Author Archives: bluedepth

Power Outages are always fun

Posted on by
Reply

Last night we had a rather hefty batch of thunderstorms move through the area. One of the strikes tossed our local power distribution grid for a loop and every computer was off this morning. This is always a really interesting time to find out what fails. It’s during these events that devices, computers, network gear, you name it take a hit on the chin. Maybe they’ll be fine, maybe it’ll be a total KO.

So far we’ve got the “Garden Level” out of network capacity altogether, the third floor has spotty connectivity and when I pulled into work my phone was ringing that people on the second floor were having problems accessing their files located on one of my servers. That wasn’t it though! Of course not.

My computer was off, when I turned it on my Apple Trackpad was unreachable via Bluetooth. Tearing the device out of the bluetooth settings and rebooting then re-pairing fixed that, and we’ve had instances of that happening throughout our office for people using the trackpads.

It’s a lot like the USS Enterprise when she’s hit by a torpedo. It’s always Engineering that is picking up the pieces, dealing with leaks, or exploding. Sometimes I feel a little bit like Scotty, “It’ll take 3 weeks to fix, but I can have it done in 2 hours” or Chief O’Brien “That’s broken? AGAIN? I JUST FIXED THAT!”

At least it keeps us employed and occupied. We won’t go into how these strong storms and odd weather patterns are cause for concern… p’shaw. 🙂

Using the Nook Simple Touch

Posted on by
1

Last week I was pretty much 50-50 on whether or not I should get another device, in this particular case, a Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch e-ink Reader. I was hemming and hawing because I already enjoy my iPad so much, I didn’t know if the Nook would be just something to have to have it versus something I’d really use. Thanks to Scott, I got a chance to sit down and really look at a Nook before I had to buy one for myself. Even the test period didn’t really help much, it did shift me 60-40, in favor of the Nook, but I was still quite firmly sitting on that fence.

Later on that week I decided that I was going to get the Nook after all, and to hop off the fence. I did post a question to my blog and social networking groups, but only one or two people commented so that avenue wasn’t as useful as I had hoped. Thanks a a lot people! 😉 So I went to Scott’s store and Scott and I went through the dance, I asked to buy, he gave me his corporate-mandated pitch, and because I’m cheeky, I decided to add a B&N Membership to the entire thing, which did get me $10 off the Nook. Truth to be told, getting the membership (a renewal after it lapsed so long ago) was partly to boost Scott’s membership-card levels and partly for a treat that B&N now has in their cafe, a Key Lime Tart that is probably very bad for me, but tastes oh-so-good. Now I can get a discount on my guilty pleasure and from time to time get a Starbucks drink from people who I trust and who I know LISTEN. So, I got my Nook and we hit the road, heading somewhere in Scott’s new Juke. I sat there pawing at the new device and wanting to set it up. I wondered just how much of a charge might be on the device and if I could indeed set it up while in the car on a road trip. I turned the Personal Hotspot on my iPhone on and started my new Nook. It came with a 69% full battery. More than enough to get it up and running! So I had my Nook set up but no books on it. That came later. By the time I was really starting to explore the Nook we had reached our destination and it was time to put the gadget away.

The Nook is much like the iPad, in so far that Apple and Barnes & Noble both produce a semi-open/semi-locked device. Both devices can accept ePub file formatted e-Books. I copied all the ePub’s that I had over to my Nook and was very self-satisfied that none of them had a problem loading. The Nook doesn’t really have a way to get eBooks onto the device without buying them and pumping them through B&N’s infrastructure, but you can plug the device in and copy over your own ePub files, as many as you like. The Nook does have a little cheekiness to itself as it is. It’s billed as having a respectable storage amount, but you only get 250MB of user-accessible storage. This is kind of a gyp, but the Nook does provide a handy port for MicroSD on the side. After a while I noticed that my eBook collection would be bigger than the standard storage that came with the Nook itself and I (later on) got a 4GB MicroSD card from OfficeMax for just $17. Quite a deal. I set it all up and pushed my big library of ePub books over to the new Nook. It worked like a charm.

As I was browsing through Barnes & Noble’s store I saw a book that caught my eye. It was a Penguin Classic (those “classics” books with the plain covers and cheap prices) and it was Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. The book was very old, published in 1922. I scanned Project Gutenberg, which is a repository for public domain books and everything they have comes in ePub format. I found this book in PG, so I could skip buying it from B&N. No point in wasting money. I downloaded it on my laptop, copied it to my Nook, and I’ve been reading it as the first book on my Nook. I just finished it today and the experience was quite nice. Reading on the Nook is fast, the Nook ST is light as a feather and I really love it’s textured back. You can either tap/swipe the screen or use the dual edge button controls to advance the pages. The display is matte, it’s eInk, so it’s very easy on the eyes, and the fonts and sizes are of course configurable, which I really appreciate. The Nook doesn’t repaint the screen after each page, but only after 5 or 6 of them. This leaves little bits of eInk debris behind, but frankly I didn’t even notice it. The one thing I was bummed about was that I couldn’t find the dictionary feature on the test Nook. Turns out I didn’t read the manual, but once I accidentally tapped-and-held on a word I saw the way of it and that really worked for me. As I said, reading on the Nook is quite pleasurable and reading fast is easier than having to futz around with a physical book. It’s lighter than my iPad and doesn’t have the battery burn that the iPad does.

