Cheerful Curmudgeon

I am thrilled to report that the magic software which Sony requires me to use to download ebooks from their on-line bookstore finally runs under VirtualBox. For reasons which I understand, but do not agree with, Sony requires use of their special software to download anything from their eBook Store, even free ebooks. Since I use Ubuntu Linux on my computer, the only way I am able to use the store is by running Sony’s software under Windows under VirtualBox. Unfortunately, that did not work, as many of us reported to VirtualBox.

Being barred from use of the Sony eBook Store did not bother me very much. I refuse to buy DRM-locked books so there was not much in the store which I wanted. That changed this morning, though, when I read that Sony and Google have partnered to make 500,000 public domain ebooks available through the store. I wanted access these books so I downloaded the latest version of Sony’s eBook Library software and installed it on Windows XP running under VirtualBox and, lo and behold, it worked. I have successfully downloaded a book from the store onto my computer and then transfered it onto my PRS-505 ebook reader.

The Sony eBook Library software is kind of flakey. I have had to kill and restart it twice to get my PRS-505 “authorized” and to get a batch of books downloaded, but at least it runs. All of this would be completely unnecessary, of course, if the publishers did not DRM-lock their books. One of these days, they will get a clue and give that up. It has taken several years for the music industry to figure it out but they finally seem to have. I do hope that the book publishers will “get it,” too.

I am fed up with wasting clients’ dollars “fixing” web sites so that they look good in Internet Explorer 6. IE7 has been out for 2 1/2 years. IE8 is available as a free beta. There are lots of other browsers available for free. All of these browsers work better than IE6. If you still use IE6, it’s time to get over it and move on. Upgrade for free to something better.

This web site, and the others for which I am responsible, now display a warning similar to this when visited with IE6:

Sample IE6 warning message

For more information, see Moving Past Internet Explorer 6.

Candy and I have talked about building or buying a home theater computer (HTPC) for years. We have a pretty nice home theater including a projected HD picture that is almost 100″ diagonal and fairly impressive 5.1 sound. This gear works great for DVDs and HD-DVDs (yes, I picked the wrong horse in that race) but, being me, I want more. I want to be able to listen to all of my music on it, including the tracks that I buy from emusic.com and I do not want to mess around with CDs. (Isn’t it amazing that, back in the Dark Ages, I used to be annoyed when I had to flip an LP over every 15 to 20 minutes; now I am annoyed that I have to change CDs every hour.) I have gazillions of digital photos which I would like to enjoy in the comfort of my den and in a more share-able form than my laptop screen. I even have a small collection of digital video which, like the digital photos, I want to see bigger than my laptop screen.

I have noodled, off and on, with building an HTPC from open source projects such as MythTV and Freevo and Medibuntu. None really hooked me. The technology is still so new that you need a pretty carefully crafted recipe of hardware components to make it all work well and the chore of concocting the recipe and then locating all the right parts was too daunting. Worse, I was afraid that I would end up with a system that was so complex that only I could dependably run it.

I even considered buying a pre-built system with Windows Vista Home Premium. My friend, Steve, has one and it is a beautiful thing: everything just works. In my den, when it is time to watch a movie, I want to turn the equipment on and simply watch the movie. Three things put me off of this idea, though. I do not want a whole computer in my den. I certainly do not want to mess with a keyboard and mouse. And I do not want to pay as much for a HTPC as such a system would cost by the time I bought hardware which included a Blu-ray player, a video card with HDMI output, and a sound card with optical output.

Given this state of affairs, I had given up on getting a HTPC, figuring that I would revisit the idea in a year or so.

Candy and I are narrowing in on our tenth wedding anniversary. As a present to ourselves, we decided to replace our HD-DVD with a Blu-ray player and that meant that I got to play one of my favorite games: comparison shopping for electronics! I was completely surprised to find many reviews like CNET’S Best Blu-ray Players from January 28, 2009 which rank the Sony PlayStation 3 at the top of the list.

