Reading is [mostly] fun. I like to read. I've liked reading before I liked writing, and even before I started on my music journey on the 笛子. I've read when I was hungry for new-fangled scientific facts; I've read when I was hungry for a bit of someone else's life explored and unfolded before my eyes. I've read when I was sad; I've read when I was happy. I've read when there was nothing to do; I've read when I needed to get some things done fast. I've read in the day; I've read in the night. I've read when the books were the yellowing pulp paper; I've read when the books are in glossy magazine paper [that weighs a ton]. I've read when I could get hold of my first e-ink reader, my first tablet, and my first vertically mounted monitor. In short, I like reading.
Did I mention that I like reading? I kinda forgot if I did so.
There are many reasons to read---read my first paragraph for some of the obvious ones. But there are more philosophical reasons as well. The thing is, for almost all of us, this mortal life is all we are going to get. Yes, there's life after death for the believers, but that life is different and is at best alluded to allegorically in scripture, and for the most part the metaphors put forth indicate that the after-life is not at all similar to the mortal one. Parenthesis aside, we all ``get'' this ``one'' mortal life. There is only a fixed amount of time per person, and that's all we are going to get, even with the best life-prolonging technology we have [so far]. This limits us to what we can actually viscerally experience on our own.
Now, humanity did not become the dominant life form of earth just relying on the individual visceral experience---this is no different from all other life forms, and look at where they are: they do not have the same planetary-scale modification powers the way we do. No. Humanity accelerates their mastery of the world through ``cheating''---we propagate information (and thus knowledge) at a much higher rate than any other life form that we know. An owl in a county may learn that certain obstacles may be traversed in a certain way, and it can only teach its children about it, while Dr Scientist who discovered a new fundamental law of nature can immediately disseminate that discovery to the thousands of other scientists (present and future) who are eager to learn about it through a published letter or paper.
Information communication technology (ICT) is useless if all we are good at is the transmission of information; an equally important part of ICT is the ability to read (and understand) the bloody thing. And this trick over the rest of our animal kingdom compatriots is what allows a single puny mortal human to accumulate the knowledge and wisdom of thousands of lives past, present, and future [speculative] with only one life time.
Reading is critically important from a personal development perspective too. Recall that I mentioned how reading allows one to accumulate the knowledge and wisdom of thousands of other lives? That's how we ought to learn, to avoid mistakes that had been made by generations past so that we make new mistakes while exploring the thought boundaries so that future generations can learn from us. But there is a catch though---reading about an experience should be considered as a guide of what someone had tried and what happened to them, and is not exactly the same as experiencing it for oneself. This does not contradict the usefulness though, since knowing about a possible outcome from a particular choice of action can be useful too, assuming that one has also developed the capability to think critically about what one has read.
But back to my liking of reading. I like reading; I wonder if I had mentioned that before. Someone once said that reading was like a temporary coma induced by staring at abstract symbols upon a dead tree, and in a completely mechanistic observation sort of way, they are right. But I don't see that as a negative---in fact, it is probably a good thing, since it reduces the amount of physical space that a person might need, since that same person, when reading, can just literally sit in one [small] cosy spot for a period of time. Compare that activity against the mountaineer who needs to climb a mountain to feel happy, or a runner who gets sick of the stupid indoor treadmill.
In short, reading is the perfect pandemic activity to partake in, and guess what, we are in the middle of a bloody pandemic now. And so, I have been reading as much as I can. Unfortunately though, the books that I have been getting involved in are starting to get longer and longer, especially for the really technical texts---these buggers have started to number around the kilo-pages order of magnitude. So it is easy to get tired of them.
I mean, reading technical texts now is so different from reading technical texts when I was just eleven. Back then, even the puny O-level physics text was considered sufficiently technical for reading. Now, I can't even read the O-level physics text with a straight-face---not because I'm smarter, but because the concepts have lost their novelty and have largely been internalised already. So to get the same ``high'' from reading, I end up pursuing either the basic texts for college-level disciplines that I'm not a specialist in (hello Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine (20th Edition)!), or advanced texts for disciplines that I have a vested interest in.
And these texts are long.
