I’m watching all of Woody Allen’s films in chronological order.

Set in Paris, a struggling writer on the brink of a loveless marriage seeks solace in the city’s many nocturnal delights. Featuring a suicidal young woman, a cameo by Toulouse-Lautrec, and some delightful shots of Paris and its surrounding countryside.

Is this Woody Allen’s “Midnight In Paris”? No, it’s his 1965 film “What’s New Pussycat“.

It is a film of its time – a bawdy sex comedy set in the swinging sixties – so it seems rather unfair to judge it too harshly. Nevertheless it is a noisy and confusing mess. There are snatches of comedic genius in among the confusing plot strands.

Peter O’Toole may be the most devastatingly handsome leading man ever to light up the screen. And of course, only Woody Allen would have the chutzpah to write himself into a role which involves undressing a bevy of strippers.

Sadly, even the sight of Ursula Andress in her underwear fails to lift the film which, by the end, descends into slapstick.

It’s not a particularly great start to my Woody Allen Challenge experience. At times the “groovy” costumes elicit greater laughter than the writing.

The film was only written by Woody Allen – he didn’t direct it.

I’m watching all of Woody Allen’s films in chronological order.

I’ll confess, I tried watching What’s Up Tiger Lilly a few years ago. I didn’t get more than 40 minutes into it before switching it off in a mixture of boredom and disgust.

I’m not sure who first came up with the idea of revoicing a movie – making snarky comments about the action on screen – but this is one of the most influential and successful.

How it became so successful is entirely a mystery to me. For a comedy film, it is almost utterly devoid of jokes.

One thing I do when I’m watching comedies which I don’t find funny is to count the number of jokes I think there are supposed to be. If there are jokes that I don’t find funny – that’s ok, we all have a different sense of humour. But this is a comedy film which goes minutes without a single identifiable joke.

The main problem is that the original film has large stretches without dialogue. Rather than edit this down, the audience is left watching “action” on screen which is simply dull.

What few jokes there are range from pretty decent to annoying and repetitive – but it’s not enough to sustain the film.

You can buy “What’s Up With Tiger Lily?” from Amazon, but I really wouldn’t bother.

As I watched Woody Allen’s latest film – Midnight in Paris – I realised that there are so many films of his that I haven’t seen.

So, I have a brand new resolution for 2012.

• Watch every single film Woody Allen has made.
• In chronological order.
• Posting reviews on this blog.

Woody has made over 40 films – so I’ll be aiming to watch one per week over the next year.

I’ll be watching all the films he has directed and – where possible – those he has written.

Let’s go!

This is my attempt to review it fairly after a week of usage. Some people have accused me of being unfair in my review of the Nokia Lumia. I think I was harsh – but all of the problems I experienced were real. This review of the Pro+ is unvarnished – I paid for this out of my own pocket and am beholden to no one.

tl;dr

Almost the perfect form factor. Let down by buggy software and a laggy processor. Excellent keyboard, average screen, but constant reboots means I’ll be sending this phone back to see if it’s a fault across all the devices, or just mine.

Specs

Because this is an unusual and somewhat rare device in the UK, I’ll let you have the tech specs first.

On paper, it is underpowered compared to the latest multi-core phones. I’m coming from a Samsung Galaxy S which, nominally, has a similar processor and the same RAM. So it has been interesting to see how fast it “feels”. Honestly? It’s slower than the original Nexus from a few years ago.

First Impressions

It looks like an elongated BlackBerry. The keyboard is of the same design, the back has the same tactile feel, even the charger is on the side – just like a ‘Berry.

It comes with the requisite USB cable and plug, as well as a pair of headphones, and a minuscule instruction leaflet. So, I stuck it on charge for a few hours (as suggested) and then let rip…

A few times I touched the screen an waited for a keyboard to popup. It took me a few moments to realise my mistake. Once you get used to it, the keyboard is close to perfect. I installed SwiftKeyX to make the typing suggestions slightly better.

The UI feels slightly “toy like”. Motoblur really is dreadful and shouldn’t be foisted on customers. Replacing the homescreen with something like ADW Launcher makes the interface so much better.

Graphics and scrolling is very laggy. It’s only 480*640, so it’s not pushing a lot of pixels. When scrolling through web pages I found that music playing in the background would stutter and freeze.

You won’t be playing many 3D games – even if the processor wasn’t so crushingly slow, the screen is a bit too cramped for anything immersive.

For web browsing and – crucially – writing emails, this device is a champion. When it doesn’t crash.

Random Reboots

The big problem with the Pro+ is that it randomly reboots. I don’t mean certain software crashes, I mean that the device spontaneously hangs, and the whole phone reboots.

I’ve pulled off the panic logs, but I don’t know what’s causing it. I’ve reset the phone several times but it still occurs. This appears to be an isolated problem with this unit – so I’ll be returning it to see if another one exhibits the same problems.

MotoBlur

*sigh* Moto Blur. Seriously. Handset manufacturers should stick to making hardware. Trying to tie me in to your ecosystem by way of yet another username and password? No thanks. I learned my lesson when Nokia Ovi closed. And when Vodafone 360 swallowed my data. And whatever ridiculous service Sagem had. I’m not signing up to anything else. My loyalty to your hardware has to be earned – I won’t be kept to ransom. Especially when your service rarely works.

Keyboard

The keyboard on the Pro Plus is as good as any I’ve used on the BlackBerry. Fast, precise, and easy to enter symbols and numbers.
The only drawback is that it isn’t the BlackBerry keyboard – so the symbols are all in the “wrong” place. Take a look.

(Note, on the UK model that I have, the $ symbol is replaced with £.

I can understand why Motorola have made some changes, but it really does confuse this BlackBerry addict as to where the “correct” keys are. Why on Earth are ALT and shift swapped? I also question the need for a physical “voice recognition” button.

On a BB, holding down a key automatically capitalises it – on the Android, it gives you all the available accents. One of those little things which takes a bit of getting used to.

As an added bonus, there’s a wiggly red line spell check – so you know exactly how bad your typing is.

Apps like the browser also have keybaord shortcuts. Pressing menu+A adds the current page to your bookmarks – for example. Though useful, they’re subtly different from the Blackberry shortcuts, which may confuse some refugees.

The best feature is being able to page-down through a website by pressing the space bar!

Software Updates

I’m not a fan of how Android software updates happen. I think Motorola’s recent blog post explains some of the mystery behind the delays. What is annoying about the software on this device is that Motorola won’t say when or if it’s getting an upgrade. Their software update pages ignore it like the black-sheep of the Moto Family. Even the Motorola community forums don’t list it. This rather gives the impression that it is a stillborn device.

Because it’s not wildly popular, there’s no support from third party Android ROMs like Cyanogen mod. So far, there’s just a solitary thread on XDA Forums.

Other Stuff

The camera is reasonably quick to start, and the flash is very bright. Sadly, there’s no way to switch off shutter sound. The camera is missing some of the fancier features of other phones like face detection – but it’s basically fine.

There’s a multi-colour notification LED which is very useful.

A front-facing camera is also built-in. Curiously, it’s not available for use. Wonder why?

Final Verdict

I’ve used this device exclusively for a week. It has crashed enough that I am going to send it back – I hope this is just a problem with my unit though.

Ultimately, it’s almost enough of a BlackBerry to convert die hard RIM-fans – but it’s not quite powerful enough as an Android to turn heads.

The keyboard is a joy to use. I would quite happily suffer through the poor performance for the joy of typing on this thing.

The Motoblur customisations are shockingly poor. I’d rather have vanilla Android than this barely thought-out, cartoony interface.

If you need an Android with a keyboard, this is the phone to get. It’s fast enough for day to day use – and you’ll be able to play a few games on it. The screen is a bit of a let down, and general performance is a little sluggish.

For those BlackBerry refugees looking for their first taste of freedom, this is an excellent start.

The Perfect Phone?

Assuming it doesn’t keep crashing, how does it score on my perfect phone scale?
Pretty damn high. It should be faster, the screen should be AMOLED, there should be a lanyard strap, and the front-facing camera should work. The form factor is great and the screen isn’t too cramped – although there’s ample space to put in something larger or higher resolution.

Maybe I’ll wait for the Motorola Pro++?

Geekyness

For those using Linux, lsub shows

22b8:2e00 Motorola PCS

So shove that in your udev rules and you’ll be able to start developing apps.

Root

Luckily it is trivial to root the Motorola Pro Plus – so mucking about with it is fairly easy. I do wonder if it will ever see the latest version of Android.

Remove Camera Click

The camera click is annoyingly loud and cannot be switched off. To permanently disable it, get root on the device, then use

adb shell
su
root@umts_elway:cd /system/media/audio/ui
root@umts_elway:/system/media/audio/ui# mount -o remount,rw -t ext3 /dev/block/system /system
root@umts_elway:/system/media/audio/ui# rm camera_click.ogg

I’d only vaguely heard of Howl’s Moving Castle before I saw the Southwark Playhouse’s latest show – although, to judge from the audience, it attracts fanatically devoted readers.

Entering Southwark’s vault is a treat in itself. Cavernous, bare bricked arches, flaming torches on the wall, and a plain white cardboard set.

A white set. Very Peter Hall, I thought. But from the second the show started the set came alive. Highly intricate projection work, surround sound, video, music, narration, all spun together to create what I can only describe as “live action cinema.”

It reminded me of the Las Vegas show EFx. Magic, mystery, and multi-media. Magical spells shot from the tips of magicians’ wands – in EFx practical effects were used (fireworks, to you and I), in Howl the high-definition projectors cast a dazzling array of spells on to the set and even the performers.

The story was brisk and engaging – although some of the aforementioned devotees thought it should have been longer. The acting and directing first rate. Not knowing the story, I’ve no idea how much writer Mike Sizemore nicked from the original author – although I doubt she made jokes about super-luminal neutrinos – but it’s hilarious and heartfelt.

My only criticisms? Working with special effects can be tough. Used too often (like the fire-demon jumping from place to place) they loose their impact – yet used only once (the surround sound dragon) feels like a wasted opportunity.

In places the music drowned out the performers – possibly due to the acoustics of the room. The actors funnel so much energy into their characters that it would be a shame to mic them up. Perhaps a slight fiddle with the volume knob?