This list consists of the best Blu-ray players on the market and the bottom line is clear — the Sony PlayStation 3 is by far the most recommendable Blu-ray player available today. There are a few caveats — the PS3 doesn’t have analog multichannel outputs or an IR receptor — but they’re overshadowed by the fact that you also get a high-def gaming console and media streamer. Some home theater die-hards will insist on a standalone player, but everyone else should stick with the PS3 until standalones cost much less and perform comparably.

Beyond the basic PS3 system, I needed add only one accessory: a “real” remote control for playing movies so that I would not need to fiddle around with joysticks and a gaming remote. Sony sells a DVD remote control which looks surprisingly like the remote for any other DVD player; it has all of the right buttons in familiar places and with familiar labels. At $20, this was a no-brainer add-on. Read the rest of this entry »

This article in Slashdot about the electronic trash that we create hit home. I cannot think of a good way to paraphrase it so here is the whole thing:

Every day, Americans toss out more than 350,000 cell phones and 130,000 computers, making electronic waste the fastest-growing part of the US garbage stream. A lot of the world’s e-waste is exported to Guiyu, China, where peasants heat circuit boards over coal fires to recover lead (a 15″ computer monitor can pack up to 7 lbs. of Pb), while others use acid to burn off bits of gold. Guiyu’s willingness to deal with lead, mercury and other toxic materials generates $75 million a year for the village, but as a result. Guiyu is slowly poisoning itself with the highest level of cancer-causing dioxins in the world. The village experiences elevated rates of miscarriages, and its children suffer from an extremely high rate of lead poisoning. TIME suggests checking out recycling brokers and accredited e-stewards the next time you’re ready to toss a gizmo.

If you are one of my readers who lives in the St. Louis; Kansas City; Las Vegas; or Columbia, SC then I recommend you get in touch with your local EPC office. They demanufacture waste electronics down to recyclable components and they do it safely, right here in the US.

Regardless of where you live, check with your local city and county government. More and more of them are setting up electronic recycling centers. For instance, the St. Charles, MO county will recycle electronics for any resident. There is a nominal cost but paying a few dollars beats the heck out of wondering who’s back yard your old CRT will be dumped in.

We all know the story of Benjamin Franklin flying a kite in an electrical storm. I always thought that it was kind of fanciful, along the same lines as the myth about George Washington cutting down a cherry tree. Guess what: I was wrong. Franklin not only flew the kite in a storm, he held onto the string, and he stuck his hand near the key so that he could fully experience the “electric fire.”

I just finished reading the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, downloaded from Project Gutenberg. At the end, I found a letter Franklin wrote to Peter Collinson in 1752 describing the electrical kite experiment in exquisite detail.

Make a small cross of two light strips of cedar, the arms so long as to reach to the four corners of a large, thin silk handkerchief when extended; tie the corners of the handkerchief to the extremities of the cross, so you have the body of a kite; which being properly accommodated with a tail, loop, and string, will rise in the air, like those made of paper; but this being of silk, is fitter to bear the wet and wind of a thunder-gust without tearing. To the top of the upright stick of the cross is to be fixed a very sharp-pointed wire, rising a foot or more above the wood. To the end of the twine, next the hand, is to be tied a silk ribbon, and where the silk and twine join, a key may be fastened. This kite is to be raised when a thunder-gust appears to be coming on, and the person who holds the string must stand within a door or window, or under some cover, so that the silk ribbon may not be wet; and care must be taken that the twine does not touch the frame of the door or window. As soon as any of the thunder clouds come over the kite, the pointed wire will draw the electric fire from them, and the kite, with all the twine will be electrified, and the loose filaments of the twine will stand out every way and be attracted by an approaching finger. And when the rain has wet the kite and twine, so that it can conduct the electric fire freely, you will find it stream out plentifully from the key on the approach of your knuckle. At this key the phial may be charged; and from electric fire thus obtained, spirits may be kindled, and all the electric experiments be performed, which are usually done by the help of a rubbed glass globe or tube, and thereby the sameness of the electric matter with that of lightning completely demonstrated.

