Month: April 2009

Nearing the End

I intend to come up for air next Wednesday. But for now, thanks to procrastination and my weird problem with closure (in that I avoid it), I’ve got two final papers to write and turn in (one due Tomorrow, the other next Tuesday) and then I’m done with my last proper semester. Everything after this is just thesis.

So anyhoo, I’d better start my paper that’s due tomorrow. (OK, so it’s started, but so far it’s nothing more than a few quotes and the beginning paragraph.) Who knows, maybe I’ll even finish it tonight. Then I can let it sleep and look over it tomorrow to see if it’s shit or not. Heh. (Thankfully, I’ve only missed 1 point in the course so far, so hopefully I can do well enough on this paper to get an A.)

My other final paper (min 15 pages, 10pt font, double spaced) is currently only an outline. I know what I’m doing this weekend!* 🙂

*Yeah, yeah, procrastinating so that I wind up writing the bloody thing Monday night…

Twenty-first Century Books

Although I never figured myself as reading eBooks, this has actually come to pass. Although Amazon.com’s Kindle is tempting, I’m quite happy to use my phone (AT&T Tilt with eReader software) to read books these days. So far I’ve read a novella and novel by Lois McMaster Bujold (which I’d purchased through Fictionwise.com, eReader’s parent company, now owned by Barnes & Noble), Jane Eyre, The Cricket on the Hearth, and The Jungle Book. Apart from a dictionary and thesaurus (which I bought from eReader.com) and the two aforementioned Bujold tales, I haven’t bought any other eBooks. But I now have quite a library on my phone thanks to a number of legal (believe it or not) sources.

My sources, let me show you them!

  • Project Gutenberg – Perhaps the greatest electronic library online there is. Thousands of out-of-print books have been hand-typed (or scanned and edited) by volunteers and are now available as text, html, and other versions. I’ve added a number of classic authors to my collection, and the non-purchased books I mentioned above are all from Gutenberg.

  • eReader & Fictionwise – Both of these companies have free eBooks to try out. Some are classics, but some are more contemporary. I’ve downloaded a selection of these, but haven’t read any yet. The difference between the two stories is a matter of format. eReader.com only sells eReader-format books. Fictionwise sells a variety of formats, including eReader and pdf. They overlap for the most part (as might be expected).

  • Baen Free Library – I was surprised (and delighted) when I discovered that science fiction publisher Baen Books had several eBooks available for free, trying to encourage people to try now, get hooked, and buy later. I’ll probably be one of those types of people. 🙂 Although they don’t offer the eReader format (whose software I like best out of the two programs I’ve tried, heh) they offer .rtf which I will discuss later. Anyhoo, I’ve got one of the Mercedes Lackey books started on my phone.

  • Scribd.com – As a new convert to Twitter, one of the things I love best about it is finding out about new stuff from links that people post. Wil Wheaton (who’s fun to follow on Twitter) posted a link to a novel available on Scribd.com and I’ve downloaded it and a few others. Like Baen, Random House is trying the drug lord method of book selling – offer free samples, then charge when they’re hooked. You can read the books at the Scribd.com site once you’ve made an account, or you can download a .pdf (if the author/publisher allows) of the book to read later. I’ve downloaded a number of .pdfs for checking out later. I may wind up putting them on my Netbook (for which I’ve downloaded FBreader).

If you’re looking for free eBooks, hopefully something in the list above will help you in your search.

Format Wars

Unfortunately, in the eBook world, there isn’t a standard (yet). MP3s have pretty much become the de facto standard in electronic music, but it’s still a desperate shoot-em-up in eBook formats. I’m hoping that ePub might be the answer (and that the eReader software eventually supports it).

I use the eReader format because I happen to like the eReader software on my phone. One feature is a dictionary look-up (which is why I paid for a dictionary) while you’re reading. It has come in handy so far. It remembers where you left off, even if you switch books. It displays illustrations if there are any, which is handy too. Plus, I have the purchased books which sort of lock me into eReader as a software. The eReader format is based upon the Palm Markup Language (pml) just like the open source Plucker format is. But it’s not the same, and eReader cannot open Plucker files and Plucker programs cannot open eReader files. So bummer there.

I had tried Vade Mecum on my Tilt. This is an open source software for reading plucker files. But it doesn’t seem to still be in development and it’s just not as user friendly as eReader is. I read all of Jane Eyre with it, but I switched to only using eReader while reading Cricket on the Hearth. So how can I read Project Gutenberg & Baen Library books using eReader? Ah, if there’s a need, someone’s probably written a program or extension for it… Let’s visit our good & dear friend OpenOffice.org.

I use OO.o exclusively on all my home computers (rather than MSOffice). It’s easy to use and FREE. And version 3.0 (which is on my Winders machines) can read those pesky docx (and related) files that MSOffice2007 creates. OO.o also has extensions available to it (similar to what Firefox & Thunderbird have). One extension it has is called odt2pml. It converts odt (open document, text) to pml (Palm Markup Language). So those text Project Gutenberg files and rich text files from Baen can be converted to pml. And eReader has a free program called DropBook which can convert pml to the eReader format. Sure, it’s a few leaps, but I’m a geek and don’t mind the hurdles. Well, actually, I’d prefer if eReader would read nonproprietary formats – especially the up-and-coming ePub format. But until it does or I find a better alternative which does, I’ll use odt2pml.

