new computer monitor

Most of my blog posts start with 'I'. This has nothing to do with the title, I just noticed it. It's not surprising since this is a purely narcissistic blog I write about me...and the weather. Hmm, Most of the weather blogs don't start with "I". Perhaps I should start using the royal "We" as variation.

We bought a new computer monitor today because SWTOR on a 19 inch monitor is tricky in group fights - too much HUD to click on the action. We were planning on 22-24 inch, but they either had shiny screens (yuck - much prefer matt) and/or didn't have the DVI cable option (only VGA). So, since it was on a $100 off sale, We now have a 27 inch screen. It doesn't have the 2ms refresh rate of the old one, lets see how long an LG lasts, but they set up skyrim on it and I couldn't see any difference in the quality with the character doing fast battle moves. This is as big as we can go and still fit the monitor and computer together on the desk.

We had to go back and correct all the accidental first person wordage in the paragraph above.

March Books

I doubt I'll read another one today. Too much to do, sp here they are...some with a 1 line comment! I like to ensureyou have enough feedback.

Wen Spencer : tinker – attracted by the bright pastel cover colours, stayed for the story
Garth Nix and Sean Williams: Trouble twisters – a little young for me I think, I couldn’t relate to the main characters
Rick Riordan: The throne of fire – OK book number two in a series I haven’t read # 1 of, so I can’t judge too much, it may require #1 to set the scene
Gail Carriger: timeless – enjoyed it. I really can’t see the issue with the dominant male thing – the female lead justs blasts straight through it
Kristen Britain: Green rider and first riders call – good books, I recommend the series
Orson Scott Card: The lost gate – book one in a series – looking good

Plus what I read at Andreas’
The Secret Notes of Lady Kanoko
- Psi High and Others
- Diving the Wreck
- City of Ruins
- Boneyards

Edit:
OK, so much for not reading another one

Garth Nix: A Confusion of Princes - very good, read it in one sitting.

skyrim nausea

I have just come to the conclusion that the way skyrim is interfaced makes me nauseous. I played it a few times when I first got it and felt off afterwards. Then I played it again tonight and I feel distinctly off again. I think its the way you change direction with the mouse. Its too randomly floaty. Queasy now so off to bed.

The things they make..

I bought Bertie Botts every flavour beans from my local lolly shop the other day. The soap flavoured beans actually taste like soap, the dirt ones taste like dirt, the vomit ones taste like spaghetti bolognaise (which I think smells like vomit anyway). I think I'll pass them round the tea room this morning.

Last night I had the strangest dream

I dreamt I was participating in a bike race, underwater, in canals..I think there was scuba gear involved, but we could have just been holding our breath. Then I was teleported to Antarctica and was hiking through the snowy wasteland looking for people to save me when I came over a ridge and there was a large, green mossy field with Mawson's hut at the front and a huge industrial complex behind it. I wandered up and the surprised employees got me to wait out front while they figured out what was going on. I remember looking down at the light jacket, shorts and cloth shoes I was wearing and thinking "I should be colder than this".

What did I eat last night? There was no cheese.

Power is back

we have the electricity back on. Its not all cleaned up yet. I've been hearing chainsaws all morning and every time I drive to and from work the roads/lanes that are closed have changed as they work on powerpoles and debris. So lots of interesting meandering routes to work

next pic

Did I mention, shortly after the storm we started hearing the sirens, I thought it might be one home...until daylight

tornados now

What next?
I was woken at 5:10am this morning to huge winds and thunder and rain going sideways into the house and what i thought was my parents closing windows loudly and banging on my door. In retrospect, they hadn't shut anything by the time i got up to close my window, so it must have been the sound of roofs being ripped off nearby.

I shut my window and then did a double take because there was still rain getting on me...through the wood panels between the casement windows. the rain hit the bathroom louvres and sprayed in up on the ceiling. At least the fly screens are clean now. The ceiling isn't.

My budgies are traumatised and we lost an eggplant bush, and nearby there are fences and brick walls and gates down..but the cross treat is worse.Not far away theres a house where the roof came off and all thats left are the beams and another where they lost the roof and half the walls (see piccys above). A road was closed nearby & they used roof panels as part of the road closed sign. Apparently there were no houses in that area that didn't lose their roof and some houses in Townsville have been completely demolished - though i haven't seen the evidence yet.

