Another Computer ?!?

The last bit of technology that I've acquired recently is a Dell Mini. Yes, I know, in a previous post I said I didn't really like it, and I didn't like it as a design computer. The Fujitsu Stylistic is far superior for that use. But the Dell Mini does have a place - in my bag.

The main reason I bought it was to have a small portable computer that would be easier to lug around than your typical laptop, especially when I go to the Bead and Button show in Milwaukee. You see, for the last couple of years I have been lugging an older Dell laptop to Bead and Button so my sister Virginia would have a way of staying on top of the email to the bead store. But after seeing the Dell Mini and then looking at the old laptop, well, who can blame me for wanting the smaller package that could still do everything, and in fact do a whole lot more.

I went to my techie friend Terry for help picking one out. We went to the Outlet page at Dell and started looking through the list of available models. He convinced me that I should get one that had the expansion slot for the air card so I could use a cellular network if there was no WiFi or Ethernet connection available (it didn't really take much convincing on his part). It didn't take us long to find what we were looking for. A Dell Mini 9 (Terry said that the screen on the 9 is superior to the one on the 10) with Windows XP, the air card expansion slot (he had a card he could sell me) and BlueTooth. No built-in camera, but I don't care. A 16 gig hard drive. Only 1 gig of RAM, but he advised me to upgrade that to 2, which was easy enough.

I've had the Dell Mini for a little over a month now, and I've been pretty happy with it. I use the air card a lot, every day at work, in fact. I even used it in the car one time when we were going into town to make sure that the local Lowes would have what we needed. I like the size and the fact that the drive is solid state. The screen size doesn't bother me and the resolution and color are great, but the key board does take some getting used to, especially the location of the single quote/double quote key. On a normal size keyboard that key is just to the left of the Enter key. Yeah, I keep hitting enter when I use contractions. I guess I could stop using contractions...

The sim card that I use to connect to the cellular network pops out from its little slot easily and I can put it in the USB connecter that it came with and use it on my Fujitsu as well. We'll see how my sister likes it in a couple of weeks.

To Boldly Go...

(SPOILER ALERT)

Yesterday Bruce and I went to see the new Star Trek movie. It's been a long time since we've been to the movies but we're both Trek fans and the review in the NY Times was favorable, so we went. I'm happy to say that we enjoyed the film.

First, the casting was superb. Chris Pine captures the brashness of Kirk while Zachary Quinto captures Spock's conflicted nature. Their initial confrontations form a nice foundation for their future deep friendship. Karl Urban does a splendid job as a young McCoy - I've liked him ever since I saw him on Hercules and Xena. Zoe Saldana as a super-sexy super-smart Uhuru and Simon Pegg as the irreverent Scotty round out the main crew. John Cho does a nice job as Sulu and Anton Yelchin is fine as Chechov, although he seemed awfully young and why was he so smart?

I wasn't too crazy about the Romulans, but they were renegades so I could overlook the tattoos. I still don't know what to make of their ship.Yeah, it was big and scary and kind of cool but it really didn't make sense to me as a functioning spaceship. It was a mining ship, which I guess would account for the drill. But Red Matter? Seriously? Couldn't they have come up with something better?

I liked Leonard Nimoy showing up as Spock from the future and his ship was very cool. It reminded me of the Vulcan ship from Enterprise. The time travel angle creating an alternate future was a clever idea. It allowed the writers to pay homage to the original series without becoming locked in by the existing canon. I am not, however, a big fan of this technique as a plot device.

Ben Cross does a nice turn as Spock's father Sarek. I especially liked the scene between Sarek and the young Spock when Sarek explains that Vulcans are actually deeply emotional, but that they cultivate logic so that they are not ruled by their emotions. This was something I had twigged to when I was watching the original show, leading me to use Spock as one of my early role models.

Unfortunately Winona Ryder was not very memorable as Spock's mother Amanda. And what was the deal on the costumes for the female Vulcans?

But these criticisms are really just quibbles. Overall, a very good movie, and a worthy addition to the franchise. It might even give it a new lease on life. I especially liked the way the movie ended - with on updated version of the opening of the original show complete with a big E beauty pass and soaring original sound track, but with Leonard Nimoy doing the voice-over narration.

