Officially change locations

I have moved my blog to a hosted wordpress blog. So go to http://www.mrshields.com

thanks

Online world

I love twitter (you can follow me here)but sometimes there are things that need more than 140 characters. I am trying to figure out my new backup, sharing, syncing strategy. Right now I have a main laptop that I have connected to a 22 in external monitor. I use the two monitors a lot for work. I also bought a little 9 inch Dell mini. At my desk I use the mini to monitor email and twitter and then do work on the other two screens. But I also will use the mini as a travel computer and want my important files synced there. So I have been using Dropbox to keep files in sync. But Dropbox has two problems. First, you can't choose which files to sync, they are either synced to both comptuers or not. So on the mini that only has a 16GB hard drive and a 16GB sd card I can't really expect to fit all my files. Dropbox says they will fix this eventually. The more immediate problem is that they won't allow the dropbox files to be put on the SD card because it is removable.

So I am trying out Syncplicity. It has all the features that Dropbox doesn't, but for some reason I just don't like it. First, it seems to be really slow to update. Maybe I just need to wait for it to get one round done well then it will speed up. Second I don't know it was Syncplicity, but I had about 4000 or so files disappear on my yesterday. Luckily I use Carbonite as a backup (which I think I will still continue to use as an overall backup service). Third, although it is one of my issues I actually do like the idea that Dropbox has a specific folder that is synced and those are the files I am working with and they have priority.

Anyone have some other ideas. What I want is for dropbox to offer a cheaper 20 GB plan that allows me to sync some folders and to put them on the removable drive.

Amazon Kindle Review

I haven’t used this blog for much recently. Most of my time is going to twitter or my niece’s blog. But I was asked last night about my new Amazon Kindle and tried to write a review in the comments section of Facebook. So I copied what I wrote there and expanded it a bit.

The summary of my review: I really like the Kindle. It is a very good ebook reader. But it is also only really good at being an ebook reading and I had hoped for a bit more.

The screen is very nice, but it has a slight gray tone. Because of the technology used it looks best with lots of light. The more light the whiter the screen looks. It also cannot be backlight because the point of E-ink is that it doesn’t have a backlight so the screen won’t strain your eyes. The negative of that is that you actually need light. I have been reading primarily on my phone (currently an HTC Mogul) or PDA for years now. I like the convenience of having your book always with you. So I am used to straining my eyes by looking at a very small backlight screen. This screen is much larger than what I am used to. I also like the ease of changing font sizes. I have been changing them fairly frequently depending on my light, the time of day, etc. Also unlike my phone it looks really good when I am outside sitting in my hammock.

The Kindle is light and close to a paperback size but just too big to be really portable (for a guy that doesn't carry a purse or bag.) This is one of my issues with the Kindle. To be useful you need to have it with you to read. I have yet to figure out how to carry it. It does come with a serviceable cover. The cover provides some protection (both from dropping it and from looking too much like a geek when reading in public.) I do quite often have a diaper bag with me these days, but when I have the diaper bag I usually don’t have time to read the Kindle.

The audiobook function works really well if you use Audible.com. I have been using Audible.com for about 5 years now and have built up a fairly large library. Using it on my phone meant that I haven’t needed to transfer books from my computer to my phone since they came out of Over the Air downloads about 2 years ago. However, even though Amazon now owns Audible and the Kindle has wireless, you are prevented from directly downloading the Audible files. They claim that they are too big. That seems like an excuse for lack of integration. So I still have to connect it to my computer to transfer files. It does have an external speaker, which most ebook readers don’t have. It also plays regular MP3 files, but I haven't tried that yet.

On the negative side, I think it would be a much better device if it was about $100 cheaper. It is still expensive. You can get a good netbook, iPod or Smartphone for about the same or cheaper. All of those devices do many things well. So it seems a stretch to have a device that really only does one thing well. Don’t get me wrong, this is a very good ebook reader. But that is all that I have found that works really well. Battery hasn't been as good as I like so far, but it is still lasting a couple days with some audio and some wireless. But that is not the month on a single charge that some ebook readers (without wireless and audio) claim.

