Month: December 2004

MobiPocket Version of Star Dragon

Boing! Boing! points to Mike Brotherton releasing his scifi novel Star Dragon under a Creative Commons license. Brotherton has text, RTF and HTML versions of the novel on his web site.

For those, like me, using MobiPocket Reader on a PDA, I’ve created a MobiPocket version of Star Dragon. Update: This can now be downloaded from Mike Brotherton’s site. The PRC file is located here.

Note: I’ll soon be removing the MobiPocket version of the novel, as the webmaster for Mike Brotherton’s site is going to add it there.

I have added, however, the cleaned-up HTML version of the noel that I used to create the MobiPocket version, which should help others wanting to convert the novel to other formats.

This differs from the HTML version currently on Brotherton’s site in that,

  • All of the non-breaking spaces have been removed
  • All open paragraph tags now have accompanying closed paragraph tags at the end of each paragraph
  • All of the HTML-encoded characters have been replaced with straight ASCII versions — i.e., I replaced all the HTML encoded single quotes with actual single quotes
  • Chapter and other headings are now center-aligned paragraphs and with opening and closing bold tags

You can download the cleaned-up version here.

Dell Axim X30 Review

I have a reputation at work as the gadget guy — I’m always showing up at meetings with some new gadget that I’ve purchased or am demo-ing. My view is that life is short, and anything that can help me finish more tasks in less time is always worth a try.

Last March I bought an IPAQ 4155. Between my experiences with my HP laptop and then this latest HP IPAQ, I’m forgoing all HP products from now on. It’s just not worth the hassle. Besides which, companies (including HP) recently began releasing PDAs based on the new Intel 624mhz XScale processor. Since I rely on my PDA to help manage remotely located equipment, it was time to move on from the IPAQ 4155.

So I convinced the boss to spring for the Dell Axim X30. I thought about the Axim X50, but I really need something that I can carry with me comfortably on my belt clip pretty much 24/7 without getting in the way too much.

This week, the X30 finally arrived. Overall, it is a big improvement over the IPAQ 4155.

The X30 is quite a bit bigger and bulkier than the 4155, but it is still pretty small. Dell still uses a very rectangular design which makes the PDA feel a bit like a small paperback book. That suits me fine, but users who absolutely must have the smallest, thinnest PDA available will probably want to stick with the IPAQs.

I didn’t do any benchmarks, but it feels significantly faster than the 400mhz XScale that the 4155 uses. 80 percent of my time on my PDA is using Agenda Fusion to sort and filter the thousands of “to-do” tasks I have going on at any moment. Filtering those on the 4155 would frequently bring up the Pocket PC version of the hourglass, but I’ve yet to see such slowdowns when performing similar operations on the new PDA.

I do a lot of work with audio and video, and am impressed by the combination of the faster processor along with Windows Mobile 2003’s audio/video options. Obviously you’re not going to get DVD-quality video on a 320×240 screen, but I’ve played around with a few clips that would be more than adequate to show clients using just the X30. It’s not something I will use often, but it’s nice to know the option is there.

The X30 nicely implements the improvements in Windows Mobile 2003. The single biggest improvement there is the ability to switch between portrait and landscape mode. The Axim X30 allows me to set a button to toggle back and forth between the two modes, though novice users would be hard-pressed to figure out exactly where they would need to make that change and how they’d go about making it. I read a lot of novels, technical documents, and other materials on my PDA, so having landscape display baked into the OS was reason enough to justify an upgrade.

I complained earlier this year about how difficult it was to properly configure the IPAQ 4155’s wireless features — in fact I have had a number of people bring me their 4155’s to configure their WiFi because it’s a bit too difficult even for relatively advanced users. The Axim X30 is much better, though still a bit difficult, I suspect, for novices. The problem remains that to successfully configure WiFi on PDAs, you need to know all sorts of networking jargon. Maybe it’s just a problem that can’t be configured for easy install, but I suspect that some enterprising interface company could come up with a better solution. The X30 also supports bluetooth for those who care.

One additional caveat — I tend to wear 3-4 gadgets on my belt at any given moment, depending on what I’m going to be doing during the day, so I have no problem coming across as unfashionably geeky. Those not so inclined, however, shoudl be aware that the engineers at Dell apparently have a thing for lights, blinking and otherwise. The X30 has a very small external antenna which lights up blue when activated. The power button starts blinking red when the battery runs low. Depending on the battery status and WiFi connection, the X30 can look like a Christmas tree at times. Some reviewers have complained that this might be a downside for business users.

With a 624mhz processor and WiFi options, the X30’s only downside is the short battery life. Setting the processor to full speed, turning on WiFi, and turning the brightness all the way up, I barely achieved 3 hours worth of battery life. Turning off the WiFi helped a little, but I still received less than 4 hours of battery life. Like I said, I do a lot of reading on my PDA, and it was a bit annoying to read a novel during a three hour trip and worry that the battery was going to run out before reaching my destination.

Dell does sell an extended-life 1800mAh battery, which I did order. The problem is that the battery sticks out about 1/4 inch from the rear of the X30 which then renders the PDA incompatible with all of the cases for it. It also means you can’t lay the PDA flat on a surface for reading or other task. I’ll probably end up carrying mine around solely for emergencies or breaking down and buying another 900mAh.

