Planet TLLTS

On the last TechShow, we talked for a few minutes about eReaders before the show was over. I was pretty much on the fence about what to do about my pressing want of such a device and I was soliciting opinions and advice on the matter.

I have long wanted an eReader because I absolutely hate carrying piles of heavy books around with me, and getting an eReader gives me the opportunity to bring along a whole bunch of books wherever I go and they all fit into my pocket! The problem I ran into was which one to get?

I like the Nook because it supports more open standard ebook formats and it is locally available at Best Buy. I am on of those instant gratification people that has to be able to walk out of the store with my item in hand. Waiting for delivery drives me insane

I like the Kindle because of its general popularity, the ease of integrating it with my existing Amazon account, the book availability, and, really, I just like Amazon. I also really like that the Kindle has a keyboard (such as it is). The downside for me there was, again, I had to order/wait for the thing.

The iPad? Well, I really dig that tablet form factor, and, after having used an iPad for a few minutes, you can really see the draw of the thing. Lots of pretty applications, aesthetically pleasing, it’s the right size, I can read every kind of eBook on it, etc., etc., etc.. Downsides are its price is 4x the price of a Kindle or Nook.

What I really wanted was a 10 inch Android tablet. Unfortunately, you can’t even get a decently working 7 inch Android tablet yet. Also, when they do come out (still vaporware as far as I am concerned), they will be at the same price point as the iPad.

What’s a guy to do? Do I just keep waiting and waiting and end up never getting anything? Do I just go for the iPad and then get irritated with myself when a decent Android tablet comes out right afterward?

Well, the answer just sort of came to me yesterday. I had to go to Best Buy to pick up a movie for my wife and what did I see there? They had not only the Nook, but also the Kindle for sale. Of course I had to check them both out while I was there. It was, after all, clearly some kind of omen.

I ended up picking up a Kindle after comparing the two side by side. The kindle was faster, the demo unit actually worked (big plus), the Kindle was actually about $10 cheaper, I think it’s better looking as well, and I do remember reading about B&N having some financial dificultes recently as well. I have used the Kindle for a day now and I am still pleased with my purchase. I have to say that these things are pretty cool and I wish I hadn’t waited this long. If you are still on the fence about this like I was, go hit a Best Buy and check them out!

After having a couple really long and bad weeks here at the Fessenden residence, I finally got the chance to send back my Think Penguin Air review unit. But right before I did that I wanted to make sure I wiped all my personal info from the computer. Cue Linux Mint 10 Release Candidate.

I was so excited when Ubuntu 10.10 came out because I knew that meant that a new Linux Mint would not be far behind. It was not long afterward that I learned that Mint had a release candidate ready. Not being a patient man, I grabbed an iso and, via unetbootin, stuffed it onto a usb stick so I could try it out.

It just so happened that I was way overdue to send back my review unit, so what better place to try the new Mint than to use it to wipe my data off that review unit? I could think of none, so on it went!

The interesting thing I noticed in the installer was that it was installing packages while it was asking the “end of install” questions. You know, the ones where it was asking my account name, timezone, name for my computer, those sorts of things. Now I may be wrong, but I am pretty sure those were never asked on previous releases until *after* all the software packages were installed. Anyhow, I believe this sped up the install considerably. 15 minutes and I was up and running.

Once running, one of the first things I noticed was the default background was grey and the theme has some polished metal thing going on. Initially, I was incensed that Mint would release without their trademark beautiful green background, but after a few minutes, it started to grow on me a little. I looked at the other included backgrounds and found the same background as the default, but in green. I decided that what they really *need* to do is to take the green logo from the green version and apply that to the grey default background and that would fix things for me Maybe Clem is listening?

I can’t comment too much on the rest as I have not had much of a chance to use it, however, everything worked, everything was aesthetically pleasing, and the Mint menu looked a bit different.

