Samsung 700T Windows 8 Tablet Review

A few weeks ago I purchased this device from a coworker, used. He probably paid around $1400 for it, I got it at around 50% off; he was upgrading to something that was more “artist-techy”.

I love it.

It does have its problems. I’ll get to those in a bit. However, here’s how it does work for me:

It is a full laptop. Doing class work for TeamTreeHouse.com? Not a problem. My version:
- i5 processor
- 120G SSD (fast!)
- 4G of Ram
The display is a wide-screen format, so when watching movies on Netflix, they appear larger than on the iPad (which is a 4:3 form factor, thus the movie must be shrunk more)
When using the supplied pen, thanks to near field technology, I can actually hover separately from a click, which is a distinction I do need to make in a lot of my work.
The Keyboard that it attaches to, I like the feel of. There’s a nice click resistance to the keys, and they are spaced nicely; the buttons make sense.
When using the keyboard, the keyboard works as a stand for the tablet; I do not need to prop the tablet up separately.
A full 1080 display for All the Pixels.
Fully works as a RDP Terminal into work.
I am loving the touch. There are many things which I used to use mouse or keyboard for, that I now find myself doing with touch – such as, scrolling, clicking into text fields, zooming in to get a good look at something.
- There is a built in stylus that becomes pretty handy when I need to get hi-res with the touch.
Decent battery life. Well, for me, that means >= 2 hours. For others, that would be a joke. Right now its saying 5 hours left, but I wouldn’t trust that.
I did not have much trouble undertanding the gestures. They do make more sense with touch than with a mouse. However, I had also played with windows 8 back in the RTM timeframe, so I had a head start.

Comparing it to my iPad:

I am not afraid to create. Like, for example, writing this blog post. I would not try to do it on the iPad. It might be possible.. but little things like, how do I get a picture of my cat into the blog post, would be vexing.
I already mentioned the superior screen for watching movies.
The iPad can kinda-sorta multitask.. but lets face it, when its trying to load a web page, you do not jump away to a different program. This one – not a problem. Something taking too long, run a different app, no big deal.
The iPad does have (much) better battery life. I don’t even think about charging it except maybe once a week. This one, I charge daily.

Caveats:

Something is broken in Chrome. I cannot use touch to do most things, in chrome, on this laptop. I can use hover-and-click via a near-field pen. I do not have the same problems with FireFox or IE, amazingly. Several other folks have reported this problem. I find this annoying, as my “default” setup is to use Chrome for personal stuff, Firefox for work stuff, and IE as the “test” browser for whatever website I’m working on. I’ll probably start using IE as the personal browser on this tablet.
I do use it more as a laptop and less as a tablet. When I enter tablet-world, I find that most of the apps are less-than. For example: What, no official YouTube app? I had to download MegaTube instead. Browsing for interesting apps in the Windows Store is a joke.
The high-resolution screen combined with a small screen = very small and hard to read stuff, sometimes. I’ve had to increase font sizes. Then again, I am also getting older. 🙂

If things go as planned, I should start doing some python or Ruby coding on this device; might even install the Visual Studio Express stuff. That will be another report.

I have also not yet used the USB ports, or the Micro-SD card reader, or the Mini-HDMI port. I assume they will work correctly when I get around to using them.

I will leave you with some artwork I created using FreshPaint:

Code Louisville 2.0, Shelving Various Things, New Tech

Tonight was my first night of mentoring at Code Louisville 2.0. I don’t know if I’d mentioned it before; I volunteered to be a mentor in a program that the city is putting together. The City’s viewpoint is, we need more skilled IT people (there’s a shortage). My viewpoint is, I get to help somebody who wants to learn, to learn something, is good with me.

It went pretty well. The program is using Treehouse for the source of instruction; the Louisville Free Public Library made a deal with Treehouse to make it available to all library patrons. The quality of the instruction is pretty decent, and it takes the stress off me for being a source of instruction. Instead, i just need to share my experience with folks. Some of them are right at the level of the instruction, some are much more advanced. It keeps it interesting.

