Pseudo Book Review - Noir: A Novel

In lieu of a book review, I present you with my 13 favorite quotes from the book.

Noir: A Novel
by Christopher Moore

They can be a very large source of filthy lucre.

Sammy's got all the perspective of a bucketful of dark.

A lowbrow mug who wouldn't know how to treat a member of the gentler sex if she smacked him upside the head with a sack full of vaginas.

As serious as Saint Joan lightin' a cigar.

That mug couldn't catch a cough in a tire fire.

She took a pull on her drink until it made a delicate slurping noise — the straw at the bottom of the glass like a tiny parched elephant.

The night at work moved like honey poured over an iceberg.

I tried to pick Pookie up by the collar, but I couldn't get a good grip and he was a giant sack of staying put.

"Bow - wows and whistle berries!" Myrtle called into the window. "Two fat dagos in the straw! Bun pup, take a shit on it and make it cry!"
Sammy raised a questioning eyebrow to the Cheese.
"Franks and beans, two spaghetti and meatballs, and a chili dog with onions," Stilton translated. "I think she just made that last one up to show off for you."

"Considering what you been through, you're as sober as a church mouse."
"Isn't that ‘quiet as a church mouse'?"
"You'd think, but once you get a few drinks in those little guys, you can't stop them singing."

The sax man stopped playing, adjusted his reed, smiled out of the corner of his eye.

"The drama, doll. Don't add the drama."
"It's how I tell a story."
"But Sammy here does not need the extra drama. Look at the poor guy, he's dramatized already."

The stink would knock a buzzard off a shit wagon.

Trend Setter Trees

Pizza Challenge, Round 2?

Could be time for another Pizza Challenge.  Lots of new options on the market.  Not sure I'm up for a full week of eating only frozen pizza though...

Awk! sed grep.

Challenge Accepted!

Create a file containing a list of the artists with music files in the m4p format using a single line of piped together unix shell commands. Each artist name should be listed only once.

find `pwd` -name *.m4p | sed 's/ /_/g' | sed 's/\// /g' | awk '{print $5}' | sed 's/_/ /g' | awk '!seen[$0]++' > ArtistsWithProtectedFiles.txt

Bonus Trivia Fact: The newest of those commands (awk) was created around 40 years ago. It still works.

Totally Comprehensive?

I saw this on the back cover of the Final Fantasy XV Official Game Guide and felt the need to share. The book's authors desire to pander to a younger generation by injecting the word "Totally" seems to have undermined the editor's redundancy checks.  It may be unfair to lay this on the authors.  Who in the book publishing business prepares back-cover blurbs, maybe marketing?

Overall the book seems pretty good, but I find myself questioning the comprehensiveness of the information.  Noticing this gaff has caused my subconscious to call every page into question. 

Been a while

Just a test, and a note to show I didn't die from the pizza experiment that was the subject of my last post almost 3 years ago.

Pizza Project - Day 6

At last we arrive at the final pizza in the experiment.

This is a radical shift from the last couple thin pizzas.  The Screamin' Sicilian weighs in at almost a pound and a half (666 grams).  A meat combo, this pizza puts a twist on the pepperoni and sausage combos that have been prevalent in the experiment.  The twist being the sausage is in the form of meatballs cut in half, and the pepperoni slices have been replaced with rough cut pepperoni.

Perhaps a picture is in order.

You can see the meatballs cut in half and rough cut is about the only way to describe the pepperoni.  Making a count of pepperoni to compare this to the other pizzas would be pointless- just glancing at it shows much less pepperoni here.  The sausage meatballs have taken the lead; this is a sausage and pepperoni pizza, not the reverse.

As we gaze now at the baked pizza, let us consider the stats.

Price: $9.99 (the range was $5 to $9.99)

Calories: 310 for 1/5 of a pizza (387.5 for two sizes of a pizza cut 8 ways).

Cooking Temp: 400 F. That converts to about 204.4 C. 

Cooking Time: The instructions call for 20 to 22 minutes.  I went with 21, midway in the range).

