hrj

About a week ago, I started working on setting up Universal Book Links to use on my website and social media, using Books2Read.com. Previously,in a balance between philosophy and efficiency, I'd put two links on each book page: one to the publisher's site and one to the Big River. (That's for the newer stuff, the older stuff like all the Sword and Sorceress stories I just used a Big River link because they're out of print anyway.) But just as I've been trying to move away from defaulting to A*****n for the podcast book links, I wanted to put my urls where my mouth is on the website.

So a bit of poking around indicated that Books2Read seemed to be the popular choice. The theory is that (after you set up a free account) you paste in one known bookstore link to a book and B2R will identify a vast array of links to the same book appearing in other bookstores. Then it gives you the master Universal Book Link that you can use as you like. Clicking on that UBL will go to a page that lists all the identified sources for the book.
So that's the theory.

The practice is that B2R seems to be extremely irregular in its efficiency of finding links. Or it clearly has identified the book correctly (because it displays an image) but then tells you that it's having trouble identifying the book and did you make a mistake? I guess you'll have to enter all the bookstore links manually.

You know, if I wanted to enter a dozen bookstore links manually, I could just code the thing by hand on my own website and what do I need them for?

B2R is also much worse at identifying print links than ebook links. The focus on ebook links can be seen in the fact that your "starting master link" *must* be an ebook link. So you can't set up a UBL for a book that has only appeared in print.

So here's the second thing I find annoying (after the amount of manual data entry that I felt bait-and-switched into). Book UBLs are specific to the account of the person who set them up. I ran into this previously when shifting the podcast notes over to a non-Amazon-centric mode. There's no way to go to the B2R site and say "is there a UBL set up for book X?" If you find one on the author's website, you can use it, but there's no centralized way to look.

The other thing this means is that all of the promised interconnectedness promised on the B2R site only works *within* a particular account. If I want to set up a bookshelf with all my books on it? I have to set up a UBL within my account, even if someone else has already set one up. If you're visiting a UBL page for a book and you want to know what else that author has published? Clicking on the author link only gives you links for books created within the same account. So Queen of Swords has set up a UBL for The Language of Roses, but if you go to that UBL page and ask "what else has Heather Rose Jones written" you get nothing else. And if I want The Language of Roses to shop up in author links from the UBL pages that *I* set up, I have to create my own separate UBL for the book.

One of the things B2R promotes is the ability to set up "bookshelves" where you can group your favorite books, or books you're mentioning in social media, or whatever. But *you* have to create a UBL in *your* account for each book you want to put on a shelf. Not worth it.

Evidently the B2R functions integrate very smoothly with the ebook publishing side of the company, Draft2Digital, which is an option I've looked at for my plans to dip my toe into the self-publishing field. But now I'm inclined to give it a lot more scrutiny before committing, to see whether that function will be as full of infelicities as the B2R function.

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Today's tea is another new one from the Chinese tea sampler: Yunnan Dian Hong Ancient Tree Black Tea; brewed as directed at 185F for 8 minutes. Using a basket to stop the brew, and measuring one heaping teaspoon of loose tea which is loosely equivalent to the 2.5 teaspoons they suggest, as long as they mean "level" teaspoons.

The loose tea smells strongly earthy and reminds me of a good alfalfa hay on a warm summer afternoon. In the cup, the aroma is more of a generic black tea smell. The color is a medium-dark brown, more into the gray range than the golden range. The flavor is mild, not particularly bitter, but with an elusive overtone that works around the back of my tongue that I'm not sure how to describe. It's mild enough that I don't feel drawn to sweeten it, though I might try that for the last cup out of the pot.

Since I used the strainer, I may try a second brew of the leaves tomorrow.

ETA: Didn't try the second brew until Monday 8/1. Brewed for 10 minutes. A little weaker but still good. That "elusive overtone" feels a bit more like bitterness this time around and after the first cup I decided to sweeten.

I sent the following off to Splash ID tech support even though my last crazy, ridiculous stab in the dark seems to have solved my problem. I'm posting it here on the off chance that it might help someone else who stumbles across this via the right keyword search.

( No need to bore the regular readers. )

Just to clean up a few loose ends, here is a review of various techie aspects of this year's Kalamazoo experience.

