My Thought Spot – Page 13 – A place to store my thoughts until I figure out what to do with them.

Amazon, Please Don’t Require Me to Use a Touchscreen on the Kindle 4

Part of the appeal of the Kindle for me is that it doesn’t have a touchscreen. First a little history, then I will tell you why I don’t want a touchscreen on the future Kindle readers.

I have had my Kindle for a little over 2 months. I have completely fallen in love with it. But, I already knew I would even though I had never touched a Kindle before buying mine. I used my wife’s Sony ebook Reader for the first time in January and began to see how much I would like using an ebook reader of some kind. From January to May I was saving my pennies to be able to buy a Kindle.

There are other good ebook readers on the market. But there were a couple of features that made the Kindle most appealing to me. That is not to say that the Kindle is the best option in every situation. I found a chart that Michael Hyatt created where he highlighted the features of different ebook readers. You may want to take a look at it when thinking about purchasing an ebook reader. Note that it was compiled in October 2010. There may be some major changes by the time you read the chart.

Some of the appealing features of the Kindle to me were that I could purchase books through Amazon and the sheer number of books available. Because I am already an Amazon customer and I have purchased ebooks to read on the Kindle app of my iPhone, I was very interested in staying in the same ecosystem. An added benefit was that I could read on my phone and then pick up reading on the Kindle where I left off, or vice versa.

Kindle has more books available than any other marketplace. I don’t think this is a huge issue if you are buying current best-sellers. Those are probably available on all the platforms. But as someone who reads older books, or more technical obscure titles, then I have a better chance of finding the book at Amazon.

But the biggest reasons I like the Kindle as opposed to some of the other readers is that the Kindle does not have a touchscreen. I don’t want a touchscreen on my ebook reader. I want to be able to touch the screen like the page of a book. I can underline with my finger while reading. I can also hold my finger on the screen while showing a passage to someone else. When looking through the chart of various ebook readers, I purposely choose one that did not have a touchscreen.

I don’t mind if the Kindle 4 has a touchscreen that can be toggled on and off, but I don’t want to be forced to use one. An ebook device will be smaller overall with a touchscreen than without (if the screen size is the same). Look at the Nook Touch to see how much smaller it is than the Kindle because it doesn’t need the keyboard.

I want to touch my ebook screen like a real page without flipping pages or making things pop up while reading.

Please Amazon, don’t make me use a touchscreen on the Kindle 4!

Review: The Manga Guide to Relativity from No Starch Press

Being a casual student of cosmology, I was excited for the opportunity to read The Manga Guide to Relativity by Hideo Nitta, Masafumi Yamamoto and Keita Takatsu. I have read several works explaining relativity and therefore the thought of relativity explained through comic book characters seemed a little far-fetched. My thinking was that the concepts were too complex to show with a few pictures. That said, it is much easier to understand relativity with a few pictures sprinkled throughout the text as opposed to text only.

The writers did a great job in explaining the concepts of relativity. Both the special theory and general theory of relativity are explained in the book. They are both important concepts and apply in real-world situations today. Without an understanding of Einstein’s theories, we would not have the accurate GPS abilities that we have today. In fact, the book ends with an explanation as to how these two theories are used in the GPS system.

I have not been a fan of manga because of the often lewd clothing and sexual innuendos often found within their pages. Unfortunately, this book does nothing to change my mind. Halfway through the book, chapter three opens with the shapely teacher in a bikini (which is way too small) having her teenage student fanning her like a slave. Then when he asks why they are having their one-on-one class at the pool she says that he should just be happy to “to look at your beautiful teacher in her bathing suit.” Completely inappropriate and exactly why I generally don’t like manga. For this reason, I won’t recommend the book to my teenage son who would probably otherwise enjoy the content. The next 22 pages are filled with pictures of the teacher in various provocative poses while teaching her one-person class about relativity.

As far as teaching the concepts of relativity in an understandable way, I would say this title delivers fine on that. Would I recommend it as a book? No. And I am much less interested in reading other books in the series, even though the books about physics and electricity are appealing.

If your are interested in understanding relativity, the best book I have read (that did not morally offend me) was Stephen Hawking’s Illustrated Brief History of Time, although I believe he approaches cosmology from a flawed faith in the Big Bang theory.

[Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book.]

Cup of coffee anyone? How about a doughnut?

I saw this coffee mug tonight on a website and thought of a few friends. Wouldn’t it be great to take this to the office kitchen and load up on a cup of coffee and a doughnut? Or, you could slide a couple of cookies in the mouth.

Of course, there are a couple of issues with the whole idea.

First, are there always doughnuts or cookies in the office lounge? It would seem like a great waste of coffee space to carry a mug around that only half of it was dedicated to coffee. I do have a second hand. I always assumed its purpose was to carry around my doughnuts and cookies.

The second problem is that the coffee might heat up the doughnut too much. Then you would have chocolate ooze dripping off your mug as you walked back to your desk. That is, assuming you eat chocolate doughnuts. Personally I like mine glazed (yes, I also prefer vanilla ice cream). Either way, you have a sticky mess falling from your cup onto the floor or on your desk. I would rather have the doughnut drip on my hand so that I can lick up every bit of sugar available.