Learning Linux

The best way to learn how to work with a new operating system, I think, is to have something not work right and then try to fix it. If everything is working perfectly, you learn nothing about the workings of the OS.

Ubuntu on my Dell Mini has been working perfectly in all of the stuff I will likely use it for. However, one of the reasons I wanted a Linux-based netbook was to see how easy/difficult/whatever it would be to use for my classroom computers. Since most netbooks come with XP Home, which will not work properly on a domain (no easy way for kids to access their accounts) I thought maybe Linux might be a solution, provided I can do everything with Linux that I currently do with Winders with my students. And I’m thinking more & more that netbooks will be the way to go when I get my new classroom in 2010. (No room for PCs in my new room and netbooks are half the cost – at least – and half the size – at least – of normal laptops.)

The Ubuntu on my Mini had everything I’d need in my classroom (a word processor, spreadsheet, web browser, pdf reader) except for Logger Pro. Logger Pro is a graphing program by Vernier that goes one step further than their earlier (and still brilliant) graphing program Graphical Analysis: it can interface with the LabQuest handheld units which we use in physics. LabQuests allow you to connect various scientific probes to it and gather data which can be viewed on the LabQuest or uploaded into Logger Pro for further analysis and eventual pasting into word processors for lab reports. Vernier already had Logger Lite available for such a purpose, but Logger Lite doesn’t do all of the analyses that I use in physics nor can it be used as a stand-alone graphing program.

So I checked on Vernier’s website recently to see if there were any plans to port Logger Pro to Linux. And sure enough, there was a link to join their beta testers on Logger Pro for Linux. I joined the group, deleted my VirtualBox Winders 7 and stuck Ubuntu on there. It installed peachy keen, but I just couldn’t get the virtual USB to connect to a LabQuest. No matter, I had a Dell Mini on the way, I’d test it then.

The Mini arrives and I play and learn and eventually get around to installing Logger Pro. Which, unlike on my VirtualBox, doesn’t go well. Indeed, after the drivers supposedly installed, the Logger Pro program told me it didn’t have all of the dependencies on the machine and wouldn’t install. I posted to the beta forum and waited for the Easter holiday to be over.

Sure enough, I got a response Monday from one of the Vernier techs. A couple of e-mails passed by, I learned a lot about installing & uninstalling using dpkg, and the first Vernier tech put me in touch with one of the actual Linux gurus who’s working on the software. While corresponding with him, I’ve learned to do even more things, such as unpackaging i386.deb files and repackaging as lpia.deb files, compiling a new driver using make, and stuff like that. I thanked the tech at Vernier for getting the opportunity to do all this stuff in order to learn more about Linux. His e-mail to me today started with “You rock!” That made my morning.

Anyhoo, after work today, I built a kernel specific driver for my Dell Mini and tried Logger Pro (which I had gotten successfully installed yesterday after the i386 to lpia conversion) with the LabQuest once more. And there it was! Data from the LabQuest (temperature probe attached) on my Dell Mini. I was so excited, I boiled some water, called dad up to come over for a Geek Emergency, and reconfirmed Newton’s Law of Cooling with a cup of boiling water and Logger Pro. Dad was as delighted as I was. (We are geeks, remember.)

So anyhoo, success with Linux and Logger Pro. I’ll continue to test with other probes. I’ll be interested to see which dialog boxes are too large for the netbook screen. (I know the interface list is just slightly too large, but that may be something we may not use in my class.) So anyway, according to one Vernier tech at least, I rock. 🙂

GIP

Got my new Open Source LJ Icon made. I shall retroactively put it in my previous post. Might add other Open Source Software icons later on – the file’s only 20kB for now. 🙂

*blush* Boy is my Netbook Red!

I waited and waited for Acer to get the right combo for their Aspire One (Linux, SSD, *and* a 6-cell battery) but they never could. Then Dell started lowering the price on their 9″ Mini and it was tempting. And then they had a one-day sale with a further $50 off their Linux, SSD, 4-cell Mini. And they had red ones. So I had to order it. (8GB SSD & 1GB RAM for the curious.)

It arrived today. Woohoo! Dad’s arrived yesterday and we all agreed it was really cute and cool. (His is white.) He’s decided that he loves Ubuntu. Had the easiest set up of a computer ever. My own experience today was equally pain free. I took photos during the opening and all that, which I’ve posted to my Pagefillers Gallery. Here’s a photo of the red lovely (downloaded & edited on the Mini, then uploaded to Pagefillers.com):

The verrrrrry rrrrrrrrrrrred netbook.

