As you can see from the above screenshot, at the time of release, it was available, via Amazon, for kindle for about $10, discounted from $23. Nothing unusual about that on Amazon and I’ve benefited from such discounts in the past. At the same time, it was released locally in hardcover for about $45 I think. Once Malazan was out of the way, I was going to see if I could pick up the hardcover cheaper somewhere to keep, and buy the e version to read.

A couple of weeks later, as I finished off Malazan, it was released locally on the recently launched Australian edition of Google ebooks…for $25. Looking at the reviews on the google page, there’s a few folk complaining about the price difference between it and Amazon…and lo, the publisher noticed and pulled the title from Amazon altogether. For a few weeks, the only e version available was for non kindle devices and folk with kindles had no avenue to get a copy.

I actually have both a kindle and a Sony ereader but I object to paying such a high price for an ebook to which I have so little rights. especially given how expensive books are in this country to begin with. Anyway, I noticed last week, that Army of Thieves had returned to the Amazon Kindle store. This time, it was listed for $26 with no discounting. Keeping in mind, this is with geographic restrictions ie this book is available for Australians only. There is a US version but it has a different name (Scarecrow Returns) and is due for release early 2012.

Needless to say, I am distinctly unimpressed. Moreso when, a couple of weeks back, I was able to buy the hardcover in my local Kmart for $23! I bought two: one for mum and one for me :-) I ended up paying less for the p than what the e currently sells for. I don’t think I’ve ever spent more than $12 or so for an ebook and I don’t intend to change that any time soon. As a friend suggested, it would be nice if the hardcover included a free version of the e so I wouldn’t have to buy the same book in each format: one for the shelf and one to read. The other disappointing factor here, is that the publisher is fine with folk discounting the p, but totally against folk discounting the e.

text editing

Popped into an electrical store today and was able to play with a couple of tablets: the Sony Tablet S and the ASUS Transformer. There was a Motorola Xoom there as well but it wasn’t charged. I also had a feel of the ASUS slider which is a tablet with a keyboard that slides out from underneath…felt a bit too heavy for my liking though it seemed nifty enough. Alas, text editing on the Transformer was disappointing in tablet mode. It was totally fine via the external keyboard that it plugged into, there were even arrow keys for moving around with the text. I couldn’t work out how to enable the virtual keyboard on the tablet side though (was still connected to external keyboard at time). I’m generally fine with virtual keyboards themselves. The Sony tablet had a text editing experience that matched my experience with the Samsung Galaxy phone ie it was pretty good with a virtual tab (as per image) that you can drag through the word to get to the spot you want. Whereas the ASUS allowed you to highlight words or phrases but there seemed to be no easy way of getting to a particular spot other than pressing hopefully on the right letter. This is a bit odd as they’re all running Android. So at this stage, the Sony is the preferred option. Curiously, the version in the shop didn’t have Polaris Office installed but that’s ok, it should be available via the Android marketplace. I’m not in a hurry so I can wait a bit and see what the Galaxy tablet is like if it manages to get a local release.

Anyway, here we are a year or so later and I had to do some testing yesterday at work on an ipad2. In the last year or so, I’ve had a lot more experience of touch screen devices initially via the iphone 3GS and then with the Samsung Galaxy S2 I bought when I changed jobs. As far as phones are concerned, I particularly liked the Galaxy’s use of Swype for entering text and found its text abilities substantially better than the iphone approach (same as the ipad with thumb dragging) ie decent cursor control. My ipad2 experience was for the most part, much improved on my ipad1 experience; I was much more at home with the touch screen and found it fast and responsive. Fun even. Text editing however has not improved.

However my netbook is dying: randomly freezes on shutdown and takes a while to start up, even from hibernation…compared to the super quickness of tablets. I am reliant on some sort of portable notetaking device for meetings and so forth. The traditional pen & paper approach are no good as I’ve mostly lost the motor skill for handwriting:

I am keyboard dependent.

