A Mind is a Terrible Thing

Okay… in lolcat-speak, as regards Barnes & Noble’s new ‘Nook’ eReader device, “I haz one.”

For better or worse, I was in the first bunch to get one, having pre-ordered early enough to get first dibs.  Better, in that I got one — and I understand these things are now going for up to twice their retail value on eBay, and current orders won’t ship for at least 6-7 weeks due to the backlog.

Worse, in that as an early adopter, I get to experience the various flaws and problems that come with a 1.0 release product.  On the other hand, I did avoid some, in that I wasn’t opening my Nook up and connecting to the registration servers for the first time on Christmas day, when I hear they melted down due to the load.  And to their credit, they’ve already released a point release upgrade on the Nook’s operating system, downloaded automatically via the device’s free 3G network or over wifi.

I’ll not bother with a review of features and stuff that you can see for yourself at the link at the top of this post.  Instead, I’ll just go over my own impression, what I’ve liked and haven’t liked.  This is my first eReader of any kind, aside from laptop computers and PC desktop software, so it took me a while to get used to it.

First, the tactile:  The Nook feels pretty good in the hand, or both hands.  I quite like the fact I can page forward or back using buttons on both sides of the device.  You can also page with finger-swipes across the touchscreen at the bottom, but I haven’t bothered with this method.  It doesn’t feel like a toy, and in fact the leather cover/protector I got for it just enhances the impression.

The visual: The electronic ink display is remarkably sharp and easy on the eyes — I can read for hours without eyestrain, and the ability to change the font (3 choices) and size (5 choices) is nice.  I also rather like the customization feature, in that I could load my own wallpaper (what displays when you’re not reading) and screensavers (what displays when the device is asleep but not off).  The small color touchscreen at the bottom is a nifty feature — I like it way better than the multitude of tiny buttons I see on Kindles… There my only complaint is it really shows finger oil smudges too easily and I find I’m frequently cleaning (maybe one of those iPod protectors would help, if trimmed to fit).

The functional:  I’ve already added 16GB of MicroSD RAM to my Nook, but it comes with 2GB and truthfully I haven’t even filled that yet, not even close.  But it’s nice to have that much space to expand into as I like.  It also supports a variety of book formats, including PDF, PDB, and EPUB — and with the tools I already have, I can turn just about everything I own (including some old Microsoft Reader LIT books, as well as my own Word docs) into PDFs the Nook can handle.

Actually, with Calibre, a free open-source utility, I can convert into any Nook supported format from just about anything else.  Calibre also has a feed-subscription feature that lets me compile online stuff for reading later on the Nook — although the only way to get it onto the Nook is via USB cable.  I’ve enjoyed reading NASA news releases, Scientific American, and a couple newspapers in this way.

The WiFi (b/g) and Wireless 3G capabilities are quite cool, downloading books I bought on B&N’s site automatically.  And it was a pleasant surprise one morning when I woke up the device and it began downloading the software update; additional goodness: I then turned on the WiFi (usually leave it off to conserve battery) and the Nook switched to using that much faster connection without my doing anything else.

The speed and responsiveness of the Nook, especially on page changes, was really not good in the initial release, but the software update fixed about 80% of that.  Unfortunately they then introduced a problem where a lot of people, myself included, experienced intermittent loss of bookmarks and last-read-point saved information.  Not good.  Word on their support site is they’re working on it, as well as a few other glitches people have reported.  Again — this is a 1.0 product and I have expectations accordingly.  I’m actually surprised it hasn’t been worse, and that although there have been some hardware issues and returned Nooks, the bulk of the problems are software based (and therefore fixable).

Areas for improvement:  For some reason, battery life isn’t what it ought to be — and others have reported this.  Not like a week between charges; for me, it’s been more like every 3rd day.

The page transitions could be smoother and faster.  The 1.1 software was a big improvement in this, but it could be better.

Three fonts and five sizes is nice…but this could be expanded upon in the future.  Also, it does need a zoom/pan feature, so you can look closer at illustrations and graphs.

They put a lot of effort into the design aesthetics and even the packaging for the Nook.  C’mon guys — throw in a 25-cent stick-on/removable smudge protector for that bottom touchscreen at least.

