Gordon Woolf's Blog

What's best for travelling?

My most recent trip away was three days by car and for the first time I took my 3kg+ laptop. Usually I travel with what was almost the first of the netbooks, the eeePC 701.

So how do they compare?

Travelling by car, the hefty laptop is more convenient and there can be everything available that you'd expect at home. It'll run Windows if that's what you run at home - in fact it can be your main computer even at home, so you know how to do everything.

The down side is the weight (it would have accounted for half the total baggage for one allowed on our recent trip by air over Lake Eyre, and once you are out of the cities you realise the effect of all your regular internet checks for things like desktop gadgets (weather, shares, exchange rate etc) add to slowing up your 2G mail and other web downloads. It may be a good idea to set up a specific "user" for travelling.

So, for air, train etc I'll still go for the little netbook. Yes, the screen is too small (it is one of the original 7" screens, there are 10" ones now which would be better) but it weighs just over 900g or 1200g with mini-mouse, charger and modem and it is a third the size of the laptop.

I'm tempted by a tablet, but so far it is only temptation - and there's that additional benefit in favour of the netbook: it cost $500 but that's when they were something new and most of that value has been written off over the years. I could replace it for around $250 so its loss or damage isn't going to hit me hard (though its replacement could just possibly be a Galaxy if I have to make a decision while travelling and a store has one).

As to wireless availability, my experiences in central Australia late in 2010 still appear to be current. Something simpler such as a netbook with Linux will get and send email faster than most laptops but I can't yet compare that to a tablet, especially one of the cheaper ones running the Android OS. I never like throwing out something that is still working well, so for the time being my almost ancient netbook will be my main means of communication when away from home and office.

On this latest trip the wireless connection via our second major national carrier was excruciatingly slow - and the motel's wifi, running from a landline link, was not much faster. Perhaps when the networks get better outside of the capital cities I will give way to the tablet temptation.

The need to make a profit

The radio caller was critical of banks, which is not unusual, but she put it in a somewhat odd way: 'I have to pay them interest, but what do they actually DO (for me?)'.

This may be partly the reason for the current Occupy movements around the world. To some youngsters it may just seem that if their parents run out of money, they just have to go to "the hole in the wall', but to those parents does it also seem that if they can buy computers, washing machines, furniture and so much more on "48 months interest free", why should the banks charge interest. After all they are only giving you money for a while, not goods permanently.

I know that doesn't make sense, but it kinda sounds logical.

The reason for the demonstrations that I have sympathy with is that it is no longer true that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer -- it is, some people have pointed out with figures and graphs, that the super-rich are getting richer, and that the rich and the poor are getting poorer.

I could claim that some of my best friends are millionaires, which is not quite true but I have known a couple well enough to visit their homes and have them visit mine. I don't envy them. Sure they make more money than I ever had but they do have to work unusual and long hours and the stress level is more than I would want, even though as a newspaper editor I once flourished on stressful work.

But we now have company directors who get pay increases by the millions and yet manage to do similar work for several companies at the same time. If their individual jobs were at the stress level of "my" millionaires, they'd have been dead long ago.

That's what I mean by things getting less fair. And therefore in general terms the Occupy movement has my moral support.

I'm not particularly blaming the chain store owner with his 48-months interest free and similar offers. The one I have in mind has said that people are stupid to accept some of the offers made in his stores as they don't suit everyone.

It is necessary for businesses to make a profit in order to reinvest but there is a big difference between making a fair profit and making the most that you can. Is the first aim of company directors to make the most profit for their shareholders or a profit which will ensure that the company continues to be viable into the future? Customers are important too, with the rest of the community needing at least a little consideration occasionally.

I don't think the unfairness claim can be made against more than a small number of the people who run companies -- it just seems like that sometimes.

A reminder of air travel as it should be

I thought that I did not like air travel. But a few weeks ago Gwen and I took a few days for a holiday trip over Lake Eyre, Australia's inland sea which is usually just salt, but which has been filled now for two years running.

I was fortunate to see an advertisement that a tiny air-travel business (four planes and a helicopter) were running a three-day two-night tour from Tooradin airfield, 20-minutes’ drive from home.