I wish the browser was a lot better. It is really nice to be able to search Wikipedia and Amazon for a new book but it was optimized for that and not much else. I would like the browser to be MUCH, MUCH better. But I have a phone and my phone has a pretty good browser. There are some hotkey combinations with the browser that use cell tower locationing to show you Google maps, local restaurants or gas stations, etc., but this hasn’t worked for me yet. I just am not getting the locationing feature. I don’t know if it is that I don’t have enough towers in my area or that it just doesn’t work. Overall using the browser is hard. The screen is not touch sensitive and you just can’t tab between fields. So you have to use the joystick to highlight and area, then choose what you want to do (enter text, hit enter, etc.). This makes using the browser very slow. Think of a very limited cell phone browser (it is actually Netfront 3.3 if you are familiar).

Another major issue is DRM. This is not a Kindle specific problem, but Amazon is among the worst DRM systems right now. This is ironic given the fact that they are a major DRM free music store and have suggested that they will remove DRM from Audible.com soon. I am a bit concerned buying too much from Amazon because if I go with another device then all the books that I bought for the Kindle will likely be lost (or I will have to figure out a way to break the DRM which is technically against the law). If I buy books from stores other than Amazon I can’t wirelessly download them. If I buy Microsoft formatted books they are easy to break the DRM but they won't be formatted as well as books formatted specifically for the Kindle. Buying any ebooks is fraught with danger. I bought 3 books about 18 months ago from Paperbackdigital.com. The store closed about a year ago and those books are now lost. They have to be re-authorized for each reader, which is fine as long as the authorization servers exist. But when the stores closed the authorization servers went down. Mobipocket, the owners of the format, have tried to contact the former owners of the store to transfer the info on the authorization servers but the owners have not responded and as of now I still can’t read the books. I didn’t lose much, maybe $20, but it makes me hesitant to buy much that I can’t crack. Luckily I like Science Fiction. Baen.com believes in DRM free books and I have purchased a lot of books from them. But they are only one publisher. If you are happy with Amazon and not concerned about DRM, then Amazon will keep all of your purchases in an online bookshelf that you can download at any time.

One nice thing is that you can attach up to 6 Kindles to the same account and share the books between them. If one person buys a book, then they all can share that book. But you have to have a single Amazon account and figure out how to do that with sharing payments, etc. And you want to make sure that anyone that you share with would actually be buying books that you might want to read.

The final issue is that the Kindle isn’t all that good looking. Many, if not most, ebooks are better looking. If you don’t want wireless then I would get the Sony Reader. The 505 is $299 retail and can be purchased at Target. (So you can touch and feel it before purchasing unlike the Kindle.) But if you are willing to open up a Sony credit card you can get it for $150. That is much closer to the price I think ebook readers should be. In the end I went with the Kindle because of the potential of the browser. On the way to church last week I bought a bible. That convenience is worth something. If you are paying full price, then pay the extra for Kindle. If you are willing to do the credit card deal, the decision would be much harder.

Summer Reading Club Update Week 4

Have been at the beach the last two weeks so I have been able to get some reading done (in between having to put in a few hours of work a day and swimming in the ocean.)

The most recent book I finished was Job: A Comedy of Justice by Robert A Heinlein. I am a big fan of Science Fiction and Fantasy books and Heinlein is an important author in modern Sci Fi and Fantasy. I have read around a dozen of Heinlein's books and this was the last one he wrote before he died. I am mixed in my review. This is written in a classic Heinlein style. It was first person, from the hero's perspective. It has lots of libertarian style philosophy. But the real central theme in this book is against religion. As a Christian I disagree with his positions and many of the reasons that he complains about religion. However, I wanted to see where he was going and finished the book. A couple of comments for anyone that has not read Heinlein before. First, he tends write with a strong strain of individualism. The hero can always solve the problem if he works hard enough. He also affirms many conservative values, don't lie, work hard, honor your elders, etc. But he has a very open view of sexuality and many of his books are fairly explicit and open about sex. This book while including ideas about sexuality was not that explicit.

