cek.log

Kindl. Kindel. Kindle.

Back before the invention of the printing press my great, great, great grandfather came to the United States from Bavaria. His name was August Kindl.

At Ellis Island the immigration officials added the 'e'...hence my family's name.

We pronounce it Kindl.  Not Kind-el.

Kindl translates to "child" in Bavarian. Those who know me well will find this fitting.

Amazon recently launched their Kindle reading device. Pronounced the same way as my last name. I find that very annoying because I'm constantly thinking people are referring to me but they're not.

I bought a Kindle and have been trying it out for a week. My thoughts:

• Great concept, crappy execution.
• The reading experience is visually great. It really does read well.
• The book buying experience is fantastic. It just works.
• The page flip buttons are the 2nd worst ergonomic design in the history of electronic devices. You cannot pick the device up without accidentally flipping a page, and heaven forbid you accidentally lean on one of the buttons...you'll find yourself several chapters away from where you were with no way of getting back.
• It requires an AC adapter to charge. They should have just done the work to make it capable of charging from USB.  Yes, I know it can trickle charge from USB, but only if it has some charge left.  I know this because I have lost my Kindle charger.  I was able to craft a new one out of an old wall wart I had lying around and a trip to Radio Shack.

I'm taking the Kindl to Hawaii for almost 2 weeks. Normally I take a stack of 5 or 6 books to Hawaii, but this time I'm forcing myself just to bring the Kindl.  We'll see how it does on the beach with sand and all...

Kindle means "burn".  I hope this kindl doesn't forget sunscreen and kindle his skin while on the beach reading his Kindle.

Book Review: Halting State

This was my first Kindle book. That's right Charlie Kindel bought a Kindle. I have to say it's getting annoying having everyone saying my name...

Here's my quick review of Halting State by Charles Stross...

The big idea is an interesting one: the future world where MMORPG gaming becomes so ubiquitous that the following happens

1. Humans participate everywhere because their mobiles are powerful enough to get them in the game.  Gesture based control with head's-up-displays via eyeglasses.
2. The Man uses MMORPGs not only to spy on the public, but to manipulate (and train) them.
3. Crimes committed in the virtual realty of a MMORPG can be serious enough to jeopardize national security, and result in murder.

As a person formerly addicted to Asheron's Crack I'm a believer that all the above will come true.  Mr. Stross does a fair job of showing us what it may look like.

I found the Scottish accents distracting and was disappointed with the ending. I won't spoil it for you, but I just expected more, given how the story built up.

If you are into hard Sci-Fi, and want a slightly different perspective of what society may be in like in 10 or so years, I'd recommend Halting State.

Windows Home Server is actually useful!

Today, instead of being the GM for Windows Home Server, I was simply a user...

For the last two weeks my wife has been giving me the gears because the voicemail attachements from Vonage refused to play in Outlook on her computer.

It was one of those weird software problems that defied logic.  All other types of attachments opened fine. I could send her an email with a .wav file attached and it would play fine.  Opening her mailbox on another PC worked great. But the .wav files from Vonage refused to work on her computer.

I uninstalled Office and re-isntalled it.  No joy.

"Ahhh...", I said to myself, "why am I wasting my time on this when I have this product running in my house that is supposed to save time?".  Duh.

So I booted her computer from the Windows Home Server Restore CD, choose a backup from just over two weeks ago, and went and put the lights on the Christmas tree.

About 40 minutes later I went back in the Kitchen and the process was done and I exited the wizard. Her machine booted, I fired up Outlook and played one of those .wav file attachments just fine.

Talk about holiday joy! :-)

-cek