The World of The Hypernaturals

I pick a show to watch while I am torturing myself at the gym. It has to be a show I love, and I have to go to the gym to see it. Before this it was Lucifer. Now...? Guess maybe Flash, because I already watched Supergirl in real-time (I can't wait for Batwoman!) I read a review of JJ S3, and I should know better than to read reviews. Critics think that in order to be effective, they have to criticize.  When they can't think of anything bad, they make up stuff. Donald Trumps REAL fake news. In this case, the reviewer (that I will not dignify with a link) said that S3 was 'a mess'. I think they were watching something else. Maybe Inhumans? S3 was terrific. Hard as hell to watch, because it was about the hero's journey, and Jessica and Trish being on it and feeling different things about it. A show with little in the way of blowing shit up that kept me distracted 42 minutes every other day on the elliptical. JJ S3 was wonderful, and I hate like hell its the l

I do not have trouble with change. That being said: I just went through the iPad this morning turning off everything I could see that MIGHT make baby Safari windows pop up in the mail app. I have the IOS 13 Beta on there, and this iPadOS is so raw. I know they keep trying to say this tablet can replace a laptop. It so can't. What good it is to pop up a small Safari window when I touch a link that I cannot resize, and that I have to swipe away rather than just close. Dumb. The file system is still a pile of garbage too. It may be more secure to isolate one app's storage from another, but it is a PITA to try to do anything with it. I was reading through the Android 10 release notes with some horror last night too. Are all tech companies just getting brain dead? Gestures instead of Nav buttons? Screw that. If I can't turn on Nav buttons again and turn off gestures, then why the entire hell am I even on Android? I can run any braindead OS. Oh: But we did it because th

Facebook is back. No comment as to why they took it down. I assume I am correct about them wanting Biometrics. The suspicious activity being everything I do to try to prevent cross-site tracking, etc. I will keep an eye on them. The only reason I added that site was because Wattpad had a button to make posting there easy. I know a lot of people live on Facebook, so I thought it might be a handy way for them to get status on things. We will see. If they keep up their locking me out because they can't track me very well, then I'll just quit trying to keep the thing running. Not like I don't have Wattpad, Tumblr, Blogger, and Twitter...

Facebook detected 'suspicious' activity on my account. That suspicious activity is that I never loaded up much of anything other than books status there, and only ever use a secure browser to access it so every time I go there all my cookies from the last time are gone. They made me upload a picture of me to prove I am me, even though they have not OTHER picture of me to even know that. Clearly they want my biometrics. I am not going to fight them to keep it alive. They can reactivate it or not: I do not care. It is not as if I have years and years of things going on there. Tumblr, on the other hand, is showing signs of much more activity over there. If I had to guess: People like that it has a new owner. I may have to look at how to mirror Tumblr and Blogger and ignore Facebook altogether.

I am about halfway through this edit of 'Missing vampire-Reward Available'. I looked at the word count and went 'Huh...' Then I realized I never actually finished writing book six because I went on to books 7-12. Doh. Not that I don't know what happens: I was just eager to get on to book 7 because it was a new chapter in the novels that made the world open up a bit. Looks like the Wattpad posting of Book six is going to be farther into the future than I realized.

I was shopping at target (back to school in full swing!) and came across a real live Samsung display. Note 9 and Note 10+ side by side. I know the Note 10 has the most color-accurate display ever. The best camera currently out there. a screen .4 inches bigger than the Note 9. an 855 rather than the 845 processor on the new, smaller fab. But I held them side by side, and then later I held my SO's iPhone X Note 10+ is just not enough screen and other advantages to overcome the loss of the headphone jack. I used the Note 9's headphone jack all week as I worked on Book 6, and plugged in my Skull Candy's to list to Debert McClinton's new album while I wrote.  (There is a reason Morgan was in a ZZ Top cover band...) So: Meh. The last drop of Note 10+ techno-lust died, replaced by my Note 9's headphone jack and ability to play whatever I want, wherever I want. HAIM is supposed to have a new album soon too! I kept my old LG V30 just to be a glorified iPod Touch

