Frustration

I’ve been preparing to publish something here for quite some time. I started a writeup on smartphone platforms while sitting in the train on the way back from an useless job interview in munich. I didn’t finish it, had other things to do, my parents were on holidays nearby, and I had another stupid test to pass. While I was working on that, I head to learn the hard way why exactly Apple came up with their magsafe stuff: The power supply of my netbook somehow managed to pull it down when I stood up from my desk. Screen broken. Nice black area on the right of the screen. I most likely won’t fix it. I will rather sell it, and buy something that’s more helpful and an additional battery for my 14″ notebook.

In addition to that, another semester has started. As I hate printing all the stuff you need to be prepared at lectures and later be prepared at the examination, simply because it takes so long, is an effing waste of natural resources and it’s a pain in the neck to carry all that paper along whenever you travel in order to be able to work, i tried to find something that could fit my workflow. An electronic device, like Amazons kindle, plus some features to be able to make annotations during lectures. I hear someone shouting TabletPC. Sorry, that’s not it. It can do too much else and thus distract me badly, it’s heavy, expensive and in addition to that, most TabletPCs have a terrible battery life.

And don’t talk me into the iPad or an Android tablet. They seem (if my inquiries weren’t too bad) to lack the appropriate software – not to mention their sunlight readability. It’s too bad that there are so few tablets using Wacom technology.

Really, the only device that’s close to fit and available is made by Apple, and i am not talking of any iOS device here. I think of getting one of these crazy Newton MessagePads. Unfortunately, those that are powerful and thus interesting (2000,2100) are rare and still expensive, and then there is another drawback: Apparently no PDF support. PDF just wasn’t that popular in the 1990s. Converting is possible, maybe it would even work out.

But really: Isn’t it effing frustrating that there is no effing device that is really suitable to survive university without having to carry a huge load of paper? Is this market so uninteresting?

Probably I should turn this disaster into a business plan.

„Der Wolkenatlas“ von David Mitchell

This is a short comment on the novel “Cloud Atlas” by David Mitchell. I´ve read the german translation, thus I did my “review” in german as well.

Cloud Atlas

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Ich schreibe über dieses Buch, weil ich mir vorgenommen habe meine Freizeitbeschäftigungen bewusster zu verarbeiten. Eigentlich würde ich lieber nicht über dieses Buch schreiben, denn es ich habe es in der deutschen Übersetzung gelesen, was, wenn man bedenkt, dass ich die englische Sprache doch immerhin leidlich beherrsche, fast ein Verbrechen ist. Aber gut, in der Buchhandlung war das Buch nicht auf Englisch vorrätig und das bestellen des Originals, ein gar nicht mal so langwieriger Prozess, wollte ich nicht auf mich nehmen, denn ich kaufte es doch nur aufgrund der Empfehlung einer hübschen Buchhändlerin, die mir erzählte, dass dieses Werk von David Mitchell eines ihrer Lieblingsbücher sei – nachdem wir uns etwas über die sich doch stark ähnelnden Geschichten von Paul Auster und außerdem über Dostojewski ausgetauscht hatten. Wäre ich geistesgegenwärtiger gewesen, hätte ich das Buch auf Englisch bestellt, dann hätte ich eins, zwei Tage später das Buch abholen können, aber gut, war ich nicht, und so habe ich das Buch nun auf Deutsch gelesen, was auch nicht so schlimm war, nein, sogar eine Recht gute Erfahrung.

