In the queue at the moment, The City and the City (in progress), Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, and the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

OK, it was the Esquire Augmented Reality give-away, and I only won one of the fifty webcams (Blue Microphones Eyeball 2.0), but it was a nice surprise to receive it in the mail. They were suppose to notify me back in January, but I never heard a word; it just arrived.

As far as getting spam, that particular contest didn’t increase my incidence of spam. Probably because at the time I was actually a subscriber to the print edition of Esquire. I do wonder if it helped my chances though…

But recently I’ve been somewhat ticked off at Amazon. I purchased a couple of eBooks from them 4 years ago, and they’ve since closed down that particular store and associated format. I have my original (encrypted) PDF files, but they’re now worthless since Adobe has shutdown the associated authentication servers. The result is a bunch of bits I “own”, but cannot access. Amazon customer service is no help and based on comments in their own forums, I don’t think Adobe would be either.

So this week I’ve taken to converting all my Kindle books (of which there are many). It works out to be a fairly easy process once you gather all the software. I’m using iPhone Backup Extractor to retrieve the eBook files, a Python script to “modify” the files, Calibre to handle format conversion to the open ePub format. On the devices iBooks and Stanza read the results in pretty close to the same quality as the Kindle apps (sans location syncing). All but one of my eBooks was painless, and that other book was handled by a different tool that I don’t expect to need very often. The nice thing about this setup is that the Python script can be configured as a plugin to Calibre, and once you get the Kindle PID for each device (for instance, using kindlepid.py ) that part becomes seamless. If I can figure out the PID for my Kindle for Mac, I’d be able to eliminate the backup extraction, and could do everything from inside of Calibre.

As a side effect of all of this, I can convert and read any PDF I have handy on the iPad/iPhone as well. More importantly, I’ve future-proofed my eBook purchases against another boneheaded move from Amazon. Now I just need to figure out how to access those older files…

Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, and the long road to the iPad. – By Tim Wu – Slate Magazine.

I have long contended that computers have the same trajectory as automobiles. Initially the domain of cutting-edge enthusiasts, moving through eras of: mass-production (Model-T v. IBM PC), large-differentiation (trucks/cars v. laptops/desktops), into customization (hot-rods v. case-mods). Eventually, the car market evolved into what we have today, a highly commoditized market were owners are are unlikely to tinker with the vehicle and depend on specialists to maintain and repair their car. Rather than increase the performance of their car through tuning, adjustment, or upgrades, consumers choose to just purchase new cars. The same is probably now true of computer users as well. It has been common industry knowledge that a segment of the population only upgrades operating system by purchasing a new computer.

As a thoughtful and long-time computer user, I applaud the design and functionality that modern Apple products represent. As a long time computer enthusiast, I bemoan the increasing commoditization of computing. As a computer science researcher and educator, I worry over the fact that our students seem to be increasingly the former rather than the latter.

The big revelation is that this thing is much faster than an iPhone; I don’t think I realized how slow my iPhone 3G is until now. Some of the apps are a bit underdone. The Netflix app has some minor flaws that I found after just a couple of minutes use.

Unfortunately, the biggest problem has to be the pricing some vendors are asking to move from their iPhone version to the newer iPad apps. Many authors are asking for the same amount or 2x to 3x more for their revised apps. While it might be warranted in some cases, I wonder if it’s really justified in all cases. For instance I paid $10 for a VPN app a couple of years ago; to upgrade to the iPad version would cost $25. It’s not clear that there has been that significant a change to the app beyond extending the screen size…

That’s all I have at the moment, but I’ll keep you updated as my experience with the iPad grows.

Mirror’s Edge was originally going to be an iPhone game, but looks to have been turned into an iPad launch title. If EA doesn’t decide to release it for the iPhone I suppose we’ll just have to hope for Canabalt II.

The plugin just allows you to easily embed the Withings smaller gadget into the sidebar of your WordPress blog. It should be appearing in the WordPress plugin gallery sometime in the near future.

You can download it now (assuming you have a Withings Scale and WordPress blog) by going here.

At school, I had first experience a couple of different Apple ][+ computers (a Bell & Howell and a standard), and then Commodore Pet computers.

Initially, I didn't have any storage device for the computer, so I had to key in programs as I needed them. Not long after the machine I got a cable that allowed a standard tape deck to work as a (manually controlled) storage unit. Eventually, I'd end up with sidecar expansions for: the speech synthesizer, 32KB memory, 5.25" disk drives, and an Okidata printer.

There was a strict ANSI compliant BASIC included in ROM (TI BASIC) on the TI-99/4A, but it wasn't too hard to work around most of the language differences. I remember keying in a text processing program from a magazine (pretty much a clone of roff), and saving my work to tape to print at school; only to find out that our school computers would read tapes made by my home computer. The most fundamental (to me at the time) missing functionality had to do with graphics. The TI came with neither sprites (included on the Commodore 64) or line drawing routines (on the Apple ][) built-in.

I eventually got the Extended BASIC cartridge which added sprites, much more powerful direct memory access routines (PEEK & POKE). The TI also became my gateway into assembly language as I used the Mini Memory Module Line-By-Line Assembler and eventually the Editor/Assembler to (attempt to) add line drawing facilities to the TI. That same project also taught me all about slope-intercept form.

Gaming on the TI-99/4A was a two-edged sword. One one hand there were a limited selection of nice games available (unlike the Apple or Commodore systems), and on the other that forced me into a lot more programming. There were a few really good games available for the TI, a couple stick out even to this day. Parsec was probably the most popular and best made title for the system with a really superb female synthesized voice. I also fondly remember a Star Trek cartridge, also Atarisoft ports of Defender and Pole Position. But it’s clear that I lusted after the large variety of games available on other systems. In the end I spent most of my time writing software. The last project for the TI was my attempt to port Konami Track & Field to the system (that time I learned a bunch about trigonometry). I even went so far as to build a 3-button controller specifically for the game.

That early experience with the TI-99/4A actually affected my computing experience for years to come. I’ve spent the majority of my time and energy working on alternative, “underdog” systems pretty much programming and porting software.

So what was your first home computer and did it impact your direction in life?

http://sandro.knot.org/health

I’m guessing the day-to-day posts are going to be pretty mundane, but your encouragement and support would be appreciated.

My experience with RobotWar probably indirectly led to my changing majors to computer science, and it certainly affected my perception of the need to efficient coding to this day.