Instead of talking about my summer, let’s talk about Android apps! I’ve started to leave a few comments about this in various places, but it turns out that I have so many feelings about this that I rapidly outgrew character limits on comments, plus I figured that it couldn’t hurt anything to have this all archived neatly somewhere.

So, phones. Right now I’ve got an HTC EVO; before this, I had an HTC Hero, which I’ve since given to Nick. Before I go any further, I should probably do the obligatory disclaimers: I really, really love my phones, and I use them constantly, and I’m way more invested in them than I probably ought to be. I’ve used iPhones and don’t especially like them, plus I super hate iTunes and the “Apple Experience”, so I’m not at all interest in hearing comments about iPhones being better or whatever. Go make your own post about iPhones. (That said, if you’re thinking about switching to Android and would like to say “My iPhone does this–can I make an Android do that?” I’m totally happy to talk about that, and I’m happy to talk about apps with platform overlap.)

Also, this is all just my opinion–I don’t know everything about Android, and I’m sure that there are many really useful, awesome things that I’m missing, but since I’m missing them, I’m not talking about them. Feel free to edify me–nicely–in the comments. (Remember what I said about the worst summer ever? Seriously, please be nice.)

Anyhow, biases admitted up front. Moving on.

This post is, as it turns out, super fucking long, so I’m sticking the rest of it under a cut so those of you who have iPhones/Blackberries/hate cell phones and eschew modern technology don’t have to read about it.

First, my suggestion for any Android user is to root your phone. This LifeHacker guide will walk you through it. Yes, it’s possible that you’re going to brick your phone. No, it’s really, really, really not likely. When I rooted my Hero, there weren’t any one-click apps available, and I had to fumble my way through it using a terminal emulator and a bunch of crappy guides from forums. I fucked it up–badly–several times, and had to pull the battery and reboot and reboot and reboot. And I still didn’t brick it. The chances that you’re going to manage to seriously damage your phone by using a one-click root method or something similar are almost none, imo. Suck it up and do it.

After rooting, I put a custom ROM on my phone. This is basically an operating system. You know how Linux has Linux-the-OS, but when you’re actually installing Linux, there’s Ubuntu and FreeBSD and CentOS? For Linux, they’re called distros; for Android, they’re called ROMs. This is a brief and incomplete list of why ROMs are awesome:

• They stay up to date. The Hero I mentioned earlier is currently running Android 2.3.3. The official firmware is still on 2.1, and they don’t expect any further updates.

• You can ditch all the bloatware that your carrier put on your phone. Really, did I need a NASCAR app? No. What about NFL Live? Still no. (Technically this is a point in favor of rooting, as you can do this on a rooted phone. But still.)
• ROMs have more options than the stock firmware does. My ROM, for example, has the option to put music controls on my lockscreen. I’ve also got a sound on/off/vibrate thing on my lock screen. You can force the phone to install any app to your SD card, which is great if you’re an app junkie. There’s a built-in thing (again, on my ROM) to set quiet hours for your phone to mute notifications. It’s a bunch of little tweaks, sure, but they make the phone a lot more enjoyable.
• Literally every ROM I’ve used–and I’ve used a bunch–is faster than the interface that the phone came with. HTC’s Sense interface is, yes, gorgeous…but it’s laggy as hell, in my experience. Motorola’s MotoBlur is the same way. Even a phone running Android without an overlay isn’t as fast as most of the ROMs I’ve used.

If you decide to install a ROM–and you don’t have to–you have to pick one. If your phone is supported, I strongly suggest CyanogenMod–it supports a ton of devices and is, frankly, awesome. It’s really fast, it’s really stable, it has a fantastic dev community, and if the people who developed Cyanogen came out with an operating system tomorrow, I would buy it without hesitation. I’ve also used Modaco, Damage Control, and Fresh ROM–I don’t like them as much as Cyanogen, but would still rec any of them. (Based, I should note, on the versions that I’ve used, all of which are a year or more old at this point.) It’s worth mentioning that Modaco’s community seems especially welcoming to people who are new to rooting and ROMs–they have an entire forum section for absolute beginners, which isn’t something I’ve seen anywhere else.

Now you’ve got a ROM! This is awesome, right? I mean, ok, it probably doesn’t look like exactly what you’re used to, but I promise, you’ll get used to it fast.

Let’s talk about apps and widgets now, then. First I’m going to put up a couple screenshots of my home screens, and then I’m going to talk about the apps in groups, yes? Yes.

That’s my home screen.

Left of the home screen.

Right of the home screen.

(There are two other home screens, as well, but one is all shortcuts to phoning/texting people, and the other is a homescreen that has stuff for Maura on it.)

Maybe you’ve already guessed this, but I use a lot of apps. I’m going to talk about widgets first, because I’ve got a lot of them on display up there.

Widgets

First up is Beautiful Widgets. This isn’t free–it’s about $3–but it’s worth it. My gorgeous home screen clock/weather/date thing up there? That’s Beautiful Widgets. Hit the clock, and it takes you to the alarm. Hit the weather icon, and you go to a four-day forecast and more details on the current weather. Hit the date, and you go to the calendar. It’s fantastic. There are also a bunch of widgets for things like turning the WiFi on and off, or enabling airplane mode, or whatever.

At the bottom of my home screen, I have a calendar display. This is Smooth Calendar. All it does is show you whatever the next [x] events on your calendar are, but it does so in a way that’s aesthetically pleasing. It’s surprisingly customizable–you can set the color of the calendar icon, set the transparency of the background, set what calendars it’s displaying from, set how many events it shows… When you touch the icon, you’re taken to a the full calendar.

Gmail Unread Count is a little widget that puts a Gmail icon up and gives it a tag telling you how many unread emails you have. If you’re one of those people who has 9823 unread emails, you’ll hate this. If, like me, you’re somewhat obsessive about having your inbox all neat and tidy, all the time, you’ll love it. It costs 99c.

Basics

Astro is a lovely file manager that’s well worth installing if your device didn’t come with one pre-installed. (If your device did come with one pre-installed, I don’t think that Astro has any killer features or anything that make it worth changing.)

Barnacle WiFi Tether is a helpful WiFi tethering app. It supports secure connections, too, so you don’t have to share your data plan with everyone within a hundred feet of you.

Days Left Widget is a simple little countdown widget, but I like it.

