Re:If only there was...
on
Pimp Your XP
·
· Score: 1
Vitrite may be what you're looking for. It's a program that just sits in your taskbar and sets transparency for the active window by handy keyboard shortcuts. Otherwise a Google search for "window transparency" turns up quite a few alternatives.
Agreed. It's an enjoyable book, but definitely quite a lot of in-jokes and that sort of thing. To be perfectly honest, while I did enjoy reading it, I felt a little bit uncomfortable reading it, as it felt rather self-indulgent on the part of the authors. There were places where I felt very much like the 4th wall was coming down pretty hard. And yeah, very politically incorrect.
In particular, I would recommend the "Jupiter" series of young adult novels. These include "Higher Education" (co-authored with Jerry Pournelle), "Putting Up Roots", "The Cyborg From Earth", and "The Billion Dollar Boy." I have read and enjoyed the first three mentioned, and I'll occasionally pick one up if I want a quicker read. There are also other books not by Sheffield in this series, including at least one each by Pournelle and James P. Hogan. There may be others, too.
This is not really a series in the conventional sense of the word, as there isn't a lot of continuity between the books. I haven't read them recently enough to be sure, but I think the three that I read are likely all in the same universe, and there is certainly some continuity with some of his adult novels, but they are all self-contained stories with different characters. The conception of the "Jupiter" series is simply a line of hard sci-fi novels for young adults.
These were the books that immediately came to mind when I saw the article headline, but I have this sneaking suspicion that boys would probably enjoy them a little more, although there are certainly some strong female characters that I recall. Also, there is some probably PG-13 stuff in some of them, but not gratuitous, so it's probably okay for high-schoolers.
The quasi-official frequency for middle C is, as the original poster mentioned, 261.6ish. The rub lies in the fact that the only really "official", or at least widely accepted, standard of concert pitch defines A (as 440Hz), not C. On an equal tempered instrument, as most pianos are tuned, C will then end up at 261.6Hz. However, most other instruments allow on-the-fly adjusting of pitch (strings, winds, brass), which, at least in the hands of a capable performer, can result in being better in tune than an equal-tempered piano, as equal-temperment is a compromise that results in all intervals being slightly out of tune so that you can play in any key equally well (or equally poorly, depending on your point of view).
There's a handy little chart on Wikipedia for the frequencies of each note given equal temperment on A=440.
Now, for the historical aspect, take a look at that chart and consider that a common Baroque (17th and 18th centuries) tuning was A=413, which means about a half step flat to modern tuning. However, during the same period, it was not terribly uncommon to have a tuning as high as A=475 (over a half step sharp).
Even though we've more or less settled on A=440, the parent poster is correct that modern orchestras often get higher than that to create a brighter sound (although usually not much higher than A=445). This occasionally results in something of an arms race, although there's only so high you can go before the instruments start acting up. This arms race can also happen on a personal level. One of my cello teachers used to play in a European orchestra, where this sort of thing is somewhat more common, and he said that sometimes there would be players who would purposely tune sharp to the orchestra so they would stick out (generally speaking, if you're sharp to the ensemble, you sound bright, and if you're flat, you sound out of tune).
Interestingly enough, although I have not researched this, from anecdotal evidence it appears that string instruments tend to be a bit friendlier when tuned flat of A=440. I first noticed this when comparing two recordings of the Kodaly Suite for Solo Cello. One recording I had (Janos Starker) was more or less concert pitch, but the Yo-Yo Ma recording was about a half-step flat of A=440. I discussed this discrepancy with my teacher at the time and his response was that he had tried tuning his cello like that for solo work, and found it to be "looser" and more responsive and forgiving. Because string instruments behave better when they're kept consistently in tune to one standard, and because I do a lot of orchestral playing, I haven't experimented with this much, but I have noticed times when both my cello and my bass felt better, and then later realized that they'd drifted flat (which happens if you only tune the instrument to itself for a while).
All that to say that while A tends to drift higher and higher if left unchecked, we might be better off if we actually went flat of concert pitch.
Oh yeah, and I find C=256 very handy for back-of-the-napkin calculations, since it means easy powers of two for each octave.
I'll preface this by saying I'm a music grad student, so I'm more than a little conversant with the world of classical music, although I'm a string player, not a pianist.