It runs until 7th of January. Well worth seeing.

It was the best of phones – it was the worst of phones…

I want to start this review by saying three things:

• I got this phone for free – thanks Nokia!
• I’m an extremely demanding mobile user. I recognise that I am an edge-case; what I find annoying, you may not.
• I’ve tried to stick to actual bugs, not just “it does things differently.”

Sergeant Elop’s Lonely Phone Club

Imagine, of you will, you have just purchased a brand new copy of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on vinyl.

It is beautifully designed, an astonishing work of art. You play side one and it is sublime – perhaps the perfect start to any album.

The you flip the disc to side two – and it’s Justin Bieber. A screeching, horrible, tune free noise that damages your calm and makes you want to smash your stereo.

That’s the Lumia 800 from Nokia. It’s Finland’s first Windows Phone 7. It’s beautiful and infuriating in equal measure.

The Good

There is much to praise the Lumia – and WP7 – for. So much potential – and nearly all of it squandered. But, we’ll get to that… Let’s start with what I love.

Beauty Is Skin Deep

The phone is gorgeous. Like a futuristic pop-tart. Sleek, shiny, and midnight black.
It pulls off the incredible feat of being discreet and eye catching.
A pure monoblock. As enigmatic and attractive as the monolith from 2001.

There’s just one problem. We’re in 2011.

A Brand New Operating System

Windows Phone 7 is different from all other phone operating systems before it. Sure, it has icons, widgets, lists, long presses, swipes, and … you know what? It isn’t different. It isn’t a new paradigm. What it is, is gorgeous.

It’s a sparse and elegant experience. Fast and user friendly.

The “Metro UI” is really easy to use, gentle on the eye, and a clever way to organise a phone.

Speed Demon

This is one of the fastest phones I’ve used. It’s startup speed rivals that of BlackBerry. In day to day usage, I never found that it stuttered or slowed down – even while having several apps open at once.

Our Friends Connected

You can add in all your disparate social networks into your phone book. So, when you look up a contact, you can easily see their last status message, their Facebook photos etc.

Just like Vodafone 360 did years ago…

But, unlike 360, it works really well. It seemed to match up all my Twitter, Facebook, and address book friends without hassle.

Getting The Basics Right

Call quality was excellent. Good speaker phone. Fine reception. Basically, it works as a phone.

The camera is quick to focus and produces outstanding images.

Ok… ok… If you want to use it as a basic smartphone, the Lumia will do you fine.
It browses the web, plays music, links all your social networks together, and looks beautiful while doing so.

It is basically fine – until you scratch beneath the surface.

The Bad

I thought that the Nokia N8 was the worst phone ever made by Nokia. The Lumia may come a close second.

I’ve been posting a running commentary on Twitter of all the niggles I have with the Lumia.

Here are the highlights – and slightly more in depth explanations – of every bug and annoyance I found. I have suffered, so that you may not.

Let’s start off with a gentle one…

Aww! #WP7 has a skeuomorph for its save icon. http://t.co/4CFKklEz

29/11/2011 20:38 via TwitpicReplyRetweetFavorite

@edent

Terence Eden

That was the warm up. What would you say to a phone that you can’t switch off?

I have since discovered that this only happens when the phone is plugged in. Maybe I’m unusual but, before going to bed, I switch off my phone and let it charge overnight. I’ve had several WP7 fans say that I should switch my phone on to flight mode (go in to settings, scroll through) or switch my phone on to silent if I don’t want to be disturbed during the night.

There’s just two problems with that. Firstly – why doesn’t the phone tell me that I can’t switch it off? Secondly – it’s impossible to switch the phone on to silent.

Silence Is Golden

This may fall under the “just how I am used to it” school of errors, but bear me out.
On every phone I’ve owned I’ve had three sound profiles that I can toggle through.

• Ring and vibrate – what the phone is normally set to.
• Vibrate – when I want to be notified, but having a loud ring isn’t appropriate.
• Silent – I don’t want to be notified (I’m in a meeting).

With the Lumia, I can toggle between Ring+Vibrate and Vibrate. There’s no way to get the phone to go silent without diving through a maze of menus.

In fairness, this is a problem which has affected recent Android phones – but there are multiple (free) widgets which solve it.

Screen Issues

The screen on the Lumia is a mixed bag. When it’s displaying white text on a pure black background, it’s perfect. When there’s a white background, the screen seems – to me – to have lots of artefacts on it.

The Lumia’s screen is at its worst when dealing with greys, and solid blogs of colours. It suffers from lots of vertical banding which is really quite unpleasant.

I’ve scanned in the screen looking at a fairly normal grey image. While the scanner has overemphasised the problem (and my greasy finger prints!) you should be able to get an idea of how the problem manifests.

Browser Bugbears

Internet Explorer is a reasonable browser – but very buggy.

The URL bar keeps disappearing. I’ve had this a couple of times. The URL bar just vanishes when you’re using the web. As far as I can tell, there’s no way to bring it back.

Only two browsers have the URL bar at the bottom. #WP7 and Lynx.Right now, it's tough to say which is more functional...

03/12/2011 22:49 via ©Terence Eden SomeRightsReservedReplyRetweetFavorite

@edent

Terence Eden

One more annoyance with the Lumia's browser. Scroll down a page, click a link, then click back - it dumps you at the top of the page. #WP7

04/12/2011 09:02 via ©Terence Eden SomeRightsReservedReplyRetweetFavorite

@edent

Terence Eden

Unbelievable! IE on #WP7 doesn't reflow text when you zoom in on a web page. The Lumia is quickly losing its lustre.

02/12/2011 06:46 via ©Terence Eden SomeRightsReservedReplyRetweetFavorite

@edent

Terence Eden

The scrolling for the web browser sometimes stops responding.

Meeting You, Meeting Me

It’s really hard to accept meeting invites on the Lumia. On my Exchange email, it works perfectly. For some Gmail invites, I have to click a link and go to Google Calendar on the web. The Lumia doesn’t recognise .ics files – so there’s no way the email client can talk to the calendar.

But, worse is to come. I asked someone at Microsoft to send me a meeting invite to my Gmail account. While the invite worked fine on the web, the Lumia gave me literally no way to answer the meeting invite – as this video demonstrates.

Crapware

This is Nokia’s flagship phone – so you think they would have taken more care with it, wouldn’t you? As well as a buggy OS, they’ve filled it with… let’s just say “non-premium” apps.

I do like the fact that I can uninstall the bloatware on the Lumia. Goodbye Ministry of Sound (what?) and Sky "News".

01/12/2011 08:57 via ©Terence Eden SomeRightsReservedReplyRetweetFavorite

@edent

Terence Eden

I think one problem with #WP7 is that it's caught between fun and serious. A BA app & Ministry of Sound. Xbox & Office. Feels conflicted.

01/12/2011 09:00 via ©Terence Eden SomeRightsReservedReplyRetweetFavorite

@edent

Terence Eden

Some apps, like this one from BA, need updating as soon as you switch on the phone. Sadly, you can’t click a button to update – you have to go into the app store.

The greatest opprobrium is reserved for TripAdvisor. I know that deals like this take a lot of time and money to organise – but they really could have done better than this pathetic effort.

One of the default apps on Nokia's flagship Lumia is... an iPhone app. Well done TripAdvisor. http://t.co/7tQPWEOf

06/12/2011 16:53 via TwitpicReplyRetweetFavorite

@edent

Terence Eden

Still, at least they let you easily install the bloat.

Things Go Better When We’re Together

Microsoft may – or may not – be buying Nokia. One thing is for sure, they’re working closely together. What’s weird is why they’ve decided to duplicate some of the services on the phone.

The Lumia has both the Zune music store *and* the Nokia music store. Different prices in both. Different sign-in requirements for both. #WP7

02/12/2011 15:06 via ©Terence Eden SomeRightsReservedReplyRetweetFavorite

@edent

Terence Eden

Very impressed with the Lumia's music streaming over 3G. No idea if it's Nokia music or Zune, but it's free & high quality.

02/12/2011 18:17 via ©Terence Eden SomeRightsReservedReplyRetweetFavorite

@edent

Terence Eden

Just discover that the Lumia has Microsoft maps AND Nokia maps. Now that's what I call synergy!

06/12/2011 17:05 via ©Terence Eden SomeRightsReservedReplyRetweetFavorite

@edent

Terence Eden

Finally, Nokia seems to have its own app store. Once again, we see just how little Nokia care for UX.

Nokia Lumia: untested, buggy, & even its own app store looks amateur. Still, Facebook is hardly a major brand, is it? http://t.co/LeXonzxj

05/12/2011 16:53 via ©Terence Eden SomeRightsReservedReplyRetweetFavorite

@edent

Terence Eden

Paperback Writer

The keyboard is a very strange beast. It’s mostly fine, but has some oddities.

Lumia's keyboard is infuriating. Sometimes white on dark, sometimes the inverse. Jumps up to accommodate buttons which ruins touch typing.

30/11/2011 13:55 via WindowsLiveReplyRetweetFavorite

@edent

Terence Eden

Latest Lumia niggle - the keyboard doesn't display a "next" button when filling in text fields. And "Lumia" isn't in its dictionary! #WP7

01/12/2011 07:51 via ©Terence Eden SomeRightsReservedReplyRetweetFavorite

@edent

Terence Eden

The #WP7 keyboard tries to autocorrect the word "Google" into "Bootleg". That's a new one, spreading FUD via dictionary!

06/12/2011 07:41 via ©Terence Eden SomeRightsReservedReplyRetweetFavorite

@edent

Terence Eden

Weirdly, the word “Lumia” isn’t in the Lumia’s dictionary. So there’s a little red squiggle ever time you write it. Or other common words.

That said – the in-line spell check is very nice. I miss it on my Android – I think I first saw it on the BlackBerry many years ago.

My Baby’s Got Me Wrapped Up In Chains

We’re living in a post-PC age. Unless you’re Microsoft. You have to connect to a Windows PC to update software, copy across music and videos, change the BlueTooth name of the device, or even subscribe to podcasts.