So how did it taste?  Not my favorite.  The marking folks set a high bar describing the sauce as "thick rich robust tomato sauce", but it was bland.  The italian meat balls were a bit off, and the rough chopped pepperoni didn't add enough to bring this pizza back in line.  Maybe it was just an off night, maybe a different ingredient combo would be better, but as the high cost leader this was a disappointment.

And that is it for the pizza experiment!  There's more numbers that could be crunched, in particular digging into the weight differences (they ranged from 536g to 775g).  There wasn't much talk in the taste reviews about tomato sauces, these also varied but not as much as expected.  Could a stand out sauce move a low performing pizza up the charts? And there's more that could be said about packaging.  But for now I'm going to wrap it up and just say there's a lot of variety out there, maybe mixing it up is the best approach to picking your next frozen pizza.

Pizza Project - Day 5

And on the fifth day there was a Green Mill.

A fair candidate in the toppings department, there's little doubt this crust will be different.  Green Mill made it into the experiment mainly because they have restaurants in this area and I've never eaten at one.  I didn't want to shun them again, and was out of good options at the grocery store, so it made the cut.

Reading the back of the box I was surprised to see Green Mill is a St. Paul, Minnesota based restaurant chain.  It had started as a pub in the 1930s.  I didn't realize it had started so close by.  But this isn't a restaurant experiment, so on to the pizza.

Before each of the frozen pizza pictures I did a little clean up.  After taking the pizza's out of the wrapper I redistributed the toppings to even things out.  This one needed a lot of clean-up, mainly because it contains small bits of bacon that had slid to one edge of the pizza.  19 slices of pepperoni here, and on to the other stats.

Price: $5.99 (the range was $5 to $9.99)
Calories: 460 for 1/3 of a pizza (345 for two sizes of a pizza cut 8 ways).
Cooking Temp: 425 F. That converts to about 218.3 C.
Cooking Time: The instructions call for 9 to 13 minutes.  I went with 11, midway in the range).

And the outcome was delicious.

I'm not sure how much of the very tastiness of this pizza can be attributed to bacon, but it was a fine pizza.  Stopping at two slices could be a challenge, good thing the experiment called for me to eat four.  Thin pizza with a crispy crust goes down like crackers at a cocktail party.  All of the sauces paired well with this pizza too- but they were an extra bonus, the pizza was fine all alone.

The last pizza is up next!

Pizza Project - Day 4

Day four brings the letter F to the oven, and a side note on the varying calorie count in the pizzas.

Today's pizza is a Freschetta.  Another hesitation at adding this one to the experiment, mainly for superficial reasons- the box.

Nothing really wrong with it.  It just looks mass market, mass produced.  I know, frozen pizza could be the poster child for mass market, mass produced.  I also was a bit turned off by the "Naturally Rising Crust", I was looking to replace a hand-tossed style crust.  This one is also a straight pepperoni pie unlike the meat combos considered so far.  Not much of a story on that point, there simply wasn't a meat combo option available from Freschetta at the store.

Distinctly different from the DiGiorno pizza, this cover isn't loaded with trademarks.  The "Signature Pepperoni Pizza" name adds a bit, saying this isn't just any pepperoni pizza.  For those looking for a health angle to nudge this box into the shopping basket there is the "!00% real cheese" and "Preservative Free Crust"-- not exactly differentiators as almost every pizza in the store says these things too.

The pre-baked goods show the cover photo doesn't lie (how could it, see the little peek-inside window cut through the cardboard?)

19 pepperoni slices in neat little rows.  Makes it easy to imagine this pie sliding down an assembly line, the lower left corner leading the way as 5 rows of pizza slices are mechanically dispensed onto the sauce and cheese.  Looks like the overall topping application alignment was a little off- everything seems shifted towards to the top right corner.

A bit about the stats before we get to the baked-up goods.

Price: $5.99 (the range was $5 to $9.99)
Calories: 340 for 1/6 of a pizza (510 for two sizes of a pizza cut 8 ways).
Cooking Temp: 400 F. That converts to about 204.4 C.
Cooking Time: The instructions call for 20 to 24 minutes.  I went with 22, midway in the range with a nudge up for the rising crust).