Sharp-eyed viewers will spot Paul McGillion (Dr. Carson Beckett of Stargate: Atlantis) in the scene where everyone is getting ship assignments.

My only other WTF moments: building a starship on Earth? Spock and Uhuru? A green Orion girl in Star Fleet?

And what about Nurse Chapel? Of course Majel was the computer voice. What will they do now that she is gone?

Oh, yeah, and where was Yoeman Rand?

Live Performances, Over Amplification, and Hearing Loss

This past St. Patrick's Day, Bruce and I went to see Celtic Woman up in Baltimore. Other live performances that we have seen lately are Cats, in Charlottesville, and Cirque du Soleil, also in Charlottesville. Before that, we had been going to the Opera in Philadelphia.

In our minds, one of the reasons to go to a live performance is to hear the artists without the mediation of electronics. As any audiophile can tell you, there is a loss in sound quality when you convert between analog and digital. Unfortunately, except for the Opera, too many performers are relying upon electronics in their performances. The primary form of this electronic assistance is amplification. This amplification generally leads to two basic problems - the performance is too loud, and the different instruments (including voice) are not well-balanced. So at Cats, for example, the accompaniment tended to overpower the singing. At Celtic Woman they had both problems. The performance was too loud for the space (the Hippodrome) and the different instruments were not always well-balanced.

This is a very disappointing situation to encounter. Why don't they have competent sound engineers help them set up the sound system for the space? And why do they think that cranking up the volume is going to give us a better experience? Don't they realize that too much amplification just results in distortion? Here you have performers with lovely voices, but we can't appreciate them because they are over-amplified. This is a disservice to both the performers and the audience. It makes me not want to go to live performances, which is a shame.

I just wish that the people responsible for setting up the sound systems would actually go sit in the theater and listen and tailor the sound to the space. I'm not even sure how much amplification you need in these theaters. They were designed, after all, to amplify the acoustic energy naturally.

Sound systems cranked up too loud are also why I don't like going to movie theaters anymore (well, that and the sticky floors). I've also noticed a tendency for the soundtrack to overwhelm the dialogue, another balance issue. Wouldn't it be wonderful if, when you were watching a movie on DVD, you could control the sound track separately from the dialogue?

And while we are on the topic of noise, why do some restaurants play their sound systems so loud? Before the show we had dinner at Oliver's up in Baltimore, a recently opened Brew Pub. It was a nice place, good food, reasonable prices, and great beer, but it was too noisy. They had the stereo cranked up so loud that you couldn't hear each other talk unless you shouted. How does that make your dinner an enjoyable occasion? It's also hard on the wait-staff, because they have a hard time hearing us and we have a hard time hearing them. So, not only is the pub making their jobs harder, but it is also probably causing permanent hearing damage.

It just doesn't make sense to me.

A Computer You Can Curl Up With

The next bit of new technology that I have acquired is a Fujitsu Stylistic Tablet PC. This acquisition was paid for by my Federal Tax Refund - hey just doing my part to stimulate the global economy. What I was looking for was a design computer that I could load my sewing, knitting and weaving design software on that was portable and that I could curl up on the daybed with. I tried a Dell Mini, compliments of Terry, but didn't like the keyboard, or the small size. I just couldn't curl up with it. So then Terry loaned me his old Fujitsu Stylistic and I was hooked.

It's like a heavy clipboard. It's about an inch thick, weighs about 4 pounds, and the display is not quite the size of a sheet of paper. You can use it in portrait or landscape mode and it has a special pen for input. It has a little keyboard screen that slides off side when you're not using it. There are three modes of entry. You can hunt and peck on a miniature keyboard - tedious and slow; you can write in little boxes a letter at a time - perfect for the Times crossword; or you can write on a line as if you were writing on a piece of paper. As you fill up the line, more magically appear. This latter method proved to be a lot faster than I expected, and the hand-writing recognition rocks.

It comes with every connection device you can imagine: BlueTooth, WiFi, Ethernet, even a lowly phone modem and two USB ports. It doesn't have an internal CD/DVD drive, but you can plug one in easily enough to load software, which is what I did. I also transferred over all of the pdf files that I have collected of knitting and beading patterns, and the weaving articles that I have found.

