Tsaot

To the E-Book Editors,

A couple of weeks ago I purchased The Well of Ascension, book two of Brandon Sanderson’s amazing Mistborn series for my Amazon Kindle. I have to say, it is one of my favorite series, second only to Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time. That makes this letter harder to write and maintain a civil tone. You see, the Kindle edition of the book has obviously not been given the care it deserves. The cover image included with the book is the abstract art piece seen inside the book instead of what is pictured on the dust cover or paperback. The images for the chapter headings are so light, that they’re nearly invisible on the Kindle screen. I’m not too concerned with these however as they only harm the aesthetics of the book, and not the actual material itself. What I do take issue with though are the obvious OCR (Optical Character Recognition) errors that are present throughout the work. For example, three times, the character Ham is called Flam (Locations 10985, 13464, 13563 as given by the Kindle 2). I cannot recall the others I’ve seen as I was trying to enjoy the work, but I just couldn’t take any more of it. I paid the full paperback price for this volume. I paid for a professional work, and this is far from it.

Macmillan is one of the largest companies in the publishing industry, and has enough weight to force Amazon to change its pricing scheme such that the financial benefit of buying a digital work is minimal at best for the consumer. By performing such an act, you are sending me, the consumer, the message that these digital works are of the same quality as your printed works, and I believed you. I believed that the experience of reading the book on my Kindle is the same as reading the hardcover I originally held when I read the work the first time.

I feel betrayed.

I cannot say I will never buy a book from you again. One of my greatest loves is that of the written work. I enjoy reading. You have wonderful authors, and I enjoy their words, worlds, and ideas.

I cannot say I will approach your books with the same anticipation as I have in the past. My idea of a digital book has been tainted by how you, Harper Collins, and other publishers have treated the format.

However, I will not stop buying digital works. The Kindle is too convenient for that. In the past year that I have had the device, I have read more books than in the five years previous. It is a gateway into more literature than I could have possibly imagined when I first purchased it. That is part of what makes this lack of basic proofreading a digital work so irritating. As the Kindle store works now, a publication cannot be updated to correct errors such as this. As I re-read the Mistborn series, which I most assuredly will do, time after time again, I will have to put up with the same errors over and over again, and it frustrates me.

Please, as this industry continues to grow, enhance your publishing practices to remove this kind of frustration. You know that the primary devices these works are going to be viewed on will be the Kindle, iPhone, and iPad. Preview the embedded images on the target devices to ensure they are viewable. Proofread the OCR’ed text with the same care you did for the original work. Let me enjoy the work the author intended without having to work around your mistakes.

Please, just respect your authors and your readers. That’s all I ask.

Respectfully,
Anthony Howell II

I hate remakes of films or shows that I remember the original source to, unless the original was a cartoon. There is a good reason for this. In live action film, the actors are the main source of entertainment. How they move, how they interpret the character, and how they interact with the other characters are all central to how the show plays out. When a movie or show is remade, there are always two paths those involved can take: they can either try to attempt to copy the source as closely as possible, or they can reinterpret the source and make something new. The former path fails every time. The latter has a slim chance of succeeding.

With the A-Team, the crew involved went for a reinterpretation of the source material and they barely succeeded. They created an A-Team. Not the A-Team, but an A-Team. Face is Face. He romances every woman he comes across, and succeeds, but is ultimately pulled away protesting. Hannibal is Hannibal. He’s a bit harder, more mean, but he sees the job and gets it done. B.A. is B.A.: obsessed with driving and doing what is right. Murdock is Murdock: insane yet functional. You never quite question his insanity like you did in the show (is Lefty really a psychosis, or is he just teasing B.A.?), but he’s sane enough to do his job.

The problem is in how the team interacts. They never quite mesh like the TV crew did. They never play off each other. They’re together to get a job done. They might go to a bar after work, but probably not a fishing trip. There was a scene at the beginning where they tried to put a little of this in, Murdock poking at B.A. with a cow puppet an B.A. responding with halfhearted threats, but that was it. Sadly, this was the element of the A-Team that I was hoping most to see.