So I am investigating tablets once more. They’re fairly light, around 600g, startup is quick and typing seems fine. Unfortunately the ipad2 is out of contention so I’ve been looking out for alternative options. Given my happy experience with the Galaxy phone, I have been very, very keen to try out the new Galaxy tablets. Alas, due to a long running court case with Apple, there’s nowhere in Sydney I can legally try one out and buy. I’d also be interested in comparing the 10″ Galaxy with the 7″ though I suspect I’d want the bigger version. The other tablet that has attracted my fancy is the Sony Tablet S and it looks pretty slick. A friend at work has one and she showed it to me though I didn’t get a chance to try out the editing functions – have read somewhere that text editing is poorly handled. With that said, it’s a decent looking tablet and has a nice feel in the hand, similar in weight to the ipad2. I’ll pop into a Sony shop next week and try it out properly and keep my fingers crossed that the Samsung court case with Apple is resolved soon.

The last year or two or so, I’ve been mulling over the idea of starting up a port barrel as port is probably one of my favourite tipples to relax with. I’m fond of a good whisky, that is true, but port is always the one to which I chill out. Of late, I’ve been drinking cask ports too, the quality while somewhat basic, has been fine. The thing I like about the cardboard box is the tap and being able to put my glass under and fill up. Plus it tends to keep well. However, the biggest plus of having your own port barrel is that you can use it to mature, or blend, a port to your liking…even a basic port can improve with a bit of time in the barrel. I’ve read quite a bit here and there on what to look for and how to manage it.

barrel and port

Mid last week, I got an SMS from a mate, asking if I fancied a trip to the Hunter on the weekend with a few friends. I try not to say no to Hunter trips :-) We always try to visit a mix of old and new wineries on each such trip and I specifically asked if we could visit Draytons as I’ve long loved their port, dating back to when they used to do ceramic jugs. I figured if anyone in the Hunter sold barrels it would be them, though there’s no mention on their website. Sure enough there was and I ended up buying an 8 litre barrel + a 10.5 litre plastic drum of rich tawny port with which to season it.

Now that I have said gear, this weekend I will fill the barrel with warm water…possibly a few times. This will allow the wood to expand and become watertight ie barrels initially will leak so you need to do the water stuff before you do the port stuff. Once the water phase is out of the way, that can take up to 24 hours, I’ll then fill the barrel with the tawny. Due to the ability of the wood to absorb the port, it will probably take more than 8 litres to fill. The bloke at Draytons suggested I keep some of the port in a separate jug so that I can compare it with the what’s maturing in the barrel.

The downside is that I wasn’t quite ready to buy a barrel and I now need to find a table/cabinet on which to stand said barrel. The barrel comes with a stand of its own so that it doesn’t roll. Ideally I’d want something either waist or shoulder high, alas the cabinet I have in the main room isn’t quite deep enough for the length of the barrel otherwise that would be almost perfect. I suppose at least this gives me a reason to visit the new Ikea that opened up nearby. Not to mention, that any excuse to go shopping is a good one ;-)

Anyway…that didn’t happen. Another cool job popped up and I’m now at the State Library of NSW. With the potential to do some of the stuff I wanted to do in NZ. One of my strengths is running with other people’s ideas. Idea creation itself is hard and I can do it occasionally but I don’t think it’s my strength in the big picture. Within the big picture however all is good, I just need to work out the big picture first…or rather which big picture suits me.

One idea that is fermenting and was initially inspired by a tweet, and follows the line of why can’t I do what I wanted to do in NZ, but in NSW instead? How about I aim for developing fun stuff here…afterall I’ve lived here all my life…and spent most of my life trying to escape.

There was another tweet that challenged me: where is the Te Ara for Oz? Instead of viewing NZ as the place to go, how about we view NZ as the first step? What can we do to follow in their path and even better where else can we take it?

