Reviews by teslasmoustache

4 stars
Powerful offline navigation app is as good as the map of your area

This is a great app. It might not be as polished and have as much of that just-works-ness as something like Google Maps, but consider that the map is stored locally on your phone. You’re not telling Google or some other giant tech company where you’re going. It’s also very flexible. You can add “favorite places” like bookmarks, tell it to remember your parking space, and even add Wikipedia annotations to landmarks.

Along with privacy comes the fact that there is bound to be room for improvement - and you have control over that. If something is missing or incorrect on the map, don’t throw up your hands and switch back to Waze or whatever you were using before. Remember that OpenStreetMap is edited by volunteers, kind of like Wikipedia. All you have to do is go to openstreetmap.org and start improving the map. Any changes you submit to OSM will soon be available as an update to the maps installed locally on your phone. If you see a mistake in Google maps, all you can do is submit a request for someone else to consider fixing it.

Pros: Privacy, flexibility, ability to edit maps, offline navigation

cons: maps take up a lot of storage. My maps take up a total of 1.24GB. UI might be confusing to some because of all the options and some general rough edges. Calculating a route might take a moment longer since the calculation is done by your phone’s CPU and not a remote server.


1 star
A chore to drink

This was terrible. I get what they were going for. It’s two, refreshing summer flavors smashed together in a sugary juice drink. Not a bad idea, but I can’t believe this one got out of the lab. The watermelon is too weak to be noticeable in the face of lemon, but when looking for the watermelon flavor it was so disparate from the citrus as to be downright annoying when I actually found it.

Who the hell liked this enough to fill millions of bottles with it and distribute it to refrigerated shelves in presumably thousands of gas stations and convenience stores? Did Snapple even test this on humans before deciding to sell it to us?


5 stars
Really good Free Software/Culture podcast

I just finished episode 1, which went over Emacs and Org-mode, PDAs, and concern over corporate control of Libre Software projects, including, among other things, the recent purchase of Github by Microsoft and how that relates to Microsoft’s history involving the infamous Halloween Memo and the “embrace, extend, extinguish” strategy.

I’ve just started episode 2, and it’s starting off really strong. I think Chris and Serge are still kind of finding a cadence, but their topics are interesting and audio quality is pretty dang decent.

Mostly, I’m just really happy to have found a quality Libre focused tech podcast, as opposed to the myriad “open source” or general Linux and technology podcasts. My podcast roll needs more of this.


2 stars
gets the job done, if you can swallow it

In short, it tastes like cat piss.

I suppose, by the very strictest definition, it is coffee. It keeps me from falling asleep at work, which isn’t nothing. But I do find it extremely difficult to finish a cup.

I don’t think the name does the fine city of Seattle any favors.