On to the review. The story premise is that Alex while on a cruise get shifted into another world (or dimension). Everyone knows who he is in the new world, but he has to figure it out and learn his new part. He meets Marga, his soon to be wife, and soon after they get together the world shifts again. Through the next several chapters he and Marga learn the rules of the world shifting. They learn that they need to be touching to stay together, anything that is touching them will go with them, and the geography stays the same, although the history is very different. Heinlein likes to play with the ideas of alternative history in many of his books and this one is no different.

The characters get from Hawaii to Mexico and then slowly make their way to Kansas. Along the way Alex, who is a minister of a generic but mildly pentecostal church tries to save Marga, who in her world worships Odin and blames Loki for the world shifting. Similar to the style in Starship Troopers (the book, not the movie) he writes a book against religion by making the hero a pro-religious character. Starship Troopers was clearly anti-war, but you had respect for those that were soldiers. In this book Alex was a decent guy that you rooted for, but you had to see that the overall tone was against religion.

I also am still working on Liaden Unibus II and the Sharing Knife. But I did finish For the Love of My Brothers by Brother Andrew. Brother Andrew is best known for his book God's Smuggler. I don't know if I have ever read the full version of God's Smuggler but I read it as a comic book as a kid. Brother Andrew smuggled bibles into Iron Curtain countries starting in the early 1950s. For the Love of My Brothers is part two of his story. After God's Smuggler he was not able to get into Iron Curtain countries but continued to smuggle bibles into many other countries that were closed to Christianity. Similar to my book from last week (Three Cups of Tea) this is a story about a man that was dedicated to a single purpose (this time getting scripture into the hand of Christians in closed countries.) Brother Andrew really had raised the problem of religious freedom around the world.

The final book that I read was The Wilding by CS Friedman. I am not going to write much about this one because this is already too long. But it a follow up to In Conquest Born (written 15 years before The Wilding. The main problem that I have with the book is that it is written as if you should remember things from the previous book, but are not in the previous book. So you are reading right up until the end. The book also just seems to end. I was defintantly disappointed in the end. But overall the book wasn't bad.

Summer Reading Club Update Week 3

This week I read a very good book about a guy that builds schools in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is called "Three Cups of Tea". There are several thoughts I had about this book. First, he makes a strong point of the fact that what he does in rural development is a probably doing more long term to fight terrorism than much of what the US military is doing. It is certainly much more cost effective. He said that the cost one smart missile would build about 80 to 100 schools in a rural area or provide for the cost of supplies and teachers for about 80,000 students for a year.

The next points are really more about my thoughts that directly about the book. The subject of the book and co-author (Greg Mortenson) is a missionary child that grew up in Africa. He was fluent in Swahili and English and a couple other tribal languages. He has picked up Urdu and Paska and several other regional languages in order to communicate and work with the people in Pakistan and Afghanistan. But beyond is obvious skill in languge is his skill in intercultural communication. I have heard for years that one of the strengths of the Western missionary system is that many of the children of missionaries end up being much stronger than their parents because they are better able to understand the difference between culture and faith because they grew up with several cultures that were taught to them simultantiously. I don't want to minimize the fact that many missionary kids seem to be damaged in this process, but those that thrive really need to be tapped as leader for a new model of missionary that is attempting to put the power into the hands of the local Christians.

The second point is directly about Greg Mortenson. He is passionate, in fact passionate, may be too mild a term for him. So very few of us are as passionate about our faith as Greg Mortenson is passionate about building schools and rural development. The book never really mentions his faith, and I don't know if he is really a Christian or not, but he is the type of person that I would like to be.

I have also finished several stort stories collections. One is More than Honor, the last of the Honor Harrington short story collections. I am also about half way through Liaden Unibus II. The Liaden series is by husband and wife team Steve Miller and Sharon Lee. They have written around 10 full novels and several collections of short stories. I really enjoy these long collections that give you a bunch of characters over a long time.

