Author Archives: Bob Evans

A Review of the EZReader PRO

On August 31, Astak began shipping their EZReader PRO eBook readers. The EZReader PRO is an eBook reader with a 5″ e-ink screen. After the usual trials and tribulations of courier shipping I received my EZReader PRO on Friday.
The Box Despite the image on the box, the reader I ordered is black in color. On the side of the box is the listing of the colors and a little sticker lets you know which color is in the box. I have been wanting to go over to eBooks for more than a year now, but I waited for the right eReader to come along.
I’m not a fan of the Kindle for a number of reasons. The two biggest reasons are that the Kindle is a closed format system and I have never liked being locked into a single format. I’m more of an open-source kind of guy. The other reason that Amazon.com is trying to hard to control the publishing industry from copyright thru sales and I do not think it is good for one company to control too much of the market.
I hesitated in going for eBooks because I like supporting independent book sellers but I finally took the plunge for ebooks when I learned my favorite local bookstore, Mysterious Galaxy, sells eBooks vis their web site. So now I have the best of both worlds.

WHATS IN THE BOX:
IN THE BOX Moving from left to right here’s what came in the box.
1) USB cable for connecting to your PC or Mac.
2) User Manual in English and Chinese.
3) 1GB SD data card with 300 free eBooks. (Public Domain titles) [update – turns out on those who pre-ordered the EZReader PRO or who buy it during September will get the SD card with the 300 free books.]
4) 1 Crush resistance leather case with the eReader already inside.
5) AC adapter for recharging the device away from a computer.
6) Ear Buds, carrying strap, and small screwdriver for accessing battery panel. (All bagged together)
The packaging was not particularly environmental, but it was efficient and everything was packed securely for shipment. I do not know if the crush-resistant case is real leather or fax leather, but frankly in my book that doesn’t make much of a difference. I do like that the case is held closed by a magnetic catch and not a velcro or a physical snap. With enough wear and tear both of those options would fail far too quickly for my tastes.

The Reader So here’s the reader sitting in its crush-resistant case. You can see the display turned and even in this photograph is quite legible. The display is 5″ diagonally, has a resolution of 600*800 pixels, and has 8 levels of greyscale. Because this is an electronic paper display, it take no power to display the image but only to change the image. The reader has a Samsung Arm9 400 MHz process. This produces very quick pages turns, though turning a page is still slower than physically flipping a leaf in a book. I adapted very quickly to the pacing of the machine and now I hardly notice the pages turns. Accessing menus is a bit slower. Generally you hold a menu button for two-seconds and then several seconds after that the menu will appear.
The listed formats supported by the EZReader Pro are: ADE, PDF, DOC, RTF, HTML, TXT, MP3, WOL, CHM, RAR, ZIP, Fb2, DJVU, EPUB, BMP, JPG, TIF, PNG, GIF, PDB, PPT, and LIT.
I have not tested ALL of those formats, but I went online and downloaded several free eBooks in various formats. I also went to Mysterious Galaxy and purchased one book in the Adobe Digital Edition format. (ADE) I can say that the RTF, TXT, DOC, EPUB, and ADE all worked fine. Depending the format some functions changed. For example depending on the format changed how many steps of font increase were available. Most eBooks and all the PDFs were simply too small for be read on the device is displayed in the native size. An 8 1/2″ by 11″ pages squeezed down on a 5″ display simply cannot be read. Pressing the ‘8’ key on the device steps the users through increasing font sizes and at the larger factors the image or rotated into landscape for viewing.
There are three ways of flipping pages. A left-handed person — I am right handed — could simply use the left and right arrow buttons on the left edge of the device. For a right handed person there are page flipping buttons, the ‘9’ and the ‘0’ at the bottom of the device. There is also a lever on the right side, not visible in these photos, pulling down on the lever advances a page and pushing up goes backwards a page. Holding any of the page turning switches for two-seconds will advance or back up the display by ten pages.
Provided the format supports bookmarks, such as ADE, each title can have up to five active bookmarks. You place a bookmark by pressing one of the number keys 1-5 while on the pages you want to bookmark. (It must be a currently unused bookmark number or you will simply flip to that current mark.) To erase a book mark, simply be on the bookmarked page and pressing the corresponding bookmark number to reset it.
The device does a very good job of reopening a book to where you left off, but the bookmarks are most useful when you are reading more than one file at a time. Simply open the file, tap the bookmark number, and you’re right back where you left off.
I took me a while to get the hang of transferring files to the device. I understood mounting and ejecting a USB drive device, and the generic files transferred just fine, but I was stuck for a while with the ADE files. That turned out not to be the device but rather my inexperience with ADE.
If you get an eBook reader and want to read ADE files, but sure to get the software you need from Adobe first. It will make life easier.
I tested the text-to-speech on the device, but the electronic voice was too electronic for me. I often have a hard time with those sort of voices and my opinion on the matter may not be a very valid one.
I have not loaded up any MP3s to play on the EXReader PRO as I have an iPod and I am very happy with that as my main music player.