I also love the illustration:

"You will find it stream out plentifully from the key on the approach of your knuckle"

I think it is certainly fair to say, Don’t Try This At Home.

But if you do… be sure to let me know how it works out!

When I was a kid, my parents got me a chemistry set, signed me up for the science kit of the month, and encouraged an incredible of experimentation which stank, buzzed, glowed and occasionally broke stuff or blew fuses. I performed useful public services by keeping trash like antique speakers and yards of old extension cords and bits of old televisions from ever seeing the inside of the local landfill. I was part of the juvenile recycling corps before it was even fashionable. You would be amazed what you can make (sometimes more successfully than others) from old bicycles, car batteries, automobile starters, small amounts of gasoline, transformers (the old fashioned electrical kind), D cells, resistors, capacitors, photocells, liquid dish soap, wood, nails, and of course, duct tape and coat hangars.

MAKE magazine brings that joy to the 21st century and to HD television near you. Better yet, you can watch it now on Vimeo

MAKE: television Preview Reel from make magazine on Vimeo.

So what are you waiting for?

Do you remember when I predicted that Google Chrome would take over the world replace Microsoft Windows, Apple OSX, and Linux? Here is the next step, to be released for CES which begins January 8, 2009.

If all you want from your computer is to read your email (Gmail) and surf the web and use the other applications that Google provides, it is just seven seconds away. No, that is not a typo. In less time than you have spent reading this article, you will be able to boot your computer and be doing useful stuff.

Of course, you could use this system for web-based applications other than Google’s, but how many people will bother. I wonder how long it will be until you can get a free, ad-supported computer with this operating system pre-installed.

I purchased my Sony PRS-505 ebook reader primarily to run Reader Plates. This is a set of electronic IFR approach plates or, to be technically correct about the name, the FAA (NACO) Terminal Approach Procedures. When I fly IFR (in the clouds), I use these half-page charts when taking off from or landing at an airport. For example, here is the St. Charles Municpal Airport GPS 9 Approach. Several things bother me about these charts. We kill too many trees producing them; the FAA sends me a 3″ stack of paper every 28 days, and I only subscribe to three of the 17 books in the United States set. The things are expensive; including shipping I am paying about $23 for every set of three books. The things are heavy and bulky; by far the heaviest thing in my flight bag on a cross country flight is the approach plates. And last but certainly not least, they are inconvenient; it is a royal PITA to assure that I have the books for distant states before leaving home, especially since they have to be mail ordered.

A small company just released an electronic version of the terminal approach procedures which actually makes sense to me. Reader Plates offers the entire set of approach plates, everything in the US, for a very reasonable $9.99 per month on a device which fits both my cockpit and my wallet. The Sony PRS-505 is about the size of half a sheet of paper, so it fits nicely on my kneeboard. At $299, the PRS-505 is one third the price of the eFlyBook and the $9.99 per month subscription works out to less than half the cost of the chart subscription for the eFlyBook. And I love being able to carry all the charts for the entire US in a ½” thick package.

Last week, I tried it out, flying both day and night approaches using the PRS-505 in lieu of paper. It worked great.

My first stop was at the local office supply store where I bought one of those rubber pads that you are supposed to stick on the dashboard of your car so that you can plop your cell phone on the dash and keep it from sliding onto the floor. I stuck that onto the back of the Sony Reader so that it would not slide off my kneeboard. With the pad in place, I took off into the wild blue yonder (with a safety pilot in the right seat, of course).

The screen on the Sony Reader is 6″ diagonally. Fold a sheet of paper in quarters and you will be in the ballpark. Reader Plates presents an entire approach plate on this screen and it is surprisingly readable, even with my eyes which need reading glasses. (Click on the image to see it larger.)