Dialer One is a replacement for the stock dialer. I like it for a bunch of reasons, but most importantly, you can dial by starting to type someone’s name on the number pad. So if I’m phoning Nick, I hit 6-4-2… For whatever reason, the stock dialer doesn’t do this, and it makes me crazy.

Dolphin Browser Mini is a replacement for the stock browser. There are lot of these out there, including Firefox and Opera, but I really like Dolphin. It’s fast, it’s very stable, it has infinite tabs, it has Flash support, and when you open it, you’re on
a speed dial page that has (customizable) links to commonly used sites.

Google Search is what you’d expect–a nice search widget.

Google Voice is a must-have if you’re on Android. It takes and transcribes voicemail, and then emails you a copy. (And, obviously, a copy’s on your phone.) It
also makes cheap international calls, which is fantastic. The widget can be seen on the left-of-home-screen screen, above.

Handcent is a SMS alternative. You can change the backgrounds of your conversations, change the way that it’s laid out (iPhone style, stock Android style, HTC style, etc.)…basically, everything is customizable. There are even font packs so you can change fonts. It also lets you schedule texts, blacklist numbers, and there’s an option to back up all your SMS messages to My Handcent. (As I have no interest in this, I don’t know if there’s a fee or not.)

Google Maps is an atlas and a GPS in one.

Ringdroid lets you make your own ringtones, either by recording something or by chopping up an existing audio file.

ClockworkROM isn’t necessary unless you’ve rooted and are using a ROM, but if you are, this makes backing up and installing new ROMs totally mindless.

Screenshot lets you screencap your phone. This requires root and probably Superuser.

Seek Droid is a 99c app that will help you find your phone if you lose it or if it’s stolen. You set up an account when you download the app, and if the phone is lost/stolen, you go onto the website and push a button. Within a minute or two, the phone will start chirping and you’ll get a GPS fix on where it is. You can also use this app to wipe data (from the phone and/or SD card) remotely. Where’s My Droid is similar to Seek Droid, only you text (instead of logging into a website) and you can’t wipe the data. They’re both awesome.

Sugar Sync lets you sync from your phone to your Sugar Sync account. (See also: Dropbox, though I don’t like it as well.)

Superuser allows apps to run with superuser permissions. If you’re rooted, you need to have this installed. (If you’re not rooted, it doesn’t do you any good, so
don’t bother.)

Tasker is, I think, the most expensive app I have–it’s about $6.50 in the market right now. That said, it’s pretty amazing, because Tasker basically lets you automate everything on your phone. When I get to work, my phone automatically sets itself to vibrate. When I get home, the WiFi turns itself on. When I open Google Maps, the GPS turns itself on, and it turns itself off when I close Maps. My screen automatically dims itself during certain hours. Plugging in headphones launches my music player and turns the volume down to one. Maybe you want to set the phone to silent, but only if it’s face-down and between the hours of midnight and seven–you can totally do that. I’ve barely scratched the surface of what Tasker is capable of, and it’s totally worth the six bucks. That said, there’s a fairly steep learning curve, and getting it to do exactly what you want to do can be tricky at first. If you install this and find yourself staring at it, flummoxed, drop me a line and I’ll see if I can help.

Tiny Flashlight is a great flashlight app. If you’ve got an LED flash, Tiny Flashlight can light it up so you can use that as a flashlight. There’s also an option to turn your screen a bright white, which works almost as well as the LED does.

Titanium Backup does like it says–it backs up everything. Contacts, messages, levels of Angry Birds beaten… If you’ve rooted but not installed a ROM, this will let you uninstall bloatware and other undesirable programs. You have to have root for this one to work.

Google Translate puts Google’s fairly amazing translation engine on your phone. Best parts: It allows for voice input, and can do text-to-speech output.

TTorrent is a torrent client for Android.

Voice Search is a magical app that means you can talk to your phone. Bring up a text, hit the mic, and dictate your text. Hit voice search and say “Text Nick C Hi, honey, go buy milk, please,” and it’ll create a text to Nick C telling him to buy milk.

Watchdog keeps an eye out for runaway apps. This doesn’t happen often to me, but every once in a while, something will get caught in a loop, and it’ll just…churn. Watchdog keeps an eye on your apps and if one starts sucking up CPU, it’ll kill
the app. (And yes, you can blacklist–never kill App X.)

Social Stuff

Facebook. I hate basically everything about Facebook…but I love how the app integrates my Facebook friends with my contacts. It’ll transfer over whatever info you have avilable to you on Facebook and make it available on your phone, basically.

Google+ is the Android G+ app, and it’s awfully shiny. Instant upload when you take photos, nice stream view, easy sharing… It also has a great widget, which you can see in the pics above. It makes it really, really easy to share things on G+, which means that I’m already using it roughly ten million times more than I use Facebook.

Hootsuite is my Twitter client of choice. I like it because it supports multiple accounts, it lets you schedule tweets, and it’s stupidly easy to use. I also like that they have a browser-based client, which means that I can use Hootsuite from my computer at work. That said, there are about a hundred great Twitter apps out there, and if you’re not using multiple accounts and/or dead set on having the same experience on your phone and in a browser, this might not be your best choice.

Tumblr has a surprisingly robust app. Nice view of your stream, really easy to post, plus has multiple blog support. A+.

Twitter‘s official app is pretty strong, too, and it sounds like it’ll only get stronger, since Twitter is eating up many of the smaller companies that used to make Twitter apps.

Urban Spoon isn’t an app that I use often, but when I’m somewhere new and don’t know what do to about supper, I pull it up. I really like that you can filter by features of the restaurants.

Yelp can really be described almost the exact same way the Urban Spoon app is, only you can use Yelp for any business. I don’t have a strong preference with these two apps, and keep both installed–sometimes Yelp will have something that US has missed, other times it’s the other way around.

Media

Amazon MP3 allows you to stream music from your Amazon Cloud Player.

Last.fm lets you listen to your Last.fm radio station and, more importantly, enables scrobbling from certain media players.

MoboPlayer is a very solid video player that handles most popular video formats without choking. It also supports subtitles and playlists, which not all Android video players do.

Moon+ Reader is my ebook reader of choice. It handles .txt, epub, and html files and is pleasing to me. (I’m currently on a quest to convert all my ebooks, including ones from Kindle, to epub, so this works great for me. If you’re a Kindle fan, though, also you’ll want the Kindle app, as well.)