It’s been two months since I started the new job at the State Library of NSW (SLNSW). It’s fab; it feels like the right move. I say this despite a week which was both my best and worst…I managed to be half an hour late for a major quarterly meeting. The meeting invites were sent out prior to my joining the library and everyone had assumed I knew about it as it was so major. Consequently I spent the morning upset and on the verge of tears. Yet, it was resolved amicably with apologies all round; I went home feeling at ease. So too, I’m starting to get to grips with the systems I’m responsible for, big and complex beasties that they are. I was actually able to engage in meaningful conversations around them. My command of the detail is small but I’m developing a sense of the bigger picture.

Having a new person on team is hard all round and it’s the same in any new job; I’d forgotten that at Gale it took me several months to get on to major internal distribution lists. It took a year, or longer to feel at home, to adjust to the new workplace. At SLNSW, I tried to cram it into 6 weeks – I went hard knowing that at least I had two weeks holiday lined up in WA for weeks 7 and 8. I almost didn’t make it. Post holiday, I need to be a bit more realistic. The job change was sudden: finishing at Gale on the Friday, starting at SLNSW on the Monday. The new folk have been supportive; keen to ensure that they don’t push me too hard, providing a set of professional training wheels.

This week, post holiday, I’ve been missing the old team a lot. After 7 years together we had each other’s measure, we all knew our strengths and weaknesses – a family of sorts. With the new team, most of them don’t know my history and I don’t know their histories. Almost a sense of starting from scratch. The job itself is full of new, whereas I had mastered the old job down to the level of instinct – I could look at an issue and know, before I could the frame words, what the problem was. 6 weeks into the new job, I don’t have 7 years of history to rely on.

For the first time in years, I’m flying by the seat of my pants. Scary and exhilarating, which is as it should be.

I got the job!!!

That was the day after my last blogging effort and I wasn’t able to announce the news at that point. I spent the following couple of weeks negotiating both with my new employer and my current employer as to how best handle the transition. After all that, my current employer (Gale – Cengage Learning) is allowing me to go after 3 weeks instead of 4, so long as I return for a week later and train my eventual replacement.

I’m now madly writing up as many procedures for my job as I can :-)

I finish up with Gale in a week’s time on the 29th of July. On the first of August, I commence work with the State Library of NSW, as a “Librarian Grade 3″ with the Online Information Services Branch. The new job title is not quite as nebulous as my current “Electronic Solutions Consultant” (which I have loved much), but at the same time, it’s nice to have “Librarian” in my title. The new position is a mix of things though the primary responsibility will be supporting SLNSW’s Digital Assets Management (DAM) system as well as coordinating the customisation of external electronic resources. Yeah, I copied that last mouthful from the position description :-)

The position is a good progression from the work I’ve done with Gale and builds on skills I’ve acquired as well as taking me in some new directions. With that said, there’s going to be a good learning curve for some of it; though nothing in the position that I can’t handle. To do the same sort of work within Gale I would probably need to move to Detroit where head office is or possibly one of the other US locations.

I’m really looking forward to starting the new job but finding it sad to leave the current. I still enjoy my current role but need some new challenges ie I want to go while I’m still enjoying it. The Australian office of Gale has a wonderful sense of a small company operating within the infrastructure of a bigger company. There’s a freedom in that that I didn’t expect. So too, I didn’t expect the amount of freedom and independence I’ve experienced on the vendor (“dark side”) of the industry. I’ve presented papers at conferences, been on conference committees and been able to do all the sorts of professional development stuff I’d be able to do were I on library-side. I’ve been able to be vendor and remain a librarian: the two are not mutually exclusive.

The other big challenge of the new position is more of a cultural/technological one. I’ve spent 7 years with my work laptop as my primary computer for both work and personal. The current laptop is XP only though previously I had a dual boot with Debian Linux. I have separate folder structures to keep my work and personal stuff apart. I even run two email programs: Outlook for my work stuff, and Thunderbird for all my personal stuff. Wherever I was, all my stuff was me, no need for any of that cloud stuff.

In a week, I return the laptop. A mate has come to my rescue and is giving me his old desktop Mac Pro as he’s upgrading himself. At SLNSW, I believe I’ll have a Windows based desktop PC; I don’t yet know which version of windows. Under this scenario, I might have to consider keeping some stuff in the cloud afterall. I’m going from one computer that goes with me everywhere, to two computers both location bound. With the development of smart phones in recent years, that’s less of a problem than it used to be. Though of course, I also need to return my iphone. At this stage, I’ll probably be getting the new Samsung Galaxy S II.

