#0 pressure to any tagged i am trying to send this in a couple directions

[minnarr]

Playlist shuffle, tagged by @fractured-ice

Rules: You can usually tell a lot about a person by the type of music they listen to. Put your playlist on shuffle and list the first 10 songs, and then tag 10 people. No skipping!

Because it's impossible to shuffle my spotify meaningfully when I'm not on desktop, I put the music collection in my car (so...most of the music I own) on shuffle instead.

1. Bound for the Cutting Stone by Arne Parrott from Call of the Sky (the Campaign Skyjacks album)

2. 母亲河·额尔齐斯 by 旱獭乐队

3. Cassandra's Waltz from the Doctor Who S1-S2 OST

4. The Hydra by Le Sserafim

5. Symphonic Sondheim: Sweeney Todd which is on the album of the Angela Lansbury/Len Cariou recording of Sweeney Todd

6. Over and Over by SHIM

7. Han and the Princess by The Andrew Allen Trio (from Live! from the Cantina, an album of jazz concerts of Star Wars music)

8. Ballet from the Oklahoma! OST

9. Corridors and Fire Escapes from the Doctor Who S4 OST

10. Paris Holds the Key to Your Heart from the Anastasia (1997) OST

tag @canonskyrissian @caityjay13 @theyilinglaozus @shadowsong26x @birbfeeder2artisticboogaloo @do-you-have-a-flag & anyone else who has not done this yet bc I'm a little late to reply to it

[justcourttee]

And They Were Roommates-Pt 4

The weekend flew by and before Marinette knew it, she was on her way to her first final that Tuesday. She spent the rest of Sunday and Monday avoiding Damian, choosing to barricade herself in her bedroom surrounded by textbooks.

“When was the American Revolution?”

“From 1775 to 1783, give me something a little harder Tikki.”

The kwamii huffed as the two of them sat huddled in the back of the shuttle bus.

“I’m trying Marinette, I’m reading straight from your textbook!”

Marinette giggled, stroking Tikki’s head with one finger.

“Thank you for your help Tikki. I know I’m ready for this test, but I still feel stressed for some reason.

“You know Marinette, you should ask Damian to study with you in the Spring! He’s a history major too right?”

The girl rolled her eyes, shaking her head.

“I think I’ll take my chances with you Tikki.”

The bus halted to a stop in front of the Student Union as Marinette jumped up, closing her backpack in the process. She walked across campus, breathing in the brisk winter air, trying to calm her nerves. She reached for the door when a tingle spread across her wrist. Pulling up the sleeve of her coat, Marinette peered down with a smile.

“Good Luck today Angel, even though I know you don’t need it.”

The brisk air numbed her skin, but she could feel the warmth spreading in her chest. She moved indoors before uncapping the pen holding her bun in place. Soft curls framed her face as she scribbled on her wrist, making small steps in the direction of the closest bathroom.

“Thank you mon amour, I’ll write you in a few hours.”

She stood over the sink, watching intently as she waited for his handwriting to disappear before she washed away hers. Grabbing a paper towel, she exited the bathroom, drying her wrist furiously as she raced to the classroom. Tossing the towel in the nearest trash bin, she barely looked up before colliding into a still object, crashing to the floor.

“Ow,” she rubbed her head, looking up at the man who barely moved.

“Are you always such a klutz?” Damian reached out his hand, a smirk stretched across his face.

“You.” Marinette narrowed her eyes, swatting his hand away. With great effort, she pushed herself up, crossing her arms to stare down her roommate.

“What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“I asked first.”

Damian scoffed, rolling his eyes as he turned back toward the entrance to Professor Lupez’ classroom

“I’m here to take my final for American History.”

“You weren’t in my class this whole semester. Did you take it online?”

“Nosy and perspective, your soulmate must be overwhelmed with joy.”

His smirk returned to his face as he watched the smaller girl turn bright red. Marinette pushed past him and into the classroom, ignoring his jabs of laughter. Taking her usual seat, she exhaled slowly, trying to push away her interaction with the boy. There was no way she was going to let Damian Al Ghul mess up her perfect GPA.