They definitely need to beef up the ability to organize a given ebook library, and there’s no reason why there is no organization at all in the non-BN section of what is stored on the device — none, not even alphabetical by title.  I think it sorts by the order in which you put it on the device, but I’m not sure.  Ideally, people should be able to set up categories, keywords, sub-libraries, that sort of thing.  BN-purchased books can be sorted by author, title, and so on — but I’d also like to sort by genre or keyword, or to browse just among a subset of books, among all my Nook-stored books.  My actual preference would be that the Nook let me mingle both BN and non-BN content in one big searchable library.

There’s also an MP3 player function, and the sound surprisingly good even on the little mono speakers on the Nook — but the player itself is pathetically underfeatured.  Anything you put on the Nook is played in alphabetic order by the embedded title tags and that’s it — no picking an album, or even manually organizing your music into separate folders and playing those.  I have a cheap USB stick MP3 player device I got years ago and it can handle rudimentary folder organization better than the Nook.

The experience:  It took me a couple days to really get used to reading on the Nook…but now I enjoy it very much.  True, nothing will replace the look, feel, and smell of a book — paperback or hardbound.  However, I’d not experienced the way an eReader device can disappear with respect to the reading experience.  No matter what I’m reading, what’s in my hands is roughly the same — the page buttons are in the same spots, the display is the same. When I need to put it down, I don’t even need to remember to mark my spot, it just stays there (well, most of the time…again, they’re working on this).

For some reason (probably the cleverness of the e-ink display engineers), the crisp blackness of the text and the not-too-white background are extremely easy on the eyes.  My spouse has had cataract surgery and is plagued by lots of floaters — she hates reading, because of the latter — but reports to me she has no problem with the Nook’s display and finds it quite readable.

So, my grades:

• Aesthetics: A (looks good and feels good in the hands, with or without a protective cover)
• Features: B- (but room for improvement, and the fact they can do so on-the-fly is a big plus)
• Display: A (very easy on the eyes)
• Responsiveness:  B- (still a touch laggy at times and with certain books, but better with the 1.1 software than it was with 1.0)
• Expandability:  A (can add memory and the battery is replaceable; the Kindle doesn’t have either of these features)
• Connectivity:  A- (let me transfer files wirelessly between my PC and the Nook and that minus comes off; let me do it FROM the Nook and it would become an A+)
• Battery Life:  C+ (acceptable, but not spectacular)
• Format Compatibility: A- (add TXT and Word Doc to this and I’d remove that minus)
• Library Organization & Searching: D (BN-purchased content organization gets a B, but anything else I put on there can’t be organized or searched at all, so that part gets a failing grade, alas)
• MP3 Player:  Pass (as in took this pass/fail…and didn’t technically ‘fail’; really needs SOME way of letting people play music in the order they wish, short of manually editing embedded MP3 tags to add ascending numbers as I did)
• Graphics file support:  C+ (JPGs, BMPs, PNGs, and GIFs all display nicely, but there’s nothing resembling any kind of viewer or browser for looking at them — this would be an easily implemented feature, too).
• Product quality in general:  C (again, room for improvement via software update, but the early units were rushed to production and the bugs do show)

Overall assessment:  Would I buy this again or recommend buying it?  Yes.  Would I have opted for one of the other eReaders out there, based on what I know about this one from experience and my prior research on the features, reviews, and capabilities of devices such as the Kindle or Sony’s eReader?  No.  I like the Nook.

Why, despite the flaws I noted above would I have gotten the Nook anyway?  The main reason is because the underlying hardware is solid, in my opinion — it’s the operating system which needs improvement, added features, and bug-fixes, but all of these can be addressed and broadcast to all the Nook owners, whether they got their on December 9th as I did or will be opening theirs in mid February.  Based on the fact there’s already been one such software update, I have faith there will be more and soon.

I haz one.  Early Yule present and it just arrived today.

Will play with it for a few days or a week or so, then post a review.  For now?  I rather like it.  Glad I pre-ordered.

Best OS upgrade experience since Windows 95 (many don’t remember what a huge step up that was from Win 3.1).  Really solid, and not a single BSOD.  I think I had Firefox crash once, but that was more likely due to FF and/or Adobe Flash.