It's the same for fiction too. Enid Blyton was a loved author back when I was still in primary school, as was the Hardy Boys series. But nowadays, the fiction seems to need to get longer for the right kick? Actually, I'm not so certain about that last point I made: just viewing the latest read items (items 799--718) of my read-list has revealed that I've not really being dealing with much fiction. I mean, I am actively working through the Animorphs series (total estimated pages: 3.6k+), but that's only one fiction series weighed against the plurality of non-fiction works.
🤷♂️
It doesn't matter too much though. The key point is that I am still reading. I think that I will never stop reading as long as I am able to.
And I recommend that anyone who happens upon this blog post to consider picking up reading as a low physical impact but high mental impact past time. It can literally make one more aware of what the world is like without necessarily having to leave one's door step.
And that's about it for now. Till the next update.
Showing posts with label eirian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eirian. Show all posts
Thursday, May 27, 2021
Thursday, February 02, 2017
Goodbye Eirian-III
I've had Eirian-III for quite a while now, and it is with great sadness that I'll have to retire this tablet.
I've had Eirian-III since January 2013, and she had always been my go-to for any of the coloured stuff and comics. Each time I travelled, it was Eirian-III that I lugged along instead of Edythe, Elyse or Eileen. Much good times were had.
But today, it was deemed the day where Eirian-III has to be retired. Her battery wouldn't charge, and upon closer examination, was already swelling up, a sign that things weren't going well.
And so, retired she shall be.
I'll always remember the times that Eirian-III had provided me with much needed entertainment that cannot be gleaned from the ``pure'' e-ink readers that her sisters were (Eirian, Eirian-II and Eirian-IV). Much fun was had watching Twitch streams on her as well. And geocaching with tools running on her, including oversized maps that make it easy to look ahead.
It will all be consigned to the past now.
Will I get a replacement for Eirian-III? I don't know, and I don't really think so. While great, Eirian-III has never been my standard workhorse---she ran stock Google Android with all its... flaws. Her coloured LCD was great for comics, but I'm no rabid comic devourer. She did follow me through great works like Neil Gaiman's Sandman, One Thousand Nights and A Night, Watchmen and V for Vendetta, not to mention my own compendium of web comics for easy reading. But are those enough reasons to consider getting a replacement? I don't think so.
So to my faithful device, thank you for your service, and thank you for your patience with a fool like me. Your absence will be felt in time to come.
I've had Eirian-III since January 2013, and she had always been my go-to for any of the coloured stuff and comics. Each time I travelled, it was Eirian-III that I lugged along instead of Edythe, Elyse or Eileen. Much good times were had.
But today, it was deemed the day where Eirian-III has to be retired. Her battery wouldn't charge, and upon closer examination, was already swelling up, a sign that things weren't going well.
And so, retired she shall be.
I'll always remember the times that Eirian-III had provided me with much needed entertainment that cannot be gleaned from the ``pure'' e-ink readers that her sisters were (Eirian, Eirian-II and Eirian-IV). Much fun was had watching Twitch streams on her as well. And geocaching with tools running on her, including oversized maps that make it easy to look ahead.
It will all be consigned to the past now.
Will I get a replacement for Eirian-III? I don't know, and I don't really think so. While great, Eirian-III has never been my standard workhorse---she ran stock Google Android with all its... flaws. Her coloured LCD was great for comics, but I'm no rabid comic devourer. She did follow me through great works like Neil Gaiman's Sandman, One Thousand Nights and A Night, Watchmen and V for Vendetta, not to mention my own compendium of web comics for easy reading. But are those enough reasons to consider getting a replacement? I don't think so.
So to my faithful device, thank you for your service, and thank you for your patience with a fool like me. Your absence will be felt in time to come.
Sunday, May 01, 2016
May-Jan
It is now May.
I wanted to write something before, but could never convince myself that there was something substantial enough to warrant the effort needed to write a post like this one.
Long time readers might have realised that I hadn't written the customary rant that occurs whenever the annual ``celebration'' of my birth rolls around. It isn't so much as me deliberately forgetting to write anything, but that I was actually waiting for something to happen before I wrote anything. The said thing happened a couple of weeks ago, but I couldn't bring myself to write anything until now.
