BeBook model "One"

There was story on the local paper that my local library lends out e-book readers. I immediately thought this is something worth checking out. So I went there got one. The library lends out model “One” made by Bebook, which I guess is a manufacturer from Holland. Here are some of my thoughts about the reader.

BeBook "One"

First of all I was quite delighted that I did not need to buy any books in order to try this gadget. You can download thousands of free books from BeBook’s webpages. Most of the books have been digitized under the project Gutenberg and they are in pdf-format. The selection of books covers quite a big range of languages and I was able to find some interesting books also in my mother tongue. I ended up reading two and half books. I read two classical novels and half from a book that explains the universal esoteric meaning of Kalevala and how it discusses the same themes as all other religions of the world. It ended up being such bologny that I could not finish the book.

The first thing you notice is how light the device is how similar the weight compared to a real notebook. The buttons are placed so that you can choose pretty freely so how you hold the device. You can change page holding the device only with one hand and you can do this with both left and right hand.

The e-ink display of model “One” was still quite pleasant to read even though technology in it is already two years old. The 6 inch screen gives you very book like feeling. It is fun to notice that reading a screen does not need to put stress on your eyes. This something were e-ink technology is far superior compared to the lcd-screens found on tablet computers. You were also able to zoom the text and rotate the text around on the screen.

Then a few words of the user interface of model “One”. The basic operations are quite easy to execute. You just push the number on the keyboard that corresponds to the title/action on the screen. The system is not that advanced but it works reasonably well. The user interface of devices that have a touch screen is far superior to the system found on model “One” and would be very nice to see e-ink screen with touch sensors it would be so much easier to just point at what you want.

The device has the ability to show pictures and play mp3s but I found these features a bit poorly implemented. I put some pictures on a SD card thought that the device would be able to resize and turn them the right way. I guess not. There seems to be a lot of limitations on what kind of pictures this device can show and at what resolution. The mp3-player worked out just fine but the usability was not very high. You are better of using another device for listening to music.

In conclusion I would say that using BeBooks model “One” is a positive experience and I never would have thought how easy it was to adjust reading books of a screen. This really made a believer in e-book readers.

Still I would not rely completely on e-books, because batteries do not last forever. What happens if you do not any power to charge your device? Also traditional books rarely brake down.

You can find more information about BeBook from their webpages.

Do You Know Hurley?

Hurley -Weezer

It is the one with face of that fat guy from “Lost” on the cover. Yes, that is Hurley, the new album by my  favorite band Weezer. This band got me through high school with out too much damage.

I did not know that Weezer was releasing any material this autumn. I think I got the news maybe as late as beginning of September that the album will be released on the 14^th. So two weeks ago when I was in France I picked the album up from a local record store and used it as soundtrack when I was wandering around Nantes.

That’s enough about that. What about the album itself? Is it any good and how does it compare to Raditude and Weezer's previous albums?

Well on the first listening you notice that the album rolls (and rocks) very smoothly. The track list is maybe not entirely “all killer, no filler” but there are no really weak songs and there every song could be a single. Actually the first single from the album “Memories”, compared to the other songs on the album, is not the best song on the album. One, I guess strange, feeling I got listening this album for the first time was that you do not need listen to it second time for you to start liking it. You do not have wait for it to grow on you.

Let’s admit it Maladroit, Make Believe and Red Album were not the best albums. Yes, there were good songs on those albums but something just was missing. Weezer started to experiment new styles on the Red Album and finally I think they have found what they have been looking for. The overall mood of the album is focused and relaxed. The songs, to me, reflect the mind of person who has had a done a lot of fighting with oneself and now is on clearer waters and has found some sort of a balance. Maybe this is more about my own experience the past few years I project to the songs.

What are the songs you should check out from this album? I think at the moment my favorite tracks are “Ruling Me”, “Unspoken” and “Hang On”. These are also the songs you should also give listen. There are two bonus songs on the album that are definitely worth a listen (or two). First one is the wonderfully hilarious, but still a song with meaning, “All My Friends Are Insects”, the second one is the cover of Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida”, which has violins and bells ringing in the back ground.

I am happy to see Weezer put out such a good album. They have moved on and have a new voice and style of doing music that has some familiar elements from the past but also a lot of new attitude and ideas to keep you interested.

Track list:

1.      Memories

2.      Ruling Me

3.      Trainwrecks

4.      Unspoken

5.      Where’s My Sex?

6.      Run Away

7.      Hang On

8.      Smart Girls

9.      Brave New World

10.  Time Flies

11.  All My Friends Are Insects

12.  Viva La Vida

13.  I Want To Be Somebody

14.  Represent (Rocked Out Mix)

I want to leave you with track from the album. This one is "Unspoken".

HTC Wildfire

I’d been thinking about buying a smart phone for long time, but never saw that spending 500 euros for a smart phone was worth it. I had been interested about getting a HTC phone, I almost bought the Legend, but not until the Wildfire came out I decide to part from my money. Having used the phone a month I would say that you get quite a good and solid phone considering price.

I have been quite impressed with the navigation applications that you can install on Wildfire. I have been frequently using AndNav2 and c:geo. AndNav2 for storing maps and routes and c:geo for searching geocaches. Both of these are free.

