Archive for February 1, 2009

New Kindle is mostly awesome

Screen much sharper, controls much better, lighter, thinner, ui better.

But guys, why f$&k with the keyboard shortcuts? Why change the Alt-TextSize shortcut for toggling awake? The key combo doesn’t do anything useful now. And why drop the Alt-t shortcut to show the time? Again it does nothing now.

Nits I know but annoying.

Kindle 2 — already delivered in Ohio

Amazon.com: Kindle 2: Amazon’s New Wireless Reading Device (Latest Generation): Kindle Store. – damn my family has theirs already. Apparently all shipped out of Indianapolis and so Midwest buyers already have their hands on. First reports are that it comes preloaded with all your existing book purchases, that is awesome.

FrightProps – Halloween Props, Pneumatic Props, Animated Props, Halloween Accessories

FrightProps – Halloween Props, Pneumatic Props, Animated Props, Halloween Accessories. Need to start thinking about.

Recent Books — Matter, The Creator's Map

  • Matter by Iain M. Banks. Solid far future science fiction set in the author’s Culture universe. First I’ve read in this setting, interesting characters tho mostly dead by bookend. I admire an author who can kill off their main characters in furtherance of the plot and emotional impact of the book.
  • The Creator’s Map by Emilio Calderon. At first I feared this was one of the legion of Da Vinci Code clones, but it is really a spy and love story twisted together. And a deep look at 3 characters who experience the same events, but have profoundly different experiences based on their own issues and emotions.

Recovery.gov

Home | Recovery.gov. — should check this on at least a weekly basis.

BetterPhoto

One of my relatives recommends BetterPhoto.com for photography instruction. One of these days

Suit Names 2 Judges Accused in a Kickback Case – NYTimes.com

Suit Names 2 Judges Accused in a Kickback Case – NYTimes.com. This case just stuns me. The plea agreement is way too lenient. And every kid who passed thru these judge’s courts should be freed immediately and have any judgement stricken from their record.

Recent Book — When Will There Be Good News?

When Will There Be Good News by Kate Atkinson. Wow, a great book. The lives of 4 people, each with life-altering disasters in their background, come together amidst a new set of disasters. And through this they all find some sort of redemption and hope. Really excellent.

Recent software trials — Fences, Disk Analyzer, Ubiquity

New SF&F Writers 1990-2009 – Google Docs

New SF&F Writers 1990-2009 — great guide to modern SF writers. Via DarkRoastedBlend

SanDisk to mass produce 64GB memory cards

SanDisk to mass produce 64GB memory cards. I currently use a 64G USB for partial backup of my photo collection, it works great.  I need a 128G (and soon 256G) tho to backup up everything. These things are going to eat away the USB hard disk market.

Canon EOS 5d Mark II tips from Rich

Rich has done a good job scrounging up info on this camera. Now that I have one, time to take advantage of.

Email clients vs webmail clients

Gmail keeps dropping all kinds of cool new features — offline use amongst them, which some people claim makes gmail the be-all and end-all of mail clients. A reasoned discussion of the pros and cons of native clients vs web clients is up here — Alex Payne — The Problem With Email Clients.

For me tho, all these discussions miss the mark. I make regular use of 4 email addresses — two business, two personal — which I have acquired over the years and I want to maintain. And I don’t want to forward them all to some uber address. So my minimum bar is a client that can handle multiple inboxes with multiple addresses. This drives me to:
* the browser, where I can use the various web interfaces of the various systems. This is a little unsatisfying as the web interfaces vary so much across the different mail systems.
* the default mac mail client which works reasonably well
* the iphone which handles multiple accounts reasonably well (tho the limitation of one exchange account sucks)

I use the iphone for about 60-70% of my mail, the mac mail client for about 25-30%, and the web clients for about 5%. The innovation that google is putting into its gmail client is thus largely wasted on me. It all sounds cool but without the ability to handle multiple accounts, I will rarely use it.

Kindle 2

What’s New. Ordered.

Materials stuff that intrigues me

Recent Books — Beat The Reaper, Narrow Dog to Carcassone, The Little Book, Never Tell A Lie

  • Beat The Reaper by Josh Bazell. Quite the thrill ride. The hero survives an incredible life intertwined with criminality to uncover and revenge the mysteries in his life. The final confrontation is original but nearly unreadable due to gruesomeness.
  • Narrow Dog to Carcassone by Terry Darlington. Humorous retelling of the author, wife, and dog’s trips through the canals and rivers of Britain and Europe. A trifle long but a fun read.
  • The Little Book by Selden Edwards. A very orignal tale of time travel, love, psychology, family. More about 1897 Vienna than you ever thought you wanted to know. Very well thought out.
  • Never Tell a Lie by Hallie Ephron. Eh. Compared to the other tales in this list, pretty pale. The entire story is telegraphed in the first 5 pages and nothing shocking really happens. It is not a bad thriller but nothing that interesting here.

Good job Trojans!

Way to go Trojans, season-opening win over Pepperdine!

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