One of my profs in undergrad (who was a pianist) told me once that good pianists are a dime a dozen. And they're all making recordings. The Pristine Classical website has quite a few possible/probable rip-offs listed, and in most cases they are pianists I've never heard of (of course, I wasn't familiar with Joyce Hatto either). This is not surprising because there are just so many pianists out there, too many to keep track of.
The other factor is that so many classical pieces end up having a few recordings that are the "standard". In other words, they may or may not be miles above everything else, but if you do a survey of music libraries, you'll find the same couple recordings of a given work cropping up a lot more. Of course, this is usually the big names.
The thing that gets me though is the one big name that she did rip off from, that being Ashkenazy. To the average lay-person, he's not one of the big names of piano (partly because he split his time between piano and conducting--he was very fine in both capacities), but any pianist (or music critic) would likely be familiar with him (particularly as an interpreter of Chopin).
There are also a few concertos recorded with Previn conducting the orchestra. The pianist wasn't familiar to me, but if he was playing with Previn, he was no slouch.
So yes, the music critics are probably full of it. You'd think somebody would have noticed by now.
TFA describes a bit of a learning curve for the kid, so I'd say you're right. But the point is that the interface is feasible. I imagine anyone getting a new robotic limb would have to learn to use it, just like you have to learn to use your own limbs. The neat thing is that he was able to learn to create these signals very quickly with some degree of fine control. THe human brain is actually a very adaptable thing, even for older folks, as evidenced by the psychologist (I think) who had special glasses that flipped everything upside-down and after a few days was able to function quite normally. So as long as the interface works, it should be entirely possible for most people to learn to use it with relative ease.
Heh. That picture reminds me of some antics from a few years back in the dorm. One of the guys in the room next to mine was very uncomfortable with male nudity. One day, he left the room unlocked, so one of my friends stripped down, sat in front of the other guy's computer and posed with the joystick in a, hmm, suggestive manner. And then we took a picture and set it as the Windows wallpaper. The poor guy came back and fired up his computer and practically had a fit. He didn't want to sit in his chair or touch his joystick for a little while after that.
This is quite important. I don't know about the claims of "most people" getting their RSI this way, but it is a factor.
I am a musician, and musicians, especially string players (I play cello) are notorious for wrist problems. Our problems tend to be more in the line of tendonitis than carpal tunnel (that's what the pianists get), but a lot of the general preventative measures are pretty much the same.
I've had wrist problems on and off for the past several years, and one of the string faculty at my college mentioned this sort of thing when I asked him about my wrist problems. He suggested wearing a brace at night, and it really does help. I actually use two different braces on a fairly regular basis. One is just a wide elastic band that wraps around the wrist. It provides a little support, and keeps me from extending my wrist too far (which is what gives me a lot of problems), but still provides a pretty good range of motion (enough that I can play with it). This one I wear quite frequently. Always when I play and frequently just for a little extra support. The other is more heavy duty and fits more like a fingerless glove with a wrist extension. This one has a metal insert that runs along the underside of the wrist and the palm. I use it whenever my wrist is really bothering me and I need to keep it relatively immobilized and also whenever I'm lifting weights or doing any other kind of heavy lifting. It's okay for mousing, but it limits the range of my thumbs, so it's no good for typing.
So I often wear one or the other when I sleep, and I have changed my sleeping habits a bit. I actually sleep with my hand under the pillow, but that's because my main concern is keeping that wrist straight, as my problem is tendonitis, not carpal tunnel.
As far as general ergonomic guidelines, I've also learned a good bit about that due to hurting myself by playing my instrument (I had a lot of back trouble a couple years back, which is mostly gone at this point, thanks to some changes I made). One of the main things to keep in mind is that any tension, especially in your spine, will spread to the rest of your body. One of the most common places for tension to start is in your lower back. The reason for this is that the human hip is not designed for a 90 degree angle between your torso and your upper leg. If you actually have that angle, it's because the last couple degrees are coming from your lower spine. This sort of static loading will kill your back. Unfortunately, most chairs aren't designed with this in mind. Your best bet for a chair is something with a relatively straight back and either a flat seat or one that tilts slightly forward rather than back. My chair of preference is an old swivel chair that my mom pulled out of a dumpster with the intent of reuphostering the seat. I stole it and used it as my computer chair for several years before college, and I still use it. During my undergrad, it was the only chair on campus that I ever found that was truly comfortable. It has a flat seat and an adjustable back (which I keep low for lumbar support) and can be adjusted to be pretty tall (which is important since I have very long legs).
