The Richter Scale^®

I just came across an article on the MSN SmartMoney web site about “10 Things Not to Buy in 2010”, and while some of the items discussed are ones I would agree with in principal, I think the authors at SmartMoney suffer from a very narrow “weltanschauung” (world view). Some might even call their views elitist, or perhaps on the other extreme, clueless.

Two of the ten items on the “don’t buy” list I vehemently disagree with are external hard drives and compact digital cameras.

With respect to external hard drives the author suggests that because of the convenience and cost of online backup services like Carbonite and Mozy, there’s no reason to spend money on external hard disks, which the article points out can crash (which is true, but rare).

But herein lie a number of serious flaws in reasoning.

First, Internet connection speeds are a real problem. Only a fraction of Americans, and an even smaller percentage of those outside the U.S. have high speed connections sufficient to upload the many gigabytes or even terabytes of data stored on their computer systems. For myself, I have multiple terabytes of data - that’s trillions and trillions of bytes of data - and if I were to try to upload all that data to a remote site for backup it would take me years, literally. Even with “only” 20-30 gigabytes of data, the average residential user would be looking at weeks for back-up initially.

Second, and perhaps an even bigger issue for most people, is that once you have actually gone and committed to backing up data to an on-line service, you have no guarantee that such services will remain in business. I have personally seen this happen with a number of photo sharing web sites that people had uploaded thousands or even millions of photos to, only find the sites shutting down with no real recourse to keep their photos stored remotely. What happens if the remote on-line backup provider packs it up suddenly, with all of your data now inaccessible to you?

A third issue is data privacy. While on-line backup providers may have certain mechanisms in place to prevent most hacking attempts, it’s difficult to protect from all possible attacks as Google and a number of Silicon Valley software companies discovered over the last few weeks at the hands of apparently well funded and coordinated Chinese hackers. So, if your on-line backups include sensitive material, like banking information, that data could be at risk if it is stored in the “cloud”. Of course, should the government get interested in you, then they can subpoena the on-line backup service directly, without getting your permission, since you are not in charge of your data – the on-line backup provider is. While you can try and work around this with encrypted storage and the such, that becomes a bigger hassle to work with too.

All three of the above issues are better addressed by external hard drives. With an external hard drive you’re in full control of your data. You can put it in a safety deposit box, or perhaps a safe, or in your sock drawer. Plus, over time, an external hard drive will be cheaper than the recurring subscription fees you have to pay an on-line provider. I just bought it a number of ultra portable one terabyte hard drives for photo backup for approximately $180 each. And to account for the unlikely possibility that the hard drive crashes, I have extras. Plus, with an external hard drive, a lot more storage is immediately accessible. You don’t need a fast Internet connection to access your files either – it’s all there, under your control, any time you need it.

The other thing I disagreed with was the suggestion that one should not buy compact digital cameras. SmartMoney suggests that since DSLRs (Digital Single Lens Reflex) cameras – you know, the big honking cameras with big honking lenses – are dropping in price, that it’s just better to buy one of those instead. That argument, however, ignores that a major selling point of compact digital cameras is that they are compact! I don’t know about you, but we have several compact digital cameras around our house, tucked away, but ready for use at any time. And I always carry a compact camera with me when I travel, even when I also have my DSLR with me. All because the compact digital camera is compact. Granted, a DSLR takes better pictures, but it’s just not as convenient.

The other recommendations for things not to buy in 2010 include DVDs and CDs (partially right), but until all media is available electronically and everyone has fast Internet connections, physical media will stick around. And while the suggestion of Netflix is a nice one, it doesn’t work outside the U.S., as I know first hand. SmartMoney also comments on gas guzzling cars, home telephone service, also-ran smart phones (anything other than iPhone or Blackberry, apparently), newspaper subscriptions, and a couple of other items I won’t bother going into.

Ultimately, this list of the “Ten Things Not to Buy in 2010” is much like any other advice from pundits – full of opinion and pontification, but rarely with any in depth thinking about the ramifications of following such advise. All in all, take such advice in consideration, but assume it’s probably flawed unless you personally discover otherwise.