Overall I liked the EZReader PRO and given that it is the lowest costing eBook reader using e-ink technology, it should be near the top of your list if you are considering an eBook reader for pleasure reading.

{UPDATE – MY EZReader PRo has developed a fault. IT’s refusing to mount on either computer I own. I am currently working with Aztek tech support to clear the issue and I will let you know the final resolution.}

[Further Update: The device is mounting again as an ejectable drive. Tech support has been helpful and we think it may be a defective USB cable which they have offered to replace. At the moment everything is working again.]

For all those people stumbling in from Astek’s website, Welcome. I hope the review is useful and please do feel free to poke around my internet home.

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Video Game Saturday

So yesterday was a video game Saturday here at my place. I had four friends over and we connected four xbox 360’s together into a local network and had five people on four screens.
(This worked out well as I have a 42″ LCD HDTV and two people can share that screen quite easily.)
Mostly we played Halo 3 because it was not picky about who had which version.
Personally I like playing Call Of Duty more, but the programers of that game make it difficult for players to put together their own local area network games.
1st) they require that everyone be on the same version of the game. So those who have been playing on-line and updating their software now have software that is incompatible with the original discs.
2nd) When doing a LAN game the programmers of Call OF Duty do not allow players to share screen. One player to a scree, so the max number of players in a system link game is 4. (‘Cause you cannot connect more than 4 Xbox 360 together in a system link.) With Halo of to 4 people can be on each Xbox 360 so you could have up to 16 players on a local system link game.

Because of this we played a lot of HALO 3. When we tired of HALO 3, we switched to Call Od Duty:World At War and played the bonus zombie levels. They are a lot of fun, but we could only play two people at a time. One on my machine and one on my friend’s Nathan;s machine.

We did have a break for dinner, that my lovely sweetie-wife made for us. A simple dinner of hotdogs and salads, but with good friends and good conversation it was very pleasant.

This afternoon we’ll do board and card gaming so my sweetie-wife can join in.

Life is good,

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Odd bits here and there

So it has been kinda slow day at the day job and I’ve spent a little break time on the internet.
I ended up on google maps looking at maps and pictures of my old hometown in Florida. (Verus my old hometown in North Carolina, moving when young can produce the two hometown syndrome.)

It was kind of odd the changes and the lack of changes. I found I could measure the distance from my old home to the home of a girl I was rather taken with back then. I used to walk from my house to hers and now I know that was about a seven mile walk.

(For those terribly curious, we dated, got engaged, never married and are now friends.)

I also saw a photo on google street view of a donut shop I used to stop at in the mornings on my way to school. Still there. I fondly remember getting a bag of donut holes to eat as I waited to be bussed to school.

I couldn’t find the old SunRise Theater where I saw so many movies. Either I was looking in the wrong spot or it’s history.

Curious the bits of memory and floatsam we gather in our lives.

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Experimenting

So as you can see if you have been to the blog before — and I suspect that is likely the case — I have selected a different theme for the blog.
Tell me what you think.
Is the new one better?
Worse?
No real difference to you?

Today was a frustrating day. I was late getting out of work due to a last minute call (Luckily I was able to help the pt so it didn’t feel wasted.) Then my sweetie-wife and I ran to the wrong FedEx location to pickup my package which is my new e-book reader.

We couldn’t get a consistent answer as to when the location with the package would close. Some said 5pm — and I don’t get off work until 5 pm, and others said 9 pm. I finally located the number for the facility — both answers were correct from a certain point of view (there were two facilities at the same address.) — but it didn’t do me any good today.

Luckily a very nice woman at the facility was able to re-route the delivery so I should have it delivered at work tomorrow.

We’ll see.

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A plan

So later this month I plan to do a couple of things I have been wanting to do for years. Some of this may seem cheesy and very touristy but hey it’s my time and money and not yours.
So I’m going to get dropped off at the Amtrak station on a Friday morning and take the train to L.A. From there I will make my way over to the Warner Brothers Studio and take their grand five hour tour. It’s pricey but I have wanted to do it since i first heard about it six or seven years ago.
Universal used to have a decent studio tour with a theme park element to it, now it is all theme park with the theme being movie studio. The WB tour is Monday – Friday of a working movie and TV studio. The five hour tour takes you into all the departments of the studio and includes a catered lunch in the Studio Cafeteria. I don’t think any of my friends think this is worth the price — or don’t have the cash at the moment to do it — so I will be doing it alone. (My sweetie-wife is not the movie fan I am so she will stay home during this, hence the train ride.)
Afterwards I’ll make my way over to Medieval Times and take in the dinner and show. Yeah this is very touristy, but ever since I’ve heard about the place I’ve wanted to do it once. I never got into the SCA, but I am a D&D player and fan so at least once I want to see the jousting battles — yeah I know as real as pro-wrestling– and just have the fun. My sweetie-wife will join me for this and then we’ll drive home.

