Mini Review: 2009

What They Call The “Real Life”

• 2008 ended with me getting unemployed. The decision being made for me was a catalyst to finally make my move. I was planning to get out of employment in 2009 anyways, so, you know. Thank you, Yahoo!.
• Early in the year I went freelance. As mentioned, I had played with the idea for a while by then, so that was pretty cool. And scary.
• Got a few clients, and managed to keep a good “client work vs. own projects” ratio. I’m not getting rich working like this, but I’d like to be truly happy in my job for once, so it’s important for me to keep the balance there.
• My first freelance project, a WoW-related site named CharPool, was a personal success, but failed nonetheless. About a month after launching it other sites with similar functionality came out and kind of crushed it. I guess I had waited too long to act on the idea for the site. So, in December, I’ve turned the server off. Well, live and learn.
• Speaking of learning, I’ve learned a boatload of new things this year. Lots of Ruby-related things, of course, but also a lot of *nix stuff. Fun!
• Among other things, I rewrote my Twitter contact management site TwerpScan — and had the chance to give a quick talk about it for a mixed audience here in Munich. Another first for me, and I’ve enjoyed it.
• Got myself two ebook readers, a Bookeen Cybook Gen3 and a Amazon Kindle 2. Both nice, but the latter wins, hands down. What a refined piece of technology!
• I’m currently knee-deep in RubyCocoa code, which I consider a road to MacRuby, which I need for my next big project… Loving it!
• Finally got me an iPhone.

Friends & Family

• In August, I had the honor of being best man for M & E. Beautiful, beautiful wedding. It was an absolutely wonderful weekend. I love you guys. :)
• We went up to Northern Germany for a nice vacation, including hooking up with my man Hendrik who showed us his hellhole of a city the (mostly) pretty parts of Hamburg ;), and a visit to the BUGA 2009 (i.e. the annual “German Federal Horticultural Show”).

Games & Movies

• Biggest surprises this year: Batman: Arkham Asylum, Assassin’s Creed II. Both games I knew about but didn’t have much interest in, until Mike would lend them to me, and then… I really didn’t see them coming, but they hit me hard. Good stuff. :)
• Also notable this year: the two GTA IV DLC packs, Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Wars.
• Avatar — holy shit. That movie really hit the spot for me. Also great: District 9. A good year for scifi, methinks.

Verdict

• Awesome year. Really, really good. :)

Here’s to 2010. May it be as good as 2009 was.

City At World’s End, 58 Years Later

A while ago I’ve decided to do a little time travelling. In literature, that is. So I’ve picked up a novel called “City At World’s End”, written by one Edmond Hamilton. It’s a story about a little rural community in the US heartland having a “super-atomic bomb” go off above it, causing a rift in time, catapulting said city into the far future, and the fight of its citizens to remain on Earth. Adventure!¹

It is exactly what it sounds like: pure pulp. The characters are rather flat; the premise is unintentionally hilarious. Yet, it’s a pretty charming read. :)

When I’ve picked the book up at feedbooks.com, I had a hunch about what I was getting myself into. After all, this novel is (at the time of this writing) 58 years old. That’s right, it’s from 1951. But I’ve chosen the book for exactly that reason (also I was told it had spaceships) — I wanted to know what successful scifi was like in the 50’s of the last century. From their point of view, I’d probably be like one of them “space folks”.² But how would I end up thinking about their view of the future? How would I end up describing their vision of the times to come?

Turns out I’d only use one word, as before: “charming”. Well, that and “a bit naïve”. :)

An example. Said rural community, called Middletown, leaps one million years into the future. One million years! The sun is dying, the Earth is cold, mankind has spread across the galaxy… yet all humans they meet are still ordinary humans like you or me.³ Given that the first homo sapiens entered the stage just around 400.000 years ago, one would expect meeting rather different beings after another 1.000.000 years. Apparently, evolution took a break or something.

But at least there are aliens! One of them is Chewbacca. No, I’m not making that up. There’s a Capellan (i.e. an alien from Capella) whose description is pretty much 100% Chewbacca. He’s big, hairy, ape-like, friendly, loyal and a very good engineer. His name is Gorr Holl. — I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE, GEORGE LUCAS.