I’ve been running Windows 7 for a couple of months now, and while I am quite happy with this version of Windows (in contrast to Vista, which I found to be agony). However, I have had one repeated annoyance - namely not having applications recognize my mapped network drives. For most folks that might not be an issue, but I have “My Documents” mapped to one of my network drives as well, and many applications just assume they should use My Documents as a repository for their files. But I have solved the problem, finally.

The issue is that the default “protect the user from his own stupidity” settings for Windows 7 result in default network drive mappings being done in a non-Administrator mode. What that means is that any application being run as an administrator, such as pretty much any installation program, will not see those drive mappings and then spit back a cryptic error when it tries to access the My Documents area mapped to the network drive (which the application can’t see).

The solution is pretty simple - you need to run CMD.EXE as an administrator and manually map the network volumes. For example, if you map your N: to the network volume \\server\shared, you would do the following to map it in administrative mode:

1) Click the Windows “Start” button.
2) In the “Search” box, type “CMD”
3) Either hit Ctrl+Shift+Enter or right click on the CMD option and select the “Run as Administrator” option.
4) After agreeing to run CMD as an Administrator and let it make changes to your system, type the following line at the command prompt (modifying the drive letter and server volume appropriate to your needs):

net use n: \\server\shared

You should get a confirmation that this worked. Now, for the rest of your current OS use cycle (until you reboot), programs run in Administrator mode will see your mapped network drive too.

If you want that to be default behavior, put the list of “net use” commands in a DOS .BAT file, and then create a desktop shortcut pointing to the .BAT file. Then do the following:

1) Right-click on the icon for the .BAT file on your desktop.
2) Click “Properties”
3) Select the “Shortcut” tab
4) Click on the “Advanced” button on the lower part of the dialog box.
5) Put an “x” in the box which says “Run as Administrator”.
6) Click “OK”

Unfortunately, putting this .BAT file in your Start Up folder will not execute the commands, so you will manually need to run the file at start-up every time. If anyone has a better solution, please advise.

However, assuming you run this .BAT after booting Windows 7, you should not have any more problems with Administrator-level programs not recognizing your network drive mappings. Of course, if Microsoft had set network drive mappings to be Administrator-level by default, this workaround would not be necessary.

I’ve been a user and fan of T-Mobile’s Sidekick mobile phones since the original Sidekick because of several features - specifically the complete 5-line keyboard (numbers along the top instead of via a function key like on Blackberry phones) and the ability to use a secure terminal application (SSH) to manage my servers remotely.

Newer models over the years have become smaller, added additional communications bands (quad band now), better camera capabilities, and occasionally better connectivity.

The Sidekick is developed by a company called Danger, and manufactured by Sharp. However, Danger was acquired by Microsoft in the last year. I don’t know if this is the cause for the complaints I have with the latest Sidekick, the LX 2009, which shipped last month, but it’s possible.

In comparison to last year’s Sidekick LX, the new Sidekick LX 2009 adds 3G data services (which don’t appear appreciably faster than the prior 2.5G EDGE support), a higher resolution camera (which is definitely an improvement), GPS (also a nice feature), and proclaims to have Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace support built in. However, at least for Facebook and Twitter, which I have recently started using, the support is pretty poor. I only follow a few people on Twitter, but consistently get error messages about memory overflows on the Sidekick LX 2009. For Facebook, the content is rarely up to date relative to what I find through a web browser, and notifications almost never match those that are on-line waiting for me.

And perhaps even more annoying is that none of the applications I had relied on in the previous version of the Sidekick have been made available on the Sidekick LX 2009, including the terminal program I need for server management. And accessories for the phone, like belt holsters, are non-existent (the ones for last year’s model have been discontinued).

All in all, the Sidekick LX 2009 has great potential, but I am under the impression that the phone has been released well before the software was truly ready. Maybe in a few months, but it’s not ready for prime time at this point.

On The Richter Scale the Sidekick LX 2009 gets a 5.0 out of a possible 10.0.