Static loading on the lower back basically means that even though you don't look like it, you're actually hunched over forward. Obviously then, that tension travels up to the shoulders and neck, and if your shoulders aren't relaxed, your arms and hands can't be. So reduce static loading on your lower back and you're already helping yourself.
The other component to my ergonomic computer setup is a desk I built for myself. I designed it with my ugly chair in mind, so that the keyboard tray is just above my lap (although for long typing sessions, I still prefer to just pull the keyboard off and put it on my lap). One thing that departs from conventional wisdom, but that works pretty well for me is the fact that my monitors are fairly high. I built the desk primarily because I needed something that I could have my computer and my
Yes, definitely check your monitor refresh...so many people have theirs set at 60Hz, which I find physically painful to look at.
A visit to an optemetrist would also be a good idea. There are more eye problems than near- or far-sightedness. I am near-sighted, but I also have a relatively significant astigmatism (irregularity in the shape of the lens on my eyes). I stopped getting more nearsighted when I was about 16, but I've had a couple prescription changes since (I'm 23 now) because of my astigmatism. With myopeia, it's easy enough to tell when it's getting worse, as things start getting blurry, but there are no direct indications of worsening astigmatism. The actual effect of astigmatism is distortions in your vision, but it's not the sort of thing you can actually see, as your brain compensates, but it leads to increased eyestrain and consequently headaches. So now when I start getting headaches for no apparent reason, I hie myself to the optometrist.
Amen, amen, and amen. All the other publishers should take a cue from Baen Books.
The vast majority of my leisure reading is SF, and a hefty chunk of that is books published by Baen. There are several reasons for this.
Probably the first is simply that Baen publishes some of my favorite authors (Lois McMaster Bujold, Charles Sheffield). Also, they've done a great job of republishing some of the older stuff that you literally cannot find anywhere (James Schmitz) and more recent out-of-print things (Timothy Zahn's "Blackcollar" and "Cobra" series). Another thing that Baen does that I don't see a lot of publishers doing is printing a lot of omnibus editions. Sure, you'll get it for really popular series from other publishers, like HHGttG, but Baen does it a lot more. If I can get an entire series in one book (Zahn's "Cobra Trilogy"), or a longer series in just a few books instead of half a bookshelf's worth (Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan series), I'm happier.
As far as eBooks go, you can't beat Baen's approach. No DRM. At all. You can download any of the eBooks that you've purchased as many times as you want in a couple of formats, including HTML, so you can pretty much read it on any device you want. And of course, the free library is a nice incentive. I've purchased probably 10 eBooks from Baen over the past 5 years, but I've downloaded scads of things from their free library and gotten moderately hooked on a number of different authors. And, amazingly enough, I have then gone on to purchase books by those authors. It's not rocket science. If I can check out an author or series for free, I am likely to read more of their stuff if I like it, and if I don't, I won't be mad that I spent money on it.
One other thing that Baen does right is they actually sell their eBooks for less than the dead-tree versions. This is a complete no-brainer, but I have been amazed how many times I've seen eBooks listed for more than the price of a paperback. That I just don't understand at all.
Now, regarding the actual question. Why haven't I purchased a lot of eBooks from Baen (or anywhere else)?
I read eBooks on my Psion Revo, using MobiPocket Reader. It's fairly convenient (fits in a pants pocket, although it's a little longer than I like in that regard). It has a nice, crisp screen (no backlight, but it's readable in fairly low light and the screen isn't too reflective). Still, I'd prefer to read a dead tree. Aside from eyestrain issues (the Psion has a nice screen, but it can't beat paper), I'm likely not the only one who's going to be reading the book. Now, there are no DRM restrictions on the Baen books, but there are practical considerations. At this point in my life (poor grad student), if I purchase a book at full cover price (which I try not to--used book stores are a favorite haunt), it's likely going to be something that both I and my wife want to read (fortunately, while our tastes in fiction are not identical, there's a very wide overlap). She doesn't want to read an eBook. We only have one PDA between to the two of us, and it's mine and she doesn't care for reading on her laptop, which I can understand as I don't either. If I can get the book for free, I'll certainly read it on my Revo, but if I'm going to spending the money, I'll plunk down the extra $3 (seems to be about the difference in price between a paperback and eBook at Baen) to get the physical copy that anybody can read.