Mitchell, ein Doktor der vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaften, hat in dieses Buch mehrere Erzählstränge eingearbeitet, die sich sprachlich so stark in ihrem Stil unterscheiden, dass er die Handlungsstränge auch ohne Probleme hätte stärker durchmischen können. So aber beginnt das Buch als Tagebuch einer beruflicher Pazifikreise eines Notars aus San Francisco namens Adam Ewing, setzt sich 1930/1931 als Briefsammlung des – gleichfalls fiktiven – bisexuellen Komponisten Robert Frobisher fort, geht danach in einen in den 1970er Jahren in Kalifornien spielenden Kriminalroman fort, dessen Hauptprotagonistin Luisa Rey heißt und Journalistin ist, um anschließend weiterzuführen über den mutmaßlich in der Jetzt-Zeit des Buches in England lebenden Verleger Timothy Cavendish, in die Zukunft. Die Zukunft, das bedeutet einen Ortswechsel in die Konzernokratie Korea, in der wir die protokollierte Lebensgeschichte des Aufgestiegenen Bedien-Klons Somni 451 erfahren, um dann den Gipfel zu erklimmen mit der Geschichte des Zachry, der sich zu den Talleuten von Big I., Ha-Why zählt, und in einer Zeit nach dem „Untergang“ lebt, als Ziegenhirte – die Sprache ist entsprechend reduziert, wirkt geradezu archaisch. Nach dem Gipfel (Zachry erklimmt nebenbei denselbigen des Mauna Kea) folgt der Abstieg, wir erfahren einiges über die Göttin der Talleute, Somni, die kurz darauf wieder selbst in der Protokollaufzeichnung zu Wort kommt, es geht weiter mit Cavendish, bis man schließlich wieder bei Ewing auskommt – welcher die innerste Puppe dieser Matroschka darstellt.

All diese Erzählstränge sind mit den ihnen vorangehenden verknüpft, mal über Personen, mal einfach als Geschichte – man könnte auch sagen, dass die Matroschken leicht transparent sind. Die Verweise mögen teilweise zwar etwas konstruiert erscheinen, ein wiederkehrendes Motiv sind kometenförmige Muttermale – aber insgesamt fühlt man sich als Leser nicht so sehr in einem elaborierten Machwerk gefangen, dass man deswegen das Buch weglegen würde, denn es bleibt spannend (und wird spannender, etwa durch Vorgriffe auf die Fortsetzung des vorangehenden Handlungsstrangs, die neugierig machen).
Ein gutes Buch. Worum es nun aber in diesem geht, will ich nicht in Gänze darlegen, nur so viel: Es geht um Lebensfragen. Mehr vielleicht dann, wenn ich das Buch auch noch im Original gelesen habe. Das Buchcover des Originals ist auch viel schöner.

RECOMMENDED (for lazy readers) : Cloud Atlas (novel) at en.wikipedia.org

Prē only – Days 5 to 12

It’s about time to give an update on how my feelings on the Palm Prē are after using it exclusively for a time close to two weeks. After I found out how to switch to 2G only mode (which doesn’t hurt at all, as I have been wasting the 200 megabytes that run fast pretty fast (thanks to tethering)) battery standby time has become good enough to make using the Prē quite a pleasure. Even though apps are limited (exspecially for me, as I don’t have a credit card and can’t purchase any paid apps), thanks to the pleasant web experience (web rendering speed is fast) and the best multitasking experience I have ever had on a mobile device. After all this time I suddenly feel like I got used to the bits I didn’t find before, because I simply wasn’t used to the way webOS, I really don’t miss Androids menu button no more. What I still miss a little bit (but only a little bit) is a softkeyboard for the landscape mode which works like androids soft keyboard (tap the text area and up it pops). That would be cool, but I got used to what was so annoying at first: slide to have a hardware keyboard, and of course my typing has become faster as well.

Besides that, I did some testing to confirm the experience, that webOS’s browser version is not the latest. HTML5 Browser Test result is 132 points (plus 5 bonus points) out of 300 possible – your average stable Google Chrome (5.0.375.125) does a 197 (plus 7 bonus points). In particular this results difference is shown in webOS lacking support of most HTML5 section elements (all besides nav), several form element types and attributes, a session history management, support for web applications, geolocation and webworkers. We’re told that all this will be fixed with webOS next major overhaul, webOS 2.0 – HP / Palm is going to follow the web, as stated several times, e.g. in this Palm Developer Podcast. – which are an interesting watch if you are really interested in webOS or even just contemporary web development, but you’ll need some knowledge, I as a web layouter and maybe designer (but not really web developer, though I am trying to get into that), I struggled to understand more than just terms from time to time.

