CPUnk I write right. Right? Aye.

Why I got rid of my Kindle

So I dropped my Kin­dle, maybe about 6 inches — and it landed on its edge.  The cor­ner has a crack, which affects the display.

I called them up and was told that since it’s “cus­tomer induced dam­age” I can have a replace­ment for $200.

Short answer — bye-bye Kin­dle.  I don’t need a $400 book that then becomes a $600 book if I drop it.  I’d rather have 30 hard-cover books in my library that I can share with my friends.

I know at least one per­son read­ing this who loves her Kin­dle — and as a work­ing device, I say “hear hear!”

But in the long run, it’s just not prac­ti­cal to have a digital-ink device that costs so much and is so fragile.

Books weigh more, but they’re less fussy.  If you have one, keep it pro­tected.  If you don’t — it’s just not worth it financially.

So to sum­ma­rize, I’m a per­son who can afford to buy ten of these things, but the global sav­ings on books, the cost to the pub­lish­ers, the cost to the authors, and the cost to the read­ers is too high.

Here are the true short­com­ings of the Kindle:

1. You can’t share books with friends, period.  Giv­ing books is a won­der­ful way to share expe­ri­ences with peo­ple.  With Kin­dle, we are all just that much more e-separated
2. It is too expen­sive.  $300–400 for the orig­i­nal device, plus the com­mit­ment to buy all your future books through it has you break­ing even at around your 30th book pur­chase.  If you read a book every two weeks, you’ll be ahead in about a year.  If, like me, you read a book a month, it’s 3 years
3. It is lim­ited in choice.  Kin­dle has about 180,000 books avail­able for pur­chase.  That’s really awe­some.  But there are mil­lions of books in print.  I’d say that, for the most part, I’ve found my expe­ri­ence is that if I go and browse their choices I find some­thing good.  But if I think of a book that I like and then go check them for it, it’s about 60/40 that I won’t find it.
4. Few “big” authors have pub­lished all their books to the Kin­dle.  If you get excited about an author, you’re never going to be able to read his/her entire oeu­vre on the Kindle.
5. It’s frag­ile.  I dropped it 6 inches, half a foot.  Granted, it landed on edge — but well — that’s lame.  I can drop my phone from 6′ 3″ (the height of my ear) and it lives.  Sad.

Do I believe in e-ink?  Yep.  I’m look­ing for­ward to the future of dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing.  Am I a bleeding-edge pur­chaser?  Yep — I loves me some new tech­nol­ogy.  Is this worth it for “civil­ians”?  Nope.  Not yet.  Wait for the fol­low­ing features:

1. Third party man­u­fac­tur­ers.  If an online book­seller is the source of all our printed future — we’re done.  You need good ol’ Amer­i­can competition.
2. Open pub­lish­ing stan­dards.  If I can only buy books through Ama­zon OR Sony OR next com­pany — that’s just going to be a failure.
3. Back­light­ing.  I love the pas­sive qual­ity of the e-paper — but being able to read it in the dark as a dig­i­tal device is still sen­si­ble.  Hav­ing an “itty bitty book­light” clipped to your Kin­dle is just silly.
4. Whiter “paper”.  The color gra­di­ent is cur­rently about the same as the orig­i­nal Pal­mOS screens.  It’s black on gray.  That’s going to have to change, and will.
5. Color.  That’s the killer change for e-ink.  When we have color e-ink, on open-platform third party screens — we’re done. 

If you have a Kin­dle — love your Kin­dle — befriend your Kin­dle and take care of it.

If you don’t have a Kin­dle — and aren’t just scream­ing in your gut to get one — wait.

The “Take it Backberry”

I just came up with that name when email­ing a friend (work friend) … I think it sum­ma­rizes every­thing I feel about this stu­pid machine.

I have to admit, if you are mea­sur­ing medi­oc­rity vs. medi­oc­rity — this is much much bet­ter medi­oc­rity than their old medi­oc­rity.  But it still sucks.

Last night, I plugged the lit­tle device into my lap­top so it would charge.  When I went to bed, it had about 30% show­ing on the bat­tery — still charging.