Netflix brings Netflix streaming to your phone, which is great for when you’re stuck somewhere and don’t have anything else to do.

Pandora enables you to stream your Pandora stations from your phone.

Play by Yahoo! Music–this, ok, really doesn’t sound like it’s the kind of thing that would be awesome. It turns out, though, that Play is my favorite music player for Android. It has the normal music player stuff, but it’s got nice bonuses–if you have last.fm installed, it’ll automatically scrobble what you’re listening to, and there’s an “identify this song” button for
times when you’re in Starbucks or whatever and just have to know what the song on the radio is. (In other words, it replaces Shazam/SoundHound.)

Productivity

Adobe Reader reads PDFs. If you have no call to do that, then you don’t need this at all. If you find yourself using the cursed PDF more often than not, though, this is a worthwhile download. There are a lot of third-party apps that do the same thing, but none of them do anything particularly special, and Adobe’s made a pretty solid app.

AK Notepad is a really basic, simple notetaking app. It looks like a piece of yellow-lined paper, and you type on it. (You can have multiple pieces of paper.) If you’re an Evernote person, Evernote also has a great app, but for whatever reason, I just don’t like it.

Astrid Task is a nice little to-do app that, in addition to the normal to-do lists stuff, lets you share lists with people and syncs with Google Tasks. I’d say more about this, but, tbh, I’ve only been using it for about a week, so I don’t feel like I’m in a great position to do so. I do, however, like it so far. (For the record, prior to this I was using GTasks, which I didn’t dislike, but felt like there had to be a better option.)

Google Docs is the app for–surprise–Google Docs. I use Docs all the time, both on my phone and on my computer, and this app makes my life so much easier. I have files for recipes, for addresses, for all kinds of stuff, and they’re always right there. The app is simple to use and works really, really well.

Documents To Go is a viewer for basically any Office-supported file. There’s a paid version (for about $15 right now) that enables editing on docs, but, frankly, I’d just as soon use Google Docs for free. I have this mostly to deal with the occasional Excel file from work.

Google Goggles is actually a visual search–take a picture, and Google will spit back information about it. (In theory–sometimes it works perfectly; other times, less so.) What it’s really amazing for, though, is taking a photo of a business card or something similar and saving the information–I don’t even keep people’s cards most of the time anymore, I just take a picture and hand the card back.

Google Reader maybe isn’t technically a productivity app, but maybe you use Greader to keep up with blogs for work? Maybe? Ok, so maybe it’s the anti-productivity app. Whatever. It’s a nice app with a clean interface, and you could find worse ways to waste your time.

WordPress puts all the controls for your WordPress blog–self-hosted or hosted on WordPress.com–at your fingertips.

Health

Daily Ab Workout is a five-to-ten minute workout. I like it not because I have any particular give-a-fuck about my abs (if you’d met me, you’d realize how laughable this idea is) but because it doesn’t require any equipment to do, so it’s easy to do it on those days when you’re feeling extra energetic. (Or when you’re just so tired of sitting in your chair that you have to do *something*.)

Daily Cardio Workout can be described the exact same way that Daily Ab Workout can.

Fertility Friend is probably the app to use if you’re trying to get pregnant. I assume that if you’re trying to get pregnant, you’re already using the Fertility Friend website, and this puts that on your phone. It’s a pretty new app–it only came out a couple months ago–so it’s still a bit buggy sometimes, but is almost certainly the best and most comprehensive fertility-tracking app out there.

Lightning Bug is a white noise generator. (It also works as an alarm clock, but I prefer Sleep As An Droid for that.) It has a bunch of inbuilt sound scenes, and you can customize them by enabling or disabling different tracks. There are also a ton of add-ons available in the market.

My Days is a great app to use if you’re just trying to track your period and don’t care about what your cervical fluid feels like on any given day. Very nice app, works really well, and has a little countdown-to-your-period widget, if you want it.

Sleep As An Droid is a sleep tracking app. It graphs your sleep history, it keeps tabs on how much sleep you’re short on, and it has one of those alarms that monitors your sleep pattern and wakes you up when you’re not in REM, which makes getting up easier. It also has the option to wake you up slowly, with a quiet noise that gets louder, and to use a CAPTCHA to turn off your alarm, proving that you’re really awake.

Pocket Yoga is a lovely little yoga app. You can either get an overview of positions, or you can select one of several yoga routines to do. I love this app and sometimes will do one of the routines on my lunch break. If you’re not following the link here, though, make sure that you get Pocket Yoga by Rainfrog–there’s another company that makes an app called Pocket Yoga, but it’s shit.

Shopping and Money

Your bank’s app. No link, because I don’t know what bank you use, but I’m willing to bet that they’ve got an app. I use a tiny regional bank that only has branches in three states, and even they have an app. Your bank has an app. Go find it. Get the app.

Amazon.com I don’t even think that I need to explain this. It makes Amazon fast and easily accessible from your phone, which is exactly what your credit card didn’t need, right? Right.

GasBuddy is a magical, wonderful app. You open it up and press “find gas by me”, and you get a list of nearby gas stations and the current cost of gas at each. Within a mile of where I am right now, I’ve got gas at anywhere from $3.57/gal to $3.79/gal. Guess what station I’m going to.

Key Ring makes shopping suck less, becuase you no longer have to carry three dozen different rewards cards on your keychain. Take a picture of the barcode and Key Ring will store it. Next time you’re at the store, you just bring up the app and scan the barcode from your phone. It also has a grocery coupons feature, but I’ve never used it, so can’t say anything useful about it.

Mint is the app for the uber-popular site. If you use Mint, this app is fantastic. (I don’t use Mint anymore, though I did for a while, and I used the app during that time. I’m mentioning it here mostly because it seemed like a solid app, and I know a ton of people use Mint.)

PayPal gives access to your PayPal account from your phone. Possibly more compelling, though, it offers the option to take a photo of a check and deposit it to your
PayPal account. Remember what I said before about how I use a regional bank? They’re not anywhere near offering deposits by phone yet, and PayPal lets me push them a tiny bit closer to the twenty-first century.

Shop Savvy is a barcode scanner. Scan the code, and you’ll get a popup of purchase options, both local and online, as well as the prices at each place. I’ve saved a fair bit of money by scanning things before purchasing them.

Photos and Art

Multitouch Paint is a simple drawing app. The controls are fairly limited, and you won’t be making Great Art, but it’s nice to have around for the occasional smiley face and to give kids something to do on your phone.