One of the things I find frustrating when I want to write my articles, blog entries, and book chapters is that my handwriting sucks. It’s not unusual for me to have to spend more time deciphering what I wrote by hand than it took me to write it. That’s one of the many reasons I really prefer to type on a computer keyboard. But the problem with that is that it’s not generally been convenient to lug a notebook computer around with me due to size and battery life, never mind boot times.

I have tried using a Palm T/X with a separate keyboard, and while the size is great, the text editing controls via the keyboard are lousy. I’ve also been playing with using my iPodTouch 32GB, but fast typing on the touch screen with my big fingers is nearly impossible without serious typographical errors. And about 10 months ago, I bought an Asus Eee PC 4G - a tiny little notebook computer running on Linux, with a 4GB solid state hard disk. The keyboard and screen ended up being too small for me, the battery life was modest, and the boot process was too long for my needs (and I sold it to a friend who appreciated it much more than I - thanks Angela!). I also ended up realizing I needed a lot more than 4GB of storage.

In late August I purchased the Asus Eee PC 1000H. This is a 10-inch notebook with an 80GB hard disk drive, running Windows XP Home. That’s a nice bit of storage. The machine cost $549 back in August, and is now available from reputable on-line stores for around $469.

At first blush, the Eee PC 1000H is pretty much what I was looking for. It’s got a 6-7 hour battery life and it boots (and resumes from hibernation) in about 15-20 seconds on average. Plus, I was easily able to upgrade it to Windows XP Professional SP3 and get secure networking capability so I could use it on my in-home network. It also has 3 USB ports, and works great for VoIP (Vonage X-Phone and Skype) and even video and music playback. There is no DVD drive, but you can attach an external drive.

The Eee PC 1000H also comes with Microsoft Works, and it’s simple enough to install OpenOffice on it as well. With the native XP support I was also able to install software to run my Sprint data service USB device for easy connectivity in most U.S. metropolitan areas, and with the built-in WiFi, the notebook is usable in any place with accessible WiFi service. And for backup, it has an Ethernet port. Not too shabby. There’s also an SD/MMC Card slot.

I should note, however, that my new, in-the-box Eee PC 1000H seemed to have been used at Asus HQ or some Asus repair facility, as it already had a registered user and some additional software installed on it, as well as a digital video version of an Asus service manual. Not a problem for me, but I would hope that this was an anomaly instead of standard practice.

At the price I paid (and even lower now) this is a pretty decent notebook, with about the same performance as the 3 year old Sony VAIO TX690 I had been using before I got my Fujitsu Lifebook back in March. The Eee PC 1000H is smaller than the VAIO TX in width and depth, but a little thicker in height and a little heavier too. And the screen’s 1024x600 resolution is challenging with some programs and web sites which were not designed with that aspect rate and height in mind (in contrast to the much higher resolution VAIO TX). But it’s also a fifth of the price I paid for the VAIO TX, which also makes it cheap enough to replace in case it gets broken or stolen during my travels.

My only annoyance with the Eee PC 1000H is that the nice big hard disk came pre-initialized in two volumes instead of one large volume (which has always been my preference), but that it a minor issue on the whole.

In any event, the Eee PC 1000H is a pretty nice little piece of hardware, and I plan to put it to good use during our upcoming travels in the Canadian Maritimes and New England starting Sunday. I give the Asus Eee PC 1000H an 8.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale.

For the last 20 months or so, we’ve been enjoying the use of a Hewlett-Packard z565 Digital Entertain System in our living room. I purchased it at the end of 2006, but only got around to installing it a month or so later because I needed to wait for a new TV to arrive too.

The z565 is a full XP Media Center-based PC with HDMI output and we have Amazon’s Unbox software, Slingplayer (to play content from the Slingbox located up in New Hampshire), as well as a TV tuner so we can record and time-shift cable TV content. We’ve even got iTunes running so we can watch TV shows purchased from Apple’s iTunes store, although that’s now been superseded by a new Apple TV box.

So, imagine our disappointment a few days ago when we go and try and turn on the z565 and see the blue power light blink on for the barest moment only to shut off and stay dark. Turns out that the power supply is dead. I should note that we kept the z565 off when not in active use because we didn’t want it to burn out due to the warm temperatures in our Caribbean home. Ironic.