What’s worse, is you have to install the Zune software if you want to get music or photos off the device. You can’t send via Bluetooth, you can’t just shove in a USB cable and drag them off. You have to install the 100MB behemoth that is Zune, restart your PC several times, fire up the software, wait for it to detect your phone, then let it sync before you can get your photos out.

Of course, you could email your photos off the phone – but the UI for that is terrible. There’s no way to select multiple images, so you have to attach each one individually.

Guess how easy it is to email multiple photos on #WP7?Android: Gallery, select photos, send.Lumia: Email, add, photo, select one. Repeat.

01/12/2011 10:58 via ©Terence Eden SomeRightsReservedReplyRetweetFavorite

@edent

Terence Eden

It seems that any time you want to do something to your phone, you have to connect it to a PC running Windows.

Yay! There's an update for my Nokia Lumia!Boo! I have to connect to a computer to install it.#WP7

02/12/2011 22:36 via ©Terence Eden SomeRightsReservedReplyRetweetFavorite

@edent

Terence Eden

Unbelievable - the Lumia won't let me download an MP3 from the web. It'll play it, sure, but it's not saved anywhere. #WP7

03/12/2011 22:06 via ©Terence Eden SomeRightsReservedReplyRetweetFavorite

@edent

Terence Eden

Let’s Talk About Text, Baby

Do you ever use read receipts for SMS? Perfect for seeing when someone has received your message. In every other phone on the planet, the read receipt is integrated in to the SMS app – so you can see at a glance which messages have been received.

With WP7, you get a long list of phone numbers which have received a message. It doesn’t even do the simple task of showing you the name of your contact.

No Thanks

I hope that what I’ve shown you is a litany of bugs, errors, gotchas, and foul ups. I don’t think any of the points I’ve raised are unfair. I like to think that I judge other phones just as harshly – see my treatment of BlackBerry and of iPhone and of Android.

For regular users, the Lumia is an astonishing phone, & #WP7 is a joy to use. For power-users, it will enrapture & disgust in equal measure.

03/12/2011 11:34 via ©Terence Eden SomeRightsReservedReplyRetweetFavorite

@edent

Terence Eden

I know this is a brand new OS – but you don’t get credit for trying.

I want to make it clear that, like the iPhone, the Lumia is an excellent device; as long as you stay within its parameters. I'm an edge case

02/12/2011 07:45 via ©Terence Eden SomeRightsReservedReplyRetweetFavorite

@edent

Terence Eden

I’m not giving up on Windows Phone 7. It is still a work in progress. There is a great deal of potential here – and I look forward to seeing what the future brings.

For the record, Lumia is a gorgeous device, the #WP7 interface is *mostly* amazing. It feels like the original iPhone; radical and limited.

01/12/2011 10:59 via ©Terence Eden SomeRightsReservedReplyRetweetFavorite

@edent

Terence Eden

For now though, avoid the Lumia. Wait until Microsoft fixes the bugs and until Nokia decides release a phone that they are happy with. Because, honestly, I don’t think anyone at Nokia can believe this is the best that they can do.

First thing’s first, this is a great idea for a QR Scanner. It saves all your scans – so you can retrieve them by category, it checks to see if links are safe to click on, it allows you to share scans with friends, and it also has a gameification element.

But I really don’t like it. It’s slow to start up, has a UI which is only really suitable for iPhone users, and has some basic usability flaws.

On With The Review!

The first thing you have to do is set up an account? Why? I just want to scan me some QR codes!

I now understand that there are a bunch of social features – but that’s not explained here. Just “give us all your personal details for some unspecified purpose.” Hardly encouraging.

The email field doesn’t tell the Android system that it’s for email – so there’s no @ key present on the keyboard. Annoying oversight.

It gets worse. There’s a password field which doesn’t tell the user the password parameters! How long does my password have to be? Do I have to use mixed case, numbers, symbols? What?

So, of course, after submitting, it tells you that you did not pass the stringent password requirements.

As a side note – if you were sending an email to people who had registered on your mobile app, would you make the email mobile friendly?

QR Pal didn’t. I don’t understand why. They know this email is probably going to an Android phone, why didn’t they make sure the email looked perfect on the device?

So, on to the app itself…

This, may I remind you, is an Android app. Yet their UI has been lifted wholesale from their iPhone app.

The UI will be totally unfamiliar to anyone who is used to Android apps and the way they work. Pressing the Android’s menu button does nothing.

Even the settings page is iPhone-styled.

Scanning codes is as quick as any other scanner – and seems to work as well.

Now, I say “quick”, but you have to wait a good 5-10 seconds after clicking the app’s icon before you can scan. Why? Because you have to see their splash-screen.

Now, there are a few nice features – checking to see if a URL is likely to be harmful is one.

Of course, it means that you are sending all your scans back to the QR Pal mothership. I wonder what they do with them all?

Once a code is scanned, it’s saved in your wallet. Scans are grouped by category.

Sadly, they don’t check for duplicates.

Conclusion

The thing is, QR Pal is chock-full of good ideas.

Integrating with Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook is a smart move.

Checking links for safety is a bit of a gimmick, but a good differentiator.

Their live map of scans is cute – although the app never asks for my location.

They have a “points” system – but it’s never really explained why, how, or what it’s for.

You see – every idea they have is good, but none of them seem fully realised. Making the whole UI look like an iPhone app makes Android users feel like they’re an afterthought. I doubt it will play well on BlackBerry and WP7 when they launch.

But the absolute killer, for me, is the start-up time. When I want to scan a code, I want to scan it right there, right then. I may be on a busy street, about to get off a train, or taking someone’s business card. I do not want to watch QR Pal’s splash screen.

My preferred scanner ZXing for Android starts instantly. It doesn’t do all of the fancy stuff of QR Pal – but it doesn’t need to. It’s quick, simple, and all the features work.

QR Pal is a great idea for an app. But they need to fix the UI, start-up speed, and finish the features they’ve started. Once it’s done that, it will be an excellent app.

Let me explain…

“The two things you’ve got to spend your money on in life are your bed and your shoes; if you’re not in one, you’re in the other.”
Ancient proverb

I have been prone to RSI in my hands and wrists. Seeing as I make my living using my hands to make computers do magical things, I think it’s wise to spend money to protect my hands.

“The two peripherals you’ve got to spend your money on in life are your keyboard and your mouse; if your hands aren’t on one, they’re on the other.”
Terence Eden

I may detail my love of my keyboard – the Microsoft 4000 – in another post. For now, let’s talk mice!

Or, skip straight to the Linux install instructions.

Three Generations of Mice

I’m in love with the Evoluent Vertical Mouse. I got my first (the generation 2) in 2007. A few years later I got a 3rd generation so I could use one at home and one at work.
Enter the 4th generation – the VM4R. There’s a VM4L for those sinister south-paws, and a VM4S for those with smaller hands.

Here’s all three of my mice playing together.

The VM4R is similar in size and shape to the previous versions.

It has a wider base and a larger lip to stop your finger from dragging along the desk.

Unboxing

No tech review is complete without an unboxing. Here’s mine.

Impressively, Evoluent use “environmentally-responsible” packaging. Essentially a cardboard box and some bubble wrap. I was nervous that this wouldn’t be enough to protect it in transit – but the mouse is pretty tough.
The box contains some brief instructions and a mini-cd containing Windows drivers.

The Good

There’s just so much to love about this mouse! I’ll contain myself to a few points.

Vertical = Less Pain

Pain and comfort are subjective. But since using the Vertical Mouse range, my wrists have been free of pain.
There are a vast number of reviews on the Evoluent website, including this one:

“The vertical mouse received very good feedback from the product testing. Our product testing team of physical therapists, ergonomists, MD’s and administrators found the mouse to be comfortable, easily adaptable and promoted a neutral wrist/forearm postures.”
Greg Ryan, University Health Services, University of California at Berkeley

I can’t say that this will fix your health problems – and you should certainly see a doctor immediately if you’re experiencing RSI – but this device has bought back the joy of computing for me.

Thumb Buttons

My index finger is near worn out from 3 decades of clicking crappy mice. I’m now able to map the buttons so that my thumb can click. A lifesaver for me. As a bonus – anyone who sits at my desk finds themselves unable to fiddle with anything because they can’t work out how to click!

The VM4R now comes with two thumb buttons. I’m not sure what use I’ll put the other one to yet!

The Need For Speed

The VM4R comes with a dedicated button for switching the speed of the mouse pointer.

A simple click sets the speed which can easily be seen via the LEDs.

This is a vast improvement on the 3rd gen model where the button was underneath the device.

The advantage is that you can use a high-speed mouse so you don’t have to move your wrist or arm very far as you go from one end of the screen to the other. It also means you can rapidly change to a lower sensitivity when you’re working on something which needs very fine grained control – like pushing pixels in Photoshop. I imagine this mouse is great for gamers who require a fast reacting device.

The Bad

There’s very little that I would change with this mouse. I note three minor quibbles.

Scroll Wheel Clicking

Scrolling with the wheel makes a really loud clicking sound. With the 2nd generation mouse there was no clicking. The third generation lightly clicks as you scroll. The clicking on the VM4R is loud and, to my fingers, slightly stiff.

Personally, I prefer a free-spinning wheel. But it’s not the end of the world.

Suitability of Chrome

Fingers sweat. It’s not pretty, but there it is. Human skin leaks all kinds of gunk – some of which is corrosive. I found the surface of my 2nd generation mouse was gently worn away over time.

The 3rd gen mouse is made from a different material which doesn’t seem to suffer from this problem.

The chrome on the VM4R looks lovely – but I wonder how long it will remain pristine. It’s already picking up fingerprints.

LED

There’s no way to turn off the glowing Evoluent LED. I doubt it’s much of a power drain, but it’s the sort of thing that might get a bit annoying in the dark.

…and The Beautiful

It looks like a spaceship!

This is a gorgeous mouse. The lights, the chrome, the shape, all conspire to make it an eye-catcher. Expect to get lots of questions about it if you’re in a busy office.

Buy It Now

I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending the Evoluent line of pointing devices.
You can buy the Evoluent VM4R from Amazon (affiliate link) or directly from Evoluent (although international shipping is expensive).
The upgrades in VM4R are impressive – but if you don’t often need to change pointer speed, or use thumb buttons, buy the VM3.

