I have had a quiet time recently. Instead of devouring books like there’s no tomorrow my wife has had her nose stuck in her new ebook reader and now she wants to give a review of it.
Review: Ectaco JetBook Lite
I had wanted an ebook reader for ages and between waiting for the perfect design to come along and not wanting to get sucked into anything proprietary, I finally settled on the Ectaco JetBook Lite. I say settled because it didn’t fulfill all my nitpicky design desires, but as I got it on sale for CAD$129 I figured it would do until something I liked better came along. However, after about three weeks of use, I could not be happier with it.
At about five by seven inches wide it is perfect for holding in my hand, not too heavy or too light. In fact, as this version runs on four AA batteries, the battery pack makes the whole thing nicely balanced to be held easily in the left hand, and the slide bar allows for one handed page turning, in both directions (there is also a button on the bottom for turning pages). The screen is LCD but is very easy to read for hours at a stretch. The slow page turns and ‘flash’ when you turn the page that you get with e-ink are not a problem here. There’s no wi-fi on this thing, so you have to load your books off your computer. And it doesn’t play MP3s, but who cares. That’s why you have an iPod. If I had to make any criticism at all, I wish it came some sort of cover to protect the screen so I could shove it into my purse. Or one of those rubber scuba suit things that people put on their iPhones.
While actual reading experience is, to me, far more important than getting the book onto the device, transferring files to and from is painless. The JetBook Lite comes preloaded with a ton of freebies, the cream of Project Gutenberg. Some of these I had already read (or in the case of the Sherlock Holmes, memorized) and others were not in my immediate must-read pile (CIA World Book?!). Since the computer recognises the JetBook Lite as just a USB drive, I was easily able to copy everything off, and replace it with books of my choice. As long as you keep the top folders, Books & Pictures, you can arrange the sub-folders anyway you want.
The JetBook Lite works with all sorts of file formats. I have tried txt, mobi, rtf & epub and they all work fine. I have had less luck with PDFs, but I admit haven’t spent the time to properly fiddle with them either. As I am still working my way through classics & freebies, I have not actually had to purchase a book yet, but since they seem to come as epub, hopefully I should be okay.
The JetBook Lite is perfect for anyone who wants to dip their toe in the ebook water. I was planning on keeping this until something better came along, but really, I can’t imagine what feature would get me to switch.
After spending a lot of July and August configuring computer monitors, I took a look in the workshop and felt I wanted to get back into building something that included microcontrollers.
Gort has had a road block since I pulled out his visor. I just have not been happy with the angle of the visor although I have tried all sorts of various ways of refitting the visor.
Bender, well it needs a lot of work.
After the Terminator 4 movie, I started thinking again about the endoskeleton. I have been tinkering with building an endo skull. I have got the basic shape. I am not pleased with the nose as it is a bit too bumpy, but it looks creepy and that is the point. I am going to continue on with it for a while but continue on Gort slowly. I will post pictures soon.
I have been so busy this year at nights and weekends – sometimes work…(Boo) … sometimes…. Linux (yeah!)…. Sometimes vacations (yeahhhhh!!!).
But Vickie has been able to steal some time from her schedule to design herself a little Cyber-coolness.
So we made our way down to the bay area at the end of May to this year’s Maker Faire. The most impressive display was the (approx) 10ft Tesla coil. I love the way everyone cheers when the Tesla coil finishes. (Worth opening it up in full screen to watch).
When you see the things made here, it makes you want to go and do something yourself right away, but by the time the vacation is over and it’s back to work, you realize that there really is not enough time.
Notable was another type of Tesla (this time the car). Of the Teslas they had on display one had the body off. There really is not much inside those things.
This hairy beast was walking around on all fours, and was very impressive.
The only bad thing I would say was it was VERY crowded and it helped to stay the full day because the beginning and end of the day was the best chance to get near anything for a good view or to ask questions.
We stayed at the Crowne Plaza in Foster city and they looked after us very well.
Well, we just got back from a quick trip to the UK to visit family. One of our little trips was to go to Newcastle for the weekend to visit the first UK Maker Faire. We saw the dates coincided with our trip and felt it would be fun to make the detour to Newcastle.
We knew it would be small as it was the first one in the UK, but boy was it fun to go and talk to like minded people who just make things for fun. There were a few robot exhibits and various other things that kept us busy. One of the best exhibits was a ‘retro’ lunar lander style game except it was not graphical, it actually had a bunch of stepper motors and servos and an arduino to control everything. You then controlled the thrust to land a model lunar module. Totally cool.