February books

and it took me till 1/2 way through March to list them...March may be difficult because I inhaled some of Andreas books while visiting and didn't make notes of the titles.

Neil Gaiman: Anansi boys
Sylvia Kelso: The moving water, Everran's bane
Rick Riordan: The son of Neptune
Misti Wolanski: Driven by the deadline
Selena Fenech: Memories wake, emotionally chraged
Kristine Kathryn Rush: The white mists of power

On other news I joined goodreads, but it seems to upload my database of just under 900 novels requires I have the ISBN numbers...the only information I don't have. There is a barcode reader at work. Perhaps one day I'll borrow it and resort all my books using the scanner...or one week.

Sydney conference

I managed to have a conference in Sydney on the wettest day they've had in 25 years...and it was at its worst at rush hour when I was travelling. I had to wade through the summer hill station underpass. Unlike the locals I didn't take off my shoes..and I waited for someone else to wade to be sure there weren't any potholes. Then I had to catch a taxi. Nobody was answering their number so I went to a taxi in the street which was in a traffic jam - cars everywhere. He was letting off a client at the station because they couldn't get across Parramatta road which was shut due to flooding. We took a long detour, which still should have only doubled my 7 minutes taxi ride, but the traffic jams were so bad, it took 50 minutes. The rain was tropical during the taxi ride and we went through some flood waters that I wouldn't go through in a sedan at home.
I was only 1/2 an hour late for the conference. It was very good btw. I'm taking some ideas home & I met lots of interesting people.

no wonder I felt blah today

I have a bit of a scratchy throat & an eye strain headache & by 1pm I was had it for the day & went home sick at 2pm (it took an hour to get through everything enough to be able to walk out the door). Then I realised I hadn't eaten anything since 6 am., hadn't drunk anything since 8am and had worked solidly since 7am with 3 hours of lectures thrown in...no wonder I felt bad...and I'd worked almost a full day before I left. So, after painkillers for the headache. ease-a-cold and gargle for the scratchy throat a drink of juice and a piece of cake for lack of sustenance and a nap...I feel somewhat better

Cranky day

And it started well, then someone changed a protocol and didn't tell me till the last minute...well, 5 minutes before I was supposed to teach it. Not happy Jan. I don't like other people changing things I'm supposed to be in charge of without consultation. Enough said.

Gaming confession

I am not a platform gamer. I have always sucked at platform games. I do not have the right hand eye coordination to jump over a box while ducking under something else...on an angle with one foot in the air. Or at least, that's how it feels to me. In the past, if there was some sort of manual dexterity jumping scenario, I would either hand it to someone else, saying "get me past this part" or give up on the game. My little brother is good at this. Unfortunately he lives on the other side of the world now.

Which brings me to the point of this post. SWTOR has some really cool easter eggs in the format of datacrons. Now, I love puzzle games. I will happily spend an hour figuring out how to get to one of these gems...so long as there isn't some hideously long path with multiple fall off and go back to the start points. At least the latest one I tried didn't kill me every time I fell. One of the first ones did. I'm still giving them the 3 strikes and I'm not trying again. But its so maddening even when you don't fall to your death when jumping up a series of boxes can result in multiple fails before I get to the top...sooo datacron near camp 27 on Nar Shadaa...even though you have a stat I want, I'm turning my back on you...at least till my brother comes to visit.

I feel obliged now

Dave listed the books he read in January...and reviewed them - I'm not that enthusiastic, but at least I'll list them. Most of them are paperbacks I bought at Pulp Fiction (while on Holidays in Brisbane in January) I think the only ebook I read in Jan was the Gratuitous epilogue. I may even keep up my list through the year. I fully expect the number to plummet by March. While my reading has been strictly sci fi and fantasy, I've been enjoying the variations in styles. Beuttner was definitely the hardest Sci Fi.

Robert Beuttner
Orphanage
Orphan’s Destiny
Orphan’s Journey
Gail Carriger
Heartless
Kylie Chan
Heaven to Wudang
Jasper Fforde
One of our Thursdays is Missing
Mercedes Lackey
Werehunter
The Sleeping Beauty
Intrigues
Andrea Host
Gratuitous Epilogue
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
Mouse and Dragon

left handedness

I just got a left handed keyboard at work - ah - so much easier to work with...except for the long pause looking at the keyboard trying to find the delete button.

ereader update

If you've read below you'll see there are two main issues I have with the ereader
1. Its really sensitive and holding it with the cover closed can result in pages turning (I fixed this by tapping the power key as I close the book. It goes to screen saver (and requires a power tap to turn back on - no nasty page turning.