To keep the mentoring / labs interesting, I’m trying to do a mini version of a standup at the start, and then circulate amongst everybody to keep things personal. I’m trying to keep a live document editable by all going as class notes / links / what did we decide. I hope its a good example for them, of how to use technology to collaborate.

As a result, though, I’ve had to shelve my architecture build. I simply don’t have the 4-6 hours it would take for me to go to LVL1 and print out the 3D parts of my house model. Each part. Times 8 parts. Times 4 levels. Without being a hog.

My current geeky project inventory:

A family project: old 35mm slides converted into slideshow project for delivery at Thanksgiving (where I’ll record everybody’s commentary about what the slides were about)
- I need to find decent screencast recording software that will let me create a DVD later. I think I’ll be trying SnagIt.
- Planning on using Picasa as the presentation vehicle. My wife has already scanned in all the slides from the negatives.
One more birthday song, for my stepson, coming up in December
One last soccer banquet slideshow, as requested by one of the kids I know. He’s a good kid, and yes, I’d be honored. To be delivered probably late November or early December, i don’t know yet.

I’ve also had an infusion of new tech into my life:

A Samsung 700T that I got off a co-worker at about 50% of the list price. This is a Windows 8.1 (thanks Anthony!) tablet device with a keyboard that makes it pass off as a laptop pretty well. I’m writing this blog post on it. However, while in tablet mode, the near field pen thingy works perfectly. It even does the “hover” thing that mice do, that I really miss on the Apple. And I’m getting used to the flexibility of reaching up and touching instead of trying to force the mouse to get to a certain spot on the screen.
A whole house water pressure regulator to cap water pressure at 75 psi. What was happening was spikes up to the 150’s, which caused the pressure relief valve on the tankless water heater to dump scalding hot water onto the concrete basement floor.

Running wise, I (barely) ran my last half marathon of 2013 (time: 2h48m). Due to a calf injury, i could not train much – my longest run the month prior was 5.5 miles – but thanks to Mr. Calvin Spears of Occupational Kinetics, I got put back together. They also used a cool app – it seemed to be called SparkLines, but i can’t find it anywhere – to measure me while I was running, and detect that my form is lop sided when I’m in my right foot. Good stuff to know. They also say they can make me faster.

My running schedule is currently clear of all races. I intend to sign up for the Polar Express series (3k, 4k, 4mi) which runs Dec-Jan-Feb, as a way to have a goal to stay in shape over winter.

First Foam-Core Build!

Doing a 45 degree bevel edge is hard and sloppy. Easier to go with two separate pieces and miter them. (If those are even the correct words)
Gluerunner is a short term solution. Really need pins to hold things together, especially around large empty spaces like doors at the edge of a wall.
I don’t have fine motor skills.. the model is very awkward for me to work with. AND the furniture doesn’t stay put yet.. would need some kind of silly putty sticky rubber goo ball tacky .. yes, that’s what it was called. tack.
I don’t think I like it enough to proceed with this medium.

I think I am going to go for a 3D print of the walls for the next iteration. I need to learn how to

slice up the solid so that I have 4” x 4” pieces or so (can max do 5” on the short dimension)
but slice it in a way that it can connect with itself
slice it vertically so that I have two pieces (probably one with the windows and up, and the other from the sill downwards)
also in a way that it can connect with itself.

Or, maybe I’m done with it. The easiest thing is to only have the virtual version.

The furniture stays where I tell it to.
I can do a virtual walk through
It looks very pretty

Here’s a render from SweetHome3D overhead:

And here’s a POV in the kitchen:

The actual model when you are working with it:

Not sure where I’m going from here. I think the next step is a class on Sketchup on Nov 5th (Tuesday) at LVL1. Redraw the plan in sketchup (very easy, there’s a tutorial on how to do interior house stuff from a CAD layout) and do something with large solids intersecting others to create slices, like this:

My First 3D print!