On to the finished product.

I mentioned before how the pizza's vary their serving size and end up around 340 calories on each box- seems like it might be a strategy to keep an even playing field.  If there was a wide variance customers who are counting calories may be tempted  to make a "low cal" choice. 

But I wonder if that thinking is realistic. When the cooking is done, is the calorie counting consumer really going to cut this pizza six ways and take one slice, versus cutting another pizza 4 ways and taking a quarter of the pizza to arrive at the calorie count on the box?  At this house all pizzas get cut into 8 slices and a "serving" is two or three slices. 

So how was it?  Poofy, as advertised. It went good with the sauces mentioned in a previous post.  Overall the Freschetta is very similar to the DiGiorno.  With the D box bringing more toppings and seasonings I would've expected the prices to be reversed (the D box was $5, this a penny shy of $6). 

A note on leftovers, that risen crust made it impossible to fit four remainder slices into the container I had been putting the left over pizza into, but that's OK- at 510 calories for two slices that's enough for lunch.

Tomorrow the pizza slims down for the letter G.

Pizza Project - Day 3

When I started this project I neglected to consider (at least) one thing.  There isn't a whole lot to say about frozen pizza.

Today is Day 3, rhymes with Day D, which is convenient because today's pizza is a DiGiorno.

 I hesitated to include a D box in the experiment, I've had them before so it isn't a "new" pizza.  But I was swayed by the box with it's rippled awning look, jaunty "pizzeria!" stenciled across the top clearly implying (to me anyway) this was different from other DiGiorno pizzas.  The final clincher was the picture of the pizza- this looks like a crust thickness comparable to the pizza I'm replacing.

But how would it perform?  Lets get to cold hard facts.

See what I did there?  Frozen pizza, cold hard facts. Ha!  A bit of a surprise here- what I initially thought was sausage is is actually genoa salami cut into strips.  Seeing the pizza now, you can clearly see this shown on the cover photo.  Maybe it is just one of those things where it's obvious after its been pointed out.  Regardless, this is the first time I've seen salami on a pizza cut this way.  Note also the pepperoni count is down to 12 from the 16 found on both the Connie's and the Bellatoria.

The stats might help explain the pepperoni reduction.
Price: $5 (the range was $5 to $9.99)
Calories: 380 for 1/4 of a pizza (two sizes of a pizza cut 8 ways).
Cooking Temp: 375 F. That converts to about 190.5 C.
Cooking Time: The instructions call for 20 to 21 minutes.  I went with 20, a bit of a silly range.

As I took it out of the oven the pizza's appearance isn't the first thing I noticed.

The first the I noticed was the smell.  This pizza has a strong aroma, unexpectedly strong.  That might be the salami at work. The crust has also transformed into a typical DiGiorno rising crust, thick and best described as poofy.  Not what I expected from the picture, but if I had actually read the box I wouldn't have been surprised- it says "crispy outside, soft & airy inside..".

But if I had looked at the text on the box closely I may not have chosen this pizza on the basis they have trade marked the phrase "the crust!" and "the sauce!"  Seriously?  I wouldn't have expected a company could trade mark such generic phrases.  The've also trademarked the word-phrase "pizzeria!" and "pizzeria style crust - created with care".

So how was it?  A bit overwhelming.  I enjoyed the leftovers more than the fresh baked pizza.  Maybe it was just an off evening.  It was filling, and at $5 it's a volume/price leader.

Tomorrow we're off to the letter F.

Pizza Project - Day 2

Day 2 of the pizza project and the candidate is a Connie's Pizza.

The concept of the pizza project is to eat half a pizza after cooking each day, and to eat the leftovers the next day.  The idea was inspired by a grocery store being sold, causing me to loose the primary supplier of what had become my favorite frozen pizza.  The acquiring store carries many varieties of pizzas so after acquiring a basketful the experiment began.  

