Category Archives: Gadgets/Code

State of the eReader

When the nook first came out, I fell in love. It was the first e-reader I’d found that I could actually use and enjoy. I still have it, and though it’s suffered a hairline crack in the page turn button from sheer overuse, in many ways it’s better today than the day I bought it, thanks to excellent software updates along the way.

That’s not to say that it’s still the best reader out there.

(insert collective gasps here)

In fact, I’d say that there really isn’t a “best” reader to buy right now, but a whole lot of options for different reading habits. There’s too many for me to look at all of them here, but I did take a look at the most recent and most common readers available for people in the US. Here’s my short, quick and easy shopping guide: Continue reading

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Filed under Books, Gadgets/Code, Media

nook: not a gadget

Disclaimer: No, I don’t get any money from Barnes and Noble or anyone else for touting the nook. I spend most of my time giving money to them in exchange for still more books.

I wasn’t planning on writing a post about my nook for two reasons: first, I kinda already did with my rant about the iPad, and second, I think I’ve established my love for it such that anyone who reads this blog will not need reminded.

But then I saw the need.

I was explaining the nook (The people at B&N, for reasons entirely their own, do not capitalize “nook”…hence the title of this post, as capitalizing just the other words gave me nightmares.) to a friend over the phone who knew that I recommended it, when she stopped me with this statement:

“Yes, but you know, you’ve always been more of a gadget person than I am.”

I blinked. I very nearly dropped my phone. Of course the above statement is a correct one – I am a gadget person – however there was one glaring error.

The nook is not a gadget. Continue reading

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Dear Apple: Please Explain?

Dear Apple,

First of all, thank you for the new product, and thus the new world of fun blogs for me to pursue and stupid people on the internet (ie anyone who doesn’t agree with me) for me to laugh at. Also, thank you for calling it the “iPad”, because, like the Wii before it, that name means several months of joy ahead for the world.

Now, I admit I’m new to your company as a customer. My dad once worked for IBM and, as I’m fond of saying, my family was barely allowed to eat apples when I was growing up. Indeed, I’m a strong proponent of open source software, and my main computers are generally running some form of Linux. However, I love my iPhone. Granted, I jailbreak mine, but that’s just what I do to gadgets I love. I love it so much that I bought one for my mom, and she loves it so much that every time I talk to her her first question is “Any new apps I should know about?” And she’s had it for a year. I even took the plunge and bought a Mac Book Pro for our new laptop, and I have to say I enjoy using it. It fills a need.

So when you said you were coming out with a tablet, I was excited. I figured if anyone could do a tablet correctly, it would be you. I did not expect it to be perfect, and I assumed that I would need to modify it some to fit my own geeky needs, but that’s a given with most new gadgets. I, like many people yesterday, looked into the footage, read the live blogs, and examined the specs, pics and video. I believe I have absorbed everything you’ve given us about this new device, the iPad. I just have one question for you.

What is it for? Continue reading

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Top 3 Reasons to (still) Jailbreak an iPhone

There was an article on Lifehacker recently that asked if people still jailbroke their iPhones and if so, why? After all, the new 3.0 OS adds most of the things that you used to have to jailbreak for, right? Right?

Maybe not. Continue reading

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Quick Workaround for Yarssr in Ubuntu

Just a quick fix for anyone else having this issue right now:

When trying to start up Yarrsr yesterday it locked due to a feed it suddenly decided not to parse. (Though it had in the past – probably the feed changed on me, haven’t checked yet.)

When calling the program from the terminal I got this error:

*** unhandled exception in callback:
*** Can’t call method “get_url” without a package or object reference at /usr/share/yarssr/Yarssr/Feed.pm line 158.
*** ignoring at /usr/share/yarssr/Yarssr/GUI.pm line 115.

Here’s the quick perl hack to stop this from happening:

  • sudo gedit (or whatever program you want to use) /usr/share/yarssr/Yarssr/Feed.pm
  • insert a line before line 158 with: if ($item) {
  • insert a line after line 162 with: }
  • save the file

That let me open Yarssr and delete the feed with issues. I added a different feed with the same info. Works great now, no problems since. This doesn’t really solve the issue, it just keeps Yarssr from trying to deal with blank data from what I saw. But it let me open it, so I’m happy.

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