Now when I come home, I curl up with my Fujitsu on the daybed. It has become the computer that I use the most when I'm at home. I leave it on all the time and it sits under the coffee table on a magazine box, always close at hand. I find that I spend a lot more time on the computer now reading my email, the blogs that I've subscribed to, and cruising Facebook and Ravelry. I haven't spent much time with my design software, but I am getting myself more organized. This past weekend I started cataloging my bead stash - so much easier to do now that I can take the computer to the beads rather than bringing the beads to the computer.

iPod Touches Me

Many years ago I bought an Apple Newton. This was another technology turn-on from my techie friend Terry. I even had a Newton holster. I wore it low-slung on my hip. I took notes on it and kept a calendar on it. At some point I abandoned it.

Last fall my techie friend Terry introduced me to the iPod Touch. It fit my hand so well, it was so intuitive to use, the touch screen was wonderful, there were all those cool apps, and it had built in WiFi. Oh, be still my techie heart! I thought about it for a while, and then bought one for myself for Christmas. It goes with me everywhere.

When I first got it I resisted the urge to over-indulge in apps. I picked up a few essentials, the Amazon app (free), the Wikiamo app (free), GroceryIQ, Spore (just couldn't resist), Solitaire. Mostly I used it to check my email without having to turn on my big computer and to look up things on imdb when we were watching movies and wanted to know who that actor was.

Well, since then, my app count has risen considerably. I have a number of apps for learning Japanese - we get Japanese customers in the booth at Bead & Button. I have apps for learning French. I have a few more games. I have an HP 42C app. I have knitting apps. I have a table of elements app, a conversions app, an app that will calculate how many grams/mole of a substance, a map of the moon app that shows all the Apollo landings. I have an app that keeps track of all the books that I might like to read one day (Next Read). I have the Facebook app and now I have the Kindle app.

I resisted getting any kind of e-reader for the iPod because I already had the Kindle, and the screen is just so small, but when the Kindle app came out I had to give it a try. It is very cool. The other night we were going out to dinner, so I downloaded one of my Kindle books to the iPod and tucked the iPod into my coat pocket. While we were waiting for our table I pulled out the iPod and started reading. Of course the screen is great. Color! And the page turn is an intuitive finger swipe. When I picked the Kindle up the next day and opened up the same book it synced to the spot I was reading on the iPod. Very nice.

Recently, one of my nieces posted a note on Facebook telling her friends to shuffle the songs on their iPods and then write out the first line from each of the next 20 or 30 songs. I had to chuckle at that note, you can put music on these? Wow, what a concept, and here I was thinking it was just a really cool little computer. I have actually bought a couple of albums for my iPod, but I'm still warming up to that aspect of the technology. Partly it is because I really don't like listening to music with headphones or ear buds, and partly it is because you don't get the liner notes if you don't buy the CD. I have recently invested in a high end small speaker for my iPod (a Soundwave), although it hasn't gotten much use yet.

I am going to be taking a trip in a couple of weeks that involves four days of driving. In the past I've taken a box of CDs, but maybe this time I'll just load some stuff on my iPod.

Kindle to the rescue.

So, the other day at work I was talking to my program boss about a cool camera that I had read about in the latest Technology Review that I thought might be useful for our project. I told him I would send him a link. Back at my desk I dug the email out of my sent folder and prepared to forward it to him. But first I checked the link. It didn't work. I tried searching the Technology Review web site. No luck. But wait! I have the issue in question on my Kindle. I pulled out my Kindle, opened up the magazine, and went right to the section in question using the section list. Voila! The short article had a link to the producer of the camera, which I sent to my boss (after checking it first). Success.

Now, I know that in my previous post I had said I didn't like reading magazines on the Kindle, but after further experimentation I find that I prefer the Kindle despite the limitations. For one thing, I like the e-ink, it's easy to read. But I also like the size of the Kindle. I like not holding the magazine open. I like the fact that you don't get uneven lighting on the page or reflected glare from the paper. And I love the fact that I can carry a veritable library in my hand.