Linux Geekyness

The basic mouse functions work automagically in Linux (tested on Ubuntu 9.10 and higher). The buttons are responsive, the wheel scrolls, changing the pointer speed works, etc. A point to note is that the the wheel click does not paste – to get that, you’ll need to remap the buttons.

Remapping the buttons is slightly trickier, however. Not least because of Ubuntu’s seemingly random changes to how it handles pointing devices. If you’re happy with the buttons just as they are, you’ll be fine. If you need to remap the buttons due to mobility issues, read on….

A quick “xinput list” gives us the device name.

"Evoluent VerticalMouse 4"	id=8	[XExtensionPointer]
	Type is MOUSE
	Num_buttons is 14
	Num_axes is 2
	Mode is Relative
	Motion_buffer is 256

Despite reporting 14 buttons, there are only 6 physical buttons available.
Running

xinput query-state "Evoluent VerticalMouse 4"

tells us which buttons are being pressed down. Here are the results (the brackets signify the action, if any, that happens when you click the button).

1. Index Finger (Left click)
2. Ring Finger (Middle click)
3. Little Finger (Right click)
4. Scroll Up
5. Scroll Down
6. -
7. -
8. Top Thumb
9. Wheel Click
10. Bottom Thumb
11. -
12. -
13. -
14. -

Remapping The Buttons

There are two ways of remapping buttons. The lazy way and the correct way.

The “Lazy Way” – xinput

We can use xinput to set which buttons do what. The command is pretty simple

xinput set-button-map "Evoluent VerticalMouse 4" 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
                                      Button 1---| | |
                                        Button 2---| |
                                          Button 3---|

So the first number is what you want Button 1 to do. So, if you want your index finger to be the wheel-click, and all other buttons to stay the same, the command is

xinput set-button-map "Evoluent VerticalMouse 4" 9 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

I like to have my thumb be the clicker, the wheel click paste, my ring finger right click, the index finger and little finger do nothing. So I use

xinput set-button-map "Evoluent VerticalMouse 4" 0 3 0 4 5 6 7 1 2

You can get that command to ruin at start-up. Different versions of Linux will do it differently – I’ve detailed some of the ways you can do this in Ubuntu in the forums.

The “Correct Way” – Xorg.conf.d

Ubuntu has an annoying habit of switching around how you configure the mouse – and no easy way to configure it graphically! This method should work on Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.04.

Running lsusb tells us that the USB ID is

1a7c:0191

Create a new conf file

sudo nano /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/90-evoluent.conf

Use the following as a template

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier      "Evoluent"
        MatchUSBID      "1a7c:0191"
        Option "ButtonMapping" "0 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 10 11"
EndSection

Substitute your own USB ID and preferred button mapping.

Hey presto! Your buttons are mapped.

Enter WorldCard Mobile – the app for Android which claims to be able to recognise the text on business cards and add them directly to your address book. At only US$5.99 it’s a good deal cheaper than some of its competitors – but does it work?

Walk Through

Snapping a card is simplicity itself. The camera focuses, then churns away, You get the chance to rotate the image if, like me, you took the photo from askew.

Processing is relatively quick if the card is simple. Some complex designs fail completely – especially if the text colour isn’t sufficiently differentiated from the background.

One nice feature is the ability to add a contact picture. You can either snap a photo there and then – or use the image of the card. Most useful when the card has a photo on it.

Finally, you can edit the entry if the scanner has got any of the details incorrect.

Bugs

OCR is an inexact science. WorldCard fails in the same areas that any other bit of software does. Is that a phone or fax number? Is that an I or l? So it’s worth double checking any entry.

One annoying bug is the software’s assumption that all phone numbers are formatted in the American style – that is my number of +447717512963 is formatted as +44 (7717) 512 – 963.
It’s not a show-stopping bug – but it’s annoying for neat-freaks like me.

It also missed out my Twitter handle – @edent – admittedly, there’s not always a field for that in an address book – but it could go into “notes”.

Conclusion

WoldCard’s website proclaims:

No manual entries. No typos. No more confusion in your contacts

It’s nearly right. There is still some manual entry to do.

It’s far better than Google Goggles which – while fine for scanning books – is hopeless at business cards.
It’s cheaper than paying someone to enter the details for you.

In short, until everyone puts their contact details on a .tel site – or uses a VCARD in a QR code – this is an essential piece of software.

WorldCard Mobile is available from the Android Market.

I tried a few generic book lights but they were either too dim, didn’t fit correctly, used obscure batteries or – as with the official booklight case – ensconced in vegetarian unfriendly leather.

Then, I discovered the Verso Arc Light – manufactured by a company called LightWedge.

It’s got everything I was looking for in a book light.

• Small and light
• Rechargeable via micro-USB
• Bright
• Fits other eBooks

Gratuitous Demo

Before I get into the specs – here’s a demo of how it works.

The movement on the light is slightly odd. I like the way it gently slides out – but it does make it feel a little flimsy.

Rechargeable

I looked at a number of ebook lights and their either required batteries – which may be hard to find if you’re on holiday – or a proprietary charger.
Lightwedge have done the smart thing and made the Arc Light rechargeable via the same connector as the Kindle. That means when I go away I only need to take one cable to charge my Kindle, light, phone, and BlueTooth. Viva USB!

Bonus – it even has a charging light to let you know it’s charging and when it is completely charged.

It took a few hours to fully charge, but you can charge it a little at a time. It will even charge and light at the same time.

At 15 hours of light on a full charge – you shouldn’t need to plug it in too often.

Accessories

As well as coming with a standard micro-USB cable (no US plug – just the cable) there are two adapters to make the light fit other ebooks – they specifically mention Kindle 1,2,3,DX, Sony PRS-300 & PRS-600, Kobo and nook.

I found that the fit was snug, even with a gel-case on my Kindle.

It’s unlikely to fall off unless you give it a sustained shake.

It’s padded, so it won’t scratch or mark your device.

Price

The Arc Light retails online for US$40 (~£25) – and that’s before shipping from the USA.
Luckily, I found a dealer in Ireland selling the Verso Arc Light on eBay. Total cost including shipping was €25 (~£22) and was delivered within a week.

Let There Be Light!

The light is bright and covers the whole screen. Naturally, it’s slightly darker towards the bottom of the page – but still bright enough to read easily.

Verdict

As I said, it feels a little flimsy. Others have complained about build quality – but mine seems all right so far.

I would have liked a little carry case or pouch to keep it insulated from knocks and bumps while it isn’t in use – but that’s a minor niggle.
The USB cable it came with was fine for charging – but didn’t seem to support data transfer from my phone. As cables are ten-a-penny, it’s not much of an issue.

Overall, a great accessory and a must-buy for any Kindle owner with a partner who needs their beauty sleep!

Like many people, I no longer wear a watch. I’ve got a phone which tells me the time and data – why do I need something cluttering my wrist?

The Evolution of the Watch

I wasn’t always this way, I used to love high-tech watches. Throughout my teenaged years I had one of those calculator watches – enabling me to add up my pocket money and write “5318008″ for instant humour.

In 1999, I graduated to the seriously awesome Timex 78401.

This was an immensely cool bit of kit. It could store hundreds of phone numbers and memos on its internal memory. Rather than wear your fingers out pressing buttons on the phone, you typed your data into a computer. The computer would make the CRT pulse in such a way that the data could be retreived by the watch’s optical sensor. Futuristic!

Finally, a few years ago, I picked up an MP4 watch from eBay. Stuffed with a 2GB USB disk inside (large, for those days) the watch could play mp3 audio and mp4 video! Well, video had to be converted to something lo-res and low-bit rate – but it played video! On my wrist! It would also pick up FM radio, act as a voice recorder and – just about – tell the time.

The Mobile Phone Watch

Long considered the holy-grail of the phone world. Can you cram a GSM phone into a watch? The answer is a resounding yes… but…

The watch itself retails from anywhere between US$70 and US$200. My parents picked it up in Hong Kong for £50 – which is factory gate price. Thanks ma and pa!

The first thing you should know about this phone, is that is is shit. I don’t mean “it is the shit”. I mean it truly is one of the worst devices I have ever used. The touchscreen in unresponsive and inaccurate – even if it wasn’t, the UI is a clusterfuck of every design mistake you’ve ever heard of. It’s hard to use, has poor battery life, is far too fiddly for day-to-day use and has a non-standard USB plug.

But, it’s only fifty quid – and you do get to impress girls at parties* by saying “I’ve got a mobile phone in my watch!”

In short, it’s cheap Chinese tat. I love it :-)

*I don’t go to many parties. Is that how things normally work?

Camera, Video, Sound

The camera seems to be 640*480 – although it will interpolate up to 1280*1024.

Sample Image - click for full size

Audio is limited to 8KHz mono – good enough for voice, as this demo should prove.

Web Browser

After diving through 3 different menus, I finally got the Vodafone GPRS settings into it. It came pre-set with the APNs of a number of Chinese and Hong Kong providers.

So, what’s the web browsing experience like? Well, experience is a bit of a strong word. Imagine using the original Netscape Navigator, while peering through a tiny window, on sub-dial-up speeds, waiting for the inevitable crash.

The results from the W3C Mobile Test Harness show it supports virtually nothing.

For fans of browser statistics, the highly detailed User Agent String is

MAUI WAP Browser

Take a look at how unbearably bad the web browser is.

The Specs

This is a surprisingly feature packed phone. Although you’ll be hard pressed to find all the features easily; who would think of looking for the BlueTooth settings within the “Organiser” menu?

