Colin Charles Agenda

I wrote this before the Apple iPad announcement, so no thoughts on that yet, in this post. At the top of my head though, I’m still keeping my PRS-505, and not getting the iPad.

In May 2008, I picked up a Sony Reader PRS-505. Its an e-book reader, and in the day, was definitely the flagship device from Sony, for electronic books and PDF reading. Today, Sony still sells this, and they also have models with a touchscreen, as well as a mini-version of this (a pocket reader?). I used the device on-and-off, mostly to read PDFs, but of late, I decided to read full-length books on it, and the quick verdict is a simple win!

A bit about the device. It can be charged over USB (I did not opt to buy the AC charger), and uses a standard USB cable. It has a built-in rechargeable battery, and you’re meant to go for about 7,500 page turns. It does audio playback (which I never use), and it can read SD/MMC, as well as Memory Stick cards (again, I don’t use these options). It has over 128MB of storage available for you to store e-books, which seems plenty (failing which, the external storage options can be utilised). It looks like a book – comes encased in a soft leather cover. To turn pages, there are two sets of buttons, so I can read with one hand, or two.

It also is based on opensource software. It runs MontaVista Linux, and Sony distribute all the GNU based software on the web (mixes of GPL/LGPL software being used). More importantly, I can sync e-books via my Linux or Mac OS X boxes – I’ve never actually used Windows for this task. I can successfully import and export books to the Reader, using calibre.

So, why a Sony Reader rather than an Amazon Kindle? Simply, it boils down to availability. I don’t live in the United States, and Amazon tells me I can’t get myself a Kindle. I’d love one – the ability to buy a few books at 3am, to peruse on a topic I’m interested in? That sort of thing is priceless. I don’t even care about the DRM that they impose, the fact that they can come in and delete my purchases. Its the convenience that matters (beats going down to Borders the next day, finding I might have to wait for a title, etc.).

That aside, I also do not buy books that have been inflicted with DRM, from Sony. I’ve been burned once before – when the Palm Pilot’s were the craze around ~1998, I did buy a few titles. Last I checked, I can’t access them anymore, and for the life of me, I don’t own a Palm device capable of reading that stuff.

What do I read? PDF’s, mostly. Of books, of course. Today, O’Reilly’s Safari Bookshelf is really useful. For about 10 tokens, I usually can download a whole book. I’ve been doing this from time to time over the years, and now, instead of reading them on my workstation, I read them on the Sony Reader. Apress isn’t far behind, as most of their books have PDF versions to boot. So my technical reading material is covered.

calibre also allows me to read bundles of Newsweek, The Economist, and the like. I used to use this, but I tend to visit a library once a week once, at least, and end up reading the dead tree copies that are there. Reading fiction and non-fiction is admittedly harder – author/publisher buy-in is very sparse, and I’m sure I’ll have better luck with the Kindle here.

What don’t I like about the device? There’s no backlight. I’d like to read in the dark sometimes, and having lighting is inconvenient, so it would be great if it were backlit. While I can bookmark pages, I cannot highlight text, or even write notes about what I’m reading, inside the Sony Reader. In contrast, if I use the iPhone/iPod Touch to read a book, I get a nice backlight, and I can copy text out, as well as make notes in the notepad. Of course, I don’t get 7,500 page turns on such a device, but if I can squeeze about 20 hours of reading off any device, I’d be pretty happy (think: long flight).

Text from PDFs can be a bit too small. They don’t seem to use up all of the available space, which is truly annoying. Zoom options are available, but there are only two supported sizes: S or M. M makes for easier reading, but I wish it took up more of the device. I’d rather have more page turns, than bad eyes over the years!

Currently on the device (I purged everything from before, just because – disclosure: most links below go to amazon.com and are part of their affiliate programme):

• Bringing Nothing to the Party: True Confessions of a New Media Whore by Paul Carr. Most interesting, I’ve completely read this already, and should post up a review soon.
• Coders at Work by Peter Seibel. I just finished a couple of chapters, and am going strong here.
• Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age by Paul Graham
• The Art of Community: Building the New Age of Participation (Theory in Practice) by Jono Bacon

Two of the above are author released PDFs, while one is from O’Reilly’s Safari Bookshelf and the other an outright purchase from Apress.

Would I recommend one? Sure. If you like reading, have a tonne of PDF’s in ~/Downloads, its about time you got yourself a Sony Reader. Would I recommend one if you already have an iPhone/iPod Touch? Sure (I have an iPod Touch, too!). I think they’re two different devices, and its not time to converge them just yet (maybe, if the iPod Touch had a bigger screen).

Do you have an e-book reader? Where are you getting your fix of content?

I’ve been using git a lot more (its become my personal favourite; though on a daily basis I have to context switch between Bazaar and SVN as well – glad that I’ve stopped using CVS and BitKeeper) and am really liking it. Recently, I found out that git add has an interactive mode!

You can add a whole bunch of files real easily. Ditto with reverting changes. You can also add certain lines of a file (this is seriously useful).

Go give git add -i a twirl. Any other good git tips?

The O’Reilly MySQL Conference & Expo 2010 will be closing the Call for Participation at the end of the 27th January 2010. You have less than 48-hours – so get submitting already.

Take a gander at some of the shortlisted presentations, look at all the amazing tutorials, and what’s keeping you waiting from registering?