Photoshop Express is a simple photo editing app. You have to have a Photoshop online account, and I find the interface a little tedious, but I keep it around, mostly to crop photos. (Inexplicably, this is something that most other photo editors don’t do.)

PicSay Pro is $4 in the market, and it’s totally worth it. You can add speech bubbles, text, and stickers (noses, beards, emoticons, eyes, arrows, holiday themed stickers…there’s a ton of them) to photos quickly and easily. More importantly to me, there are a ton of adjustments–exposure, contrast, brightness, make the image black and white save for a single color, sharpen, blur, fix red eye… And there are a ton of effects, too: pencil sketch, lomo, faux HRD, cross processed (for that ’70s look), sepia, tilt shift, vignette, instant film… It also supports the ability to mask the effects, so they’re only applied to part of the photo. To be honest, this is what I expected the Photoshop app to be like. Totally worth the $4.

PicsIn Kaleidoscope is oddly mesmeric. It’s a pretty simple app–pick a brush size and a color, and move your finger around on the screen. The app will reproduce the finger path over a bunch of segments, and the effect is very pretty. Um, screencap; I’m explaining this poorly.

See? Pretty.

Games

Ancient Frog is a zen-like thing in which you have a set number of moves to move a frog from start to eating a fly. I find it weirdly compelling, but…well, I’m weird.

Angry Birds probably doesn’t really need an introduction, right? It’s worth mentioning that Amazon has ad-free versions of Angry Birds for 99c/game.

Angry Birds Rio is…more Angry Birds!

Angry Birds Seasons is a seasonally-updated Angry Birds game. This is probably my favorite of the three–it’s certainly the only one in which I’ve beaten all the levels.

Bonsai Blast is a bit like Popcap’s Zuma–fire colored balls at a chain of colored balls, make colored balls disappear. I’ve used this app to get more than one person used to using the touch screen–it’s a very simple game to play, and trains people fairly quickly in how to touch the screen so things will go where you want them to go.

Doodle Fit is about a buck fifty, and it’s a clever little puzzle game for the price. (That said, there’s also a free version–just search and it’ll come up.) You get a shape, and have to fit a bunch of other shapes into it. Which sounds pretty easy, but isn’t. This is definitely the best jigsaw-type game I’ve found on Android.

Dragon, Fly! is friggin’ adorable. I mean, that’s it–you’re a baby dragon, you slide down hills. That’s the whole game. But it’s so goddamn cute that I don’t care.

Dragon Hunter is a charming tower defense game in which you defend your tower from dragons. Bet you didn’t see that coming, did you? Predictably, my favorite bits are the sea monsters.

Dropwords is kind of like Boggle, if the boggle tiles disappeared and were replaced by new letters after you’d used them to make a word.

Enjoy Sudoku is a really great free sudoku game. If you upgrade to the paid version, which is, I think, two bucks, you have unlimited puzzles. I love it and play it every day.

Plants vs. Zombies doesn’t get a link, because it’s only on Amazon, and–um, and for some eason I’ve decided not to link things that are Amazon only. It’s a cuteish tower defense game, basically. Downsides: if you have an older phone (and by “older” I mean “older than a year old”) you’re screwed, and the app is something like 80MB, which is just fucking ridiculous.

Robot Unicorn Attack is…uh. Look. Go here. Turn on your volume. Play the game. Did you think it was hilarious? Then you want this app. If you think it is annoying and pointless, you don’t want it. Stunning insight, I know. You’re welcome.

Shortyz Crosswords is a great app that pulls crossword puzzles from a bunch of online sources (my last update had Universal Crossword, USA Today, Newday, Sheffer Crosswords, Joseph Crosswords, LA Times, Washington Post, and NY Times Classic) and gives you a clean, easy to use interface to do them on your phone. Worth mentioning, I guess, is that these are American-style crosswords, which and I have recently realized are not
only unlike cryptics, but are also unlike the quick crosswords that are sometimes published with the cryptics, so if you’re not American, this is a new and exciting world of crossword frustration! (We spent a not insignificant amount of time trying to do each other’s crosswords, and both failed. If you were wondering.)

Slice It! is a geometry-based game, which sounds absurdly boring, I know. But I’m kind of faily at math, and this is great. You get a shape, and a certain number of cuts, and have to cut the shape into [x number] of equal pieces. It’s harder than it sounds, and I’m always ridiculously pleased when I get one right.

Words with Friends is a Scrabble clone with a huge user base. I’m meghanconrad–totally start games with me.

Supermarket Scramble is a Bejeweled-style game with fruit instead of gems. I like it because you have shopping lists and are meant to find certain things, not just any matches.

Keyboards

The stock Android keyboard is pretty solid, imo, but if you want to level up and type a hell of a lot faster, look into alternate keyboards.

Swype is the only app link that doesn’t take you to the Android store. Swype is still technically in beta, and I don’t expect it’s ever going to find its way to the app store–they’re making most of their money by licensing the keyboard to phone manufacturers. Which they can do, because the keyboard is amazing. No more tap-tap-tap–instead you just drag your finger from one letter to another, not picking up between. There’s a bit of a learning curve, but once you’ve learnt it, it’s really fast and very smooth. To get it, you have to sign up for the beta, and they’ll send you an email with a download link. Beta is open right now, but they seem to open and close it randomly, sometimes leaving it one way or the other for months at a time.

8pen is an amazing keyboard designed for phones. It looks nothing like a traditional keyboard, and it works nothing like them, and it has a staggeringly steep learning curve. If you can get past these things–and I admit that it’s a big if, and one that I can’t yet really say I’ve managed–8pen would be blazingly fucking fast, because it’s basically like forming cursive letters. I’m not there yet, but can see the possibility in it and am determined to get proficient at it. It currently costs about $1.50 in the market.

Swiftkey is great if you’re into predictive text–it actually studies your Facebook posts, tweets, and SMS messages to figure out what words you’re most likely to use next. That said, I have an unreasonable hate of predictive text, so I didn’t use this keyboard long.

Stuff that didn’t really fit anywhere else

Google Sky Map has basically no useful purpose, unless you’re trying to navigate by the stars and unsure what star is which. That said, it’s super fucking cool. You open the app and point it at the sky, and it shows you what you’re looking at, complete with labels. Maura loves this app and can play with it for hours, and I’m not really a whole lot better.