Now, if it's a book that I really want that my wife is going to have no interest in reading, I'll go ahead and save the $3 and get the eBook. I'm cheap. However, as the parent poster has mentioned, Baen is not the entire publishing world, so there are plenty of books that I want to read that somebody else published. And I'm not likely to purchase an eBook from a different publisher due to DRM/format restrictions or price.
So to sum up:
If a book I want is not published by Baen, I'm not buying an an eBook. If it is published by Baen, I'll download it free in a snap, but otherwise I'll only buy it as an eBook if I'm the only one who's likely to want to read it.
Not too terribly long ago, when I was totally dependent on friends and family handouts to aquire computing equipment, I had a 386 and a daisywheel printer. I thought that printer was the coolest thing, as it wasn't too far removed from the electric typewriters that had fascinated me and that i took apart. Also, it sounded like a small war when it printed. So of course I fired up BASIC and wrote a little typewriter program. All it did was copy keyboard input to LPT1. I still preferred my second-hand Selectric typewriter, though, mostly because it was easier to correct typos.
I have a Diamond Mako (rebranded Psion Revo Plus) and have read a lot of ebooks on it. The screen is relatively hi-res and very crisp, so it makes reading a pleasant experience. Also, with MobiPocket Reader (free download), you can utilize 100% of the screen for reading without any toolbars or other visual junk. Also, because the screen is fairly wide for a PDA (5"), I find that speeds up reading a bit because you're not jumping lines every 5 words (although my reading speed is still slower than with a book).
There are always a number of Psion devices (Mako/Revo, Series 5, Series 5MX) on Ebay. Note that the Mako/Revo does not have a backlight, although the Series 5 does.
On an standard mass-market paperback, I average about 100 pages per hour. Oddly enough, with Tolkien, that goes up to about 120 pages per hour. Something about the way his writing style flows makes it a faster read for me.
Plus, let's not forget that half of RotK is appendices (okay, not quite half, but a lot of it).
So 12 hours is not at all unreasonable if you're a fast reader.
...I had my DVD drive on my XP box half crap out on me. For some reason it spontaneously stopped playing DVDs. I had just taken out a DVD that played fine, and put in another DVD and it wouldn't recognize that there was a disc in the drive. No other DVDs would play either. It would still recognize audio CDs and CD-ROMs. I did the usual stuff: reinstalled drivers and such. Eventually, I just did a firmware upgrade on the drive and it's been fine since.
If you accept the EU books as canon, then Luke could indeed understand R2's whistling. There's a scene in one of Timothy Zahn's (excellent) books where R2 talks Luke through disassembling his bionic hand.
[SuperPenguin cowers in shame at his own nerdiness and slinks away.]
The Honorverse CD is actually only the first CD Baen has put out. There's been another one since then that was packaged with John Ringo's "Hell's Faire." (You can get the contents of this CD here) This, together with their free online library have actually generated purchases by myself, as I discovered some new authors (definitely read Keith Laumer if you haven't -- there are some of his works available on the Baen Free Library and these CDs) and I also like to support a publisher with this approach.
Just in the past couple months I got turned onto the HH books via the Baen Weblibrary. I read the first two on my PDA (the Diamond Mako (aka Psion Revo Plus) has a nice crisp screen for reading and the free MobiPocket reader is a nice interface). However, I'm one of those people who don't buy all that many books as I would soon go broke if I bought all the books I want to read, and have been getting the rest of the series from the library. So Baen hasn't made any money off me yet. But this is a big temptation, and I'll probably head to B&N and buy it as soon as it's available. So just by adding a CD that didn't cost them very much, Baen is going to get some of my business.
Slashdot Mirror
My Gameboy Advance is red, so it was already fast, but it runs even faster since I put an AMD Phenom X4 sticker on it.
and add a mask too?