Minutes later, Damian entered the room chatting idly with the professor as if they had known each other for years, his smirk still evident on his face. Marinette felt her blood start to boil again. Professor Lupez was her favorite teacher on this entire campus, there was no way that he could take that from her. She stood up to intervene when she felt a light pressure in her back.

Sitting back down, Marinette let out a soft groan before reaching into her backpack to grab her pencils. Tikki reached up, offering them to her while shaking their head. The kwamii made a motion to inhale deeply and let it go and much to their delight, Marinette did just that.

“Alright class, any last minute questions before I hand out the most important grade of this semester?”

Professor Lupez glanced around the room, her eyes landing briefly on Marinette’s, offering the girl a warm smile.

“Well then, if everyone is so prepared, I wish you all the best of luck. As always, cheating results in a 0 and please, try to place your tests in one neat pile. I know you are not savages!”

Marinette exhaled one last time as her seatmate handed her the pile of tests. Picking the one from the top, she passed on the rest, risking a look at the boy seated two rows down from her. He was already on the second page, his face stretching into a smug. She looked back at her own test, a smug expression of her own forming.

This test would be a breeze.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Walking out of the classroom, Marinette breathed a sigh of relief. She had finished the test in a mere twenty minutes, shocking many of her classmates when she drifted past them to turn it in. She pulled out her phone to send a text to Chloe when she heard the voice she was dreading.

“Took you long enough. I thought for a second that you could be on my level of intellect, but your performance proved otherwise.”

“What are you still doing here Damian?” She let out a sigh, averting her eyes to the ground.

“I thought we could walk home together, after all, we do live together.”

Her eyes darted up as she crossed her arms, watching Damian with a renewed curiosity.

“Yeah, with Adrien and Chloe. Don’t make it sound like we’re a couple.”

“As if you could earn my respect Dupen-Chang.”

She frowned at his smirk, unable to tell if he was joking, unable to tell if she cared.

“Yeah, well, let’s go then.”

She didn’t wait for an answer as she pushed past him, exiting the building, leaving him to trail behind her in the cold winter afternoon.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The walk home was awkward to say the least, neither one saying much. Marinette tried to ask him about his family and his home, but he brushed her off, declaring that he did not like the idea of small talk to fill in the silence. She jiggled her key into the doorknob, pushing lightly to break through the slight ice that had formed around the frame.

“Do you want some-”

She didn’t even finish her sentence before his bedroom door slammed, leaving her alone in the kitchen. Marinette let out a sigh, unzipping her backpack for Tikki to fly out.

“Well, I guess hot chocolate for one then.”

Tikki let out a giggle as the girl pulled down a mug. She placed the mixture of chocolate and milk on the stove when her phone began to buzz. At the sight of the caller id, a warm smile stretched across her face.

“Maman! How are you?”

“How am I? How are you?! Your first final was today! Tell me, will I have another history buff in this family like your grandfather?”

Marinette shook her head, trying to keep the laughter from bubbling out.

“I’m considering a double major Maman, but you know I love designing and nothing can change that.”

“I know sweetie, I just want to make sure you’re exploring your options! That’s what college is all about!”

“I know Maman, but I’m exploring business, that’s exploring enough.”

Her mother chuckled, sending a warm feeling straight to the girl’s toes. The sound of bubbling liquid caught her attention as she moved to turn off the stove, ladling the chocolate into her mug.

“Maman, I love you, but you don’t usually risk an international call unless it’s something urgent. What’s going on?”

“Oh sweetie, it’s nothing bad. It’s just that your father and I were talking about your winter break. We know you’ll be busy working on your portfolio for Professor Brookes, but if there was an opportunity for us to fly over for Christmas, would you want us too?”

“Oh my god, are you serious? Maman I would love that! Both Adrien and Chloe will be flying back so I’ll have plenty of room!”

The women chatted excitedly for several minutes before they finally agreed to hang up, neither wanting to pay the phone bill that they were wracking up. Swirling her hot chocolate in her mug, Marinette felt on cloud 9. It was the inspiration she was waiting for to get back to her designs and she wasn’t going to waste it.