Then there are the communications. People tend to park their spaceships just out of town (they have spaceships!), yet someone forgot to invent the walkie-talkies, because there’s still a lot of people running back and forth, waving and yelling to alarm the others.

Also, the space-age people from one million years in the future are familiar with Einstein. That’s fame, I’m telling you. (No mention of Michael Jackson, tho.)

And then… women. Oh, the women, what with their constant wailing or their firm resolve or their pre-Doris Day’ish behaviour. Really, the picture painted of the females is an interesting one, saying quite a bit about the age the book was written in. On the one hand, we have Carol, the protagonist’s girlfriend. She’s the friendly, quiet type who likes the “old ways”. (Not what you think.) Beneath her surface is a fragile young woman, almost a girl still, shaken to her core. On the other hand, there’s the new space love interest, Varn Allan from space, the administrator of this neck of the woods space. On the outside, she’s a cold and efficient bureaucrat! But during the book, we learn that beneath her surface there’s a fragile young woman, almost a girl still, shaken to her core. Diversity! Dope.

So. I know the comparison is not entirely fair, but putting “City At World’s End” and its long-term vision (I fail to come up with a better term) next to today’s books, like “Accelerando” by Charles Stross or (less hard scifi) “Old Man’s War” by John Scalzi, it looks, well, less visionary. I am aware that in terms of “scifi seeds” today’s authors have a better (?) starting point than the authors 50 years back, but they seem to do a better job in dreaming up a future working as canvas for their books. Maybe I’ve just picked the wrong author here, who knows. And maybe the people in the 50s just weren’t ready for too “far-fetched” visions yet?

Anyways. The tech and the portrayal of the people are equally fun, and reading the book made me grin and laugh quite a bit. But of course snickering is easy for me, from my cushioned seat in front of my computron device. It’s 2009! Yes, we may have global warming and a outrageous lack of everyday space travel and jetpacks, but still: it’s an exciting time to be alive. There’s new technology surfacing almost weekly, from biotech to personal gadgets to propulsion engines and whatnot.

Well, my verdict: If you are wondering what to read next, get yourself an old scifi book. You might have fun. Many of them are free & legal downloads by now. Both Feedbooks and ManyBooks (if it’s up…) are good places to start looking. And if you’re unsure what to get, either just pick one with closed eyes or ask around at GoodReads. :)

Review: Bookeen Cybook Gen3

One of the first applications I’ve installed after buying my iPod touch last year was Stanza, one of the few dedicated ebook reading tools for the platform.

The idea of electronic reading appeals to me. I’ve tried my luck several times over the last few years, on different devices, with varying success. (Anyone remember Palm? Haha, yeah… me neither.)

First of all, I like a good novel. Being able to carry a number of them around with me, wherever I go, is a good thing. Back then I was spending almost two hours each day in public transit, and imagine that: reading beats staring at subway tunnel walls the whole time.

My second argument is a bit more elaborate. You see, I’ve read a lot of books in my life, most of them just once. Not everything written by man is a gem begging to be re-read time and time again. And while this is okay —not everyone can be Shakespeare, and most of these books I’ve enjoyed at least a bit, after all— it raises the question of what to do with them after reading. There are so many “one-off” books in my basement, it’s not really funny anymore. Some of them I gave away, some I’ve sold, some I’ve fed to a recycling bin. But the others are sitting there, silently, and everytime I look at them I wonder a) what to do with them and b) how much wood was used up to make them. (Yes, I’ve actually had a point to make here.) Thus, I’d feel less bad about getting said one-time-read-through novels in electronic form.

Anyways: After a few months with Stanza I’ve decided electronic reading works well enough for me to warrant a dedicated device for home use — a real ebook reader. After some shopping around, comparing prices and reading up on different offerings I went with the Bookeen Cybook gen3.

After a few weeks of using it a lot I now feel comfortable enough to share my findings. I know at least a few people are curious about it — hi Mookie & Bernhard. ;)

Quick Facts

• 6” e-ink screen
• 600x800 pixels, 166 dpi
• B&W, 4 grayscale
• No backlight, naturally
• Multi format: reads Mobipocket (DRM and non-DRM), HTML, PDF, TXT, PalmDoc, image formats etc.¹ Both EPUB and better PDF support are promised for the upcoming firmware update. (Hopefully this’ll include reflowing text in PDFs.)
• Has an SD slot — in case the 512MB onboard storage isn’t enough.