Vitrite may be what you're looking for. It's a program that just sits in your taskbar and sets transparency for the active window by handy keyboard shortcuts. Otherwise a Google search for "window transparency" turns up quite a few alternatives.
Agreed. It's an enjoyable book, but definitely quite a lot of in-jokes and that sort of thing. To be perfectly honest, while I did enjoy reading it, I felt a little bit uncomfortable reading it, as it felt rather self-indulgent on the part of the authors. There were places where I felt very much like the 4th wall was coming down pretty hard. And yeah, very politically incorrect.
In particular, I would recommend the "Jupiter" series of young adult novels. These include "Higher Education" (co-authored with Jerry Pournelle), "Putting Up Roots", "The Cyborg From Earth", and "The Billion Dollar Boy." I have read and enjoyed the first three mentioned, and I'll occasionally pick one up if I want a quicker read. There are also other books not by Sheffield in this series, including at least one each by Pournelle and James P. Hogan. There may be others, too.
This is not really a series in the conventional sense of the word, as there isn't a lot of continuity between the books. I haven't read them recently enough to be sure, but I think the three that I read are likely all in the same universe, and there is certainly some continuity with some of his adult novels, but they are all self-contained stories with different characters. The conception of the "Jupiter" series is simply a line of hard sci-fi novels for young adults.
These were the books that immediately came to mind when I saw the article headline, but I have this sneaking suspicion that boys would probably enjoy them a little more, although there are certainly some strong female characters that I recall. Also, there is some probably PG-13 stuff in some of them, but not gratuitous, so it's probably okay for high-schoolers.
The quasi-official frequency for middle C is, as the original poster mentioned, 261.6ish. The rub lies in the fact that the only really "official", or at least widely accepted, standard of concert pitch defines A (as 440Hz), not C. On an equal tempered instrument, as most pianos are tuned, C will then end up at 261.6Hz. However, most other instruments allow on-the-fly adjusting of pitch (strings, winds, brass), which, at least in the hands of a capable performer, can result in being better in tune than an equal-tempered piano, as equal-temperment is a compromise that results in all intervals being slightly out of tune so that you can play in any key equally well (or equally poorly, depending on your point of view).
There's a handy little chart on Wikipedia for the frequencies of each note given equal temperment on A=440.
Now, for the historical aspect, take a look at that chart and consider that a common Baroque (17th and 18th centuries) tuning was A=413, which means about a half step flat to modern tuning. However, during the same period, it was not terribly uncommon to have a tuning as high as A=475 (over a half step sharp).
Even though we've more or less settled on A=440, the parent poster is correct that modern orchestras often get higher than that to create a brighter sound (although usually not much higher than A=445). This occasionally results in something of an arms race, although there's only so high you can go before the instruments start acting up. This arms race can also happen on a personal level. One of my cello teachers used to play in a European orchestra, where this sort of thing is somewhat more common, and he said that sometimes there would be players who would purposely tune sharp to the orchestra so they would stick out (generally speaking, if you're sharp to the ensemble, you sound bright, and if you're flat, you sound out of tune).
Interestingly enough, although I have not researched this, from anecdotal evidence it appears that string instruments tend to be a bit friendlier when tuned flat of A=440. I first noticed this when comparing two recordings of the Kodaly Suite for Solo Cello. One recording I had (Janos Starker) was more or less concert pitch, but the Yo-Yo Ma recording was about a half-step flat of A=440. I discussed this discrepancy with my teacher at the time and his response was that he had tried tuning his cello like that for solo work, and found it to be "looser" and more responsive and forgiving. Because string instruments behave better when they're kept consistently in tune to one standard, and because I do a lot of orchestral playing, I haven't experimented with this much, but I have noticed times when both my cello and my bass felt better, and then later realized that they'd drifted flat (which happens if you only tune the instrument to itself for a while).
All that to say that while A tends to drift higher and higher if left unchecked, we might be better off if we actually went flat of concert pitch.
Oh yeah, and I find C=256 very handy for back-of-the-napkin calculations, since it means easy powers of two for each octave.
/musician rambling
I'll preface this by saying I'm a music grad student, so I'm more than a little conversant with the world of classical music, although I'm a string player, not a pianist.
