The way all computing should be?

A few days ago I was bemoaning that I had to get a new computer this half term. My XP desktop is nearly 8 years old and had started being a bit temperamental. Very bloody temperamental.

So it was off to get a new desktop yesterday, with me fully expecting to have to spend the next few days tweaking it all and getting it just right. Except it didn't work out that way at all. In fact, by 9 tonight I was finished. Everything worked quickly, installed smoothly, files transferred like a dream. Hell, even iTunes picked up all my music and artwork and didn't mess them up at all.

Unbelievable. Windows 7 seems pretty nice so far - in the barely notice it's there sense, like any operating system should do. Even better than that - practically silent, almost eerily so. I find myself noticing the quiet, more for the absence of noise than anything else. The old machine could occasionally manage to find some sort of frequency of fan whirring noise that would play havoc with my tinnitus. But every so often with this one I find myself turning down the music just to try to make out the noise.

So I was wrong. Yes, if I would have had a £1000 spare I'd probably have gone for a Mac. But I didn't, so Windows 7 will just have to do. And so far, it's doing rather well.

A little computer history....

Probably of very little interest to anyone but me, but what the hell....

I think I got my first computer around autumn 1995 - over a £1000 from a local PC company in Dudley. A Windows 95 machine with no internet. Relatively high spec as I recall, but not certain of the exact specs. I also paid out full price for a copy of Office 95 Professional. I must have been mad, but for some reason I decided I needed Access to learn databases.

I spent hours pouring through the Windows manual and the Office 95 manual working out how to use it. Learnt how to use Access by making a huge database of my comic collection at the time, all beautifully cross referenced and organised. Now I don't have comics, and I dont have Access. But back then it was a real big deal.

Second computer was a Windows 98 machine, and again I have no real idea when I bought it, but it had Internet which puts it at sometime before Molly was born in 1999 - only because we remember using the Internet to search for what to do about colic!

Again the machine cost over £1000 for a relatively high spec, and again I paid out for Office 97 Pro. Oh, how things have changed. You wont find me doing that anymore. Either a copy of Office 2003 or go Open Office. Even at school we still use or licensed version of Office 2000. There's very little chance of us upgrading to MS Office 2007 - cost mostly but also because both I and the ICT co-ordinator like the idea of teaching our children how to do things with computers, not how to become slaves to Microsoft applications.

And the third computer came along in January 2003. Again fairly pricey, but the spec was pretty good for those days: Windows XP, 2.9Ghz, 120GB hard disk, 512MB RAM upgraded to 2GB after 6 years. I shocked me when I looked back just how long I'd had the machine. It's no wonder it's on it's last legs really.

After that came the idea of mini computers. I'd been thinking about them for a long time and was obviously way, way ahead of my time. Got myself a Palm m550 and foldaway keyboard in 2003, long, long before the era of smartphones. It was used as an organiser and a way to write when out and about. Not really ideal for either to be honest, but the best of what was around at the time.

But what I really wanted was something small and with a full, fixed keyboard to carry round with me and write on. Ironically, I was still ahead of the game, as the only really small mini-laptops at that time (2006/7) we're highly specialised and bloody expensive. Even more ironically, the eventual solution was something I first saw when working in a secondary in Birmingham around 1997.

Enter the Toshiba Libretto:

Bought in 2007 from ebay, costing about £100. It's still upstairs, the battery's shot, but it's still working, this beautiful little machine (about size of a hardback book). Perfect for carrying around with me, doing writing for the FPI blog, and this blog - granted the keyboard is tiny and too fiddly, but it was a lovely thing.

But I could have just waited a few months and the first wave of netbooks would have come along. My timing wasn't great, but at least I got to play with the Libretto, very probably my favourite piece of computing kit I've ever had.

November 2008: Along comes the Asus EeeePC, which is what I'm writing this on right now.

A perfect little machine, allowing me to write anywhere, not too heavy, wi-fi enabled to surf in front of the TV. It's so much better than the Libretto ever was, running Windows XP, pretty fast, not much memory, but I like to run it stripped down anyway. Only really needs a text editor and the Internet to get everything done.

And now we're onto the fourth desktop machine in my series of computers. that makes six computers, four operating systems, probably the best part of £5000. No doubt I'll be on here sometime soon with pictures and moaning about the fuss of Windows 7.