It’s worth noting that if you’re using MySQL 5.0/5.1, with SSL enabled, and you’re using yaSSL as opposed to OpenSSL, you’re vulnerable to CVE-2009-4484. Its a buffer overflow, that works over TCP, via the MySQL port, 3306. Lenz furnished us with some information, and the patch is available. You’ll see this rocking when MySQL 5.1.43 gets released.

It affects Debian (presumably, it will also affect Ubuntu). Red Hat/CentOS is spared, because instead of using yaSSL, OpenSSL is used.

MariaDB 5.1.41-rc (based on MySQL 5.1.41) which was just released a few days ago, naturally is also affected. The next release candidate might potentially be rebased against 5.1.42 (the builds are already ready, from what I understand), and will include this patch.

Some yaSSL trivia: did you know that one of the two co-founders of the project, is actually Larry Stefonic? Larry was an early MySQL Ab employee, holding quite a few positions at MySQL Ab; he was the President of MySQL KK (the Japanese branch), and was also SVP for worldwide OEM sales!

“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” – Thomas Jefferson

A lazy Saturday, I’m taking a break from most things, and I figured I’d fire up Twitter and see what’s on. Many people pointed me to: Malaysians advised against being immersed in Facebook, Twitter (a href=”http://malaysiakini.com/news/122094″>Malaysiakini picked this up too). It features Rais Yatim, being more pompous than he usually is (yes, please watch that video – its highly amusing).

He added that facilities like internet could not be accepted wholly because it was a form of business introduced by the West and “Malaysians were just users.”

Malaysians were just users. Why were they not the creators of sites like Facebook and Twitter? After all, with organisations throwing money away in the form of grants, so readily to companies, why haven’t we created the next Facebook or Twitter? Ping.fm had only two employees, picked up some angel funding, and have recently been acquired by Seesmic. RM150k for a year, is enough for two founders to hack on something, and make it worthwhile, yet, we see higher amounts of folk gaming the system. What about Twitpic? This list can go on, but that’s not going to be the focus of this post – Malaysian’s can create, if they put their mind to it. To boot, there are also funds that they can have access to.

He goes on to talk about how one must upkeep religious values and be mindful of them when using social networking services. Wow, whatever he’s smoking, I want some.

“We must be strong in our believes and culture because the identity and image of our country depends on us.

Yes. The image of the country today, largely depends on what the people say. Politicians can go overseas and lie to others, but what do people do before the want to visit a country? Invest in a country? Move to a country? They check up on the prospective new place on the Internet. They use Google search. They’ll read Google News. Heck, they might even go read Google’s Blog Search. Others will check out Flickr and Picasa to find good photos, some will check out YouTube. Others will look at TripAdvisor to find a good hotel. Others will check out the newspapers. The list goes on. However, what citizens do, is they speak their mind, when online – so the government clearly lacks control of their old one-way-mediums.

His next statement makes absolutely no sense at all. Maybe he should have spoken in his native Bahasa Malaysia?

“They are just selling Facebook, Twitter, L-Band and various other services, even through space, as a product but we do not do such business. We accept all this in a state of cultural shock,” he said.

Culture shock, eh? Seriously. He continues…

“We should not be quick to condemn or look down on those who do not use Facebook. Newspapers are still relevant, so is Facebook, but do not be carried away with everything and disregard the old system,” he said.

Of course. That would be plain wrong, and ageist. Not everyone needs to be on Facebook. Or Twitter. Or read online media. Its fine that people have a choice. Today, if one chooses to go “old school”, all one has to do is wake up in the morning, buy a dead tree edition of your favourite newspaper, read it, then go over to the boob tube, watch the myriad of programming available on free-to-air channels, and suck in all the propaganda. However, as a society matures, they do tend to disregard the old, and check out the new (for example, if I’d had followed the old system, I’d be seeing this silly media article in the dead tree edition of The Star – I saw it half an hour after it was published because I was on Twitter). Societies mature, and their needs mature, so they do outgrow the old (same applies to political regimes).

It continues, in where he says things about how one shouldn’t use Twitter, Facebook and SMS messaging for the wrong reasons. He tells us that we cannot escape from the law for our actions. And that most people understand the whole 1Malaysia concept. Drivel, in general.

Anyway, newspapers in their dead-tree form are losing relevance. We have two that are free now – The Sun and The Malay Mail. The Star has pretty much all its content online. And Malaysians can read The Malaysian Insider (Malaysian creation) for free, or subscribe to Malaysiakini (Malaysian creation). As the Internet penetration rate goes up, we’ll see more of this. The magazine industry in Malaysia has been suffering for a couple of years (no eyeballs, no advertising ringgit).

So, there are Malaysian creations, used by people, where Malaysians are not just users but creators. I’m sorry Rais, you’re so out of it.

Check out how Linden Labs, creators of the popular game Second Life, upgraded their MySQL database. The MySQL they use? Straight out of Debian! Of course, now, they’re running with the Percona patchset, against MySQL 5.0.84. Definitely a good read.

Its good to see Lars post about contributing to the MySQL replication & backup codebase. It sounds like the replication & backup team have decided that mentoring is the way to go – you get a “coach developer” if the idea is accepted. I like this very much, and sincerely hope it spreads to the rest of the server; it will help decentralise development of MySQL, and the endgame is a larger community.

While I know Christmas is over, The 12 Days of Christmas (MySQL Edition), is actually quite a fun watch :)

Happy New Year all!