all things me

Recently I’ve been playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for hours on end (especially on Easter weekend — four full days of all-day playing, and that’s not much of an exaggeration). I haven’t been concentrating on the main quest; instead, I’ve been doing miscellaneous quests and guild quests. I even made a list from the quest descriptions at the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages Wiki; I listed only the quest titles of course and now I am crossing them off as I go along.

The strange thing is, I don’t much care for role-playing games. At least I didn’t know I did. I’ve never got into the having to train your skills (and choose which skills to concentrate on) side of games. I’m generally really bad at RPGs, too; I don’t fight very well. Well, I suppose that in Oblivion I’m trying my best: I concentrate on sneaking, lock-picking, and marksmanship. No one hears me, and I can shoot an arrow through their head from amazing distances.

Because of my sudden enthusiasm for Oblivion (I’ve had the game borrowed from a co-worker since October even though my sister got a copy for Christmas), all the other games have gone on the back burner. I should be practising Splinter Cell: Double Agent, because I don’t think I’ve had the patience to play it properly and it has felt a little difficult. (And I love Splinter Cell! That’s what makes it doubly worrisome.)

I’m apparently quite far in the Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay because my sister finished it last weekend and said it wasn’t a long game I don’t have much left. I can’t remember if I’m stuck or just taking a break that’s gone on for too long. Perhaps I should try Riddick for a change this weekend.

Not to mention Deus Ex 2. I’m probably in the final battle and I gave up after an alien killed me just once. Guess when I’ve installed the game? August 2005! And it was then when I actively played it: my latest save is dated September 3rd 2005.

I also have these installed: Path of Neo, Tomb Raider III, Silent Hill 4, True Crime: Streets of L.A., The Sims 2, Black & White, Area 51, Obscure, Constantine, Half-Life 2 — not to mention a dozen of little time-killing games. (I noticed that the hard drive had “only” 61 Gb free space so I uninstalled a few. Now there’s roughly 80 Gb free space.)

Having it in black and white (or dark grey and purple) now, I realise it’s not really about the large amount of games and small amount of time. At the moment I just seem to be lacking the motivation and patience to finish any of them. I need a vacation (for games, not from them).

At the moment there seems to be a flood of email spam from <someone>@yahoo.com (<someone> being various first names) with the subject “hello.” I have to admit I rarely think of any imaginative subjects (for personal, letter-like emails) but at the moment I’m being careful with any email with subject “hello.” Luckily, the genuine emails can be identified by a familiar name and email address, but if someone I don’t know sent me an email through my website for example, I would accidentally overlook it if the subject header read “hello.”

I spotted my first N95 in the wild today. It was sitting right next to me at the ontology lecture.

The owner was fondling the device all the time (I still fondle my N73 — constantly…). I hate to see people get gadgets that I want. I sure hope they appreciate the amazing gadget they have obtained. But, I’m determined to give this one a pass and wait for the next device which will of course be much better and more wonderful and more beautiful (they better have it in plum colour, too). And hopefully it’ll have a miniSD card slot instead of microSD.

I still have 1 year 7 months left of my contract (I could switch the phone to N95 but I’d have to pay the rest of the N73 first) so I’m going to wait.

There better be something much better around the corner (in 2 years — no sooner, no later).

Today the mail man brought me a Prodige Bluetooth dongle.

I used to connect my phone to the computer via a data cable (CA-53) but I’ve used it quite a lot (plug in, plug out, plug in, plug out…) so it stopped working: PC Suite couldn’t use the connection unless I was squeezing the cable and the phone together at a correct angle (which is quite impractical because I need my hands to operate the computer).

I had bought an infrared device for my previous phone and it works nicely with N73, too, but it’s quite slow. When I was installing an application, I didn’t realise it was doing anything because it took such a long time transferring the installation files to the phone…

Now I have a nice, quick Bluetooth connection; although, I don’t know yet if it’s quick because I haven’t tried installing or transferring anything. Before I got it working, I had to install the driver (1.6.1.4 — an old driver I think, because the IVT BlueSoleil site offers 2.3) that PC Suite requires. I don’t know if Suite would support a newer version but I’d hope so.

Now, all I need to do is find a new application or finish converting an X-Files episode on the Video Manager to test if this 2-3 Mbps (max.) transfer speed is as fast as it sounds.

[Edit April 18]
Alas, phone updates cannot be done over Bluetooth. So, if I want to update my phone (which I do, some day), I need to take it to the Nokia store.
[/Edit]

The other night I realised a weird “pattern” in the names of my computers. My first computer was named Simon and this one is Sullivan — Simon & Garfunkel, Gilbert & Sullivan. What next? Sonny?

Not much of a pattern, they’re just some sort of duos. (I actually thought that Gilbert and Sullivan had something to do with modern music… I was wrong.) I’ve honestly just tried to think of nice names beginning with S (as long as my computer is a Scaleo).

Do you give nicknames to your computers, gadgets or anything? (I don’t mean toys or living things. Nor euphemisms.)

Great-looking movie. Amazing music. Efficient killing. Buff men in skimpy clothes.

What more could a girl want?

I try to read as much as I can and I like to carry a book with me wherever I go. When I’m close to finishing one book, I start carrying two books with me which sometimes makes my handbag quite heavy…

Luckily, I stumbled across eBook readers for mobile phones. I’m currently using Mobipocket Reader. At for example Manybooks you can download several different formats — one of which is the Mobipocket Reader format. It’s also really easy to convert text files, HTML files or Word documents into eBooks with Mobipocket Creator.

Let’s pick a book at Project Gutenberg and convert it to Mobipocket.

I’ll pick the HTML format even though plain text would do. HTML format contains tagging for headers and things which can be used in formatting the text in eBook.

After opening Mobipocket Creator, I choose to create a new blank publication. This way it’s easy to pick the title and I can combine several files if I want.

Now I need to choose the files to include in the publication. I drag and drop the HTML file I just downloaded from Project Gutenberg.

For demonstration’s sake I’ll pick up an image to be used as the cover image. I’ll drag and drop this image into the Cover Image window.

As far as I know, the image doesn’t show in the mobile application. Instead, it’ll show up in the Mobipocket Reader’s library.

Finally, I click the build icon and the Build button.

Then I open the Mobipocket Reader and send my newly created eBook to my mobile.

The resulting eBook from this HTML looks like this:

In Mobipocket reader there are several settings. For example, if I read just before going to sleep, I change the background to black and the text to yellow. Last night I tried out teal text on black which was quite good. On the bus it’s usually best to read black on white. The font size and font type are also adjustable, as well as justified text or unjustified. There are options to add highlights, bookmarks and notes to the text as well as create hyperlinks.

What I miss is a way to check the total number of pages. There is a meter at the bottom of the screen to show how far you are in the book but it’s difficult to really make out how much there is left. Maybe it’s just me, I like to look at the number on the last page no matter how interesting the book is.