As a movie goes, the film was great. It’s going down as a Buy for me. The story and acting is good and the action is well choreographed. As a remake, not so much. It’s an A-Team, but it’s not the A-Team. Not yet. But there is hope. It’s a decent start. They have the characters. Make a sequel, and build up the camaraderie, and I’m there.

And the WordPress install is back! WTFlyingChicken happened you ask? I got fed up with Drupal, that’s what happened. Don’t get me wrong, Drupal is awesome; just too awesome for my use though. To put it bluntly, what I wanted from it was a small, miniscule, tiny bit, of what it could do. That is, a site with a blog and pages to showcase a few things. WordPress is perfect for this. I knew that when I moved over to Drupal, but when you compare the amount of work required to make Dupal do what I want it to what I already had the good W to the P doing, it just wasn’t worth it. Every time I tried to change something I wound up spending hours of research on the tiniest of changes that didn’t even affect the front end everyone saw. I wasn’t writing anymore. So to heck with it I said. I’m back, I’m front, I’m both of me and I’m writing again, for better or worse.

Shortly I will be releasing my first commercial app on Windows Mobile. As a result, I’m moving my blog from www.tsaot.com to blog.tsaot.com and turning WWW dot into my commercial page. This is an exciting time for me as I’m finally doing something I enjoy for a living. My first app will be small and I will announce it when it is ready in the next few days.

Sadly, the move of my blog will not be a pleasant thing as WordPress is not built for such actions. As a result, I’m going to take the? opportunity? to move to Drupal, which I have enjoyed working with in the past. Drupal has the ability to run multiple sites from the same install, which allows me to maintain a seamless appearance across my domain. Drupal is also more than a blogging engine. It is in fact a content management system that can be used as a blogging engine and a company website and maintain the same look and feel across both. I look forward to what I can do with it in the future.

I’m getting tired of the Kindle’s UI. The Kindle 2 has been out for nearly a year now and the best the dev team has been able to give us is a list of every file on the device and a context sensitive menu. I will admit that the interface is simple and anyone can use it. It’s also very easy to navigate, if you have less than 30 items. I have one hundred and seventy nine. It is a mess! Instead of having easy access to my books now, I have to dig through the mess by either paging through the list that can only be sorted by most recent access, title, or author (descending only) and can only be filtered by all, personal documents, subscriptions, or books. I cannot list audio or text to speech enabled books only. I cannot tag books and list them by tags (say Fiction, Business, Need to Read, Read, etc…). There is no form of library management whatsoever and I need it. I can’t count how many books I’ve downloaded for free from Amazon that I haven’t read just because they’ve been buried by the books and podcasts I’ve put on the device. (Quick tip, put a MP3 file in the Audible folder and it’s treated as an audio book. Your position in the file is saved and you can skip ahead and back by 30 seconds. Combined with Songbird and the folder sync addon, it’s the ultimate podcast player.) Organization is a mess and it needs improvement.

One solution I freely offer to Amazon is to create an actual Home Screen that appears when I press home on my device. Something that separates different media types such that they don’t bury each other. I have 10+ publications I sync to my Kindle with Calibre that bury the set of books I’m currently reading every morning, so why not split the screen and list the 5 most recently updated publications and 5 most recently accessed books? Now, because left and right will have to be used to move between the different sections, let’s use the keyboard to access these options. There are 44 buttons there and an ALT key; let’s put them to use. ALT + L can skip directly to the classic file list with additional filtering and sorting options. ALT + P or S can go to the publication/subscription list, and ALT + K can open the Kindle Store.

Let’s look at the Kindle Store for a moment here. Admit it, the Kindle’s wireless access to the store is the reason you chose the Kindle over a Sony PRwhatever. Never mind touch screens and back lights, instant access to a new book once you finish your current one is where it’s at. So why not put it on the home screen? Sure it’s shameless advertising in the one screen that you will see the most on the device, but it’s also instant access to the most used portions of the kindle store. You finish a book, click Home, and ooh! Brandon Sanderson’s continuation of The Wheel of Time has just been published! Click, buy, read. I can’t count how many times I’ve finished a book just to go to the store and purchase the next one in the series, which coincidentally was in the recommended list. This just shortens the process. It’s useful to you the reader and to Amazon the merchant.

