Kindle 3 in NZ

A few thoughts on the Kindle 3

• The eInk screen is amazing to read from, after reading 4 book on the device and reading until 2am in the morning there is no eyestrain unlike when I use an active display such as my netbook or cellphones.
• Books load quickly after the first time, when they appear to be indexed.
• The kindle store works well and with your credit card details linked to your account can be bought with only a couple of clicks.
• The purchased books arrive very quickly over both wifi and 3G.
• Also books purchased directly from there website arrive next time you connect the kindle to a network.
• The battery life is impressive on the first charge I've read 5 or so books before getting a battery warning, should last 8 or 9 books by the time it's had a couple more charges.
• Battery life is a function of page turns, so appears to decrease as you increase text size and spacing. But leaving it in suspend for a week has little or no effect.
• It's highly impressive to switch the device off and have the kindle render a graphic on the display and leave there while it's 'off'.
• The text is very clean and easy to read.
• The device is quite small about the size of a midsized paper back and incredible light!
• The size and weight make it alot easier to hold than an iPad for reading.
• The refresh rate when turning pages is quite acceptable, if you hit page advance when you reach the bottom of the page it should have refreshed by the time your eye reach the top.
• You can change the font, spacing and orientation of the text.
• The 3G makes is easy to buy a book and start reading it pretty much anywhere.
• The downside is it makes it a little too easy to buy a book that catches your eye, and with the purchase only requiring a click or two could easily get out of control.
• There are a lot of free ebooks in the correct formate available from third parties such as baen, including some complete series, which helps make the device even more valuable

• The webbrowser is rather basic though usable, a 5 way pad is not the best way to browse the web.
• The music player is completely basic, no gui just plays stuff in order in the background, the built in speakers are of reasonable quality.
• The book reader as usual is the standard robotic voice, and won't make audio books obsolete any time soon.
• The books seem to have US$2 surcharge on them to cover the cost of sending them Internationally via 3G, this applies both when buying via 3G or Wifi, which as far as data charges go is a complete rip off!
• Book prices are in US$ so while the books are still cheaper than a normal priced paperback they're not incredibly so (NZ$17 for the most expensive I've bought)
• While the book range is decent I've run into a number of books that are not to be sold in NZ

Overall I'm very happy with the device I just wish the book prices were in NZ dollars and didn't have the US$2 surcharge!

Farewell, summer holidays

Well on the way back to Hamilton for work. Was good to see most of you over the Christmas break. I'll stick up an image or two from New Years once I have some free time to go through them properly, though that may take a wee while as I've a lot of Photos from Australia to go through as well. Also I'm likely to pick up a few more images with the up coming wedding. I'll throw up a post here when I get around to updating speculum.
I'll also stick up a few photos from Aus here for those of you interested in such things hopefully in the next couple of weeks.

Any way greetings from wellington (for the whole hour or so I'm here.
Oh and here is a preview image from the trip to Aus:

Christmas Day: Surfers Paradise

On that note: Eee Pc and 3g for the win!

Dragon Age!

BioWare : Dragon Age : Home

Dragon Age is looking awesome from the early screenshots and videos released, the website has some info as well these days so if you like RPG's have a look at it!

IT consumerization

Analysis: IT consumerization and the future of work

An interesting article hypothesizing that consumers are replacing Enterprise and Governments as the main driver for modern computer technology with a suggestion that this could eventually lead to BYO computer workplaces, as companies struggle to keep up with the rapidly changing and diversifying software and hardware ecosystem.

What do you people think? Or are you already there (Matt?)?

Snow Crash

If you've not read it you should, It's a cyberpunk novel by Neal Stephenson. It plays around with a lot of interesting ideas related to linguistics, informational and biological viruses, Sumerian mythology, the rise of civilization and Christianity or Religion. While it's a work of fiction the ideas utilised and the real world implications of some of the ideas are a fascinating alternate view of Civilisation and Religion.

Any way Snow Crash is well worth reading and I'd highly recommend it to those who find such ideas interesting!

For Fun

OO.org 3.0beta

First look: OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta a big step forward
Finally native OSX support for those of you utilizing that system, so no more need for X11.

Between black and white: the state of grayware on the PC

The state of Greyware on the PC

EEE PC any one?

Looks like Dicksmith is selling some of their linux ones off at $495 this weekend.

Mind Enhancing Drugs and Software

Two interesting articles in a similar field from wired.com this time.

First up and the less likely to be controversial of the two is "Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm", it's a fascinating read, so if you've got some spare time have a look at it.
The article covers supermeamo a memory enhancement software package and it's creator. A software package that utilises research on optimal memorisation strategies to provide a system that can boost your ability to memorise material. The system apparently works by determining the optimal periods at which to refresh the material you want to memorise. It then sticks up a reminder with the info at the point were you should be just starting forget the information. Seeing apparently if the optimal time is targeted regularly the average time between needing a reminder increases and the quicker it gets committed to "longterm" memory. If it works, it sounds like a rather useful system for extending/increasing your ability to memorise material in an optimal manner. The second part of the article looks at the creator of the algorithms used, a man who's so convinced about the software that he allows it to run his life, choosing what he wants prioritised and then letting the software, take what he wants to read and learn and sticking it into this system.
The writer makes some interesting comments that the future of computer boosted IQ for humans, may not be using the computer to store the information for you but instead using them to optimise the manner in which you learn it. The software is available commercial for windows and is apparently considered brilliant for learning languages, free alternatives that use slightly different algorithms are available for both windows and Linux.