The Good

• Rather affordable: I’ve ordered mine in the UK, and paid €225 incl. shipping to Germany. The box contained the Cybook, a short pamphlet, and an USB cable. Not more, not less.
• It’s a light device: Only ~170g, battery included.
• The screen is great, the time it takes to turn a page is surprisingly short and not noticeable anymore after reading a few pages.
• There’s no proprietary software to be installed. Connect it to your Mac/PC, and it’ll show up as mass USB storage device in your Finder/Explorer. This is also how you put new content on the device. I like that.
• Truetype support: Don’t like the built-in fonts? Just copy TTF files to the device and use them instead. I really like that.
• Rather simple and logic menu layout. The menus mostly make sense.
• Handy display controls: Font family, font size, layout (justification etc.).
• Impromptu bookmarks: Turning off the device or going back to the “library” (i.e. the main list of stored texts) during reading will make a note of your progress. Going back to the text later on will bring back to you where you’ve stopped reading.

The Bad

• Doesn’t support EPUB yet, but apparently this will be “fixed” within the month.
• The PDF support is… well, let’s just say that yes, it displays most PDF files. But it either tries to cram one document page into the space of the 6” screen or flips the display 90° and shows either the upper or lower half of the document page. It works, but it ain’t fun, yo.
• No page numbers: There is an (optional) horizontal bar at the bottom of the screen to display how far you’ve progressed through the book. It’s a neat idea, and a good alternative to page numbers. Well, in theory. It’s an idea that wasn’t fully thought through, as you can also jump to any page using its page number through the menu. Which is somewhat useless, as the current page number isn’t indicated number anywhere. It’s just not displayed. I know that on a device that supports different font families and sizes, calculating page numbers can be a drag, but come on: the navigation currently in place is only 4 parts working — and 1 part barely sufficient.
• Stability:
  • It locks up every now and then, which puts me in the strange situation that I had to reboot my book. (There’s a tiny reset button on the back of the device.)
  • Since the reading progress is only stored during shutdown or upon return to the library but naturally not during a lockup, the device will not remember where I was when the crash happened. So after a reset the last automatically saved bookmark will be used — my progress made between opening the text and the lockup will be lost. This is unfortunate, as there is no “forward ten pages” menu option, so I usually end up flipping through dozens of pages after a crash, looking for the right page.
  • Update: The crashes are apparently directly related to the font used — using DejaVu Serif Condensed instead of Liberation Serif helped the stability quite a bit. YMMV.
• Not all books come with a TOC, and it’d be nice if the Cybook would autogenerate one. Alas, it doesn’t.
• I’m having problems opening the PDFs from the Suvudu Free Library, which makes me a sad panda. I hope this will change with the aforementioned firmware update.
• I don’t like the available three library views all that much. They’re a wee bit uninspired.

The Useless

• Plays MP3.
• On the left side of the device there are four buttons. Only three of them have a function.

DIY Improvements

• I wanted a cover to protect the screen, but didn’t want to spend money on them “official” leather covers. So I’ve …molested a Moleskine (ahem²). Which actually worked out pretty nicely after all. Because I am a man of many talents! Oh yeah.
• Liberation Serif. ‘nuff said.
• Impress the ladies: MobiPerl and hpricot make for a good team.

The Verdict

It’s no Kindle 2. It’s a neat device without frills. It’s not perfect. But it’s affordable and works, and I don’t regret the purchase.

Mini Review: 2008

• I was promoted. Then I lost my job. But I came to a conclusion, and found new goals. (More on this later.)
• I had planned on running 250km, then hit that goal in October, and ended up doing 400km.
• My granny passed away, and I miss her.
• My faith in the USA was partially restored (the Obama campaign and its success even gave me hope, and I don’t even “count”).
• We’re done with the bulk of the renovating of our 2nd floor. I’ve installed the floor tilings. w00t!
• I was overly surprised by a videogame — GTA IV. I’ve spent a lot of time on that one. Wonderful adult entertainment.
• I got me an iPod touch — which turns out to be a good reading device, thanks to both Instapaper Pro and Stanza.
• I’ve tried to bring Child’s Play to Germany, and failed. Oh well, it was the first round. Better luck in 2009.
• I’ve launched a few smaller projects — Twitter Twerp Scan, escaloop (which I’ve shut down a few months later) and Random.li.
• I came to love GitHub. Great site/service.