The Calendar pane. Who doesn’t need a calendar? The Kindle’s tied into the Internet, why not have it show you your Google calendar? Google offers a good API so it’s possible to tie into it and Amazon can charge for the service. I wouldn’t mind paying $1.5o monthly for instant access to my calendar. I would prefer that it be free, but hey, if Amazon can deliver a good calendar manager which ties into what I already use, I’ll take it.

Lastly, what home screen doesn’t have the current date and time? It’s hardly unique. But how many home screens tie in a fun fact unique to that date. Amazon boasts Wikipedia integration, even going as far as including a button for it in the search interface. Why not put it to use and make the Kindle fun again? I’ve had the device for over 6 months now. It’s still travels everywhere with me and I still love it, but it’s not a toy for showing to other people anymore, it’s a tool and I get annoyed being interrupted by other people when I try to use it. Throwing in a fun fact of the day is a great way to get me to share the device with others. Historical facts are always interesting. And hey, if you are interested enough to learn more, just slide the cursor down and click to see the Wikipedia article on it.

Amazon has a great device here and it’s the first to market, which give it a strong foothold, but others are just on the horizon. Amazon’s only strength is it’s online store. Everything else about the device (DRM, poor library management, spotty text to speech support, no desktop reader) are weaknesses. Other companies are offering touch screens, desktop management software, back lights and other features that will pull customers away. The device is stagnating, and the only real new feature offered on the device since I bought it was the hobbling of the TTS.

This device is revolutionary. We can see that from how many other devices are copying it’s online and note taking functionality. The revolution is over now though. We now understand that we want portable libraries with wireless store, dictionary, and encyclopedia access. The question very soon is going to be which one do I want, or which one do I want next. The answer there is the one that makes getting to what I want the easiest.

All I can seem to type recently is rant material. Maybe I need to start looking for the good in my life instead of the bad.

In any case, I’m mad a Verizon.

In the next month or two I’m going to be booted off of my dad’s cellphone plan to make room for my younger siblings. I need to get my own plan as a result. I’ve known for months that this was coming up so I’ve been watching the different coverage maps, cellphone releases, and data & texting plans. What I’ve found is that I really need to stick with Verizon. My house is on the edge of Sprint’s coverage map, so no go there. AT&T has too much bad press and all my friends that have had it have switched away (that is except for the Apple fanboy). The same goes for T-Mobile.

So here’s the rub with Verizon: phone selection. It’s crap to put it bluntly. I’m looking for a multi-touch PDA/smart-phone. Verizon has zero. Every single one of their smart-phones are WM 6.x candy bars with either resistive touch or no touch screen at all. This is not what has been promised for nearly two years now. On December 4, 2007 C-net reported that Verizon was planning on carrying phones using the Google Android OS. In June, C-net again reported that Verizon was planning to offer an Android OS phone by then end of the year. Nothing has come of it.

Palm and its new WebOS had two phones now either out or coming out on the Sprint network. Verizon has promised that it’s going to have the Palm Pre in early 2010. Well whoop-de-doo, Verizon’s going to get a new 1 year old platform just in time for everyone else to upgrade to the next. Seriously, what is the problem Verizon?

Fed up with the empty promises, I contacted Verizon to inquire as to where the new innovative were. I told them I wanted an Android or WebOS phone, something that had an OS newer than Windows Mobile 6.1. Here is their response:

Dear [Tsaot],

Good morning, my name is Irma, and I am happy to assist you with your inquiry regarding equipment options.

There are several wireless phones being tested for functionality and reliability with our network. Verizon Wireless will not offer a product or service unless it meets the high standards our customers have come to expect. Verizon Wireless is constantly improving the services, features, and wireless phones we offer to our customers for their communication needs. I am unable to provide information regarding which equipment is being considered or approximate release dates, as this may raise expectations that may not be met.