A run down of the major features includes

• GSM Compatibility: 850MHZ, 900MHZ, 1800MHZ, 1900MHZ. So it should work everywhere that there is 2G coverage
• Language: English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Arabic and Chinese. What’s most impressive is the handwriting recognition. It’s marginally faster than multi-tapping on the tiny keypad.
• Screen: 1.4 inch, QICF touch screen, 176*144 pixels. Touch-screen is a bit optimistic. Use your fingernail to point vaguely at the screen hoping to elicit a response doesn’t have quite the same ring. It does come with an integrated stylus.
• Vibration: Support
• Memory: MicroSD Card Support.（Up to 16GB in size). Didn’t come with one, but happily accepted a 1GB card I had. Just as well; the internal memory is limited to 400KB. That’s not a typo – less than half a megabyte of storage.
• Connection Methods: Mass Storage, Webcam, COM Port. Works on Linux, claims to work on Windows and Mac. Mass storage works well – if slow. Can also be set to be used as a webcam. I assume the COM port is if you need to connect to the Internet.
• Accelerometer. Well… sort of. There’s a compass function built in – but it’s hit and miss.
• GPRS Support: Browse WAP Website. Ha! Brilliant! Possibly the worst browser I’ve ever encountered.
• SMS/MMS/Email. SMS send and receive worked perfectly. No support for delivery receipts.
• E-Book Reader: TXT. Yes! Throw away your Kindle and read .txt files on this minuscule screen.
• Bluetooth Support: Bluetooth (V2.0). Pretty impressive, actually. Paired with my Jabra Clipper and worked as both a music player and headset/mic. Claims to support Handsfree, Headset, SPP, DUN, OPP, FTP, A2DP, AVRCP. It played music through my bluetooth headphones – although the decoder is shockingly bad.
• Net weight: 65g. Chunky – but not too heavy.

Conclusion

I asked my parents to buy me a knock-off phone for under £50. This doesn’t disappoint. I think it’s kinda nifty looking – if you dig that retro vibe.

As a phone, you expect it to make and receive phone calls. You can either hold it up to your ear – like a spy in a bad movie – use the supplied headphones, or BlueTooth. Call quality was adequate. As a basic phone, the best I can say about it is “it works”.

The S16 will frustrate you and horrify you in equal measure. But, there’s no denying – taking a phone call from your wrist is cool!

Assuming it doesn’t give you cancer of the wrist. Which would be bad.

The waiting staff are all professional opera singers – they serve the food and they sing to you. And, wow they can sing. Take a listen to this AudioBoo.

The highlight of the evening was the communal sing-a-long – The Drinking Song from La Traviata. Thoughtfully, it included a complimentary glass of prosecco. Here’s a recording of the outstanding opera singers – and our less tuneful caterwauling.

The atmosphere is incredible – and highly romantic. The music is joyful and intimate. There’s nothing quite like hearing a opera singer who is stood at your table. So what about the food?

The food was well prepared. There were a range of vegetarian starters – I took the carrot and pumpkin soup which was slightly under seasoned for my tastes. For the main course, vegetarians are relegated to the ubiquitous mushroom risotto. However, it was so well flavoured that, for once, I didn’t mind. The tiramisu with blackcurrant coulis was the perfect end to the meal. The menu can be viewed here.

Total cost was £113 for the two of us. That included 3 course meal, two side dishes, a glass of champagne each, half a bottle of wine, and a 12.5% tip. Food was half-price thanks to the Taste Card.

Overall, possibly the most romantic restaurant I’ve been to in London. The food and wine were divine and reasonably priced – although another vegetarian option wouldn’t have gone amiss. The quality of the singers was superb.

Take that special someone on a date there – you won’t regret it.

I’m not saying I’m a better blogger than Richard Herring. That’s for other people to say…

- Terence Eden

Is Richard Herring the son of a god he doesn’t believe in? He may not be the Messiah, but he is a very funny boy.

For this long time apathist, none of His arguments were very new – the Bible is inconsistent, God is petty, etc. – but the sheer enthusiasm and obvious joy He brings drew huge laughs from the audience.

The show is unremittingly funny – weaving skilfully between observational comedy and pure scatological filth. Something for everyone, then.

The only weak point, I felt, was the ending. I’m not sure whether He lost the courage of His convictions, or it was the abrupt change of pace. As it was, it was merely hilarious, rather than being side-splitting.

If you get a chance this week – do go and see the show in London. If you live in the wilderness, he’s taking the show around the country.

I’m not saying I’m a better comedian than Richard Herring. That’s for other people to say…

- Terence Eden

If I were a superior comedian, this is what I’d change about Herring’s obviously rubbish show.

Bollocks. He’s a professional funny man and I fiddle with phones for a living. Go see his show.

Anathem

Neal Stephenson’s Anathem
By rights, I should have loved this book. But I didn’t. I couldn’t even get 5% of the way through. Perhaps it was the deliberate use of overcomplicated language, or perhaps because it feels like it’s an n-th generation copy of A Canticle for Leibowitz – I just couldn’t get in to it. There are obviously some fascinating ideas in there, but I feel that Stephenson has gone for “Epic Tome” where a judicial use of the red pen would make it far more readable.

Seeing Further

Bill Bryson’s Seeing Further: The Story of Science, Discovery, and the Genius of the Royal Society
The essays contained within range between frighteningly good (Richard Dawkins on evolution) and mawkishly unfathomable (Margaret Wertheim who seems to think that because there might be an eleventh dimension, that means the Bible is literally true…. WTF?).
The essays are, on the whole, entertaining and informative – but they do stray quite wildly from the subject of the Royal Society.
After being so cruel to Neal Stephenson, I should say that his essay on Leibniz and Newton is deliciously good – and it reveals much of the historical background to Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle.

The Last Dragon Slayer

Jasper Fforde’s The Last Dragonslayer
I think that Jasper Fforde is the most original fiction writer. If you’ve never read a Jasper Fforde book before – The Last Dragon Slayer is amazing.
If, however, you’ve already devoured all the Thursday Next books – this will give you an odd sense of deja-vu.

• Young, tenacious, female protagonist? Check!
• Mysterious animal companion who can only say one word? Check!
• Mega-corporations with comedy product names? Check!
• TV Chat Show hosts with sinister motivations? Check!

You get the picture. The only thing missing is the copious footnotes*.
That said, it is a great story, set in a subtly complex world. The characters, pacing, jokes and denouement are all satisfyingly entertaining. Much like Terry Pratchett a few years ago, it’s a little too “Jasper Fforde By Numbers“. Certainly worth reading.

As has been pointed out – Dragon Slayer is meant to be a children’s book. Personally, I don’t think there’s anything in this book which makes it suitable only for children.
Also worth noting, Dragon Slayer doesn’t have the usual array of special features and web content that I associate with Fforde’s other work. There is a webpage with some enhanced content.

*Although that may be a repeat of the missing footnote problem which struck First Among Sequels.

Heat Wave

Richard Castle’s Heat Wave
This is a fantastic holiday read – if you’re a fan of the TV series “Castle”. The show has Nathan Fillion playing crime-writer Rick Castle. Stuck for ideas, he tags along with detective Kate Becket and writes a book loosely based on their crime-fighting capers.
So, this isn’t the novelization of the series; it’s the fictional writer’s fictionalised book based on fictional events. Confused?
The whodunnit aspect of the book isn’t fantastic – it reads like a rejected mid-season story – but you don’t get the book for that. You buy it for the outrageous levels of fan-service it bestows upon the viewer/reader.
Even the dedication has an in-joke:

To the extraordiany KB
and all my friends at the 12th

A superb tie-in – although not as challenging a crime novel as, say, Jeffery Deaver.
Many thanks to Miss Geeky for bringing the book to my attention earlier this year.

The Fry Chronicles

Stephen Fry’s The Fry Chronicles
The follow-up to his previous autobiography, Moab Is My Washpot. Stephen Fry has an almost painfully self-conscious way of describing event – often engaging in a meta-analysis of his own thoughts and feelings. This only covers a fraction of his life – from entering university to starting to become famous – yet it is a fulsome read. It concludes with a shameless cliffhanger for his next autobiography – let’s hope we don’t have to wait 13 years for the next one.

Life

Life: Keith Richards
It seems that half the people on the beach were reading Keith Richard’s autobiography. I’m not a massive fan of the Rolling Stones and only read this on the recommendation of Martin Glassborow. I was glad I did – it was an engaging and witty read. Completely different in almost every respect from Stephen Fry’s autobiography although, bizarrely, dealing with exactly the same themes – love, sex, growing up, becoming famous, and drug abuse. There are a few passages which deal with the intricacies of guitar playing which I skipped over – and some of the discussions about the songs and riffs he wrote are almost meaningless unless you’re very well versed in the Stones. Other than that, it’s a highly recommended book – and works wonderfully as a companion piece to Fry’s.

World War Z

Max Brooks’ World War Z
(As recommended by Peter Ibbotson)
What a joyously bit of post-apocalyptic sci-fi. Told in a retrospective documentary style – much like Day of the Triffids. Fast, fun, and utterly believable. The perfect holiday read.

Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Stieg Larsson’s books litter the world’s beaches as they are rapidly devoured. I was left moderately underwhelmed. I was about 2/3rds of the way through the book before I got on the plane home – and didn’t feel a compelling need to open it once seated.
It’s all told in a rather plodding style. I have a half-baked theory that books popular with women tend to concentrate on the little environmental details – the shoes, the food, the crunchiness of the gravel underfoot – Larsson makes this almost a fetish; faithfully recounting the exact number of degrees the thermometer reads and the number of the bus his protagonist jumps on at one point. One nice touch is that his knowledge of computers is broadly accurate – a nice change from the Dan Brown school of writing.
The central mystery takes an age to be revealed – it’s only 50% through the book that you get any idea of what’s happening. There’s a lot of build-up around not too much story. I’ll finish it, but unless the last third is dramatically different to the rest of the book, I struggle to see why the series has become so popular.

Amazon Kindle

A special mention to the Amazon Kindle. It’s hugely liberating to be able to pack a suitcase and not worry about whether the books will take you over your luggage allowance – or if you haven’t packed enough to read. The free 3G was also useful in completing online check-in for the flights home – and reading the occasional weather report.

While the Kindle is amazing for reading books, it is atrociously bad as a library keeper. There’s no way to easily organise books into folders, you can’t search by the title of the book you’re looking for, and with over a thousand books on the device there is a noticeable slowdown in sorting and searching.

The Kindle versions of some books are still more expensive than the hardback versions – utterly unacceptable. There’s also no way to lend books to non-Kindle owners. As my wife has an Elonex 511EB, it was easier for be to get the books from stores other than Amazon and convert them for use on the Kindle.