I usually keep my computer running most of the time because it’s also a publishing weather station on the ‘Net…and sometimes I forget how long it’s been since a reboot (which tends to happen now only when there’s been some major software installation or update).  By now, on Vista, I would absolutely have had to restart every day or two given the frequent Dragon Age: Origins gameplay, iTunes, and late evening video watching.  I did install a memory recovery utility called CacheBoost, but even with that back in the Vista days, given heavy use, I’d say I had a week max before the entire computer bogged down.

Absolutely it boots faster than the previous Vista installation, with noticeable ’spinning icon’ activity ending at about 2/3 the time it used to take.  Shutdown is faster, too.

I’m liking the Task bar for the most part and really like the pop-up thumbnails (Aero Peek) when you mouse over an active application’s icon, but I do wish it was a little more customizable.  Like for example to choose to have active applications move to the right of the inactive ones.  And to alter (increase/decrease) the Aero transparency effect.

No regrets on the upgrade, and I’m really super happy I opted in early for the half-price advance purchase (we got 2 Win7 Pro upgrades for $99 each…normally, it’s twice that).  I’m sure the ‘Home Premium’ edition would’ve been good enough, but I always like a few extra bells and whistles — and in this case, it was the instanced WinXP feature.

The pros: Slick, noticeably more responsive than my previous Vista 64-bit installation.  Some details are a little kludgey as I figure them out, but in general Microsquishy took nearly all the things I hated about Vista and made ‘em better.  The newly redesigned taskbar is da bomb.

The cons: Given it was physically possible for me to upgrade from V64 Home Premium to either Win7 Home Premium or Win7 Ultimate (the top-end product), it seems clear to me it was purely a marketing decision to restrict people from directly upgrading from Vista Home Premium to Win7 Pro (which in features sits right between Win 7 Home Premium and Ultimate).  It’s obvious there’s nothing even vaguely resembling a product or software limitation as to why I had to do the custom clean install and was barred from the simple upgrade.  Otherwise, Vista Home Premium to Win 7 Ultimate wouldn’t have worked as an upgrade path.  Really dumb, and not a good idea to annoy your customers in this way for no good reason than what has every appearance of greed (as in, “If they want to upgrade to a higher product, let’s make ‘em all buy the most expensive version.”).

That said, I’ve decided to see the glass as half-full — in that it actually is a good idea to do a fresh OS install now and then, and in general is the better choice when upgrading if you have the time.  It’s just a pain in the butt to have to reinstall everything though.  Fortunately, I’m well versed in how to manually move settings and files back — hence within an hour, I had both Firefox and Thunderbird looking exactly like they did, with all my settings and files and emails, yesterday morning.  Today, I’ll take a stab at the rest of my usually installed programs…which I might as well do because we’re somewhat snowed in here (about 5 inches worth outside right now).

Some advice and caveats:

• Have lots of disk space available on your main system drive before attempting the upgrade, because your entire previous Windows installation will be renamed Windows.old…and with the new OS being added, it can chew up a lot of space.  On my system, Windows.old is 115 GB.  One suggestion:  Pre-uninstall programs you haven’t been using much, because you’ll likely need to reinstall them again anyway.
• DO back up your documents, emails, music, photos, videos, and other personal files.  It’s just dumb not to, especially when performing software surgery at this level.  Also, if you know how, make a backup copy of your entire “Documents and Settings/(user)” folder (where ‘user’ is your login name).  Having this backed up can, if you’re a clever sort, enable you to restore a lot of stuff on your own, including your browser and email settings, iTunes, etc.  You’ll still need to reinstall the programs, but right from the get-go you can have ‘em working and operating just like they did before.
• If performing the upgrade from an existing working Windows installation, at the first system reboot, do NOT let your computer boot from the DVD-ROM disc in the drive.  In fact, upon each subsequent reboot, you STILL don’t want it booting from the DVD disc.  If you do, it will act as if nothing has been done and prompt to copy your old Windows OS files a second time…and I have a feeling it has the potential to mess up the upgrade process majorly.  Just let your computer boot normally from the hard disk.  For a couple seconds, you’ll see a screen that’ll let you pick between the upgrade or to boot into your previous (and still functional) operating system — with the default auto-selecting to do the upgrade.
• I noticed that the “completing installation” phase took a very, very long time on my system.  I have no idea if that was because some piece of hardware wasn’t responding as it ought to or that part of the installation actually takes that long.  Microsoft ought to have put in more indicators as to what was actually happening, some better progress indicator.