I made a mis­take and closed my lap­top — that essen­tially turns off the charg­ing fea­tures of the lap­top — so the phone stopped charg­ing — my bad.

Then, I came back to the thing this morn­ing — 8 hours later, I slept in — and you know what?  It’s almost out of bat­tery.  Well, that makes sense — 8 hours of just sit­ting still should use 30% of the entire battery.

This thing is like a Tam­agotchi — it’s an elec­tronic pet you have to tend to all the time so it won’t die.

---

I got a voice­mail!  Excit­ing.  My “Mes­sages” app (the one with the enve­lope on it) had a star on it (not to be con­fused with my other “mgm…” app right next to it, that has an enve­lope AND the world, which also had a star on it but indi­cates email, not mes­sages — but you can also track your email in the mes­sages list — try to keep up).

So, I thought “oh boy!  I can check my visual voice­mail! (avail­able for $9.95 extra per month)” — so I went look­ing for it.  Since noth­ing is alpha­bet­i­cal, I had to look for the icon, which is intu­itively marked with the torso of a per­son with green lines com­ing OUT of its left ear.  Once I found that, I clicked on it, so I could eas­ily and visu­ally review my voicemail!

Here’s how:

1. Click the handy dandy icon, filled with antic­i­pa­tion because you’re about to just SEE your voice­mails in a sec­ond instead of hav­ing to do all that stu­pid dial­ing and lis­ten­ing to prompts!
2. Dis­cover that you have no mes­sages.  Wait … what?  I have voice­mail mes­sages — my enve­lope icon (not the other enve­lope icon right next to it) told me so!
3. Oh wait — there’s another icon over here marked “SMS and m…”, it has a pic­ture of a cell­phone and an enve­lope.  It’s got a star on it!!!  Let’s check it!
4. It says I have a voice­mail as “1 NEW VOICEMAIL 0 URG 1 TOTAL *86″ … that prob­a­bly means I have one new voice­mail, no urgent and 1 total (star eighty six you sexy Black­berry user)
5. I’ll click that!  Oh look, it’s a full screen ver­sion of the same state­ment.  I’m glad I was able to see that!
6. Must be back at the Visual Voice­mail (avail­able for $9.95 per month) by now!  The mes­sage was sent at 5:51am (or 5:53am if you view it in full-screen mode).
7. Visual Voice­mail says I have no mes­sages.  Let me push the magic but­ton to pull up the Menu.
8. Ahhh… stu­pid me — I thought Visual Voice­mail was an active mes­sage checker — you know … like “Mes­sages” and “mgm…” and “SMS and m…” — but it’s a pas­sive sys­tem.  I need to click “Check for Mes­sages” (with my giant man fin­gers) … well… ok.
9. There is check­ing going on because the lit­tle arrows on the appli­ca­tion are flash­ing madly from white to off-white and then white again.  Let’s wait for the voicemail.
10. Still wait­ing.
11. Hmmm… by now I could have just called my voicemail.
12. I think I’ll just call voicemail.
13. Ahhh— it’s a mes­sage from my friend Chris, I’m lis­ten­ing to it on speak­er­phone — that’s clear and con­cise, by the way.
14. Oh … my screen has gone black, I want to see what I’m doing — I’ll push the “red means go” but­ton, which on the takeit­Back­berry means “go to the homepage”
15. Haha … no, when you’re using the phone it means hangup.  Stu­pid me and my expec­ta­tions of con­sis­tency.  I’m so dumb, but the peo­ple at RIM are so smart.  I wish I was them.
16. Well — that was fun chas­ing down a voice­mail on my phone that is des­per­ately cling­ing to my lap­top because it sucks bat­tery like a crack user in Columbia …
17. Don’t for­get to turn off all the appli­ca­tions you opened!  It’s a sim­ple 10-step process!  Do it, or the bat­tery will die even faster!  You now have: Visual Voice­mail, Mes­sages, mgmead…, and SMS and m… open and run­ning in the back­ground.  I think “Phone” doesn’t count.

The next iPhone is available on Friday

I gotta say — that’s eerie and ironic tim­ing.  I’m glad my plea­sure is so impor­tant to Apple that, while I was post­ing the last mes­sage — they sent me news that the next iPhone is ready for my review.  Are they watch­ing me?