Summer Reading Club Update

My week has been busy and I haven't finished any books since last week. But I have started two and come close to finishing a third. The one I am almost finished with is Worlds of Honor. This is five short stories based around David Weber's Honor Harrington stories. There were four different authors and the stories were fairly different. Four of the five stories were about treecats. Treecats are a sentient species in the series. The treecat stories were the ones that really brought you in and made you intersted in the universe that David Weber has created.

The first book I started this week is the last of a trilogy. The Sharing Knife is a fantasy book. It is about two characters who met and were married in the first two books. One is a Lakewalker, historical protectors of humanity, that are often misunderstood and marginalized because of the work that they do, and the secrecy that they hold around their society. The other is a Farmer, the term for everyone that is not a Lakewalker (from the Lakewalker's perspective). Once they were married they were pretty much rejected by both of their families. This book is about their struggle to find a new way, a way to introduce their world to one another and help each of their societies to honor and trust them for what they do.

The second book isn't really a book, it is a journal put out by ACT3 (Advancing the Christian Tradition into the Third Millinium). They don't put out the journals anymore, but I have a couple of old ones that I am working through. I read one on prayer a month or two ago and this one is based on the work of NT Wright. I talked about NT Wright in my last summer reading club entry so I won't revisit him here. But I may do more once I finish the journal.

Summer Reading Club

Mark Lee of Third Day fame has started his summer reading club on his blog. Instructions are that we are supposed to talk about the last two books we read. I have a bad habit of usually reading at least three books at any one time. I listen to one from Audible.com, read one on my phone (my preferred reading device) and read on paper book because I need something to do while I am taking off and landing while I fly. I haven't been flying that much lately so I haven't finished a paperbook recently. But I am in process of reading two books. Jesus Creed by Scot McKnight and Surprised By Hope by NT Wright. Jesus Creed is a good book but I think he gets across pretty much everything that is important in the first third of the book. So I have only gotten about half way through and am kind of bogged down. Surprised by Hope is a bit heavy for occational reading. I really need to sit down and read it through. So I will probably wait until my beach trip before I really get back into that one.

I got into NT Wright after hearing a lot about him but never actually reading anything. So I listened to several lectures, then I listened to Simply Christian. I have heard it called Mere Chrisitianity for the postmodern world. I imagine that is a fairly good description, but I have never been able to get through Mere Christianity, so I can't say for sure. What I do know is that it is a Thick Book, not in pages, but in content. I am glad I listened. I seem to be able to process better when I listen. But after having listened to Simply Christian and started reading Suprised by Hope, I think that NT Wright is a better speaker than writer. Not to say he is a bad writer, but to say he is a great speaker. Very rarely do I hear a pastor that both has real content and a real pastoral concern for the audience to "get" the content. NT Wright exudes pastoral concern. I go to Andy Stanley's Church. And I think he is a great speaker, but he is giving life application to scripture. NT Wright is explaining scripture. There is a subtle but profound distinction.

Just so you don't think that I only read theology. The last book that I listened to was Seeress of Kell by David Eddings. It was the last of a 10 part fantasy series. I had read it as a teenager and decided to go back and read them all again. I read the first nine on my phone, but then listened to the last one. I should have just read them all on my phone. After reading that long I had the voices set in my head and the narator had a different conception of several of the characters and really detracted from the book.

On my phone the last book that I have read was Changer of Worlds. It is a miliary Science Fiction book. It is actually a group of short stories that are based in the world of Honor Harrington, a character from a series of books by David Weber. There is a book publisher, Baen, that has a library of free books. They ask their authors to contribute books, often the first book or two in a series. So I end up reading the first couple and then buying a bunch more. I probably would not otherwise have chosen to read so much military oriented Science Fiction. But I like supporting a book publisher that believes in both putting out material free so people can get an idea of what they like but also rejects all DRM. No books sold by Baen have any DRM on them!