Day 2 and with the Connie's frozen pizza out of box a thought occurred to me, all frozen pizzas look a lot alike.  Then again, they may feel the same about us.

Just glancing at it there seems to be less pepperoni than on the Bellatoria from yesterday.  There were 16 slices on the Bella, but the Connie comes in at 16 slices too.  The sausage bits are about the same size, quantity there is harder to judge.

Before we see it cooked, here's the stats:

Price: $6.99 (the range was $5 to $9.99)

Calories: 340 for 1/5 of a pizza (adjusted to two sizes of a pizza cut 8 ways that works out to 425 calories.  Maybe I'll address the caloric differences another day).

Cooking Temp: 400 F. That converts to about 204.4 C.  

Cooking Time: The instructions call for 16 to 20 minutes.  I went with 18, another judgement call.

And on to the finished product!

Here's the subjective part.  How was it? I didn't have any particular expectations given it looks the same as the Bella, but was pleasantly surprised.  This was a good pizza!  It went well with all the sauces as well.  The left overs were tasty too.

A quick bit about the sauces.  I'm not talking pizza sauces here, I'm talking seasoning the pizza with these:

To keep things consistent, each pizza was cut into 8 slices. Four were set aside for the next day.  Of the remaining four, one was eaten straight and eaten first.  Rude to the chef to season your food before you even try it.  Each of the remaining three got a dash of one of the sauces. Cholula was found years ago and works well with any pizza.  Franks is a new comer to this household. And Tabasco is just a classic.  I'm not a big fan of spicy food that is just hot for the sake of being hot.  That is not what these sauces are about.  A few shakes of these on a slice just adds a different flavor.  More a taste gimmick than anything else, but there you go.

As I mentioned above Cholula complements any pizza I've had.  Works great with the Connie's too.  The Tabasco also fit nicely with the Connie's pizza. 

Tomorrow we move on the the letter D as the pizzas continue to go down in alphabetical order!

Pizza Project - Day 1

I decided to alphabetical in the Pizza A Day project.  The first candidate is a Bellatoria Ultra Thin Crust, Ultimate Combo.

I also decided to set some parameters for the experiment:
1) All the pizza's would have similar toppings, even if that led to a crust thickness variance (read on).

2) Each pizza would have three photos; Box Front (as above), as it appears out of the package, and as it appears after cooking.

3) Each pizza would be cut into 8 slices; 4 to be consumed immediately, 4 to cool and be refrigerated for the next day (usually for lunch, but on Tuesdays that doesn't work for my schedule, so I'll just figure something else out).

4) Of the first four slices eaten immediately, three would be with sauce (three different kinds) one plain.  Call it an experiment within an experiment; determine which sauce compliments each pizza the best.

5) The blog posts are posted a day later - this isn't live streaming of a pizza eating contest.

6) Blog posts will contain the cooking instructions and price paid for the pizza.  What's an experiment without some cold hard facts?


Enough Chatter, time for a couple more photos!

What were you expecting?  It's a frozen pizza.  Any editorial here?  Typical amount of pepperoni, all the pizza's are some sort of Pepperoni & Sausage combo.  I didn't want to over complicate things, figuring any frozen pizza brand should be able to nail this one.

On to the finished goods!

Now that's a pizza!  I think a few Italians just had a stroke.  Apologies.  Honestly though, given the amount of frozen pizza available in grocery stores on this side of the pond that is what the majority of the pizzas in America look like.  Your mileage may vary.

The stats!
Price: $8.99 (the range was $5 to $9.99)
Calories: 340 for 1/4 of a pizza (a serving = 2 slices when cut into 8 wedges as most would tend to do)
Cooking Temp: 425 F.  It didn't occur to me until just now but I bet ovens in the UK (umm, probably the rest of the PLANET) use Celsius, don't they? That converts to 218.33 C.
Cooking Time: The instructions are 10 to 15 minutes.  I went with 12 minutes.  Judgement call.