Computers, computers, computers - why I really don't want to get a new one

My lovely Windows XP desktop is on it's last legs. Back in June it developed this annoying intermittent fault that means every few weeks I have to do a system restore to a good point, then spend a couple of hours adding things and changing settings so that it all works how I want it to. But looking back at the receipt I'm amazed to find that I bought the thing in January 2003. It's nearly 8 years old for god's sake.

Now I could keep doing that for a while longer, but there's always that feeling in the back of my mind that some day, probably some day quite soon, it's just not going to bloody work any more. And it's always going to happen at exactly the worst time.

Which means I've decided to get a new computer now, when it suits me. The downside of all this is that it means my obsessive compulsive behaviour kicks in and I have to learn a new operating system and get the new computer doing exactly what I want it to. But at least I've managed to survive on XP long enough to skip over Vista and get Windows 7.

And please, no-one pop up and tell me I should get a Mac. I've seriously thought about this over the last few months. If I'm changing operating systems, I figured at one point I may as well go the whole hog and go Apple. Except for three main things:

1) Money - I just can't afford the £1000 a mac would cost.

2) Fear - it's completely different, I'd have to learn it all again.

3) School - we're on a Microsoft network that I have to look after and I'd like to stay Microsoft at home to keep my hand in.

So sometime this half term I'll be getting myself a new Windows box. With Windows 7. And then I'll start the stressful process of getting it just how I want it. Which for most people would be something that they do gradually. But not for me. I'm far too obsessive about these sort of things. And based on what happened back in June when I had to completely reinstall my current PC, I know it's going to go something like this: 1 day of reinstalling everything (programs, internet connection, restore all my data) and then 2 days of getting the music sorted. Again, most people would just be happy getting iTunes installed, iPod synched and then tinker with tracklistings, artwork and all the fiddly stuff over the next few months. But not me. Oh no, it all has to be done and sorted immediately.

I really am hopeless, aren't I?

My new computer bug

*

.... and it's driving me mad. Moving around was bad enough but now it seems to be having a rest / has died right in the middle of my eyeline.

Little bastard. Obviously did it deliberately.

(*not actual bug, this is someone else's bug. I couldn't be done with getting the camera out and taking a pic of the screen)

So, computers. Aren't I meant to know something about them.....

Two weeks ago my beloved old desktop machine decided to break. It's 5 years old, runs XP, does exactly what I want it to do and does it fast enough for me. I don't want a new machine, I've got this one set up just right and the prospect of upgrading just fills me with dread.

But suddenly, I turn it on and it hangs on the desktop. No icons, no start menu, no taskbar. Just wallpaper. So, being IT savvy, I head over to google and start working out what could possibly be wrong with it. This is where having the second machine - the lovely little netbook always comes in handy. How people solve computer problems without a second machine to google the trouble I have no idea.

Lots of different things. Lots of attempts. Lots of reboots. No luck.

In the end, resigned to the fact I was looking at getting one of those newfangled Windows 7 machines I gave it one last try. The complete reformat of XP.

I've done this before. At school. And somehow, on machines where they're just 1/50th of the total it doesn't hold as much fear. But this was mine. All mine. And I fretfully sat by as it went through the whole process. And bless my soul, it worked.

Except then I had the problem of reinstalling everything and trying to make it look and function exactly the same as it had before.

[TIP#1 - always have a list of programs you need installing]

[TIP#2 - make sure all your data is lovingly backed up and ready to just copy over]

[TIP#3 - do try to make sure you actually have a list of what needs doing to the machine to make it work like you want it to]

I managed Tip #2 just fine. My paranoid obsession over backups paid off. But #1 & #3? Lets just say I have a very good list now.

So. Thursday night - Reformat, start reinstalling. Friday afternoon - finish reinstalls and download god knows how many windows updates. Move data across. Friday night, Saturday, Sunday - screw about with iTunes. Yes, three days of messing about, importing all the music, finding out where it's imported wrong, where it's messed up tracklistings, pictures, info and all the other small, annoying crap.

Finally. It was done. I have a functioning, lovely, just like it used to be machine again.

And then it does it again last night. OH MY GOD.

Except this time I notice that it happens to do it just after one particular windows update install on shut down. It took me the best part of two hours trying to figure out how to fix it, and in the end it was as simple as stopping automatic updates and deleting the Windows/ Software Distribution/ Downloads folder. Since then it's all worked wonderfully.

Which means, oh yes, that the entire problem last weekend, the four days spent reinstalling everything just right, all of that could have been avoided.

And I'm meant to know what I'm doing.

Stupid things that they pre-programmed into the damn computer.....