Verdict

• A really good year.

Posts

I didn’t write as much as I had planned on doing, but nonetheless, here are a few of my “better” posts (subjective opinion, YMMV).

• Revelation, Twitter Edition
• Revelation, Garden Store Edition
• Der Vogel (in German)
• Going Paleolithic
• A German’s View: US Elections 2008
• Child’s Play 2008: Germany
• The Amazing Xmas Gift Ideas Machine

Have a good 2009.

Mini Review: “Iron Man”

Quite a hoot! The lady and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Looking forward to the inevitable sequel.

Worth the money.

Mini Review: Need For Speed Carbon (Demo), Xbox 360

Preface

• ~1GB download.

Lasting impressions

• Bad framerate issues. (No joke. Pretty choppy at times.)
• Good sound design, especially in the “angry polygon dude yelling at me from his car”-type cutscenes.
• Kinda (too) easy.

Verdict

• Meh.
• It’s no Burnout Paradise (demo).
• Srsly—it’s no Burnout Paradise (demo).

Mini Review: “Children of Men”

Wonderful movie that manages to be hopeful and dystopian at the same time. Great cast.The “block under siege” scenes where everyone was united in awe had me in tears.

Go buy/rent.

Sky: Brought Down

This afternoon I’ve finished the first/latest Mass Effect DLC, Bring Down the Sky. It adds a new mission to the game which promises ~90 minutes of gameplay, a new location, a new race and a new XBL achievement (worth 50 gamerpoints). It costs 400 MS Points (€4.80).

The mission was nice, nothing out of the ordinary, tho. Drive around in your Mako, clean out some places, gather “leads” (if you want to call them that) and then face a boss guy. Make some Paragon/Renegade decisions, get a glimpse at a possible new story line to come and be done with it.

The aforementioned new location is an asteroid on a collision course with a colonised planet. The rock itself looks like pretty much like any of the old “lesser” planets from the main game. It’s okay, not more, not less. What makes it special (to me) is the beautiful planet looming overhead — X57, the asteroid, is heading towards Terra Nova, destined to bring doom and destruction. A grim outlook! Still pretty, tho. Seriously, it’s really shiny, but I’m a sucker for stars and planet imagery, so I might take more joy from something like this than other people.

Anyways, why is it heading there? Because of the Batarians, a race of 4-eyed humanoids. Apparently they don’t like the Humans for various historical reasons, and thus use their first on-screen appearance ever for speaking with the protagonists in a resentful manner. And for shooting at them. The audacity!

So, is “Bring Down the Sky” a perfect DLC/addon? No. Bioware’s decision to make this an “in-between mission” is questionable. I can understand it from a storyline point of view — too much is in flux after finishing the main game, what with the Council and all. But unfortunately it means I have to go back to a savegame where I could freely roam the galaxy — i.e. a save that was made prior to visiting Ilos etc. —, and for some people that might be a drawback. A co-worker of mine has no save like that left, and that means he’d have to start over, and therefore he won’t pick up the DLC. So… srsly, not a good decision. (Personally, I was lucky to still have a “good” save, tho.) But the implementation could’ve been smoother. Well, I actually expected it to be smoother.

And what’s with the silent team members? I though Garrus and Kaiden were pissed since they wouldn’t talk to me during the mission. Not even random chatter. Meh. It’s a small issue, tho. Just something I found a bit strange.

All in all, tho, it’s been a nice ride. For the average price of a Döner you get ~90 minutes of additional Mass Effect goodness. A good bargain in my book.

Mini Review: Mass Effect, Xbox 360

Okay, yes, I’m late to the review party. In my defense, it has something to do with this and the fact that I wanted to finish Mass Effect twice before rendering my judgement.

So, my first playthrough on normal difficulty was very thorough. I’ve picked a male (Infiltrator class), took the “good guy” approach (“We have to save the galaxy! — Wait, what’s that, old lady? Your kitten is trapped in this death maze? We’ll help!”), also did pretty much every sidequest I could find, landed on every rock available, and ended up spending -~43- 34 hours or so. Hey, my char even had freaky, slightly awkward (in the build-up) alien sex with that endlessly blabbering blueberry. Dynomite.

