Romey's Ramblings

Is Google sneaking a keyboard into their search IOS app?

December 15, 2016December 15, 2016Romey

I’m a third-party keyboard junkie. I always have multiple keyboards installed on my phone and am always shifting between them, especially when one comes out with an update. However, it’s been a while since I’ve had Google’s GBoard app on my phone, or so I thought – but it’s still there, masquerading under the Google Search app.

While I was playing with another keyboard, I went to enable it through iOS settings and saw that the Google keyboard was present. I didn’t think twice and enabled it as well. After a half day of playing around with it, I realized GBoard wasn’t for me and went to uninstall the app – only to realize the app was not there! I went through all of my menu screens to make sure I wasn’t hiding it somewhere, and sure enough, the GBoard is nowhere to be found!

Thinking there was some fluke, I reinstalled and uninstalled the GBoard, only to find the Google keyboard ever-present my settings. Getting suspicious I went and uninstalled the Google Search app, and bingo: the keyboard was mostly gone!

Out of all the keyboards that I’ve used, I’ve never seen an uninstall leave a bastardized version of itself in iOS settings. To confirm my findings, I reinstalled the Google Search app and as expected, the keyboard is back!

What is going on here Google?? Nowhere in your Search app description do you disclose that you’re embedding a keyboard. Is this a sneaky way to get people to try GBoard or an insidious way to collect inputs from users?

This sets a very bad precedent in mobile apps. I am often leary of desktop programs that sneak other software onto your system during install, but this is worse, you don’t even have the option to opt out!

Photographing South to Cedars

November 19, 2016January 30, 2023Jeromey Balderrama

Last night Amy and the Peace Pipes played at the Stuff A Truck benefit for Homeless Gear at Pateros Creek. We had the honor of sharing the stage with Aires Attic and South to Cedars. I managed to snap a few shots during South to Cedars set.

In all honestly, the lighting was pretty challenging. Pateros Creek has a great room, but the stage area shares about the same lighting as the rest of the room, with the exception of some flood lights that are covered by transparent colored film. Pateros also had the (very good) problem of being completely packed for the evening, which limited the angles that I was able to capture images. South to Cedars put on an amazing show and feature some awesome harmonies by all of their members (they don’t normally had a drummer, they had a guest sit in for the last few songs, so a lot of great singing moments. In addition, the fiddle was a lot of fun to capture. It’s not too often that you get to capture tight shots of musicians and their instruments.

As always, all of my band photos can be found on Flickr. I’d love to hear what you think!

Photographing Wolfer and Places Back Home

November 17, 2016January 30, 2023Jeromey Balderrama

A few weeks back Amy and the Peace Pipes played a show at Nixons with Wolfer and Places Back Home. Nixons has a really cool lighting setup on their stage, so I took it as an opportunity to capture a few shots of the other bands.

Ben Sawyer, Wolfer’s lead singer, has an awesome beard that was a lot of fun to shoot while light bounced off of it.

Places Back Home also had a lot of energy in their performance. They were all over the place while they were on stage, which made capturing “full band” shot a bit of a challenge. They gave me a lot of really cool action moments!

[envira-gallery id=”3757″]

Are there any pictures that you like?

New Gigposter: Stuff A Truck Benefit Concert

November 16, 2016January 30, 2023Jeromey Balderrama

We have a really exciting gig coming up with Amy and the Peace Pipes on Friday, where we’ll be playing with Aires Attic and South to Cedars to benefit Homeless Gear. Members from the three bands has been doing a lot of work towards things, getting some generous businesses to donate really cool prizes that we’ll be giving away. I got a chance to design some artwork for it, I do have to confess that I did borrow from a previous design that I put together 8 years ago – but I figured the Statute of Limitations for my artwork expired and I could make it useful again.

One of the biggest challenges was the use of all of the logos for the sponsors. Everyone’s managed to come in different shapes, sizes and colors. I also found it difficult to striking the balance to providing the logos enough prominence without detracting too much from the other information I was trying to convey.

I also played around a lot with the new Facebook banner design, coming up with this guy:

The gap in the middle was allocated to give space for the event title and date that Facebook imposes. People who would click onto the cover art would see the full “donate items” text, but I wanted to put the most striking content above the fold. Here’s what it looks like over on Facebook:

I played around with the art some more, making a 1×1 image for our Twitter and Instragram profile pictures:

I’d definitely welcome any thoughts or input!

Dallas

July 7, 2016August 23, 2017Jeromey Balderrama

My heart goes out to all those in Dallas, especially for the police officers that were killed and wounded tonight. I grieve for them and their families. Make no mistake: this is the greatest tragedy tonight.

I’m also deeply sad for the thousands of people who have had their voices hijacked by people who sought to commit terror tonight. If you can set the tragedy aside, it’s remarkable to think that so many came together in so many communities to further the conversation our society needs to have about injustice, racial tension, and overreaching of authority by those charged with protecting us.

The problem is that this may now devolve into another polarizing issue that’s over-simplified to being either anti-black or anti-cop. Just like Orlando prompted discussions about whether certain people shouldn’t be able to buy guns, we need to have the same conversation about whether certain people shouldn’t be able to become cops.

It is possible for people to grieve these officers in Dallas and other law enforcers who have made grave sacrifices, while at the same time question whether current climate and procedures give way to an abuse of power by police, and whether they should be held to a higher standard. I’m fearful however that our idea institutions and leadership have become so weak that we won’t have that thoughtful discussion before more lives are lost.

Tonight is a sad night, this week is a sad week – not only for those lives that were lost, but also for our kids. I’m sad about the world they’re going to grow up in.