mom’s old phone for the last time noticed that it could save videos as gifs, and thought, oh! how cool! I’d use that– not all the time, but occasionally!!! and so on my new phone I looked for that feature and… no. Googling shows me various times it has been a thing a phone on this operating system could do, but it is not a thing natively in the camera app on this Pixel the way it was on Mom’s Samsung. Objectively in all other ways this new phone is superior– multiple camera lenses, all these features I want– and ostensibly you can create a gif in Gboard (which I have)– well you could in this article from 2018, but that button’s not there now. Oh you can create a gif in Google Photos (which I use)– oh, that button’s not there now. What the fuck, how can I find a current explanation of this, or do I have to download some shady shit from the app store??? This is not rocket science, and for a thing I expect I will use 1) primarily on Discord and Tumblr, and 2) like once every six months or so, I don’t want to devote this much effort. But I want to do it!!!

So anyway. Any help is appreciated. shakes cane etcetera

Well anyway that’s my new phone. It’s not… huge but it’s not really a sensible size either. Fortunately I don’t need it to be any particular size. I have to use it two-handed though. Oh maybe I should see if I can get one of those finger straps through the holes of the case, that might be a good idea. It’s so… chunky.

In other personal news, I have a couple of weeks off from traveling to the farm and I have decided to teach myself woodcarving so like wish me luck. I bought cutproof gloves, we’ll see if I lose any fingers.

Of course I’ve also been trying to write, after a couple of weeks of just not having any time, and it’s been– well I had to reread a bunch of my earlier published things to figure out where to tie things in and boy that’s– well. I like what I wrote but the author’s notes sometimes slap me in the face. 2020/21 was a bummer guys. (Your picture was not posted)

Comments

[oracne]

A friend of mine does whittling, and finds it very soothing. All her fingers are still intact.