We figured this would be easy to resolve, so we contacted Hewlett-Packard’s support department via on-line chat, got the part number in question, and then discovered that the power supply for the z565, a machine which was less than two years old, had already been discontinued and Hewlett-Packard no longer sells the part either.

And, on top of that, I then discovered that the part number that HP support provided turns out to be different from the part number on the actual burnt out power supply itself.

An on-line search for the part turns up several companies that sell “pulled” (extracted from overstock/returned systems) and/or refurbished power supplies. And they aren’t cheap either. I have ordered two of them just to have a spare after I install one of them. We’ll see how that works out. And it’s not possible to use just any PC power supply due to the form factor and low decibel design of the HP z565.

However, the main point to this long and winding story is that I find it ludicrous that a machine that was promoted as state of the art by Hewlett-Packard less than two years ago is no longer supported with available parts. Of course, I could have “solved” this problem by scrapping the old system entirely, but I did not want to upgrade to a digital entertainment PC running the nightmarishly obtuse and slow Vista operating system, or build a new system from scratch with an old XP license.

It’s a sad statement on the commoditization of technology when an expensive, task specific computer can literally become a giant paper weight so quickly. At least I could find refurbished power supplies from third parties, at least for now. 

I received an e-mail today from Best Buy telling me that I had been welcomed to the “Premier Black” level of the Best Buy Reward Zone program, telling me I was one of Best Buy’s best customers. I was surprised as I had not shopped at Best Buy for some months (Amazon.com is my go-to place for most gadgets and games these days), but I know I had spent a fair bit at Best Buy over the last year or two, so maybe that counted.

Turns out my surprise was justified. When I clicked on the link to “Locate Your Premier Black Concierge” I ended up at a username/password prompt which obviously did not work properly. And when I clicked on the link to get into the Best Buy Reward Zone Premier site, I found that I was a mere Premier Silver member.

Talk about a tease. The promise was that my Best Buy Premier Black Concierge could help me get out-of-stock items - and I’ve been looking for a third Wii Fit without success (this one’s for my neighbor). Guess I’ll have to try more ordinary routes.

Turns out I’m not the only one to get this bait-and-switch e-mail. Apparently it was mailed out to all of Best Buys Reward Zone members - see Best Buy’s Premier Black Service For All - Oops.

I must say they really blew their roll out of this service. They certainly are not inspiring me with faith in the quality of their Premier service when they make mistakes this massive. What’s next? Accidentally sending out client confidential information? Sheesh.

I’m not really wild about social networks like MySpace and Facebook. Just about the only communications I have ever received via MySpace have been “friend” invites to see naked women on webcams - not that I’m averse to that, but there’s always some catch, like them wanting money for the viewing. And my nephew is on MySpace too - he’s just about the only real person I know on MySpace and that I’m friends with.

Facebook has been far better in terms of real friend invites - people I actually know from elsewhere have accounts there and occasionally even invite me to be their friend. How about that?

However, this morning, in processing another friend request (this one from my sister-in-law), I happened to click through to a link to find other people with whom I graduated from college back in, gulp...., 1985. There are a fair number of them on Facebook. And most of them have supplied photos with their profiles.

Imagine my surprise and disappointment as I’m scrolling through the list of 1985 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute graduates to find that most of them look old. Some are balding, some have white hair, others look a fair bit older than “distinguished”, and a couple downright geriatric. Granted, we all graduated 23 years ago, but still… we’re all only in our mid-40s, right?

I know I have more gray and white hair than blonde these days, but I am still young at heart, but these profile photos brought back the harsh reality that people age, often more rapidly than expected. That reminder is not the best way to start a day.

In preparation for upcoming travels to exotic locales, including the Canadian Maritimes, Ecuador, and Peru, I figured it might be nice to automatically geo-tag the photos I take along the way. Geotagging refers to applying positional information to a data source, in this case the photos themselves. Such positional information can include the GPS coordinates, altitude, and even orientation from which the photo was taken.