Why I laugh at the Blackberry Storm

Thus far:

I have been grap­pling with the fact that the device leaves every appli­ca­tion you touch open in the back­ground — suck­ing up resources.

For exam­ple — I opened some mini-app for a moment to see what it was, then nav­i­gated to the home page.  The mini-app was run­ning the entire time there­after… dumb.

How­ever, if I wanted to turn it off, I can simply:

1. Nav­i­gate back to the app by hit­ting the “Menu” but­ton — which is des­ig­nated by a bunch of dots all in a clus­ter, but I must HOLD the Menu but­ton to make the super secret appli­ca­tion switcher win­dow pop up.
2. The super secret appli­ca­tion switcher win­dow shows the 4 apps I cur­rently have open.  Oh wait — my bad — if I use the super-duper secret left swipe ges­ture while view­ing the super secret appli­ca­tion switcher win­dow, I will see a hor­i­zon­tally scrolling dis­play of all the appli­ca­tions I have open — oh my, I’ve opened a lot.
3. While using the super secret appli­ca­tion switcher win­dow, and scrolling to the left to get to my mini-app, I notice that I have another app open — let’s say it’s Face­book — make a men­tal note — I’ll have to close that app in a second.
4. Now, sim­ply scroll to the left to select the mini-app that I wanted closed, click on the icon for the mini-app that I’m try­ing to CLOSE mind you, bring it to the front.
5. Hav­ing brought it to the front, you will notice that the super secret appli­ca­tion switcher win­dow dis­ap­pears.  Sim­ply click the menu but­ton (indi­cated by the Inter­na­tional sign for menu, which is a bunch of dots in a group), but DO NOT HOLD IT.  Hav­ing just clicked the but­ton, your Menu for this mini-app appears.
6. Using your pre-existing knowl­edge that only a por­tion of the menu is show­ing, use the super-duper double-trick ges­ture to make the menu scroll up — this will bring new choices to your view — now this list may change from app to app — so feel free to just swipe at any menu you see.
7. We’re still clos­ing an app, remember?
8. Do the super-duper double-trick ges­ture a few times, pass­ing choices like “Move” (which doesn’t actu­ally move any­thing), “Move to Folder” (a slightly more pow­er­ful ver­sion of “Move”), the ran­domly appear­ing “New Folder”, “Options” (which may take you to options related to this mini-app, OR global sys­tem options — or maybe to a mag­i­cal place where all options live together in har­mony, danc­ing in cir­cles and wait­ing for clicks to fall from the sky), and so on … keep scrolling and scrolling — and even­tu­ally you will hit the bot­tom of the menu, which is always the word “close” (unless you’re using Visual Voice­mail (for only $9.95 extra each month)), which seems to not have the abil­ity to close.
9. With your big fat man fin­ger (in my case), click the tiny 8-point font word, and poof — you’re back to the home screen.
10. Remem­ber Face­book?  Oh, that’s open — let’s go and close it!
11. Hold down the Menu dots but­ton to bring up the super secret appli­ca­tion win­dow, ges­ture to the left to find Face­book, click Face­book, bring it to the front (notice that the Black­berry Mes­sen­ger appli­ca­tion is run­ning also, that will be fun to close).
12. Per­form steps 2–10 or so to close Face­book — 2 apps down, about 10 to go.
13. Let’s try it on the Black­berry Mes­sen­ger App.  Per­form steps 1–10 on that app.
14. What?!!! It’s not gone from the super secret appli­ca­tion switcher win­dow!  It’s still there!
15. I must have done some­thing wrong — let’s try it again — repeat step 13, which is really steps 1–10.
16. It’s still there!!! Dread!  I’m a fool — I can’t close this app!!!
17. Oh… that’s because it’s part of the ultra-purple top secret group of appli­ca­tions that don’t ever leave the super secret appli­ca­tion switcher win­dow.  Phew — thought I was just going nuts.