More will follow soon..

Prē only – Days 1 & 2

Soon after my “Further Imprēssions” post I felt like I should give the Prē another chance and try to use it all day for at least a week (without using my G1 in the meantime). In fact I plan to do so for at least two weeks, and I will try to blog some tips and tricks regarding the Prē, and I’ll try to do so frequently.

Before I actually started to use the Prē again I re-read the instructions manual. Probably I should have done so earlier, but as I was self concious that would find out how to use this device just by actually using it, I just had had a short glimpse at it before. No I read it really carefully while actually trying out all the described features and gestures which aren’t to self explanatory. Then I went on, sat down at my PC to watch some videos about webOS.

In the first video on webOS I watched (after quite a long time), a very important term that was mentionned: “Concious design decision”. Actually this didn´ t really get me overexited (like I was when I saw the announcement video stream of the Palm Pre), but it enabled me to finally get rid of my Android glasses and see the Pre without having certain expectations. I decided to stop missing the “menu” button.

This actually didn’t kill all the points I criticised about the Prē, but it already sort of killed my “landscape mode” point because I suddenly was able to imagine that Palm did this with having something in their mind, and while I was browsing the web I understood that Palm tried to make landscape mode a “better readable” mode, which is not the worst idea I ever saw.

Soon after that I realized, that the slider is a lot less annoying when you don’t use it that often. In fact, when you sit down to have some nice, hot coffee, and want to use the Pre to surf the web while sipping that coffee in a casual way, it´s really comfortable to keep the slider slided out, and hold the pre one handed at the bottom. And it’s fast, this Pre on steroids (Überkernel), compared to my good old G1 – and multitabbing becomes multicarding on the Pre.

Preware (which I had installed before, but hadn’t really looked at is another great thing. Whenever there is something lacking (talking of the default apps), I simply check Preware whether there isn’t a patch.

The first patch I want to talk about, is a rather simple one called “Read/Delete All Email”. It extends webOS’s mail client by offering two extra buttons, one to delete all mail (which I don’t use at all), the other to mark all mails as read, which is handy when dealing with mailing lists and ebay reminders as a person that get’s distracted when a device claims that there is mail waiting to be read.

Another one which turned out to be pretty nice is “Alarm Daily Options” which extends the otherwise too basic (Alarm) Clock, rendering it useful – I will not describe what it does here, it’s too obvious.

More Prē/webOS observations / wishes soon.

Further Imprēssions

As I haven‘t sold my Palm Prē yet (which is in a way unfortunate, as there has been a huge price drop recently) I feel like sharing my opinions on the Prē.

I have used it quite a bit, though not as much as I could have, because I use my G1 most of the time: I am afraid of scratching the Prē. While the form factor is nice (though there might be people that prefer a slightly bigger screen (which would result in a larger device) at less thickness), the Prē‘s surface is made of glossy plastic. If you ever handled glossy plastic, you might have noticed that it catches scratches easily. Besides this, there are some more hardware issues: The keyboard, which I don‘t really like, as it is pretty small. And there is no soft keyboard, besides a hacked-in one on PreWare which unfortunately doesn‘t quite do what you would expect from a decent soft keyboard: come up automagically whenever there is something to be typed – in fact this experience reminds me of the soft keyboard Android 1.0 on the OpenMoko had.