Sometimes it's the little things about computing, or maybe just Microsoft, that amazes me. Sticky keys that are a source of continual amusement to some children. That stupid thing where you can rotate the screen 90 degrees completely by accident if you happen to press some combination of keys in order (which is surprisingly easy when you're 5).

And then tonight, when my keyboard suddenly decided to give @ instead of ". A little google later and it turns out that the damn thing's designed to do that whenever the ALT and the SHIFT key are pressed together. And what are the odds of that eh?

Stupid, stupid, stupid computers.

Deliberate luddite behaviour .... or "just not getting computers" as they say to me.....

........................ Oh, alright then, since you asked me.
Fixing computers for friends and colleagues. Or friends of colleagues. Or children of colleagues. Fun.

But the most annoying, or perhaps irritating thing about it is that more often than not it's fixing stuff that shouldn't have happened in the first place. Invariably it's broken this or broken that, laptops or computers with huge virus problems.

And no matter how many times I've sent around emails or talked to folks about doing little things like regularly backing up everything or making sure they have the best free anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewalls in place - they rarely have. At which point they bring the computers to me. And I fix them with a smile and a gentle reminder that they should really think about doing regular back-ups and getting all that security software I've been telling them about. And halfway through I can see them forgetting to do it already.

It's at the stage now where I'm beginning to believe that it's actually some form of luddite-ism. Worse, there's almost a deliberate refusal to even think about these sorts of little things that would make their lives so much better and easier. You tell them what they need to do, these smart, educated people, and they look at you with glazed over eyes and always come out with something like "but I don't understand computers"

The thing is, we both know they don't mean don't. They mean wont.

Oh, Remember The Milk - how I love thee.... more...

Somedays I wonder what I did before the Internet.
No Google - how would I do my job? How would I have found out what that computer error meant and how to fix it?
No Spotify - how would I find so much new (and old-new) music to annoy Louise with?
No Blogger - what would I do with my evenings?
No Wordpress - what would I write review after review after review on?
No Bloglines - how would I find all of the great news and information to write about?



But most of all - no Remember The Milk.

That would mean no organisation at all.

I'd barely make it out the door before the confusion hit me.

I know I used to actually have a memory. I did. No, really. But after a while that gave way. Then I had a notebook all the way through school and university that became vital to work out what work I was meant to be doing and when it was meant to be in.
Then I got a Filofax and that became the most vital thing for piecing together my life.
Then I got my wonderful Palm m550. And for years that was the thing that organised me, that told me where to be and when.

And then, miraculously, came RTM. I don't even remember when (see what a memory?) but a quick look back on the blog shows me it was here - August 2008. But even then I see it may have been a little earlier. But that means I've only been using it for little over a year.

RTM is so much a part of my daily life that it's joined the small group of online things I'd actually pay for. If they emailed tomorrow and said they were making it a premium only service and it cost £100 a year - I'd pay there and then.

I-Tunes 9 - aaaaaaarrrrrrrggggggghhhhhh

2 hours to install I tunes 9 today. Completely messing my afternoon and completely throwing off everything I wanted to do.

The plan was a simple one - I'd already installed it on my I tunes setup on the laptop at work (well I had to do something whilst the SIMs upgrade was slowly clunking away on the server this morning) - and it was a flawless, simple and quick install.

I get home on tim for once - have the whole afternoon to myself, thinking I'll quickly do this, have lunch and start on writing. Install I Tunes, reboot the machine, start I Tunes. Ooops. Error:

Apple Application Support was not found.
Apple Application Support is required to run iTunes. Please uninstall iTunes, then install iTunes again.
Error 2

Well reinstalling didn't work (of course). Didn't work the second time either.
Google around. Stress levels rising. Find this:

1. Download and install WinRAR.
2. Right-click the iTunesSetup.exe icon and choose "Open with WinRAR".
3. Once the EXE is opened in WinRAR, double-click AppleApplicationSupport.msi and when the installer window is open choose "Repair".

And it sort of works. There was no Repair option so just a full install of AppleApplicationSupport had to do - and it worked. Then I had to repeat the process with the Quick Time app in the iTunesSetup.exe and the Mobile App as well to make Molly's iTouch sync properly.

But it was done. The question really is why it's happened? Do Apple really hate us Windows users that much that they think it's okay to stick us with really crappy installations?

But all is well. It did completely throw my entire night out. I'm so far behind what I'd planned to get done. Bah. back to it.

