On Sun, 18 Oct 2015 21:11:16 +0100, Stephen wrote:

> On 10/18/2015 8:46 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>   watch TV
> 
> The last time I watched anything on my tablet was:
> "You can go to Hell. I'm going to Texas."

LOL

> But I've mentioned that before.

My cable provider provides an Android app that lets me watch stuff I've 
recorded on my DVR as well as their On Demand selections.

That's kinda handy.

Jim



-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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> Like many people [that was sarcasm], I have a graphing calculator. I'm
> pretty sure it's powered by a Z80, and it has an awful 160x120 LCD. You
> can "program" it, in that you can write a macro that opens menu pages in
> a specific order. (WTF is the point of that, BTW?)
>
> I keep thinking to myself "man, if only this had an actual programming
> language on it. It's already a hand-held computer, if only I could write
> code on this thing!"

I still have a TI-86 somewhere gathering dust. That had a BASIC 
interpreter built-in. Somehow IIRC we also had a version of Mario 
running on it, I assume you could also run assembler on it somehow.

In fact I wrote a simple "shoot the target" type game in BASIC for a 
piece of GCSE Maths coursework. It showed you a target (a pixel) on the 
right edge of the screen, and you had to enter an angle and speed to 
fire an arrow (another pixel) to hit it. I learnt two important lessons 
doing that. Firstly to test your program with sufficiently varied input 
before releasing it, and secondly that 45 radians roughly equals 45 
degrees (mod 360).

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On 19/10/2015 08:31 AM, scott wrote:
> The best (IMO) would be to buy a cheap smartphone (or tablet) running
> Android. You can then download the free developer tools for your PC
> (google "Android SDK") and so long as you can code in Java you'll be
> away. If you have the phone/tablet connected to your PC (via USB cable)
> in the developer tools you can just click "Run on device" and it will
> compile, send to the device, and start it running on the device
> immediately.

But you can't run the SDK *on* the device itself?

So I'm not going to be sitting in the corner of Blenheim Palace writing 
a quick Java class or two. (Or rather, I can *write* then, just not 
*compile* and *execute* them...)

> What exactly is it you want to do? Smartphones/tablets are not good if
> you want the user to enter a lot of text, if you can somehow change the
> inputs to something more suited to a fat thumb on a small touchscreen
> then it will work better.

My sister got be a rather expensive digital recording system for my 
birthday. It's really cool, but the one thing it can't do is the one 
thing I was expecting it to do: overdub. It can be configured as a USB 
audio interface though, so from a PC it's trivial enough to open up 
Audacity or whatever and overdub to your heart's content.

Trouble is, the set of places where I'm allowed to make noise and the 
set of places where my PC is have an empty intersection. I can use my 
laptop, but it's big and heavy and requires mains power to operate.

A tablet is obviously much smaller. I have no idea whether any of them 
can act as a USB *host*, nor whether Andriod has drivers for something 
as exotic as a USB audio interface. I doubt you can run Audacity, but it 
can't be *that* hard to hack together a simple Java console program that 
starts or stops recording on a certain key-press...

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> Trouble is, the set of places where I'm allowed to make noise and the
> set of places where my PC is have an empty intersection. I can use my
> laptop, but it's big and heavy and requires mains power to operate.

I thought a laptop had a battery? Sounds to me like a small laptop would 
be better than a tablet. You get a real keyboard, ability to install 
lots of developer tools, and easily interface to various bits of 
hardware via well-tested drivers and software.

> A tablet is obviously much smaller. I have no idea whether any of them
> can act as a USB *host*, nor whether Andriod has drivers for something
> as exotic as a USB audio interface. I doubt you can run Audacity, but it
> can't be *that* hard to hack together a simple Java console program that
> starts or stops recording on a certain key-press...

This was the first result from google:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.extreamsd.usbaudiorecorderpro&hl=en_GB

I suggest you get hold of a phone and try it out with your hardware, in 
the page above there is also a trial version to test if your hardware 
works or not with it.

If that doesn't work I suspect you'll have a far more painless journey 
with a laptop.

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On 10/19/2015 4:03 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> My cable provider provides an Android app that lets me watch stuff I've
> recorded on my DVR as well as their On Demand selections.
>
> That's kinda handy.

My ISP has a function that plays the BBC iplayer on the TV. It has never 
worked.

That is kinda un-handy.

Well it would be if I watched TV. ;-)

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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On 20/10/2015 08:18 AM, scott wrote:
>> Trouble is, the set of places where I'm allowed to make noise and the
>> set of places where my PC is have an empty intersection. I can use my
>> laptop, but it's big and heavy and requires mains power to operate.
>
> I thought a laptop had a battery?

Yes, but like all laptops more than 6 months old, the battery no longer 
functions.

(Well, OK, that's a bit unfair. I still get about 20 minutes of runtime 
out of it...)

> Sounds to me like a small laptop would
> be better than a tablet.

Yeah, that's the other possibility of course...

> This was the first result from google:
>
>
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.extreamsd.usbaudiorecorderpro&hl=en_GB

7.9MB?! o_O

Not that I suppose that's a problem, I'm just surprised it's that big... 
Man, I feel old now!

> I suggest you get hold of a phone and try it out with your hardware, in
> the page above there is also a trial version to test if your hardware
> works or not with it.
>
> If that doesn't work I suspect you'll have a far more painless journey
> with a laptop.

Yeah, you could be right.

I'm pretty sure the Raspberry Pi *hardware* can do this, but again I'm 
unsure about software. (Although since it's basically running Debian, it 
seems reasonable that it might work.)

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On Tue, 20 Oct 2015 17:29:56 +0100, Stephen wrote:

> On 10/19/2015 4:03 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> My cable provider provides an Android app that lets me watch stuff I've
>> recorded on my DVR as well as their On Demand selections.
>>
>> That's kinda handy.
> 
> My ISP has a function that plays the BBC iplayer on the TV. It has never
> worked.
> 
> That is kinda un-handy.
> 
> Well it would be if I watched TV. ;-)

It seems that playing iPlayer on the TV would be like watching TV. :)

But yeah, I've got the iPlayer app installed on something here.  Not that 
I can watch TV with it, but I can listen to some radio programmes with it.

Jim
-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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On Tue, 20 Oct 2015 18:10:30 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

> Yes, but like all laptops more than 6 months old, the battery no longer
> functions.
> 
> (Well, OK, that's a bit unfair. I still get about 20 minutes of runtime
> out of it...)

4 year old laptop here, still gets several hours out of the battery.  
Dell Inspiron.  Also, Macbook Pro, still get 8+ hours out of its battery.

Jim
-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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On 10/20/2015 6:11 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> It seems that playing iPlayer on the TV would be like watching TV.:)
>

I wouldn't know. :-(
I don't think I've watched TV for a couple of years except for some 
comedy programmes on Freeview*.

I lost the habit years ago before there was satellite TV. When I was on 
the rigs. Radio 4 was all we could get and that was on Long Wave.


> But yeah, I've got the iPlayer app installed on something here.  Not that
> I can watch TV with it, but I can listen to some radio programmes with it.

I use get_iplayer as a PVR.

*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeview_%28UK%29

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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On 10/20/2015 6:10 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> Yes, but like all laptops more than 6 months old, the battery no longer
> functions.
>
> (Well, OK, that's a bit unfair. I still get about 20 minutes of runtime
> out of it...)

Run it flat, charge it up. Repeat.

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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