The Richter Scale^®

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.

InfoWorld started a petition a few months ago to help convince Microsoft to postpone its plan to discontinue shipping Windows XP on June 30, 2008.

Of the more than a dozen PCs in regular use in our home and office, only three run Microsoft Vista, and they create daily administrative agony for our IT manager (that would be me). Software doesn’t run properly unless you’re set up as Administrator, and even then there are problems. Running files off our file server is problematic without further changes, network file copies are horrifically slow, the user interface requires re-learning, and the list of Vista woes goes on.

In short, Microsoft Vista is the bane of our networked computer existence here at Richter Scale central. So much so that when I was shopping around for a new ultra-portable notebook last month, I ended up foregoing the Sony TZ series I really wanted and instead chose the Fujitsu Lifebook P-8010, primarily because I could get it shipped to me with Windows XP instead of Vista. And I couldn’t be happier with that decision. Windows XP just works - it’s fast, efficient, stable, and not prone to ever constant security pop-ups.

While I can understand that Microsoft wants to sell more copies of Vista, efforts to force Vista down the throats of folks who don’t want to use Vista are not going to win Microsoft many friends. In fact, if my discussions with others who have problems with Vista are any indication, it means that there will be a lot of folks not upgrading their Windows XP-based PCs for a long time to come, if but only to avoid having to downgrade their Windows experience to Vista.

If you believe, as I do, that Windows XP needs to stick around as a supported and sold operating system, it could not hurt to make your voice heard by signing the Save Windows XP Petition.

When Amazon first announced they were going to be offering music without digital rights management (DRM) last year, I cheered, but didn’t do much else about it. However, while on an eight-week stint in a hotel in San Diego (which ended about two weeks ago) I decided to expand my music library, and checked out the Amazon MP3 download service. And I think it’s excellent. And Amazon’s DRMed Unbox video service isn’t too bad either.

The library of music content at Amazon is very extensive, with even brand new content available upon release by the record labels. And the prices aren’t too bad either - generally cheaper than the same music at iTunes, especially when you buy music by the album. I found album prices running from $7.99 to $9.99 typically.

To download a purchased album in MP3 format you need to install a small program from Amazon which actually performs the download, and, as I understand it, tags the MP3 files as being sold to you as the purchaser (presumably so that if you share them they can tag you for it). The Amazon MP3 downloader also lets you specify where to store the downloaded music, and you can also tell it to automatically add the newly download music to your iTunes or Windows Media Player libraries (but not both).

All the MP3s are encoded at 256Kbps, and sound great. Definitely a painless way to download music with no restrictions on your personal use of the files, unlike original iTunes songs. And, you can run the MP3s on any music player, whereas even the DRM-free iTunes downloads need to be converted into MP3 from Apple’s proprietary AAC format first.

As for video downloads, Amazon offers their Amazon Unbox service. This, sadly is DRMed, which makes it a pain to use, as you cannot convert the downloaded video into an MP4 file that you can play on an iPod, among other restrictions. Also, Unbox content is limited to either the machine you download the video on (for rentals) or you can designate two machines for “purchased” (not rented) content. Unbox works only on Windows-based PCs or on TiVo devices with current firmware.

Prices are the Amazon Unbox service are on par with iTunes - TV shows for $1.99 typically, and movies for around $9.99-14.99 (purchase) and less if rented. And, of course, some content not available at iTunes is available for legal downloadable viewing via Amazon Unbox and vice-versa. For example, we found Battlestar Galactica Season 4 on Amazon Unbox after not finding it on iTunes.

As with the MP3 downloads, the Amazon Unbox service requires the installation of a program on your PC. That program acts both as the video player and downloader, and does a pretty decent job. Visual artifacts in BSG4’s first episode were negligible on our 61” DLP display, and sound quality was excellent (and appeared to offer surround sound queues to our receiver unlike our experience with iTunes content on the Apple TV). Also, with at least the BSG4 shows we downloaded, we were able to start watching before the entire show had downloaded, so less planning required. We haven’t tested it with movies yet, and there doesn’t appear to be a separate category for HD content either.

The Amazon Unbox service, in addition to having less content (at least for what we’re interested in at this point), also has very strict requirements with respect to country of download. While iTunes lets a user with a U.S. billing address download content no matter where they happen to be in the world at the time of download, Amazon Unbox is very specific about the fact that downloads are only possible while physically in the U.S. This is similar to the restrictions imposed by the various TV networks on viewing past TV shows.

