Kian Ryan (.NET, Android, Geekery)

A few days ago (17th November … cough), I picked up a new toy, a Kobo Touch E-Reader.  I made a tweet along the lines of…

Look, it’s an EBook reader that’s not a kindle! It is, rather good. Review in a day or so.

In my defence, I have been testing the device thoroughly.  So thoroughly, I’ve clocked 41 hours reading time on it and around six books.  If you don’t believe me, see the photo for proof.

It’s small (6 inch screen, quite thin border), it’s light, and comes with a touch screen.  If you need more space, just pop in a micro SD card.  The device supports EPUB, MOBI, TXT, CBR/CBZ and PDF.  It’ll also connect using Adobe EPUB if you’ve bought books from other stores.  The UI is amazingly intuitive: your bookshelf can be arranged in a variety of views and reading consists of flicks or taps to the left and right.  The font size, margins, line spacing and font can all be changed, so you can make your page look like a condensed cheap 70s paperback or as spacious as a modern best seller hard back.  Reading is an addictive pleasure.  If the on board fonts aren’t good enough, you can side load TTFs.  Finally, it comes with a pretty good webkit based browser, Sudoku and a sketch pad.  Battery life appears to happily be a few weeks with a couple of hours a day.  I personally, recharge between books.

Firmware updates are regular and come as OTA updates.  Firmware appears to be released every few weeks with new functionality each time.  Latest release (as of writing) brought notes, highlights and annotations to non Kobo Books.

One of the big winners for me, is the shop system.  Purchases can be made on the website, on the reader or on tablet/phone.  Books are delivered OTA (Wifi only).  Books purchased from the store are tracked as you read so you can pick up your position on any device, and keep track of your reading habits.  Sidloaded books are only tracked on the device.  Books purchased from Kobo can be downloaded as Adobe EPub to use on other devices.  Admittedly, my first purchase had a small hitch, but this was quickly resolved by the store and I was refunded the full value of the book as store credit, which was rather nice.

I am impressed.  Love the device, love the system.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m getting back to reading.

(Edit: Wired rather like it as well: page1, page2)

Our hero had finished his journey down south,
sharing his culture, being quite loud.
And whist awaiting his return back up to the north,
accepted one final tribute, a breakfast of sorts.

They brought forth to him tea,
It was tepid and weak.
What insult was this,
Did his patience, they seek?

Willing to forgive, he let this one slide.
And awaited the main to arrive with some pride.
Unbeat in battle, known far North was he.
As it’s mightiest eater, the pig slayer – me.

Out came the plate, brought to his table.
With quite some pomp, as if from a fable.
Insulted again, for what meat was this?
Reclaimed from the bits of the pig that were missed.

The sausage was plain, not Cumber’ or Lincoln,
They had managed to fail, with their miserable bacon.
The poor wretch had never seen a winter up North,
which would have hardened the meat, added taste to the pork.

The pudding had never seen innards or blood,
And the eggs had been pushed from the arse of a dove.
(For clearly not, the chicken had seen,
the great battle of foul of 2003).

Was this truly the all and the sum of the south?
That so soft were they, that their food left such doubt?
And all I could see was red in mine eyes,
That this was the best they could offer as tithe.

And as wont is all Northeners as is to do,
when treated as thus by as others shall too.
For whence and such as nerves are left this raw,
There was only one action left: to declare WAR.

Back in the North batallions were formed,
Regiments armed with real sausage, not Quorn.
And phalanxes grappled with spears made from bread,
formed and baked hard enough to crack a man’s head.

For where food is in battle, be in no doubt!
Our northern counterparts are tasty and stout.
So when presented forthwith with such a threat,
we go armed to the teeth, and very well fed.

Between Manchester and London the forces did meet,
and the Midlands did form the place for the feat.
All forces did bring, son, dog and daughter,
Lines of both sides threw themselves to the slaughter.

The battle was mighty, the battle was proud.
The Hodge was in Weatherspoons, where else to be found?
Our comrades did cleave though the soft sourthern masses.
Like a spork glides fast through a bowl of molasses.

On centre of field, two fighters sought out,
For Devon was held as the prize of their bout.
David and Daisy stripped bare to the waist,
Their udders displayed, a fight in poor taste.

Over so quickly, noone asked how.
Poor Daisy lay spent and dead on the ground.
The victorious bathed in the milk of the spoils,
It was clear right now, the Southeners recoiled.

In one final act, to cleanse and to pure,
Because dead bodies rot and makes harder to cure.
The earth was schorced to five thousand degrees,
a fitting end to Birmingham, sacrificed for we.

And the lands were divided and owned by the North,
apart from Devon which Dave had claimed as his fort.
And the land was now once quite again sure,
that no breakfast again would be served, quite so poor.

Two titans of the computing industry passed away recently.  Each respected for very different reasons, each with a very different philosophy on computing and life.

Dennis Ritchie, the father of C and Unix, was responsible for developing the operating system and language which underepins almost every machine which matters in the world.  With no C, despite your own personal views, there would be no Objective-C, no C++, no C# and no Java.  Programmers, computer scientists and anyone with any attachment to a computer owes this man a drink.  The man was quiet, quite reserved, and I think this reflected in his work.  There will be people the world over quietly raising a respectful glass in his honour.

Steve Jobs was a visionary,  driven by a desire to commodotise and make the things computers can do accessible.  With no Steve Jobs, I am pretty confident that certain areas of user interface design and product design would be at least a decade behind where we are now.  Jobs’ lasting legacy is not the products that he’s introduced, but the ideas.  It’s surprising to see the effect Apple’s rising has had on other producers in the industry, switching from a “good enough” viewpoint to consumer-centric.  Whether intentional, he did build a cult around himself and became worshipped by customers, worshipped by others in the industry and worshipped by fellow engineers.  When he passed away, there was a global out cry, and scenes of fans out-pouring their grief over what they saw as their loss.  This was also appropriate in its own way.

There have been complaints that Ritchie’s accomplishments were greater, his legacy larger, and yet his death passed relatively unnoticed by the mainstream media, and that this was unjust while the death of Jobs was plastered for several days across the major news channels.  The people who will mourn Dennis Ritchie genuinely appreciate his contribution to the industry, and will know it every time they use a tool he has influenced, be it mobile phone, desktop, server, programming language or toolchain.  People grieve for different people in different ways.  Both will be missed.  Jobs and Ritchie will be remembered for different reasons, and the way they will be remembered will reflect that.