I have had a Tumblr account for a while now ( https://www.tumblr.com/blog/cjstevens )  , ever since I started publishing books. and my  http://www.hypernaturalsbooks.com/  web page is built on WordPress, so it is interesting that the owner of Wordpress is now also the owner of Tumblr. I look forward to seeing what they can do with it. A great deal has been made in the press about the fact that Verizon lost their entire ass on that deal, but they have no one to blame but themselves. I have watched the postings drop off on Tumblr ever since they went all politically correct on it. If you do not want a unique platform, don't buy one and try to homogenize it into yet another vanilla platform. We already have Instagram for that. Now the question is: will WordPress let Tumblr breathe? Keep the 8chan hate-speech and child porn off, but the otherwise open expression re-allowed? I write Vampire romance, among other things, and while I do not get overly explicit, I do try to be open an

https://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-galaxy-note-10-kills-headphone-jack-for-galaxy-buds-2019-8 Dave Smith, at BI, thinks removing the headphone jack from the Note 10 was a smart business move. After all, Samsung makes no additional money is I use my Skull Candy headphones. They want to sell me some Galaxy Buds. Setting aside that I have buds and I hate them (not Galaxy ones) my main headphones are all wired with the sole exception of my workout headphones, and those are Bose Soundsports. Even is I were going to put up with this Jackmail, I would not buy Samsung headphones. I would not reward their anti-customer behavior that way. Assume for a moment I can never buy another phone that does not have the headphone jack removed. That means I have to carry a dongle that lets me use wired headphones. Not that I will buy their product. But for the foreseeable future, Note 9 in hand, I am not even buying their phone. Their smart business decision means I am not buying ANYTHING from t

I am throwing the bullshit flag. Samsung SAID they deleted the headphone jack on the S10+ to make room for more battery. They made the screen grow from 6.4 to 6.8 inches, but the battery only went up 200 Mah? That's smaller than my watch battery. BS: They deleted the headphone jack because they want to sell their Apple earpods equivalent. I am not here for that. Not sure what my next phone will be, but it won't be a Note 10+, even with the 10.8 inch screen. Not like the Note 9 is a bad phone in the meantime. Such an Apple move.

And... no headphone jack. Guess the Note 9 is going to be it for now. I would love that screen, even though the body needs a case to keep from touching the screen. Or, there is the headphone jack/usb-c charging dongle. Not yet... time to wait and watch. see how the new Dex thing works.

If there is a thing I do not understand in the tech press, it is the widespread hatred of bezels. I like my Note 9, but I had to buy a tech21 case for it to make it so I can hold the thing without touching the screen. My Galaxy Tab 4 has no bezels to speak of and it is always giving me a message about 'multi-touch protection' being activated. Well, of course it was, I can't levitate the thing with my mind. My SO on the other hand got one of those new iPad Mini's with the A12 processor and the Hi-Rez screen. Lovely device, and it has bezels (because it is the old dated design) so one can actually HOLD it. Fast. Good battery life. No accidental screen touches. It has nice sounding speakers, and a headphone jack too Makes me think about going back into the Apple Ecosystem! I am sure they will kill it.

I have been a Samsung and Apple customer over the years. I got tired of fighting Apple for control of my iPhone (they seemed to think it was theirs) and switched back to Android. After a foray into LG, I got tired of those always breaking (G2, V20, V30) and got a Note 9. I LOVE the Note 9, or least once I scrap all the Samsung cruft off it. Would it be so hard to just not add in all this garbage? I want to root the thing just to dump all the pre-installed BS. If it has one other failing it is too small. yes: Too small. I know. My daughter (also tired of LG failure on her V30) got a Samsung S10e. She loves it. because it is tiny. Different strokes: I used it today, and could not stand how small the screen is I looked at the S10+, but it is the same screen size as the Note 9. Its main advantage was the Snap 855 processor, and the Note 9 does not feel slow. I would have liked the battery life, but the Note 9 was a lot less expensive. It was six months old already, after all. A

So: What am I going to put here? Tumblr and Facebook and Twitter are all reflections of each other and mostly at the moment where I put Wattpad postings.  I do a few other things on Twitter, but not much, because of length restrictions. So: I think here is where I put other musings. technical and otherwise. But first, my other web sites: http://www.hypernaturalsbooks.com  : this is a Wordpress site about the books and the world https://www.tumblr.com/blog/cjstevens  : nearly 500 posts in, tumblr is a dead zone. After Verizon bought it, it seems they are doing their dead level best to kill it. Rumors abound about Pornhub possibly buying it and letting it breathe again. We'll see. https://twitter.com/cjstevens2018 : Twitter feed. https://www.wattpad.com/user/cjstevens2018 Wattpad publishing of a lot of my work. https://www.facebook.com/cj.stevens.92754  Me on Facebook. Me on the Internet, so far. I thought about Pintret, but not sure why. I don't draw that many c