little red planet

Me and My KOBO, A Review

dale — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 09:28:27 +0000

Recently I purchased an inexpensive little ereader called a KOBO. The Kobo is a plan jane, bare bones ereader. It’s small, light, plan and devoid of heaps of features. However, I have decided that this is why the KOBO is a sexy little ereader and has not been far from my reach for the past two weeks. I won’t go into all the technical specs of the KOBO, I’m sure there are better reviews that can give you that information. But I will highlight the strengths and weaknesses as I experience them.

We are a very bookish family. We live in a bushfire prone part of Australia and are often confronted with very real situations where we have to pack belongings and leave until the bushfire crises subsides. As a family we all agree that in the event of the worst case scenario, we would be most devastated to lose our shelves and shelves of books rather than jewelry, electronics or other keepsakes. There’s something about being surround by volumes, lazily browsing titles and handling most favorite books.

So my family was surprised I got a KOBO. It’s practically the antithesis of the what we collectively value. It’s a piece of technology, small and without character. However, I was fascinated with the small size, weight and ability to store a large volume of books in the device.

After buying the KOBO I quickly striped off the box and got down to business. I was impressed with the 100 or so books that came preloaded. Only after the purchase did I wonder if the device was compatible with my linux systems. The answer is yes and no. I plugged it in and the device was recognised by my Ubuntu system however the preloaded software on the KOBO was not linux compatible (familiar story for linux users). I surfed over to the KOBO website and was impressed with the selection of ebooks. I found the book I was looking for, Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson, and made my online purchase. This was when I realised that KOBO was not going to play nicely with linux. I could not download the ebook purchase.

I rebooted into windows and installed the preloaded software. Arg!. Another problem. The preloaded software was branded to the store (Angus & Robertson) the KOBO was purchased from and could not download or install my purchase from the KOBO site. It was also very apparent that the preloaded software was very limited and only managed purchases from the Angus & Robertson online store. After a little googling I installed Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) and was able to download Snow Crash from KOBO site and then install it on my KOBO. All seeming was well.

But, when adding ebooks to the KOBO from ADE, the front covers are lost as is the ability to change font size. This was important because the font was so small it made reading on the KOBO very tedoious. A little more google later, I learned how to hack into the Snow Crash epub file and delete the css sheet. Like magic, this allowed me to then change the font size on the KOBO for Snow Crash.

The preloaded software is annoying and basically useless. I contacted KOBO support and they were quick to reply but could not offer any real solutions except to say that in the coming weeks, the KOBO site will release their own KOBO software.

I have downloaded the ereader Calibre on linux and this does a great job of managing the books on my KOBO without having to boot into windows. It doesn’t manage to install books purchased online and copyright encrypted. I still have to use ADE to do this although I have managed to get ADE running under Wine on linux.

So what’s the verdict? I love it. It has rarely left my side in two weeks. I like being able to carry several books on the train, to work and around the house in one small tiny device. I like the fact that it is very simple and focuses on only being an ereader. I like the fact that it’s very small, light weight and easy to handle. It makes reading in bed with one hand very easy! The screen was designed specifically to read books from and works well in the sunshine and shade. It is not back-lit and is very easy on the eyes. Almost like a real book. It uses very little power. I’m almost finished with Snow Crash and have started a number of other titles and have recharged it only once.

I’m a convert and you’ll find the KOBO on my bookshelf.

July 2 2010 – UPDATE

Kobo have released a firmware (1.4) update that resolves the issues I mentioned with the font and covers. If you have a Kobo and have not upgraded the firmware, check out this post from Michael Tamblin, EVP of Content, Sales and Merchandising at Kobo discussing the firmware upgrade in detail. Kudos to Kobo for listening to customers and promptly responding. Let’s hope this sort of collaboration continues!

Blogging and Photography

dale — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 06:04:09 +0000

Blogging and photography, I like to do both but don’t seem to have enough time to really put in a good effort at either. I’ve decided to open a new site and post a photo-a-day. I’ll refrain from tutorials or long posts and focus on trying to get an image each day. If you are interested in photography, check out my new photo blog Totem

When Taking A Walk …

dale — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 05:28:50 +0000

“When taking a walk you need to sit down” Willow

Bury Me In My Skates

dale — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 03:25:46 +0000

The new Bury Me In My Skates T-Shirt design is available by special order only. If you’re interested, please shoot me an email or comment here.

Ice Pirates – New Designs Inspired by Blades of All Kinds

dale — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:46:24 +0000

My family has a love of all things on the ice. My oldest daughter figure skates and speed skates, my youngest figure skates, my wife figure skates and I hit the ice in hockey blades. We are at the ring 2,3 sometimes 4 times a week. A few weeks ago my 5 year old daughter bought a little ice skating T-Shirt. This got me to thinking and I realised that there are not many nice looking skating related T-Shirts and products available – at least not Down Under. So I’ll be launching a new range of products under the Ice Pirates label. I’ll be working on a series of designs on shirts as well as other products and launch a website later in March 2010. This is one of the first designs – designed on GIMP and inkscape exclusively of course.

So I better wrap this post up, the Vancouver Olympics women’s figure skating is on behind me and I want to watch our little Australian hopeful Cheltzie Lee. Aussi Aussi Aussi!