While it’s certainly possible to record this sort of information manually using a separate GPS and then use a program like Lightroom or a site like Yahoo!’s Flickr to geotag your photos, it’s a real hassle to do it that way. Some cameras (and camera phones, of course) have GPS capabilities built in, but for higher end cameras, like the Nikon D300 DSLR I presently shoot, there is no built in GPS feature.

Enter the GeoPic II from Custom Idea.

I ordered mine from B&H Photo for just under $300 and have been playing with it a bit for the last week in New York City and have some pros and cons to share.

First and foremost, using a GPS geotagging device in the canyons of New York City is a bad idea. It just doesn’t work very well because the GeoPic II has a very difficult time getting a GPS lock with all those tall buildings around. And of course, don’t even bother trying to start it up indoors.

The couple of times I managed to find some open space, it did lock to the GPS satellites pretty quickly, and stayed locked until sky visibility became adverse again. I have now resolved myself to using the GeoPic II on my non-urban jungle expeditions - that should be fine with trips to Costa Rica, the Canadian Maritimes, and South America all coming up in the next few months.

The next thing to realize is that the GeoPic II is dependent on the power supply of the camera. For normal use this will reduce the number of photos you can take off a full-charged battery by about half. This design decision to use the camera’s battery creates a very compact geotagging device, but if things go awry with your camera (like leaving it on, in a backpack where there may be pressure on the GeoPic II’s sole button control), it can drain the camera’s battery to nothing. Fortunately, when it happened to me (being the anal retentive king of redundancy that I am), I had a spare battery available, which saved my day. My suggestion - disconnect the GeoPic II when not in use for a while.

That brings me to another point - the GeoPic II, at least on the Nikon DSLRs, connects through the 10-pin control port on the front of the camera. It’s a bit of a trick to be able to smoothly and quickly plug the device in, especially as you need to then rotate the screw-on base for a secure connection. That’s not easy with my big fingers, but I found I got better at it over time. However, one issue I do have is that if I use a remote trigger like the Nikon MC-36 it means I cannot use the GeoPic II at the same time, since the remote cords require the exclusive use of the 10-pin control port too. And the times when I want to use a remote trigger are the same ones (big lens, tripod, no shake - night time and/or nature photo) for which I would love to know where I was when I took the photo. I will have to work something out to juggle between the two uses of the 10-pin port - and once I do, I will probably post something here.

The final annoyance, a minor one, is that the user interface for setting the various operational features of the GeoPic II is rather clunky. It involves counting the number of blinks and color of a single LED, all whilst holding the shutter release on the camera half way down. I would have happily paid another $50 for a few more buttons (the GeoPic II has one button on it) and a small LCD display to give a real status of the device and far easier and better control.

All those things, however, don’t change the fact that the GeoPic II does do what it is supposed to (local conditions permitting), namely adding a GPS location and altitude to your photos. When you combine that with a program like Adobe Lightroom (my absolutely favorite photo management software), you can see where you took your photo from, since Lightroom allows you to go to Google Maps with a single click of the mouse on a geotagged photo (you need to click on the little arrow next to the GPS position in the photo’s metadata in Library mode).

If any of my opinions change in the coming months as I use the GeoPic II in the great outdoors I will add some notes here. However, for now, I give the Geo Pic II a 6.0 on The Richter Scale. That score could be improved significantly by better (more) controls and feedback from the device via an LCD or other read out, as well as some way to use the GeoPic II with with a remote cord.

I am in Barcelona, Spain right now on a family expedition as part of The Traveling Richters effort, heading off to other parts of southern Spain tomorrow, and then later to Morocco, Portugal, northern Spain, France, and England after that.

For now, I just wanted to note I have blended my review methodology (The Richter Scale) from this site on the other site in reviewing several Barcelona restaurants:

Txapela
Iggy
El Choquito Restaurante
Brasserie Flo
Barkeno Cocina Mediterranea

A little while ago I received a review copy of Comic Book Creator 2.0 (CBC2), US$49.95, published by Planetwide Games. My testing plan involved my son, Bas, a creative 11 year old who enjoys reading Manga comics and playing video games. I set up CBC2 on his notebook computer, watched the web-based tutorial videos for the product (very helpful), and he was off and running - well, almost. Turns out that in Windows Vista you need to run CBC2 as the Administrator, otherwise certain output functionality does not work properly. Based on similar problems with other titles under Vista, I put the blame here entirely on Microsoft. 

