We're moving!

Pedro Vera's Web Log is changing platforms. The new site still has the same URL, http://pedrovera.com/ but it is hosted in the Tumblr platform. I am keeping the old entries here for archival purposes, all new content is at the new site.

New experiment: Amazon Kindle Wiki

Now that I am starting to get a hang of the Kindle, and my friends are slowly embracing it, I decided it was time to put together some kind of online reference.

The obvious candidate for this is some kind of wiki. I have setup a Google wiki at http://wiki.pedrovera.com to see how that goes. Right now the wiki only holds general information about the device, but it also has a section where you can download my two novels in the Kindle format, plus plain text and PDF.

The Kindle version is far from perfect, mostly because the conversion tool that I used is still in beta. I would really like for Amazon to release the full specification of their digital publishing platform, for example, the proper way to tag for title and author.

iPhone 3G

The Vera household has been a bit hostile since my dear mother in law came for her yearly summer visit. I love my mother in law, god bless her, the problem is her daughter, that is, my wife.

Whenever her mother is here she goes batshit.

This time the ordeal started because MIL wanted to buy an iPhone 3G for her other daughter, who is already with AT&T in Puerto Rico.

The problem: nobody would sell her one at the upgrade price, she needed the account holder in person.

After a week of FAIL, and without asking me, All Mighty Alpha Nerd and Master of Technical Decisions in the Vera Household, they decided to upgrade Ivette's iPhone 8GB to an iPhone 3G 16GB, then the deactivated iPhone 8GB could go to her sisters. That's a $300 upgrade for a phone that commands more than that on eBay.

I was furious, because as All Mighty Alpha Nerd and Master of Technical Decisions in the Vera Household, I feel entitled to always have the newest toy. I could not tolerate using an iPhone 8GB when my wife had an iPhone 3G 16GB.

No god damn way.

Of course, I couldn't afford to pay for upgrading my own, at least not yet, so I resorted to bitching and moaning. And lecturing.

For example, they went out for a drive and called me in a panic because they got lost in South East DC.

While carrying an iPhone 3G, which has fucking GPS in it.

Yeah, you can feel the rage already. It takes two lousy clicks to find out where you are at:

1. Click on the maps button



2. Click on the location button

That's it, you are done. If in range of GPS, it tells you exactly where you are at. Otherwise it tries to use cell towers and known wifi hotspots to give you a circle of uncertainty. The smaller the circle, the better the prediction is. In my old iPhone I had the triangulation peg my location within a car length, which is pretty damn impressive when you take into account what happens to GPS if selective availability happens to be enabled for your area.

After a week of bitching, moaning, pleading, etc. I wore them down and they upgraded mine, so now I also have an iPhone 3G 16GB, and my old phone (sorry Brian) is going to be my MIL's.

Now comes the best part: what the fuck for?

From my desk I still can't get 3G (but the Kindle can see it just fine, thank you). And my wireless access point decided that it won't let me login so I can add the mac address of the new phones, so I am surfing on EDGE while sitting 6 feet away from a wireless access point connected to 16MB cable!

What's different about the new phone?

1. It's lighter.



2. The buttons are chromed.



3. It smudges twice as much as my old one, because the back is now glossy black.



4. Now I don't have a dock.



5. And the AC adapter is maybe 1/4th the size of the old one, so it is even easier to lose.



6. And except for 3G, and it having twice as much storage capacity, and GPS, the device has the exact same feature set as my old phone.



7. The bill is now magically $15 more per phone.



8. The camera doesn't have the weird color spot that the old phones have, at least as far as I can tell.



9. Maybe it is a placebo effect, but normal voice calls are a bit better.

That's about it.

In terms of aesthetics, I still think the original back cover looks classier than the new glossy back. I haven't seen the white phone in person, I imagine it will be the ultimate chick phone (sorry Brad).

Flip Video Ultra

Now that we are more or less having family gatherings once per month, I thought it was worth it to take another shot at making videos, since there is only so much you can convey from photos.

I was hoping to score something flashy, but the kind of HD camcorder that caught my eye is still in the $1000 range, and that's too damn much.

Worse, most of these videos would eventually end at youtube, so HD was really a god damn waste of resources, even if it was worth it for archival purposes.

Almost by accident, I ran into the Flip Video series. By looking at the specs it did not look like much, a tiny camera, almost no zoom, and one hour of video capacity.

What the hell is that going to be good for?

I got sucked into the reviews big time: pretty much everyone loves the damn things.

Why? Because they are simple, and they work.