So, as per normal, I used the birthday celebration as an excuse to buy myself some cool stuff. One of them is a brand-new Kindle Voyage reader with the origami cover, nicknamed ``Eirian-IV''. She's a compact replacement of Eirian-II, whom was actually replaced with Eirian-III, my Nexus 10 tablet. The thing is, I've always liked to do my heaviest text-reading over e-ink, but as noted before, Eirian-II was fast fading away. I had used Eirian-III for a while, but the brightness that comes from staring at an LCD display was starting to annoy me. What convinced me to get the Kindle Voyage was the stupendous resolution. At 300ppi, it rivals that of the Nexus 10 (also around 300ppi), is more than 4× better than the Kindle DX (~150ppi---we're looking at area here), and has an amazing battery life. That high resolution made the 6-inch form factor tolerable, and so I got one. Eirian-IV is thus procured and is now part of my daily carry.
I got Eirian-IV a couple of months or so before my actual birthday, but didn't really write anything about her till now.
The main thing why it took me so long to write this was my Grenaditte bass flute, or Mio. An order for Mio was placed a while back, but due to a variety of reasons (some staff changes, Chinese New Year, probable company restructuring etc) it took GUO nearly 3 months before they delivered it to the shop. And when Mio finally arrived, I was right in the middle of my annual trip to the US to meet up and hang out with friends, as well as to go walk around to find geocaches.
It is of no secret that I am starting to explore the lower extremes of sound generation. I have been quite decent with messing around with the really high-pitched stuff (see also my picc, the new Garklein recorder that I got during my US trip, which superceded the sopranino recorder that I had since my days at UIUC), failing only with the highest of the high notes, i.e. everything from A7 and higher. But there is only that much one can go with the high pitched notes---they tend to get a little too annoying on the ears (anything at around 1kHz does that, and when it gets to 4kHz it gets stupid worse---try listening to the screams of a toddler for an idea on how annoying it gets). It may be super impressive and fun, but as I mentioned, it gets annoying. Now the lower extreme, that's not as well explored as that of the middle and high range. Partly because of the skill and resources required. Small instruments need some level of skill to construct, and a relatively iron will to actually play it. but larger instruments require quite a bit of actual material to build, and a fair bit of physiological conditioning to even make a sound out of it, let alone play it well. They also tend to sound way more pleasing to the ear, and in the grand scale (hur hur) of things, more octaves of them for playing with than the high stuff (around 5 octaves of low notes versus the commonly used 3 for the high ones).
So yes, a bass flute. The cheapest metal bass flute costs nearly USD10k, and weigh practically a ton (more like 2kg or so). Mio is made of Grenaditte, the same material as my picc, and weighs less, nearer 1.5kg. She also costs around half the price of the cheapest metal bass flute, while still sounding pretty solid for the price point. In short, a real steal. Of course she can't beat the well-crafted professional silver bass flute, but she is definitely a cost effective way to explore the beginning of the lower reaches of the flute family. In comparison, the standard ``bass'' dizi is only at the range of an alto flute, not counting the scary weird 巨笛 (or ``giant dizi'') that spans nearly 3m in length.
Waiting for Mio was the reason why I didn't write this post any earlier.
The more astute among you will know why my Grenaditte bass flute is called Mio. I shall end on this note for now. Till the next update.
I wanted to write something before, but could never convince myself that there was something substantial enough to warrant the effort needed to write a post like this one.
Long time readers might have realised that I hadn't written the customary rant that occurs whenever the annual ``celebration'' of my birth rolls around. It isn't so much as me deliberately forgetting to write anything, but that I was actually waiting for something to happen before I wrote anything. The said thing happened a couple of weeks ago, but I couldn't bring myself to write anything until now.
So, as per normal, I used the birthday celebration as an excuse to buy myself some cool stuff. One of them is a brand-new Kindle Voyage reader with the origami cover, nicknamed ``Eirian-IV''. She's a compact replacement of Eirian-II, whom was actually replaced with Eirian-III, my Nexus 10 tablet. The thing is, I've always liked to do my heaviest text-reading over e-ink, but as noted before, Eirian-II was fast fading away. I had used Eirian-III for a while, but the brightness that comes from staring at an LCD display was starting to annoy me. What convinced me to get the Kindle Voyage was the stupendous resolution. At 300ppi, it rivals that of the Nexus 10 (also around 300ppi), is more than 4× better than the Kindle DX (~150ppi---we're looking at area here), and has an amazing battery life. That high resolution made the 6-inch form factor tolerable, and so I got one. Eirian-IV is thus procured and is now part of my daily carry.