So how was it?  Fine, as the lead off candidate I don't have any reference points other than comparing it to the go-to pizza I'm replacing, and in that regard it isn't a tremendously fair comparison.  The pizza it is trying to replace has a thicker crust. For a thin body, this was a good pizza.

A few words on Crust Thickness.  So why even inject a thin pizza into the competition? I wanted to pick five and there was another candidate closer in the crust department but it was only available as either a plain cheese pizza or a Canadian Bacon with Pineapple combo.  I figured those toppings being so radically different than all the other pizzas would throw things off more than a crust thickness variance.  Besides, the "right" crust thickness may have made it into someone's doctoral thesis, with dubious conclusions, so lets skip over that debate, shall we?  

Final Thoughts: It went good with each of the sauces.  On the high end of the price scale, I didn't even realize that until I looked up the photo of the receipt I had saved with the pizza pics and my reaction was surprise- I didn't realize that this one was a pricey pie, relatively speaking (insanely cheap when you consider it could be the core of a meal for two).

More on the sauces in a later entry.

Pizza Project - The Concept

I live in a suburb that had four grocery stores, each a different company.  Each also carried slightly different brands of all the various food items.  When the longest standing one was sold to one of the other companies, it signaled the demise of our primary source for what had become our favorite frozen pizza.

Browsing the pizza cases of the acquiring store, I was a bit overwhelmed with the options- was there one here that would replace my favorite? And if it was here, how would I find it?  Gotta try them all!  OK, maybe not all- but a bunch.  But that could take a while...unless...

With my wife out of town for a few days I decided to do a pizza experiment.  I'd eat half a frozen pizza every night and the left overs the next day.  A different pizza each day.  Maybe one of these would  be a stand out.

The candidates have been selected (constrained by the number of days available before the spousal-unit returns home).  Let the experiment begin!

Bananas?  Yes, but (this) man does not live on pizza alone. Oh, not what you meant? Understood.  Stay tuned for the reviews.

Kindle Fire - Part 5, Editing

The Kindle Fire uses a soft keyboard for data entry and editing of text, regardless of field length, and operates in a fashion reflecting the Kindle Fire's Android base.  A long press in a text field that is editable brings up one of three sets of menus:

• If nothing had previously been cut from the text the user is given options to select text
• If something is on the 'clipboard' the system adds an option to paste text
• If the user is already in the middle of the 'text selection' mode, the system offers to copy or cut the selected text

Once in edit mode the Kindle presents a set of 'grab tabs' that can be used to drag the text selection area to fine tune the text selected.  All that may seem pretty basic, but keeping in mind the iPhone didn't support copy and paste until well into it's product life cycle it is noteworthy the Kindle Fire supports these concepts in version 1.

One trivia-worthy note about editing.  Scrolling while editing on Android devices works a little differently from the behavior on Apple devices.  For example, given a subject line longer than the visible text box, selecting text may require 'horizontally scrolling' to reach the text not shown.  In Apple devices, dragging left or right moves a cursor with the text staying stationary, while on Android devices if the text has been highlighted via 'select all' the system behaves as if you were moving the text itself.  The net effect is that the direction you drag your finger to move the text is reversed between the two modes.  On the Kindle, there is a visible cursor that can be moved with the large 'drag tags' (orange strips that hang down below the cursor), on other android devices I've used there is no visible cursor while dragging, but one does appear after touching text.

Editing in the Kindle Reader application works a little differently, reflecting the nature of the app being intended for content consumption and also supporting highlighting and note taking.  The Kindle touch screen interface allows for a very smooth highlighting and note making experience.  Just put your finger on the text, wait a second, then drag to the end of the text you'd like to highlight or note.  After lifting your finger the Kindle asks if you'd like to highlight or add a note.  A long press on a word without dragging brings up the dictionary entry for the word selected.  Once highlights and or notes are made, they appear in the bookmarks list and are accessible from the Internet as with all other Kindle Reader platforms (web, devices, or the app on smartphones and tablets)

Next Up: Cover flow (K-version vs. Apple) / Setting settings, everywhere.