Having no software keyboard, you have to use its hardware sibling i already critisized, and this means, whenever you feel like typing something (or not, but you‘re required to) you have to switch to portrait mode. As a G1 user, which has a hardware keyboard which you use in landscape mode, this feels slightly inconvinient. In fact webOS feels much like you´d expect looking at Palm‘s device range: It‘s all portrait optimized (but I am used to landscape thanks to the G1’s keyboard). In fact you notice this when you get some notifications. Soon you will feel a little bit like watching a 2.35:1 movie on a 4:3 screen if you know what you mean. This, again, doesn‘t feel too great, so it‘s not as bad as turn to portait whenvever there is typing action thing. In fact I didn‘t manage to try out too many apps as I didn‘t want to throw money at Palm‘s App Catalog as I never felt like that the Prē would replace my G1 – after buying it. So all I tried out was actually for free (there are considerably less high quality free apps on webOS than on Android (though the homebrew/PreWare community came up with some nice ones) which is probably due to webOS proprietary nature) or inbuilt. And sorry to say so, but that‘s not it. I noticed a lack of creativity apps (like pianos, drum machines and alike), but there is one more point that annoyed me a lot more, being a heavy GMail user who follows mailing lists using GMail: No threaded mail in webOS mail client, and simple no way to mark tons of Mail as read. Really, webOS‘s inbuilt email client killed the experience. Not only it felt hard to write Mail (because of the keyboard issue), in addition to that it felt hard to manage my mails, or at least a lot more inconvenient than on Android. A simple GMail notification service linking to the mobile GMail web interface would do a lot better (sometimes I think so on Android as well).

While there might be further issues, which i didn‘t notice because I didn´ t dive deep enough into webOS, aside the mentionned ones which could be rouled out by another webOS update.

Conclusion: I have to say that webOS is a great platform with perfect mobile multitasking, which has nice animations rocking a beautiful interface (even great sounds) that is not that usable as it should be running on beautiful hardware which doesn‘t feel that solid or sturdy you would like it to. A platform that might be really great with a few new devices and a new software revision. I recommend to wait for webOS 2.0.

Regarding the Prē I have to say that it is overall a nice, rather speedy device which has a nice camera (image quality is more than ok and the shutter speed is the best I ever experienced on a smartphone (though I didn’t invest much in camera savvy smartphones). If there was a decent Android port (or a webOS without the issues I mentionned), it could be my number one smartphone.

Ubuntu 10.04 on the nc6400

A few days ago my new old laptop arrived, a HP Compaq nc6400, and since I upgraded the RAM to 4 gigabytes I am absolutely happy with it. Having Windows XP Professional preinstalled this laptop felt a lot like my good old beloved HP Compaq nx6325, only more widescreen and quite a bit faster. In fact this nc6400 must have been pretty damn expensive when it was new, even today its Core2Duo T7600 CPU is not that outdated performance wise.

Of course, even though Windows XP is not that bad considering its age, I had to try another, more modern OS on this machine. As I didn’t really feel like diving into Windows 7 and as I didn’t feel ready to give that hackintosh experiment a try, I decided to install a desktop optimized, end user friendly distribution: Ubuntu 10.04

Even though I will most likely move on to something different, like Slackware64 or Arch (I am a little bit fed up with Debian) I have to say that as long as your machine is fast enough, Ubuntu can be fun. Its instant messaging integration is a nice touch, and the preinstalled software is ok.

As always with Ubuntu, I had to customize the looks rather quickly. I never liked its Orange and Brown color themes, now they added in some purple and red, and there’s still some orange in it… if it was all purple, dark grey, light grey and white, I could like it, but as it is it feels like the designers weren’t sure which colors to use. Not that the colors don’t fit each other, they do, at least sort of, but it’s too much for minimalists like me. So I went trough the wide fields of the internet, looking for something that fits my aesthetic feelings better, and I ended up with elementary.

There is one more thing new with Ubuntu 10.04: The buttons to close, minimize and maximize a window were moved to the left (were they’ve always been on Apple’s operating systems. Whether this was a wise decision or not (I doubt it because the majority people that give Ubuntu a try are used to M$ Software), it made me installing global menu and a cairo-dock, to have some kind of Mac feeling. Unfortunately, this is a broken experience, as global menu only works with native Gnome/GTK+ applications (not with OpenOffice or Firefox), but still it`s a nice thing which reminds me of the 1990’s when I used a Mac. Feels great.

AVATAR

Finally I made it and saw this James Cameron movie called “Avatar”. A true masterpiece of animation (even though I didn´t see it in 3D – some scenes must be really frightening in 3D as they even made me moving watching it in 2D) is what comes two my mind first, trying to summarize what I saw, though I have to admit that I don´t know much about animation – nontheless: I liked what I saw. I am rather into stories, I read them, I write them, I tell them in my spare time.