I’ve no doubt that Amazon will adopt the ePub standard in the next 18 months – until then readers will be stuck in the same situation we were in in when iTunes only sold music in Apple’s proprietary format. Plus ça change…

This review is spoiler free. By which I mean, there’s so little plot, there’s not much to spoil. Neo goes into the Matrix, fights Boba Fett, recovers Excalibur, Learns A Valuable Lesson, gets the girl.

WARNING! This review contains EXCESSIVE CAPITALISATION. Tron Legacy isn’t the sort of movie to do RESTRAINT or NUANCE. So, in homage, neither will this review.

But First, A Word From Our Sponsors

BUY A NOKIA N8!
RIDE A DUCATI MOTORBIKE!

I know I’m over-sensitive to product placement of phones – working in that industry – but the brand placement is just so blatant.
A shot of a cool new phone doing something technically implausible isn’t the worst crime in cinema – but the movie pauses for a few minutes near the end so that the characters can chat about how great their Ducati motorbike is!

NOW DRINK SOME COORS BEER! IT’S DELICIOUS!

Daft Punk

Did you know that Daft Punk did the music for this film? The soundtrack is stonkingly good and terrifyingly loud. And Daft Punk have a cameo. Well, I say a cameo. The camera practically freezes on them while big neon signs flash out saying

“HEY KIDS! IT’S DAFT PUNK! LOOK! RIGHT THERE! SEE! DAFT PUNK DO THE MUSIC AND ARE IN THE FILM!! IT’S INTERTEXTUAL!”

The cameo is symbolic of everything wrong with this movie. Whereas you may have to watch a Hitchcock movie a few times to find the great director’s cameo – here it is splashed on the screen repeatedly. There is no subtlety, no nuance, everything is in gaudy technicolour. It is son et lumière – without the storytelling grace or skill of the Lumière brothers.

Special Effects

This was the first feature-length 3D film that I’ve seen. There’s no doubt that the Dolby 3D system is astonishing. The fact that the glasses are so expensive you need to be virtually frisked as you leave the cinema shouldn’t give you cause for concern. Nor should the fact that every pair also gets a sanitary wipe to help remove the previous patron’s fingerprints, their sweat, and germs.

The director does a good job of not abusing the 3D. There is the occasional pan which seems to be there purely to show off the technology – but there are no gratuitous shots of things being thrown at the audience merely to make them jump.

Which, ironically, is a pity. The 3D only exists behind the silver screen. It never seems to trouble the audience with its presence. The 3D Disney title sequence is the exception to this – it gathered a round of applause from the audience but, from then on, the 3D just faded into the background.

Had the majority of scenes been in 2D, the 3D sequences would have been significantly more effective. As it is, they’re about as interesting as surround sound – or even colour.

One stand out effect is that of the Young Jeff Bridges.

Essentially, they’ve digitally removed his beard and given him virtual botox – but the total the effect is seamless. I can see this technology being used to rejuvenate some aged screen greats for the modern age.

Fem-Bots

LOOK! LADIES IN SKIN TIGHT COSTUMES!

Yes yes. Olivia Wilde is rather pretty. And skin-tight costumes are very attractive on her. And on the other ladies. Remember, girls are only there to serve teenaged-boys masturbatory fantasies.

There’s some nonsense about Olivia Wilde being a Eloi – but essentially all she does is pose around in her catsuit. What a waste of a talented actor.

Now What?

It seems the height of churlishness for me to dump on a film preview that I saw on the cheap. True, it wasn’t the worst way to spend a few hours. The special effects are really great. Michael Sheen is the only actor who seems to relish in his role – although it’s always a pleasure to see Captain Sheridan on screen again.

But that’s not enough.

If you want to spend millions of dollars and thousands of man-years, you’d better have something decent to show for it. If they’d spent a little less on hype and a little more on a screenwriter, this might not have been the gigantic disaster that it is. A loud, flabby mess of a film which will succeed purely due to the huge marketing push behind it.

If you want to watch a film with cutting edge special effects, a thin plot, laughable characters, and atrocious dialogue, I suggest you watch this instead.

It has the advantage of being shorter, much more enjoyable, and culturally significant.

Verdict? If you prefer pretty flashing lights and booming sound over plot, direction, and a tight script – you’ll still walk away from Tron thinking “was that it?”

Postscript – a special message to Empire Cinema

Having security goons literally screaming at the audience to switch off their phones doesn’t make for a very pleasant atmosphere.
A PA announcement or gentle reminder from the hosts is enough for most film fans. Aggravating your audience by shouting at them continuously really sours the mood.
I don’t expect to be yelled at like that in a restaurant, or any other place of business. Why you think that sort of aggression is warranted for movie reviewers is beyond me.

File Sizes

The glasses, it turns out, record in 1.1GB chunks.

If you really want to know the details, the videos are

1,231,771,216 bytes
1,233,678,696 bytes

Each file is 30 minutes and 1 second long. Annoyingly, there is a gap between the videos of roughly 10 seconds.

My calculations from earlier were incorrect – an 8GB card is enough to hold just shy of 4 hours of video.

Compressing

I’m hosting the video on archive.org. One of their services is to re-encode the video into a web-friendly format. What’s quite stunning (to me) is the inefficiency of the MJPEG codec which the glasses use.

The change in quality is negligible – as you can see from the demo.

I wonder how much more expensive the glasses would be if they recorded in an efficient format like Ogg Video? Obviously, there would be battery life considerations – but being able to record 10 times as much video on a single memory card is a big gain.

Another demo

This is using flash, however, Archive.org also offer HTML5 video which I’ll be moving to after #NaBloPoMo has finished.

I wondered if anyone was selling them second-hand on eBay. They weren’t. But there were a whole load of clones. “Spy Sunglasses DVR” and the like. Some were technically very impressive – bluetooth, mp3 players, fm radios – all built in.

I went for the cheapest pair I could find. 1280*960 video resolution (actually 640*480 – more on that later), no built in memory, and shipped from Hong Kong.

Total cost? £16.50. A damned site cheaper than the Immortal glasses – but would they be any good? After two weeks on a slow boat from the East, they finally arrived…

So, how well do they work?

Test Videos

Sunshine Test

Walking down Brick Lane in the dark

The video glasses I purchased said that they recorded at 1280*960 – in fact, they’re only half that at 640*480. The seller has agreed a partial refund. I’m not convinced that the 1280 version would be any more than interpolated upwards.

Test Pictures

The resolution of the pics is 3264*2448. Click the pictures for full size.

The Specs (geddit?)

• Weight: 52g
• Battery:5V DC 450mAh
• Recharging Time: 3-6 hours
• Continuous working Time: 2-3 hours
• Picture Resolution: The rather odd 3264*2448.
• Video details (based on usage, not manufacturer’s details)
• Video 640*480
• Audio is driven by a mono microphone on the left side.
• Mplayer says: VIDEO: [MJPG] 640×480 24bpp 29.710 fps 5479.8 kbps (668.9 kbyte/s)
• Mplayer says: AUDIO: 24000 Hz, 1 ch, u8, 192.0 kbit/100.00%

Once plugged in to USB, the camera just shows up as a USB mass storage drive. No software needed. Works perfectly on Linux.

lsusb produced

05e1:0b02 Syntek Semiconductor Co., Ltd

The Down Side

Look, it’s a piece of sweatshop produced plastic. Don’t expect the world, ok? That said, there are a few minor niggles.

• Mini USB rather than Micro USB. All of my gadgets use the new standard – I have plenty of mini cables, but it’s a pain that this doesn’t support the new standard.
• Limited to 8GB MicroSD card. To be fair, that’s ~2 hours of recording time – which is what the battery is rated at.
• The lenses of the sunglasses seem to be smoked glass and don’t offer any real UV protection.
• The lenses are meant to be removable (I’ve got a clear pair of lenses coming) but I can’t find any way to remove them.
• Glasses are lightweight but feel quite fragile.
• Glasses are a little tight for my big head.
• The mono microphone picks up what the wearer is saying reasonably well – but other sounds can be quite muffled. I think this is because the mic is pointing downwards.

All that said, I’m reasonably impressed with them.

Setting The Time

One of the problems with buying cheap tat from China is that the instructions are… obtuse.  As you can see in the above videos and pictures, I managed to screw up the time initially.

To set the time correctly, create a file called “time.txt” in the root directory. Open it up in your favourite text editor and type the time using this format.

2010.11.05 13.45.30 Y

That’s “YYYY.MM.DD HH.MM.SS” The “Y” at the end tells the camera to place a timestamp on every video and picture. If you don’t want a timestamp, write it as

2010.11.05 13.45.30 N

Once the file is saved and the camera turned on, the time will be set and the file automatically deleted.

Comparisons

Comparing the video to the hyper-expensive Looxcie

And the Immortal

I think this generic set holds up very well.

Conclusion

Under twenty quid? Bargain! It certainly falls in to the “good enough” category.

NB1: I primarily use SocialScope on my BlackBerry. SocialScope’s terms of use prohibit me from showing screenshots of their beta. Hey, guys, I want to show everyone how great you are!

NB2: Screenshots taken on a BlackBerry 9000 running OS 5.0

First Impressions

I’ve never understood the need for a EULA. They’re long, confusing, boring and a terrible way to make a first impression on your customers.  Twitter for Blackberry has a 30 page monstrosity.

EULA Hell

No one reads them, no one cares, find a better way.

Good

This app really shows off the power of the BlackBerry SDK. It’s a pity that more developers don’t make full use of it.

Tweets show up in your message list….

Message Integration

…and can be opened from there.

Open From Message

Images can be sent directly to TwitPic.

Send To Twitter

Apps like SocialScope and UberTwitter also hook in to the OS so that you can click on any #hastag and @name and be taken directly to that page within the app. I wasn’t able to ascertain whether this functionality was available in this app.

Bad

Limited view space.  At best, you can view 2 tweets at a time before scrolling. That’s not a very efficient use of space.

The Tweets Went In Two By Two

Poor navigation.  You can’t simply scroll left or right to move between pages, you need to scroll all the way to the top, or open the menu.

Navigation

The software also doesn’t remember which tweet you were on before you left.  It always refreshes the timeline and jumps to the top.  This is really annoying and it’s a problem solved in both UberTwitter and SocialScope.

Ugly

Missing loads of features that many users have become accostomed to.