I’ve only got two complaints about the Mini so far – funky keyboard arrangement (apostrophe and dash are in odd places) and the beta version of LoggerPro for Ubuntu wouldn’t install. (Not too worried about the second issue – the purpose of the beta is to get it working for as many Ubuntu and Linux users around – I’m sure the folks at Vernier will get it sorted out.) Dad’s got a complaint about his – his screen keeps going black for no apparent reason. Hopefully Dell (or Ubuntu, if the Dell tech he chatted with tonight actually knew anything) will get his issue sorted out.

Since I’ve been working a lot with Firefox add-ons of late, my Mini does much of what my main PC and laptop do. I’ve got the TwitterFox add-on to keep up with the Twitter folks I follow. I’m using the SyncPlaces add-on to keep my bookmarks synced between the three devices. Like with my laptop, I’ll stick with webmail for e-mail. For non-Firefox programs, I’ve got Pidgin for AIM, Drivel for Livejournal writing (it’s like a bare-bones Semagic), GIMP for image editing, F-Stop for getting images from my camera, etc. I was even able to installed my supposedly Winders-only laser printer on here. Cool beans.

Oh, for music, I figure I can use Pandora and Last.FM. Although the speakers are considerably tinny, with my earphones hooked in, it’s really nice sound. I was tres impressed. It hooked up to both my WiFi and dad’s without a hitch. Oh – and the most astounding thing? It came with a recovery DVD! I didn’t think any computer company sent a recovery DVD along with the machine anymore! (OK, so no DVD drive on here, but I figure we can copy it to a flash drive if we ever have to.)

My next task will be to find DirSync or something similar because I’d like to set up the 4GB SD HC card I’ve stuck in the SD slot to backup my Documents folder whenever I click a button on the desktop (or similar). Don’t think I’ll be filling this little duffer up with a lot of stuff, so the 4GB of space remaining will likely be sufficient. (I can see this coming in handy when doing research/book reviewing in the library when I finally get started on my Masters).

Well, I’ve found a drawback with GIMP on this Netbook – some of the windows are too big for the resolution so I can’t see to change file types or other little things like that. I was going to make a new LJ icon, but I’ll have to do that on my laptop or PC.

S H O P P I N G

I’ve spent most of my Spring Break working on things that have been lingering in my house/college work/etc. Although there’s still a lot more I wanted to get done, I’m pleased with some of my progress.

But for me, Spring Break just isn’t Spring Break unless I go SHOPPING. I was hoping to get doon sooth to Ikea (a good hour and 20 minute drive) this spring break and today wound up being the day. The original plan was me, mom & dad. But alas, dad has caught the cold that mother got when she flew down to Florida last week. Mom was mostly recovered, so she drove the two of us down to West Chester (that’s south of Dayton, but north of Cincinnati) with my phone telling us where to go. And it got us there just fine.

This Ikea is fairly new and still has the New Store look to it. We arrived right at noon. Which was good, cuz we were both hungry for lunch. I got the Swedish meatballs with gravy & lingonberry preserves along with smashed tators. There was also a fizzy peach drink which I picked up. Mom decided on their veggie wrap and the garlic tomato soup and some of that peach fizzy drink. We agreed we’d get dessert after shopping.

If you’ve not been to an Ikea – well, it’s an adventure. We started putting little things in our bag as we wandered. Mom checked out kitchen cabinets and their arrangements, I just liked looking at the neat-o furniture. We tried out a few sofas and were impressed with the comfort. I got to see the TV stand I’d been eying on their website. I decided I’d get it and we even found some nice green boxes which would fit on it. (It’s not going to be a TV stand, it’s going under my picture window as a set of shelves.)

After we picked up the very heavy TV stand and purchased everything, we dumped it all into mom’s car then returned to the store for dessert. I got the chocolate cake (which elsaf would hate – it’s basically layers of chocolate mousse separated by oreo cookie crumbs) – it was delish! Mom got the almond cake, which was also lovely. So lovely we decided to pick one up in the little Swedish food shop. And a few other items.

The little dessert (and coffee for mom) perked us up enough we were game to finally see Jungle Jim’s. Aunt Becky has sung its praises before. And it was indeed impressive. It’s like a Trader Joe’s x 3 plus a regular grocery. We had a nice time in there, despite the fact that we were getting sore feet/legs/etc from all the walking about. They even had pork pies – so I had to get one. The prices were pretty reasonable as well. All the stuff that I got and it was under $40. Oh, and when we finished shopping, it was 6pm. So we shopped for 6 hours straight (with a few times eating and/or driving to the other store).

We had a long drive home which is when the sun finally decided to come out. Indeed, the closer we got to home, the sunnier it got. Heh. I ate my pork pie and had some salt & pepper potato chips left over from Christmas when A&R were in town. Mom and I finally finished ’em. I think the pork pie had more meat in it than the ones I’d always buy at Harrod’s in London. Heh.

Two more days left of Spring Break. I’ll probably go back into productive mode tomorrow. (Well, I’d better! For one thing, I want to put my new TV stand together and stuff books & things on it.) But today was a nice break from productivity.