One of my profs in undergrad (who was a pianist) told me once that good pianists are a dime a dozen. And they're all making recordings. The Pristine Classical website has quite a few possible/probable rip-offs listed, and in most cases they are pianists I've never heard of (of course, I wasn't familiar with Joyce Hatto either). This is not surprising because there are just so many pianists out there, too many to keep track of.
The other factor is that so many classical pieces end up having a few recordings that are the "standard". In other words, they may or may not be miles above everything else, but if you do a survey of music libraries, you'll find the same couple recordings of a given work cropping up a lot more. Of course, this is usually the big names.
The thing that gets me though is the one big name that she did rip off from, that being Ashkenazy. To the average lay-person, he's not one of the big names of piano (partly because he split his time between piano and conducting--he was very fine in both capacities), but any pianist (or music critic) would likely be familiar with him (particularly as an interpreter of Chopin).
There are also a few concertos recorded with Previn conducting the orchestra. The pianist wasn't familiar to me, but if he was playing with Previn, he was no slouch. So yes, the music critics are probably full of it. You'd think somebody would have noticed by now.
...but I won't feel truly safe until there is a smart surveillance system in place that identifies crimes before they happen.
TFA describes a bit of a learning curve for the kid, so I'd say you're right. But the point is that the interface is feasible. I imagine anyone getting a new robotic limb would have to learn to use it, just like you have to learn to use your own limbs. The neat thing is that he was able to learn to create these signals very quickly with some degree of fine control. THe human brain is actually a very adaptable thing, even for older folks, as evidenced by the psychologist (I think) who had special glasses that flipped everything upside-down and after a few days was able to function quite normally. So as long as the interface works, it should be entirely possible for most people to learn to use it with relative ease.
To ease your troubled mind: The joystick was in front. Held in his lap as if were, ahem, 'playing' with it.
Heh. That picture reminds me of some antics from a few years back in the dorm. One of the guys in the room next to mine was very uncomfortable with male nudity. One day, he left the room unlocked, so one of my friends stripped down, sat in front of the other guy's computer and posed with the joystick in a, hmm, suggestive manner. And then we took a picture and set it as the Windows wallpaper. The poor guy came back and fired up his computer and practically had a fit. He didn't want to sit in his chair or touch his joystick for a little while after that.
Seems to me that the successor would be the Wii II. Or maybe wii ii. Or maybe just wiiii.
I am a musician, and musicians, especially string players (I play cello) are notorious for wrist problems. Our problems tend to be more in the line of tendonitis than carpal tunnel (that's what the pianists get), but a lot of the general preventative measures are pretty much the same.
I've had wrist problems on and off for the past several years, and one of the string faculty at my college mentioned this sort of thing when I asked him about my wrist problems. He suggested wearing a brace at night, and it really does help. I actually use two different braces on a fairly regular basis. One is just a wide elastic band that wraps around the wrist. It provides a little support, and keeps me from extending my wrist too far (which is what gives me a lot of problems), but still provides a pretty good range of motion (enough that I can play with it). This one I wear quite frequently. Always when I play and frequently just for a little extra support. The other is more heavy duty and fits more like a fingerless glove with a wrist extension. This one has a metal insert that runs along the underside of the wrist and the palm. I use it whenever my wrist is really bothering me and I need to keep it relatively immobilized and also whenever I'm lifting weights or doing any other kind of heavy lifting. It's okay for mousing, but it limits the range of my thumbs, so it's no good for typing.
So I often wear one or the other when I sleep, and I have changed my sleeping habits a bit. I actually sleep with my hand under the pillow, but that's because my main concern is keeping that wrist straight, as my problem is tendonitis, not carpal tunnel.
As far as general ergonomic guidelines, I've also learned a good bit about that due to hurting myself by playing my instrument (I had a lot of back trouble a couple years back, which is mostly gone at this point, thanks to some changes I made). One of the main things to keep in mind is that any tension, especially in your spine, will spread to the rest of your body. One of the most common places for tension to start is in your lower back. The reason for this is that the human hip is not designed for a 90 degree angle between your torso and your upper leg. If you actually have that angle, it's because the last couple degrees are coming from your lower spine. This sort of static loading will kill your back. Unfortunately, most chairs aren't designed with this in mind. Your best bet for a chair is something with a relatively straight back and either a flat seat or one that tilts slightly forward rather than back. My chair of preference is an old swivel chair that my mom pulled out of a dumpster with the intent of reuphostering the seat. I stole it and used it as my computer chair for several years before college, and I still use it. During my undergrad, it was the only chair on campus that I ever found that was truly comfortable. It has a flat seat and an adjustable back (which I keep low for lumbar support) and can be adjusted to be pretty tall (which is important since I have very long legs).
