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2010-04-30

Unboxing the Kobo ereader

Filed under: General — 19day @ 06:31:34

I got my hands on the new Kobo ereader, so I’m just unboxing it here.


Box

Un boite



Shelf

Pull-out ’shelf’ to get at the goods



Stuff

Quickstart guide, connection, and the ereader itself



ereader

The e-reader itself, initial setup screen


So a fairly straight-foward unboxing, the unit comes with 100 free books and instructions on how to get at them. Also with USB for charging and loading up with more content. The unit is actually quite light, and the quilted back is comfortable. As can be seen from the last picture, it is quite thin.

Time for disclosure, I work at Kobo, so of course I’m excited about this device. Take a look. You may find yourself excited too.

2010-04-11

Canada, Oh…

Filed under: General — 19day @ 13:07:13

A little while ago, government was proposing to change the lyrics of the Canadian National Anthem. The change? “In all thy sons command” would be changed to “Thou dost in us command,”. It’s a little clumsy, but it’s more inclusive. I think also people were batting around the idea of removing God from it as well or something.

At first, I was agin’it, it seemed like more revisionist crap that gave us ET with people running around aggressively pointing walkie-talkies at people, but then I looked it up. The change was to change it BACK to the way it was in the 1908 version. That affected my opinion significantly. I didn’t know it had undergone changes, so what I don’t understand is why there was apparently no (or at least less) resistance to changing it the other times, but now we shouldn’t. If it was changed to reflect our values of the day, should it not continue to do so? The cynic in me thinks it’s because it pandered to the religious and gender dominated section in power. If they wanted to change it to add more religious and male-celebrating bits, maybe it would go through. Maybe not. Somehow I think that in the States if they wanted to add more religious references to their pledge, that it would be easier than attempting (as they have) to remove them. And just as our anthem, removing them would have reverted it to the way it was before.

Honestly, whenever I sung the anthem, I obviously misunderstood that section anyways. I thought it was “In all thy Son’s command”, as in, a reference to Jesus, and not “sons” as in the males of the country. But before that, when I was younger, I sung it as “In all thy Sun’s command”, cause man, the Sun is big, and apparently I’m a pagan or something. When I was older and wanted to keep religion out of it, I didn’t try to sign the “God keep our land” in another way to avoid the god reference, I just make it an exclamation like “God! Keep our land,”, it always amused me.

I think a lot of people were outraged at the change because they didn’t think it had been changed before, but to me, knowing that it had, it should lessen the resistence to changing it again. But that would rely on people being sensible, alas. Another aspect to the whole thing is that it was put out there to distract people in a Wag The Dog sort of way, which I wouldn’t put past this administration.

I think it would be amusing to suggest that the english version of Oh Canada be eliminated, since it was originally in French anyway, so we should only sing that version. Sacré bleu

2010-04-03

Kobo e-reader

Filed under: General — 19day @ 18:03:34

So my company has begun taking pre-orders for its own e-ink reading device. The space is packed, but hopefully our device, doing the specific things it was designed to do very well, while being less expensive than the excessively signing and dancing devices already in the market, will gain some traction. The following little demo/commercial I found quite catchy, and not just because I’m an employee, the simple tune and animation style I would have found appealing regardless of the source.

Anyway, take a look at the demo if you’d like (quicktime plugin required at time of writing), and consider Kobo for your next unbirthday present.

2010-03-03

Checkpoint – Extended Play

Filed under: General — 19day @ 23:46:29

My mass reduction regime has reached its first milestone. I’ve lost my first 20 pounds. I decided that instead of my usual choice of a single insurmountable goal, that I would go for several, smaller insurmountable goals instead. I picked 20 pound increments that divided evenly into my weight at the time, bought a scale, and have been monitoring myself.