My job in diagram form

Well, most of the technical stuff anyway. (via Jez)

More holiday stuff .... painting and painting and birthdays

Had a weird week so far. Painter came round on Monday to start on the house. Just windows, front door, front railings and garage door, just at the front. The house catches all the sun and all the rain on the front so, although we had the whole house done two years ago, the front is in desperate need of a new coat or two of paint. It's also about time we striped the front door done and attempted to reseal it so it stops leaking when we have driving rain.

The plan was Monday; strip paint, undercoat, Tuesday: gloss. But it hasn't worked out like that. Monday went well, Tuesday not so well. About half 1 he'd finished but decided the front door needed a second coat the next day. Unfortunately soon after he left the rain started here and carried on through the early hours of Wednesday. So no painting Wednesday. And since the paint hadn't gone off (or whatever the technical term is) enough when the rain started both garage door, front door and railings needed another coat. Thursday and Friday he put another couple of coats on.

The bad thing about this is that most of the week we've had to have the front door open. This isn't really compatible with going anywhere or doing anything. We've gone out and around town in the mornings when the painter was there, but most afternoons we've just had to stay in and generally relax. Board games, computer, drawing, playing in the garden, bit of cookery but nothing too exciting. Thank god that she arranged to go swimming with friends yesterday!

The other thing that I've had to do this week is sort Molly's birthday out. A big, big surprise for her this year. She's not expecting this at all. She's had a birthday list for ages, with lots of bitty things on it since she knows there's no way we can get her this........

(and you have to promise not to tell her.......)



Oh she's going to be very, very excited in a few weeks when she opens that one. Molly (and Louise) have wanted one for ages. But it's never been the right time and we're not the sort of parent who buys something this big and expensive at any other time than birthday and christmas. So this birthday, with nothing large being asked for, we figured we could just about stretch to getting it.

If I'm really lucky, I'll manage to get a photo of her face at the moment of realisation.

Too cool for school........ hopefully

Last night I spent far too long playing around with a music presentation for a lesson today. The idea was to get the children thinking about instruments and sounds and what exactly makes something musical.

Last year I got the electronic keyboard out and showed them that it can replicate traditional instruments. This year I decided to do the same thing but use existing pieces of music, going from simple, single instruments all the way through to full electronic pieces, both old and new to try and emphasise how music has developed alongside computers. But I didn't have any time to sort out thhe individual tracks, download them, edit them etc etc. God bless Spotify. Had everything arranged, playlist organised and ready to go. Even bought a day pass to guarantee no annoying adverts.

They certainly seemed to enjoy it. They got loud enough at times to disturb the classes around them - just like I'd hoped it would.

And yes, there was Kraftwerk involved. What did you expect? Musical education after all.

Today - a quick run through of triumph and misery....

What a horrible / brilliant / horrible day it has been..... Dropped Molly off at school; she's really nervous / excited about the prize day this afternoon where she's got to do a trumpet performance and is up for the position of Head Girl.

Then along to my school. Generally an indication of how utterly crap or good my day is going to be is a combination of how far I get past reception before someone says "Richard.... such and such is looking for you" and how many frantic pleas for help are on the whiteboard in the ICT suite. Today we had both. Network trouble. Which first looked simpler to solve, then I realised it was happening across most, but not all of the school.

Devastated, I phoned Louise to tell her I wouldn't be making prize day. The first such thing I've missed since I missed Molly's first sports day ages ago in Birmingham. Pledged then that I wouldn't do it again. Utterly sickened that I might miss her getting head girl.

If you have a look through various posts about my job, you should be able to get the idea that I'm pretty damn good at what I do, generally making ICT easier for pupils and staff and essentially making our kids digitally literate. But one thing I do fall down on is the hard techy network knowledge. What I do know is okay, but I don't know enough.

However, when I investigated the server cupboard and one bank of switches is flashing on and off like it's having it's own 4th July fireworks celebration, even I can figure out that this is not good.
Take cables out. No change.
Swap cables round. No change.
Turn it off. All switch lights go out.
Turn it back on. 4th Of July all over again.
Being not completely stupid I realise this is more than I can deal with. And I'm probably going to need a new switch thingy. Very handy ICT techy folks we used before are close by on a job and actually pop in within the hour - do everything I did and a bit more and eventually disconnect the switch box and can't get it to power on again. Swapping all the leads over to the other, smaller switch box solves the problems and off they go pledging to bring new switch box tomorrow or Wednesday.