Tag List:

@damianette-is-life @ladybug-182 @fusser90 @thestressmademedoit @dast218 @thezestywalru @jardimazul @olynix @dorkus-minimus @xahriia @kris-pines04 @urbanpineapplefarmer @moonlightstar64 @itsmeevie01 @little-lady-bird @alexandriamw @lozzybowe @emmdaenovice @loysydark @toodaloo-kangaroo @jessigurl-design @aegyobutpsycho2 @stark-morgoona @tis-i-beanbandit @rebecarojas07 @abrx2002 @ash-amg @loveswifi @heaven428 @dreamykitty25 @marinettepotterandplagg @smolplantmum @clumsy-owl-4178 @books-and-left-behind-journals 

[cmlosaria-blog]

  The Samsung Galaxy Tablet E 9.6 was launched way back in 2015 but is still being made and distributed by Samsung. The reasons I decided to purchase one was mainly to be used as a multimedia device, where I can binge on my series, as well as used it as a secondary monitor to my laptop, to increase my productivity. How does a 2-year-old tablet fare in 2017? Read on to find out.

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What’s in the box

Unit

USB cable (1 meter)

2A charger

Manual

  Build Quality

The tablet comes in two colors; black an white. I decided to buy the black one as I already got tired of white devices. Positioned as a budget tablet, the Tab E 9.6 is made of plastic material, well-built, with no apparent creaking sound produced when pressure is applied. The back part is made of high-quality plastic with mesh texture for that added grip.

The back part features a 5-megapixel camera, a single back-firing speaker as well as the Samsung logo.

Flip it over and you’ll find a ginormous 9.6-inch TFT display. Just above it are the Samsung logo and a 2-megapixel snapper. Below, one can find the home button and non-lit capacitive keys.

  The top edge houses the Micro USB port and 3.5mm headphone jack. The tactile power button and the volume rocker is located on the right edge while a 3G SIM slot and a micro SD slot can be found on the left edge, both of which is covered with flaps. The bottom edge houses the mic.

The device is heavy, make no mistake about it. It weighs 495g; that’s half a kilo. Coming from an iPad mini, the additional weight of the Tab E 9.6 is very noticeable to me. Having significant weight and plastic build usually is not an ideal couple and sadly, the Tab E doesn’t give you that confidence it will survive a waist high drop.

Display

The Tab E 9.6 sports a ginormous TFT screen measuring 0.4 short of 10-inches. It has a screen resolution of 800×1280 with 157 points pixel density.

Due to its resolution, the screen will not be blowing anyone away. Pixelations are very noticeable on close inspection and jaggedness of edgess can be observed on small icons. Colors are rendered ok. It’s not that bad, just don’t expect much.

Overall, it’s still a very good multimedia device and if you’re someone who loves playing games, surfing the net or watching TV series, the display size is an advantage.

The display has wide viewing angles but can appear flushed out under direct sunlight. The Tab E 9.6 does not have a light sensor so get used to adjusting the screen brightness manually based on the environment you are in.

Since TFT LCD technology was used, and also factoring in the big display size, the Tab E 9.6 suffers from light bleeding. However, it’s only noticeable on dark backgrounds and in low-lit environments.

When I first got the tablet, I did not notice the problem as the store I bought from had very bright lights. I tried returning it to the store the next day after I noticed the light bleeding on some areas of the display while doing a reboot of the device.

Sadly, after opening 4 units, they all had the same problem, light bleeds in some areas. I didn’t bother to return the device or did I ask for a refund because frankly, there isn’t any tablet in the store that has this big screen size with a comparatively low tag price. Also, I had come to enjoy using it, being spoiled by that big real estate.

Doing a quick Google search, apparently, light bleeding is fairly common for big displays like monitors and TVs that still uses this old LCD screen technology. So I had come to terms with the problem.  Still, I can’t help but feel cheated by Samsung, supposedly a leader in display technology lol.

  Performance

I would like to point out that there are currently two variants of the Galaxy Tab E 9.6 being sold as of the time of this writing. One is a US exclusive version with 1.5GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage and a quad-core Snapdragon processor clocked at 1.2ghz. It also has a huge 7300mah battery to boot. That variant also is upgradeable to Android Marshmallow 5.1

Since I bought this in Vietnam, I got the international version, which comes with the same amount of RAM, but a smaller 8GB of storage and a slightly higher clocked quad core processor at 1.3ghz. The processor used on the international version is different and has the moniker “Spreadtrum SC8830”. Basically, it’s an older and cheaper processor and as such this one will be stuck with Android KitKat 4.4. This variant also has a smaller 5000mah battery. I had come to know this information after purchasing the device, as it simply would not upgrade to Marshmallow, contrary to what was specified on the Samsung website. So I had to research and boom. Again, feeling cheated lol.