By the way, I think I may have blogged about this before, but it bears repeating:  For authors using Windows as their PC platform, Treepad is one of the best tools out there for organizing, keeping track of projects, and book development.  (They also have a more basic version available for Linux/Wine.)

I’ve tried MindMap — and not only do I seem to lack the requisite visual orientation, I just can’t cram enough information into a given map for it to be of use. Good for brainstorming, but I just can’t make it work as a tool for organizing a complex novel.

Treepad, on the other hand, uses a tree/branch/node structure that lets me track as much or as little information as I need — text, graphics, tables — and to organize it however I need.  Character outlines, place descriptions, timelines, maps, world history, notes & To Do lists…it’s all easy to track for those such as myself who like organized lists and hierarchies.

I’ve bought a license for the Enterprise Edition, Single User in late 2004, and nearly five years later it’s still one of the main tools I install on any new computer I own.  Great thing, too, is the license is perpetual: Free updates forever.

For those who might be curious, they have a  freeware version available, with a reduced but not crippling set of features.  And all the other versions have a fully-functional 21 day trial.

My own experience was I tried the free version for a couple days, then immediately knew it was THE tool for me, and that I wanted the larger database size support (8 GB back when I bought the Enterprise Edition, now up to 12GB) and the ability to have multiple DBs open at once.

Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others – Pogue’s Posts Blog – NYTimes.com
This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

(snip) You want to know the best part? The juicy, plump, dripping irony?

The author who was the victim of this Big Brotherish plot was none other than George Orwell. And the books were “1984” and “Animal Farm.”

As someone in the article notes, it is as if you bought something, took it home…and then woke up one morning to find it gone, and a refund check left on the dining table.  (h/t Talking Points Memo, with the appropriately titled entry, "Down the Memory Hole.")

It’d be one thing to stop future sales…but to reach out into thousands of personally owned Kindle devices and just delete a bunch of books?  It is a criminally stupid blunder.

Stephy and I went to see the new Star Trek movie this afternoon…first time we’ve been to an actual theater since…well, since we went to see Serenity, while vacationing in Wisconsin.  We figured catching a mid-week afternoon matinee would be the way to go.

The movie?  Oh yeah, it’s all that.  I’m usually very, very fussy about plot and characters, and this film managed to satisfy both quite well.  A few minor quibbles here and there…but overall I simply enjoyed it.  Great action, funny dialog (my favorite bit had to be when McCoy kept injecting Kirk with one nasty thing after another, each one causing increasingly debilitating side-effects), and simply stunning CGI effects.   The science?  Feh, who cares.  The point is entertainment and a willing suspension of disbelief for the sake of said entertainment, and for both of us it was an afternoon we really enjoyed.

I hope there are sequels.  Zach Quinto has only just begun his new career as Spock, I think.

This is a shameless (but 100% unsolicited) recommendation for Ryan Bliss’ digital computer art site, DigitalBlasphemy.com.  I first stumbled on his work 3-4 years back, sometime after getting a free screensaver package…didn’t like the screenie and eventually uninstalled that. What I did do, however, was begin subscribing to his website, which offers unlimited downloads of what I consider some of the most gorgeous computer art available — landscapes, space themes, abstracts and more.  He does it all with software tools, but has an eye for realism such that I’ve had people ask me, “Where IS that place?  It’s gorgeous.”

I’ve remained an avid fan of Ryan’s art, and today I received an announcement that he’s offering a lifetime subscription for just $49 (50% off the previous price).

Don’t take my word for it, go ahead and check out his work.  Some of it is free.

I’ve had EA Games’ latest blockbuster computer game, SPORE, for about 3 weeks.  Couldn’t play for most of last week though, because we were away in Bangalore for a shopping/break trip, and I don’t have the game installed on my VAIO laptop (not that it would run anyway).