Kindle Fire - Part 4, Where for art thou, comma?

Soft keyboards (keyboards that appear on touchscreens) can be a little too smart.  The flexibility allows developers to change the operation of keys, a feature most of the time, but disorienting when taken too far.  Take the example of the lowly comma.  Arguably a piece of punctuation often discarded in modern (read 'text message' style) communication as extraneous.  This jettisoning of the pause character is probably a reflection of early texting, when anything beyond the obvious (e.g. printed on a 9-digit keypad phone) was deemed unnecessary.  But those days are long gone, and the Kindle Fire keyboard has a broad character set, so much so the comma may, gasp, actually get used.  Presumably this left the developers with a question; where to put the comma. Apparently they were left without much supervision, see the attached screenshot and (a challenge for your amusement) find the comma before reading on.

Don't get too confident in your knowledge of where the comma is, even if you found it in the above photo.  Not satisfied with a single placement, the keyboard developers decided the much maligned comma should move around.  I suppose there may have been hot debates about it's location, and they settled these debates by simply incorporating each suggestion.  In case you still haven't found it (or didn't bother to look, I mean really- some people just can't be bothered with this type of thing) the comma is in the corner of the period key (it's small, you may have to squint).  Don't take that to mean it is accessed via the shift key.  No, the comma is accessed by a long press on the period key.  Let's think about that for a sentence.  A comma means a short pause, a period means a long pause.  To access the period you make a short press, to access the comma you make a long press.  This inversion of meaning and action may be the developers just playing with us, and it isn't worth talking about any further as we may never know what they were thinking.  But I digress.  

The comma moves to a new location, the top row of soft keys (lets call them 'super soft keys') that appear in a background-ish color above the keyboard.  Why?  I guess because it was decided the old spot for the comma was too inconvenent.  To help you in resisting the temptation to take the hard way to arrive at a comma, the developers chose to remove the comma from the period key when it is visible in the 'super soft key' area.  This may explain in part why some people hate software developers.  Perhaps another photo would help illustrate my point.

Comma quest aside, the Kindle Keyboard is very comfortable to type on.  This may reflect more on the size of the device (roughly equal to a 7 inch tablet) rather than anything specific to the software inside.  And speaking of that, the software inside is Android-based, so I checked other Android devices and found similar period, comma, and backspace placement oddities.  The backspace is in a spot much more akin to the return key on any other keyboard on the planet- don't even get me started on how badly that will screw you up. 

Key placement complaints aside, it is a little amusing that a device clearly designed for information consumption actually does make for a good data-entry vehicle.  Taking notes are a breeze on the Kindle Fire, maybe not as easy as handwriting or touch typing on a laptop (this is still a typing exercise where you have to watch the keys instead of relying on tactile feedback) but a nice bonus when considering how you might use the device.

ETA: A Kindle software update has been made to retain the comma accessibility from a long press on the period key.  Whether that was in response to this post (doubtful) or not (likely), thank you.

Next Up: Editing / cover flow (K-version vs. Apple) / Setting settings, everywhere.

Kindle Fire - Part 3

Part 3 - Kindle Fire Review - My First Stumbles

Getting the Kindle Fire set up wasn't flawless.  My first stumble was with configuring email.  There was no native exchange support, but the Kindle did graciously advise me to go to the app store to find an app for that.  It seemed like an odd thing to omit, it seems to show business users were not a top priority for the Kindle Fire designers.  Perhaps a mis-step, almost every Kindle Fire I've seen "in the wild" has been in the hands of a person travelling for business, with the occasional college student (usually female, presumably more women than men read books for leisure in college) thrown in.

ETA: The draft of this review included the above statement before Tech Crunch came out and confirmed my observation: More women than men use the Kindle Fire.  If you're a man, don't let that put you off, buy one and represent!  Or maybe you should wait, more on that in a later post.

My second stumble was when typing.  I wrote the first draft of this in the Evernote app on the Kindle Fire.  The stumble was with the placement of the period key. I was going to make a screen capture to illustrate my typing woes, but (a) screen capture on the fire is non-existent out of the box, a shortcoming of the Android 2.2 OS the Fire is based on, and (b) you get the idea without really seeing it, just imagine periods in lieu of every 3 out of four spaces.