The second time around I rolled a female (Soldier class) and played the whole game on hardcore difficulty in a “I have a job to do, get out of my way” kind of way. Short-tempered, gun-in-your-face attitude, not afraid to leave a crater. In short, for the most part I tried to play it like time actually mattered. This time I clocked in around 20 14 hours. And this time, my leading lady ended up ripping the clothes off one of her male subordinates. Oh, and she had freaky, surprising lesbian alien sex with some random NPC, without meaning to.

Shiny.

The game’s not without flaws, tho. The sidequests on the planets are a wee bit repetitive. There are some rather frequent framerate drops and “Halo 2”-style texture pop-in issues after the loading screens. Background noises were sometimes awfully quiet, and it was really, really hard to make them out, which made some surroundings appear a bit sterile in the aural department. The squad NPC pathfinding took a short break from time to time, making me run back to show one of my compadres how to walk around the car. Oh, and Bioware? My wife asks whether for ME2 you could add some more samples to enemy NPCs, I think if she has to hear “I will destroy you!” or “Go! Go! Go!” one more time, she’ll be going postal.

But ultimately, in my book, it’s really a great game. Hey, it’s mostly “Knights of the Old Republic”, albeit with a lot of changes! It might not perfect, but it comes close. The player char’s gender does make a difference every now and then. I liked the majority of the voice acting, the stories and side-quests were mostly laid out well, and the presentation was usually top notch. Especially the last 1-2 hours were mighty fine. Cinematical, even. Wonderful, wonderful build up of tension.

All in all I’ve spent around 60-70 50-60 hours on Mass Effect, and enjoyed those. I recommend it.

Madrid, or Whoaholycraphowcoolisthat

The other day I talked about our impending doom, but Madrid wasn’t totally bad.

In fact, I had two great nights there. On Monday, after I’ve arrived, my esteemed colleagues and I went to a little tapas restaurant whose name I forgot. Too bad, because it was rather spiffy. Nice food, great wine, much fun. We actually walked there from the office, so I managed to get some quick glimpses at the city. Beats driving around in a taxi.

On Tuesday, the good folks of Yahoo! Spain took us to Casa Patas, a Flamenco-themed restaurant. Really nice food, good wine (once again). Around 22:30 we’ve all been really stuffed, and wondering where to go next, when we were told that there was a Flamenco show coming up, and we had tickets.

Now, mind you, I had no idea what to expect. Flamenco had never really appeared on my radar prior to that evening.

To make it short: it was one hell of a show. There were three singers, Pepe Jiménez, José “El Flaco” and Pedro Jiménez, two guitars, Jesus Losada and Victor “El Tomate” (I am not making this up, it’s what the pamphlet said). Also, three dancers: Primitivo Daza, Miguel Canas and Rosa Jiménez. (Thanks to David for letting me use the picture.)

And quite frankly, they rocked the house.

The music was superb. The dancing was mindblowing. It was an awesome evening, and I was completely blown away. The other guys had a good time as well, and it’s been quite something!

Many thanks to both Marcos and Arno from the Madrid office for planning a great night out. Here’s hoping you’ll never come to Munich because quite frankly, I wouldn’t know how to top that. ;)

Unfortunately, I still have no idea what kind of Flamenco I had witnessed. Apparently there are around 50 different styles of Flamenco, and I am a total n00b when it comes to classifying kickass foreign ethno entertainment. :p After spending some time listening to many different artists (Pandora.com and Last.fm be praised), I hadn’t made any progress. So I’ve asked my Spanish coworkers, and they couldn’t tell me either.

Then I’ve mailed the folks at Casa Patas (in English), explaining which show I had seen, and asking whether they could tell me the subtype(s) of Flamenco that were shown this evening, and guess what I got back? A form letter, in Spanish, with a rather lengthy Word document, describing the history of Flamenco, in Spanish. Gee, thanks. I wonder what made them think I could speak Spanish, after writing them in another language. ;)

So, that didn’t help either. It means listening to more music then, hoping to find something I might like. Well, that can’t hurt, but it’s driving me nuts to listen and listen and listen and not find the right thing.

Before discovering the Internet I’ve had a bit more patience, I think.