You may also receive free e-mail updates as to when new products and services are available. To receive your free e-mail update, please click on the following link to view the “E-mail Updates” page of our website: [link redacted as it appeared to be specific to this email]

My goal was to address your concern regarding equipment options ? the first time you contacted us via our website. I hope I have accomplished that for you today. We appreciate your business and thank you for being a valued Verizon Wireless customer.

Sincerely,

Irma
Verizon Wireless
Customer Service

This email has left me with nothing but questions. It seems to imply that being a Verizon phone is a privilege given to a select few. Tell that to my Moto Q9m. The only thing I’ve ever liked about it was the excellent keyboard. The message management software, music playing software, web browser, and exclusive multimedia home screen are all pieces of junk. But lets analyze this some more. As I said, an Android phone was promised nearly 2 years ago. T-Mobile’s G1 wasn’t released until October 2008. This means that and Android phone Verizon could test has been available for almost a year now. Given the amount of time passed, I think it’s safe to say that the HTC Dream did not pass Verizon’s rigorous testing.

I think it’s safe to say that nothing innovative will ever pass Verizon’s testing process. They turned down the iPhone, they let someone else take the plunge on the Android, and seem to have passed up the WebOS. This leaves me with a hard choice. Do I stay on the network that hosts my family’s cell phones and either keep my old phone or get one I never wanted, or do I switch networks to something inferior to get a better phone. I don’t know quite yet, but it’s not a choice I look forward to making.

I just want to post an update to my Gateway troubles. They ended the discussion by telling me that as this is a Game issue, the cannot provide free customer support under warranty as it is not a Gateway hardware or software issue. So even though the laptop was advertised as a mid-range gaming rig in the store, they will not support it as such. Honestly though, this is the last Gateway/Acer laptop I buy. It has heat issues along with the enter button being mapped to the num-pad enter event instead of the normal enter key. When I move on, this will probably be subjected to some sort of tear down and remodeling, maybe as a wall mounted media center.

Dear Gateway,
My keyboard acts funny in only one kind of application. What's going on?
Dear sir,
Your laptop is under warranty but we don't know your Name, Age, Address, etc... please post them in this insecure communications forum and we'll store that information away. Also, I don't know what could cause your problem. Maybe $Jefferson$ or $Benjamin$ could jog my memory.

So yesterday, August 29, 2009, I fired off a support e-mail to to Gateway concerning how the enter key on my MD2614u behaves in games. The short story is: it doesn’t. Many games require you to hit the enter key at different points, most of the time to just acknowledge a message. I first noticed my problem in Tomb Raider: Anniversary Edition. I’ve gone on to see that it doesn’t work in several other games that use the Direct Input method of keyboard capture. Of course many games have mouse inputs for the same thing as well, so I’ve been able to work around this problem for the most part.

In any case, I finally decided to track down the source of my problem. I plugged in a USB keyboard and discovered no issues there. The enter key works fine. I then decided it was a hardware specific issue and decided to search the web for insight. No dice, neither Bing nor Google could return any result that even matched what I was wanting to see. So I turned to my last resort. Gateway technical support.

I went to the e-mail support page and sent the following message:
I've noticed that in many games (Tomb Raider Anniversary, Fiesta, Batman: Arkham Asylum Demo, Droplitz...) that the enter key on my keyboard does not work in them. The game does not register the button as being pressed. In normal applications such as Word and Notepad++ the key operates normally. The keys on an external USB keyboard work fine, so I do not believe it to be a software issue. Is this a known issue for this like of laptops and is there a workaround for it? I would hate to pack a keyboard around with me just for 1 button.

Grammatical errors (that I just now noticed) aside, I thought this got my issue across satisfactorily. E-mail sent, I went back to binging and googling for an answer to no avail.

The response was posted at 08/28/2009 07:16 PM.
Dear [Name Removed],

Thank you for contacting Gateway. I will be happy to assist you with this issue.
As per our records, your computer is in warranty but not registered in our database.

Thank you Best Buy for protecting my identity while still retaining my warranty.