I am so looking forward to it.

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The Sharpest Shiv

Back after the 2004 election President Bush famously announced he had earned some political capital adn he was going to spend it.
he wanted to overhaul out social security and retirement system.
I think the system is in need to reformation and expect without intervention we’re going to have some rough seas ahead. (that”s not to say I endorsed any particular Plan of Bush’s, just that I agree with the need.)
The Democratic party fought Bush tooth and nail on the plan and managed to kill it by pulling out the sharpest shiv in the cell block known as American Politics, Scare The Seniors.
Once they had scared the seniors, the Democrats had won their war.

Now it’s 2009 and President Obama is trying to reform the Health Care system in this country. Again I agree it needs to be done with agreeing to any particular plan out there right now.

The Republicans are now the ones fighting tooth and nail and they have taken the weapon sharpened by the Democratic party and used it to their own ends. It’s another round of Scare the Seniors.

Neither party is made of principles and both parties are more interested in killing the others legislation than in really solving the problems we face.

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Sunday Night Movie: MST3K Attack Of The Giant Leeches

leeches Not everything I watch is a classic film and I don’t always choose something for serious viewing.
When I want to have fun it rarely gets better than watching Joel (or Mike) and the ‘bots having at some terribly directed, written, and produced movie. I was not disappointed by MST3K’s take on Attack Of The Giant Leeches.
In the swamps of Florida, near Cape Kennedy, giant leeches are attacking people and making off with them. The leeches keep the people alive in a cave as sort of a blood larder. No one believes the survivors when they tell of monsters and soon it’s up to a local game warden, his lovely wife, and her father the doctor to prove what is happening and save the day.
This episode turned out to be one of the funniest I have seen. There was a moment when we had to pause the DVD while I recovered from laughing and my sweetie-wife recovered from pushing water through her sinus cavity. (German expressionistic humor does that to us.)

This was an early season where they still did invention exchange and the chemistry still worked like a charm.

If you are a fan of the show and haven’t seen this one, by all means get it.

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DVD Review: The Brotherhood Of The Wolf

brotherhood_of_the_wolf Via Netflix my sweetie-wife and I watched the French film from 2001. Because I am currently struggling with a werewolf short story of my own, I have been renting and watching werewolf movies. Or at least movies I thought to be werewolf movies. The Brotherhood Of The Wolf is not a werewolf film.

The film is set in 18th century France, in the province of  Gevaudan, where a strange and terrible beast is killing people. Despite the best efforts of the local people and authorities the beast eludes all attempts to kill or capture it. The king sends one man, Gregoire de Fronsac (Samuel Le Bihan) the royal naturalist and taxidermist to deal with the trouble.  Fronsac brings along with him his friend and guide an American Indian, Mani (Mark Dacascos.) the pair find that things are not so straight-forward in the province. Roving gangs attack people at will and secrets seem to abound. They quickly make allies and enemies as they seek to uncover the nature of the beast that stalks the countryside.

This really is a very unusual film. It is a period film photographed in a rich and style that really capture the elegance and decadence of France shortly before the revolution. It is also a martial arts film (Though in the subtitles during the bonus features it was once referred to as a marital arts films. I’m not the only one who has to watch his typing.) Mark Dacascos is a Hawaiian martial arts expert and this is not wasted in the film. So this is a film with anachronisms, Mohawk Indians fighting like oriental monks, a large digital beast killing and maiming, and weapons (in the climax) that have to be rendered digitally because they could not be made and function as the director envisioned them.

Despite the flaws, primarily that the ending goes too far over the top, this is a film worth seeing. The biggest surprise to me came in the bonus material.

The Beast of Gevaudan is apparently a historical incident. There was some beast loose in that province at that time. It killed at least 122 people and evaded hunts that numbered more than 20,000 hunters. The King was forced to send troops to deal with the situation and they failed. According to the author of a book on the subject the beast was never properly identified. Some historians think it was wolves, but wolves do not attack people except in very rare situations. The film proposes one answer to the riddle of the Beast of Gevaudan — apparently a well known story in France — and the author has another.

This film is worth a look see.

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