Monthly Archives: November 2011

Kindle Fire To the Rescue

Posted by on November 28, 2011 No comments

Or… I dropped my iPad2.

So I wrote about how un impressed I was with my Fire, and as I turned back to my iPad – I noticed that my slick – solid – sturdy aluminum case – was dented!  And not just any dent, it was dented right where you plug in the connector.

Disappointment #1

Apparently it slipped off my arm rest in my F250 and landed just right on one of the steel posts that holds in the back seat.  Until you really look it it, it’s kind of hard to believe how tight the tolerances are on these things.  No way could I get a pair of pliers into the gap to straighten it out.

And with no access to the connector plug, there is no way to charge the darn thing.

So I made an appointment at the Genius bar and took it to the apple store.

Disappointment #2

Turns out Apple does not have an accidental damage policy for these things.  And they can’t repair it.  Say what?  That’s a 64GB 3G iPad!  What do you mean it can’t be repaired?  Not by apple anyway.

Suuuuuuck.

Fail #1

I go to Fry’s electronics and buy the smallest, skinniest pliers I can find and try to straighten the port myself.  No joy.  All I’m doing is scratching the surface and I’m afraid I’m going to break the board inside the slot.  Time to get help.

Let’s hope there’ s not a Fail #2

So I go online, find a company that says they can repair iPads.  I sign up, and take my baby to Fedex and ship it out.  God help me.

Kindle Fire to the Rescue

So that leaves me tablet-less…  or does it?  I still have my Fire!  And so I start to poke around with the skinny 7″ unit.  Without the option to use my iPad I’m forced to really assess to the Fire.  And now I have to say… if I couldn’t own an iPad I would definitely want one of these.  And if I didn’t already own an iPad, I think I would give the Fire some serious consideration.  If you don’t know what you are missing then the Fire is a very impressive little box.

Works for my books, I’ve downloaded a couple of games and they work pretty darn well.  And I can stream some old TV shows (Why isn’t Quantum Leap part of Amazon Prime?  Really?).  It’s not iTunes and the iPad but this little bugger cost $800 LESS than my beefy iPad 2.

And I now see that they’ve added email and some other useful apps.  I still find Android scattered and generally not nearly as polished as iOS and iOS apps.  But for $800 still in my pocket I think I could learn to live with it.

I’ll update when I know how my repair went.

Facts Suck

Posted by on November 23, 2011 Comments Off

Or the death of a good story.

So I was talking about Coral Castle with some friends, and I remembered some stuff from T. Lobsang Rampa (thanks for the reference dad).  And then it hit me.  When I first heard about these things… there was no internet.

Funny, I wondered what the internet had to say… sigh.  Facts suck.

First Coral Castle.  If no one saw Ed Leedskalnin lift this stones, then no one owned a pretty decent camera back in the thirties to take these pictures.
Apparently the secret of the great pyramids was a block and tackle.  Or as Ed was quoted as saying, “he understood the laws of weight and leverage well”

Well, turns out another trouble maker from FLINT Michigan learned those laws of weight and leverage pretty well too.  Only this guy is alive today and owns a video camera.

A carpenter by the name of W.T. Wallington it seams figured out that if you understand the laws of weight and leverage you can move around some pretty massive stones with not a lot of effort, BY YOURSELF.

http://www.theforgottentechnology.com/

Check out his videos.  They are ridiculous.  Turns out a very heavy stone is exceptionally stable on a fulcrum.  In other words, stick a pebble under a big hard stone and you can move it easily.  The heavier it is, the more stable it is.  In his words:

once a weight is close to balance on a single point, rotation can be initiated and the object becomes stable

For those of you keeping score at home (check your physics text), the clever idea here is that he’s using the LOAD as the LEVER.  By using the principles of balance and inertia he is able to move really have stuff quite easily.

You’ve got to check out his videos showing moving these things around.

Finally, he kills my pyramid odyssey dream.  (one of my favorite books).  Because he does what no one else seemed to be willing to do – some MATH.  Turns out, with these techniques, you might not need that many people to build the pyramids.  At least not as many as people thought.

For continuous hoisting at the Great Pyramid working a 40 hour week, 50 weeks a year, and for 25 years, only 20 horse power would be required.

If you watch his videos (see the Egyptian Hoist) it becomes obvious that a little ingenuity, and some clever use of physics makes man a pretty awesome creature in his own right.  No extra-terretrials needed.

Doh, that clever, clever brain of ours!

So I’m a little sad that these fun stories appear to be no more than that, fun stories.  But how cool is that we live in an era where not only did someone figure it out, they videoed it and put it on line for my entertainment!