Thanks to some email, a kind member showed me how to use (and clean) the Makerbot, and I got my first print!

Ok, the size is a bit off. The full thing is supposed to be 20cm wide, I got 3cm. I’ll have to work on that. Here’s the original: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:8560

But more importantly, I learned about:

Unloading and reloading filament using the modified spring loaded extruder mod thingy
How to take apart the heads, the places where filament usually gets jammed
Snipping the ends off the filament when it looks grody
Balancing the bed using the secret thingamajiggy tool

The center of the bed is higher than the edges, there is such a thing as too tight, and then not tight enough, and this is within a mm, so use the thingamajiggy

Cleaning the bed
Spraying the bed with hairspray to maintain tackiness
ABS – heated bed, PLA – not
ABS – 220, PLA – something lower (I haven’t done PLA yet)

Furthermore, it looks like I’ll be downtown every Tuesday (I’m signed up to be a Mentor for Code Louisville), I’ll have plenty of time to go by there and do some printing.

Excited!

Making a 3D print of the interior of my house

A project I’ve always been kicking around (ever since I bought my first mobile home in 2000) is to create a scale model of the space I live in.

In 2000, I did it with graph paper and cut-out pieces of cardboard to represent furniture.
In 2007, I did it with Lego’s. I wish I still had a picture of it, but they got lost somewhere in Photobucket. land.
In 2008, I used Sketchup to plan our Kitchen remodel.

Well, the urge came back up again – and this time, the other urge is to use a 3D printer to print out either the model, or the furniture which goes into the model, or both.

Research

So I started researching. Here are the nuggets I’ve learned:

Sweet Home 3D makes wonderful 3D models of the interiors of houses.

It only exports to OBJ format
The models it generates are non-manifold.
The furniture it places tend to be non-manifold.

Most 3D print software reads STL. Or so I thought.

Turns out that’s still mostly true; many of them convert to “GCODE”, but Makerbots use something else called “X3G”.

Meshlab can read in, and write out, many different formats, and can detect non-manifold edge problems.

It crashes pretty often.
It has code which can be used to fix meshes, but I don’t know to use it yet.

Netfabb Private can read in STL files and do some mesh repair work.

Some of the sweetHome3D outputs are too complicated for it.
Very juicy program. If I keep doing this, I might buy their pro version.
Netfabb Cloud fixes even more stuff.

If you’re looking for some frickin’ cool math, PolyMender is pretty neat:

Imagine filling a model with 2^N little squares.
Draw the model, filling in the squares
Just using the squares, recreate the model.
Its garunteed to be manifold.
The output was somewhat choppy for my purposes though; and the resulting files when given enough resolution (N=8,9) were too large for the 3D print software.

Sketchup is no longer part of Google, but still has a free editor.

To which you can add an extension (.rbz) to Import/Export to STL.
However, it can generate surfaces with problems. Not necessarily Manifold problems.
But if you take care while editing your model, these problems are the types that can be automatically fixed by Netfabb.

Repetier-Host is a program used to control Solidoodle’s and several other 3D printers.

It will detect Manifold and intersection problems
It will run Slic3r to generate G-Code to drive a printer
You can view the resulting G-Code and get a feeling of overhangs, support material, infill, etc.

The List of 3D printers

The end result is, while I’ve got a pretty decent rendition of the house in Sweet Home 3D, it is far too difficult to convert it into a 3D print at this time.

Plan B. Using Foam Core Board.

Check out this video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4UchgSDeCA&w=448&h=252&hd=1]

Captions are Captives

Its about furniture building, but what I’m thinking is, I would use the technique to build the model, and then use 3D printing to create a framework so that I can assemble the different floors of the model into a house (think spacers, building a framework to nest other components, etc).