I got Eirian-IV a couple of months or so before my actual birthday, but didn't really write anything about her till now.
The main thing why it took me so long to write this was my Grenaditte bass flute, or Mio. An order for Mio was placed a while back, but due to a variety of reasons (some staff changes, Chinese New Year, probable company restructuring etc) it took GUO nearly 3 months before they delivered it to the shop. And when Mio finally arrived, I was right in the middle of my annual trip to the US to meet up and hang out with friends, as well as to go walk around to find geocaches.
It is of no secret that I am starting to explore the lower extremes of sound generation. I have been quite decent with messing around with the really high-pitched stuff (see also my picc, the new Garklein recorder that I got during my US trip, which superceded the sopranino recorder that I had since my days at UIUC), failing only with the highest of the high notes, i.e. everything from A7 and higher. But there is only that much one can go with the high pitched notes---they tend to get a little too annoying on the ears (anything at around 1kHz does that, and when it gets to 4kHz it gets stupid worse---try listening to the screams of a toddler for an idea on how annoying it gets). It may be super impressive and fun, but as I mentioned, it gets annoying. Now the lower extreme, that's not as well explored as that of the middle and high range. Partly because of the skill and resources required. Small instruments need some level of skill to construct, and a relatively iron will to actually play it. but larger instruments require quite a bit of actual material to build, and a fair bit of physiological conditioning to even make a sound out of it, let alone play it well. They also tend to sound way more pleasing to the ear, and in the grand scale (hur hur) of things, more octaves of them for playing with than the high stuff (around 5 octaves of low notes versus the commonly used 3 for the high ones).
So yes, a bass flute. The cheapest metal bass flute costs nearly USD10k, and weigh practically a ton (more like 2kg or so). Mio is made of Grenaditte, the same material as my picc, and weighs less, nearer 1.5kg. She also costs around half the price of the cheapest metal bass flute, while still sounding pretty solid for the price point. In short, a real steal. Of course she can't beat the well-crafted professional silver bass flute, but she is definitely a cost effective way to explore the beginning of the lower reaches of the flute family. In comparison, the standard ``bass'' dizi is only at the range of an alto flute, not counting the scary weird 巨笛 (or ``giant dizi'') that spans nearly 3m in length.
Waiting for Mio was the reason why I didn't write this post any earlier.
The more astute among you will know why my Grenaditte bass flute is called Mio. I shall end on this note for now. Till the next update.
Monday, January 28, 2013
Birth Anniversary Aftermath Report
It has been roughly a week since the anniversary of my birth and there is of course much rejoicing at a most private level. I suppose I should write a little about what happened and what-not because I promised it earlier in my thank-you note to all the people who had an impact on my life.
Prior to everything happening, I had decided to get myself a gift as per tradition. People who have known me for at least the last couple of years would realise that I'm a big fan of the e-ink readers, preferably something that is bigger than the puny 6-inch form factor. Eirian II was a recent replacement for Eirian who had aged over the course of the years. In general, I'm not a big fan of tablet form-factors that are not e-ink for several reasons: discomfort in reading under either bright or dark conditions, low battery life and most importantly, lousy resolution. So when I realised that the Nexus 10 existed with a whopping 2560×1600 resolution, I knew it was time to plonk some hard-earned money down to get a tablet for myself, not to replace Eirian II but to support her with a coloured high resolution sibling for things that are not as readable on e-ink displays. An example of such files are comics or graphic novels---the colour that is used doesn't look that good when we strip out the hue and saturation information. Here's a quick picture of the Nexus 10:
Lovely isn't she? The character that is gracing the wallpaper of my Nexus 10 is Death of the Endless, one the loveliest and pragmatic personifications of Death I've ever seen, prompting the joke of ``Yeah, I stare at Death every day on my screens''.
While I have named almost every device I own, somehow I can't bring myself to naming the Nexus 10 (or even my Google Nexus phone either). I'm not sure why---maybe I see these devices as tools more than friends per se, which is weird. Maybe I need to devise a new naming scheme for such tools, I mean, even my Neo has a name (Eiko). I can't call the Nexus 10 ``Eirian III'' simply because it's not a replacement but a sibling. This will prove tricky...