I had never been to Newcastle before and found it quite nice. We stayed at the Marriott hotel next to the Metrocenter in Gateshead and took the bus into Newcastle each day. The hotel and staff were well above expectations. The Maker Faire was across several venues within Newcastle but all within easy walking distance. The picture above is of one of the mechanical exhibits that someone had made complete with fire breathing nostrils.
My wife and I being good little netizens, do not torrent files. We waited until Doctor Who was finally shown by the CBC. However we’re not stupid, and when the DVD set for S4 was released prior to the last four episodes being shown on the CBC we pre-ordered it and then watched all the remaining shows at once.
Which brings us to the the S4 finale of Doctor Who. All in all not bad. It was nice to see all the companions together (even if some of them didn’t have much to do) and Davros was excellent. Just one little niggle. Treating Donna the way they did was dreadful. Precious few people wanted Donna as a season long companion, but when we got her, most everyone was impressed with the growth and character development. To rip all that away, to turn her into the same vapid, gobby cow she was at the beginning of The Runaway Bride was mind-bogglingly cruel.
All the other companions got to keep their memories of their time with the Doctor, even if they didn’t get to keep the Doctor. They were better people at the end than they were at the beginning. Here’s how Donna’s finale should have gone down.
Everything was fine until they were back in the TARDIS. When the Doctor informed her that she couldn’t keep her super huge Time Lord knowledge in her comparatively tiny human brain.
How it should have ended… He should just have taken that knowledge away, not everything that happened since she’d met him. Donna then decides that travelling anymore with the Doctor would be too painful with the memory of what she had to give up. At her request, he takes her back to Chiswick. She mopes around for a day or two, until finally one night, out in the allotment, her grandad, says “I reckon it’s time I gave you this.” and pulls out a pocket watch.
It would have been a far better ending to have Donna revealed as a Time Lord.
Well last weekend was the Polaris 22 convention. I really enjoyed myself (even the 3 x fire alarms that were triggered Sunday morning did not ruin the weekend.
I have been very busy at work and knew that progress was still quite slow on Gort (still lots of painting etc) and he would not be attending.
I knew I might be able to finish it in time to put it on display.
Anyway I was still working long hours and I rushed to get it built. It did not turn out exactly how I planned it but I did finish it. Overall it turned out OK considering it was completed in 2 weeks and some late nights. Thanks to paul030176 for giving me some inspiration to finish mine.
I have not posted anything recently, I have slowed down work on Gort due to being busy at work during the day and the recent bout of humid \ thunderstorm weather. Not to completely stop I have added ears to Gort and another layer of Papier mache.
I have spent a lot of time with the EEEPC and various other linux \ linuxes I like the EEEPC so much, I like that it powers up fast. After using it for a while I have only one complaint it gets hot, very hot.
I moved my project movies to Viddler (which I also like)
Other projects have my attention too but I want to see how it turns out first.
The upcoming weekend is Canada day and I will try to give the workshop a good clean up.
During the summer I would like to paint Gort while the weather is good and give him a chance to dry in the fresh air. More soon (hopefully)
I have been so busy trying to catch up after my vacations.
I made the pilgrimage to San Mateo fairgrounds again this year and again I was not disappointed by what I saw.
I found that there was a lot more ‘art’, ‘fire’ and ‘fire art’ there this year but still plenty of Robots to go around. I heard that there was 65000 people over the 2days, up 25000 from last year.
It certainly felt busier than last year (a little frustrating when trying to fight the crowds).
Several R2D2 robots and B9
My favorites were the laser harp, the wii white board but all amazing stuff
After the hustle and bustle of the crowds we went to Vegas for a few days of lazing around the pool.
I got the complete box set of Captain Scarlet as a Christmas present and there are a total of 32 episodes. Finally saw the last one today. Even though I vaguely remember seeing these as a kid I never saw them all or in order.
I have to say the violence just washed over me as a 7 or 8 year old. Maybe I knew that they were not real and just puppets but the Mysterons were quite mean. In the first couple of episodes we see someone’s head explode a la Scanners and a man get crushed by a car hoist that pushes the car into the garage ceiling.
Overall I found it most enjoyable and interesting, what their view of the future would be with analogue dials and all.
