u/trkeprester

I was tempted to go to the dark side of giant expensive phone due to lack of hardware upgrades on the image sensor front but in the end my pinky's comfort and one handed habits won out and I ended up with the s26 base. I don't really need a new phone, the ~2hr SOT of my s22 is really enough for 95% of my daily needs, but the promise of 512gb storage (can kick the can of freeing up space on my device down the road for good little while) and the specter of phone price increases in the next year due to ai madness was enough to sway me into the upgrade. I figured the camera image processing should be better but I was not prepared for a dramatic improvement in the clarity of the 50mp image, dunno if it's because I had a lemon of a lens, or if my tendency to applaud with my phone in hand has knocked the lens out of prime, but anyway even in the center of the image where auto focus generally guarantees an in focus image has gotten way better, and the edges of the image have gotten a huge boost in quality which is nice for me since I'm a landscape photography pixel peeper by habit. Not to mention dramatically improved shutter lag, s22 takes probably 700ms between clicking button and capturing image while the s26 is probably 100ms or less. I don't see people mentioning these things, granted it's annoying af that Samsung keeps identical image sensors for past 4 years but surprisingly to me the main camera has gotten way better due to a better lens (at least in my case) and likely improved processing algorithms.

So I don't feel quite as jilted being an American having to deal with stagnant phone market hopefully next time I upgrade in 2030 Samsung will still have smallish light weight one hander phones with an actual upgraded image sensor suite (I heard there will be an s27 pro that has the upgraded sensor suite but I'm not going to take my chances on waiting to upgrade what with memory and storage prices going way out to the moon)

this is old hat, i know there are thousands of forum posts about this, it's as much just venting and therapeutic expression for me so, sorry about this, but what has worked for you, what balance should i strive to achieve for my 8 year old, how can i keep some semblance of discipline while not letting them just do their own thing which, i am aware, is basically going to lead to zero progress?

i was one of those talented piano fuckers whose mom was all up my ass about practicing every day, i basically have ptsd and getting my child to practice triggers my inner anger and frustration, and has by this time led me to behaving badly in front of my child. they still like piano, and in spite of my insistence on quitting being ok they still want to do it, somewhat surprisingly to myself. not sure exactly what it is that keeps them going, i suspect it is partly hard-headedness on their part but they genuinely have some musical talent and love for music, so i can understand the desire to keep going.

but of course practicing is never fun for basically any child. they have been doing this for the past 2 years, made a lot of progress for sure, but a lot at the insistence of my sitting down and going through it, lots of teeth grinding on my part, and yes losing my shit on occasion and just telling them it's not worth it if they aren't interested in practicing, i'm not going to pay for lessons if they don't practice, etc. at this point my child frequently seems to get angry when it comes time to get around to practice, i'm pretty sure due to my perfectionist tendencies and my shitty childhood emotions that i've not fully resolved tainting their connection with the music.

so anyway yea last thing i want to do is force my child through the same stupidity in spite of the 'success' it wrought for me, i got really good at focusing for hours on end and grinding through the most mundane shit that most people can't bear like debugging multithreaded application crashes, but of course i'm mentally and emotionally stunted and basically waiting to die to get away from this life i've gotten to

sorry for this