So…time for the usual follow-up review.

I have to admit, I’ve gotten way more gameplay from Spore than I have with most other games I’ve purchased in the last several years.  In fact, the last game I played to completion (repeatedly) was “Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic” for XBox (loved it…but the follow-up sequel?  meh.)

I’ve also played Spore to the ostensible ‘end’ of the Space phase.  Had myself a smallish stellar empire of a few dozen systems, dealt with crises and wars, fought my way to the center of the galaxy, etc.  That said though, it’s a noted feature that the Space part of the game is also the biggest, with literally hundreds and hundreds of stars.  I’m not exaggerating.  Spore is also open-ended, in that you can keep on playing, doing whatever you like.  Terraform worlds, reshape planets, grow your empire, go exploring, forge mighty alliances, go to war — whatever.  You can be a ruthless capitalist, a fierce warrior, or a gentle diplomat, and more.  You can be good, neutral, or evil, or anything in between.  There are no real limits or strict categories on how you have to behave.

However, if you do take your little cellular creature and grow it a particular way through the creature, tribal, and civilization phases, each of the previous phases determines your characteristics later on.  If you’re a friendly, social critter, then in space, aliens will tend to be favorable towards you.  Be aggressive and militaristic, and you’ll have bonuses and abilities in that direction — and the others will tend not to trust or like you.

In addition to the five phases of a given game, there are also highly extensive tools for creating your own creatures, buildings, vehicles (land, sea, and air), and starships.  I am totally, completely, utterly without artistic skills.  I’m serious:  I suck at art.  Always have, always will.  But the tools for designing things in Spore are amazing.  You just assemble parts, stretching and adjusting, and finally ‘paint’ your creation with a large palette of colors and textures.  There is also an ample selection of parts styles, so you can indulge your whims.  (For example, I literally created a ‘Stack ‘O Pancakes’ as one of my starship designs.  I also put together a rather passable and highly detailed rendition of Serenity, from Firefly.)  The click-and-drag controls also have a built snap-to and symmetry functions, but I have to admit I wish sometimes there were easier ways to fine-tune.  Sometimes I just can’t quite get a part to go where I want it.

Even better, the creatures, buildings, vehicles and ships I encounter are not only my own creations and those included in the ‘base package’, this is also an online game — where everyone can share, and where your own game keeps downloading content from the Spore servers (this is optional).  Last I checked, there were over 30 million items available, nearly all of which were created by fellow players.

As for the gameplay itself…well, I’ve played through on Easy and Normal difficulty settings.  Still, the early phases seem to go by too quickly.  All you need to do to graduate from Cell stage is eat enough food and collect enough parts.  Creature stage, food is incidental — there you collect parts and interact with other critters (either socialize or exterminate them).  Tribe stage — collect food to grow, and interact with other tribes (either win them over socially, or exterminate them).  Civ stage — collect ’spice’ for money, and interact with other cities through religion, trade, or conquest, until you’ve conquered, converted, or bought up the entire planet.  What I mean is that once you know what you’re doing, it’s not hard to get through the 1st four phases in a couple hours at most; only the Space stage is open-ended and big enough to require many hours of play to advance to the end-game scenarios.

In a positive note, however, very shortly after finishing my 1st game (well, abandoning it), I found myself wondering, “Okay, I did an Ecologist, now I wonder what it’d be like to be 100% ‘green.’”  Ran that up a ways, then I decided to try out a predator-type.  Before I even took that much into Creature phase, I decided to try an omnivore trader.  And so on.  Then when I got a little bored with that, I switched over to creating new designs.  Ships, buildings, and so on.

Anyway… the ‘cons’ are that I wish the early stages were richer and longer.  Also, in the Space phase, there are entirely too many crises that require personal intervention, which is nigh impossible to do when you’re literally halfway across the galaxy, deep in enemy Grox territory.  I note also there are some definite ‘holes’ in the game, too, where I’m pretty sure they pulled features — for example, noses and ears are purely decorative and give no particular benefits.