Layar is an augmented reality app, which I love saying because it sounds super futuristic and scifitastic. Basically, though, you hold your phone up so it sees what you’re seeing, and you’ll see the area around you on the phone’s screen (duh) with labels. What you see depends on what layers you’ve got enabled, but some of the more common ones are homes for sale, local businesses, restaurants and bars, and landmarks. When you tap the label, you’re off to more information about the [whatever]. The database isn’t amazing yet, and I wish that they’d add user-edited info, but even here in bumfuck Ohio, most businesses are labeled, and it’s a neat thing to play with.

The Weather Channel is worldwide weather with predictions, maps, detailed hourly forecasts, and all that other fancy stuff. I love my homescreen weather app, but sometimes I want more detailed weather, and this does that.

Ok! I think that I have officially run out of words to say. What’d I miss?

Last weekend, I finally managed to get my garden put in. After the stunning failure of last year’s garden, I decided not to start my own seeds this year, but to go buy a bunch of plants and see what happened. So I went off and spent about $25 on plants, and then I spend eleven hours over the course of two days planting things, mulching things, and getting sunburnt.

I know. My life is pretty glamorous.

Pictures of the garden coming shortly, but for the moment, the above is a more-or-less accurate diagram of what was planted where.

1 Sage
2 Thyme
3 Rosemary
4 Basil
5 Oregano
6 Druzba Tomatoes
7 Moskvich Early Tomatoes
8 Oxheart Tomatoes
9 Oxheart Tomatoes (not an error–I accidentally made both eight and nine Oxhearts.)
10 Granny Smith Tomatoes
11 Sun Sugar Tomatoes
12 Beefmaster Tomatoes
13 Black Krim Tomatoes
14 Yellow Pear Tomatoes
15 Banana Peppers
16 California Wonder
17 Black Beauty Eggplant
18 Lettuce
19 Purple and orange cauliflowers
20 Yellow Doll Watermelon
21 Butternut Squash
22 Zucchini
23 Stonehead Cabbage
24 Brussels Sprouts
25 Bush Pickle
26 Strawberry

If I manage to find time this weekend, I have a few pumpkins and some dill that I’d still like to put in, but even if they don’t make it (and, let’s be honest, they’re probably not) I feel pretty good about the garden.

I expect that’ll last for a month or two–right about until all my plants start dying horribly. But for the next month or so, I’m totally an awesome gardener, and I’ve got a diagram to prove it.

What’s broken my seclusion, then? I’ve been visited by the cheese fairy.

[pretend there is a picture here. a picture of someone from Wisconsin, maybe, or France. someone who has wings and is carrying a wand that has a wedge of cheese instead of a star at the tip. this person is the cheese fairy, and they are good.]

And it’s not any cheese–it’s fancy cheese. This cheese, to be precise.

Upon receiving it, I did what any sensible person would do, which was to rip open the package, make a joyous noise, and then promptly eat half a wheel of Cirrus for supper. (Obviously, right? I mean, that’s definitely what you guys would do, too, isn’t it?) Then the next day I made mushroom and pea risotto and mixed in a little more of the Cirrus.

Then there were a few sad, cheeseless days, and then I ate half a round of Seastack for supper. Nick ate some of the Trailhead that night, plus some super-delicious cheddar. Sometimes making a real meal is hard, and sometimes it’s just that cheese is really delicious. Stop judging me, okay?

(Yes, fine, I just read that New York Times article about cheese, and I’m feeling a little defensive. Leave my cheese alone.)

I didn’t order it, and the cheese didn’t come with a note or anything, but I figured that some generous soul had sent it to me–it wouldn’t be the first time something like that’s happened. I fired off an email to the usual suspect when the cheese arrived, but as she was gone for the weekend, I happily ate my cheese, assuming that it was her doing. So imagine my shock when she returned and informed me that no, actually, she didn’t send me anything.

I don’t actually have an ending to this story. You’re expecting a clever plot twist now, but there’s nothing. Maybe it was an elf, or Livia has an alternate personality who enjoys sending people anonymous cheese, or maybe–dare I say it?–maybe the cheese fairy is real.

I don’t know where the cheese came from, and I don’t know why it came to me. I do, however, know where it’s going to end up: in my belly! I think we can all agree that that’s a happy ending.

(Cheese fairy, if you’re out there, speak up so I can thank you proudly. Or don’t, but know that I’m very grateful. Thank you!)

Turns out not so much. I’ve been after making tomato jam for a while, and after my first attempt (with skins on) turned out more like tomato sauce than tomato jam, I figured it was time to suck it up and peel the damn things. It turns out that peeling tomatoes is super easy, and not very time-consuming at all–I think that once I got the water boiling, it took me about fifteen minutes to peel almost four pounds of tomatoes.

It turns out that to peel a tomato, you do exactly what everything says to do: drop it in boiling water, then cool it, and it’ll slip right out of the skin. If you are–like I was–staring at that and going “yeah, right,” here’s more detail.

On the bottom (non-stem end) of the tomato, cut an X. It doesn’t have to be big–half an inch or so is just fine. It also doesn’t have to be deep–it just has to break the skin. Toss the tomatoes, a few at a time, into a pot of boiling water. Then you let them sit. The internet often says that you should leave them in about thirty seconds, but this is both a pain in the ass (who wants to sit there and count out thirty seconds over and over?) and sort of a lie. What you ought to do is leave them in the pot until the skin has split open from top to bottom. For some tomatoes, this means you’ll take them out after a minute; with a few of the less ripe Romas that I had, it took more like three minutes. Just fish them out as they finish. Toss the hot tomato into a bowl of ice water (or onto a cookie tray or something to cool) and toss another tomato into the pot.

When the tomatoes are cool, just grab the skin and lift it off.

Super, super easy. I feel like an idiot for having avoided this for fifteen years. Luckily, I’m not that old, so I can still get a good fifty or sixty years out of my newfound knowledge.

Almost as well-covered has been the woman’s apology.

I want to take this opportunity to apologise profusely for the upset and distress that my actions have caused.

“I cannot explain why I did this, it is completely out of character and I certainly did not intend to cause any distress to Lola or her owners.

Later, the woman says,

I wish to reiterate that I am profoundly sorry for my actions and wish to resolve this matter to everyone’s satisfaction as soon as possible

One of these is an apology. One of them is not.