The Nook is not all rainbows and butterflies however. This past weekend I took my Nook to South Haven’s Beach for some light reading while everyone played around in Lake Michigan. In order to keep my device clean and safe I put it in a ziplock quart-size baggie. This worked well until I got out in to the bright sunshine. As the plastic would touch the screen the Nook would register it as an actual touch, since the Nooks system uses Infrared sensors to register touches on the display surface. I discovered I could avoid all of that by pulling the baggie tight against the Nook device, and that worked acceptably well. Beyond this little oddity, which really isn’t a problem, just something to watch out for and cope with, I am VERY HAPPY with my Nook Simple Touch. For the pricetag, only $139 bucks, you really can’t go wrong! The Nook does need some add-ons, but they aren’t too expensive. The little Nook light is nice to have, as well as that MicroSD card. Add it up and you still come up to about $150-160 bucks. Not bad for being able to haul around 1400 books in my pocket, on demand, able to read anytime and anyplace I like.

The only unanswered question is how will airlines consider the Nook? Even when it’s “Off” it displays an image. Do airlines regard the Nook as a device that needs to be turned off, or a book that doesn’t matter because you can’t turn it off? That’s something that I’ll have to find out once I fly again.

 

Google Plus

Posted on by
Reply

For the past few weeks, ever since it was closed to the majority of the public I’ve been toying around with Google Plus. At first I was hesitant to invest much energy in it because I got so burned with the boondoggle that was Google Wave. I immediately noticed that the user interface seemed oddly familiar, as it turns out one of the designers for Google Plus was an old Macintosh designer. Who couldn’t see that coming from miles away? The interface was clean, it didn’t have annoying Zynga games or any of the other dreck that Facebook has to contend with as part of it’s heritage of being a “College Kids Social Site”. Google Plus was something new.

After a time I started to think of Google Plus as a weapon Google designed and aimed directly at Facebook, as it seems that the two products are pretty much direct competitors to each other. I had this view for a few weeks until I saw a slide presentation that revealed that Google’s hubris was a lot larger than anyone had previously considered. Google doesn’t want to fight Facebook. Google wants to fight an entire computing paradigm. Currently the world is in the throes of migrating towards “thin clients” and “cloud services” and Google is angling to become the assumed foundation for that entire new world. There are balls, and then there are Google Balls. It’s not so much Facebook that Google Plus is fighting. It’s like an anonymous-but-incredibly-attractive man in a black leather jacket came into Facebook’s house and almost incidentally smothered Facebook with a giant pillow. You can see that he isn’t really holding the pillow but you can see that Facebook is struggling as if Googles entire weight was holding that pillow over Facebooks head. I’ve already left Facebook for nearly all intents and purposes. The only thing that Facebook retains that is still somewhat useful is their event subsystem, but I fully expect that one of the next steps that Google will take will be a new events system that leverages Google Calendar and Google Plus into a new product, maybe, called Google Events. Only time will tell on that one.

Using Google Plus is as I’ve said, a breath of fresh air. I love using it and I can’t really explain why that is. I think it’s because there are a lot of little things that all cluster together and when you add them up, Google Plus has some seriously powerful features. Instead of Facebook’s Like, you get a +1. At first this seemed rather like a feature-for-feature thing, until I noticed that every single item in a Google Search carried this shimmering (yes, it really shimmers) +1 button next to each item! So Google has found a way to instantly socialize search. Hah. Amongst all the other things, I learned by browsing the web that Google’s Picasa product, which quietly got a cloud-treatment called Web Picasa, that the service has a 1GB data storage cap, but that the cap only counts on files that are bigger than a certain very-large-value and that it’s unlimited storage just like it is on Facebook. Again, Hah. The best part of Google Plus, at least for me, is the Circles functionality. It’s very clean and very elegant. I have my Friends, my Family, Coworkers, Followers, Google+ New People… a circle for each of my social groups. I can control which Circle or set of Circles gets which updates right when I write the updates themselves. This is perfect for me as I’ve learned, in the crucible of Facebook, that sequestering certain individuals in my social life is essential. These people, in the past, have unilaterally demanded on censoring what I have to write, even if those things are my opinions and frankly are none of their business and if I were to be really picky, violate my First Amendment rights. With Google Plus I can make sure that they never see the things that would normally upset them and with one very elegant control choice, make sure that they will never have to be upset again by the things that I write. I marvel at this kind of structure that Google has provided people like me. Google Circles are a virtual representation of how I structure my life! There is Work Andy and Home Andy and Friend Andy and so many kinds of me, all configured specifically for that group. My friends wouldn’t recognize me at work, because I conduct myself far differently than I do anywhere else. Likewise my work acquaintances have never really met the real me. They are the Coworkers Circle, and that Google brought this to the forefront really appeals to me and gratifies me.