Two weeks ago I took delivery of a Flip Video Ultra, it was $117 at Amazon and shipping was free. And that's where the fun started: In two weeks I have shot more video than the total amount of video I shot during the year that I owned my previous camcorder, a JVC miniDV that I sold in pristine condition more than five years ago (it was a year old, yet it had not been used for a full hour of total recording time).

See some of my videos at Youtube.

The reviews are right, this thing is basically perfect for the job. The quality of the video is not stellar, it looks a bit washed out but I was able to clean it up a bit with iMovie 7. Everything else is great. I can take videos of PJ, plug it into my Mac Book Pro and in less than half an hour I have already edited the video and uploaded it to youtube. VLC doesn't like the audio codec, but that's the only thing I have seen so far.

I have seen the output of the camera as:

1. Youtube, web resolution. Looks as bad as every other youtube video, no surprise here.



2. Youtube, AppleTV. Looks much nicer.



3. Youtube, iPhone. Looks fantastic.



4. AppleTV, h264. Looks very nice, not as nice as Youtube for iPhone.

I haven't made DVDs yet, so I have no idea what it looks like.

So far the videos have been a hit, and even PJ likes to watch himself on youtube, which is kind of funny in a meta way.

The good:

1. Inexpensive (not "cheap", it feels very solid, a quality product, not a cheaply made piece of shit). < $120 is a lot of bang for the buck.



2. It does one job, and it does it well.



3. It's fun to use.

The not-so-good:

1. I am a moron, because I did not read the instructions booklet I missed that the battery compartment has a lock button, so I spent my first week constantly pulling out the damn door by mistake.



2. The record button doesn't give enough feedback, so it is hard to tell if it engaged unless you are looking at the LCD.



3. An SD slot would have been great, but I am not losing sleep over it.

Amazon Kindle

I was a very early reader. My mother taught me how to read by the time I was four, and I was reading Sherlock Holmes and Jules Verne novels before I was out of elementary school. At least in my school district this was a rarity, even in high school when a teacher wouldn't believe me that I had read a novel (I am sure it was by Isabel Allende) on my own, not because I was being forced to.

It got me out of my normal Spanish class and into the "lit" class for a week or so, which was nice.

In US Army basic training you are forbidden from reading anything that isn't published by the Army, and you are handed a paperback, the "Smart Book" (Tradoc Pamphlet 600-4). Whenever you are not doing anything, you better be reading that book.

I carried it on my left leg pocket of my BDUs. On the right leg pocket I carried Clive Barker's Imagica. From 6 feet away it looks about the same size as the Smart Book, and I never got caught reading it. I had the Smart Book since before basic training and was already bored, so I needed the novel just to keep me sane.

Years later, I am still reading nonstop. It doesn't even bother me the cost, since there is always a decent selection of discounted books at every chain bookstore you can think of. The problem is storage.

A book per week habit means a collection of hundreds of books, which basically eat up your living space since you are only reading one at a time. In our case, we have a full wall covered with bookshelves, crammed to the top with 14 years worth of book purchases. And this doesn't take into account the books ruined over the years by insects, water, etc. If we still had them all we would need a second full wall.

And here comes the Kindle. The Amazon Kindle is an e-book reader with prepaid 3G wireless connectivity, and integrated into Amazon.com. This means that, without even using a computer, you can browse the Amazon Kindle store from the device, pick the books that you want and they are delivered to your device in minutes. Want to read a sample first? No problem, you can download a sample and pay to turn it into a full version later, and it never expires.

It is being marketed as the iPod of the book world.

It is also ugly as murder, since it is not an Apple product people will bitch and moan about how ugly it is, but the truth of the matter is that once you are reading, you don't pay attention to the device, all that you do is look at the screen and it looks perfect.

People also bitch about the price: $359. What everyone seems to be missing is that this device comes with prepaid 3G cellular connectivity, which is expensive. My iPhone 3G costs $30/month to access the same kind of connectivity. With the Kindle, you pay $359 and off you go. I am sure that at least $200 out of the $359 is due to the prepaid connectivity.

Now, here is the smart thing that Amazon did, that Apple didn't: Amazon stores all of your paid content for you, and you are free to re-download as many times as you wish.

Fried your Kindle? You can pull all of your purchases with your replacement unit, no charge. You can't do that with iTunes and an iPod.

Ran out of space and are too cheap to buy a $8 2GB SD card? Delete some of your books, you can always pull them down again. You can't do that with iTunes and an iPod.