Well — let’s open the Help app to learn what I’m doing wrong in gen­eral — there must be an easy way to do these things.  Click the red “end” but­ton in order to go to the Home screen — keep­ing with Blackberry’s intu­itive “stop means go” theme from their other phones.

Select the giant Ques­tion Mark icon marked Help.  Seems like a good start.
Oh look — it’s a tight list of help­ful top­ics … so tight in fact, that my giant man fin­gers can’t click any­thing — why is it high­light­ing all the words?  I don’t want to cut and paste — I just want to click on this line that talks about set­ting up the Home page — click (no!) … hit the escape key (marked with a curved arrow, which we all know means “escape” and not go back — unless you’re click­ing it to go back — which it also does) … take my tiny fin­ger­nails and try to select the line about the Home page. 

Thanks, Help sys­tem — that sucked.  I’m gonna hit the handy dandy red off but­ton and go back to the Home page.

Oh dang — I left the Help appli­ca­tion run­ning — bet­ter go and close it … we all know how to do that now, don’t we?

I got another Blackberry — I think I don’t like it already — maybe

I got the Black­berry Storm.  I told the very nice girl at the store that I wanted to make sure that it can be turned off so I can put it in my pocket and not pocket-dial.

She assured me that it totally can — and showed me the brand new excit­ing “lock” but­ton that has every­one atwit­ter with excitement.

Here’s how the lock but­ton works:

1. Push the lock but­ton (be sure not to hit the but­tons on the sides of the device while grab­bing the device so you can push the awk­wardly placed lock button)
2. Stand there.
3. Watch the screen dim — isn’t it cool?
4. No wait … keep watch­ing… see how it gets darker all smoothly?  Isn’t that cool?
5. Still watch­ing?  It’s almost dark, get it?  It’s not quite dim yet — but go ahead — watch it some more.
6. Is it dark?  What?  Already?  Awe­some dude — you are a rockin’ Crack­berry user!  High-five!
7. Put it in your pocket.
8. Watch it light up again.
9. Take it out — return to step 1, you total rad­i­cal mon­ster tech-user!

Funny side story — It was 2006 that I tried my last Black­berry.  How do I know this?  Because once we got my sys­tem set up again (which took about 30 min­utes because RIM, the mak­ers of Black­berry, still had me assigned to the old phone of yes­ter­year — which resulted in a mes­sage that said (and I quote) “Your account has been dis­abled.  Please con­tact your IT Spe­cial­ist.”) … as I was say­ing — when my sys­tem got started again (did I men­tion that I AM the IT Spe­cial­ist?  The girl behind the counter didn’t know what it meant — nobody did — they all called around … they finally called tech sup­port — who wanted to know my email address and pass­word.  I smiled and said no.) … so when my sys­tem finally got con­fig­ured — the email came in with the newest mes­sages from my cur­rent account and two old emails, from 2006, that basi­cally said “Wel­come to Ver­i­zon Black­berry!” … thanks for that.

So far — I’m semi-non-plussed with this.

I also signed up for VCast with Rhap­sody and it looks like I’m hav­ing to pay more than the more I already signed up to pay?

But hey — it’s alright — the screen goes click and the sys­tem only ignores my clicks most of the time.

Is the silly lit­tle device afraid of me yet?  I don’t think so …

USB-to-Serial console for Mac (OSX)

This is how you can get ser­ial con­sole on a Mac — very impor­tant — com­pletely dry.  Humans should not read this link.

N.E.R.D.: USB-to-Serial con­sole for Mac (OSX).

Why WordPress is awesome

• It is free and sim­ply asks me to pay the peo­ple in charge when I choose — I like that because it allows me to be magnanimous
• It is well made — I installed it in one night with­out issue
• It is well sup­ported — the open­source com­mu­nity behind it makes all sorts of awe­some plu­g­ins regularly
• I can add these plu­g­ins and seem to be amaz­ingly pow­er­ful with­out break­ing a sweat
• While I am a super tech, I do not need to be a super tech in order to enjoy this software
• It allows me to write to it by email — and use “on the fly” for­mat­ting like bold and under­line (oooh) with­out writ­ing klunky HTML (ugh) in my email by hand

There­fore, I believe every­one should use Word­Press for­ever!  Hurray!