teyrnon

Just thought I'd make a quick post here to let everyone know I'm still around. Things are mostly okay. I'm dealing with high blood pressure and hopefully a medication that actually works can be found soon. It's always been on the high side but for the last year or two it's been excessively so.

I've been debating whether to do holiday cards this year. I'm thinking that if I do I won't be buying any new cards this year. Instead I'm going to round up all the left over cards from past years and use those. Get those out of the way for a fresher start to 2013. I think I've got five or six boxes with just three or four cards in them. Should be enough.

I've been reading the Vorkosigan books by Lois McMaster Bujold in a rather haphazard order as I can lay hands on them. I don't know why I've never bothered to read them before now.

I'm seriously considering getting a Kindle Fire this year. I want one mostly for the access to magazines that the publishers have decided must only be available for tablet devices rather than e-ink devices. I think it's stupid personally, but what can you do? I'd also like one for the other features too. I've been wanting something like this since forever but have heretofore refrained because the options either didn't impress me or had aspects that I found repulsive.

On the off chance anyone might be interested. As some may recall I made a post about considering going with something electronic to replace the latest paper notebook. I've been using hardbound blank books since the late 80s as a combination journal and notebooks. I have very nearly an entire shelf full of these that are filled with my scribblings. Unfortunately lately I've developed issues where handling paper makes me sick. It was the driving reason I started using ebooks and dedicated ebook readers about midway through the last year.

I still haven't gotten anything to use a PDA. The past month I've been considering the iPod Touch and it looks like a nice enough device. Not exactly impressed with it though. I've fiddled with one in a store recently and while it might be usable the on-screen keyboard seems rather awkward.

I'm thinking a small netbook would probably be the best thing at this point. An 8" model or something. I could even load it with a few of my favorite open source compilers and use the various utilities I've written over the years on it.

Anyone have any thoughts to add? I'm as undecided as ever.

It's been awhile since I've posted anything here so this is an update I guess.

I still haven't found an electronic replacement for my everywhere journal but we'll see.

My brother finally got the 1994 Sunbird squared away and it passed the emissions inspection. We only had to replace the battery and the alternator and patch the radiator to get the thing working again.

I need to get stuff together for the Holiday/Christmas/Yule/Whatever cards this year. Like as not this year I'll probably go through the cards I got last year and only send cards to those people. Seems like a plan at anyrate. I still haven't gotten the cards yet but I hope to at some point this week.

I've read over forty books on my Kindle DX so far. Not too bad for a four month period. Oddly I find that I prefer reading in the landscape rather than portrait orientation. It just seems more comfortable that way. It's so nice to be able to adjust text size while reading. When my eyes start to get tired I just bump it up a notch or two. :)

The evil trash-burning neighbors moved out the other month. Maybe my sinuses will get a little better soon. I'm still having that crackle in the skull thing, I've had since shortly after those morons moved in. It might be getting less frequent though, we'll see.

That's all for now.

I got a chance to visit Fry's Electronics yesterday to look at what they had. They had four models of ebook readers. Three of which were e-ink devices. They had the Sony PRS-505 and PRS-700 models, one of the Astak reader, and the ECTACO jetBook. Didn't really look at the Astak much since the display model looked damaged. The display on the PRS-700 is indeed a bit on the foggy side. I had read about that but seeing it first hand I have to really wonder what Sony was thinking. Do they really think consumers want to have a touchscreen and a backlight with the trade off of having less than crisp and clear text? I really like the PRS-505 though.

While I haven't completely taken the jetBook out of consideration. The fact that it has an LCD display rather than e-ink is a big minus but still it can be found for such a nice price if you watch the sales.

e-ink has changed a bit since the demonstrations I saw five or so years ago. The text on the 505 is clear, crisp and does indeed look like fresh black ink on paper. What I saw a few years ago had this odd yellow tint with a slightly faded newsprint look. Nice to see that isn't the case with the devices on the market. Whatever it was I saw back then I'm not even sure it's in the same lineage as what they call e-ink now. If anybody remembers that stuff, let me know. I think I saw it at some trade show or something. Can't remember.

Health issues seem to be alright. I'm still having sinus issues but changing urologists last year really helped with that other issue. It always works better when the doctor is treating you for the condition you have rather than something he's imagining. I need to find a good ENT specialist who's accepting new patients.

I'm still looking at eBook readers. To that end I've been hanging around the MobiileRead Forums a bit lately. It's been interesting and I'd recommend the site to anyone interested in these devices. The readers I'm most interested in continue to be the Kindle DX and the Sony PRS-505. Would like to get to a Borders or somewhere to spend a little time looking at a PRS-505 in person. I saw one at Borders the other year but didn't take all that much time to look at it. No telling when I'll get the opportunity to do that.

I've recently watched Adventures of Brisco County Jr. on DVD. It was pretty much what I remembered from 15 years ago. It's a fun series. I think I missed a few episodes back when it originally aired though.

jigsawdiva, I don't know if you saw that comment I left to your comment the other day but I've put pictures showing the Doctor Who MMPBs I'm interested in passing on to someone else. As the images are quite large and left so to keep titles readable they can be found here and here.

Okay, I'm really, really, really bored today. Well, probably more lonely than bored I guess. Then again maybe it's all the same thing. I don't know.

I'm still researching ebook readers. I really want either a Sony PRS-505 or a Kindle DX. Actually both would be very nice. I like the Kindle DX for the large screen and native PDF capability. It seems like the screen is just about the right size for the typical letter size pdf, maybe. It's still a little smaller than a letter size page. Then there's the selection of books Amazon offers for it. The wireless connectivity is nice but isn't a big feature with me. On the other hand the PRS-505 is a nice almost pocket sized size and offers a wider variety of format support. The casing design is also more aesthetically pleasing.

I've also given some consideration to the ECTACO JetBook. Newegg has it for a very nice price. However I'd rather have something with an eInk display. The JetBook has an LCD display which I'm sure is very nice but I'm not sure I'd want to spend hours and hours reading an LCD display like that when I know the epaper stuff exists.

I think I have a new pet peeve. As some of you know I've been researching ebook readers lately. I've read a few hundred user reviews across a dozen or so sites and one thing really stands out. More than half of the reviews are written by people who insert LOL or ROFL at seemingly random intervals throughout their writing. It makes for obnoxious reading and quite frankly my first thought when I see this kind of thing is to wonder what kind of idiot is this?

Second peeve are those who seem to feel a strange need to apologize for length when the sum total of their post is under 500 words. If it's under 500 words it's not long! Blazes, if it's under 1,000 words it's probably not over long. If it's worth writing someone somewhere will find it worth reading. Stop assuming your readers have the attention span of a 3 year old on a sugar high! If you have something to say then say it and use as few or as many words as you need.

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