My Wildfire is running Android 2.1 and it performs reasonably well. I’ve had quite a few crashes, but the system recovers quite fast and so far there have not been any major issues. The software is not as good as the Apples operating systems, but considering the price of the device it is acceptable. I must say I am waiting for the the 2.2 update of Android which should come also to Wildfire. However I am a bit sceptical when it arrives. The update should have arrived Q3, but now it seems I may have to wait a little longer. In some discussions there have been statements that it may not come at all.

Android Market offers a range of apps and games for you to download but the amount of programs is not as great as in iTunes. There is another catch that rises from the hardware of Wildfire. Wildfire is not equipped with very fast processor and therefore not everything that is on offer on Android Market is on offer to the Wildfire. So if you are looking for serious gaming or other applications that require the processor to pack little more punch then the Wildfire isn’t the phone for you.

If you are on a budget and looking for a Android phone I could recommend Wildfire to you. The phone does not have that WOW factor iPhone or Ipod Touch had back in the day but it is a solid device and should serve you well for couple of years.

Funny or Not?

A few weeks ago I bought the new book by Hugleikur Dagsson, a comic artist from Iceland who makes comics with extremely dark humor. Almost always the jokes test the limits of good taste. You check out what I am talking about at dagsson.com. The jokes on the front page are of the not-so-offending-kind, but you will get the idea. The book I bought is called in Icelandic "Okkur 4". In Finnish the book is called, freely translate to English, "Laugh Pervert, Laugh".

Now to the content of the book. I thought that nothing would shake me and I would think most of the jokes would be hilarious. But I was wrong. Of course one thing that the author wants to do is to test the limits of your humour, I do understand that much. Still some of the jokes were just too brutal and there was no joke or twist in them. And there are quite a few of those in the book.

Second thing is that it seem that this kind of humour works only in small servings at a time. Reading the whole book at once is just too much. My favourite joke in the book is the one were wife farts and the husband says "our marriage is over". =)

After reading this book I felt immensely disgusted and amused at the same time. Which I think is what the author is aiming for. If you want to laugh and wonder who writes this kind of immoral shit I recommend that you read Okkur 4.

Do you have Bols?

I was in Amsterdam in June on a work trip and I bought a bottle of Corenwyn from Schiphol on my way back. I finally managed to crack open the bottle tonight and here are my thoughts about the this Dutch spirit.

This is what Wikipedia has to say about jenevers in general:

Jenever (also known as junever, genievre, genever, jeniever, peket or in the English-speaking world as Holland gin or Dutch gin), is the juniper-flavored and strongly alcoholic traditional liquor of the Netherlands, from which gin evolved. Believed to have been invented by a Dutch chemist and alchemist named Sylvius de Bouve,it was first sold as a medicine in the late 16th century. In the 17th century it became more popular for its flavor. Traditional jenever is still very popular in the Netherlands and Belgium. European Union regulations specify that only liquor made in these two countries, two French provinces and two German federal states can use the name jenever. Source: Wikipedia: Jenever.

Okay, now that we have our facts it is time to go to how this fire brew tastes like. At first the smell of juniper is quite pleasant. *EDIT* There is also hint of yeast in smell. However after the first sip you realize that the taste of  Corenwyn is quite strong and you can really taste the juniper. The after taste leaves a nutty taste in your mouth. For a spirit the taste is very agreeable and nice. I really like this stuff. This time I drank Corenwyn raw, but some time I must try mixing it with tonic water. Plus the bottle made from clay looks really cool.

Devilishly good album

Okay, okay, "Get behind me Satan" isn't the newest album, hell it isn't even the newest album by White Stripes, but it is the one that I am listening at the moment.

Previously I had almost ignored The White Stripes and did think that they weren't even that good.Somehow this summer I really started digging "Blue Orchid" and it's great guitar sounds. I was quite surprised how much there is variation on this album. There great rock sounds. The drumming is awesome. The strange country wibe in some of the songs is incredible. You won't get bored listeninh to this album.

I definitely want to recommend that you go listen to in Spotify.

The White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan

New type of living

Maybe a month ago I saw a document about Michael Reynolds.Garbage Warrior made in UK in 2007 is document about Micheal and his life.

I think I have heard about Mr.Reynolds and his "Earthships" at least once before. These earthships are experimental houses that Mr. Reynolds has been building already for many decades. His goal is to make houses that are made out things that people throw away (e.g. car tyres, bottles etc.). The houses are designed so that they would leave the smallest possible impact on nature and that the houses would be as far as possible self-sufficient when it comes to heating, electricity and water.

The documentary showed that sometimes the rules that we have made to protect ourselves inhibit truly innovative people to try new things. This really bothered me since here is no question about it that we need to develop housing that uses less electricity and natural resources. 

In my home country industrial production of low-energy and so-called passive houses is about  to start in larger scale and that is quite positive sign. Even though these houses consume significantly less or even no energy the downside is that they rely heavily on technology provided by the society. There is nothing wrong with organised society, but sometimes things go wrong you cannot rely on society to provide utilities. That's why I think Reynolds gets it right. Let's make our housing self-sufficient and ecological.

I think what Michael and his team are trying to do is achievable.  At the moment he is building his houses in New Mexico (and I guess also in Georgia) what know about the climate in New Mexico is that it is not the most hospitable. So it should possible to develop these houses so that they work also in places were conditions are less harsh. I just wonder if these houses work in places like Finland where temperature difference during the year can be 70 degrees celsius?

Anyways I was really impressed and inspired by the documentary and if I ever get possibility to visit one of these Earthships I will definately do it. Check earthship.com for more details. The houses look really cool.