Next up: Where for art thou, comma? / Editing / cover flow (K-version vs. Apple) / Setting settings, everywhere.

Kindle Fire - Part 2

The ongoing story of my first use of a Kindle Fire...

My first thought with the Fire in hand was how to get it setup and associating it with my Amazon account.  On other Android devices I’ve used setup began with turning the device on and immediately being asked to connect the device with a Google account.  The Fire does not care if you have a Google account or not, but the device is only useful when associated with an Amazon account, doubly so with an Amazon Prime Account (more on that later).  So how to connect the Fire to an Amazon account?  

If you purchase a Fire directly from Amazon you do nothing, the nice folks at Amazon set this up for you.  If you need to do it yourself it is an each process  I discovered in a few minutes of playing with a Fire in a store.  Just touch the gear Icon in the bar at the top of the screen.

This is probably a good place to mention The Touch Screen Factor.  The Fire has a touch screen.  Not a big deal and easy to handle on phones, even convenient.  The transition to a tablet or Fire takes a little getting used to.  The Fire has some weight to it, and you need to hang on to it.  Getting too grabby could mean accidentally clicking things.  This is where the generous bezel around the Fire’s screen comes in.  It seems excessive when just looking at the device, but pick one up and you’ll understand the benefit, whether by design or not.

Once the Fire and my Amazon account were linked the Fire immediately displayed my library of books.  The Fire also detected apps I've purchased from the Amazon Android app store and displayed them in a list with the option to install each app.  Not being an app-hoarder I chose a few to try on the Fire.  I'm not a person who has hundreds of apps and I also don't install everything on every device.

Next up: My first stumbles.

Kindle Fire Review - Intro

My company let me use a Kindle Fire for a couple months, this is (the beginning) of the story of what I found.  

First, a little background.  My only prior exposure to the Kindle Fire was playing in a store for 15 to 20 minutes.  My cell phone is an iPhone,  so I'm used to touch screen keyboards, but that also means I've been exposed to the screwy- in my opinion- iPhone autocorrect.  More on that later.  I do have access to an Android phone for software development (Android 2.2 OS), so I'm not unfamiliar with Android (the underlying OS of the Kindle) and have used a small collection of Android apps from both the Android Market (now Google Play) as well as the Amazon app store.  Evernote is one app I've used on both iOS and Android and also happens to be where the draft version of this was written (written initially on the Kindle Fire, then 'cleaned up' for posting).  My very tech savvy employer has also supplied me with an iPad (initially a v1 then traded up for an iPad 2) which I use primarily for note taking and business intelligence demos (using MicroStrategy).

When it comes to eReaders, I have a first generation Kindle eInk reader, a very pleasant reading device that is probably the primary reason I haven't bought a Kindle Fire of my own.  The eInk device just works, satisfying all by eBook reading needs.  But when the opportunity to test the Fire came up I was willing to try a swap.

Coming next: Impressions from my first use of the Fire.

Bike Riding Weather

There was some excellent bike riding weather this weekend.  While out plotting a new route, I noticed a Road Closed sign along the Mississippi River.  The road was closed, but the bike trail was open.  Being the curious sort, and figuring the road was closed due to flooding (river over road type thing), I thought I'd bike down the trail to see how far I could go.

About 12 miles later I made my way through.  At about mile 9.5 the bike trail did have water over it, but a quick alt-route back onto the road gave a clear path.  So in reality, the bike trail should've been closed and the road open.

Ah well, nice ride.

On not writing

I've been preparing some entries for this blog on my test drive of an Amazon Kindle Fire. There's been a bit of a delay in posting as I debate and edit the content, or more acurately, debate editing the content. It occurred to me tonight that if I spent half the time I spend on self-censorship on actually writing I'd probably be twice as good a writer as I am today. Or something like that, I haven't quite got the words right yet.