I can't remember how many years it has been since I've kept my birth date hidden on the Facebook. One thing is for certain though: only those who truly care truly remember. Folks like RX, Cui, Victor, JW and YT (and my mother of course) who gave me their best wishes on this day of rememberance. This gives me a fuzzier feeling than having half of the people on my Facebook ``friend list'' spamming my wall with two-word and three-word posts. YT even sent me a nice box of Singapore-styled curry spices, which gives me a strong incentive to actually get potatoes and chicken from the supermarket the next time I go grocery shopping---curry in the US tends to be watery and lacking in the right kind of ``kick''.
It's not that the curry here sucks, it's just that it is dominated by the Thai-styled and American-styled curries. It's hard to find something more of a cross between South East Asian and Chinese cooking that is so predominant in Singapore.
But those are of course the physical gifts that I received. There are other more interesting things that happened. John treated me to a dinner at Tang Dynasty restaurant in Urbana without knowing which day my birthday was (he only knew the month, which was of course my intention overall). The food there was decent but not fantastic, and we both agreed that it was definitely one of those places that we should just try once to have said that we have been there and then find cheaper places for food. =P
On the actual day itself, I had actually arranged with Janet to have dinner at Alexander's Steakhouse, a family-style restaurant-grill-bar north east of campus in Champaign. Ever since Cedar brought me there to eat about a year or so back, I've fallen in love with the thick slabs of steak that they had to offer, and wanted to go there to eat once again. Janet had a car and so it was an easy enough appointment to set up. Well, of course I neglected to inform her that it was my birthday; I don't reveal things like that because it generally makes people feel all uncomfortable and compelled to do strange things like agonising about gifts and what-not---I'm more interested in the company than what gift they are getting. Anyway, we had an enjoyable dinner at Alexander's, and Janet was amazed/confused/shocked that it was my birthday, and that I could finish up the 20 oz steak and that she could finish her 16 oz steak and still walk after the fact. Easily the best dinner I've had in a while. =)
For some reason, I just enjoy food. For the rest of the week, I ended up eating sashimi and sushi at different places (oh my poor poor wallet) and had an enjoyable extended celebration of my birthday, without drawing too much attention from people. Life is good that way.
And now, a new week begins, and we are back to the regular schedule of life. Till the next update.
Prior to everything happening, I had decided to get myself a gift as per tradition. People who have known me for at least the last couple of years would realise that I'm a big fan of the e-ink readers, preferably something that is bigger than the puny 6-inch form factor. Eirian II was a recent replacement for Eirian who had aged over the course of the years. In general, I'm not a big fan of tablet form-factors that are not e-ink for several reasons: discomfort in reading under either bright or dark conditions, low battery life and most importantly, lousy resolution. So when I realised that the Nexus 10 existed with a whopping 2560×1600 resolution, I knew it was time to plonk some hard-earned money down to get a tablet for myself, not to replace Eirian II but to support her with a coloured high resolution sibling for things that are not as readable on e-ink displays. An example of such files are comics or graphic novels---the colour that is used doesn't look that good when we strip out the hue and saturation information. Here's a quick picture of the Nexus 10:
While I have named almost every device I own, somehow I can't bring myself to naming the Nexus 10 (or even my Google Nexus phone either). I'm not sure why---maybe I see these devices as tools more than friends per se, which is weird. Maybe I need to devise a new naming scheme for such tools, I mean, even my Neo has a name (Eiko). I can't call the Nexus 10 ``Eirian III'' simply because it's not a replacement but a sibling. This will prove tricky...
I can't remember how many years it has been since I've kept my birth date hidden on the Facebook. One thing is for certain though: only those who truly care truly remember. Folks like RX, Cui, Victor, JW and YT (and my mother of course) who gave me their best wishes on this day of rememberance. This gives me a fuzzier feeling than having half of the people on my Facebook ``friend list'' spamming my wall with two-word and three-word posts. YT even sent me a nice box of Singapore-styled curry spices, which gives me a strong incentive to actually get potatoes and chicken from the supermarket the next time I go grocery shopping---curry in the US tends to be watery and lacking in the right kind of ``kick''.
