Andrew Huey | pointlessly blogging since 2001
According to a variety of sources (including the NYT), there will likely be a new Kindle model released on Feb. 9. I’m pretty happy with the current Kindle, but I’m curious to see what the new model looks like (assuming that’s actually what Amazon is announcing on 2/9).
It doesn’t look like they’ve got any really revolutionary advances in E-Ink technology ready, and that’s the area where they could really make a difference in the hardware.
I posted a couple of weeks back that I would likely pick up David Allen’s new book, Making It All Work, whenever the Kindle version dropped to $9.99. Well, it just did, so I bought it today. I just just thinking that our new president could probably use a bit of organizational help from David Allen. He’s got such an ambitious agenda, and in such a challenging environment, that I really think he should put a personal productivity guru of some sort on his staff. (Who knows, maybe he already has one.)
I’m not sure when I’ll actually get around to reading this book, though. I’m in the middle of a Doctor Who novel right now, plus I just started reading 1776, and I have John Adams on the Kindle too. Plus a boatload of SF and fantasy novels, both dead-tree and Kindle format, waiting to be read.
The Brave and the Bold is turning out to be a really fun show. It’s nothing like the classic B:TAS, but it’s great in its own way. The next episode will have Wil Wheaton playing Ted Cord!
Don’t you hate it when you randomly come across a really good band, and check their web site, only to find out that they played a show in NYC just two days ago, and now probably won’t be back any time soon? Yeah.
Only a few days after upgrading 200+ songs to iTunes Plus, I went back again today, and found another almost 200 songs to upgrade. The biggest chunk there is the complete Led Zeppelin, which I bought for $99 a while ago, and will now cost me about $30 more to upgrade. I’ve noticed that the songs are downloading pretty quickly, but the bit where it says “processing file” right after the download is taking quite a long time on each song. I have no clue why that is, but whatever it is, it’s going to take a long time to get all that Led Zep converted to iTunes Plus.
I finally got around to installing an XP virtual machine under Virtual PC on my VIsta desktop PC. This is one of the last things I need to do before wiping out the XP install on that machine, which I’m currently running in dual-boot mode.
I discovered one odd thing while setting this up. If you install XP with SP1 under VPC on Vista, the VPC additions won’t quite work right until you upgrade the virtual machine to SP2. Just a little hint, in case anyone else runs across this problem.
I’m currently letting the XP VM upgrade itself to SP3 via WIndows Update. Boy, that’s taking a long time!
I spent a little over $50 yesterday upgrading my iTunes library to the DRM-free iTunes Plus. I had 219 songs upgraded. I feel a bit like a chump for paying Apple so much money just to get DRM-free, slightly higher bitrate, versions of stuff I’ve already paid for. But it’s a one-time thing, and I like the idea of having the DRM-free tracks. In practice, I don’t think it’s going to make much difference though. I listen to my music primarily on my iPod, or through my CD player, so the DRM never got in my way.
It took a surprisingly long time to download all the new tracks. I had to quit the download last night, so I could turn off the computer and go to bed. I picked it up again this morning, and I think it ran for a few hours at least. It was still running when I left for work, so I’m not sure. The download process does an OK job of replacing the old tracks with the new ones, but it didn’t move all the old tracks out of the way like it should have. I had to go in and clean out about 50 tracks manually.
I wish Apple would have come up with a good way of automating the replacement of the old tracks on a second computer, though. To get the new tracks from my desktop to my laptop, I had to attach to the desktop, put together a “smart folder” to pull the new tracks together, copy them to the laptop, move them into the library, then delete the old versions manually for *all* the tracks. That was a bit of a pain. And there’s no way to fix existing playlists, to replace the old tracks with the new ones, so now I have a bunch of empty, or nearly empty, playlists. Well, it was probably time I cleaned up some of my old playlists anyway.
Here are a few random lists, of books & comics I read, and movies I saw, in 2008. I don’t suppose I have any good reason for posting these. I was just kind of bored with the Rose Bowl, so I started making lists. I’m not bothering to list anything I read or saw, but didn’t really enjoy, so you can assume that all these books/comics/movies are recommended to anyone who might have tastes similar to my own.
books I read in 2008:
1. Well of Lost Plots – Jasper Fforde
2. The Millionaires – Brad Meltzer
3. Zero Game – Meltzer
4. Areas of my Expertise – John Hodgman
5. Something Rotten – Fforde
6. Diamond Age – Neal Stephenson
7. Interesting Times – Terry Pratchett
8. The Last Lecture – Randy Pausch
9. Idea Mapping – Jamie Nast
10. Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay – Michael Chabon
11. Old Man’s War – John Scalzi
12. Death Masks – Jim Butcher
13. Bood Rites – Butcher
14. With No One as Witness – Elizabeth George
15. Certain Justice – P. D. James
16. A Taste for Death – James
17. Spirit House – Christopher G. Moore
18. Tales of Beedle the Bard – J K Rowling
some comics I read:
1. Coraline – Neil Gaiman / P Craig Russell
2. 21 Down – Gray / Palmiotti / Saiz
3. Teen Titans: Titans Around the World
4. Shadowpact
5. Fell – Warren Ellis / Ben Templesmith
6. a bunch of Hellboy and BPRD comics
7. Invincible (Vol 1-4, I think)
8. Kid Eternity – Grant Morrison / Duncan Fegredo
9. Challengers of the Unknown – Loeb / Sale
movies i remember seeing:
1. There Will Be Blood
2. Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
3. Stargate: Ark of Truth
4. Stargate: Continuum
5. Battlestar Galactica: Razor
6. Dark Knight
7. Hellboy 2
8. Iron Man
9. X-Files: I Want to Believe
10. Batman: Gotham Knight
11. Wall-E
12. Gone Baby Gone
13. No Country for Old Men
According to this article by Karl Rove, President Bush read 40 books in 2008, 51 in 2007, and 95 in 2006. Pretty impressive, assuming these numbers are correct, and that Bush actually understood what he was reading. There are a couple of reactions (here and here) to this article on the Huffington Post site that express a certain amount of doubt as to Rove’s motivies in writing this piece, and the likelihood that Bush actually did read and understand all of these books. As for myself, I’ve been keeping a list of all the books I’ve read this year. I finished 17 books in 2008, mostly novels.
Happy New Year! I’ve been hearing some good things about the Zune over the last year or so, but now, Microsoft reminds everyone why they shouldn’t be trusted with making consumer electronics devices. Guys, it’s not like leap year logic is difficult to figure out or anything! Did they just think the product wouldn’t last until 1/1/09, so they didn’t bother with it?
