JVert's Space

Nothing like sitting poolside in Maui with a Mai Tai and watching your kids try to kill themselves on the Tarzan swing. And then making a Photosynth with your digital camera:

http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=fccd6037-7730-45cf-a4d8-cd2bfc534fff&i=0:0:73&z=2138.6841892761586&g=0&p=-1.26172e-015:-2.11201e-013&m=false&c=-0.311786:-0.0953924:0.0531123&d=-1.33258:0.401867:0.48954 

If you haven't seen Photosynth, it's incredibly cool and you should check it out. I tried to make some synths from some of last winter's skiing photos but they never turned out because I didn't have enough coverage. Last night I was at the ballgame and figured I would try taking some photos specifically for Photosynth. I shot about 50 pictures on my Olympus Stylus 760SW (then the battery ran out)

Anyway, it turned out pretty well. It's "94% Synthy" I guess "Synthy" is good. It's cool how the players fade in and out in different shots. You can see Ichiro on each base.

http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=afc87f53-f04b-47e8-9882-20a7d7f41f5b

Neal Stephenson has a new book coming out.

This book is apparently not available on a Kindle.

What is a self-respecting geek supposed to do??? Sacrifice some trees and pre-order a huge lump of paper from Amazon? If there is any author that should be available on the Kindle, it's Neal Stephenson. Think of how many trees would have been saved if the Baroque Cycle was available on the Kindle!

I am conflicted.

I've been typing on IBM keyboards for a long time. Ever since the original IBM PC came out in 1981. That's a long time and a lot of keystrokes. Millions, probably. IBM got out of the keyboard business a long time ago, selling it off to Unicomp. I guess there's not enough consulting business in keyboards. I have a decent collection of these old keyboards and I have been hoarding them and moving them from PC to PC for many years. The newer ones tend to be a bit mushier than the old ones and the click is not as crisp. Maybe I've just worn them down.

Recently I heard about the daskeyboard and it intrigued me enough to order one. I wimped out and ordered the "Professional" which has letters on the keys. It showed up a few days ago and I have been test-driving it at work.

So far I really love it. The click is crisp. The keys have good action and tactile response but a bit lighter touch than my current IBM keyboard. It's nice to have a modern keyboard with a USB connector and built-in USB hub. With Vista, I find myself actually using the Windows key on my laptop, so it's nice to finally have on one on my workstation. When I get typing fast it sounds like an overexcited Geiger counter and it makes me feel (and sound) productive!

The glossy black finish looks really sweet and it even comes with a tiny polishing cloth to keep it clean.

I am still getting used to the slightly different key layout, but I think it's a keeper. My only regret now is not getting the Ultimate keyboard which looks truly cool. Maybe I will have to get one more, just in case!

One problem I have with my Kindle is my daughter keeps trying to steal it from me. That could get expensive really quick, she goes through even more books than I do. So I figured I would download some free classics off Project Gutenberg and stick them on the Kindle for her to read.

Project Gutenberg has a huge selection which seems to be a mix of old, out-of-copyright classics and esoteric things I can't believe anybody would be interested in. (lots of nut-growing historians with an ebook fetish?)

Once I figured out that .txt files need to go in the Documents directory on your Kindle, the next problem with reading a Project Gutenberg .txt ebook is that it looks like crap. This is because for some reason the canonical Project Gutenberg format is ASCII text with 70 character lines. Thumbs up on ASCII, but I don't know why they think that splitting sentences with CR (or is it CR/LF? or just LF?) every 70 characters is going to be a more useful format 1,000 years from now. Because the lines are fixed length they don't reflow to fit the Kindle's screen and you get all kinds of jaggies and orphans.  It probably looks great if you have an old VT-100 lying around, but try taking THAT with you on the bus.

Of course my first thought was to write some tool that reformatted the text into HTML or .mobi format. My second (smarter) thought was that somebody must have already written such a tool. My second thought was right, GutenMark by Ron Burkey does exactly this. It is a command-line program which will chew up nasty PG .txt files and spit out lovely .html files. It's free and it works.

But even though Kindle has a web browser (and so should be able to render HTML) you can't read HTML docs directly on the Kindle. You need to reformat them into .prc format. Luckily, this is also free. Download Mobipocket Reader. File->Import, select the html file. Then File->Send->G: (or whatever drive letter your Kindle shows up as). This will create a .prc file in the eBooks directory on G: One last step, move the .prc file from the eBooks directory into the Documents directory, so the Kindle will see it. Unfortunately, mobipocket is not as cool as Ron Burkey so instead of a handy command-line converter, you have to go through all these steps with the GUI for each file.

Whew! That's a lot of work just to save $0.25 on Huckleberry Finn! Probably not worth it, but if you have some time to kill and want to save a quarter, now you know how.

I just unboxed my Amazon Kindle (or amazonkindle as it says on the front) This thing launched yesterday and I had to have one, so here it is on my doorstep today. All the way from Kentucky overnight, courtesy of DHL.

First impressions, it is a nice light little package. Sleek & white but relentlessly functional - no iPod/iPhone sexy curves here. The screen is great. Not quite paper-quality but the closest I've seen on a real device. It's a little hard to read in dim light, but so are books.

I downloaded a couple books and it just worked. Reading Liar's Poker right now, which I always wanted to read but never got around to buying and for $10 seems worth it. Got a few more queued up to read as well. In the long run this will save me a lot of money since I am always buying new $20 books from amazon, reading them, and letting them pile up on our bookshelves. The idea of tossing this in my backpack on my next trip instead of a stack of dead trees is pretty compelling. Plus the added bonus that I can buy more while I'm sitting in the airport or hotel and get instant gratification.

Lots of blog-pundit blowhards are ranting about the DRM and that it's not a book and it's not a laptop. It's way smaller and lighter than any laptop/tabletPC/origami I've ever seen (and I've seen them all). The screen and reading experience is vastly better than any smaller iPhone/smartphone form factor. And Amazon's done a great job with the integrated wireless service. So far it just works which is more than I can say for most early adopter gadgets I impulse-buy. (my wife is going to kill me about the shittiness of our new Vonage service) So I give it a tentative thumbs-up.

On the down side - it's got its own incompatible power adapter. Another thing to lug around and lose, why can't it just charge from USB, damn it! I could never get the "experimental" web browser to work, it just hangs. The buttons seem a touch too sensitive for my hamfists - I'd like a little more tactile feedback there. The screen is gorgeous, but updates are SLOW and have an annoying flicker to black before changing.

The killer app for this thing would be a Windows print driver that lets you "print" any document to your Kindle. I am always printing off tons of specs and powerpoints and stuff to lug around. Amazon has some service where you can email documents to a special @kindle.com address and Amazon will reformat them and send them to your Kindle for $0.10 but that seems pretty klunky. (haven't tried it yet) File->Print->Kindle would rock.

So far no indication what this thing is running. Linux or some home-grown Amazon thing I guess. Haven't tried hacking it much yet but I expect it's only a matter of time until someone cracks it.