Well, from what I remember of “Titanic”´s storyboard (the only other James Cameron movie I ever saw/enjoyed and remember) I have to say that I feel like it is similar in a way – in fact many other movies are. Not that this would be a bad point, but what do we have? An impossible love story. And beyond this modern society is criticized, but you will rather remember the love story than this criticism.

But of course there are differences, there have to be. I rather don´t blather about Titanic‘ now, because I didn´t watch that one in years and might mix things up – I have to stick to “Avatar”. It is the dream of a discovery of another civilization, which might be inferior at a first, technology centric look, but will turn out by far superior in its spirituality, happiness and wisdom. While the invaders have messed up their own planet and culture, the invaded have a feeling for their surroundings, they live in a perfect symbiosis with their environment, that are really attached to it. We´ve all read this more than once, it is the story of the invaded paradise. It is the story of invaders, who just see the money they can make and are willing to destroy holy places, homes and habitats that are really unique – unlike that ‘uniqueness’ you bullshit about in business.
Yeah, maybe it is this back to the roots, back to mother earth destiny thing, the feeling that we are so far away from perfect harmony, that depresses today’s mass societies. ‘”Avatar” is addressing all this, but not in a way that could really make people a lot more aware. It is not a movie that will revolutionize the world. It has just some impact on the movie aesthetics, art and business. There is this love story ruining all that´s beyond it, but certainly in a very nice way.

Imprēssions

Finally I got myself a Palm prē after this Toshiba TG01 dissapointment, and well, what shall I say? It’s yet another dissapointment? Well, that would be the truth, almost. The prē is a package of promises, but Palm didn’t manage to fullfill them. My complaints are those that you’ve probably heard a couple times. Quality issues for example. The sliders bottom is sharp enough to cut cheese, which is really bad because it makes using the tiny keyboard even more unpleasent. And the slider itself could be more snappy – as there is no soft keyboard, you have to slide the phone open whenever you feel urged to type something. It’s annoying. HTCs Android first timer (for those of you that forgot it: The first two iterations of Android (1.0 and 1.1) didn’t have a software keyboard as well) did much better. And this isn’t one of the first prē’s – it’s a shame Palm didn’t manage to address these issues yet – rumors have it that they managed to do better with the Prē Plus – but still: Without HP Palm would have failed, and this mismanagement regarding the quality issues might have very well killed Palm.

Let’s skip hardware without mentionning the good points (lovely form factor), and move on to software. WebOS is a nice platform, no doubt about that. But it isn’t that mature yet, if you ask me. And there are some things, that do annoy me. Example? Take the lack of something like APNdroid, which is so nice for Android, not just to save money (you can’t use the Prē without a data contract), but as well to prolong battery life. Take the mail client, which annoyed me by not threading mails. I am really locked into Android apparently – and if there is one more device of the current smartphones out there that I would try, it was probably be the Motorola Milestone.

Toshiba TG01 – Impressions

The gadget hunger won again – and so I got myself a Snapdragon device: A black Toshiba TG01 “Tsunagi”.

Yeah, it is a Windows Mobile Device. Yes, there is no Android / Linux port for the TG01 right now. But still: A 4.1″ 3G (MID size) Snapdragon slate, less than a centimeter thick – I could not resist.

Hardware

The formfactor is really impressive. It is just as pocketable as my G1 – or even more pocketable, as it is really so thin that people almost won’t see you’ve got a phone in your pocket. But that doesn’t mean that the hardware is perfect – the resistive touchscreen of the TG01 is a good one – but I would still prefer the capacitive one of my HTC Dream. One more bad thing: No 3,5mm audio jack, and the USB port (the only port of the device) is placed on the side of the device. Small pockets and a headset? No way. No need to mention that the slimness leads to a small battery and that should lead to a “not that great” battery life.

Switching the device on you will see a customized Windows Mobile – depending on your operator you might see a special, operator made home screen replacement, e.g. SPB Mobile Shell or Toshiba’s stripe UI.