I would also use 3D printing to print out some of the more interesting furniture (though, for square things, I’d just use Origami).

The advantage here is I can then take pictures of textures and glue them appropriately – and given the speed and cost of 3D printing, its probably cheaper.

About that 3D Printer

I was all excited, and about buy myself a Solidoodle 2 – however, somebody had once mentioned the local hackerspace LVL1 to me. I decided to go check them out. Separate blog post on that. Chances are, I’ll probably get a membership to them instead*, and use their printers. And possibly some of their other stuff.

*POINT: Don’t need a membership to use their resources. They are very proud of that. However, given that everybody likes 3D printing, the times when they are open to non-members = contention for use of the 3D printers, and they are 20 miles from home, so a membership will ease the access part of the equation.

Caffeine, Depression, Sugar, etc

I gave up caffeine about a month ago. Its been a bumpy ride.

Here is where I’m at:

I’m about 1 month plus into caffeine withdrawal.. and supposedly it takes that long for a body’s sleep cycles to adjust. I’m definitely feeling better this week, but part of that could also be: I cancelled most of life. I’m not going to try to train for the Half Marathon anymore, I’m not trying to be productive in the evenings, I’m just going to work getting it done, get home, and zonk out to some PC games.

Depression

Not to be confused with life-crippling, stay-in-bed, I don’t want to live depression that some of my friends have.
Also not to be confused with “I want to sit in my pity pot and whine” whine-pression.
But a definite marked “down-ness”, nothing feels “exciting” anymore, I have no desire to do anything, I’d rather just sleep and watch TV (be entertained) all day.

Also leading to: “what if I change this will I feel better” and “what if I change that will I feel better” — see last two posts on sleep schedules. (note: neither one really worked).

Awareness

Always fun when it dawns. In this case, I did my standard exercise when faced with something not feeling right inside me: I took a blank sheet of paper, drew a big box on it, and gave myself permission to be as negative as I wanted to be, within that box. Out came a ton of little messages like “I’m worthless”, “I’ll never be able to do X”, “I’m not useful”, etc — maybe in a bit harsher language, but along those lines.

After that past, I was able to look at the box with a clean, calm mind, and pose the question: what now [God]? What do you need me to know and/or do?

And the answer came back rather easily:

Maybe I have been subsituting sugar for caffeine in an attempt to cope.
And maybe I am currently in adrenal fatigue. [Note: I don’t mean the medical term. I just mean that my body ain’t right. the “feel” of the words adrenal fatigue matches my emotion]
I may need to change my sugar intakes.

Acceptance

Never jump straight from awareness to action – especially not against well-entrenched habits like what you eat, sleep cycles, and stuff like that. Sit with it a while, let it sink in, collect data – see what the reality is. Then the decisions are made from “it has to be this way” (certainity) rather than “I’m going to try my hardest” [and fail] (ego/intent).

Part 1 – collect data on sugar habits.

Eating Habits

I started on Saturday. I’m taking to getting out of bed (when the cat wakes me), turning on the S.A.D. light, and entering my food for the previous day.. and looking at finances and other stuff like that. (and facebook). Here is what I’ve logged:

Because I am actually logging it, that does affect my decisions on what I eat. Its less than what it has been in the weeks past, but as I can see, them sugars are crossing the 100 mark all the time.. and a lot of fuel is coming from carbs rather than fat. Now, I’m not a dietician, but I know I can do better than two donuts for breakfast in the morning (Sunday, Wednesday) and a crap-ton of bread (wheat) (I don’t do well with wheat).

But why? I’m not feeling as bad as I once was. For that, I need to look out to the future: What do I want to do?

Dreams

Somebody I looked up to, once clued me in that if I’m envious of somebody or something, it probably means I want to do that .. that’s a dream inside me. Maybe I’m scared of doing it and thus I won’t recognize it, and instead I’ll be annoyed at those who do actually do it. Avoidance things like that.