Now, 8GB of storage is small so better invest in a good high-speed microSD card. According to the Samsung website, the Tab E 9. 6 can accommodate up to 256GB of memory. Also, unlike other KitKat devices, it supports moving app data to the MicroSD, if the app developers have allowed it.

Day to day usage may vary but I am fairly satisfied with this tablet. I use it to watch series, write blog entries, check out social media feeds and write emails. From time to time I do play games on it and so far I have found some games compatible and playable in this tablet like Asphalt 8 Xtreme, Modern Combat 5, Need for Speed: Most Wanted and Bullet force. Not a bad list for a KitKat Tablet. Just be wary of the storage requirements of the games you will download. The 8GB simply isn’t enough as some games and apps aren’t allowed to be transferred to the microSD. I have had insufficient storage popping up from time to time. I will update the list when I am able to try out more games in the future.

For everyday use, the tablet is able to handle simple tasks and it works flawlessly. Doing heavy multitasking and app switching is when you will start noticing occasional lags, but not enough to tarnish the experience. I made it a habit to access the app switcher and close apps I no longer need running.

Since this is a Samsung tablet, it supports Samsung’s Multi-Window feature to take advantage of the big real estate. This is something Android Nougat users currently enjoy but has been implemented by Samsung on their Note and Tablet devices since Android KitKat. It’s useful for doing two things at the same time. I used it primarily to watch YouTube videos while at the same time, browsing thru my feeds in Facebook or checking emails. It’s also useful for comparing two documents side by side.

Camera

This device has a 2MP f/2.4 front facing camera and a 5MP f/2.2 rear snapper with auto focus. The rear camera is capable of taking 1280×720 HD video recordings. As a tablet,  I really didn’t expect much in the camera department. You be the judge. Below are sample photos were taken with this device.

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Connectivity

The tablet supports USB 2.0 OTG function so you can connect USB OTG flash drives as well as other peripherals,  like a mouse, wired keyboard or game controllers. It doesn’t have support for MHL so you can’t connect the device to a TV via HDMI. Since this tablet accepts 3G SIMs, you can send SMS as well as make or take calls. However, you would need a headset or use the loud speaker to be able to hear the other person as this doesn’t have an earpiece. Other connectivity options include Bluetooth 4.0 a2dp and A-GPS.

Battery life

The international version of the Tab E 9.6 packs a 5000mah battery. Sounds huge right? Let me remind you that the US version has a bigger, meaner,  7300mah battery. In short, they have the better version of the Tab E 9.6. Anyway, the 5000mah battery lasts me more than a day if I’m not using the tablet to watch movies, series or playing games. The 2A charger that comes with it is rather fast in topping up the battery. I haven’t observed the time from 0 to 100 percent as I usually just leave it charging overnight.

The Verdict

Should you buy this two-year-old tablet in 2017. The answer is not that straight forward. Obviously, if you consider the performance, the Android version, and overall specifications, there are better options out there from Apple, Huawei, Lenovo, Asus, and Xiaomi. However, there aren’t many tablets of this size at its current price range (200.00 USD). It won’t run the most high end of games nor is this the fastest tablet. It also doesn’t have the ideal screen resolution for its display size, however, at this price range, ok performance and good looks, it’s enough for me to keep this tablet for now.

  Pros

OK performance and can still run latest games with KitKat support

Big screen for a more immersive experience

USB OTG support

Can run supported apps side by side even if not nougat

SIM slot for texting, making calls and data connection

  Cons

The 8GB internal storage limits app installations

Small RAM at 1.5GB

No more Android upgrade down the road

Quite heavy and will probably break on fall

3G connection only

Price may not be justified

Screen Resolution

Sunlight legibility questionable

Suffers from light bleed

    Gear Review: Samsung Galaxy Tab E SM-T561 The Samsung Galaxy Tablet E 9.6 was launched way back in 2015 but is still being made and distributed by Samsung.