• URL expansion.  bit.ly/fjhgkdfhg means nothing – use their API to expand the URL
• Embed images and media. Show a preview of flickr images, YouTube videos etc.  At the moment, it only appears to do TwitPic.
• No OAuth!  This is partly due to Twitter’s broken mobile OAuth support.
• No autocomplete. SocialScope will show a list of your friends when you type @ to allow you to quickly select them.

Conclusion

This app is amazing… if you’ve never used UberTwitter or SocialScope.  I also found it to be marginally slower than the other apps.

Shades of Grey – Jasper Fforde

Jasper Fforde is one of the few truly original writers. The plot is so-so (a mystery, a quest, a conspiracy) but the sci-fi is just the right side of weird. Absolutely no exposition about why the world is the way it is – it’s left to the reader to pick up what clues they can. One of the best books I’ve ever read. Funny, confusing and sweet.

I’d thought that the last Thursday Next book showed how FForde had painted himself into a bit of a corner.  This new universe he has created seems endlessly ripe for possibilities.

The Year of the Flood – Margaret Atwood

Dunce that I am, I didn’t realise until half-way through the book that this was a sequel to the rather brilliant Oryx and Crake.  You don’t need to have read Oryx to enjoy this book.  Much like Cory Doctorow (see below) Atwood’s speculative fiction is a delight.  It’s certainly refreshing to read a sci-fi work with two strong female leads.

Oryx and Crake – Margaret Atwood

I first read Oryx several years ago – the plot is still blisteringly good.  The only downside is some of the references have dated a little (CD-ROMs etc).  Re-reading this immediately after “Flood” was a revalation.  The characters burn brighter for knowing the complementary story within “Flood”.

Neverwhere – Neil Gaiman

I remember a special feature in the Radio Times about the making of the TV series – but I hadn’t found time to read the book until now.  Much like Shades of Grey, the plot is almost secondary to the world which Gaiman has created.  It owes a lot to Hitchikers’ Guide – but that’s no bad thing.

Black Swan – Taleb

For a much hyped book, this really isn’t very good.  The basic premise is sound – unexpected things happen; plan for them – but the writing is turgid, self-important and too folksy for my liking.  I got halfway through the book before I felt like he was repeating himself endlessly.  I don’t think I’ll return to it.

Starship Troopers – Heinlein

Another one that has languished on my “To Read” pile for far too long.  Expertly crafted sci-fi which – as far as I can see – hasn’t dated in the slightest.

Unseen Academicals – Pratchett

Terry Pratchett had lost his way on some recent DiscWorld books.  Too many plot strands and too many in-jokes.  This is a stunning return to form.  I’m not in the least bit interest in football – so I no doubt missed many excellent puns – but this was the funniest book I’ve read in a long while. The plots work well together and there’s jsut the right amount of menacing undertone.

The Diving Bell and The Butterfly – Baudry

It’s a remarkable book – dictated over months by a man who can only blink to communicate.  Essentially it’s a love letter to life.  That being said, I didn’t find it particularly moving or – if I’m honest – interesting.  If you’re missing your appreciation for life, it’s probably a must-read.

The Behaviour of Moths – Poppy Adams

Bit of a random one, this.  It’s a sweet and engaging story which is high on detail and emotion.  AKA chick-lit.  But rather than blather on about dieting, this concentrates on family relationships, the nature of love and self identity.  There’s a beautiful sense of mystery  which is expertly left to the reader to resolve. I didn’t really enjoy reading this book but – oddly – I find myself enjoying the memory of the book.  No doubt it will be made in to a mini-series at some point.

Makers – Cory Doctorow

Once again, Cory Doctorow comes up with a compelling vision of the future.  This is a more accessible read than some of his earlier work.  The human detail is richly expanded.  It seems, though, that it could do with a spot more editing.  The odd repeated phrase and convoluted sentence structure are a mite distracting.  I am also at a loss to explain his fetishising of Disney. Nevertheless, a hugely enjoyable and mind expanding book.

Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman – Walter M. Miller

This is the sequel to “A Canticle for Liebowitz” – without a doubt one of my favourite books. I’m at a complete loss as to why this book was published (posthumously). All of the majesty from the original book is gone. It takes a small event in the life of the Liebowitz order and relates it with grinding detail. Similar in tone and scope to a novel like Ken Follet’s “Pillars of the Earth” but without any of the fire, zeal, excitement or – if I’m frank – plot.  This was a slog to read.

Run VT, Errol!

Startup Screen

Click to download full size

I’ve set my startup screen to show my phone number and email address. Combined with the startup password, it’s a fairly simple way to protect your device and hopefully get it back if lost. Of course, all of your books can be taken from the SD card – so make sure you’ve got a backup!

Click on the above image to download the file. Edit it to show your details then save it to the root directory of your SD card as “start.jpg”. Unplug your reader and press “5″ Settings. Press the right arrow twice. Press down twice to select “System Maintenance”. Then press “3″ Startup Pic. If it has found the file, press enter to confirm. You can always change your image again to anything you like.

Screen Refresh

The refresh rate is extremely fast. This is because it uses a “Partial” refresh rather than the traditional “Global” refresh. The advantage of this is speed, and you don’t get the momentary inverted screen that you do on other readers.
The disadvantage is that you can – if you look very very closely – see the faint trace of an after-image. You can just about make out the ghosts of previous letters. Even after 50 page turns, they aren’t distracting – but you can hit the refresh button on the keyboard to make them go away. You can also go into the settings menu and set the screen refresh to “Global”.

Bugs

• Some have noticed that the 511EB displays Chinese characters where it should be displaying accented European characters like á – this is due to the way files are saved. If they are in UTF-8 format, all characters display correctly.

• The typesetting is a little off. It doesn’t force a hyphen into words like a traditional book (this is a good thing), but it breaks the line at any punctuation.

As you can see, when I say "
That's a nice book." the line
wraps at the wrong place. It'
s slightly annoying.

• On the default set of books, some of the words run together. It’s arguable whether this is a bug in the book file or the reader – either way, it should have been fixed during QA before release.

• Searching for books works, but looks like it doesn’t. Because there are no numbers by the files, it’s not immediately obvious what you have to do in order to select them. The search box takes up the first two “rows”, so to select the first book it finds, press “3″. For the second, press “4″ – and so on.
• Text-To-Speech is a nice gimmick, searching within a book is very useful. Yet they’re both absent from PDFs and the hugely popular EPUB formats. I cannot fathom it. They’re both rendered as text on the screen – so what’s stopping the reader from searching and speeking?
• Mac and Linux compatibility. This is a Windows CE device – but there’s no reason for it not to work on other operating systems. If a simple card reader from PoundLand can work, there’s no reason why this cannot. Removing the card isn’t hard, but it’s an annoyance for those of us not on Windows.
• The keyboard is slightly wasted. There is no note taking facility. The password screen only accepts numbers. Yes, it works, but it could be so much more. The placement of the Delete key is odd. It’s next to the spacebar. I’m used to the delete key being above the enter key. On this model, that’s the cancel key. So, rather than deleting a character, I often find myself cancelling.
• The Title Bar shows the title of the book you’re reading. Fair enough. But it truncates it for no apparent reason. So, if your book is titled “Lewis Caroll – Alice in Wonderland”, all you’ll see is “Lewis Caroll – A…”
• The truncating is present on the Bookcase. If your books are titled “Cory Doctorow – Ander’s Game” and “Cory Doctorow – After the Siege”, all you’ll see is “Cory Doctorow – A…” – good luck working out which is which! The solution is to save books in folders. So, for example, I have

.
|-- e_book
|   |-- Cory Doctorow
|   |   `-- Ander's Game.txt
|   |   `-- After the Siege.epub
|   |-- Lewis Caroll
|   |   `-- Alice in Wonderland.txt
|   |   `-- Alice Through the Looking Glass.epub

• PDF zoom. PDF is a rubbish format for an ebook. The page paradigm really doesn’t work when you’re on a screen. When the 511EB zooms in to a PDF, the page down button litterally takes you to the next page – not the next part of the page you’re on. You have to use the arrow keys to scroll around the page.

Finally, there’s no screen rotation. To be honest, this isn’t a feature I’d ever use – but some people like to have it.

Conclusion

As I said before, this is a cheap and cheerful ebook reader. The speed of page turning speed is impressive. EPUBs and PDFs work well, but missing some of the extra features like searching and Text-To-Speech. It handles large files – although performance takes a slight hit.
The build quality is what you would expect, a bit cheap and plasticy. But it only weighs 190 grammes. The quality of the keyboard is sufficient and the display is as good as any other eReader.

A Word on Waterstone’s

Given the number of bugs (admittedly, fairly minor) it seems odd that Waterstone’s are heavily promoting this model. My local shop has 3 rather prominent displays. To dedicate so much space without even testing the unit takes some bravado.
They have taken over half of their window display.

511EB in the window of Waterstone's

They have a whole book case devoted to the unit.

Heavily Promoted

They’re also putting it up against the much more expensive Sony eReaders.

Dummy Model

Yet they’re not as committed to this as you may think. There are no working models on display. With the Sonys, you can try them out, see if they’re fast enough, explore their menus – the lowly 511EB gets a cardboard dummy.

The majority of questions people have asked me could have been answered by having a working model. The Waterstone’s website is also full of people asking basic questions. Questions which really should have been preemptively answered on the site. I’ve registered with the site so I can answer some of them, but a device like this deserves more information up front.
Elonex – the reseller of this device from Hanvon – have committed to firmware updates. I hope, for Waterstone’s sake, that they come out quickly and regularly. Otherwise, Waterstone’s will face a lot of angry customers and will set back the progress of eReader adoption.

Ebook readers are the latest in a long line of “written-word” technology. From clay tablet to papyrus to the printing press, humans have always found better ways of displaying words. The latest innovation is e-Ink. A remarkable material which simulates the look and feel of paper – but where the display is controlled by microelectronics.

As a book lover, I’ve been eager to get my hands on a Kindle, or nook, or Sony eReader – but they’re all prohibitively expensive. Until now. Waterstones – a leading book retailer in the UK – has started selling the Elonex 511EB. An eReader with the retail price of £129.99. Now, that’s not quite as cheap as paper – but it’s around half the cost of the Kindle.