What has been pinging me lately? Let me count the ways:

Dream	Extent	How do I know this to be true?
Run a Marathon.	26.2 miles, at least once.	Every time I see a 26.2 sticker on a car. Every time I hear of people I know doing it.
Run a 5k faster	Under 25 minutes.	Currently at 30. My best ever was 24:50. Listening to people talking about running them in 22 or so – I would like to do that.
Bike decently.	A century, at 15mph or better.	Every time RAGBRAI gets mentioned. (I have biked a century before, but more at 8-10 mph avg).
Triathalon	The smallest possible one. Swimming is my weakness.	At least two friends whom I am slightly envious of.
Lose Weight	down to 155 lbs, which is the weight at which I can easily take my shirt of, and there’s no pot belly.	I was at 159.5 once. It was wonderful. Currently at 175.
Finish some damned fun coding projects.	Facebook catcher-upper Chore-Ban (new) Car-Metrics Burn-it (shelved)	Envy when I realize I couldn’t get to the local monthly code mash-up. Envy when I hear my co-workers talk about the fun code they’ve been working on.
Travel	First the USA – out west, mostly.	Whenever we realize we can’t go somewhere because of X,Y or Z reason Whenever I look up how much time off I have available for the rest of the year.

Road Map

The nice thing is, a lot of these dreams are completely realizable and doable. But not all right now. There is a stepping order to it:

Now is not the time for me to work on the “larger” time sink items – but I definitely can make it a point to join my beautiful wife in going to the YMCA.

We get to spend time together! I’m not robbing relationship time for workout time.
Currently on Tuesday, Thursday, and once over the weekend.
Last night I ran a 28’ 5k, though it was on a treadmill.

I’m not saying anything about the nutrition yet. I’m not there yet.

One More Aspect

A lady I respect pulled me aside, and told me that her husband asked his doctor about his lack of energy. Turns out.. testosterone levels. I am 42 (almost).. there maybe be a component involved; maybe I’ve been trying to mask that with caffeine and sugar all along. Will ask doctor to check next time.

Fastline 5k 2013

Race #3 of the four part series.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a85JEmkmCpQ&w=448&h=252&hd=1]

“video caption here”

I found out that Judge David Voegele is also in charge of the local origination Cable TV channel. (I don’t get cable anymore, so I can’t check it out for myself). He also puts some of the same stuff up on his youtube channel. He believes greatly in getting community input, showcasing Oldham County .. and he’s willing to come out on a Saturday to a race to take video for it. He asked if I had any video I could contribute to his editor; I gave him the bulk of what I had, but I have no idea if they used any of it or not. It shouldn’t matter, I’m happy to help out.
I kept the chest-mount and this time, I stabilized, then sped up, all the race video .. at 20x speed .. to get the full course covered in a reasonable amount of time. Initially I had it at 1600%, but that was very jittery; at 20x speed due to a 180bpm cadence ~= 10 frames per step, things evened out and the jitteriness went away.
It was fun learning about FastLine, the company. Till then I had no idea what they did other than “print stuff”.
It was fun learning about the system that Brian Ruggles put in place for tabulating race results.
I used some excellent music from Kevin MacLeod as filler during the video, and especially for the awards presentation.

One more race to go.. the Apple Patch. I have this idea in my head.. of taking the race video.. adding some Pole Position sound track to it.. or maybe Mario Kart.. have a speedometer (with real numbers of course), and a “which position am I” (as calculated backwards from my finishing position).. that would be a ton of fun.. for me.

However, I’m also running out of subscription to Adobe Premiere. We’re redoing our budgeting, and $30/month is too steep for my allowance, so I’m letting it go for now. I will renew it if I have to.

Altered Schedules Part 2: Resetting Sleep Cycle

I’m continuing to try the Altered Schedule talked about earlier. I don’t think its working.