Brilliant.  Wait, maybe we DO live in magical times.

Kindle Fire

Posted by on November 19, 2011 No comments

So,
I got my Kindle Fire. I ordered it the minute I first heard about it. Except for the Kindle 1 I order a new kindle every time they introduce one. Largely because I’m a big fan of eInk displays. I’d look at some other readers but… I now have a pretty darn large book collection with Amazon so I’m “tied in”. I really love the way their system works so why move? Again it’s the software.

But I also own an iPad, and I was anxious to see what Android could do. In fact, almost everything I own is Apple if it has a battery now (Phone, Computer, Laptop, Tablet). I’ve head so much about Android – I wasn’t going to buy a phone to check it out, and $500 for a tablet I’d hardly ever use seemed like a waste. But an Android Kindle sounded like a great idea, especially for $200.

So here’s what I learned.

It’s a not an iPad

While that may be obvious, one of Apples real strengths is their attention to detail. They charge a premium but they also deliver for that premium. Excellent screens, snappy response, everything just “works”. Android is becoming the new windows. In other-words, android appears to be the king of it-works-well-enough.

Everyone points to, there aren’t many apps. But it’s more than that. The Kindle Fire is really highly tied to Amazon’s services. Like the original Kindle it is not a general purpose computing device, or even general purpose media device. For example, how do I load personal videos onto the Kindle? And what about my photos? Can I put those on a kindle?

If it is possible it is not obvious. No, the Kindle is a portal into content you buy and manage through Amazon.

Secondly

It’s unresponsive at times. You just get so used to touching the iPad and it responds to you instantly. Most of us use computers crippled by bloatware, or anti-virus filters (Macaphee would you PLEASE JUST STOP!) and crud, and time that it’s really are to have a computing device that responds INSTANTLY to your touch.

There are multiple times where in using the Kindle I thought it had crashed, or hung up, or I wasn’t sure what was going on. It would just sit there unresponsive. It was weird.

But it’s only $200!

Now, I am probably unusual in that I have both units. What’s more, the kindle was cheap enough that it was worth the try. If you don’t have a tablet yet, or an eReader it really does fix some of the things that people didn’t like about the original Kindle and maybe that’s where it should really be compared. In fact, Amazon may consider it a triumph that it is being compared to the iPad and other Tablets instead of being compared to the other products in its family – the eInk readers.

(Cr)Apptastic

Before I move on, I do have one final dig, and it’s more of an android issue than a Kindle issue. The weird thing about buying a new platform is that you are looking for new experiences. New software. New newness. However, very often what happens is that you end up buying the same applications you know from other platforms.

Plants vs Zombies? Got it on my phone, my iPad and now my Kindle. EA Sudoku. First got it on my DS. Now I have it on everything I own. (I just really like their version of it.)

OliveTree Bible reader. Best bible reader I’ve found.

However, one thing about android is that sometimes, stuff doesn’t work. Or it can be confusing. Take plants vs Zombies. There is a kindle fire version! But also a regular version for sale. Why are both available? What’s the difference? Other than the title, it’s not obvious or easy to find out. And take OliveTree’s bible reader. I own several bibles, but when I click on the link for the store more on the Kindle… it doesn’t work. Nothing happens. “What?” They shipped this?

But I digress. I suppose in principle the reason you get a Fire, or a Kindle for that matter is that Amazon is expending tremendous effort to make sure that they media they present on it runs really well. And for the most part, their video, music and book interfaces work really well.

I’m very tempted to sing up for Amazon Prime and while I have it for a Month I’m using to watch some TV episodes. I’ve uploaded a small part of my music library to Amazon Cloud Player so I can try that out as well.

But in truth, I’m tied to iTunes, so this probably won’t make a big difference for me. I have so many ways to listen to my music around my house the fire won’t be how I consume music.

Kindle Fire vs Kindle 3

But like I was saying, the Fire really should be compared to the traditional Kindle. And if you look at it from that point of view it is an outstanding product at an oustanding value.

Display

The main comparisons are obvious. You now have access to video and color content. The presentation of books with images is so much better on the Fire than it is on the Kindle 3 with it’s eInk display it’s not funny. However, in broad daylight the Kindle 3 still rules. Get some direct sunlight on your Fire and you have a hard to read screen. Nothing beats eInk for sunlight. Not that I get to spend a lot of time reading in the sun, but it is one of my favorite things to do, if I can get a sunny day is to read something good on that amazing black and gray screen. The closer it gets to paper the more awesome it is.