A. Age: 42
B. Bed size: double but with a queen size doona
C. Chore that you hate: cleaning the flat
D. Dogs: nope
E. Essential start to your day: coffee
F. Favourite colour: purple
G. Gold or Silver: silver
H. Height: 5 foot 6 I think…I still do an odd mix of metric and imperial
I. Instruments you play: zilch
J. Job title: Electronic Solutions Consultant
K. Kids: n/a
L. Live: Inner West, Sydney
M. Mother’s name: Beryl
N. Nicknames: snail
O. Overnight hospital stays: dunno…several, perhaps a few weeks altogether
P. Pet peeve: apostrophes
Q. Quote from a movie: Abso-fraggin-lutely! (Babylon 5 I think)
R. Right or left handed: right
S. Siblings: one; younger
T. Time you wake up: sometimes 5 or 6am, sometimes with alarm at 8am depending on how body clock is coping
U. Underwear: yes
V. Vegetable you hate: avocado (but love guacamole)
W. What makes you run late: the internetz
X. X-Rays you’ve had: teeth, head, back, crotch, legs
Y. Yummy food that you make: mashed potato
Z. Zoo animal: kangaroo

It remains the case however that one of my favourites is still not supported by versions 4.0+, that being “copy plain text“. I am very, very tempted to hack the version number and reports suggest that will be ok. Anyway, I have just upgraded, at long last to 4.01, as almost all my plugins are now compatible and the other remaining one, “Tab Kit” will be migrating in the next week or so.

When I’ve tweeted about upgrading, a few folk have said “chrome” as the answer to my problems. I’m guessing because most folk think in terms of lone browsers or browser wars. On my machine I currently have these browsers installed:

• Firefox 4.01
• IE 7.0.5730.13 (can’t upgrade due to compatibility issues with work’s content management system)
• Safari 5.05
• Opera 11.11
• Lynx 2.8.5rel.5
• Chrome 12.0.742.100

though compiling this list has meant I’ve just upgraded a couple of them :-) One of the big reasons that I have so many is that I do tech support for an online information provider, and it’s useful if I can test problems in the same browser that the customer is using. Of those, I need IE for some work stuff, however Firefox (at least in part due to its plugins) is my workhorse. Firefox is the browser I spend most time in, and seems most modifiable ie I’ve got it fairly tightly tailored to what I need. I currently have 28 extensions installed not counting disabled or out-of-date extensions. Of those, some of my favourites are:

• Add Bookmark here – so I can add bookmarks to the right folder
• Compact Menu (just changed to it as Tiny Menu needs updating) – I use my toolbars for quick linking and don’t want a row of menu headings taking up space
• DownThemAll! – for downloads
• Fireshot – for taking and editing screenshots.
• Foxclocks – for keeping track of timezones in the various company offices
• Remove Cookie(s) for Site – a button on the toolbar that removes all cookies related to the currently opened window. Great for when I’m testing authentication.
• URL Link – this is useful, for highlighting a word on a webpage and slotting it into a pre-formatted URL. I use it primarily to construct URLs for customers to access their databases with as I’ve set it up to insert the account ID into the right spot of a URL eg http://blah.blah/ID, and open a new tab with that URL.

With all that said, we did at least get to see all of the “official” competition films and the winner of that, Jodaeiye Nader Az Simin (A Separation) was one of my favourites of the fest. I s’pose my top bunch for the fest, in no particular order, derived by scanning back through the programme include:

• Jodaeiye Nader Az Simin (A Separation) – Iran
• Noruwei No Mori (Norwegian Wood) – Japan
• The Tree of Life – USA
• Drei (Three) – Germany
• The Forgiveness of Blood – Albania
• The Future – USA
• También la Lluvia (Even the Rain) – Spain/Mexico