Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: eConfusion
I’m reserving judgment.
Our Nook has arrived.
Our Nook has arrived with its seven-step instructional leaflet describing how to set up your Nook how to get your Nook out of its childproof packaging. I gagged on Step 5 (“While still attached in its tray, pull your nook and the tray straight up. Lift the bottom end first and then unhook the top, while holding down the bottom case against a flat surface, such as a table. Your nook and its tray should slide off of the bottom case.”) Karen figured it out.
Three minutes into the on-screen orientation, my Nook hung. I was attempting to navigate to the first page of Pride and Prejudice, which comes pre-loaded onto the Nook (along with Dracula and Little Women) when the little bastard froze on me. Karen figured that out, too. Or at least, she figured out how to reboot.
Right now, she’s downloading the update. We’re hoping that will take care of the freezing problem. For the time being, I’m going to reserve judgment about the Nook. I give B&N points for not getting cutesy (they could have written, “Your nook and her tray should slide off of the bottom case,” but they wisely kept the gender neutral) but jeez, guys, haven’t you ever heard of beta testing? What kind of word of mouth do you expect if you send out a buggy device?
D.
iPredict: iFlop
So Apple released the iPad today. For $499, you get an oversized iPod. I think this one’s going to belly flop because it’s the wrong size. It’s too big to fit into your pocket, too small to serve as a nice viewer for movies, TV shows, videos. (We’re big screen people, I guess.)
It's a lidless laptop!
I want something that will fit into my shirt pocket yet give me the experience of an 18 inch monitor (or better). VR goggles with internet access, perhaps. I want to be able to type, too, but that technology is with us already. There are those cool gizmos that project a keyboard onto a flat surface, so that you can type anywhere, on just about anything.
THIS cracked me up (from the Seattle Times):
Yet the iPad didn’t receive the warm welcome given the iPhone in 2007, with some pundits shrugging and others making jokes about the name, which some thought conjured up feminine-hygiene products.
Can you imagine anyone shlepping one of these things around? Other than to show off his new toy, I mean.
What new tech would you like to see? I’m still holding out for teleporters.
D.
Some day, my Nook will come
Yes, we bought a Nook. A Nook, not a Kindle, because Barnes and Noble is a blue company and Amazon is red (based on which politicians they fund), and more significantly, the Nook allows you to download free stuff from the Google Book Project / Project Gutenberg, and we like us some old books. Karen just got done reading Tarzan, Return of Tarzan, She, Return of She (am I getting those titles right? I don’t know! It’s late, I’m tired, you get the idea), and now she’s reading an Emile Zola novel. Oh, and the Nook let’s you loan out ebooks to friends.
We have a Sony ebook reader (that’s what Karen has been using to read the aforementioned books), but I dislike the dark gray text on the light gray background. I want black on white! And no, this is not simply a must-have compulsion for new gadgetry. We don’t own an iPhone. We have an iPod but we don’t use it (I won it at a supermarket, actually). I confess that when I heard about Apple’s upcoming tablet, I was intrigued, but I doubt I’ll get that, either. Knowing Apple, it’ll probably cost $4000.
Sometimes I think I should get some of this newfangled crap just to stay au courant. But then I remember that I have a Twitter account and a Facebook account that I never use. Not that I pay anything for these things, but it disturbs me sometimes to think of the fossilized footprints I’ve left on the web. Do yourself a favor and never google “angstwolf.” Some of those recipes (like the guacamole) are better off forgotten.
I’m going to bed.
D.
PS: Why do I really want a Nook? Because I’m fed up with buying books. Physical space books, that is. I have boxes and boxes of ’em and I don’t want to have even more boxes of ’em.
I need to donate.
It’s alive!
We have internet access, little thanks to AT&T. The start-up software kept gagging and it seemed like we would have to call AT&T tech support — *shiver*. Then Karen had the bright idea to click on Firefox and voila, we have access. It’s a mystery what the AT&T software was trying to do.
So we’re back, hooked into the ‘net, and yes indeed it’s an important thing. I think we first went online back in ’93 or ’94, and I can remember yucking it up over Mirsky’s Worst of the Web, Slutboy’s Home Page, Ninevolt’s HatePage, and a lot of other relics. Back then, the internet was a source of entertainment rather than information. Few businesses had an online presence. The Yellow Pages still mattered, and we needed paper maps to find our way around a new town.
Our GPS crashed two days ago, so without the GPS and the internet we’ve been limping around Bakersfield like somnambulists. The GPS is still down, but of the two, the ‘net is more important.
Work starts Monday, a solid week of orientation. Wish me luck 🙂
D.
We’re he-ee-ere!
. . . And the mercury’s been pegging 107F each day we’ve been here. I’d like to smack the cheery smile off those folks who feel compelled to point out, It’s a DRY heat!
We have limited internet access until Wednesday, when our apartment finally gets hooked up. For now, it’s the $2/hour thing at Starbuck’s AT&T WiFi (or as our GPS’s British voice calls it, Wiffy!) and I don’t know when I’ll make it back.