Given however that 90% of my viewing is indoors of some kind I have to say…

Advantage: Fire

Size and Weight

The Fire is a comfortable size – 7″, but the weight and thickness are a tad disappointing. I really like the slimness of the Kindle 3 and it is light.

Advantage: Kindle 3

Note: The new Kindle touch should be an improvement over the 3 even extending the difference.

Battery Life

This is a no brainer. One of the things that I love about the Kindle 3 is I can charge it once and use it for a week. The Fire’s battery life is roughly on par with any normal computing device or netbook who’s battery life is measured in hours instead of days.

Advantage: Kindle 3

Keyboard

This isn’t as obvious, but I actually like the Kindle Fire screen keyboard better than the Kindle 3 keyboard. Why? While you may argue that buttons are superior to little virtual boxes, for me the reality is that I type on a kindle so rarily that giving up that much realestate to a keyboard seems like a waste. I would MUCH rather have a bigger screen, and the Fire does that. Plus I’ve just gotten used to typing on a touch screen. What’s more with 7″ of screen, the Fire keyboard feels HUGE compared to my iPhone.

There you when you need it, gone when you don’t.

Advantage: Fire

Web Browsing

Duh…

Advantage: Fire

Ruggedness

I haven’t dropped my Fire yet, but I’m going to guess…

Advantage: Kindle 3

Conclusion

So at the end of the day, if you own an iPad there really is absolutely no reason to buy a kindle fire unless you are a tech nut like me and you could buy one heavily subsidized with Amazon gift card points like I did.

If you don’t own an iPad and you have an old Kindle, it might really be worth taking a look at the thing. It is a pretty awesome upgrade to a normal kindle and it will get you some iPad-”like” features that you’ll probably enjoy.

If you are looking for a real tablet however… The iPad can just do so much more than the Kindle, and it does it better, with more polish, you just have to ask yourself is it worth the extra $300?

By my way of thinking yes. For example, I wrote this on my iPad. Not doing that with a kindle. And this is cheaper and easier to use than my laptop, plus it’s more versatile with a longer battery life.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have some Zombies trying to get into my house. I need to go plant some pea shooters and sun flowers to take them out. That is how you stop Zombie invasions right?

Breathing Life Into a Dead Mac

Posted by on November 17, 2011 No comments

Okay,

Way back in the day when we started working on THE ORIGINAL XBOX Microsoft sent us XBox Dev Machines – they were Apple Macintosh Pro boxes with Dual Core Power PC chips.  The original XBox was to have 3 cores.
That was in 2000.  After the project was over no one wanted the dev machines back.  We were allowed to keep them despite the fact that each box cost $10,000.  So I took one home and that became my first Mac.
I used it for about 5 years.  THEN IT DIED.  Sad… sad day.
So I bought ANOTHER Mac Pro.  Only this time I got one from Fry’s electronics so I knew it was a late model.  I saved about $700 but I was able to reuse most of the equipment from my Power Mac.
Now that machine – circa 2006 is starting to grind to a halt.  I mean what do you do with a machine that
can’t keep up with your typing or even play audio files?
To replace it?  Budget about… oh… $4,500.  Holy crap.
So – I did a little checking and I found a way to salvage my beloved tower.
#1) More RAM.  Mac’s have ALWAYS been very efficient with RAM.  2GB was enough forever with most apps being a 20-30MB (compared to their Windows counter parts that were 10X as big).  So my 4GB was huge 5 years ago.  BUT… most Mac applications now tilt the scale at 150-300MB.  Some as big as 500MB.  Open up 3 or 4 things and suddenly – you’re low on RAM.  So I was able to scare up another 4GB of ram for $100, doubling my memory.
#2) And this was the biggest.  Move to the boot drive to SSD.  When I bought my macbook air, the hardware specs were less than impressive but the Fanboys raved about it’s performance.  Why?  Because of the SSD Drive.  This is how bad my MacPro had gotten – with the latest software I could not listen to audio.  It was garbled and crappy.  What the heck?  A combination of low memory and slow swap disk
really killed the systems core threads.
But after $100 memory upgrade that doubled my RAM (8GB baby) and a much more expensive $450 upgrade to a $256GB SSD drive – my machine is FASTER THAN IT HAS EVER BEEN.
It’s like I have a brand new machine.  It’s crazy.
Eventully I’m going to get one of those $5000 machines with the dual quad core processors, 16GB or RAM and most important of all a 512GB SSD drive, but for now, I’ve got $4,500 worth of performance for $550.
And now I can listen to my music again.  With enough RAM for the processors to run free, and the super snappy response of the SSD my drivers function correctly.
Wunderbar.
Scott