Kindle Girl

Lately I’ve been investing in some new technology. It all started back in October of 2008 with a Kindle (version 1). I was talking to my techie friend Terry one day and mentioned that I was thinking about getting one as a birthday present to myself. Well, says he, I happen to have one that I am not using if you would like to borrow it. Of course I said yes.

It took me a little while to warm up to the Kindle. I wasn’t put off by the form factor, unlike a lot of people who have been writing and speaking about the Kindle. No, I had to figure out how it fit into my life because I am a bibliophile. I have a house full of books.

I immediately took to the idea of being able to browse and buy books right from the device. So, Bruce and I would be watching The Daily Show, and Jon Stewart would have some author on, and before the interview was over I would be browsing the book in question on my Kindle and reading the reviews.

The first book that I read on the Kindle was “The Hogfather” by Terry Pratchet. This was a book a friend had recommended to me. I haven’t read any Prachet before and tend to stay away from never-ending series, but her descriptions of a couple of scenes piqued my curiosity enough that I bought it and read it. I didn’t feel bad buying it on the Kindle because it wasn’t a book that I would have bought ordinarily. It was, for me, a throw-away book, an experiment to see if I would enjoy the reading process on the Kindle. Well, I did. I like the grey-scale screen, and the page turn delay doesn’t bother me at all. Mostly, I like the fact that I can read it with no hands, which means that I can read while knitting.

The next thing that really got me excited about the Kindle was all the classics that are available. It didn’t take me long to get the complete works of Shakespeare, Jules Verne and most of H. G. Wells. Also, Jane Austin, E. M. Forster, Alexander Dumas, Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Walter Scott, Dickens, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. I now have something like 100 different items on my Kindle, including a lot of samples. That is the other very cool thing about the Kindle, you can try a sample of a book for free. The free sample satisfies the instant gratification bug without costing you anything. And believe me, the instant gratification of the Kindle is a big temptation to spending too much money on books. It is just so easy. Other than the credit card statement there is no evidence of your indulgence. You don’t even have to find more bookshelf space.

I have tried reading magazines on the Kindle, but that hasn’t worked as well. Books tend to be read in a more linear fashion, although I still miss being able to easily flip back to a previous passage. But the magazine experience is different. There is the whole layout of a magazine page, which is not reproduced on the Kindle. And you really can’t flip through or browse the way you would with a print magazine. There is no art work to catch your eye, just text. Having the latest issue appear magically on your Kindle is pretty cool, though. You also don’t want to read books that have a lot of graphics or photographs in them. The grey scale does pretty well, but it is not color. But for reading novels it is great.

I have looked at the NY Times on the Kindle, but just couldn’t really figure out how to read it effectively. It just seemed to be too big for the Kindle, you know? I also tried out some of the blogs. They’re okay, but I really didn’t like the fairly steady stream of updates being downloaded and sucking my battery life. In the end I settled on just reading books on the Kindle, mostly fiction, but some non-fiction as well. Anything in paperback is definitely a Kindle read because I can’t read a paperback and knit at the same time.

Once I got hooked on the Kindle I took it with me everywhere. Bruce even started calling me Kindle Girl. Since I got the Kindle I have been reading more. I still buy real physical books but only if I really want the hardcopy, or if it is something that the Kindle just won’t handle well, or if it is something that Bruce will want to read – he doesn’t like reading on the Kindle, he needs more contrast.

The Kindle is not the end of the e-readers, it is the beginning. The reason it has done better than the others is because it has the weight of Amazon behind it providing a lot of titles (Oprah’s endorsement didn’t hurt). Yeah, it is spendy, and the price discount on the books is not that substantial, except on the classics, and there are the issues of digital rights management (thank goodness iTunes has gone DRM-free!) but the Whispernet is great. I don’t think that Kindle 2 is that much of an improvement over 1. More contrast, slimmer, but you can’t change the battery yourself, and they did away with the memory expansion slot. They did up the on-board memory, but I’ve probably exceeded that on my Kindle 1 (I have a 15 gig SD card).

The Kindle is a sign of things to come and I, for one, am looking forward to the future.