June 2008

Playing along

| | General

Love the drum kit. You can plug an iPod in and play along to your favourite tracks. This is so much fun its probably illegal. Plus it seems to be good exercise.

“Science is a way of life”

| | Science

Brian Green has an opinion piece in the New York Times outlining why science is important. It’s well worth reading. The following quote is a good summary:

Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that’s precise, predictive and reliable — a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional. To be able to think through and grasp explanations — for everything from why the sky is blue to how life formed on earth — not because they are declared dogma but rather because they reveal patterns confirmed by experiment and observation, is one of the most precious of human experiences.

iRex Iliad

| | Technology

I’ve been using a Sony eInk device for about a year. It’s an excellent device for reading fiction (and text grabbed from opinion piece web sites). The Sony is poor for A4 PDF documents though, as the screen is too small. The whole A4 page is rendered on the small screen and the text is too small to read. There are tools to change the PDF’s and increase font size etc., put they are a bit of a pain.

I’ve been looking at the iRex Iliad as a device for reading A4 PDF’s on for a while as it has a larger display, but it has always been a bit too expensive. iRex recently introduced a new Book Edition model with a different case, no wireless networking and a reduced price. I bought one to replace the big pile of paper I’ve been reading (Apple Mac OS X Server and VMware VI3 documentation). I recently printed out a PDF technical manual (that was a few hundred pages long ) and 2 days later a new updated version was released! Now I just update the version on the Iliad. I could read these on my Mac laptop but the eInk screen is much easier on the eyes for prolonged reading. Plus you can use a pen to annotate the PDF’s.

I have to say that the Iliad did not have the wow factor that the Sony PRS-505 had. I think this is a function of the design of the device, and maybe because I’ve been using eInk for a while. The design of the Sony is much better than the Iliad. The Sony feels like a book, whereas the Iliad feels like an electronic device. Both are better than the Amazon Kindle though! What an abomination in design.

So the Iliad now hosts my technical library and the Sony is my electronic paperback. I’m hoping that there will be a larger screen iPod touch device released by Apple that’ll have a good PDF reader. The Sony will stay as a fiction book replacement for the foreseeable future though irrespective of any new iPod touch type devices. It’s just too good to be replaced. The battery lasts for weeks and it fades into the background in use.

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