Kudos to the Mint team and I cannot wait for the final release so I can upgrade some of these machines around here and give Mint 10 a better run

Today was my second day back to running. I’m taking it easy with my back and all and I must way it’s not as smooth going yet as I would like it to be. So I am running East down West Mercury Boulevard, not too far from my house approaching two young men when I hear this screaming. But is it screaming? I cannot tell. I don’t see anything looking around. But then I hear it again; the traffic is still a bit heavy, it’s almost past rush hour. I see what looks to be a man from some utility company on the other side of the road and a mini-van oddly stopped in the left turn lane on the West bound side but nothing more. So I start to turn back to my run when I hear someone scream “Rape!” The mini-van is laying on the horn and that is when I see the utility man is not from any utility company as he is over top of someone in the grass across the highway. A few seconds later he is up but appears to be calm but the person on the ground looks distressed! What do I do?

I didn’t know, it was weird. The guy is calm, there are 6 lanes of busy road between us, a van laying on the horn, two guys approaching me and a man and a woman approaching the scene from the other side of the road. The guy was backed off a bit. I could not tell who was on the ground: A Man, a woman, a Kid. It looked like a kid. Was there an assault going on right on the side of this road in broad daylight? Was it some kid who was out of control and that was his father? Again, this guy did not look agitated, he looked calm. The man and woman approached and the guy backed off. The two men approached me and asked what was going on. I knew about as much as them; but all the while I kept thinking I should call the police.

We crossed the road and learned it was a woman who jumped out of this guys truck after he apparently became violent. She had proclaimed he had assaulted her a few days ago and was in jail for a bit but when he came home he continued the abuse. She came up from Georgia with him and had no family and he was preventing her from using a cellphone to call them.

The two guys I came across with contemplating throwing this guy a beat down but he sauntered off to his truck and left. We further assessed the situation trying to help this woman out when the guy returned. The two guys went to speak with him I hung back. He got out of the truck and was a bit verbal. At that point I’d had enough and called the cops (something I should have done from the beginning). He took off, the cops arrived a few minutes later and I gave my report.

It was a scary thing, that it was. Standing there trying to figure out what is going on, wondering if I should get involved. If nobody did, where would this woman have ended up? Afterwards I really felt bad for holding back, for not rushing to the scene sooner or calling the cops. But I have to admit, I was uncertain and a bit scared at the prospect of confrontation with this guy. I mean come on, if he is really assaulting a woman in broad daylight, around rush hour, on the side of one of the busiest roads in the area; what am I going to meet on the other side? Some guy with a knife? A gun? But what about the woman? If I hesitated too long what about her?

What I should have done immediately is called the police. Regardless the situation, better they arrive sooner than later. If things had taken a turn for the worst the police would have been on the way. Waiting could have proved fatal.

I love superheros, that I do. Comic books, movies, all that; but when it comes to real life it’s a scary choice to interfere in someone else’s tragedy; very scary. It would have been so easy to just turn away and keep running. No it wouldn’t have been, it would have haunted me.

She plans on pressing charges and I hope she does. I hope my report helps and I hope she gets the help she needs; maybe a lift home. I wish her well and I hope I am never in this situation again. But if I am, I will learn from today and make sure help is on the way from the start.

This just came out in the Debian Project News:

Members of the Debian project have started a new user oriented service at ask.debian.net. It lets users ask specific questions and find answers, while also providing rating systems and badges for users. It allows Debian Developers and other contributors to easily stay in touch with the community.

Topics include:

In today's ogg cast, dave talks about espeak versus festival, Super Street Fighter IV, some note taking apps, Rockbox and his recent sansa e280 problems, netflix, star wars, quake 3 and some movies he has been watching.

Links:

lottalinuxlinks.com linux user podcast 129 ogg vorbis format;

lottalinuxlinks.com linux user podcast 129 speex format;

espeak;

festival;

Super Street Fighter IV;

nevernote;

zim-wiki;

tudu;

zoho notebook;

rockbox;

Red Riding trilogy;

Moon;

Attack of the 50 Foot Woman;

King of King: A Fist Full of Quarters;

Black Dynamite;

Chocolate;

Star Wars The Force Unleashed 2; and

Quake III.

