The Oleo File

In which our Hero feels a little self-conscious about his fat-fingered-typing

Yesterday I watched an episode of Dirty Jobs where Mike Rowe waxed his producer’s chest. And while I was laughing for most of the segment, it really does drive home the whole idea of the hairless ideal that is pushed in movies and magazines. And I know a lot of men and women struggle with the question of how to deal with the divide between reality and Photoshop depicted social norms. I reached peace with my own hirsuteness (hair suit…. haha) long ago, but every time the ladies are gushing about the sexy star with the skin smoother than a purebred sphinx, self-doubt starts scrabbling hard claws at my self-confidence.

But as powerful as the hairball over hair is, there’s something even more built to make a man question is confidence in his own body, and it is the touch screen. Because all of my touch devices are visibly touched devices. It doesn’t matter how often I wash my hands, it doesn’t matter how often I wipe the screen clean, if I’m going to bring the device out and there are other people looking, my screen will be smudged and streaked.

Am I a freak? My fingers don’t feel gooey or slick. They’re dry to the touch, and smooth. But over there is a pile of charging electronica reflecting the texture of my operation.

My fingerprints are in my foreground because of a bit of good fortune. This past month, the wonderful folks at Blackberry have been running a promotion where every new developer who submits a non-trivial application (no fart apps, as Steve Jobs famously described that criteria) will get a free Playbook tablet. And with their version 2 operating system, they have a way to run Android apps on the playbook, which means that in effect what they were saying to me was… “Learn to write Android apps and we’ll give you a free tablet.”

Heck, I wanted to learn how to do that already. And I’ve been feeling a sense of wounded pride that I never completed their free tablet offer last year. And now I get a toy for doing it? I’m so in.

Last time, I tried to code an app, but I was working in an environment that I don’t know, and my idea was good but… too sophisticated. The lesson from last time was to come up with something simple, and easy. Not trivial, but without too many frills and bells and whistles.

So, inspired by my own sense of feeling stupid, I wrote a little arithmetic drill program, to duplicate an exercise my grade eight math teacher used to do, shouting out operations in a sequence.

5… x2… +3… /6… +4…. is?

It’s a ridiculously simple app, but it’s more fun than I expected it to be. And last week, a package showed up with my new playbook in it so go me.

On the other hand, both Hollywood and I have friends and family we’d like to get devices for. So we both got people to register accounts, and wrote more apps. I only managed a second one before the deadline, compared to Hollywood’s final total of 7 apps for 4 playbooks, this promo. Plus the one he got from last year.

My second app is a task calculator. It’s easier to show than to explain. But it takes screen size information “That new phone has a 4″ screen that displays 1024×600” and lets you compare the size of the screen to other devices, but also how big or small the same sized thing will appear on those screens. And hopefully my uncle will enjoy this playbook thing he’s been wistfully talking about.

I’m really pleased with myself. I picked up a new skill in two weeks, I finally actually learned a little Java. I mean, I haven’t written a java program from scratch in a decade or so. Actually, I haven’t really written anything from scratch in that long. So it was very satisfying to do, to get my hands on and dirty, to debug and test and in the end, to pop my silly stupid little application on to my phone and have it run.

And I have a new toy. As for the Playbook tablet itself, well, there’s a reason why I didn’t rush out to get it. And having it in my hands as proven my analysis. It’s beautiful. It’s powerful, and well designed. The interface is very smooth and simple.

But it has so little capability without spending money on apps that I see no point in it. I’m not going to pay to make it an ereader when I have to purchase blind, and when free options are available on iOS and Android. Same with media player software, same with network browsers, same with everything that I’ve tried. No skype.

On the other hand, it comes with a free racing game. And that’s been a hoot. But not worth buying the tablet for.

I’m going to play a little more. Want to see if I can find utility in it. But realistically, right now, it’s most likely to become a digital picture frame. If I can find an app to do that.

Bah.