I also like that I can add my own content to the device. I can either plug the Kindle to USB, or I can remove the (optional) SD card. If I plug the Kindle to USB, both the internal memory, and the SD card, show as two separate storage units. There is no science as of how to add content, you simply drag files in the allowed formats into the documents folder in the Kindle or SD card and off you go.

If you want to convert your files to the AZW format, then you can try Stanza, which so far rocks.

Still, there are things that could be better:

1. The previous/next buttons need more resistance, to account for accidental hits.



2. The wheel button eats the battery if the device is asleep and the cover is closed.



3. The retention tab for the cover is a joke.



4. The rear door opens too easily. At least it needs a lock button.



5. The two most important buttons, the power and wireless buttons, are in a really stupid place if you are expected to use the cover.



6. Search sucks.



7. It doesn't allow you to arrange your books as folders. I added a few dozen files and it drove me crazy trying to figure out what was what.

Those are all minor nags, and Amazon is rumored to be already working on version 2. I would expect Amazon to address some of the usability issues, but one thing is for sure is that there is no way in hell Amazon is going to show up with a $99 Kindle, that is, unless it comes with a cellular service contract for $X/month.

Veraperez.com pwn3d again

"Fuck me once, shame on you. Fuck me twice, shame on me."
- Cedric Daniels, The Wire.

Veraperez.com got hit with a Google black list again (thanks to Brian for catching this). And for the same bullshit as the last time. Parties unknown inserted an IFRAME with links to malicious code. Google automatically checks for these to protect their users. Anyone seeing Veraperez.com as Google search results is warned that the site links to malware. Anyone using Firefox and attempting to visit the site get a big red nasty sign explaining that the site is potentially dangerous.

On one hand, I can't complain about Google fixing my fuck ups, it beats the hell out of having to explain to my visitors why I let THEIR computers get fucked up by MY website.

On the other hand I am god damn furious that this is the second time in a month that this happens to me with a properly installed Wordpress. Am I the only one?

This time I went as far as to assume that maybe the account password was compromised, so I ended up changing my passwords in a bunch of sites (good luck using a dictionary attack now, assholes). Still, the damage is done, I will lose at least two days of traffic to this bullshit.

If three weeks ago I was concerned about Wordpress, right now I am downright fucking scared of it. I don't think I can justify offering Wordpress to any of my customers when they can run a proper blog off Blogspot with their own domain names and with a hell of a lot less concern for security issues than when trying to run Wordpress stand alone.

Domino's Scientists Test Limits Of What Humans Will Eat

Domino's Scientists Test Limits Of What Humans Will Eat

Word cloud

Here is the Wordle.net map for this blog:

And here's the one for Veraperez.com:

Frustrated

We have a code word/meme that is used a lot by #asp regulars, it is used to convey frustration with something that is work related:

This is how I feel right now.

Another seemingly infinite wikipedia session

I know more than a few people that can't help but get sucked into wikipedia whenever they go there just to check for one specific thing. It scares me because whenever I get sucked in, I blow hours at a time. Here is the result of just two hours worth of wikipedia browsing/reading just for this evening:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Scientology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia%2C_Pennsylvania

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltpeter_War

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltpetre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_Valley%2C_Washington%2C_D.C.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonopah%2C_Nevada

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bannack%2C_Montana

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feisal_I_of_Iraq

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._E._Lawrence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Revolt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auda_ibu_Tayi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Ferrer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_bridge

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Sharif

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Delon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Pillars_of_Wisdom

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_of_Arabia_(film)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_town

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_de_Gaulle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Ohio

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaumont_Reserve_Fleet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Oriskany_%28CV-34%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Langsdorff

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dianetics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroaster

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thus_Spake_Zarathustra

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_%28Ayn_Rand%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Szandor_LaVey

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_Prince_of_Wales_and_Repulse

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_battleship_Strasbourg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vichy_France

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casabianca_%28Q183%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_de_main

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuttling

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Guernica

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Yamato

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Normandie

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsize

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuttling_of_the_French_fleet_in_Toulon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_Anton

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Torch

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condor_Legion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Franco

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Romero

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_%28Spain%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror_%28Spain%29#Red_and_White_Terrors

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palacio_de_Lecumberri

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram%C3%B3n_Mercader

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror_%28Spain%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trotsky

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Dali_Young_Virgin_Auto.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Virgin_Auto-Sodomized_by_the_Horns_of_Her_Own_Chastity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Dal%C3%AD

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeois

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surreal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_universe_%28fiction%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Hill_%28film%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Hill

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmen

The list is backwards, so my session starts at the bottom of the list with the Watchmen page.