We will register your system in our database for you. For that we need to get some information. Please provide the following information:
1. Complete Name:
2. E-mail Address:
3. Complete Address: { including Street address, Country, City, State and Postal ( zip ) code }
4. Home Phone Number:
5. Work Phone Number:
6. Store Purchased From:
7. Purchase Date:
8. Price:
9. Model Number:
10. Serial Number:
We will register your computer after getting the information.

Wait… You want me to e-mail that to you where it’ll be posted in a forum whose access is granted by just the knowledge of an e-mail address? Would you like my credit card information to make the theft of my identity that much easier?

Having reviewed your email, I understand that the Enter key is working in normal applications like Wordpad, Notepad etc. So the keypad is working fine.

No it’s not.

Unfortunately, we are unable to offer support for this type of issue. Please understand that Gateway technicians have not been trained on every possible software title or hardware component.
Gateway technicians can assist you with the removal or installation of any hardware or software purchased from Gateway. Due to the magnitude of information that would need to be learned,Gateway technicians are not trained on all the advanced features of the software or hardware Gateway sells.

“I don’t know the first thing about troubleshooting this kind of issue as I have no training other than in the English Language.” Fair enough, I’ve had jobs like that before.

Note: Items from the Gateway Accessory Store are fully supported by the manufacturer of the hardware or publisher of the software that you purchased.

That was random, this is not an accessory, it’s the keyboard built into the device.

There are a number of options below that you can use for assistance with your request. Below you will find two options that should be able to assist you with your question or issue.

Yay!

1. Most software applications have help files that can usually answer your questions on how to use or configure the software or hardware obtained from Gateway.
I strongly suggest you use the help menus that are included with most applications. The help files included with those applications have a lot of good information and will frequently provide you the information you need to customize or use an advanced feature of that program. You can access the help file for most programs by clicking Help on the Menu bar of the program about which you want more information.

Been doing that, doesn’t work on games that don’t let you remap buttons. Also, Menu bar? You don’t play many games do you?


2. Another option is calling Answers by Gateway. Our representatives have advanced industry knowledge of all major brands and their merchandise so they are able to provide you with expertise when answering questions about those products.

Good!

You may call 1.800.237.6483 [dialing it now] at a rate of $2.95 per minute [Say what?] (billed to a credit card). [Never mind then, hanging up.] However, calling cards are also available in 30 minute, 90 minute, or 1 Year unlimited usage.

So your answer is that I need to pay you for an answer? What wonderful customer service skills you have.

I sincerely hope one of the options above provides the information you need.

No. No it doesn’t. I didn’t ask how I could put more money in your pocket.

For further assistance please visit our web site: http://www.support.gateway.com
Have a nice day!
Respectfully,
Gateway Online Technical Support

Needless to say, I found the above not only incompetent, which I expect for a first response, but outright rude. “We don’t have an answer now, but we can solve your problem in 15 minutes for just under $45!”

OK, I understand that this is probably a canned response the employee (I can’t call this person a tech as he didn’t attempt to clarify the problem to come to an answer), but I admit the problem is somewhat vague. So I did a little more troubleshooting and found a new fact. I forwarded this on to the guy.

I've done some additional experimentation/research as it appears you do not have enough information to help me yet. The enter key on my keyboard appears to be mapped to the numpad enter button instead of the standard enter button, which when used in some applications (mostly games) is used for other purposes. Now, as many of these apps do not allow me to re-map my controls, is there some way to change the behavior of the key itself to the standard enter input?

A new person responded as I’m writing this. The gist of the message is “we can’t help until you register your information”. Sigh, you’ve admitted yourself that my machine is covered under warranty. I’m not asking for repairs, just a little trouble shooting assistance. They did provide a link to a registration page so I don’t have to post my information in a public forum.

I registered. The page thanked me and informed me to “Keep an eye out for e-mail updates featuring the latest in exciting Gateway news” even though I didn’t check the newsletter box. Great.

So I return back to the dialog and notice this line in the second response. “Is this issue specific while playing games only?
If yes, you may please contact Answers by Gateway at 800.237.6483 at a rate of $2.95 per minute”… This person apparently didn’t read my previous message as I specifically indicated that the enter key is behaving as though it were the numpad enter instead of the standard enter key.