I am not sure if the second problem is worse than the first or vice versa. They are both serious problems. But carrying a coffee cup that is only half full of coffee seems to be the greater of the two problems to me.

If you are so inclined to purchase one, you can pick up the Face Mug at Amazon for $18.

Nurse Judy Came to Visit

Family shot in front of the Puente de las Mujeres — Puente de las Mujeres in Puerto Madero

We had a great visit with a friend from our days at the Bill Rice Ranch. She has been a neighbor and friend for almost 20 years. Without going into too many embarrassing details, let’s just say we have been through a lot together. Not the least of which involves lots of gauze, pain and tears.

She was here for almost a week and we acted like tourists each day.

Wednesday—the day she arrived—we took it easy and talked most of the morning. In the afternoon she and I rode bikes to church and worked on setting up some new microphones she brought with her. Then of course we ended the evening with a church service.

Man painting with his feet — A man painting with his feet

Thursday we went downtown to our city, La Plata and saw the sites. There really isn’t a lot to just walk around and see other than a few old buildings. The city has some nice places to visit, but it would take days to really enjoy the city in the right way. We have an old museum and some beautiful parks. We spent the majority of our time at the Republica de los Niños (the big park near our house) and the old Gothic-style cathedral (the tallest in the Americas). We finished off the evening with a sign language class at church.

Friday was our long walk through Buenos Aires. We started with a train trip to the station in BA. Then we rode the subway to the Casa Rosada which is the seat of the executive branch of government in Argentina. We took a walk down to the waterfront and toured a couple of ships which are now turned into museums. Then a stroll down Florida Street. This is a fancy place where people with money go to shop. Mostly tourists. We enjoyed a walk instead of buying anything. We saw a man painting with his feet, listened to a little music and got rained out of watching some tango music. We rode a nice bus home. We planned to spend much more time in BA, but with the rain we came home and enjoyed a couple of episodes of Shaun the Sheep.

Family at Republica de los Niños — At the park near our house--Republica de los Niños

Saturday Judy and I went to my sign language class at the deaf association in town. We then spent the afternoon at the hippie market. This is a handcraft market that is mostly run by smelly hippies. That night we had some fellow missionaries over for a meal.

Sunday was business as usual. Church in the morning and a long nap in the afternoon. We took a quick trip to another handcraft market before the evening service.

Monday was the day Judy had to return home. One final trip downtown to enjoy a final bus ride and look at a couple of souvenirs. I rode with Judy in a taxi to the airport. The ride cost us $65, but got us from our front door to the front door of the airport. Not bad for a 1.5 hour ride.

The real adventure began on my trip home from the airport. I wanted to get home as cheaply as possible partly just to see if it was possible to get from the airport to home on public transport with no taxis involved. I took a bus for about 45 minutes to a train station. Bus cost $0.50. When I got to the train the ticket booth said I could get on without a ticket. I got to my next train connection and had to wait 50 minutes for the next train. But, I then rode that on to my house. Total cost was the lone 50 cents I paid for the bus. The downside is that the trip took me 3 hours to get home (twice as long as going), but cost $64.50 less than the trip going.

We had a good time talking about old friends and where they are now. We also enjoyed the excuse to take a few days to go see the sites. After she left all our attention got turned to preparing for our church’s missions conference which started a few days later.

Review: How to Distinguish Good and Bad Information Online by Howard Rheingold

This video series by Howard Rheingold helps the viewer try to determine what is junk and what is valid information on the web. There are 12 different video segments that let you jump to just the information you are looking for, or you can watch them all at one time. The program is set up in an interview format so that it is not just a talking head video. The interviewer is asking Mr. Rheingold various questions to keep the video on topic and moving forward.

I love the information given, though I think it is a little basic. This is the kind of information that is helpful for someone new to the Internet or that friend who forwards every email hoax to you. Mr. Rheingold really targets this information for children; however, I think kids who have parents on the Internet probably know most of this information. If you are concerned about your kids getting duped into believing bad information online, then this would be a good video series for you.

One section of the video includes tips on how to use search engines. It does not go into detailed search strings you can use to refine your search, rather it gives tips on how to use search to find out if the information you are being told is legitimate. There is also a section on tracking down the truth of what you think might be an urban legend. I wished more people would learn that instead of posting to Facebook and their entire email list a bunch of false information.

Most of the sections are 10 minutes or less. It is something that can easily be watched in chunks of time. The whole program is 1 hour and 42 minutes long.

I don’t like the title of the videos, though I understand it is probably not offensive to most people. However, I always think a publishing company limits their ability to sell books when they use a questionable word in the title or an inappropriate picture.

Crap Detection 101: How to Distinguish Good and Bad Information Online can be found at O’Reilly. Because it is a video series you can only buy it directly from the publisher. It is available for download or streaming off their website.

[Disclaimer: I was given a free review copy of the video series]