Besides this the button placement is not perfect: The camera button is directly on the other side of the volume buttons, so if you press the camera button it might happen that you press the volume buttons as well.

Windows Mobile 6.5

With the TG01 being my first Windows Mobile 6.5 device, I have to admit that I like what Microsoft did to make the UI seem more competitive – comparing this to 6.1, it is a pleasure to use – though it is in my opinion inferior to Android. The whole platform is inferior in my opinion, due to its age and a lack of APIs. Looking at the TG01, you will find out that the inbuilt G-Sensor won’t work with some games or applications that work with, say, HTC devices.

Further impressions

While Phone quality and sound are ok with the latest Swiss Orange firmware, the device feels pretty slow, considering it has an advanced 1GHz ARM v7 SoC. Scrolling isn’t even as fluent as on my good old T-Mobile G1 – but I am pretty much convinced that this is a simple OS matter – the Windows Mobile 6.5 CE 5.2 kernel is pretty old, it is still close to 2005´s Windows Mobile 5 kernel. The ARMv7 instructions don’t seem to have a noticable impact on the devices performance – though compared to the Windows Mobile devices I had before it is without a single question the fastest one.

More soon..

Schall und Wahn

Es fällt mir schwer, über Musik zu schreiben, ich habe keine Erfahrung darin – und meine musikalische Erziehung war auch nur durchschnittlich, mir fehlt also an vielen Stellen Vokabular, so dass ich nur Eindrücke wiedergeben kann, nicht wirklich analysieren. Andererseits ist das hier nur Pop – keine Geheimwissenschaft, wenn man so will. Und ich muss über diese neue CD von Tocotronic einfach schreiben.

Schall & Wahn heißt der neue Tonträger der Band, die man dereinst in den 90er Jahren des vergangenen Jahrhunderts zur “Hamburger Schule” zählte. Hamburg ist aber nicht mehr der exklusive Ort der Band, das neue Album “Schall & Wahn”, das 9. Studioalbum Tocotronics vollendet die sogenannte Berlin-Triologie der Band, die 2006 mit “Pure Vernunft darf niemals siegen” begann und 2007 mit “Kapitulation” fortgesetzt worden war.

In den knapp 17 Jahren, die zwischen dem Debut “Digital ist Besser” und “Schall & Wahn” verstrichen sind, hat sich die Band mehrfach gewandelt – begann man mit Schrammelsound und plakativen Botschaften à la “Ich möchte Teil einer Jugendbewegung sein” und meist ellenlangen Songtiteln, stellte das 2002 erschienene “weiße Album” mit dem Titel Tocotronic eher Pop mit verkünstlerten Texten dar (etwa “In den Adern des Holzes seh ich Gesichter” (Textstelle aus “Free Hospital”)) – wie man sich denken kann, war manch ein “Fanatiker” von dieser Wandlung nicht zwingend begeistert.

Mit “Pure Vernunft darf niemals siegen” (insbesondere dem Titel “Aber Hier Leben, Nein Danke!”) schlugen die “Tocos” dann eine Brücke zwischen eher rockigen Botschaften und Künstelei, ein Weg, den auch Kapitulation bestritt – und der nun mit “Schall & Wahn” weitergeführt wird.

Wochen vergehen, denn ich kann nicht weiterschreiben. Bei jedem Satz, den ich schreibe, überkommen mich Zweifel an seiner Richtigkeit. Es könnte falsch sein, und das will man nicht. Und ist so eine Einordnung in den Werkkontext überhaupt nötig? Oder sinnvoll? Währenddessen schießt das Album auf Platz eins der deutschen Albencharts – aber wer sich mit Musikmanagement befasst, weiß, dass das nicht mehr viel bedeutet. Dennoch, ein Achtungserfolg. Und ich lese weder Feuilltonbesprechungen noch den Artikel in der Spex, die ich extra deswegen erwarb. Was bleibt: Es ist ein gutes Album. Eines der besten von Tocotronic. Ob es mein Lieblingsalbum wird? Das zeigt die Zeit allein.