Author: Alexander Mamchenkov

SwiftKey 3 Keyboard

I rarely (read “never”) dedicate single post for single small thing, but this time I feel like I should do so.

Few weeks ago a friend of mine, in a conversation about Android apps, especially most essential ones like launchers, keyboards and so on, told me he is using SwiftKey 3 Keyboard and that it is really good, though you need to pay something like 3 euro for it. That time I replied that I am kinda satisfied with default keyboard in Jelly Beans and don’t see any point of changing it.

Few days ago I saw a port of Droider.ru about the same piece of software and when to read the complete review. It turned out to be so good that I went out to Google Play and downloaded the one-month-free-trial version. After install it asked me few questions on my way of typing, languages I use as well offered to give it access to my SMS/Gmail/Facebook to learn my way of communicating. Access was granted and in few minutes I was informed that things are fine now and ready to be used.

First thing I noticed is a design. Much better looking keyboard where I could easily touch any key as well as do long-tap for secondary symbols – nice. One day of normal phone use with mostly Foursquare, Instagram and Evernote where I was posting things and writing comments show me all the advantages. Not only SwiftKey 3 keyboard did well with predicting the word I am trying to type, but after pressing space (finishing the word) it was very good on a prediction for coming one. For instance, writing something like “Morning coffee” is done by typing “Mor”, selecting “Morning” as prediction, typing “c” and selecting “coffee”. Or typing “This is a nice keyboard” is done by typing “Thi”, selecting “This” as prediction, selecting “a”, selecting “is”, typing “ni” and selecting “nice”, typing “keyb” and selecting “keyboard”.

I found the layout of keys, the prediction of the text and all other features very useful and paid the small amount for such a useful thing. I don’t normally recommend things unless I really feel like I should (which is a rare case), but this time I do recommend everyone who didn’t try this nice software to go and check the trial version.

One more thing to note is that SwiftKey 3 Keyboard supports multiple languages with the same nice text prediction (at least English and Russian are fine).

Amsterdam. Few days later

So here i am, few days in Amsterdam, already used and know few ways around. General impression – I like it here, but I wouldn’t live here permanently.

Vincent: Yeah, baby, you’d dig it the most. But you know what the funniest thing about Europe is?

Jules: What?

Vincent: It’s the little differences. I mean, they got the same shit over there that we got here, but it’s just…it’s just, there it’s a little different.

 Here few things that we noticed compared to Cyprus:
  • Weather changes very fast and frequent
  • You actually need to by plastic bags in the shops, they are not given away for free
  • Transport system is really good, but it is quite expensive (2.70 euro ticket for an hour, or 2.20 euro to get from home to the office using OV anonymous card [prepaid]).
  • No free parking places. Though I didn’t have chance to check it personally, I heard it is about 3 euro/hour, even if parking is by your apartment
  • WiFi is not everywhere (talking about pubs/restaurants). It is more like exception rather than a rule (from what I have seen until now)
  • Rich nature: everything is green, water channels with birds all around and so on. Spiders all over around as well
  • Food is different: a lot of half-finished food in the shops for cooking in microwave/oven. I heard locals don’t really like cooking at home. There is not that many sandwich/kebab places like in Cyprus, so you need to find food, especially when not in the center of the city. But there some regions  with lots of restaurants. So one need to find a way for food
  • Bicycles, they are everywhere. Small, big, cheap, expensive, different.
  • 3G and any other kind of mobile internet is of great use here. Foursquare check-ins, instragram, Google Maps, 9292 (very handy app for transport info in NL) are of great use here. Since we have only one mobile with 3G (mine), I use WiFi tethering to share internet with my wife anytime she needs it.
  • Lots of walking. We don’t do that in Cyprus, we drive, and everyone has a car. Here is different. Having a car is expensive (I bet), while using metro/train/bus involves a lot of walking around.
  • Sky is covered with airplane traces. Sometimes it reminds me of Tic-Tac-Toy board :-)
  • Apartment numbers: this is tricky! There are no number on the houses. There are numbers on the apartments which are street-wise. Meaning that one house on a street will have apartments from 1 to 57, and the next one will have from 58 to 93 and so on. You can not predict which floor an apartment will be at each given house. Each house (especially with elevator) will have a plate with a map, telling which door is at which floor. Never seen such thing before, but it makes sense if you know how to use it.