But those are of course the physical gifts that I received. There are other more interesting things that happened. John treated me to a dinner at Tang Dynasty restaurant in Urbana without knowing which day my birthday was (he only knew the month, which was of course my intention overall). The food there was decent but not fantastic, and we both agreed that it was definitely one of those places that we should just try once to have said that we have been there and then find cheaper places for food. =P
On the actual day itself, I had actually arranged with Janet to have dinner at Alexander's Steakhouse, a family-style restaurant-grill-bar north east of campus in Champaign. Ever since Cedar brought me there to eat about a year or so back, I've fallen in love with the thick slabs of steak that they had to offer, and wanted to go there to eat once again. Janet had a car and so it was an easy enough appointment to set up. Well, of course I neglected to inform her that it was my birthday; I don't reveal things like that because it generally makes people feel all uncomfortable and compelled to do strange things like agonising about gifts and what-not---I'm more interested in the company than what gift they are getting. Anyway, we had an enjoyable dinner at Alexander's, and Janet was amazed/confused/shocked that it was my birthday, and that I could finish up the 20 oz steak and that she could finish her 16 oz steak and still walk after the fact. Easily the best dinner I've had in a while. =)
For some reason, I just enjoy food. For the rest of the week, I ended up eating sashimi and sushi at different places (oh my poor poor wallet) and had an enjoyable extended celebration of my birthday, without drawing too much attention from people. Life is good that way.
And now, a new week begins, and we are back to the regular schedule of life. Till the next update.
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Firmware Upgrade + News Anchors Gone Wild
In other news, Eirian just had a firmware upgrade. The interface is improved, the battery management modules are in place, and there's a whole bunch of useful shortcuts available to work with to avoid having to select things too many times.
And now for something different:
And now for something different:
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
ImageMagick
ImageMagick is a very useful command line program that can be used to do batch processing of graphics. Here's a useful incantation:
convert input-files -colorspace Gray -depth 4 output-file
Note that this allows the creation of a pdf of images. Interesting for converting comics into a pdf that Eirian can read.
Alright, I'm done with writing. Back to converting comic piles.
convert input-files -colorspace Gray -depth 4 output-file
Note that this allows the creation of a pdf of images. Interesting for converting comics into a pdf that Eirian can read.
Alright, I'm done with writing. Back to converting comic piles.
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
Eirian and Other Diversions
Yeah... it has been a couple of days since I last wrote anything here. Not that I'm skiving or anything, but the fact remains that there is so much to be done over the last few days that it was really hard to be able to sit down and do a little introspection and wonder about other interesting things that have occurred.
The first interesting thing over the last few days was that the official record temperature that I went out without a jacket is now -2 degrees Celsius (with windchill). It wasn't that bad, actually, considering that by now most of my body is literally immune to cold. The important thing about how to actually survive something like this is to have good quality cloth that is non-porous---this will prevent the wind from slicing through the material and freezing oneself.
The second interesting thing to have occurred was the utter vote stuffing for The Glass Is.... It started off with being ``half-empty'' trailing at about 64.5 million votes (a travesty if you ask me, since most of the world is supposed to be rather un-optimistic), but with the combined efforts of my room mate and I, we managed to raise it to about 66 million votes, and with the help of other members of the Internet, we managed to push it past the ``half-full'' vote count. Here's a screen capture from my room mate's computer at that fateful moment:
And now we are just making sure that we preserve the lead to show that the world is not really that optimistic after all.
The third interesting thing to have occurred is the arrival of my Continued Fractions book. As at now, here's a list of things that I want to do over Winter break:
Alright, back to the final grindstone for this semester. Till next time.
The first interesting thing over the last few days was that the official record temperature that I went out without a jacket is now -2 degrees Celsius (with windchill). It wasn't that bad, actually, considering that by now most of my body is literally immune to cold. The important thing about how to actually survive something like this is to have good quality cloth that is non-porous---this will prevent the wind from slicing through the material and freezing oneself.