The ‘pros’ are the wide range of gameplay, and the simple fun of raising a tiny cell to eventually become a starfaring species.  Despite the relative persnicketyness of the design tools, they’re still amazingly flexible and encouraging for personal creativity.  Plus, there is definite replayability value here.

As mentioned in a previous post, I’d gotten the pre-purchase download for EA’s highly anticipated “massive single-player online game”, Spore.

Late last Sunday night, the pre-load unlocked itself and I was able to install it — but being late, I didn’t do anything other than to confirm it installed okay.  Actual gameplay didn’t commence until the following morning.  Since then, I’ve usually played a couple hours each day.  In the game I’ve taken the farthest, I’ve just started the Civilization (4th) stage.

Initial impressions — the pros:

It’s a really beautiful game, and quite entertaining simply to enjoy the visuals.  In general, the basic gameplay is fairly simple.  For instance, at the earliest “cell” phase, you just swim around and eat stuff.  Along the way, you try to collect parts for function upgrades.  Eventually, you get big enough to evolve into a creature.

As a creature, it’s much the same thing, but now there’s more focus on whether you fight other critters or tend to be social — and again, you try to collect new parts and abilities.  Eventually, you move on to a tribal stage, then civilization, and finally space exploration.

How you play and behave reflects itself in the abilities you unlock and acquire, and also in how newly encountered strangers will tend to treat you.  Be a friendly-type creature, and when you form a tribe, you’ll continue to tend to be favored socially.  Be a ruthless carnivore, and others will be hostile — but your tribe will also have evolved more attack strategies.

It is super easy even for a total non-artist like myself to create interesting and highly detailed creatures.

The game is constantly updating itself with content from online servers, you never know what kinds of creatures, buildings, vehicles, and spaceships you might run into — most of which were created by other players.

Once you have unlocked a particular game phase after the 1st one — creature, tribe, civilization, or space — you have the option to begin new games at those points, rather than having to start over as a cell.  But if you do that, you do forego some of the ‘acquired characteristics’ that result only from having a continuous past.

Although Spore’s depiction of evolution bears only a nodding resemblance to the real thing, the whole concept of this game has to be driving the creationists crazy.

The cons:

Sometimes the directional controls can be really clumsy, and I’m not finding it very easy to keep the camera focused where I want it to stay.

The on-screen mini-map and status icons in the Creature and Tribal stages are way too small.  The display elements ought to be more customizable.

It’s also not always obvious what you’re supposed to do, or how to accomplish it.  In addition, when you move from one game stage to another, the mouse-click behavior sometimes changes — an inconsistency which can result in lethal errors.

There’s almost no penalty for dying, you just get reborn back as an egg, or at your village or city or planet.  I keep thinking there ought to be some cost, even if it just means you have to spend more time again collecting DNA points, food, or Sporebucks.

This is just me, but I like to fiddle with things, try stuff out — and the ‘real-time’ nature of the game can make this difficult.  I generally prefer a “turn-based” option, or something that automatically pauses the action so I can take care of tasks. Or some way to speed up or slow down time.

The lack of elapsing time control is exacerbated by the fact you only get one save position for any given game you’re playing.  For instance, in my current game, I’m in the Civ phase.  I cannot go back to, say, the Creature phase and make different decisions (like, “I want to be more ‘adaptable’ than ’social’, so instead of making friends, my critter should fight more”).  The only option is to start over in a brand new game, back at cell stage — and it looks to me like there’s a limited number of games at any given time (about 10, I think?).  If I had to pick one peeve, it’d be this one: Let me have at least 10 save positions per game run, not just furthest advanced.

Ought to be some way to screen out or replace non-alphabetic creature names.  The game sometimes goes out to the main Spore servers and downloads player-created content.  Now the game’s been released worldwide, I’m seeing critters with names in Japanese characters.

Summary:  (Above is a little Flash widget showing my various creations.)  It’s fun.  Despite the shortcomings, this is the first computer game in ages which has actually managed to captured my attention and enthusiasm.  That said though, I found both the installed game ‘Sporepedia’ help systems and user manual to be woefully inadequate in terms of helping me figure out what to do — hence I have to recommend also getting a copy of Prima’s game guide.  I bought and downloaded the eBook, and it’s proven invaluable in explaining how to do stuff.