Previously in the ‘Geeky’ Category…
Would you use 9 year old milk?
- May
- 18th
- 2010
IE6 is compared to 9 year old milk – by MICROSOFT no-less.
I find this hilarious – because I compared it to 9 year old beer the other day. Another study also showed that people are better at using updated browsers at home than they are at work.
The IT departments are blaming it on “business critical systems” that require IE6.
WTF? A company that have not updated their routines or their software for 9 years – seriously I would not like to do business with those people.
For sure, IE 8 still has faults, but compared to the bastard child of a hundred maniacs it is a step in the right direction.
Casca as Ebooks
- May
- 2nd
- 2010
The Casca book series will be published as ebooks. This is a fine example of how books out of circulation can find a new life – and through the wonders of the internet Tony Roberts – the writer of book 32 in the series – was kind enough to send me a personal email in regards to this.
“Daniel
There’s news about ebooks on the casca website www.casca.net
Regards
Tony Roberts”
OK, so I bullied him last winter about doing some epublishing, but I still feel honored he remembered my mail.
What is Casca? Heretic! No seriously, it is a story about the ultimate heretic – the soldier Casca Rufio Longinus, who spears a selfproclaimed prophet during a crucifixion 2000 years ago, only to be cursed to live forever until “they meet again”.
It is pulp fiction at its best. War stories spanning centuries, through the eyes of Casca, and not always on the winning side. Vietnam, the Persian war, fighting for the nazis during the second world war… it is interesting read as the mythos expands for the eternal mercenary.
The printed books are hard to find, as you will have to go to extreme lengths to find them. I am overjoyed to finally be able to read them all.
I got into the books when I borrowed them off a friend back in 1998. He only had a couple, some in Swedish, some in English, but the story stayed with me in great detail.
Well, I am happy that Tony Roberts is continuing the efforts of writing Casca too – after the demise of Barry Sadler, and for being a good sport, so for all you guys wanting hard cover books, you can buy some if not all from his website in hard cover. Here is the latest effort Anzac
The Sequel to Barry Sadler’s Casca 21: Trench Soldier, Casca is hunted by a dogged opponent from Egypt to the dizzy slopes of Gallipoli in 1915.
I love Ubuntu 10.4
- May
- 1st
- 2010
The latest version of Ubuntu is out. It is a long term service version, which is great for people who don’t like their OS upgrading on its own every 6 months.
Speaking of which, this is one of the reasons I love Ubuntu – when I sat down at the computer it simply asked me “There is a new version out called 10.4 – Would you like to upgrade?” Why, yes, sure, go for it.
The setup was a little iffy on my desktop, because I have a lot installed on there, and I fucked up because of my lack of knowledge of Grub. It took a long time and in the end it failed, so I had to re-install Ubuntu. Fortunately through I keep my /home directories on a seperate partition. For all Windows users out there: That means that all my files and settings and all program settings are kept seperate from the OS – and also encrypted 
So it was all safe and I lost none of my documents/photos. I still had to reinstall some programs after the installation (which took approx 30 minutes), but my settings for those programs were still there. Brilliant.
On my laptop the upgrade actually worked without a hitch – mainly because I have no funky stuff installed. No missing drivers, it logged back in on the wireless network when it finished.
Best of all Start up time from when I press the on button is now less than 40 seconds. Some people can even get half of that depending on hardware setup.
So what are my impressions of this version – well – all drivers worked straight out of the box. Wireless card, printer, screens, etc. A lot smoother if compared to only a year ago. The new look is good as well since it is a lot less brown and orange and more tasteful purple and black. Of course easily changeable in the appearance settings.
One thing I did not like was the move of the window buttons from the right to the left (like on a Mac) so I changed that back to the way I liked it. I found a simple guide by just googling. Short version is
Click Applications, then Accessories and then Terminal.
Type gconf-editor and then press Enter. This will open the Configuration Editor application.
In the left pane click apps, then metacity and then general.
In the right pane right-click the button_layout key and in the context menu click Edit Key. Change the Value to
menu:minimize,maximize,close
and then click OK:
Simple as that. Of course a lot of tweaks can be done and the looks can change a lot. Compiz still looks great so I got my wobbly windows and 3D cube desktop area that I have grown accustomed to.