Unboxing

The Elonex 511EB.

You also get a quickstart quide, a USB cable and iPhone-esque white earphones. The device comes with a 4GB micro SD card (Sandisk branded) – enough for around 8000 books. There are 100 free eBooks included – you can also download them directly from Elonex.

What's In The Box

Cost

I won a £20 Waterstones voucher in the Times’ Cheltnam Microfiction Competition – so the cost for me was £110. You can also sign up to Waterstones’ loyalty card – which will net you 389 points. That’s £3.89 off any subsequent purchase.  At a shade over £100 it’s certainly the cheapest eReader I’ve found.  It lacks some of the features of its high-priced cousins – no wireless, no touch screen, smaller screen.  But, to my mind, that’s not a problem.

Features

Here’s a run-down of some of the more interesting features of the device.

• Text-to-speech.  A synthetic voice will read in English, Mandarin or Cantonese.  The voice can be set to male or female.  It’s not the best TTS I’ve encountered, but it’s adequate.
• Memo recorder. As well as a QWERTY keyboard for you to write your own novel on, there’s a built in microphone so you can record any thoughts you might have.
• Format support.  The device will render TXT, HTXT(?), HTML, PDF, ePub and DOC.  It admits that complex DOC and PDF may not render correctly.  It has Adobe Digital Editions support should you wish to read a DRM’d eBook.
• SDHC.  The device comes with a 4GB microSD card and will take up to 32GB.  That’s probably more books than you could read in a lifetime – but leaves plenty of room for…
• Music playback. MP3, WAV and WMA. It doesn’t say what bitrates etc it supports.  No support for OGG, which is a disappointment.  The two speakers on the back are loud enough – but aren’t going to be replacing your HiFi.  The headphone socket is a standard 3.5mm jack.

• 

  MP3 Screen

• Picture support for JPG, TIFF, PNG, GIF and BMP.  Obviously it’s only a black and white screen with 8 levels of grey.  You can set one of your images to be the start-up screen.
• Security. You can set a password if you’re worried about it being lost or stolen.
• The screen is 800*600 at 170dpi.  The refresh rate seems a mite quicker than the more expensive screens – but only a mite.
• The device shows as a mass-storage device when plugged in to a computer – so there’s no software to install on your Mac or PC. I did have some troubles with Linux – see the bugs section.
• There’s a lock button at the top.  It also has the usual array of eReader functions – bookmarks, text search, remembering your last position, font size changing.  It comes with two built in fonts – Arial and Times.
• Lots of settings to play around with.

Bugs

For a device this cheap, there are bound to be one or two gremlins.  There’s support in the device for firmware upgrade – so hopefully Elonex will fix them.  Incidentally, eReaders like this usually run Linux.  There’s no mention of it on the box and Elonex doesn’t link to any GPL’d sources – so maybe it’s running a totally custom OS. Update! Pdurrant at the MobileRead forums notes that this is a rebadged version of the WISEreader N520 – a device made by Hanvon and running WinCE 5.0.

Firstly, it doesn’t seem to handle non-standard characters very well. The “é” in “Les Misérables” is rendered as Chinese character.
(The text is a lot more crisp than my scanner can show)

Character Encoding Bug

Text doesn’t flow very well in text files. It takes all the line breaks a literal breaks in the text – as you can see here.

Text Flow Bug

This is particularly bad in HTML as you can see here.

Alicehastextflowissues

When we take a look at the HTML, we can see the issue.

Alice's Adventures in HTML

The line breaks here are ignored which leads words to run in to each other. This is the fault of the HTML file – but this shouldn’t have got through quality control.

Linux support. I’m one of those crazy people who runs Ubuntu Linux. The 511EB should just show as a USB drive when plugged in. It doesn’t. I’m not sure what the problem is, but I can’t get it to show up. The SD card is removable so you can get access to the files that way.

File System

It’s a little inconvenient – but it did lead me to this discovery…

Beneath a rubber flap is the microSD card and a rather strange looking port. It may well be a micro USB connector – the new standard for charging mobile phones – or it could be something proprietary.

micro usb?

There’s no manual. Most of the features are self explanatory – but for those who don’t like exploring a device, it wouldn’t have been any effort to include a manual on the device.

Verdict

This is a great device.  It is missing a few of the features of the Kindle – but at this price point, who cares?  Sure, no one wants to throw away £100 – but if you left this on a train, you wouldn’t be half as upset as if you’d lost an eReader costing £250.

The e-Ink screen is made by Prime View International – they’re the same company who make Sony’s eReader screens.  So the quality of the screen is really good.  It has a crisp display – once you’ve set the fonts to your preference – and a quick refresh rate.  Like all e-Ink screens, it can be read in direct sunlight.  There’s no backlight, so you’ll need a torch if you want to read under the covers.

There are a few bugs – but they’re not show stoppers.  Hopefully there will be some updates to the firmware.

If all it did was display text – it would be a bargain.  Considering it plays music, has text-to-speech, has a full keyboard for note taking AND a microphone, it’s a lot of kit for very little cash.

I haven’t exhaustively used the device – so I may be missing something that’s important to you.  Please leave a comment if you’d like to know anything specific about it.

Waterstones

I’m a little disappointed to have to write this review.  But the information on Watersons’ website is woefully inadequate.  Would it have been too much effort to link to a manual, explain what file formats it supported, or had several pictures of the device?  I bought this from a physical store where they didn’t even have a working device on display – only a cardboard model.  If retailers are serious about selling high-tech kit, they need to ensure that all the information a customer needs is available to them.

Who would spend over £100 on a device without first seeing a detail spec-sheet? I hope this review has given you enough information to make your mind up about this device.

Read part 2 of the review.

You choose your meal in a dimly lit bar then, guided by your blind waiter, you are lead through a series of curtains until you are ensconced in total and utter pitch black.

Choices are made from a set menu with no specifics other than vegetarian, meat, fish, or “exotic”.  This is a unique culinary experience.  Relying only on smell, flavour and touch brings a whole new dimension to enjoying your food.

Going with a large group of people was an unnerving experience – never entirely sure of who was sat near you, or whose wine glass you were reaching for.  I can imagine this would be a delightful place for an intimate dinner – possibly even a first date – as you have to rely on conversation to keep your companions aware of your presence.

The waiters were very attentive – although you can call out to them at any time should the need arise.

The food was tremendous fun.  Like many expensive restaurants, portions were not overly generous but given the mix of flavours and characters on each plate, this is probably just as well.  Rather than assault the few remaining senses, the chefs have cooked up a subtle treat which relies on your total surprise from the moment your fork first enters your mouth.

The dessert was a potpourri of elegant flavours and mouth-pleasing textures.

There is no doubt that it is a dining experience like no other.

There are some downsides – the restaurant caters for a large number of people.  Due to the sensory deprivation, it seems that voices escalate and emotions are magnified.  A table of women regularly found themselves shrieking at their merest touch from a passer-by which lead to another table raising their voices to be heard.  The assault on the ears was quite tremendous and rather disconcerting.  Normally one can use all the senses to judge the mood in the room – without sight it seemed that the evening could descend in to chaos at any time.

Emerging blinking into the light is a blessed relief and as refreshing as any digestif. We eagerly crowded around picture books with large photos showing the meals we had just eaten.

I won’t spoil the surprise by telling you what we had – the “White” menu was particularly inventive and the vegetarian menu was pleasingly different despite being revealed as a rather pedestrian offering.

At £34 for a two course meal and £39 for three courses, Dans Le Noir? is well within the reach of anyone who values creative dining.

Ellie Levenson has written a book about moden girls and feminism. Take a look at the cover of this book. Pink, winsome, girly. Everything that feminism isn’t. Right?

Wrong.

“The Noughtie Girl’s Guide To Feminism” is deliberately trying to look like “chick-lit”. It’s written in a style somewhere between that “worthy” article in Cosmo and a ranty blog. The language and ideas contained within are kept simple – but not simplistic. It makes the point that there’s no inherent contradiction between wanting equality for men and women and shaving your legs.

Now, that may not come as a surprise to you. You may be aware that lip-gloss and the right to contraception go hand in hand. Not literally of course, unless you’re on to the advanced stages of the Kama Sutra.

If you already think you are a feminist or have read any “real” feminist books, this book is almost certainly not for you. This isn’t Germain Greer – it’s better than that. More well reasoned? No. More academically rigorous? No. More correct in its understanding of what feminism is and should be? No. More accessible? Yes! Yes! Yes!

This a light introduction. Freed from the constrains of academia and without the need to be ferociously “right on”. I think that’s a good thing. It does, however, gently point the reader to some “real” feminist books and blogs – like The F Word. The book is sometimes contradictory. Occasionally hilarious. I found myself disagreeing with some of it. I’m aware that I’m not a “noughtie girl” and can accept that this book isn’t meant to change my mind.

Ellie points out that lots of feminists seem to prefer infighting to campaigning for change, that some groups are only interested in the academic theory of feminism. From the vitriolic reviews by some feminist women, I’d say she was right on the money.

“Noughtie Girl’s” is the sort of book you might slip to a young female relative in the hope that she’d take it on holiday thinking it was another pre-swim read. The chapters are easy to dip in and out of and relate back to Ellie’s life experiences. She’s been unjustly criticised for only presenting a white, middle class, heterosexual version of the world – she writes about what she knows. This book is written for people like her. It doesn’t get bogged down in the ephemeral – it addresses the practical concerns of her target audience. Is that so terrible?

In the olden days, we used to talk about “Consciousness Raising”. A subtle and entertaining way to highlight our causes to those who either didn’t know or didn’t care.

That’s where this book succeeds. The vignettes aren’t a polemic. They’re not moralising. They’re not telling you how to behave, nor what to think. They tell the young woman that it’s ok to want something better than she has. If she want to be paid the same as her male colleagues or to be able to walk down the street without fear of attack – that doesn’t contradict with wanting to get married or wearing pink high-heels.

If you’re looking for a gentle introduction to feminism, I highly recommend it. If you’ve already accepted feminism into your life – buy it for a friend who hasn’t. It will get more converts than placards, seminars and pamphlets.