Poor little ballerina dalek....
10:41 AM 09/03/2012
So on Saturday my wife and I watched the Doctor Who season opener. And in case you aren't paying attention or are uninformed the actress who played the girl in that episode is the next companion after Amy Pond leaves.
There was one sequence (spoilers) in the episode where Amy Pond's perception gets distorted and she sees the daleks as people. And I have to wonder if that's how the daleks see themselves deep down.
I mean yeah they're all kill everything but daleks but every society has to have something beyond that. Perhaps...just perhaps...we saw a glimpse there of what's happening on the back-end of things.
And no I'm not saying go hug a dalek but it's an interesting idea isn't it?
In other news I'm reading more manga on my iPad. Currently through book 20 of Fruits Basket. Borrowed my wife's kindle after she went to bed and downloaded and then deleted a sample of some manga from Amazon just to see what reading it on the Kindle would be like. The answer is as long as you have either the backlit kindle or a strong light source it wouldn't be too bad. Otherwise manga shows up as far too dark on the e-paper screen. I wonder if it looks any different on the Nook or other readers. That and the manga available from the Amazon store - sucktastic. Very little choice at all and nothing seriously popular.
That said I'm reading manga through an app on the iPad but honestly I really want the ability to download them into epub format or whatever and use Calibre to put them on the device. Just hooked my wife's Kindle to this Linux laptop (Mint 11) and was able to not only backup her Kindle but put a book on it without issue. So maybe if I can find manga in whatever Calibre can convert then I can just get a Kindle.
Why do I want to move away from my iPad as an e-reader? Three reasons. 1) Size. It's just heavy and bulky to read on. 2) Concerned about breaking it. A Kindle is $80 or so while an iPad is $500. Nuff said. 3) Battery life. Reading several chapters of Manga yesterday dropped my battery life on my iPad to 34% over several hours. While that's actually not bad it doesn't compare to several _weeks_ of battery life on an e-paper reader.
Didn't sleep all that well last night. The first started my two weeks of on-call. I didn't sleep well the last time and I suspect I won't this time either. Likely it's anticipation that the phone will ring and fear that I'll be half awake and tell someone to format their hard drive or something. (I'm better than that but it's still a fear.) And I can't really take anything to fall asleep during these times because then I might not hear the phone when it rings. Such is the life of an on-call tech. I'm sure I'll normalize on it over time.
So...waiting for other shows to start back up. The Legend of Korra is high on my list to watch and I hope it's as good this coming season as it was last season. Also Ponies of course but there's enough fan made material to keep that fresh currently. Not too many other shows I watch. Pert of it is time because I always have things I really _should_ be doing and partly because a lot of the shows just don't interest me. I mean seriously I don't see a lot I want to watch and frankly I just don't want commercial television to occupy my time.
The exception to this is likely going to be my USB digital receiver I have plugged into my Linux machine out in the workshop. If I put up a decent antenna on the roof I should be able to get a number of digital stations that should satisfy those times when I need my regular TV fix. And one of the stations I can get now seems to have old black and white movies on it so that's very cool as I like those.
Need to finish up my dad's new system. Moving him to Windows 7 and it's not easy because of some of the stuff he had. Things like a Hauppage capture card that I need the original disk for so I can install the Windows 7 version of the software. His Magic Jack software, Office 2000, printer drivers, etc. I can get it all done but it's really a pain. Thankfully it's only 32 bit Windows 7 so most of his stuff should run without a hitch.
Off to get dressed and get something to eat...
Cross-posted from Dreamwidth ( http://nimitzbrood.dreamwidth.org/262943.html ) but feel free to comment here as well.
So on Saturday my wife and I watched the Doctor Who season opener. And in case you aren't paying attention or are uninformed the actress who played the girl in that episode is the next companion after Amy Pond leaves.
There was one sequence (spoilers) in the episode where Amy Pond's perception gets distorted and she sees the daleks as people. And I have to wonder if that's how the daleks see themselves deep down.
I mean yeah they're all kill everything but daleks but every society has to have something beyond that. Perhaps...just perhaps...we saw a glimpse there of what's happening on the back-end of things.
And no I'm not saying go hug a dalek but it's an interesting idea isn't it?
In other news I'm reading more manga on my iPad. Currently through book 20 of Fruits Basket. Borrowed my wife's kindle after she went to bed and downloaded and then deleted a sample of some manga from Amazon just to see what reading it on the Kindle would be like. The answer is as long as you have either the backlit kindle or a strong light source it wouldn't be too bad. Otherwise manga shows up as far too dark on the e-paper screen. I wonder if it looks any different on the Nook or other readers. That and the manga available from the Amazon store - sucktastic. Very little choice at all and nothing seriously popular.
That said I'm reading manga through an app on the iPad but honestly I really want the ability to download them into epub format or whatever and use Calibre to put them on the device. Just hooked my wife's Kindle to this Linux laptop (Mint 11) and was able to not only backup her Kindle but put a book on it without issue. So maybe if I can find manga in whatever Calibre can convert then I can just get a Kindle.
Why do I want to move away from my iPad as an e-reader? Three reasons. 1) Size. It's just heavy and bulky to read on. 2) Concerned about breaking it. A Kindle is $80 or so while an iPad is $500. Nuff said. 3) Battery life. Reading several chapters of Manga yesterday dropped my battery life on my iPad to 34% over several hours. While that's actually not bad it doesn't compare to several _weeks_ of battery life on an e-paper reader.
Didn't sleep all that well last night. The first started my two weeks of on-call. I didn't sleep well the last time and I suspect I won't this time either. Likely it's anticipation that the phone will ring and fear that I'll be half awake and tell someone to format their hard drive or something. (I'm better than that but it's still a fear.) And I can't really take anything to fall asleep during these times because then I might not hear the phone when it rings. Such is the life of an on-call tech. I'm sure I'll normalize on it over time.
So...waiting for other shows to start back up. The Legend of Korra is high on my list to watch and I hope it's as good this coming season as it was last season. Also Ponies of course but there's enough fan made material to keep that fresh currently. Not too many other shows I watch. Pert of it is time because I always have things I really _should_ be doing and partly because a lot of the shows just don't interest me. I mean seriously I don't see a lot I want to watch and frankly I just don't want commercial television to occupy my time.
The exception to this is likely going to be my USB digital receiver I have plugged into my Linux machine out in the workshop. If I put up a decent antenna on the roof I should be able to get a number of digital stations that should satisfy those times when I need my regular TV fix. And one of the stations I can get now seems to have old black and white movies on it so that's very cool as I like those.
Need to finish up my dad's new system. Moving him to Windows 7 and it's not easy because of some of the stuff he had. Things like a Hauppage capture card that I need the original disk for so I can install the Windows 7 version of the software. His Magic Jack software, Office 2000, printer drivers, etc. I can get it all done but it's really a pain. Thankfully it's only 32 bit Windows 7 so most of his stuff should run without a hitch.
Off to get dressed and get something to eat...
Cross-posted from Dreamwidth ( http://nimitzbrood.dreamwidth.org/262943.html ) but feel free to comment here as well.