After recording the soon to be released LLL129 oggcast, I sat down and tired to unbrick my recently replaced sasna e280 media player. Long story short, it was a success. Simply booting into recovery mode and replacing the original firmware did the trick. So, now I have two fine sansa e280 media players, both running rockbox. The new one (a v2 original firmware device) is every bit as nice as the old v1 original firmware device-- in every way save one: battery life. The old device gets 25 hours of battery life, the new one only 16. I am sure this will improve over time (rockbox battery life on my old 4th gen ipod has increased from 4 hours to nearly 15 since version 3.4) as the rockbox developers continue the fine work they do on this fine project. Speaking of which--rockbox verion 3.7 should be out any day now.

My new refurbished sansa e280 arrived today, 3 hours after my current one quit working again. I am charging the new e280 as I type this, and will be installing rockbox on it when it's fully charged. After that, I am going to try to get the old one working again, by following the unbricking procedures (removing and replacing the battery did not revive the player this time).

My new sansa e280 is a v2 original firmware device, my old one is a v1; both are fully supported by rockbox. I will try to make the time to document the unbricking procedure as well as what is involved in installing rockbox.

I am thinking of getting a clip+ as a new back-up device if I cannot revive the old e280.

Being a linux user, I need a media player that has ogg-vorbis support and is linux friendly.

I have had several good media players in the past: (in chronological order) an iriver T30 (which survived a pocket full of melted chocolate), two iaudio u3's, and a sansa e280. Each of these was the best player I had ever owned until purchasing the next.

My current player of choice is a refurbished sansa e280. I have had this player for almost two years now. With Rockbox installed it's a VERY nice media player. It has a removable battery, accessable by removing 4 phillips head screws from the back of the metal case, and a micro sdhc slot (capable of accepting a 32 gig micro sdhc cards after installing Rockbox), and 8 gig of built-in storage. This is my everyday media player and I love it.

A couple of days ago, I turned it on only to be greeted with a black display and a backlit thumbwheel. This was easily fixed though by removing and replacing the battery. Fixed or not, the black display was indicator enough for me that it might be time to purchase a new/replacement media player for when or if this one did decide to give up the ghost for good. I don't think that time is coming soon though. I really think that this player will last me a long time yet (as this is the only problem I have had with it in nearly two years), and will probably only have to replace the battery before having to buy a replacement player. Rather being safe than sorry though, I went ahead and purchased a 2nd refurbished sansa e280 for $49.99 from TigerDirect, and will be putting Rockbox on it as soon as it arrives. If you go to TigerDirect and they are out of stock of the refurbished sansa e280, check back often as they get a number of these in from time to time. Since this player is no longer in production supplies are limited. Get one while they last.

What is Rockbox and why should you run it?

I have said before on several occasions that Sobell does really good work. Well, this holds true to my words. This is a big book with some 1250+ pages in it absolutely filled to the brim with useful information. The review on the front cover mentions that the book is “comprehensive” and that just might be understating it a little. This book has practically anything you might want to know about Ubuntu, and references a lot of really helpful general linux and userland program information and it’s put together in a very straight forward and understandable way. Having the word “Practical” in the name is also a really good fit as the book offers great walk-throughs on things people will want to do with their Ubuntu install from beginner things like configuring a printer all the way up to things like some perl programming and running your own web server. All in all, this book is not only worth a look, but a keeper. It’s a good read and great technical reference.

Glitch: The Hidden Impact of Faulty Software by Jeff Papows

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is a great starting point for management and IT professionals in general looking to move more into a managerial role. The focus is on creating IT compliance and the text is rife with great ideas for building a sound plan for just about any organization.

From the developer’s perspective this book gives a great introduction to the concepts one should be aware of with regards to code creation and application but will not provide a technical plan for how to ensure your code is as high quality as possible. With that said, though, I will stress that this brings to light some issues that may not be in the forefront of a developer’s mind when developing an application. Thus, being aware of the ramifications of your code is a valuable tool to have in the back of your mind along with what management may be struggling to achieve with practices at the moment you may not understand or agree with.

From a developer who is very enthusiastic about free and open source software I was pleased the author paid `more than lip service and identified the increasingly important role FOSS is playing in organizations and the need to include said technology in your IT compliance plan.

While this book does not have all the answers it is a very valuable starting point for building a solid IT compliance plan with a focus on creating solid technology solutions.



View all my reviews