This is great news; a hardware problem that's not my fault and network downtime that I couldn't do anything about.
Took until half 11 to get this sorted and organise the remaining switch box so that admin, myself and the ict suite have connections working.
Then a manic rush to get loads of Year 6 stuff printed and lots of reports reprinted. Seems a lot of staff didnt take my advice about proofreading the work to heart. Oh well. It may be a surprise next year when we limit their printing each term - some of them will run out after a couple of weeks.

It's quarter past one and I'm meant to be at the prize giving by half one. Manic rush to make sure everyone knows I've done everything I can until we get the new hardware and then out the door. Race to prize day (within the speed limit of course. No more speeding fines for me) and settle down in the chair just as the head comes on for her introductory speech.

The very act of finally stopping means the hideously bad headache finally takes hold and I sit for the next two hours with my head throbbing painfully.

And yes - Molly did get the Head Girl award - see here. What a wonderful girl we have!

Monitor again.....

Have decided that not only do I not like the widescreen monitor but that it was responsible for giving me a blinding headache last night. Too wide an image for the peripheral vision and far, far too bright. Have reverted to full screen 4:3 aspect and knocked the brightness and contrast down to about 10% and it's much better. Of course, I've now got two bloody great black bars either side of the screen, but I'll just have to get used to that.

I'm really not that good with change in any form am I?

Monitors - such a simple thing - such a nightmare

I went out and bought a new monitor today. Nice 20" widescreen one. Except I really didn't want a widescreen and now I'm sat here thinking I've made a mistake. It's too strange right now. Maybe by the end of the weekend I'll be used to it. But right now it just seems wrong.

So I decided to have a play with the settings, went into windows update and updated the drivers.

Who would have thought that updating the graphic card drivers would have completely fucked up the entire LAN settings and my internet connection. Much gnashing of teeth, pulling of hair and general stressing. Eventually managed to get the settings back to how they were.

I think I'll be leaving well enough alone now.

sticky sticky sticky. pop. that was the monitor blowing up then....

Blogging here has been a little sporadic of late. More on that later maybe. But for now...

Oooh, what about the weather? Hot? Bloody hell. At least at work I get to go in and switch the air con to full in the ICT suite. It's when I come home that the sticky misery starts. And then tonight I sat down at the computer and switched it on to hear a loud pop coming from the monitor power supply. That's probably not good thinks I. As it was I've managed to jiggle cables sufficiently that it's working again and not sparking. But I think a new monitor is called for. Just when I thought I'd actually be able to save a penny or two this month. Arse.

Spotify thoughts

Spotify is fast becoming my default music of choice at work. You know Spotify don't you? Free music service? Internet radio with exactly the playlist you want? Completely legal and beautifully easy too setup and use? Exactly. Bloody great.

I find myself using it at school as an extension of my music collection - sometimes playing stuff I've already got, sometimes playing unheard albums from folks I already like and sometimes listening to whatever hot young thing is making the most press that week.

It's turned into an invaluable service, allowing me to keep a little bit more up to date, find out what I really, really want and be able to hold my head up in music conversations with all the young things.



Which brings me to Little Boots. Beloved of the thinking press, touted as the next big thing on the back of a couple of songs and nearly completely unknown to me before now. I saw her do a bit on Jools a while back and thought it was good. Especially the new single New In Town (You Tube). And then it starteed playing around in my head. One of those songs that sticks and sticks. So I stick it on Spotify and listen to it. And again, and again, and again. It's pretty fantastic stuff. Sure, it's pushing every 1980s synth-pop button that it should and it's highly derivative. (If I were ladytron right now I'd be really, really pissed off). But it's also bloody great pop fun.

And all thanks to Spotify. What will be on the playlist tomorrow at work?

Training Course hell.....

Today's training course was a refresher course on Learning Platform administration. When the email came through a couple of months ago this seemed like a good idea. After all, wasn't the initial plan for the summer term at work to spend the first half term doing email changeover and school blogging and the second half term to actually start the work on the Learning Platform? So a refresher on the LP admin would be a good thing. That was the theory anyway.

Of course, in practice I found myself drowning in work stuff, with the plan to not do much (if any) work stuff at home working well but putting me behind in what needed doing. So a day out re-learning stuff on the Learning Platform suddenly seemed a complete waste, especially when I knew the training day rule applied - anything learned on training days that isn't immediately applied is almost instantly forgotten and will need to be re-learned when actually tackling the problem. So, with permission from the boss I decided to just go for the morning and duck out at lunch to get back and do the more important stuff.