2. when you swipe to change pages, it occasionally thinks you want to look at a word in the text, highlights it and gives you options for dictionaries, google etc.

I just popped the ereader on my computer to sync it with the reader for PC to download a new book and it pops up "would you like to upgrade your software to fix (problem described above)". Yes, yes I would. Lets see how this goes.

SWTOR - everyone has a twin

My mum thinks my smuggler on SWTOR looks like my little brother. And except for the bald with horns bit, she's right. I didn't see it till she pointed it out. Now I'm going to look for other people in my alts - perhaps its all subconscious.

ereading

I've now read 4 books on the ereader (guess which 4, Andrea) and have discovered how to stop the annoying page turning while the cover is shut. Tap the off button and it goes into screensaver mode - this will cause it to be be unresponsive till you tap the power button again. I dropped a crumb on it one day and it just kept flicking pages till I removed it! Hows that for sensitive! Most of the "my hands are used to knidles (I just can't type Kindle without being dyslexic)" issues are over. I think the Kindle may be a little faster (or smoother) on the turn, but I should put them side by side on the same page.

On other news, Brisbane was fun for a week - no computer meant I had a chance to rest my computer induced tennis elbow. I had a photo taken of me with a python at Lone Pine Sanctuary and it wasn't till I got home that mum mentioned that she'd had one taken about 50 years ago at the same place - I've seen that photo! She's skinnier than me in it. The snakes looked the same though.

Not looking forward to going back to uni - sigh.

kindle vs Sony ereader

I've read all of one book on the sony & so far I find it much easier to do things -the touch screen is intuitive & having had a smart phone for a while, I instinctively want to touch the screen. The down side is that the touch screen can sometimes be too responsive. There have been occasions when I turn pages only to have the dictionary function activated because I've somehow lingered on a word. This usually happens for several pages before my fingers remember how to work it. This morning I found that my floaty sleeves will also turn the pages if the fan blows them over the screen!

I like the computer reader that the sony can install on your computer. It syncs automatically and you can play around with storage as well as read on your computer - I do my manual reading on the computer while playing with the ereader.

Big plus for sony - it tells you the page you are on like a normal book - and adjusts when you have changed font size and type - I did this in seconds without looking anything up! The kindle is set up with % through the book - maybe you can change that, but I haven't found out how. Its harder to get back to places in the kindle.

I haven't played with collections etc yet on the sony, so I can't compare that..and there is no australian sony store (unless its started since last I checked). So far not an issue for me as I get my books from smashwords.

Covers (mine are the ones with lights)
I like the light more on the sony case. The kindle light set up makes me think I'm going to pull it out too far and break it & its non-adjustable, though in a good position.
I like the elastic strap on the kindle case, which case keep it shut in transit, though I have yet to have the sony one open up.
The biggest issue with the sony case is that it has a softer cover than the kindle - I often pick up books by the bottom and I find that I auto forward a couple of pages because there is also a forward and backward button at the bottom of the ereader. This shouldn't be an issue as the ereader insets into the back cover, so a firmer front cover would avoid the problem.
The sony comes with a stencil since you can write on the screen (fingers work too), but there's nowhere to store it. I was slipping it over the top of the book cover, but I lost it once that way. Perhaps a compartment for it would help.

Overall so far, the sony seems looser and more flexible, the kindle is more rigid and controlled - steps to get to places take longer, but I am much less likely to do something accidentally.

And lastly,
Having two different ereaders is resulting in me trying to page forward by pressing the non-existant bottom right button on the sony and touch the screen on the non-touchscreen kindle.

So, I'll be doing a little more reading on the sony & determining whether I get over the sony paging issues or whether it drives me nuts. I should also try getting books from a few more sites & determine whether one ereader is easier to get books for. I also need to put some journal articles on the sony to check how good it is with reading science articles - and annotating!

SWTOR

The physical game came today. They have my account details, I have the game. Now to play, knowing I won't get booted tomorrow.

Yay!