Secondly we move on to an article on Brain-Enhancing Drug Regimens where people are using mind enhancing drugs, originally designed to help with sleeping "disorders", ADHD and other disorders to boost their mental performance for work, tests and assignments. The article provides a brief overview and then dives into examples of drug regimens used by readers of the magazine in their daily life. The Drugs act to promote alertness, and boost the users focus, ability to ignore distractions and rate of memorisation. What is also interesting is that the US department of defense is funding research into such drugs for a variety of uses by military personnel.


Together both articles are rather interesting look at the field of human mental self experimentation, as people try to boost there mental rather than physical capabilities with various strategies and drugs. I suspect such things will increase as we move further and further into an information saturated society. One where we are permanently connected to various information sources and our friends and colleagues, and have to deal with the associated information overload. Seeing we've done pretty well so far considering we're a group of evolved hunter gather scavengers, who are an increasingly long way away from the plains and deserts that we spent millions of years wondering and that our minds and bodies were "optimised" (yeah, yeah I know Evolution and optimisation don't go together but give me a break, you know what I mean) for.

Give Your Intellect a Boost — Just Say Yes to Doing the Right Drugs!
Now if you've read the second article have a look at this quick page, which lists a varity of the drugs, their effects, side effects and possible modes of action.

Any way what do you people think, would you be interested or consider utilising either system? Or do you consider such systems to either not work or to be actively dangerous to ones health?

HP2133, compeition for the eeepc

HP 2133 Mini-Note Review

HP 2133 Mini-Note Review
Just when you thought you'd never find the perfect small form factor notebook for less than $1,000, HP comes to the table with the all new 2133 Mini-Note. This ultra mobile subnotebook features an impressive 8.9-inch screen, a remarkably large keyboard, a full-sized notebook hard drive, and plenty of impressive specs. Is this the perfect road warrior machine? Let's take a closer look and find out.

So the eeepc finally has some serious and somewhat more expensive compeition, certainly a nice looking laptop though it's a pitty that the CPU seems even more underpowered than expected. Will be interesting to see if they upgrade it to the new via cpu that's coming out soon, seeing apparently it's pin compatible but offers similar preformance to a core 2 duo. Will all so be interesting to see if some one picks it up to sell in NZ and what the local price will be.

One advantage at least and a mini RANT

Well there's at least one advantage to having nothing to do while looking for a Job, it leaves you with plenty of time to make nice stuff for lunch. Hmm homemade minipizza.

On a completely different note I'd like to say Apple's "Software Update for Windows" is a piece of annoying crap, it sticks a large window right in the middle of your screen, it provides no obvious way to disable it, it wants to download the full version of the program it's trying to update rather than a delta and finally it trys to install by default Safari, an entire new application as an update which is simply WRONG!
Windows update is by comparison is amazingly good it uses a tiny icon in the system tray, it only auto selects updates for you existing software (new stuff is not selected by default) it generally updates with delta's (or subcomponents) and it is highly configurable you can decide when and how often it runs and what it does each time.

Windwos Vista + Macbook Air

Macbook Air running Vista

EEE PC The future

Well it looks like the EEE PC has some interesting changes coming up in the near future.
Bigger screen (1024x600), more storage (8GB, 12GB, 20GB), a change in CPU (Intel Atom), quick battery recharging, longer battery life (up to 8hours) etc

This could make things rather interesting, If they manage to get one out with 4+ hours battery, and an Atom CPU I think I'll be picking one up rather quickly!

For more info Eee PC to Get Intel’s Diamondville, Hard Drives, and Fashion Forward Style.

Free online storage for back up and file sharing

Well Micro$oft now offers 5GB of online file storage to any one with a @hotmail @msn or @live account and while it is unfortunately M$ 5GB of free online storage for backing up data and sharing material between computers and people is certainly worth considering.

Windows Live SkyDrive launches, but needs a touch of paint

Current Desktop Theme

Finally got around to clearing out all my old gnome, and thunderbird settings (canning all the old pop mail in thunderbird and moving to IMAP saved 1GB of HD space) today, and changed the default theme for my desktop. Have moved to a Dark grey theme which works rather well except that it looks a little odd in thunderbird and on some Internet sites in firefox. As seeing firefox uses the system theme colours and widgets you end up having dark grey data boxes on a white page and a few other minor things like that.

Desktop

Odd appearance of Google.co.nz, with a dark theme.

Mac getting Spore

Coming to the Mac in 2008: 'Spore' | CNET News.com. Well it looks like you Mac Fanboys will be getting the odd interesting game for OSX this year, though I see they're using Transgaming's wine derivative rather than a native port of the engine.

EEE PC competition

"Cloudbook" UMPC to run Googlish Linux
If this comes out the same price as the eee pc things could get interesting :-)

Via C7 ULV processor clocked at 1.2GHz
30GB hard drive.
512MB RAM
7" 800x480 screen
And apparently 4+ Hour battery life!

Apple faces elitist crisis

The Elite Apple Corps - washingtonpost.com an interesting article apparently written by a mac fan complaining that Mac's/Apple stores are too popular now, it's no longer alternative it's now main stream much to their disgust.

And commentary by the Inquirer :-) Apple faces elitist crisis.

Linux is Productive

Well I've finally managed to finish installing the latest version 64bit of Mandriva Linux on my laptop, the result being much to my supprise I actually got some acutal work done due to the lack of games etc to distract me from my task. Along with the advantages inherent in Gnome desktop compared to Vista. Virtual desktops, Scale/Exposé andvarious other difference between the systems make the Gnome Desktop much better at handling work that envolves 10+ windows and 3-4 different apps, even on a 1440x900 res screen.

Also being 64bit it's nice to know the 4GB of RAM can actually be used rather than 3.5GB when running in 32bit Vista.