Through a combination of what I like to call a food-reduced diet, and using my elliptical (admittedly I’m not using it as much as I had hoped, due to lack of time these days), have brought me to my first goal in something around 2 months. I had one fall-off-the-wagon last weekend where I ate rather more than I should have, and drank a lion’s share of 3 pitchers of beer while watching the Canada Men’s hockey team in the semi-final olympic match, I ended up gaining 8 pounds back (or so the scale said the next day), but it settled down after that, I should avoid intoxicants for this reason.

Aside: I’ve drunk water at home exclusively for a while now, I used to use crystal light, but I ditched the Aspartame and now I put a bit of lemon juice in it and sometimes some splenda for fun (and I await the day that they say that splenda is actually death in powder form). Anyway, I noticed on the lemon juice label (and the lime juice one I also have) that it is not a significant source of a variety of things, but was surprised when it included Vitamin C. Wasn’t the whole Limey’s being a reference to the British because of them using lime juice to stave off scurvy. I find it a little worrisome. (Addendum: Apparently the pasteurization destroys it, and it isn’t readded, oh well, best take my vitamin pills)

Despite the first checkpoint having been reached, there are still very many more checkpoints to reach. How many more? Not telling. Especially since I have no clear idea when I will claim success. If there is an absolute value where one goes from being ‘fat’ to not being ‘fat’, probably a little below there before I make the next plan. Motivation? Let’s be upbeat and say it’s so I can fit into a normal-sized-person’s coffin.

2010-02-14

Optimization Problem

Filed under: General — 19day @ 19:41:25

arrow through heart

It’s that time again. Past couple of years I didn’t mark the passing of this particular day, but I feel like it this year as it stings more than usual.

Love is just an optimization problem. Women (or indeed, any group that is looking for good material from another group) are looking for a global maximum. The chances of finding such a thing is hopelessly low, since they themselves are unlikely to be the global maximum for the other person, and that’s if they ever actually meet this person at all. So we seek global maximums, but due to geography and such, we settle for local maximums. I don’t remember much about this kind of math, but I think it bodes very badly for me being a global minimum.

Happy ugly-fat-person shame day to us all.

2010-01-29

Filed under: General — 19day @ 23:32:12

When depressed, I occasionally do impulsive things.  Not usually interesting things, but occasionally I’ll go out and buy something frivolous when usually I’m pretty careful about buying gadgetry or frivolity, other than of course DVD’s.  But what started as a vague idea with no real plan for execution has this week come to fruition.  I’ve bought an elliptical trainer.

Yes, I’ve bought a Life Fitness X7 Elliptical trainer.  It was one of the few that was in a price range I was willing to afford, while being able to stand up to my advanced mass.  After deciding that I would get such a device at all, I made the trek up to my local Fitness Depot.  I had checked their website and found one that had the virtues I wanted while not being too expensive.  However, once I got to the place I was told that the model was not to be found in North America.  As their website only served North America, I found this rather perplexing, especially how other models were listed as sold out, while the one I inquired about was not.  I came back home and wondered where else I could get such a thing, not ever having entertained buying such a device before.  I found a Fitness Source which, as it turned out, was located a stones-throw away from the Fitness Depot, but still a bit of a jaunt to get back in that area from my apartment, having already walked there and back in my futile Fitness Depot attempt.  But I went out again into the cold and found a model that, normally I wouldn’t have been able to afford, but suspiciously was 50% off.  I’m wary of deals since I usually chalk them up to underhandedness.  And that may still be the case, but I decided to go with it and purchased it then and there.

I asked for it to be delivered the following week, and during the intervening weekend had parents up to help me throw out an old desk, sofa-chair and a matching 3-seater sofa which all took up a large amount of space in my apartment.  All I have left in the way of seating is a two-seater sofa, a stool and my computer chair, but as no one comes to my apartment anyway, I thought it was something I could live with.  The delivery men came on the appointed day and assembled the unit in something like 20 minutes.  It takes up rather a bit more space than I thought, but I might be able to reposition some things.


Elliptical

It takes up an inordinate amount of space, we have something in common


I haven’t used it much yet as I have been quite busy over the past couple of days, but hopefully I settle into a routine and eventually am able to rejoin the human race.