We drove in to the airfield, up to the office, carried our bag in where we were met by the pilot who took the bag, weighed it and took it out to the plane, an 8-passenger Piper Chieftain, sitting ready the other side of a fence you could have stepped over. We were introduced by his wife to the other passengers, then led back to our cars to drive to the "secure" area for them on the other side of the hanger. We ambled back across the tarmac, had a coffee and the pilot said it was time to get going.

Before we boarded the pilot ran through the usual safety preamble with the lifejacket (which still has to be done even though most of our trip was over desert, admittedly somewhat wet desert, then it was an invitation to sit where we liked and the lolly jar was handed around.

One of the "towns" we landed at, William Creek, has a permanent population of 2 and is on the Oodnadatta track, a "road" definitely more deserving of the description "track". The pilot apologised that he could no longer taxi to the back door of the pub, so we'd have to walk the last 50 yards. A sign at the sealed airstrip's parking area says to pay the $25 landing fee ($30 for ours as it had two engines) at the hotel bar.

As might be expected when you are visitng small towns in what really is the Outback, mobile phone and wireless broadband coverage was somewhat patchy (at Lyndhurst we were told you could get a connection on Telstra or Optus on a small hill a kilometre along the road) but even the most deserted pubs offer landline or satellite connections and the Lyndhurst Hotel even had an inhouse computer repair service advertised on the noticeboard).

Incidentally we can thoroughly recommend the hamburgers at William Creek which need a couple of kebab sticks to hold them together. Only about four or five aircraft landed for lunch that day but our pilot told us it is not uncommon to have 20.

So it is not air travel which is the problem, it's large airports.

Is the future in The Cloud?

It was only a few years ago that Bill Gates and others were promoting the always-connected theme and even formed an always-on association to promote the idea of never turning your computer off; computer manufacturers were encouraged to not have a power switch, just a button which could leave the computer able to wake up on a call from the local or wide area network.

At the time I was not only sceptical but wrote articles pointing out the cost to the economy of wasted power usage and dangers from hackers having that always-on access to millions of computers.

They trashed the always-on promotion in response to pressure worldwide and most computers got their on/off switch back. But what they forecast has happened.

I still switch my computers off overnight, but the modem/router stays connected so we can still make and receive VOIP calls and the PCs immediately reconnect to the Internet when they are switched on.

A recent trip reminded me that there are large areas of this country where there are no Internet connections (nor mobile or cell phone coverage) because there are so few people, and where it exists outside capital cities and so the idea of working in the cloud is impossible.

I was wrong the first time. Maybe not this time as I've changed sides. We need better connections outside major cities before it can happen, and probably need a better and smaller way of satellite connection so mobile country connections can be usable and affordable for travellers (a permanent outback resident can opt for a satellite connection now and most large farms/cattle stations etc, even some communities, already have them).

The cloud does make sense, but to be usable outside of city centres it needs technological advances that, in my view, put it at least 3 to 5 years away.

Open letter to a publisher thinking of switching to online

Yet another magazine sent me a notification that it was going online. This time it was to be just a trial, but here is a slightly edited version of my reply:

While I can understand the desire of publishers to change to online provision of magazines, I would suggest that this is not as much in a reader’s interest. It is largely a transfer of costs from publisher to reader rather than a true saving in costs (and therefore in resources).

For example, I have a 10GB monthly download limit and while I usually stay within that, it means that on the occasions when I might not, it is quite likely that a magazine file will have to wait until the new month or be ignored altogether. My minimum cost to add an extra couple of GB of download is a one-off $20 payment or, alternatively, to increase by $10 every month to go to a higher limit which may not be used.

If I wish to show something to my wife or look at it more closely it means printing it out which again increases costs at my end, and though I’d often choose to print on my relatively ancient laser printer at a few cents a page, it might have coloured content that makes it more likely that I’d print on my inkjet at perhaps a dollar or more a time for a 2- or 3-page article.

The print edition will also normally be passed on to someone at the local computer club or U3A or community house (or even the local branch of the Australian Shareholders Association  (though that I no longer attend with any frequency). At any of those it may well attract further interest and possibly subscribers before being recycled (at least I can hope it is recycled). The online edition, if downloaded, will consume electricity and broadband fees before being deleted, i.e. gone for ever. Online for you it will continue to cost storage fees.

I can see a lot of sense in making some content available only online, especially the tables which have to be printed in such small type that they cannot be read by most people with my aged eyes. News too may be better online but most articles tend to be scanned much more quickly on screen than in print...and therefore not read as thoroughly.