Static loading on the lower back basically means that even though you don't look like it, you're actually hunched over forward. Obviously then, that tension travels up to the shoulders and neck, and if your shoulders aren't relaxed, your arms and hands can't be. So reduce static loading on your lower back and you're already helping yourself.
The other component to my ergonomic computer setup is a desk I built for myself. I designed it with my ugly chair in mind, so that the keyboard tray is just above my lap (although for long typing sessions, I still prefer to just pull the keyboard off and put it on my lap). One thing that departs from conventional wisdom, but that works pretty well for me is the fact that my monitors are fairly high. I built the desk primarily because I needed something that I could have my computer and my
Yes, definitely check your monitor refresh...so many people have theirs set at 60Hz, which I find physically painful to look at.
A visit to an optemetrist would also be a good idea. There are more eye problems than near- or far-sightedness. I am near-sighted, but I also have a relatively significant astigmatism (irregularity in the shape of the lens on my eyes). I stopped getting more nearsighted when I was about 16, but I've had a couple prescription changes since (I'm 23 now) because of my astigmatism. With myopeia, it's easy enough to tell when it's getting worse, as things start getting blurry, but there are no direct indications of worsening astigmatism. The actual effect of astigmatism is distortions in your vision, but it's not the sort of thing you can actually see, as your brain compensates, but it leads to increased eyestrain and consequently headaches. So now when I start getting headaches for no apparent reason, I hie myself to the optometrist.
The vast majority of my leisure reading is SF, and a hefty chunk of that is books published by Baen. There are several reasons for this.
Probably the first is simply that Baen publishes some of my favorite authors (Lois McMaster Bujold, Charles Sheffield). Also, they've done a great job of republishing some of the older stuff that you literally cannot find anywhere (James Schmitz) and more recent out-of-print things (Timothy Zahn's "Blackcollar" and "Cobra" series). Another thing that Baen does that I don't see a lot of publishers doing is printing a lot of omnibus editions. Sure, you'll get it for really popular series from other publishers, like HHGttG, but Baen does it a lot more. If I can get an entire series in one book (Zahn's "Cobra Trilogy"), or a longer series in just a few books instead of half a bookshelf's worth (Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan series), I'm happier.
As far as eBooks go, you can't beat Baen's approach. No DRM. At all. You can download any of the eBooks that you've purchased as many times as you want in a couple of formats, including HTML, so you can pretty much read it on any device you want. And of course, the free library is a nice incentive. I've purchased probably 10 eBooks from Baen over the past 5 years, but I've downloaded scads of things from their free library and gotten moderately hooked on a number of different authors. And, amazingly enough, I have then gone on to purchase books by those authors. It's not rocket science. If I can check out an author or series for free, I am likely to read more of their stuff if I like it, and if I don't, I won't be mad that I spent money on it.
One other thing that Baen does right is they actually sell their eBooks for less than the dead-tree versions. This is a complete no-brainer, but I have been amazed how many times I've seen eBooks listed for more than the price of a paperback. That I just don't understand at all.
Now, regarding the actual question. Why haven't I purchased a lot of eBooks from Baen (or anywhere else)?
I read eBooks on my Psion Revo, using MobiPocket Reader. It's fairly convenient (fits in a pants pocket, although it's a little longer than I like in that regard). It has a nice, crisp screen (no backlight, but it's readable in fairly low light and the screen isn't too reflective). Still, I'd prefer to read a dead tree. Aside from eyestrain issues (the Psion has a nice screen, but it can't beat paper), I'm likely not the only one who's going to be reading the book. Now, there are no DRM restrictions on the Baen books, but there are practical considerations. At this point in my life (poor grad student), if I purchase a book at full cover price (which I try not to--used book stores are a favorite haunt), it's likely going to be something that both I and my wife want to read (fortunately, while our tastes in fiction are not identical, there's a very wide overlap). She doesn't want to read an eBook. We only have one PDA between to the two of us, and it's mine and she doesn't care for reading on her laptop, which I can understand as I don't either. If I can get the book for free, I'll certainly read it on my Revo, but if I'm going to spending the money, I'll plunk down the extra $3 (seems to be about the difference in price between a paperback and eBook at Baen) to get the physical copy that anybody can read.