Meanwhile, I’ve been making daily trips to Target to stock up on supplies, trips to the grocery stores, etc. Not much else to do when you don’t have cable TV or the internet. And it’s really, really creepy to be cut off from the world like this. I only just found out that Sarah Palin will be resigning as Governor some time this month. I feel so cut off. Yes, I know there are these things called newspapers, but they’re so yesterday.
I’ll be very happy when all of the various shopping chores are done and I can hole up all day long in an air conditioned room.
See ya this Wednesday.
D.
LISP, anyone?
I had this bright idea to teach my son LISP, since (A) he’s interested in robotics, (B) AI is important for robotics, and (C) LISP is supposed to be a good language for AI. But I don’t know LISP, and indeed, aside from some very rudimentary knowledge of Basic, I don’t know jack about programming languages. In spite of my shortcomings, Jake is picking things up rather well, and frequently I surprise myself that I’m able to help with his homework.
BUT it would be nice to have someone out there whom we could ask the occasional LISP question. Does anyone out there LISP?
More later. Governor Mark Sanford has to be worth some snark, after all.
D.
Atahualpa
I’m trying out a new theme, Atahualpa. It allows me to customize my left and right sidebar widgets (though why it doesn’t give unlimited ability to shift widgets from left to right and vice versa is beyond me), and most importantly, I’ll be able to customize my header image. If this theme plays well, expect frogs soon um, NOW*.
What do you think? I’m bothered by the three cubes near the blog title, and I’m really bugged by the listing of pages at the top. Unfortunately, many themes have this same quirk. At least Atahualpa lists the pages in a pale, small font. Does anyone know how to fix these things?
Anyway, let me know what you think of Atahualpa. I think it has potential.
Edited to add . . .
I fixed my own problems . . . to quote Fredo Corleone, I’m smart!
D.
*This really is a customizable theme.
Let’s test this out
Hmm. Has my audience flown the coop? The only way to find out is to enable comments. Protected Static thinks it’s coincidental that the hacks stopped when I closed B&W to comments, but I’m not so sure. Here’s what I’ve done: I’ve subjected all comments to moderation. I’m not sure that will protect me from code injection hacks, but I’m about to find out.
I’ve backed things up first, just in case . . .
In other news: we watched The Dark Knight on TV last night. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one movie do so much damage to Newtonian physics. Batman gets to fly like a bat, you know, thanks to these itty bitty bat wings in his suit (and I’ve got news for Batman: titanium is heavy). (Oh, and speaking of heavy, the Batmobile must harbor a small black hole in the trunk. That’s the only thing I can figure, since when it collides with the Joker’s semi head-on, it sends the semi flying backward.) And when the love interest, played by oh-so-bland Maggie Gyllenhaal, plummets from a 40-story building, the Bat dives after her, catches up to her, and breaks both their falls . . . how, exactly? Wind resistance on those batty wings, which aren’t even fully deployed?
The script is lifeless. What the hell does this mean? “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” It gets said twice, so it must be important. And then there’s the movie’s big closing line: “Because he’s the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we’ll hunt him because he can take it. Because he’s not our hero. He’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector. A dark knight.”
WTF? My bogosity meter is stuck in the red zone.
We liked Aaron Eckhart’s Harvey Dent, and had a split vote on Heath Ledger’s Joker. I liked the performance but Karen thought he was too over the top. Definitely better than Jack Nicholson’s Joker, though, which brought back fond memories of Cesar Romero. We both felt the writers could have done more to show “the making of the clown”; as written, we’re given precious little insight into the character.
The movie needed more Julie Newmar
Oh, and while I’m kvetching, Christian Bale’s Batman is lifeless. The voice he provides for the man behind the mask is, what? Some aged rocker after he’s effed up his vocal cords? That got old fast.
My overall rating: three out of four Mehs. I didn’t hate it, but I do feel like I wasted my time watching it beginning to end. I want Michael Keaton back, but I guess that won’t happen. Not unless some production company decides it’s time for an “old Batman” movie — old Batman appeared as a well conceived character in one of the animated versions for TV.
And while we’re on the subject of TV, nothing cinematic compares to
Batman: The Animated Series.
Okay, ready to post. Time to see if fully moderated comments can kill my blog. Of course, y’all will have to make some comments to test this thing out.
D.
this is only a test . . .
I’ve turned off comments. I think I’m getting hacked by code injection from a site called ‘huge top locate dot cn” (all run together, of course, with the http, etc.) Baaaastards! So here’s my theory: they’re injecting code through the comments, so if I shut off comments, no injected code. Brilliant!
This code forum thread suggests that it is, indeed, BlueHost’s fault: “the problem is with the server and your ISP who has not implemented appropriate security measures to prevent this.” So maybe I’ll switch to a new host once we get back from Bakersfield.
Aside from all that, we’re househunting this weekend. The frustrating thing is that we’re limited by the size and timing of our down payment. We’re also constrained by the fact we want a particular school district, a one-story house, and Teh AWWWEsome Kitchen. Some things are important.
The email I’m using most frequently, for those who wanna say hi: malmerkin at gmail dot com.
D.