So, unless you plan to also reduce article lengths and their number and interest, I’d suggest that at the very least you investigate a thinner, more cheaply printed edition with web links, preferably in a short form or linking to an index page online for more information.

I note your comments that the online version is just a trial but it does take several seconds to go from low to high resolution on a page and I note that links within pages are not live.

Lastly, it is a Flash file and I presume you have noted that the iPad does not accept Flash files and does seem to be the only real eReader suitable for viewing online magazines, at least until we see HP’s contender.

Indented paragraphs and period spaces

A recent Tweet about the pilcrow, that backward-P mark to indicate the end of paragraphs, reminded me of a piece I wrote a while ago answering someone who wanted to know why people used indented paragraphs with no space between lines and two spaces after a period, suggesting it was all due to newspapers.

Indented paras with no space between, yes that’s newspaper style, but two spaces after a period? Only in very amateurish newspapers which do not realize that in most fonts the extra space is built in with the actual dot at the left hand end of the glyph.

Spacing between paragraphs is quite common in newspapers when text is set ragged right, either as a style or for special features. And paragraph spacing is a common ploy to make stories fit.

Simple backup and transfer of Thunderbird

One of the problems with using Thunderbird for email and Firefox as a browser is that it is difficult to find the files to back up and more so to be sure that you have all the files you need. I came across this when I needed to transfer all settings and stored emails from XP to Windows 7.

Enter MozBackup, from http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/

It is freeware developed by Pavel Cvrcek from the Czech Republic and is how programs should be: no entries in the registry, just unzip and put the exe file where you want it. It finds installed copies of the various Mozilla programs (a lot more than just Thunderbird and Firefox) and when you click the one you want to backup it offers to deal with all the suitable settings but gives you the option to deselect, so you could use it to back up just settings, or just emails.

It then offers a backup file name suggestion (usefully incorporating the date) and offers a place to store it but you can change those.

I wondered whether it would work in reinstalling when copied to Windows 7, which puts the files in different places to XP. but it worked perfectly. There in Windows 7 was Thunderbird with all the settings and emails I had in XP. I then repeated the process for Firfox and again it just worked.

When I had a problem with Windows 7 and went back for a while to XP, the process worked in reverse -- not a lost email or bookmark.

New use for old carbon paper

My huge but now ancient stock of carbon paper has been going down fast since I introduced some toddlers to it: "See, you put it between two sheets of paper and what you draw on this sheet is also on that one".

I'm not sure their mums like it that much even though some was the "new kind" several decades ago which did not spread the mess quite so far.

I was able to explain to a couple of the parents that this was what the term “cc” as used in their email program came from. And that “bcc” means “blind carbon copy”, referred to carbon copies when their recipients were not listed on the top copy of a letter or document.

