all things me

Human Brain Cloud.

It’s so easy to keep adding words there instead of doing something mandatory, like writing an essay on localisation — due tomorrow.

Well, only in part. I often find myself scratching my head when shopping: I stand in front of a bookshelf or a DVD shelf and can’t for the life of me remember if I’ve bought a specific book or a specific movie.

B.N. (Before N73) I used to carry a small note where I’d listed all the King books I have and, more recently, all King movies I have. Nowadays it’s easier for me to remember which King books I don’t have (that is, only Cycle of the Werewolf and any recently released — currently Blaze), so the book list is pretty much unnecessary. I haven’t listed other books I have because books are things I remember more easily. A.N. (Anno N73) I’ve surfed to my Stephen King site, to the Bookshelf page and waited, waited, waited for the pretty pictures to load. I don’t have to worry about moving too many bits because I’ve never come close to the 25 Mb per month I pay for, but it’s the wait that bothers me.

My “Achilles heel” in the remembering department are movies. Although my movie collection is small by movie-buff standards, I often buy a DVD and put it on the shelf without watching it right away. I also record quite a bit from TV. And I don’t usually have my sister with me (she remembers my movie purchases better because she usually watches all additions as soon as I bring them home; movie-deprived, that one).

Therefore, I decided to create a mobile-friendly version of my movie and King book collections. Possibly in the future I’ll make the different pages modular so I only have to update one or two files but for now the mobi site is plain and simple HTML. I set the font size to 60% so that I don’t have to zoom out on the phone. (I view pages at 50% zoom.)

Without further ado, I present: mobi.all-things-me.net. Pretty much for my viewing pleasure only. The movie collection isn’t complete because I haven’t listed all my VHSs (bought and taped) or all movies I’ve recorded from TV.

Here’s a snapshot of it on my mobile:

For quite a while now my university email has been hit by numerous spam emails every day. I don’t quite understand how spammers have got my email address because it hasn’t been on any open websites (only unlinked assignment pages).

Maybe this is a new way of smoking out the old students! Along with load of Bologna, the study time has been restricted. However, us old students can study for a while longer — uncontrollably (I suppose there are 10-year checks or something). So now they’ve decided to spam us, hoping we would get fed up with it and hurry up with our degrees.

Ha, I’m onto you!

– – –

But of course, there are several mailing lists at the university so most likely one or more of them have been compromised.

For a long while I’ve been wanting to re-do my site — the blog, more specifically. I try and sketch, find colour schemes, and start coming up with the basic structure. The problem is, I have no graphic design talent.

Finding nice colours is quite easy, there are lots of tools to make it even easier, too. I have collected hundreds of fonts through the years and there are the selected few that I really like. But after those are taken care of, I should start making my site pretty. That’s when I hit the wall.

I can’t draw (seriously), I possibly can doodle but doodling doesn’t make pretty. Of course, I could make my site with only coloured boxes, but that’s quite dull.

I took a look at my past designs and I may just resort to using one of the old ones (coded better, of course). However, I’d really really like to create something new. Maybe I’ll finally continue with the design which was in the “final polishings” stage two years ago(!!!) — if I can find the files, that is.

How do you do it? Are you one of the lucky ones who have an artistic bone in their body? Do you use some sort of resources to help with the design?

[Edit May 18] And where do you get an idea for the design?! I’ve only managed to think of the main colour so far. Argh! [/Edit]

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.

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.)

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]

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.”

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).

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Dear English-speaking reader. There should be a space between “väärin” (= wrongly, mis-) and “käyttäjätunnuksesi” (= your username). “Väärin” specifies the word “kirjoitit” (= you typed).