This isn’t uncommon. People generally don’t like admitting wrongdoing–we hate admitting that we’ve done something inappropriate, and so often we simply don’t admit it. It leads us to “apologies” like the first example here. I’m sorry for the upset this has caused, or I’m sorry that you’re upset. In both instances, the emphasis is on the recipient of the apology and largely removes the reason for the apology from the picture.

Saying things like “I’d like to apologize for the upset and distress that my actions have caused” says quite clearly that what this person is sorry for is that people are upset and distressed. It doesn’t in any way imply apologize for the actions that caused the distress. It’s like saying “I’m sorry you thought I did that,” or “I’m sorry you feel like I wasn’t listening to you when I kept interrupting.” This phrasing implies not only that the person apologizing didn’t do anything wrong, but they’re also the bigger person, since they’re being tolerant this other person’s implicit overreaction.

The cat lady, whose name is Mary Bale, actually flat-out stated this.

“I really don’t see what everyone is getting so excited about. It’s just a cat,” Bale said.

[...]

“To think this video is being seen around the world is unbelievable. I’m a very private person and don’t want to upset any members of my family. I don’t know what my relatives will think, but to be honest I think everyone’s overreacting a bit.”

I’m certainly not saying that Bale should be put to death for abusing the cat (though I admit to feeling that maybe she should spend twelve hours or so in a garbage bin,) and obviously this is an extreme example. It’s a good example, though, because she’s articulated precisely what many reluctant apologizers are thinking: This isn’t a big deal. I didn’t really do anything wrong. These people are just crazy and overreacting. This isn’t really my fault.

This sort of apology isn’t about wrongdoing, or even about the person who’s apologizing. It’s a thinly veiled excuse for your actions, and it pushes the blame from you for doing something offensive to the person who’s been offended. After all, if they were looking at things more realistically, or if they weren’t overreacting, or if they weren’t misinterpreting, this wouldn’t be a problem at all.

So here’s how you apologize.

Decide that you want to apologize. You don’t have to. No one’s going to make you. They might think that you’re an asshole, but they’re not going to bully you into apologizing. If you’re not actually sorry for what you did or said, you might as well own it. If you feel like you have to say something, stick with something relatively neutral. Say it wasn’t your intent, maybe, or that you’ll agree to disagree. If you must, say “I’m sorry you feel that way.” (That’s code, by the way, for “I don’t really care.”)

But if you want to apologize, really, here’s what you do. You listen to what the other person is saying, even if you don’t agree with it, even if you think that they’re being unreasonable. You let them finish without interrupting. Then–and this is the tricky part for a lot of people–you say you’re sorry. Just like that: “I’m sorry.” If you’d like to step it up a bit, you can say something like “I’m sorry for running over your bike. It was an accident, and I’m happy to replace the bike. I hope that this doesn’t get in the way of our friendship.”

You don’t have to do all that, though. All you have to do is say you’re sorry.

The unorthodox challenge grant comes from a health-conscious woman in Oregon who wishes to remain anonymous, Ms. Lynch said. Fit and fond of organic food, the wealthy benefactor believes that obesity is a serious problem in America and wants to give overweight people an incentive to lose pounds.

“The donor is an extraordinary example of a woman who’s led a healthy lifestyle,” Ms. Lynch said. “She’s 87 years old and weighs exactly what she did when she married her husband—117 pounds. It’s a point of pride for her that she has maintained her youthful physique.”

This is appalling. Let’s talk about why.

Here’s the thing. This is clearly not a health-related incentive. If it were really health-related and they were dead set on controlling employee behavior, they’d also be requiring that people who smoke quit and that people who drink more than the recommended two units of alcohol per day cut back.

If they wanted to simply make employees healthier, they could’ve gone about this really differently. Maybe suggest that the college provide healthy snacks for employees, or at least fill the vending machines with things that are a healthier than the standard chips and chocolate. Maybe they could pay up on the condition that the cafeteria cuts its use of deep frying, offers healthier drink options, reduces the use of products with high fructose corn syrup, and adds (or cuts the price on) a nice salad bar. Offer a discount at a local gym, yoga studio, or masseuse, or offer reduced prices on smoking cessation assistance, counseling, and visits to a nutritionist. There are a lot of things that could be offered–things that have the potential to improve both employee health and morale–but the benefactor has chosen none of these things.

What she’s chosen instead is fat-shaming. She’s chosen to make it clear that the she–and by their acceptance, the college–is more concerned about how people look than about trying to provide them with a healthy work environment and trying to improve their health.

Stephens College is primarily a women’s college–I believe that they admit male grad students, but not undergrads. According to The Alliance for Eating Disorders Awareness, one in five women struggle with an eating disorder or disordered habits. (This is backed up by the National Institute of Mental Health.) 90% of people with eating disorders are women between 12 and 25. Look at those numbers again and think for a minute about how many people–how many young women, how many girls–that is. The message that the college is sending is the same message that these young women are getting from everywhere else: it’s not how you feel about yourself that matters. It’s not how healthy you are, and it’s certainly not your quality of life.

No. What matters is being thin, because fat is bad and unhealthy. Because fat is scary and visible and easy to demonize, so it’s what matters.

I realize that we’re talking about a fairly small amount of weight shared over a presumably large pool of people. The weight loss is probably just a few pounds each. But it’s not what they’re losing that we really need to think about here–we should think about what they’re gaining. They’re gaining a culture in which office culture is synonymous with diet culture. They’re gaining an environment that has the potential to really pit people against each other–dieters vs. non-dieters. We’re talking about a lot of money here, and it’s easy to get people worked up over that. They’re gaining the ability to pressure coworkers into dieting, regardless of how that coworker feels about their own weight, lifestyle, and level of health. Sure, people who disagree could refuse to participate, but let’s be realistic: when you’ve got a hundred people on a diet, and they’re all on it together, and they’re charting the group weight loss, you’re going to have to be a damn strong person to not feel bad–guilty, even–about eating your Friday-afternoon brownie.

The worst part of this for me is that the college president has actively created this environment. The initial offer was made just to her, and she went back and said hey, we’ll collectively lose weight if you’ll donate. Her offer of a “bargain” seems to imply that she initially refused–apparently, a donation to the college wasn’t sufficient reason for her to change her lifestyle and habits. It was, however, sufficient reason to convince most of the staff to do so.