Future in Internet Radio

Most of my media experience has been with newspapers and magazines, but there have been a couple of short periods of involvement with radio, once with the ABC and then with community radio. That may explain why I was intrigued with the idea of internet radio and had been listening to the internet feeds of a few radio stations. Unfortunately that ties the listener to the computer unless you go for extensive wiring or set the volume excessively loud. It is thus not surprising that my latest toy is an internet radio. What is an internet radio? This one looks like any other "kitchen radio", somewhat bigger than a bedside clock radio, mainly so it can have a better quality speaker, though still just one; it picks up its signal not from normal broadcasting but from your own wireless router. That means it connects to radio stations for their digital online services but directly to their web address via the router/modem without needing a computer. I'd been looking at what was on the market, but felt that the prices of from $299 up was too expensive for less electronics than in a $15 alarm clock. Then I saw that Aldi were offering one at $149. Still expensive but below my current mental limit for something I might play with and then discard.  I've since discovered that the current awareness of what these things are is so low that Woolworths were having a cleraance of Sagem models at some DSE and Tandy stores. It did not take long to get it going, with only a couple of "switch off and start again" detours. I was concerned that the manual says the date and time which show when switched on will not survive the power being turned off. Would the other settings hold? Answer: yes they do, switch off the radio, unplug from the transformer/power supply plug, reconnect, turn on and it automatically reconnected to my router (I'm using WEP) and to the station that was playing before. So I can shift it from room to room and turn it off at the socket, which I'd need to if it is the bedroom as the backlit blue screen is as bright as Lunar Park (well, almost, definitely bright enough to keep us awake). The other thing I miss is even a basic tone control. My office is somewhat reflective (lots of windows and vertical blinds, no curtains) so I'd like to knock the top off a little — but it seems this is a fault not only of the Aldi radio but of most models, and of internet radio on the PC too unless you go deep into software settings. Incidently it is clearly branded "Pure" despite the model number of AV-BT1506 indicating it may have been contracted out by Pure for the Aldi order. Pure's current internet radio as seen on their sites is more advanced but also more expensive. The radio comes with an access code to the Frontier web site which works well as the radio picked up my new account listing there within a few seconds, and you can use folders to separate listings into genre or whatever. Apparently Frontier make the chips used in many brands of internet radios. There are around 7000 radio stations available from the two-line LCD display but it can be a lot easier to set up your own list of favourite stations on the Frontier web site and then allocate the best of those to the eight presets. One of the first accidental finds was Australian Showcase on a station called CMR Nashville that seems to be based somewhere in Europe. (I'd prefer jazz but this is my wife's favourite kind of music and showing her that she can get the music she likes while the ABC was at this time obsessed with the football Grand Finals by simply pressing a couple of buttons was easily justifying the expense). Since then I've found that CBC (the Canadian ABC equivalent) seemed obsessed with the US elections despite having one of their own, from the BBC London station that the jewish bakery/deli that my dad used to take me for a salt beef beigel on a Sunday morning when I was about 10 is still in business (alongside the more recent Bangladeshi curry houses), and that it is a novelty for most Londoners to be getting water meters. So, what will be the future for internet radio? There seem to be signs that they may become much more portable. A battery operated version the size of the old transistor radios would be more portable around the home and garden even if restricted to the coverage of the user's wireless router/modem. And outlets for headphones and audio in general should become universal. Perhaps they can be combined with MP3 players of the iPod kind.  Tomorrow's internet radio may not be like the ones we have today but with many thousands of radio feeds already available and with dozens being added each week, my guess is that they'll become much more common. Even in the past few weeks the number and quality of ads on a couple of stations listed among my favourites have shown a healthy increase, so the financial return to stations may also become better even against current trends. There are already network ad inserters offering ads on up to 600 stations but the best returns for advertisers are likely to be for those ads which are relevent to the listeners either by interest or region. The other problem to overcome is the relationship in the music forms of internet radio between income from ads and the payments out to music rights owners. Currently there is a reprieve from high rates originally proposed for US law.

How long do CDs and DVDs last?

So how long do CDs and DVDs last? Sometimes things on the Internet take on a life of their own. That's why I occasionally engage in what is often called "egosurfing" -- that's searching for your own name in Google or other search engines. It can be done by authors to check on illegal use of their material and I've known several fellow writers who have found their words in places where they did not expect them. In my case I have a lot of content that is offered free for non-commercial use provided it includes my byline and a reference to either a specific book of mine or to a more general description of the kind of books I write, (Googling my name will show that a good number of computer user groups have used my articles with correct attribution). It is seven years since I wrote an article for the Melbourne PC User GTroup, the largest computer user group in the world, asking "How long will a CD-R last?" It received widespread republication worldwide and many crosslinks to the original article at http://www.melbpc.org.au/pcupdate/2106/2106article14.htm Then it started to take on a life of its own, and as the article got older I'd still get fairly frequent emails from all over the world with questions on whether the conclusions in the article were still current. I had to reply that while I could not vouch for most, one of those conclusions, that most problems with CDs and therefore most likely with DVDs too occurred while they were being written, rather than in their storage, did seem to be still accurate. Only last month I was given a CD by a relative which was supposed to contain a mass of family photos. It contained nothing. The person who gave it to me was reluctant to go back to the person who had produced the CD but eventually, after getting several people to try it, got another copy -- which again did not work. I suspect that many backup CDs will have the same problem. They will fail when needed a few weeks or months later but not because of any gradual failure in the material. They were not created properly in the first place. However, returning to my theme, my latest find on Google was that the article is referenced as a source in a new book, Robots in Space: Technology, Evolution, and Interplanetary Travel by  Roger D. Launius and Howard E. McCurdy, published this year by Johns Hopkins University Press. You'll find it on Amazon. The real question is, as my article was really just a layman's summary of published research and manufacturers' claims around eight or more years ago, why has no one produced similar advice brought up to date?