Now, if it's a book that I really want that my wife is going to have no interest in reading, I'll go ahead and save the $3 and get the eBook. I'm cheap. However, as the parent poster has mentioned, Baen is not the entire publishing world, so there are plenty of books that I want to read that somebody else published. And I'm not likely to purchase an eBook from a different publisher due to DRM/format restrictions or price.
So to sum up:
If a book I want is not published by Baen, I'm not buying an an eBook. If it is published by Baen, I'll download it free in a snap, but otherwise I'll only buy it as an eBook if I'm the only one who's likely to want to read it.
Not too terribly long ago, when I was totally dependent on friends and family handouts to aquire computing equipment, I had a 386 and a daisywheel printer. I thought that printer was the coolest thing, as it wasn't too far removed from the electric typewriters that had fascinated me and that i took apart. Also, it sounded like a small war when it printed. So of course I fired up BASIC and wrote a little typewriter program. All it did was copy keyboard input to LPT1. I still preferred my second-hand Selectric typewriter, though, mostly because it was easier to correct typos.
I have a Diamond Mako (rebranded Psion Revo Plus) and have read a lot of ebooks on it. The screen is relatively hi-res and very crisp, so it makes reading a pleasant experience. Also, with MobiPocket Reader (free download), you can utilize 100% of the screen for reading without any toolbars or other visual junk. Also, because the screen is fairly wide for a PDA (5"), I find that speeds up reading a bit because you're not jumping lines every 5 words (although my reading speed is still slower than with a book). There are always a number of Psion devices (Mako/Revo, Series 5, Series 5MX) on Ebay. Note that the Mako/Revo does not have a backlight, although the Series 5 does.
On an standard mass-market paperback, I average about 100 pages per hour. Oddly enough, with Tolkien, that goes up to about 120 pages per hour. Something about the way his writing style flows makes it a faster read for me. Plus, let's not forget that half of RotK is appendices (okay, not quite half, but a lot of it). So 12 hours is not at all unreasonable if you're a fast reader.
about whom there was much doubt as to the veracity of her story?
Ahhhh! [Gouges out eyes]
It depends very much on your hardware. Visit the manufacturer's website and look for a firmware upgrade.
...I had my DVD drive on my XP box half crap out on me. For some reason it spontaneously stopped playing DVDs. I had just taken out a DVD that played fine, and put in another DVD and it wouldn't recognize that there was a disc in the drive. No other DVDs would play either. It would still recognize audio CDs and CD-ROMs. I did the usual stuff: reinstalled drivers and such. Eventually, I just did a firmware upgrade on the drive and it's been fine since.
If you accept the EU books as canon, then Luke could indeed understand R2's whistling. There's a scene in one of Timothy Zahn's (excellent) books where R2 talks Luke through disassembling his bionic hand. [SuperPenguin cowers in shame at his own nerdiness and slinks away.]
The Honorverse CD is actually only the first CD Baen has put out. There's been another one since then that was packaged with John Ringo's "Hell's Faire." (You can get the contents of this CD here) This, together with their free online library have actually generated purchases by myself, as I discovered some new authors (definitely read Keith Laumer if you haven't -- there are some of his works available on the Baen Free Library and these CDs) and I also like to support a publisher with this approach.
Just in the past couple months I got turned onto the HH books via the Baen Weblibrary. I read the first two on my PDA (the Diamond Mako (aka Psion Revo Plus) has a nice crisp screen for reading and the free MobiPocket reader is a nice interface). However, I'm one of those people who don't buy all that many books as I would soon go broke if I bought all the books I want to read, and have been getting the rest of the series from the library. So Baen hasn't made any money off me yet. But this is a big temptation, and I'll probably head to B&N and buy it as soon as it's available. So just by adding a CD that didn't cost them very much, Baen is going to get some of my business.