The iPad Keyboard

I decided to try doing my live-blogging by iPad this year, in part to test its performance, in part because doing it on the laptop means risking running out of battery if I can't angle for a seat near an outlet (and when I can, it sometimes means creating a tripping hazard). The battery is good for a couple of sessions without recharging, but not for an entire day's worth. But while I'm happy using the screen keyboard on my commute (in fact, I prefer it, given that I regularly have to work standing up on the evening return), I knew I was unlikely to keep up with the necessary typing speed for note-taking unless I had an actual keyboard. So I went down to Fry's (yet another plus for living in Concord -- a local Fry's) and benefitted from their new policy of "salespeople get commissions for successful sales" which meant I not only got help in comparing keyboard cases, but I got enthusiastic help. I needed a combo keyboard-case that would hold a relatively rigid shape when balanced on a lap. So several candidates were immediately rejected because they needed to sit on a hard flat surface to support the screen properly. I ended up with a Kensington "KeyFolio" Bluetooth keyboard/folio case.

It worked very well for the job in question. I did have to get used to the precise limit of the angle of my lap at which the weight of the iPad would tip the whole thing forward (or, more usually, would overcome the velcro fastening of the lower edge of the pad-holder part to the keyboard part, letting the pad flop back away from me). Once the keyboard has been synced to the pad, it pairs up quickly and easily when turned on. The entire keyboard section of the case can be folded back behind the pad if you find yourself wanting to work one-handed without the keyboard. (You need to have the keyboard turned off in this mode, since the supporting hand will be pressing against the keys.) The case allows for use of both the front and back cameras and all controls are accessible. I quickly got used to using a combination of both keystrokes and gestures (e.g., while the keyboard has cursor keys, jumping to a new position in the text is still done much easier by tapping the screen). When the keyboard is on and paired, tapping the screen no longer brings up the screen-keyboard, so you get full-screen display at all times. The Kensington has excellent keyboard-feel: positive "click" action and home-spot bumps on the f & j keys as usual. While considerably smaller than a regular desktop keyboard, it's only minimally smaller than the keyboard on my MacBook, so that wasn't a problem for me.

As I note, I would use the keyboard in certain specific circumstances, not universally, but it functions very well in those circumstances. If you want to be able to keyboard in both landscape and portrait modes, then you'll need a different model. I suspect a portrait orientation wouldn't balance well on my lap, so the fact that mine won't rotate doesn't matter much. Overall: very successful at the job I bought it for.

iPad vs. Laptop as a Travel Device

I realized, at some point late in the conference, that I almost could have made it through the entire event without using my laptop at all. Not only the blogging, but e-mail, social media, and general web browsing were all very convenient and practical with the iPad + keyboard combination. The only things I actually needed the laptop for were retrieving and e-mailing several files that I wouldn't have known in advance I'd want access to. I also used it as a usb hub for recharging other devices. And Sunday evening when I was logging in my book purchases and composing the post about them, the ability of the laptop to have both files visible at the same time was convenient (although it wouldn't have been absolutely necessary). But I'm unlikely to leave the laptop home when attending events like this, simply because I never know when I might get a request for a copy of a class slideshow, or to look up a piece of data, or need to forward a draft of a paper for consideration for a future session ....

QuickOffice Pro

This is an iPad / iPhone app that can be used to create, open, and edit stripped-down versions of Microsoft Office products. "Stripped down" in that only minimal formatting can be performed and a lot of functions aren't accessible. (If you open a regular Office file to edit it, you don't lose any of the originally-included features, you just can't add or manipulate them via QuickOffice.) I've been using this extensively on the iPad when working on my novel(s) on BART and whatnot and I used it for drafting up my blog posts (rather than drafting them in the LJ interface) on the principle that I was less likely to lose work that way. Well, I was partially right.

One peculiarity of QuickOffice is that, while the program does interim saves as you're working, in order to do a "real" save, you need to exit the file and then re-open it. And when you re-open it, of course, you're back at the beginning of the file. Not a problem for small files, but annoying when one is working on a 100+ page document, both for the file-location issue and because the file size affects opening time. (One work-around I use for large text files is to use a unique non-alphabetic symbol as a "bookmark" so I can jump back to it easily using the search function.) Another peculiarity of the interim saves? They appear to be accessible only by the internal functions of the program and can't be used for recovery purposes. Evidently when you switch between apps you actually "close" the file when you leave it and re-open it from the interim save when you return to that app. But if the program crashes .... Well, let's just say I'm glad I learned that lesson on one of the least interesting sessions I was blogging, and not while composing new text on my novel.

This is a bicycle performance/route tracking application. It's aimed at people who are a bit more serious about their cycling than I am, but to balance it out I'm perhaps more serious about my iPhone toys. The main idea is to use the iPhone's GPS function to track your route, speed, and elevation, along with tracking the total ride time (including the ability to pause the record so, for example, stopping at the store doesn't screw up your overall average speed calculation). So far, except for the mapping, the functions are fairly similar to the small mechanical speed/distance tracking device I got for my bike a couple years ago. But the differences are in the details (and the extras.)

