Updates

Lately, my Android tablet that I bought six years ago, back in 2019, has kept reminding me that it's no longer able to update some of the apps that I have on it. Checking up on Android versions, I found that the tablet is stuck on Android 7, while the latest ones now seem to have Android 15. So perhaps really more suprising that there are still quite a few apps on it that I am still able to use...

No real panic, as my laptop and my phone are both younger, and have been able to keep up with the necessary app updates so far. Nevertheless, I decided it was probably time to look into getting a new tablet as well. 

I did some online research; but somehow, I still have this old-fashioned wish (when possible) to see what I'm buying - and perhaps be able to ask some human "tech guy" a question or two as well. So this past Thursday, I took a bus to an electronics shop "across town". I had seen online that they had tablets of the same brand as my old one (Lenovo), which on the whole I've been getting along with very well (until its recent hints of not quite being able to keep up with everything any more). 

Ironically, it turned out that of the tablets on display in the shop, the one that I fell for (Lenovo Tab M11) was not in stock there - but they could order it for me, and have it delivered to a pick-up place close to where I live the very next day. So I went with that option.

The parcel arrived as promised; and after reading some basic instructions it seemed like it would be easy to set up, as I could simply copy all data from the old one to the new one using an USB cable. So I got that job started already on Friday afternoon. So far, so good... 

But then, somewhere along my fiddling about with adjusting various settings etc, the screen keyboard disappeared, and no matter what I did, I found no way to get it back. Super frustrating. The first thing I did was of course to google the problem. And I did find plenty of people in various forums asking the same question (about disappearing screen keyboards). But alas no applicable answers!

So finally I decided to reset the tablet to its original settings (removing all my transferred data) and start over. That did restore the screen keyboard (phew). But since I still don't know how I came to lose it in the first place, I'm now afraid of it happening again. So now I'm taking things really slow. So not repeating the copying of data from the old tablet, but instead installing one app at a time, and trying to keep better track of what I'm doing. It's time consuming, but after all (I keep reminding myself) there's no real hurry. All my important apps are still working somewhere, even if not all on the same device... 

It has taken a lot of time that might otherwise have been spent on blogging, though.

One answer found when I googled the definiton of "android": 

"The Latin root androides literally means “resembling a man,” and androids really know how to blend in. Androids mostly appear in science fiction novels and films, but who knows, maybe you're friends with an android and you don't even know it. Yet."

The Seagulls Have Landed

One of the sure signs of spring around here: The seagulls have arrived! A gang of them always come up the river from the coast in spring, to spend the summer here.

More signs of spring:

 Flowers are being planted in the parks and graveyards.

 Trees and bushes are slowly turning green.

 I bought some daffodils for my balcony. (In Swedish we call them "påskliljor" = Easter Lilies)

My strawberry plants have survived another winter. (In the late autumn, I wrap the box in newspapers, put it under a bench on the balcony, cover the bench with a tarpaulin - and hope for the best...)

There is still some life left in the clematis, too - at least in one of my two plants. One may have died, but the branches are all so entangled with each other on the trellis that it is very hard to tell which belong to which pot... I shall have to wait for flowers before I decide what to do! (I seem to remember that those are slightly different in colour between the two plants.)

We had a lovely sunny weekend with some warmer winds at last (although back to colder again now!) - but where did my feet (and the bus) take me? Not out into the countryside; but to the big shopping district across town...

 Photos taken from a glass-covered footbridge across the main road, connecting two main parts of the shopping district.

 All for a good cause though (well, in my opinion anyway)...

A new tablet, to serve as companion to the laptop (which serves as "desktop" in my study) and the mobile phone, whose memory is beginning to struggle to keep up with all the app updates. 

I gave it some thought, and arrived at the conclusion that a good tablet might allow me to free up some memory on the phone, and make it possible to keep that for bit longer instead.

I would probably have bought a new tablet even earlier, if not for the fact that it's such a struggle to decide which one to buy... 

I've had another kind of tablet before, but it was never a very good buy to start with; and by now it's very outdated, so more trouble than help, really. (Because it's not very good, I don't use it much, which in turn means that when I do want to use it, for one thing I have to charge it, and then it also wants to do a million updates before it allows me to do anything else... By which time I've usually lost patience with it and turned to either the phone or the laptop instead...)

So I've been spending quite a bit of time searching and comparing etc online to find the "right" kind of tablet. But there are so many things to think of, and always so much additional tech information that is just 'mumbo jumbo' to me as I don't know what it means...

But with the arrival of Spring to inspire me, I decided on Saturday to go out to one of the big media stores - the same one where I bought my laptop, and also my camera. And again I felt I got good help there, to check my "thoughts" about what I wanted, with a sales person who seemed to know what he (as well as I) was talking about. It resulted in the purchase of a Lenovo TAB4 10 Plus. 

So far, I think we (Len & I) may be able to get along well... Even if it always takes a bit of time to get properly acquainted! 

One area where I do think the tablet will be helpful is when it comes to reading and commenting on blogs. (I often read blogs on my phone, but find it difficult to comment from there.)

Writing blog posts will probably still usually be a job for the laptop, though, as that is where I collect my photos!