Storytelling With Images, An Experiment

dale — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 11:19:34 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I took a little bush walk in Sherbrooke Forest near my home. I came back with a number of fantastic photos however, viewed individually or one after the other, they lost some of their appeal and magic. Last week I experimented with uploading an image a day with a one sentence caption that told a simple story. The photos and captions helped to tie the images together and allowed me to highlight aspects of the photo. This worked out really well so I’ve placed them together into a little movie complete with a Ry Cooder audio track. I’ll continue to explore and experiment with this as another media. Let me know what you think. Cheers.

A Little Walk … from dale rogers on Vimeo.

Photographs taken in Sherbrooke Forest, Dandenong Ranges, Australia. All images were taken on a little walk about a half mile from my house. Hope you enjoy the serenity and majesty of this great mountain forest.

Editing in Gimp – Threshold and Color to Alpha Tools

dale — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 11:17:42 +0000

As the title identifies, I’ll be using the image editor GIMP to demonstrate the Threshold and Color to Alpha tools. If you don’t already have a copy, head over to GIMP.org and download one. it’s free which is why I use it .

This is what we’re shooting for:

Threshold
The Threshold tool turns your image into a true Black and White. That is Black and White only, no shades of grey. You have to carefully choose the image you want to use this effect upon. If the image has too many colors or limited contrast, it may not work too well. However, if in doubt, open up the image and give the Threshold tool a whirl and see how it turns out, a little experimentation may find a brand new trick!

So, let’s take my original image:

You’ll notice that this image has a lot of conrtast and limited colors. It’s perfect for turning the Threshold tool loose on. Now, you’ll find the Threshold tool under Colors > Threshold…

I’ve selected the Threshold tool and am adjusting the slider to get just the effect I want. I think right about here gives good detail. Let’s go with that.

Now we have a black and white image, perfect for using the Color to Alpha tool (Alpha is a fancy name for transparent).

Color to Alpha tool

You can find Color to Alpha under Color > Color to Alpha… Let’s choose that now. Here’s a shot of the open Color to Alpha tool. I selected white in the “From … to alpha” box. As soon as I did that, all the white in the image disappeared like this:

Now we have an image that is only black, black trees. The rest of the image is transparent. Lets add a layer and move it underneath these black trees. If you look at the Layers, Channels, Paths and so on window (it’s usually on the right side of your screen looking something like this:

Let’s add another layer. I’ve circled in red the new layer button. This will add a transparent layer above the tree image. This new layer need to be placed below the trees so just click on the new layer and pull it below the original one. Voila, now you have a clean slate to lay in the background!

I chose a Hubble space telescope image for this background. I opened the space image and scaled it down to fit my tree image. Copied the space image, click on the trees again, clicked on the transparent layer and pasted the space image into it. That’s it. All that is left is a quick rotate of the whole image. I decided that I wanted it rotated to the left so I choose Image > Transform > Rotate 90 counter clockwise. Be sure and click on the finished image and view a larger size version. Much of the detail is lost with the small sizes.

Now, let’s see what you can do!

GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.

GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

GIMP is written and developed under X11 on UNIX platforms. But basically the same code also runs on MS Windows and Mac OS X.

Dwelling In the Desert

dale — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:31:49 +0000

“What do we mean by setting a man free? You cannot free a man who dwells in a desert and is an unfeeling brute. There is no liberty except the liberty of some one making his way towards something. Such a man can be set free if you will teach him the meaning of thirst, and how to trace a path to a well. Only then will he embark upon a course of action that will not be without significance. You could not liberate a stone if there were no law of gravity — for where will the stone go, once it is quarried?” Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Introducing the BigShot .00

dale — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 04:41:18 +0000

My friends over at Shuttercal.com are having a contest all through January. The winners recieve a XShot2.0. The XShot is a nifty little gadget that allows you take take photos of yourself from a nice distance. It’s a small telescoping device that puts your camera a good ways in front of ya so that you can either get a good background shot or get a shot of yourself with a group of others. In order to win one of these babies at Shuttercal you must upload a self portrait. I really really want a XShot but I’ve seen my competition over there and don’t like my changes of winning.

However, I realised that the XShot2.0 is really for wimps. It’s long and flimsy and looks like it belongs nestled in a pocket protector alongside a calculator and half a dozen leaking pens. I decided that I’d make a better camera extender thing meself.

So, without fanfare or any pomp and circumstance nonsense, here’s the BigShot .00.

It’s chunky and rugged. It can hold a REAL camera and lens.

It allows you to take nice pictures of yourself.

But, I got to thinking that my BigShot can do a lot more than the little XShot2.0.

It can be used as a club to fight off man eating bears or dive bombing magpies.

It makes a nice walking stick or just a good ol place to rest your noggin.

I’m pretty proud of the BigStick.

So, I’m off into them there hills and gonna take a few panoramics of meself from the ridge.

BTW, I’d recommend you drop on around to Shuttercal and check out the photo a day projects and their really cool prints + shoeboxes. Also, even though you might really want a BigShot .00, I’ve decided to keep it a one-of-a-kind so you’ll have to settle for a XShot2.0.

But, Shuttercal, I still wouldn’t mind a XShot2.0, just to compare of course …

7 January 2010 – A Perfect Day

dale — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 10:48:37 +0000

What can I say, this year is looking good. Another perfect day on my favorite beach. This is Juniper enjoying the crystal clear waters.