Google Plus has half of the keystone for get my full adoration. They submitted an iOS App for the iPhone and that was cleared by Apple and it sits on the second row on my home screen of my iPhone. The other half of the keystone will either make that iOS app they already have a Universal App, or come out with an app formatted for the iPad. Once that comes to pass there will be very little if any reason for me to ever return to Facebook. In many ways it’s almost an odd new competition between Google and Facebook. To see who can come out first with an iPad app. Facebook declared that an iPad is not a mobile device and so they were never going to make a Facebook app for the iPad. Then it was revealed on the web that Facebook did have an iPad app hidden in their iPhone app and once it was revealed Facebook did enough to show their hands as manipulative petulant assholes and immediately put the kibosh on that iPad app. It may not be ready and they may not want to release it because the app isn’t up to their standards, but that’s just a red herring. It would be such a deep coup if Google got it’s Google Plus iPad App approved before Facebook’s iPad app. It would be one more slap in the face to Facebook as Google actively ignores it and snuffs it out at the same time.

If you would like to join me on Google Plus, all you have to do is send me the email you would like to associate with Google Plus and I will send out an invite. I apparently have an inexhaustible supply of invites, so if you aren’t on Google Plus and you would like to see what all the hullabaloo is about, all you have to do is ask.

 

 

 

 

 

Nook Simple Touch

Posted on by
1

I asked Scott to bring home a Nook Simple Touch, because he works at Barnes & Nobles he can take advantage of “borrowing” things and bringing them back. This gives me a chance to really sit down and try to use some of the technology that Barnes & Nobles has brought to life.

I’m only half-heartedly looking for a eBook reader as my iPad does a very good job at displaying eBooks. I have a gaggle of eBooks already saved up, all in the ePub format and I’ve been off-and-on reading them both on my iPad and the Nook Simple Touch reader. I’m quite on the fence between the two devices. Here’s the layout before me:

Points for iPad:

– I won’t have to buy anything new. I already own my iPad. It does a great job at displaying books and is compatible with a gaggle of formats even some the Nook Simple Touch cannot handle, like graphic-intensive PDF files.

– The iPad is backlit, which makes it easy to read at night without turning on the lights and disturbing anyone else who is trying to sleep and is light-sensitive. This isn’t as big a reason as I originally thought because when it’s late and there isn’t any light outside I’m most likely going to pass out and reading is just going to push me that much faster towards unconsciousness.

Points for Nook:

– The iPad is heavy. Much heavier than the Nook Simple Touch. That might be a compelling reason to switch.

– The Nook can display many of the ePub files I already have quite well. The display is eInk and while it is not backlit, it is slightly easier to read.

– I prefer the fonts on the Nook Simple Touch to the font selections on iBooks on my iPad.

– The Nook has a 2-month (really?) battery life, while my iPad has at most a 1 to 2 day battery life.

– The Nook doesn’t have the iPad’s obnoxious annoying notification system always popping up bibble-babble while I’m trying to read.

So what to do? I can easily afford to buy a Nook Simple Touch, the price is certainly right, at $139 dollars. My only misgivings about the Nook is no built-in backlight and no available dictionary lookup feature that exists in the iBooks app on my iPad. Do I go ahead and buy the Nook Simple Touch and enjoy it or should I stay with my iPad? I use the iPad for lots of other things other than reading books, but there is something about having one device that does it all instead of having a gaggle of devices for specialized uses. The only thing that is outstanding is the weight and size. The Nook is easy to hold in my hands, while the iPad is heavy. Is it enough of a reason to plunk down the money and get a Nook?

Another idea I have is that it would help Scott’s store’s bottom line. I like B&N above every other bookselling company, especially over Amazon. Do I stimulate the economy by buying a Nook Simple Touch? I’m on the fence. Teeter-totter. Is there anyone out there with an iPad and a Nook? How did you resolve this conundrum and get off the fence?

A Million Little Pieces

Posted on by
Reply

I would split it up into 100,000 batches and give it to my closest friends. It may last them a long time, they may piss it away, or they could get out of debt and have a shot at happiness. What they do with the money is up to them. It's more direct than charity and more relevant than investing it. You don't invest in companies, you invest in people.

Powered by Plinky

Zombies! At Meijer's! :)

Posted on by
Reply

Easiest answer ever. Weaponize a Meijer's. "Ammo in Aisle 5" 🙂 We'd need many guns, each person would have a rifle and a pistol on them at all times and everyone would wear a uniform made of a Kevlar and Tyvek blend. Nothing bites through that! 🙂

Powered by Plinky

Next Gadget

Posted on by
Reply

We have flat panel tv’s for informational boards

I’ve been thinking about getting a 24-27″ TV for the guest room, something bigger than the 13″ SDTV that is currently in there. It would be nice to give people, especially during Halloween a chance to see what we have on our DVR while we watch horror movies in the basement. It’s not a purchase that is very high on my list, so I may not get around to it, but the idea is there at least.

Powered by Plinky