I even went as far as trying to Reset my Sleep Cycle with a 16-Hour Fast. Twice. This is the second time. Result: While hungry, I don’t get much sleep; Sure enough I wake up at 6am no problem.. its now 11am and I am draaaaggging. If this is like the last time I did this (Tuesday morning), at about 1pm the sleepy is going to hit like a ton of bricks attached to my eyelids.

On the other hand, yesterday there wasn’t anything I could do before a 10am meeting at the client site, so I slept in. I had a wonderful day!

I am about ready to throw in the towel. My clock likes to fall asleep at about 1am or 2am, and get up around 8am. Next week, I’m going to try and respect that:

	The Plan	The Reality
8am-?	Wake up, Shower, Journal, etc	TBD
?-10am	Get to work by 10	Probably more like 9:30.
10am-7pm	Be work productive. First meal probably at noon.	Will get cut short whenever anything sneezes .. family sports, etc.
7pm-9pm	Household productive. Dishes, sweeping, etc.	Eating dinner with the wife would count as household productive.
9pm-11pm	Play	I can be pretty good at this part when I get my target figured out.
11pm-midnight	Wind down	Not so good at this.
midnight-8am	Sleep	1am: Cat. 3am: Cat 5,6am: Cat

Hey, Deployment done. Back to work.

Altered Schedule

This is day 4 of an altered schedule. Now that I’m off caffeine, and .. either (a) I’m waking up more alert, or (b) I am equally sleepy all day .. After going on a vacation, and getting some feedback from very wise person, I am trying this:

MAKE TIME for things that are fun.

However, at the same time, my wife and I are trying something else:

Can we exist with one car?

The plan on the latter was, I would have the car on Tuesday and Thursday, and she would have the car on M,W,F. I drop her at work / she drops me at a work / that kind of thing.

So here is how it has panned out:

	The Plan	The Reality
6am-?	Wake Up, jump in the shower, drink some water, etc.	2/4 days yes. 3rd day: shower followed by nap. 4th day: sleep till 7.
?-8am	Get to work (or leave for work) by 8am!	More like 8:30 arrival, or 9:00, but hey the cat has a vet appointment, so lets go for 10:00.
8am-5pm	Work till 5 or whenever I get my hours in by.	Leave at 3:30 to get the wife from her job, go home and then work at home for a few hours
5pm-8pm	Be “productive” till 8pm (house stuff, etc)	This has worked pretty well. Dishes are done! Bills are paid! Cat is brushed!
8pm-10pm	Do something fun / just for me from 8 to 10	This has also worked pretty well. Video editing, watching pro cycling, etc
10pm-11pm	Head upstairs, wind down, journal, dim the lights, get to bed	Worked ok for 2 days. Then yesterday: THOU SHALT NOT SLEEP!
11pm-6am	7 hours of sleep!	1am: Cat. 3am: Cat. 5am: Cat.

What we also figured out is, my wife uses her driving time as her solitude time.. she’s a closet introvert (I am a closet extrovert?!!) .. so as much as I loved having time with her all to myself in the car while transporting each other, she got increasingly grumpy at not having recharge time.

So, in summary:

a. Our schedules are too deviant to make it work with one car. We’re keeping both cars.

b. I’ll try The Plan again. This time with my own car.

Caffeine Withdrawal 3.0

Third time in my life, I’m withdrawing from caffeine.

I wrote a blog post about it at version 2.0 – here: http://sunnywiz.livejournal.com/245127.html

Actually, that post was written AFTER being off caffeine for a while and then starting back up again.

This line struck me as particularly insightful:

When I am decaffeinated & on the wagon.. and have gotten through withdrawal.. my mental pattern is .. not so exciting, doesn’t have “spikes”, but its definitely functional. And there isn’t that large lake of sleepiness underneath it all.

And that is why I’m back off it again. I was getting non-functional. And my life was getting unmanageable.

Day 7 of no Caffeine .. I now only have to take an Advil every 6 hours to ward off the stab-me-in-the-eye headache.