The mapping feature is, of course, not to be sneezed at. It not only shows your route against the standard iPhone version of Google maps, but adds pointers at each mile-post along the route. You can also display the map as you ride. (Positioning the iPhone so it can be viewed with safety to both rider and phone involves a Bracketron bike handlebar mount.)

You can either run metrics on each ride individually, or if you ride the same route and want to compare performance, you can save it under a name and associate new rides on the same route with that name. In addition to the numeric metrics of date/time of start, total ride time, total distance, average speed, fastest speed, maximum climb, and estimated calories burnt, you can do a graphic display of speed or elevation against the route mileage. A calendar view will show you icons for which days you recorded rides and whether the ride was better or worse than your average for the route.

But wait ... there's more! You can set up the app to generate automatic Twitter, Facebook, or email messages providing your stats and route location, either at regular intervals during a ride, or at the completion of the ride. And it is able to do text-to-speech renderings of responses to those postings. So you not only can post your progress as you go, but get feedback (they suggest "from your coach" but we know that's a crock) while in progress.

Although the name of the app indicates it was designed for cyclists, it lets you code routes as Cycle, Hike, Run, Skate, Ski, Swim, or Walk. I haven't checked it it to see if this affects any of the functionality other than how the route is labelled.

Now, the one big problem about this app is that it eats power due to the constant GPS usage. And if you set your phone not to sleep in order to use the map function continuously, it will eat it even faster. (It will continue recording your route data even if you let the phone sleep.) Back at MacWorld in February, I noticed that one of the hot popular products was external booster battery packs for iPhones, laptops, and gadgets, and my immediate thought was "what in the world would someone need all that power for?" Well, as often happens, now I know what they'd be useful for. So now I have one. It'll be interesting to see how long a full charge will last with sort of app running. I was thinking -- since it turns out I won't be painting pottery tomorrow after all -- that I might take a bit of a ride and try it out, but then I decided I really need to so some work around the house instead, so it'll have to wait.

Cyclemeter has a mid-range price: $4.99. It's sophisticated enough that you'd hardly expect it to be a two-buck app, and in fact if it weren't for the skewed pricing expectations of the app store, I'd call it under-priced. Although I plan to use it with the handlebar mount, you can get the stat-tracking functionality with it just sitting in a pocket or bag. So for anyone who happens to have an iPhone and who happens to do any significant biking at all, I'd say what the heck, give it a try!

So sometimes I browse the app store just to see if I stumble over anything interesting or useful. Today I spotted an item in the "Staff Favorites" section categorized as "Lifestyle" and named "What's Invasive?" Hmm, I thought. Maybe something trying to raise people's consciousness about inappropriate requests for personal information? Warnings about the automatic collection of on-line data?

Nope, it's something far more interesting in terms of how smart-phone applications could be used. To quote the blurb:

The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area needs your help to stop the invasion of non-native plants!

Do you visit the Santa Monica mountains to hike or walk or just sometimes enjoy getting out of the city? Do you want to help the Park Service maintain the natural beauty and habitat of native plants and animals?

You CAN help, by downloading the What's Invasive app and using your iPhone to take pictures of the top six most invasive plants in the area while you are in the park. Those photos are geo-tagged and time-stamped, and that information is then sent to the National Park Service so they can locate and destroy these harmful invasives before they get out of control."

Now that's thinking outside the box! (The programmer has a sense of humor as well -- the graphics crib from classic horror film imagery.) The credits note "This project is in collaboration with the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing at UCLA ..." so I'm guessing that it may be someone's student project. If so, I hope they got a good grade for innovative thinking. The weakest point in the strategy seems to be the necessarily highly-targetted market (people carrying iPhones while hiking in this specific park). On the other hand, given that the app is free (duh!) and that apps can be downloaded directly off the net, then simply promoting it at entrances and other key points of the specific park might be successful enough for the purpose.

It's definitely a nice break from browsing through endless app-clones.

I love my iPhone packing list app. I think I've finally gotten the hang of how to bend it to my own personal quirks. (It wasn't originally designed for intensive camping gear organization or packing for gourmet cooking or for handling costuming issues ... but it can learn.) They key seems to be applying the principle of modularity to the list templates. So, for example, the template for packing for an SCA campout includes a single item "clothing module", but then there are separate list templates for all the standard time/place/gender outfits I wear. Similarly, the main packing list includes the item "pavilion module", where the separate "pavilion module" template includes everything necessary for setting up the pavilion. (Because there are times when I might want to include the pavilion module in a day-trip packing list without including all the other standard weekend-event items, such as the camp kitchen.) This may mean that a specific trip may include half a dozen packing list modules, but each module involves minimal customization for any particular event. The true usage test will come when I use it for an event when I'm not still setting up the templates and modules. As usual, the process is almost more fun than the actual functionality.