2010-01-01

2010: The Year I Lost Contact

Filed under: General — 19day @ 00:01:53

Another christmas come and gone.  Went home, exchanged gifts, the usual thing.  Got my mother a Wii (and Wii Fit) since that’s the first thing she’s actually requested specifically as a gift for quite a long time.

Another year has come and gone.  Reading my previous New Year’s entries over the years, it’s quite a depressing stream.  And I’m sorry to say that not much has changed.. or rather, things have changed, but have only gotten worse.  In fact, the whole decade has been a bit of a write-off for me in a few ways, and I’ve lost quite a lot, more than I realized I had.  Not weight though, heh, far from it.  In fact, records I have from the start of the decade show that I gained almost a whole other person.  And so, my resolutions are the same as they have always been.  As I fear they will always be.

The noughties are over, hopefully I can find a way to move on.  Maybe the tens will be better, but I’m cognizant of the fact that I don’t have many more decades to play around with.

2009-12-15

There are not many anagrams of Book

Filed under: General — 19day @ 02:27:47

This is a little delayed, and violates my usual rule of not talking about work, but as it’s a major change, I’ll go ahead.

So I finally left Infor.  I seemed to me that I might end up there forever, as I was comfortable (in a way) and was settled far longer than may of my friends who came and went.  So I was there, for four and a half years, but finally, through a former collegue, found an exit vector (after a couple of irritating false starts elsewhere).

I’m now, and have been for the past 3 business days, an employee of Kobo.  Kobo, was until very very recently, called Shortcovers, but now we’re off with a new name.  I left a number of friends, and a large amount of domain knowledge behind in this move.  Hopefully I can find some friends and find my bearings sooner rather than later.

Unrelated to this change, but happening at nearly the same time, was my suffering what I consider to be the greatest emotional setback in my life so far.  It’s left me very raw, and very uncertain, and it’s just unfortunate this had to happen so close to the stress of starting a new job.  I won’t go into any details on this aspect of recent events, as, after all, this is “not a journal”.

Maybe one day I’ll make an e-book of my melodramas and sell it, now that’s synergy.

2009-10-30

Hold the Grits

Filed under: General — 19day @ 22:12:52

So on the heels of going off to Cancun for a week, I was shipped off to Greenville, South Carolina for a week for work related stuff. I won’t go into the work stuff, but I did try to spend the rest of the trip like a mini vacation, so I took photos and such.

Just getting there proved to be the most harrowing part of the trip. A colleague and I arrived at Pearson with about an hour and a half before the flight, but by the time we worked out the pre-customs form stuff and got our boarding passes, we had about an hour left.

As we passed through US customs, I guess we didn’t say the right things, as we were shunted off to what I call a Detainment Area, where we were summarily fingerprinted, photographed and made to sit in a room with about 20 or so other people who looked like they weren’t going to be making it to their destinations either. We waited for quite a while, and overheard snatches of other people’s conversations with the agents, things like “we’re denying you entry to the US” and such, which made us think that the trip would be cut very short indeed. However, when it was finally our turn and we explained we were only going for meetings and not to actually work, which would have required a work visa, we were released to continue our journey. We made it through security without any issues (though I grumbles that I had to remove my loaner laptop from the apparently checkpoint-friendly laptop bag, the whole notion of it being checkpoint-friendly was to make it unnecessary to remove it) but when we made it to the gate, the tenders exclaimed “where were you? We’ve been paging.” Basically, we made it in time for the flight time, but normally by then they would have been on the runway about to take off. But we didn’t miss it, they quickly ushered us out of the building to the tarmac and up the staircase next to the plane. That was as new experience for me as well. I always felt it would seem more real to climb stairs into the plane, rather than just walk down the umbilical corridor into the doorway. So it was neat to finally get to do that. However, I feel now that instead of thinking it made it seem more real, I might have been confusing it with making it seem more like the movies.