Reader Plates full page view

Since this is pretty small, pressing the center of the navigation wheel (lower, right corner of the PRS-505) magnifies the image, zooming in on the top half of the chart. In this mode, the image is exactly the same size as the printed approach procedures.

Reader Plates magnified view

Pressing the center of the navigation wheel a second time switches to a magnified view of the bottom half of the chart. Pressing a third time cycles back to the full page view. Reader Plates has a larger set of screen snapshots on their web site.

This actually works out quite well for me. When I fly an approach, I prep by looking at the whole page and getting an impression of the overall route which I will be flying. After that, I really only look at the bottom half of the chart, constantly reminding myself of the MDA or DH. I leave the lateral navigation to the GPS with its moving map display and the CDI needle.

The Sony Reader takes its time doing things when you press buttons, so it requires several seconds (and several button pushes) to navigate from one chart to another. This is generally not a problem except after landing, if you need to quickly switch from the approach plate to the airport diagram. In this one case, you may find it handy to have the airport diagram on paper.

Having initiated Reader Plates with my day practice approach and a night IFR flight from Kalamazoo back to St. Charles, I am thrilled with the combination of the Sony Reader and Reader Plates. I have already cancelled my subscription to the paper terminal approach procedures and plan to use the PRS-505 on a 2,200 mile cross country trip in a couple of weeks.

There are several concerns about electronic charts, especially for the landing phase of flight which is particularly critical. I have given them some serious thought since I am kind of fond of being alive:

• What if the battery dies? The Sony Reader uses eInk technology so it only uses power when you change pages; when simply displaying an image, it consumes absolutely no electricity. With an advertised battery life of 7,500 “page turns,” I don’t worry about running out of batteries during a flight.
• What if the PRS-505 dies? It is unlikely since the Sony Ready is pretty durable and, other than the switches, has no moving parts. But if the PRS-505 did expire mid-flight, it would not be the end of the world if I had to fly an approach without the chart. My plane is equipped with a KLN94 IFR GPS and that has a database of all approach procedures. Beyond that, I would need someone on the ground to tell me the MDA or DH for the approach, and that would be a hassle, but I would get safely to the runway.
• But the Sony Reader does not have a light. Neither do the paper charts that it is replacing.

If you are an IFR pilot, give Reader Plates a serious look. I think you will like what you see.

My Sony PRS-505 ebook reader continues to delight me. I have chewed my way through a couple of books and several short stories, all without the bother of braving the mall to reach Borders or the traffic to reach the library. As I have finished these books, I simply let them evaporate into the ether, smug in the knowledge that I have neither filled the recycle bin with nascent packing materials nor killed trees and burned petrol to just to sooth my addiction to reading. There is still a problem: sometimes, I come across a book that I would like to keep and I still have not figured out a satisfying way to keep ebooks.

The underlying problem is that I like being surrounded by bookshelves filled with dead trees. I like the colors and the patterns. Even more, I like the warm memories that surface whenever I look at the books. I have books which have followed me around since childhood; I don’t read them any more but my soul remembers reading them the first time and delights in the presence of these old friends. Someday, my children will wonder what the heck these old things are doing here and, with luck, they will guess the answer to the riddle.

I try to imagine a way to surround myself with ebooks with the same satisfaction and I fail miserably. I imagine my house with every bookshelf gone, replaced by a shared folder on a computer in the basement. Anyone in the house can easily open \\Library\ebooks\fiction (or, for the Linux users amongst us, ssh://Library/ebooks/fiction), browse by genre or author, pick a book, and read it. The ebooks are accessible by everyone at once, so there is no need to wait your turn for the new releases. Since the ebooks can be freely copied, the worry about losing a book is gone forever.

Those are all wonderful advantages but they do not make up for the fact that my life would be poorer without bookshelves. Many books simply cannot be satisfactorily read on a 6″ diagonal screen in black and white. Some need large paper and color. Some need indexes. Some need to be savored by three of us at a time.

