random thoughts

The ramps leading up to Port Authority Bus Terminal have always been great for "big city" and "urban decay" style shots.

I use Twitter.  A lot.  Especially from mobile devices.  Previously I used a combination of Motorola q9m (no data plan, so I just used SMS) and iPod Touch 1G + Twitteriffic.  On desktops, I go with Tweetie on Mac and Seesmic on Windows, but lately I've been trending towards libpurple (Adium and Pidgin, respectively).  

Android, being an open platform, benefits from a myriad of free and pay Twitter clients.  For the hell of it, I decided to test out four: Twitter for Android, Seesmic for Android, Twidroyd, and Toiteur.  All are available for free, and Twidroyd and Toiteur each have paid versions with a few bonus features.

My goal here is to narrow down each client, based on the features available in the free version only, and then make a decision on which to keep.

Interface-wise, each was unique.  Toiteur (pronounced "Twitter" but with a heavy French accent) has a very nice interface, with a good amount of tweak options, and the official Twitter client has a nice, clean interface.  The official client also has annoying animated backgrounds that can be disabled.  Seesmic features muted colors, and sticks closer to the desktop Seesmic look than the Android color scheme.  Twidroyd is probably the worst, looking drab and boring, and with a collection of too-small buttons at the bottom of the screen driving application use.

For functionality, Seesmic wins hands-down.  It supports multiple accounts (something offered in the pay versions of Toiteur and Twidroyd), background updating, and also support for Google Buzz.  Toiteur has the best means of retweets (supporting both the API-based, "Via," and "RT" styles).  Twitter has a unique feature in its contact sync, but I haven't been able to get it to work yet.

Ultimately, I found myself using Twitter and Toiteur the most.  Twitter is nice for its clean interface, but Toiteur provides more functionality.  A paid version is available (and the free version doesn't have any ads).  I've already uninstalled Seesmic and Twidroyd, even though I used them both heavily when I first switched to Android.

You cannot uninstall the official Twitter app.  The other three can be  uninstalled normally.

Vignette may be the better Android camera.  Its only weak point is that its £3 in the Market, while FxCamera is free.

One great feature is how there's an awesome terminal built right in.  It runs bash by default, and has a lot of the GNU tools (and I'm a HUGE GNU screen fan) installed either by default or with the dev tools.  Most important is its support for a SSH connection and X forwarding running on top of that.  Previous semesters saw projects that ran entirely in console mode, or were (mostly) cross-platform Java apps, while now I'm writing GLUT apps that need a screen to display on, so I'm moving outside of simple terminal use.

My preference, so far, has been vim in an SSH login.  It's easy enough to learn, and I haven't really had the time or desire to learn emacs to date.  My only issue is having to jump into pico for a Makefile, since I have vim set up to use 2 spaces instead of a tab.  Aside from some of the usual *NIX grumbles (specifically, constant use of the command line), this is a great experience.  Running inside screen, a utility I discovered only a few months ago, has seen my productivity double or triple, and allows me to do work from anywhere for either a few minutes or a few hours.  The only issue is that a wireless connection is a bit much for a SSH session, with the lag ruining the otherwise native speed of access.

As a bonus, here are my .vimrc and .screenrc files:

.vimrc:

set background=dark
syntax on
set softtabstop=2
set shiftwidth=2
set tabstop=4
set expandtab
set nowrap
set ruler
set number
set numberwidth=4
set cursorline