The flight landed in Cleveland and we immediately disembarked and re-embarked at the same gate, though I’m not sure it was the same plane as the flight attendant was different. In total I think we spent maybe an hour in the air. I mean, by the time we reached cruising altitude, we had just enough time for the drinks trolley to pass before we’d be starting our approach to the destination airport. The company “travel agency” as it were arranged me a seat by myself in an aisle that only has one seat at all. That is, each row of seats is Seat, Aisle, Seat, Seat. So I got to be by myself with my immensity. It wasn’t painful to sit in those seats, but I wouldn’t say it was comfortable either, but I managed.

We stayed in the Hampton Inn, which had large rooms, large bathroom, large bed, it was quite nice, and more expensive than I would have stayed in myself if I were paying for it. Though the bathroom was well stocked with little containers of various products, each time housekeeping had been, things wouldn’t be quite right. For example one time I suddenly didn’t get a new container of shower gel, but instead had two containers of shampoo.

The hotel was right on a river which had, we were told, been beautified over the recent years. Where before it was a refrigerator graveyard, it now had little waterfalls and parks all around it. We walked around there a couple of times, usually on the search for restaurants, though we almost always ended up at the same one. Our favourite spot was a place called Smoke on the Water, and though the food was alright, it was the happy hour and $2 beers that brought us back. On our last night I had four beers, which probably was more beer in that single sitting than I had had over the course of the previous year.

The town, or at least the section we were near, was small, and reminded me of waterloo in the way that it seemed the whole place shut down at around 6. The only places that appeared to be open after leaving the restaurant were other restaurants. Unlike waterloo, the streets were dead too, without even drunken students to avoid. The general Greenville area seemed very large, but quite full of trees. Flying over it when we landed I remarked just how green it was from the sky.

The food was, as I’ve heard from other travellers to the Us, plentiful and inexpensive. At one place we were at twice, Cracker Barrel, our mains would have been quite enough, but we also got to pick 3 side-dishes, and cornbread of biscuits. And it came to 8 USD (which is pretty well 8 CND without dealing with fiddly small change). And most of the places were like that. One thing I noticed about the menu’s is that they would frequently use the word Veg where we would use Side. In that, a menu might say that with your burger you got two Vegs, the selection of them frequently included Macaroni and Cheese, which I found a little odd. And the bread you would get with your meal was frequently corn bread, which was a nice change. The only thing I noticed with drinks is the concept of Ice Tea. At home, it usually tastes like it was made from a sugary powder form. In the US (at least using the 2 sample points of data I have) it appears that if you ask for Ice Tea, you get Iced Tea, quite literally, and it is not sweetened. If you want that, you ask for Sweet Tea, but even then, it’s still more like actual tea, that’s been cooled down, and sweetened.

Everyone we met was reasonably friendly. Perhaps too friendly, as one incident will illustrate. So my colleague brought along his GPS and we relied on it quite heavily. On our way back from the office to the airport for the journey home, we started to drive but didn’t actually have the address of the airport, so we found an empty looking street, pulled off a bit, put on the hazard lights and started going through its database looking for the airport and, once found, for the satellites to find us as it usually took a while for the think to find its marbles. While we were there, a guy drove up behind us, waited for a second, then pulled off as well, and got out of his car. At this point we were a little worried, since this type of thing usually doesn’t go well, so when he approached the car, we lowered the window a bit, and the guy said in a reasonably southern accent “Hi’yall, you fellows okay?” (may not be an exact quote, but it was as disarming). We explained we were just setting up the GPS, thanked him, he wished us well and drove on. Friendly, yes, but we’re from Toronto, where such things are more alarming.

The flights home were mostly uneventful, it was pretty stormy when we made it back so it took a while to land, and I finally made it home to my apartment. I survived the US and all I got was this lousy pair of shoes (actually they are fairly nice shoes, bought because my current ones were failing apart as per the 6-month rule).

Two international trips in one year, I’m quite the jetsetter, thick sarcasm intended.

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