The second interesting thing to have occurred was the utter vote stuffing for The Glass Is.... It started off with being ``half-empty'' trailing at about 64.5 million votes (a travesty if you ask me, since most of the world is supposed to be rather un-optimistic), but with the combined efforts of my room mate and I, we managed to raise it to about 66 million votes, and with the help of other members of the Internet, we managed to push it past the ``half-full'' vote count. Here's a screen capture from my room mate's computer at that fateful moment:
And now we are just making sure that we preserve the lead to show that the world is not really that optimistic after all.The third interesting thing to have occurred is the arrival of my Continued Fractions book. As at now, here's a list of things that I want to do over Winter break:
- Forth in assembly
- Continued Fractions library prototype in Python 3.0
- Study for GRE
- Building applications/kernel for Eirian
Alright, back to the final grindstone for this semester. Till next time.
Friday, November 28, 2008
iRex Digital Reader 1000S---Arrived!
Without much fanfare, my iRex Digital Reader has arrived. Check it out:
The text is pretty sharp in spite of having only 16-levels of grayness---this is due to the rather high resolution of the device (1280×1024 spread over (roughly) 8inches by 6inches). The response to input is relatively spiffy, which is good, except for a few cases where the page size was ridiculously large in storage space due to the insertion of images that were scanned at high resolutions.
I'm quite happy with this device---being able to read is always a joy, and now that I have something that is as funky as this, it is even more fun than before. I will take my Digital Reader for a spin, and then talk more about it when I have the chance.
Till next time...
The text is pretty sharp in spite of having only 16-levels of grayness---this is due to the rather high resolution of the device (1280×1024 spread over (roughly) 8inches by 6inches). The response to input is relatively spiffy, which is good, except for a few cases where the page size was ridiculously large in storage space due to the insertion of images that were scanned at high resolutions.I'm quite happy with this device---being able to read is always a joy, and now that I have something that is as funky as this, it is even more fun than before. I will take my Digital Reader for a spin, and then talk more about it when I have the chance.
Till next time...
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Waiting...
And so begins a three-day lull period, except for the fact that it is not technically lull, since I actually have to do non-trivial stuff, like for instance, my research and research paper, as well as the final term paper for the Chinese language and culture class that I am taking. Hopefully, my order for the iREX DR1000S will actually come in today to help relieve an otherwise terrible week.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
iRex Digital Reader 1000S
If you knew me well enough, you'd know that I'm a sucker for reading. While I like that PDF documents are so prevalent these days, and that most computers can read them with relative ease if one stays away from the overly bloated ``official'' reader, I'm still not happy with the fact that the only way to read these documents is through a computer screen that is largely placed in landscape format.
I mean, come on. The screens have such high resolutions, surely we can just rotate the screen to put it into the portrait format that is characteristic of most typed documents?
Well, no. Only a few screens do that.
For a while, I've been looking at having an e-book reader. The current offerings by the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader are inadequate for me---I'm reading academic papers not ``New York Times bestsellers''. Their ridiculously small screens are completely useless when trying to read technical papers which are almost always stored in Letter or A4 format (the readers mentioned deal with sizes of roughly A6).
But then I found the iRex Digital Reader 1000S. With a diagonal of 10.2 inches, a resolution of 1280×1024 (effectively having a reading area of 6 inches by 8 inches), I knew I have found what I wanted. Not to mention the use of Wacom's amazing pressure-sensitive digital writing instruments---annotation should be quite an interesting occurrence.
Needless to say, I put my money where my mouth is and placed an order for it. Let's see if it lives up to its claims when it finally arrives.
I mean, come on. The screens have such high resolutions, surely we can just rotate the screen to put it into the portrait format that is characteristic of most typed documents?
Well, no. Only a few screens do that.
For a while, I've been looking at having an e-book reader. The current offerings by the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader are inadequate for me---I'm reading academic papers not ``New York Times bestsellers''. Their ridiculously small screens are completely useless when trying to read technical papers which are almost always stored in Letter or A4 format (the readers mentioned deal with sizes of roughly A6).
But then I found the iRex Digital Reader 1000S. With a diagonal of 10.2 inches, a resolution of 1280×1024 (effectively having a reading area of 6 inches by 8 inches), I knew I have found what I wanted. Not to mention the use of Wacom's amazing pressure-sensitive digital writing instruments---annotation should be quite an interesting occurrence.
Needless to say, I put my money where my mouth is and placed an order for it. Let's see if it lives up to its claims when it finally arrives.
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