Once we overcame the Vista difficulties with the assistance of Planetwide’s excellent technical support service, we played with the software a bit to see what we could do. You start off by selecting a format for your comic book using supplied templates, most of which focus on letter size pages. I also came across a template editor written by CBC fan Jesse Pavel (see here) and I understand other templates can also be purchased from Planetwide Media.

Once you have your layout - and you can include pages with other template types in your comic book, incidentally - you’re ready to start adding content. CBC2 comes with a limited range of clip art to use as the basis for a comic book, but allows for the import of art via a variety of file formats, including JPEG format. You can then use various tools in CBC2 to add text boxes, speech bubbles, effects, and more.

My son’s first thought was to combine CBC2 with his obsession with Bungie’s Halo 3 on the Xbox 360. thanks to the ability to do screen captures from the instant replays in Halo 3, he was able to script a complete story idea and then capture the individual frames which I then helped him download from the Bungie web site. We then imported the screen captures into Comic Book Creator 2, and he applied speech bubbles and more to produce his first comic book - all of which took less than an hour once he had all the parts in place. Below is a sample page from the comic book he made (you can output the comic book to PDF, incidentally).

Sample Comic Book Creator 2 output using images from Halo 3

His next thought was to use Lego characters as the basis of another comic book, so I helped him set up a “stage” and he took pictures of the “action” he had scripted for his next project. Again, we imported those photos into CBC2, and he made his second comic book (excerpt below).

Sample Comic Book Creator 2 output using staged Lego characters

Bas is a bright kid, but Comic Book Creator 2 was a rather inspirational tool for him. He proceeded to make another couple of Halo 3 comic books to share with his friends over the course of the afternoon. We had some problems printing out the comic books, however, as the software would not allow us to print double sided on the double sided color laser printer we have here. We had to resort to outputting to PDF, and then printing from Acrobat to get double sided printing to work, and getting PDF output to work under Vista was initially a challenge because we didn’t know we had to run the program as Administrator (right click on the program on the desktop, click Properties, then click on Compatibility, and then put a check mark in the box that says to Always Run As Administrator).

That same night we celebrated a friend’s birthday at a local restaurant, and Bas’ idea was to give her a comic book of her birthday dinner, so we both took lots of pictures, and the next morning he whipped up a Birthday comic book, an excerpt of which is below.

Sample Comic Book Creator 2 output using photos from a birthday dinner

You can also add sound and video to comic books created with Comic Book Creator 2, and at the time we played with the software, it was also possible to upload comic books to a dedicated comic book web site which appears to have since morphed into something called MashOn and the original content we uploaded seems to have disappeared.

If making your own visual content is not your thing, Planetwide Media also sells licensed art in the form of bundled versions of Comic Book Creator. The licensed art includes material from Marvel, Virgin Comics, Speed Racer, National Geographic, and even Manga from TOKYOPOP, among many others. Each of those packages include the full release of Comic Book Creator 2, and you can use all the clip art, screen shots, etc. to make your own comic books. If you have multiple sets of source art, you can reference them all from one installation of the software as well. My only complaint about this packaging approach is that I would like to see a version of the software which has only the licensed art and not the software, under the assumption that it would be less expensive than having to repurchase the program yet again. The tutorials imply this might be the case, but I was unable to find purchasable content on the web site.

Comic Book Creator 2 is definitely a creativity inspiring program, good for all ages of users who want to be able to present their ideas in comic book layout form. The results with CBC2 are only limited by one’s imagination and able to create/find the base content.

I give Comic Book Creator 2 a 7.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale. That score could be improved if pre-developed content - more types of speech bubbles, clip art from a variety of sources, etc. - were more accessible, and if more templates, like for a standard 3-up newspaper comic format, were provided with the base software. And finally, the printing problems we encountered, while not insurmountable as we found a workaround, should not have existed in the first place.