And I was glad to get out. The content was just ridiculously basic, all stuff I knew anyway and none of the difficult stuff was dealt with. To make matters worse we found ourself trapped in a room with that annoying teacher stereotype - the far too loud, know-it-all type who spent 10 minutes talking about what they'd done in their school with the learning platform so far during the usual round of "let's introduce ourselves to the room" rubbish. And how, pray tell, had she managed to do so much with the learning platform - simple - she just did it all at home. No life. No life. No life. I had to leave at lunch just to avoid saying something very unprofessional to her.

But it's no help to me. I've spent the first three months of the year working far too many hours getting the school website done with lots and lots of hours working on it at home. But at least with that I knew there was an end in sight. It had to be done by the end of March. With the learning platform the end is at least 3 years away, if it ever really ends. There's no way I can commit to it in the way I did the website and I've decided it's something I'm only going to work on at school. So I'm going to be pushed to find 10 hours a week to work on it. Not enough. But it will have to be enough.

The Kindle thing....

Scott McCloud weighed in recently with his thoughts on the supposed print killer of Amazon's Kindle. There's an article on it over on the FPI blog.

Basically Scott's argument goes:

“Cinema is wider than it is tall. TV is wider than it is tall. Theater is wider than it is tall. Laptop and desktop monitors are wider than they are tall. In fact, with the advent of widescreen TVs, there’s little difference in the shapes. They’re all around 3×5 or 4×5 range. Wider than tall. All of them.
And print? Well, print is taller than it is wide right? The printed page is the exception to the rule, isn’t it?
Wrong. The default shape of print is not taller than wide. It’s wider than tall just like all the rest, because the default shape of print is two pages side-by-side. And the reason is the same reason as the shape of TV and cinema and theater and surfing and all the rest: because we have two eyes next to each other, not one on top of the other.

I don’t even have a Kindle yet, so this isn’t meant as a specific critique of the device. And I’m sure its engineers had solid practical reasons to design the device the way they did. You can even turn it sideways when needed. It just reminded me when I went to Amazon this morning and saw images of the latest, how design principles in the wild can always be adjusted on the fly, but as soon as they’re embedded in hardware, they tend to stick around. For decades in some cases.

So if I could humbly suggest a new cardinal rule of designing anything meant to be read (including webcomics): Step #1, look in a mirror.”

But I think he's wrong. Print is most definitely, at least for me, a portrait medium. In fact, his final comment of "look in a mirror" doesn't even work because most mirrors tend to be portrait as well - or at least a lot of the ones I look in.

Print is portrait to me. Every time I open a book, comic or magazine I may initially view it as a 2 page spread, but when I'm reading both eyes are focused on just one page - portrait.

But it's worth reading Scott's views and worth even more to think about it yourself. Will electronic readers eventually supplant print? I think they will - but only up to a point. I read a lot more articles online and onscreen now - simply because they're there. And I can certainly see something like the Kindle (or whatever Apple inevitably comes out with) becoming the way newspapers and magazine articles are read in the future. They're temporary, transitory things - read once and then dispose of.

But books and comics are different. Sort of. I can't ever see electronic readers replacing the actual physical pleasure of reading long form works such as books and graphic novels. They're just to fixed in the psyche as a form. The often used analogy with music or film doesn't wash - these media have been switching formats regularly since the first methods of recording sound or moving images. But the printed page, bound between covers has been such a fixed point in civilisation that I really can't see a sudden shift to a slab of electronic screen. Sure, there might be uses - the holiday book bag replaced by a lightweight reader perhaps. But near complete replacement the way that mp3s and similar are replacing records, tapes and cds - can't see it.

However, comics are a different matter. I've been a champion of the comic form since I first read one. And I've long been a champion of the collection, the graphic novel as the perfect form for the medium. I see comics as mere previews to something bigger. They, at least to me, are throw away, temporary things, just like newspapers. If I'm interested in a comic I'll read an online preview or buy the first issue. If it's worth it, I'll wait for the collection. So I can see an electronic reader, if it reproduces the look of the comic page well enough, replacing that aspect of my comic reading.

How about you?

Tone Matrix.... say goodbye to hours and hours.....

This is amazing. A complete time waster but wonderful:
Tone Matrix. Fully flash generated sinewave sythesiser.

I've just spent an hour entranced by it. Tomorrow I think it's going to be up on one of the whiteboards at school so it's making music by touch - the kids will absolutely love it.