Speaking of charging the X30, the folks at Dell skimp and leave out a cradle for the X30. I don’t really use cradles, since I don’t sync my PDA and rarely take it out of its RhinoSkin case, but for people who do want to sync/charge with a cradle, that’s going to be an extra cost (Dell does include a sync/charge USB cable which works fine).

Clearly PDAs with 4″ screens and 640×480 resolutions are the future, but I’d prefer to wait another 8-12 months to see more options there and perhaps even faster processors (from my personal testing and reviews, the 624mhz processor is still a bit sluggish pushing around the pixels required for a 640×480 display). Until then, the X30 is an excellent alternative that will more than fit the bill until the VGA PDAs come down in price a bit.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0

I take a lot of photos — I’ve averaged just under 7,000/year for the last several years. I’ve been looking for a good program to track, organize and edit all of those photographs for the past couple years with little success. The basic problem was everything that had the power to do what I wanted was $200 or more, while everything at the lower end also had lower serious deficiencies.

The past few days I’ve been using Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0, which combines the old Elements and Album programs into one, and it seems to be able to do everything that a non-professional would need at a reasonable price.

Adobe has finally included the feature whose absence in prevoius versions was a deal killer — after you’ve tagged your photos to your heart’s delight, the program will write the tags to the individual files as IPTC keywords. This means you’re not stuck using Adobe’s proprietary database to track your photographs, but can switch at a whim to any program capable of importing IPTC keywords from the image files.

There are still some minor gotchas — the biggest being that if you rename or delete a tag within Photoshop Elements, the program will not rename or delete the tag in the image files. So once the tag is written as a keyword to the file, you’re stuck with it unless you want to use a third party utility. This was apparently done to prevent users from inadvertently deleting tags in files that were placed there by other programs. I’d prefer some sort of override pref, but it’s a minor annoyance rather than a deal breaker.

Elements continues to be improved and perfected as an excellent photo-editing centric program suitable for those of us who don’t want to have to learn the full version of Photoshop or would prefer something with a smaller featureset for basic photo editing.

Anti-Porn Witch Hunts Are So Creepy When They’re In India

This Boing! Boing! link is fascinating, I think, because it really highlights just what partisan hacks the authors of that particular blog have become.

Here’s the short version — a kid in India uses his cell phone to take video of some girl giving him a blow job. Someone posts a copy of the video for sale on an Indian subsidiary of Ebay.

Here’s where things start to get bizarre — the Indian government arrests the president of the Ebay subsidiary, Avnish Bajaj, and charges him with disseminating obsenity because, (after all, the video was offered for sale on his service.)

One can imagine the well-placed outrage, for example, if the U.S. Justice Department ordered the arrest of the CEO of EBay in this country because someone posted an obscene video for sale.

In the Indian case, it turns out that Bajaj is an American citizen and so the U.S. government is actively intervening on his behalf with the India government. But instead of lauding the government for looking to protect the rights of its citizens, the move is derided by the usual suspects,

Update: Fleshbot picked up an interesting/creepy angle on the story as reported by Agence France-Presse: the incident is
reportedly being followed at the “highest levels” of US government as well. Fleshbot’s editor asks, “Yes, the manager of Baazee.com is an Indian-born US citizen, but still. Is this the sort of case the US State Department usually gets involved in? We’d have thought they were busy with other things, like … oh, war and stuff.” Link

And reader John McCarthy says, “According to todayÂ’s Salon, CondiÂ’s on the trail of the India phone sex scandal.”

[Condoleezza] Rice is understood to have telephoned the U.S. ambassador in India, David Mulford, about the case. The Bush administration’s national security advisor and future secretary of state has let it be known that she is furious about Bajaj’s humiliating treatment. He is, after all, a U.S. citizen.

Again, I can’t imagine Boing! Boing! treating so cavalierly the arrest of a U.S. citizen by the U.S. government for such a tertiary (non-existent actually) role in disseminating obsenity. The obvious comment that comes to mind about the administration’s role is that it is nice to see them defending the rights of Mr. Bajaj, and that hopefully they can start to take the rights of Americans living on U.S. territory as seriously as they take the rights of Americans living in India.

Instead, the U.S. efforts to protect Bajaj are simply (emphasis added)”intersting/creepy.” What the hell is creepy about protecting Bajaj from an anti-porn witch hunt? Oh, that’s right, since John Ashcroft and George W. Bush aren’t leading the witch hunt, the story’s just not the same.

WWYSD — What Would Yog Sothoth Do?

My outrage has been building for a long time, but Penny Arcade pushed me right over the edge with its The Last Christmas project. Yes, that’s right — it’s time to start doing something about the excessive commercialization of Cthulhu.

Look, when I was a kid Cthulhu was straightforward. You’d read the HPL stories, maybe some Clark Ashton Smith, and, if you were really lucky, some Arabic works that would drive you insane if you weren’t careful. In those days, Cthulhu was straightforward — it was about those wonderful cult get togethers, ordinary people making the transformation into Deep Ones, and tracing the lineage of in-bred New Englanders.

This new generation doesn’t appreciate or understand any of that. To them, Cthulhu is only about Santa Claus plushies, and tentacled slippers.

People have completely forgotten the spirit of Cthulhu. It’s not about collectible card games or high performance racing.

Where are the investigators being driven insane, or slimey trails left by horrors that cannot be named? That, I submit, is the true spirit of Cthulhu, and one that this generation is sorely missing.