So I’m submitting the following response:
OK, I registered so you can now provide support.
I pointed out that the problem that I'm experiencing is that the computer interprets the *built in* keyboard's enter key input as the numpad enter key. Most programs do not distinguish between the two, but there are a relative few that do. Programs that use Direct Input for their keyboard capture (mostly games) are the most common in this category.
The solution I'm looking for now is a way to change the behavior of my enter key from the numpad enter to the standard enter. Is this possible? Please note, "Pay us for an answer" is not an acceptable answer.

Hopefully someone will have an answer.

Hey! I’m back in the game. I will be updating this blog again on a regular basis. For this event, I am releasing my favorite app: Tsaot’s Twitter Reader. This application is a Twitter reader for Windows Mobile 2003 that eliminates the need for a twitter client cluttering up you desktop by putting your feed on your PDA on your desk. If you have a Windows Mobile touchscreen device and need to get rid of an extra screen on your desktop, go download it!

I do admit that I have ulterior motives for releasing this program. I’m broke right now and I’m hoping for donations. I don’t have a good job at the moment and I’m hoping that people benefiting from my applications will help out. As a result, I’m putting out my most useful apps and will be updating the ones that get donations, with more time devoted to the more popular ones. I will be re-releasing and refining my Language Study Aid Excel program as well. It’s located in an earlier post and works great. Of all the resources available, it helped me out the most when studying for my Japanese class. I know not everyone has Excel, but it was the easiest platform to make it on at the time (the table functions are all built in). If I get enough people asking for it to be a standalone application, I will re-make it as such.

That’s all I have to say for now.

I recently spent quite a large sum of money for the new Amazon Kindle 2. Part of what convinced me to do so is the amount of money I would save on buying new books, something I do quite often. Alas, the Kindle is $360 (or, if you’re like me, 377.98 with overnight shipping). As a result of this steep entry fee into the Kindle store, I would not actually see any savings for quite a while. If I buy enough books, I know I could start to see a savings, but again, only if I buy enough books.

How many books? Crap. This requires math. To the quick-and-easy Math Machine: Microsoft Excel! (I can’t count how many times I’ve used Excel to do quick computations. It’s just too useful.) After throwing in the cost of each book I have purchased and the kindle, I found that on average, I’ve spent $133.58 per book. This didn’t shock me but it made the numbers more real. This got me to thinking though. How many books do I need to buy before I reach the break-even point as compared to my normal purchase of dead-tree works? I bounced back to the Kindle store, grabbed the dead-tree price, the digital MSRP as I have read (painful as it was) whole works on my phone via MobiPocket, and the date I purchased my books. I plugged these in and found that ignoring the cost of the Kindle, I’ve saved 23.14 on paper books or 13.16 on digital books. These were just a side note however. I soon got back on track. First I wanted to know how many books I would need to buy on the kindle to break even on the paper. Turns out it’s 49 and a bit. I’ve already bought 3 in the week that I’ve owned it so if I keep at my current pace (which Anathem is severely slowing down), When would I break even? June 26, 2009. How much more will I have spent in that time? $349.17. For digital books on another reader (such as my phone) those numbers would be 83 books, September 30, and $631.23. (I expect to see the digital numbers to go down as they are typically the same, if not greater, than the paper versions. I have no idea why it’s like this.)

I will admit I’ve been spending more on books for the Kindle than I would normally. It’s a new toy, what can I say? This is something that needs tracking though. I know my rate of spending will decrease in the future, but I still want to know that I made a wise purchase. To that end I decided that this quick calculation needed to turned into an easy to use file. The result is this:

I’ve prettied it up a bit and actually avoided using VBA macros on this one, so it will work on the Mac version of Office as well. As you can see it displays both real and imagined savings, so you can feel good and bad about yourself at the same time (or if you’ve already bought a mountain of books, you can feel good and better about your self). I now present this file in .xlsx and .xls formats for everyone else to play with. I’ve left my 3 books in it to give an example as to how to enter your own data. Please let me know what you think (a.k.a. ridicule my book purchases) in the comments.

Tsaot’s Kindle Calculator
Tsaot’s Kindle Calculator xls