Travels and Thoughts

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WEEK 47 2007

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Saturday 24 November 2007

Saturday - on the road, back to Lancaster. Moderate to heavy traffic.

Some remarkable natural phenomena. [via Tigerhawk]

Friday 23 November 2007

Friday - there is much food left over. The adults just don't eat much any more, and we'd only the one child at the table. I didn't make all that much, really, but the fridge is still full. Lots of turkey left, pie, various other things.

Thursday 22 November 2007

Thursday - the dinner came off reasonably well. I baked two pies, made biscuits, gravy, stuffing. My sister K arrived in time to be a big help. She took over the gravy while I rushed about doing other things. She pointed out that if I was doubling the flour for biscuits that I should probably double the other ingredients as well ;-) Nice catch. I'd thought I'd be done by 2:00 and sit around watching the game and drinking beer. Not even close...

No one had to be rushed to the hospital so I'm thinking that it went OK. I was too tired to accurately judge - indeed I laid down for a half hour nap at 8:30pm, a bit after dinner, and actually woke up about 3:00am, still my daytime clothes.

My Dad lost two bits on the morning game, but won the afternoon game. So we're tied there.

Wednesday 21 November 2007

Wednesday - cooking the turkey, early. I don't want to be baking the pies and biscuits while working around a bird in the oven, I'm just not skilled enough. It looks as though the bird came out decently cooked.

More on the Kindle, at Slashdot. Looks like it sold out on it's first day of sale, but that may mean that it just had a few to sell. The article links to a head to head comparison at WIRED, with pictures and sizes. I think the final word is yet to come, but things aren't quite there yet.

Tuesday 20 November 2007

Tuesday - heh. I looked at bit more at the Kindle. A lot of rather bizarre and arbitrary limits to what it can do. Apparently it can't even handle native PDF documents, or TXT without some sort of conversion, and the text has only a single font. Too bad. Sony has been trying to lure readers and lock them in for several years now, without much luck. It's sad that Jeff Bezos over at Amazon is trying the same. I guess that's business.

That said, what would I want? I'd like a bigger screen - 6" on the diagonal is too small. Make it the size of a normal book - there is a reason that size was chosen. Publisher's way back when, just as now, were cheap and didn't make books any bigger than they had to be. So that's the minimum size that should be used. (Paperbacks are a red herring, disposable commodities) Black and white is OK, if that's the cost of more usable time. The EVDO link is a great idea, but wifi would work. It should support natively PDF's (a lot of reports and working documents are in that format), WORD, RTF, txt, etc. In fact, since readers for all of these are free and available on LINUX, there isn't any reason not to have them. There is a .mobi format, which is some sort of mobile book format. I'm not sure that it is free. A touchscreen. It should support bookmarks and annotations, have USB and Bluetooth. And why not have an MP3 player? Even the two units mentioned have it.

Indeed, it should be a small computer in itself. But there is always a trade off between size and functionality. So, expandable. Optional Bluetooth (it burns power). An external keyboard, if desired. A LED light that clips to the top, for viewing in dim light. Make the touchscreen an option, not a standard feature.

There are some vaporware products out there that claim to have some of these things, but time will tell. It'll come, but I expect Sony and Amazon to miss the boat.

The neighbors cats.

Not too much else going on. Beautiful weather, but the sun is down by 4:30 now. A waxing moon blocks out any sign of comet Holmes.

San Francisco has banned plastic grocery bags. They are trying to keep restaurants from using trans fats. They are giving ID cards to illegals, and forcing the city personnel to use the same ID. Essentially it is the nanny state triumphant, and maybe it's a good thing. We can look at it and see how power corrupts, how a few minor officials - supervisor's of a smallish city - act, when given enough power by the voters.

Monday 19 November 2007

Monday - I saw a Sony ebook reader at Costco for $249.99. I was really tempted, but it's a steep price. And it was an earlier model, the PRS-500 and not the PRS-505 which has, apparently, whiter 'paper'. And I'm wary now after Sony's various issues and missteps - DRM mazes, malware on boot sections, and so on.

So it was interesting to see Amazon has come out with their own ebook reader, the Kindle, using the same electronic ink display technology, with a 6" diagonal, but much more full featured with regards to everything else. It has a web browser, access to Amazons' ebook library, newspaper and blog access, a keyboard and more. It can download via Sprint EVDO - but you don't pay for the EVDO access, Amazon does via a deal they cut with Sprint.

Pretty cool technology, though the reader itself looks like it should have a Timex-Sinclair sticker on it. Also it's $400.

Drove up to my Dads' place. Decent traffic, good weather. Good to be back after a couple of months away.

Sadly I have already lost two bits on the Monday Night Football game. The quarterbacks were both good, but the Denver kid looks like a hall of fame candidate. The announcing was horrific, as always. ESPN is actually worse than the old network. They won't report the game any more, it's just non-spot 'color' spewing forth like projectile vomit from the three - three - announcers.

Sunday 18 November 2007

Sunday - I had big plans for the patio doors, to paint or varnish them. That didn't get done. I did get over to a friends place for dinner and a cooking lesson.

I think she has an exaggerated idea of my cooking abilities, but I appreciate the lesson. The critical item, as I see it, is to have a frozen pizza in the icebox as a backup on Thursday :-) Seriously, she came up with a comprehensive shopping list, loaned me pans, rollers, cutters, and gave me an apple pie that we made from scratch, to bring up. We even practiced on a chicken. It should go OK I think.

Saturday I just ran out of energy and time where patio doors were concerned, I did get to spend some time with my brother - we went out to lunch and hung out for a while.

Picture of the Week

Photo Notes: Into the ocean...

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