Android 11 Gripes

Updated on Thursday, August 26, 2021

11

You have to make allowances for the fact that many people are working from home (where maybe it's harder to test code and you certainly can't do hallway usability testing). Things also improved somewhat with the October patch. But Android 11 was a Windows ME level disaster. Google says that they dropped the desserts to make Android 'more accessible to a global audience' but I think it's probably because they know that new updates are no longer sweet.

Multi-tasking is completely broken. In pandemic mode I'm on video calls all day, and dodging the 2-3 video calls that are usually going on elsewhere in my house. Being able to have Teams and notes running at the same time is pretty important right now and with 11 it's not possible.

Other than conference calls and Kindle the other main use I have for my phone is podcasts. Android 11 improved the media controls by moving them to the quick settings area of the notification shade, providing easy switching between playback devices and allowing you to swipe through recent playback apps. All good, except that none of it works. The controls are there but do nothing so I have to run the app to pause. Also, there is a weird ghost of a previous media playback that shows up and then disappears when pulling down the notification shade. And as for dismissing previous sessions that seems to require a reboot.

Multi-tasking and media were fixed in the most recent patch, but there is also some new notification system to separate out conversations. In practice this seems to mean I get multiple groups of Gmail and Teams notifications instead of a single cluster per app. This isn't what I want, gives me more work to do and so far I haven't found a way to turn it off. Notifications have steadily improved over the last few major Android releases so it's upsetting to see them becoming worse.

This is all on a Pixel 4XL which you would assume would get some level of testing love. It used to be that the main advantage of a Pixel was getting new versions of Android quickly. With 11 I'm for the first time wishing I was waiting a few months while the kinks were worked out.

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San Francisco PM2.5

Updated on Sunday, June 4, 2023

San Francisco PM2.5

This post is updated hourly with a PM2.5 (2.5 micrometer or smaller particulate matter) map of San Francisco.

The PM2.5 data comes from the Purple Air API. The map uses one hour average readings from outdoor sensors and interpolates each point in San Francisco based on the inverse of the distance to the four closest sensors. The color scale is green to yellow (0-50), yellow to orange (50-100), orange to red (100-150) and red to purple (150-200+). San Francisco is plotted using elevation contours from DataSF.

Updated 2022-06-11 12:28:

The map is currently broken. The URL I use to download sensor data started returning a 500 error code at the end of may (Error: Server Error / The server encountered an error and could not complete your request. Please try again in 30 seconds.). This seemed like something Purple would need to fix. On closer inspection the error occurs after a redirect to https://purpleair-over-quota-2.appspot.com/ which sounds like too many requests (a 4xx error surely). With even more digging it turns out the download link is no longer supported (410 maybe then?) and so I'll need to migrate to the REST API to get this working again. I'm currently trying to get an API key and will get this fixed as soon as I can.

Updated 2022-06-13 17:28:

Purple Air were kind enough to issue me with an API key so the map is back to updating hourly.

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ITHCWY Newsletter for July 2020

ITHCWY Newsletter for June 2020

Visualizing Coronavirus Cases and Deaths by Country and US County

Updated on Sunday, June 4, 2023

Cases and Deaths by Country

Week on Week Incremental

Visualizing Coronavirus Deaths by Country (Daily Incremental)

Cumulative

Visualizing Coronavirus Deaths by Country (Cumulative)

Cases and Deaths by US County

Week on Week Incremental

Visualizing Coronavirus Deaths by US County (Daily Incremental)

Cumulative

Visualizing Coronavirus Deaths by US County (Cumulative)

This post is updated weekly (on Sunday) with global and US county level coronavirus data from Johns Hopkins University. Four videos show both cumulative and week on week progression (comparing seven day moving averages) of the disease together with four images that show the most recent snapshot.

Cases and deaths are shown simultaneously using blue for cases and red for deaths. Where both are high a region will be a shade of purple. Regions with no data are dark gray.

The week on week incremental visualization is useful to see the history and current state of the spread of coronavirus. Each region is shaded based on the highest number of daily cases and deaths for that region and is relative to population. For example if the highest number of deaths reported on any day in San Francisco county is seven, then any day that has seven deaths will be the brightest shade of red. This shows where COVID-19 is relatively bad over time.

The cumulative visualization is shaded relative to the highest total death and case count for any region, relative to population.

As the location and date of the peak in week on week and cumulative cases and deaths change over time the videos will be different each time you watch. Bookmark this post and check back for weekly updates.

(This is the fifth version of this post as I have changed the data source and methodology several times. I usually preserve the previous version of any post but the changes are large enough that in this case I have removed them).

Cases and Deaths by Country

Daily Incremental

 

Cumulative

 

Cases and Deaths by US County

Daily Incremental

 

Cumulative

 

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ITHCWY Newsletter for May 2020

ITHCWY Newsletter for April 2020

ITHCWY Redesign

Updated on Sunday, November 6, 2022

I've just launched a redesign of I Thought He Came With You. The main thrust is to make the site more usable on desktops. Which seems nuts, but the data doesn't lie. The site has low mobile traffic and for a while I thought this was some kind of technical issue. I optimized the design heavily for mobile and spent a lot of time on speed and some AMP. I guess it's the content. Google loves it when I write documentation for them and doesn't think I have anything useful to say on politics. They're probably right. So I've gone back to having an old school sidebar and I've taken the performance hit of using Bootstrap to get some better looking forms and navigation without spending a lot of time on it. I hope you enjoy it, and if you find anything broken please email or leave a comment.

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ITHCWY Newsletter for March 2020

Actual, age weighted and age and life expectancy weighted results of the 2016 Presidential Election

More Bangalore: Timelapse featuring Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace, Lalbagh Botanical Garden, KR flower market, Bangalore Palace and Cubbon Park.

Coastal: an abstract timelapse of the California coast.

Jesse Wegman has written a book, Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College (review) and a NYT op-ed on switching to a more rational way of electing the President. If you support this idea I have a page on the topic with four concrete things you can do to help.

Hike to Kirby Cove Beach (Marin Headlands near San Francisco).

Tool to backup locked files on Windows 10 - great for XCOPY backups or just grabbing a locked file.

Previously:

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News: We May Be Living in a Simulation, but the Truth Still Matters

Updated on Sunday, October 23, 2022