As I’ve stated before, I’m not thrilled with DRM because it makes you dependent on the vagaries and policies of the DRM provider, and you could well find yourself cut off from your content one day because of that. However, where it relates to content I am likely to only use once, like TV shows and movie rentals, I have less of an issue with it. I listen to my music library daily, so that needs to be DRM-free, but video does not - and if I want to watch a particular movie in the future, I can either buy it on physical media or rent it again.

I give the Amazon MP3 download service a 9.0 out 10.0 and the Amazon Unbox service a 7.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale. The only way I can see to improve the Amazon MP3 service is to have a more complete library of all music and audio content available (some of the music I was looking for was not available in MP3 form, but they do have an excellent collection). The Amazon Unbox service needs more content, including HD content, and less restrictive use of content - I’d like to be able to play it on my iPod and not have to have a “Plays For Sure” compatible device (which Unbox does support for purchased content).

I recently purchased the new Apple TV with the 160GB internal storage drive as a way to get movies and other iTunes video content into my bedroom. My living room has an HP Digital Entertainment System PC, on which I can play iTunes videos, as well as video from other on-line sources, incidentally, which is why I didn’t need the Apple TV there.

The Apple TV was a breeze to install, as I opted for the direct-wired Ethernet connection instead of connecting to my slower WiFi network. The iTunes software installation on my notebook immediately recognized the Apple TV and started moving content over to it as well.

One glitch I ran into was that the iTunes synchronization did not copy my entire music library over to the Apple TV unit - only the last week’s worth of new music (courtesy of Amazon’s MP3 download service, which I like better than that of iTunes). Turns out the only way to force the copy of all my music over to the Apple TV was to highlight my entire library and “mark” each item (via the right-mouse-button context menu). Once I did that and resynchronized, everything moved over properly.

Video playback on the Apple TV is pretty good for regular TV shows - I have it connected to a 32” LCD panel via HDMI, and the visual compression artifacts were negligible on episodes of New Amsterdam, Reaper, and Supernatural. We also took advantage last night of the ability to rent and watch high definition (HD) movies, selecting Jodie Foster’s The Brave One as our test subject.

The movie took about 5 hours to download over our 2MBps connection. We had purchased it on Saturday evening in order to view it Sunday night, so the download time wasn’t a problem. It should be noted that some TV programming can be watched a minute or two into the download, instead of having to wait for the entire show to download, by the way.

The HD quality of the rented movie was very good - I could not discern any artifacts. The only disappointment other than the weak ending of the movie itself was that there was no embedded surround sound in the film. I don’t know if this is a normal situation or limited to just the movie we selected.

All the ordering and downloading can be done directly via the Apple TV, or also on the associated PC running iTunes. And you do need to have a Mac or PC to get the Apple TV running, incidentally. To order via the Apple TV, just enter your iTunes account information and password via the cool little remote control.

The cost for the HD rental was $4.99 ($3.99 for the non-HD version), which allows the movie to stay on your Apple TV (the only platform it will play on) for up to 30 days, and once you start watching the movie, you have 24 hours to finish it. Not unreasonable considering you don’t have to drive to the rental store to get the movie, but more expensive than a service like NetFlix if you’re an avid movie watcher.

From our perspective, it’s a lot cheaper than buying the movie on Blu-ray Disc, especially considering it wasn’t that great a movie (although Jodie Foster’s performance was pretty good).

The Apple TV, in addition to being a music and video jukebox, also offers photo storage and a related slideshow mode, and also has a YouTube viewing option where you can look at the most recent, most viewed, most popular, and searched for YouTube videos. Nice distraction, although it also serves as a reminder of how inane 99% of YouTube content can really be.

The current price of the Apple TV 160GB model is $329, and you must have a usable Internet connection, a local area network, and iTunes-capable personal computer to make it work.

My only technical annoyance with the Apple TV hardware is that is on all the time, and it runs hot. You can shut down (i.e. put in stand-by) the video output section (which is a major heat generator) of the Apple TV by pointing the remote control at the Apple TV, and then holding down the “play” button for six seconds, but this was not documented anywhere obvious. I stumbled across this tip during a Google search about the subject.

In terms of content, iTunes has a great selection of movies and TV shows, but frustratingly iTunes does not have everything I want to watch - shows like Battlestar Galactica Season 4, Private Practice, Torchwood, Pushing Daisies, Dexter Season 2, and Dr. Who were all not available, for example, requiring me to resort to Amazon Unbox or BitTorrent feeds.

I give the Apple TV a 7.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale. It would rate higher if it were more eco-friendly in its power consumption and if it had greater content selection.