E-Book reader!

I've been thinking over the last few days/weeks/months, that when I get
to PNG, I might like to have an ebook reader so I don't have the weight
of tens of books to carry around with me. This lead me to start
investigating the prospects of ebook readers on the market currently.

The first one that I knew about was the Amazon Kindle
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindle) The electronic paper that
is used on the high end ebook readers looks sharp, and leads to long
lasting battery life. However there were some complaints from the user
reviews that didn't like the new Kindle 2 because it doesn't have the
expansion slot for SD card and that the contrast one the '2' was worse
than the original... not the direction you'd like to see out of and
updated version. Then of course is the price. At $359 for the Kindle 2
makes it pretty hard on the pocket book... You do get ebooks downloaded
for free over 3G networks when you download/buy books from Amazon, but
that won't work in PNG... so, final verdict? Let's see what else is out
there...

The next ebook reader that looked good was the Hanlin V3
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlin_eReader) which gets re-distributed
under various other name brands, here it's called the "Astak EZ Reader".
There is also a V5 version that is out/will be out shortly. The cool
thing about the Hanlin is it says it has battery life based on page
turns... somewhere between 1,000 to 8,000... unfortunately quite the
wide range, but it probably has something to do with rendering pictures
and the like. It has a slot for an SD card and an internal memory of
512Mb. The biggest problem that I've seen is that it's so hard to tell
the differences between the versions. Not much was updated from the V3
to the V5, and the prices are still about the same. ($299 for V3 & $250
for V5... yeah, you got me on that one) I haven't been able to locate
where to buy the V5 yet, but this website is a great one for looking up
information on ereaders: http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Hanlin_V5

Anyway, the V5 is still more than I was hoping to spend on the
conveyance of reading my books on an electronic device. Well, lucky for
me there is another option...the XO laptop: (http://laptop.org) Since I
happened to participate in the Give 1 Get 1 a few years ago, the
opportunity to use this computer as something special has just come to
mind. It is a low power laptop for kids in developing nations around
the world... A cool project with a lofty goal of delivering a laptop
for every child in the world.

The XO laptop has a Gb of storage, and can lower the back light to a
gray scale for outdoor use, a full keyboard (although very small for
anything but a child's hands), wireless networking (802.11b/g/s), and an
SD slot... The downsides of using it as an ebook reader is that it's
rather large and the interface is a little slow compared to a device
that is built for a dedicated purpose. However, I already own this
one... ;-)

Would I guy it just for an ebook reader? Nope... Would I buy it again to
support the G1G1 project? Yeah, but unfortunately that program isn't
going on right now. You might just have to wait for the XO2...
http://www.olpcnews.com/laptops/xo2/

Here's a review of the XO as an ebook reader:
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/02/with-some-polis/
and the XO website: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XO

Happy reading!

Family Time

Well, yesterday I had a chance to hang out with my sister and her kids before I take off for Alaska. AnnaLiese was a lot of fun to watch. After supper at Val's, she was catching fireflies and the picture here is one of her victims. It was good to see Eliot and AnnaLiese for awhile. We had to work to keep food on Eliot's plate... man can that kid eat, and he's only about a year old right now. AnnaLiese was more excited to find out if I liked the card she wrote for me a few days ago. She wrote me a get well letter and drew a few pictures for me. Boy was I surprised to see that when I opened the letter. It seems that Julie told her about my biking accident and AnnaLiese was sure to tell me all about how bad my "owe" was. That kid doesn't forget much of anything anymore, but it was really cool to have her concerned for me.

I finally broke down and installed Picasa on my laptop. From a first glance, it's very easy to make quick clean edits to photos to add a little more warming to pictures such as this one. I'm sure there are more professional ways to edit this photo, but I'm happy with the result here for all the work I put into it, which was not much. I think it took about four or five minutes to download and install Picasa, then about ten minutes to import all the photos currently on my laptop and less time than that to glance through the features of Picasa, modify a few options, edit this photo and export it to picasaweb. I didn't figure out how to export directly from picasa to picasaweb, but I didn't look that hard either.

Skype Asks FCC to Open Cellular Networks

This was the article title from the /. article and amazingly it happened to be accurate. I just about laughed out loud when I read it though... so ironic since Skype uses a non standard, closed VoIP protocol for their client.

It took the comments on /. way too long to get to that same conclusion.

I can't say I disagree with the TFA, but at the same time it scares me a little bit to know Skype wants this too.

Why won't the internet work?

So, my sister is going to college (finally), and my folks went to her dorm to deliver her new computer. They ordered an HP. Yes, I, or my brother could have built one, but then I'd have to support it and every time something went wrong (hardware, software or anything user related) I'd be the first one to call. Not that that's a bad thing, but it means I'd have to be available to travel to her place and show her the correct way to use it. Oh, that and I would have put Ubuntu on it... That means I'd probably be getting lots of calls on "why won't `such-and-such` program install?"

Alright, I'm being a little hard on my sister. But that's mostly because I just called her to see how she liked the computer, and my dad was still there trying to get the Internet hooked up. Worse yet, the computer came with Norton installed on it. I don't think I've ever seen a program that so completely bricks a machine as Norton does so well. Not only do you have to figure out it's beefy interface and backwards feature list, you can't even disable it properly because when you do it stops you from connecting anything to the Internet.

Yes, yes, it's a security feature for all those people that would inadvertently disable it and never re enable before doing something dangerous. But from a technical phone support call it is a nightmare. The computer had grabbed an IP address, but would not connect to a webpage. Now, I have never attended this school my sister is attending. Better yet, I have never even used a computer on this campus, and the technology webpage is less than helpful in this endeavor. So the question arrives, is Norton blocking information, or does the local network administration need to allow the computer's MAC address to get to the Internet? Oh yeah, it's the weekend. No help coming from that end of the equation, so it's up to the roommate to help out. Good luck there.

Now, I've been using Linux for several years now, and I would never think of going back to a windoze world. Does Linux do everything right? Absolutely not. Do I always have faith in the update process when I run a simple `emerge -uavtDN world` hardly. Do I want to deal with the monopolistic tendencies and backward thinking retroactive software that the largest software company in the world uses while forcing you to purchase expensive licenses so you can view the latest version of bloated software that does nothing more than the same software released in 1994? (ok... exaggeration... 2001). I'd rather eat spoiled meat.

Here's the late breaking update from my sister's computer woes. There is a sign in the hallway (apparently with big red lettering) stating that to get the Internet to work, you simply log onto their proxy server to register your computer. The observation skills of my dad are amazing. No really, I would have thought the solution much more complex than that. Anyway, I shot him a quick email to do a speed test from my favorite place, and found out they have 386kbs up/down. Sounds like they restrict bandwidth per port. Can't say I blame them.
All this drama... and I didn't even leave my chair. Now, all I need to do is email my sister instructions for installing Mozilla FireFox, perhaps Open Office, and Gimp and she'll be well on her way. Perhaps I should get out of my chair... I see the sun is setting so my eyes won't be scorched out of their sockets from that fiery star in the sky.