Anyway, one of the more great news is the social interactions with Facebook, Twitter, etc
Gwibber is a good desktop app to keep track of tweets, status updates, and more. Updating your status or tweet is just as easy too. I like it. Spotify got the same thing now where there is more social interactions.
All in all I find Ubuntu as great as always. For a normal desktop user, only using their machine for webbrowsing, using office, webb applications and entertainment it is hard to beat. It actually makes Windows 7 seem klunky!
For designers it might take a little more tweaking to get our favourite apps working. One being Photoshop, and more.
As I said before there is always Virtualbox from Sun – which is brilliant. But it takes a lot of resources. I do wish Adobe would get their act together and sell their software for linux – I sure as hell would pay for it, but even one of their simpler Photoshop alternatives would be a good start.
GIMP sucks. It really is like working in Microsoft Paint. It is not a viable alternative.
Xara Xtreme on the other hand is open source and brilliant for vector graphics once you get used to it. Perfectly viable alternative to Illustrator – and available on many platforms.
So for you people out there who are still on Windows – give it a try. Any problems you come across generally are solved with a simple Google search.
Why are ebooks expensive?
- February
- 4th
- 2010
Seriously! What the fugg?. OK, I got an ebook reader. I love it. I go to bed with it and even take baths with it.
Have I got books? Sure. Shedloads. Downloaded in various formats over the years and converted by myself to a readable format.
Once in a while though I like to buy new books. Pay my way as it were.
So I go to online retailers thinking “hmmm, for sure this ought to be cheaper as an e-book than a hard copy?”
Why? because
- only one copy is ever produced – ever ever
- no paper
- no binding
- no printing costs
- no storage costs (more than a few Kb on a server)
- no postage
- I use my own bandwidth to download
- no handling by any people once the book is done
- not ever out of order
Appearantly, to publishers, these factors have no impact on the price of books.
The books cost the same as physical copies, if not more expensive, and they are also constructed so that no one but ME can read them.
All of you in the publishing industry, let me let you in on a dirty little secret:
It won’t work.
Seriously, trying to make me reading this on my ebook reader more unattractive than actually buying the physical book is silly.
Reminds me of the early MP3 services which over charged (here is looking at you iTunes) their users. If people feel ripped off, they will not buy things.
I know how much it costs to make a copy of something digital. If I drag a file to an email message and send that to a friend I have made a copy. Cost to me: absolutely none. Let me up this stake, I send the same file to 100 of my closest friends. Cost is still the same.
Considering the state of the forests around the world, you should really encouraging new ways to enjoy your products. Branch out so to speak (pun intended).
Of course I understand that you want a return on your investment in some authors.
You won’t get that by ripping off customers who want to be legal. You know why? We do not think that it is priced right. I want to support my authors. I really do. I also know that you publishers constantly rip them off, and they don’t generally see any of the profits you make from the books.
OK, so selling a book online at a cheaper price means that you will not make as big a profit as producing one book and then selling it at full price to thousands of people.
Considering your massive save mentioned above, I think a price cut in electronic books should be in order.
So far I have only found one fairly decently priced online shop at Mobipocket.com. Still they are expensive, and they have some books only available in certain countries, but at least they have bargains too.
So tell you what – lower the price, or I will continue visiting the library – OK?
Update! Appearantly I am not the only one aware of this stupidity
Harry Potter Theme park
- November
- 19th
- 2009
Sneaky behind the scenes of the new theme park at io9.
Yes, I am a big child. I love theme parks. I went on the Rocking Roller-coaster at MGM 5 times in a row. I have never backed down from downright scary rides, neither have I backed out from downright silly or childish antics either.
Clearly I have more in common with my nephews than my peers, but I would love to go to this themepark.
What also interests me is how they are going to bring a magical world to life technologically without breaking the fourth wall. Moving portraits can be done using LED screens for sure, moving stair cases for sure, the candy (which I have tried) is a done deal. What about wands and magic duels – it could be a very very cool computer game that is live action.
Yes, I am looking forward to this.