Now, this is what I have on my mind strait away. If I remember/notice some more things, I will post it later in separate posts.

For the past few days we’ve been to few places and here some notes:

  • Ganzenhoef metro station (we stay near by) is a region with mostly black people, not restaurants (few local bars only), pretty quiet. It is ok there, but sometimes we feel strange and strangers there
  • Science Park (we work here) is a place with lots of IT stuff around as well as students
  • Leidseplein (we went there for a beer): crowded place with lots of bars/restaurants and huge Apple shop on the corner. Noisy, but if you like such things – I think you will enjoy it. We had some beers and food and it was good
  • Rembrandtplein: very nice place with lots of restaurants for steaks and grills. I think this is a place I gonna have all my future dinners :) Had amazing steak yesterday evening. Plus some live music in the center of a square.
  • Amsterdam Centraal: this is a place with lots of tourists. Very crowded (obviously), but nice to walk and watch around. Channel boat tour is something everyone must take. We went once and we are going more, since we wanna sit on the other side of the boat and watch other channel shore. There are some nice candle tours, where you go with the boat, night time, with candles, wine and so on. Gonna try it some time later.

Now, with regards to photos: we have a good camera, but carrying it around all the time is not handy. We took it this Saturday since we knew we gonna go for a channel tour, but mostly we use Instagram (my wife registered there as well) and pics are posted to Facebook/Twitter/VK.com. Pics from camera go to Flickr, but we are lazy, so don’t expect daily photos apart of instagram ones.

As we are working day time, most of things will be happening at the evening, as we are trying not to get stuck at home and make some use out of this trip. One thing that pushes us to go out of home is that we are looking for proper hot food for dinner, as we are having sandwiches on lunch in the office. So stay connected. More posts should come as well.

Amsterdam

Yesterday we arrived to Amsterdam, where we gonna spend a month working on a project. I am still under huge impressions, so I can’t tell much, though I can tell I like it here. So for the next month watch my instagram, foursquare and twitter for updates. It is really cool here and is completely different from Cyprus. Nice change for a while.

PrimeTel mobile call forwarding

As I am planning to travel very soon, I needed a way to forward all calls from my mobile to another number (which will take care of routing calls to my other number while I am abroad). Googling for PrimeTel mobile call forwarding I found this page in their FAQ, but it turned out to for landline services. No other pages in FAQ related to the problem I need to fix.

Few minutes on the phone with their operator and here are the instructions (assuming I need to redirect all incoming calls to 25666666):

To activate, dial the following from your mobile: *21*25666666*11#
To deactivate, dial the following form you mobile: ##21# (yes – double # in the begginning)

Keep in mind that call forwarding works only when redirecting to Cyprus mobile or landline numbers, no international redirects are allowed.

BTW, I am using PrimeTel mobile for few months now and I am pretty happy with everything, including 3G, nice web-portal to view call/sms/data logs, view/pay bills and so on.

Theme change

Finally I got some time to play with my blog settings. Changed theme, changed few plugins. Hope all works fine.

Missing few plugins, but couldn’t find anything good:

  • Flickr widget. I used to have FlickPress, but somehow it has few errors in the code and I am too lazy to fix them. This errors caused occasional braking of widgets following after flickr widget in the flow. I need a widget that can display N pictures from my flickr page in random order and lightbox (or similar) popup when pressed. Or have something similar to (newly installed) instagram widget, where random pics are shown with timeout rotation
  • Foursquare map widget. All the widgets I tried failed :-( I need a simple map with my last check in, that’s it

The rest of the things look fine.

If you notice anything strange or have any ideas/suggestions – feel free to drop a comment ;-)