If the donor had suggested that underweight people gain weight, there’s no way that it would have been considered. I doubt, too, that anyone would have undertaken a quest to, say, teach everyone how to knit, nor would a donation contingent upon everyone learning Esperanto go over so well. I don’t think that anyone would have seriously considered a suggestion in which grown adults were made to monitor, report, and reduce their alcohol intake. Or since we’re talking about personal lives here, how about someone will make a donation, but only if the president will spend the next year campaigning in support of a political cause, or maybe spend the next four months having a romantic supper one night a week with the donor–clearly inappropriate, right? But because we’re talking about fat, people seem to feel that it’s okay.

It’s not okay. These people are adults and have the right to determine how they live their lives. If they want to eat healthily and take long walks and not care about their weight, they have the right to do that. If they want to count every calorie and exercise for at least an hour a day, they have the right to do that, too. If they want to live off of jelly doughnuts and coffee, they can. They can ride motorcycles without protective gear, they can stay with abusive partners, they can choose to become a hermit, they can drink until they vomit five nights a week. Most of this is not healthy behavior, but it’s still something that they’re entitled to choose, and unless they’re vomiting in your shoes, it’s none of your business what they’re doing.

Neither is it the business of some anonymous donor, regardless of how much money the donor’s willing to pay for that privilege.

This is part two. Eventually, I’ll be posting part three, about misogyny in Disney movies, because it turns out that I have a lot to say about this.

Two quick notes: I hate unnecessary capitalization, but have tried to capitalize princess when it’s specifically referring to the Disney Princess line. When it’s referring to princesses in general, it’s (probably) not capitalized. Hopefully I managed to keep it straight throughout; apologies for any errors.

Also, I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: this is specifically about Disney’s Princess movies. It’s explicitly not about Monsters Inc. or Robin Hood or Mary Poppins or Ponyo, several of which I’ve seen and liked very much. I’m not saying all Disney movies are bad and everyone should hate them forever, I’m just saying that a little bit of critical thinking never hurt anyone.

Unlike the last post, this post starts with a picture. Two of them, in fact. Looking at the picture, what do you notice? Notice the pink, maybe? That’s sort of the obvious–the “girl’s” aisle at Toys R Us is bathed in it. Pink signs, pink signboards, pink packaging, pink dresses. There’s also a lot of yellow, and sometimes blue (mostly, I noticed, on bath toys,) but surprisingly little purple–apparently pink and yellow are the big “girl colors” now.

Those two pictures are (almost) the entirety of the Disney Princess display at my local Toys R Us. Like I was saying the other day, there are nine princesses: Belle, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Ariel, Mulan, Pocahontas, Jasmine, and Tiana. Maybe, looking at those pictures, you’ve noticed that only the first five princesses on that list are represented.

In fairness to Disney and Toys R Us, I have to admit that there’s a Princess and the Frog display next to the one that I took photos of–it’s about two shelves, roughly the size of the shelves in the pictures. It seems to mostly have a ton of dress-up clothes, plus a few Tiana Barbies. It also has a Polly Pocket set, which costs about $35 and comes with a prince and a horse and a carriage, I believe.

Still, the focus of the Princesses is clear: Princesses, for the purposes of Disney, are white. When you’re looking at the whole Princess line, it’s easy to think that Disney has done a reasonably good job of providing heroines of different nationalities. And, in the films, they mostly have, I suppose. Sure, Tiana spends the vast majority of the movie as a frog, but hey, at least she’s there, right? And okay, Pocahontas exists solely to help the white peoples, but representation, yay!

Unfortunately, the films, at this point, are sort of obsolete. Not because no one has them (though it seems that the actual films have waned somewhat in popularity, replaced by sing-along DVDs and Princess-themed shorts,) but because the real money’s in the merchandise. Don’t get me wrong–I’m not saying that the films don’t make money. I’m just saying that in terms of yearly revenue, I’d bet that the dolls and dress-up costumes and Princess-themed bookbags bring in more than sales of the DVD backlist.

And, really, Disney’s merchandising is impressive. Princess dolls in every size, if not shape or color; clothes from the movies; clothes allegedly inspired by the movies; clothes with Princesses on them; games ranging from puzzles to complicated games for the Nintendo DS; Princess books–sticker books, coloring books, actual books with words in them; backpacks; ballpits; makeup; cameras; motorized bubble blowers… That’s just from a quick skim of an Amazon search for “Little Mermaid”.

Maura has the Polly Pocket Disney princesses–she has all of them except Mulan and Pocahontas, and (to my distress) they’re her favorite toys. I picked the first five of them up for a few bucks at the drug store or the supermarket. For about five bucks, I could get a doll and two dresses; for about twelve, there’d be six dresses and, usually, some sort of adorable bird or dwarf or whatever it was that featured in that film. Sleeping Beauty, Ariel, Snow White, Cinderella, and Belle were all purchased this way. I caved and ordered Tiana online for, I think, about $25. She’s new and popular, I told myself. There’s a premium on that.

I started looking for Mulan, Pocahontas, and Jasmine. Jasmine is nearly impossible to find in stores–I finally happened across the doll in a closeout store, just her and a single dress, for seven bucks. I snapped it up, of course. To get the bigger set of her, which has the doll, the tiger, and half a dozen dresses, I was going to have to order it online for something like $30. (Remember, I can buy the other large sets for twelve bucks.) Mulan is just as hard to find–you can buy her, but only online, and only in a $30 set with about six dresses. Pocahontas can’t be had for love or money. She just doesn’t exist.

After the ridiculous success of the Polly Pocket Princesses, Disney apparently figured that hey, one set went well, so two sets would go twice as well! So now there are an additional six “favorite moments sparkle bag” dolls. They’re the exact same thing, only they have painted-on shoes and sparkly clothes. Ariel, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White, Jasmine, and Belle got bags. (Jasmine’s bag is only available–you guessed it–online.) Pocahontas, Tiana, and Mulan didn’t get sparkle bags at all.

It’s weird, right, that while I can find the white princesses in every damn store I walk into (and believe me, I can, because Maura has a homing instinct that leads her straight to the Pollys,) but I can’t find any of the non-white dolls? That to buy the non-white dolls, I’ve had to order online and pay twice as much?