Ebooks can serve another purpose, however, as a trial license for the paper book. Several authors and publishers are experimenting with releasing a free ebook in conjunction with a traditional, for-fee physical book and are finding that the ebook certainly does not hurt, and may even boost, sales. James Boyle discussed this in more depth in Text is free, we make our money on volume(s) at the Financial Times’ web site. This makes a lot of sense to me: I can download the ebook and browse it to my heart’s content in the comfort of my easy chair. If I like it, I then buy the paper, thoroughly enjoy everything it has to offer, and finally add it to my wonderfully crammed bookshelf.

Perhaps I have been trying to make ebooks into more than they will ever be, at least for me. I think that, along side the ebooks, there will always be a place for real books in my life.

Having spent almost a week with my new Sony PRS-505 eBook reader, I am way past infatuated and well into love. For reading books, it just plain works. No fuss; no muss. I have grabbed several books, some old, some new, and am thoroughly enjoying reading them. The first line of the main menu, visible in this picture, is one of my favorite features.

The reader can “Continue Reading” from where I left off, not only in the last book I was reading, but from where I left off in every book in it’s memory. So I can merrily skip around between Arthur C. Clarke’s The City and The Stars (borrowed from the St. Louis County Public Library) to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (downloaded for free from Project Gutenberg) to Dan Reiter and Allan C. Stam’s Democracy at War (borrowed from the St. Charles County Library District) and back again. The reader automatically remembers the last page that I read in each book. Of course, I can also set bookmarks and that is handy for remembering all of those passages that I want to share with Candy while she is crocheting (and unable to escape).

Between the local public libraries and Project Gutenberg, I have found a reasonable pool of books. Unfortunately, the PRS-505 does not grok HTML files. Why Sony chose to omit this format is beyond me. Fortunately, I found directions for downloading, configuring, and using Book Designer at the MobileRead Wiki. This sweet piece of software allows me to easily convert the HTML files from Project Gutenberg into Sony’s proprietary BBeB format. It takes me a few minutes but the end result is an emminently readable ebook which contains a nice table of contents.

The PRS-505 supports three levels of magnification, which is great when my eyes get a little tired late at night. Here is a page from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin in all three magnifications. (Click on the pictures to see larger images.)

As you can see, all are perfectly readable and it is nice to have the “large-print edition” just a button click away.

The screen snapshots also show a couple of other points. The highlighted “[16]” is actually a link to a footnote. Pressing the center of the wheel in the lower, right corner jumps the reader to the footnote. If you then press the left arrow on the same wheel, the reader jumps back to the page you just came from. You have probably also noticed that the “F” chapter initial is not correctly placed. The reader can properly display these but the freebie Book Designer software seems to have misplaced it during conversion from HTML to BBeB format. It does not keep me from enjoying the book so I have not poked around to see if this is fixable.

So what’s not to like? The PRS-505 does not support HTML files which keeps me from downloading portions of web sites which would make great reference material (e.g., the PHP function reference). There is no way to search for a word within a book, which limits the reader’s usefulness with reference texts. Neither Adobe’s nor Sony’s ebook library software runs on Linux, which means that when I want to check a book out from the library, I have to fire up my Windows virtual machine just to “authorize” the book and transfer it to my reader.

The big bug-a-boo is not with the reader at all; it is with the DRM-locked ebooks. O’Reilly has the right idea; they are beginning to sell ebooks which are completely unlocked. Once I buy them, I own them and can do with them as I like, just as I expect with any other purchase. All of the other publishers that I have checked are selling books which are restricted; after I buy them, I cannot give them away or sell them to a third party. Guess what: I won’t buy a book under those conditions.

I bought the PRS-505 to run Reader Plates when I fly. As a miniature electronic flight bag, containing all of the IFR approach plates for the entire US, the device is well worth the price. Knowing what I know now, would I buy one just to read books? No. It is just too expensive. Would I buy one if I could buy current books without DRM? Absolutely!