The same holds true for other Disney products–the princess tea set has Belle, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty. The tiara has Ariel and Belle and Cinderella. Bookbag? Belle, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella. Underwear? Mostly Ariel, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella, though Tiana can be bought on her own (instead of with other princesses) and it’s possible (though difficult) to find a set of Belle, Cinderella, and Jasmine. These aren’t examples I had to hunt down, either, it was just the first few things that I plugged into Amazon. It goes on and on. The only place I’ve ever found Jasmine is on Valentine’s cards, in one of the Princess movies, and as a Barbie. Mulan can be had as a Barbie, as can Tiana, but that’s about it. They’re not in the princess movies, and they’re not part of the merchandising. Pocahontas, so far as I can tell, isn’t on anything at all.

The message that Disney’s sending is clear: real princesses are white. You other people might be allowed to show up in the background, or as guests at a tea party, but let’s face it–you’re just not as pretty or interesting as those other princesses.

The kicker, of course, is that of the Princess line, the only ones who have any sort of personality are the ones who are excluded. We don’t really know a lot about any of the Princesses–Belle likes to read, Ariel likes singing and collecting forks, Sleeping Beauty likes to dance in the forest, Snow White is apparently a great housekeeper, Cinderella isn’t afraid of mice, Jasmine is tired of staying at home and would like to go explore the world, Pocahontas is an environmental activist, Tiana would like to own her own restaurant, and Mulan’s strong enough to head off to war to save her dad’s ass.

So…yeah. Of those characters, which ones should be the interesting ones? The ones who like to play house, obviously! Looking at it laid out like that, though, it’s also striking that any character who’s darker than skim milk isn’t in this for herself, she’s in it for good, noble reasons. Jasmine’s teaching us a very important lesson about arranged marriages, Pocahontas wants to save her land and her people, Mulan wants to save her father, and Tiana’s both fulfilling her father’s dream and working for a living.

It’s interesting to me, too, that while the vast majority of the princesses have endings that are very clearly meant to be read as happy (and then they got married and rode off in a beautiful carriage pulled by white horses, and they lived happily ever after, the end,) the only two who don’t have that ending are Pocahontas–remember, John leaves at the end of the movie and goes back to England, and Pocahontas stays with her people–and Tiana, who ends up married to a guy she loves, but is going to be busting her ass in that restaurant for the rest of her life. Both of these are certainly more realistic endings than Snow White and company, but am I the only one who finds it a little problematic that the one princess who’s going to spend her life working is the black one?

And then we have Mulan and Jasmine. Neither was all that interested in getting married, but by the end of the movies, they’ve gotten any sort of adventurous spirit worked out and they’re ready to settle down and be good wives. Jasmine was so bored, but hey, now that she has a husband, she’ll never be bored again! And Mulan was failing at all the proper girl things that she was supposed to be doing. Then she went off to war and met Shang, who, when he realized she was a woman, was clearly bothered by her lack of womanliness. Eventually, the Emperor’s like, “That Mulan, eh?” Then Shang follows her home, and hey, now she’s apparently ready to settle down and behave correctly.

Disney could very easily make all of the Princesses part of their Princess merchandise, and they’ve chosen not to. The message is clear: real princesses are white and appropriately feminine. The Princesses of color might be more interesting and more realistic, but they don’t fit this ideal, so they’re going to be second-class merchandise forever.

I’ve also visited my in-laws down in Florida, shipped my daughter off for two weeks with my mother, had heat exhaustion, had a mild bout of stomach flu, adopted two dogs, gotten Maura back, and completely and totally failed to pay any attention at all to my garden.

Despite that last bit, my garden is doing surprisingly well. The carrots and fennel are huge and leafy, the tomato plants have little green tomatoes on them, and we’re going to have enough squash to eat all winter, and then probably some left over. I was thinking that maybe I could pay my mortgage in squash for a few months, actually. That seems reasonable, right? Surely Bank of America will jump all over that. Beautiful organic squashes, guys!

In other squash-related news, I’m now the only person I’ve ever met who managed to completely fail at growing zucchini. Zucchini! The vegetable that gets left in baskets for unsuspecting neighbors, that grows to the size of your average toddler in three days, that fells large trees with little more than an angry glance, and I have managed to destroy it. I don’t even know, guys.

Those of you who are reading closely may have noticed that I mentioned some dogs. We have dogs! Multiple dogs. To go, you know, with our multiple cats. We will not be having multiple kids, so this works out pretty well. We’d been looking for a dog friend for Basil, and had emailed a guy on Craigslist about a dog he’d posted. As I was talking to him, Nick sent me another Craigslist post, telling me that if this fell through, we should contact this other guy. Turned out that it was the same guy and he had two dogs, so now we have three. Like you do, right?

Basil’s, the white terrier mix, is about two and a half; Cooper, a long-haired dachshund, is two; Seamus, the Yorkie, is six. They sleep on our bed, sometimes with the cats, and I love them.

The first one is from Margaret Atwood’s poem Spelling:
My daughter plays on the floor
with plastic letters,
red, blue & hard yellow,
learning how to spell,
spelling,
how to make spells.

I wonder how many women
denied themselves daughters,
closed themselves in rooms,
drew the curtains
so they could mainline words.

A child is not a poem,
a poem is not a child.
there is no either/or.
However.

I return to the story
of the woman caught in the war
& in labour, her thighs tied
together by the enemy
so she could not give birth.

Ancestress: the burning witch,
her mouth covered by leather
to strangle words.

A word after a word
after a word is power.

At the point where language falls away
from the hot bones, at the point
where the rock breaks open and darkness
flows out of it like blood, at
the melting point of granite
when the bones know
they are hollow & the word
splits & doubles & speaks
the truth & the body
itself becomes a mouth.

This is a metaphor.

How do you learn to spell?
Blood, sky & the sun,
your own name first,
your first naming, your first name,
your first word.

The second is on Nick’s calf–it’s Maura’s name (circa 2008) and a cat that she drew around the same time. I love it madly.

I also madly love the remaining 1/3 of this week’s activities–another Maura name and drawing, this one of an ice-fishing penguin, that’s on my foot. Pics of that forthcoming, as it was a bit more swollen and raw looking than the other ones. Give it another day or two.

This weekend is my little sister’s wedding reception. It’s completely bizarre to me that she’s no longer seventeen.

Slight delay on the rest of the Disney posts. I got a concussion (cat, stairway, low crossbeam) on Friday and have been out of commission for a couple of days. The bruise on my head has receded, but the pain has not, nor has the very attractive lump on my forehead. I look like a Neanderthal.

Regular posting to resume shortly.