Kindle 2

I had the great pleasure to try out one of Amazon's Kindle 2 electronic readers our office bought to test against other e-readers like the iTouch. I really liked it and found it pretty easy to use. I found plenty of e-books out there to try out and some of them were free! I created a couple of test documents based on pdfs that I could download to the Kindle and read. At some point my office might consider creating Kindle-ready files of our printed course guides.

On a short trip to Sitka I read F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a short story that later became part of Tales of the Jazz Age. It was a quick read but kind of fun on the kindle. It fits pretty nice in my hands - not too big to be cumbersome or take up a lot of personal space and not too small to cause eye stress. I wrote this review for another blog I participate in.

And you can read it out in the sun. A very useful thing here in Southeast Alaska!

This and That again again

If you like to drink tea from a tea cup this is a great deal. Makes me want to open a tea house or afternoon tea eatery. My mom always talked about doing that. She said that she would make the pies and do the dishes! What a deal!

This group in England has an interesting idea - banning jargon and cliches from their council meetings and publications. But is it realistic? How do you decide what is jargon and what words are accepted with common definitions. Education and especially Technology is the leader in making up words and/or changing common interpretations. Netlingo.com even provides a Jargon Word of the Day!

Information comes at you all the time and one of the hardest parts of graphic design is taking a message and making it meaningful to the audience. Using graphics to tell a story – well that's how communication began, right! Check out this video retelling the story of Little Red Riding Hood.

Wants some beef with those tires?

We had some new tires put on the Yukon and got something else to chew on at the same time! We got a pretty good deal - 4 tires for the truck and extra spare tires from all the processed and fatty sausage.

Because of food allergies, we don't normally seek out sushi restaurants but this would be one we might have to look for next time we're in abroad, Inamo restaurant in London's fashionable SoHo district. Touchscreen menus for choosing and ordering your food, paying your bill (will separate by order if you're with a group), webcams in the kitchen to see if your food is being spit in or tenderized by being dropped on the floor, and more. Who would have time for eating!

We went to Tarentino's Italian Restaurant for my birthday celebration. Located where the Wild Spice was and before that a Russian Tea House, this new establishment openned around the first of the year. We started out with a nice green salad with mixed greens and the house italian dressing. The dressing was made up of marinated roma tomatoes in a flavorful oil and vinegar mixture. Crusty fresh garlic bread kept us going until the main course came. I had Shrimp Diablo on a bed of angel hair. Spicy red sauce with at least a dozen shrimp. Tim had the Veal Parmagian and the house pasta. Two large filets filled his plate. The food was pretty good. We've had better and we've had worse food. The service was very good. We got there just in time to get a table and the place was packed. Where they had the big round mongonlian grill they have set up bar seating with what looked like a stainless steel bread warmer sitting on the grill itself. We'll go back someday and give it another try as its one of the better places to eat in Juneau.

No more cold hands

I've found a very useful USB tool that I would have loved to have had when working in Fairbanks - a pair of these would have been in high demand, especially in the old Denali Building!


That's right - they are USB fingerless gloves with temperature controls!

google earth/wrecks

I attended two lifelong learning lectures last Friday at UAS that gave me more of a chance to learn about the natural history of the area. It also gave me a chance to go to the campus but I didn't have time to visit with anyone. Car trouble, wouldn't you know.

The first session was hyped at using google earth to fly around SouthEast Alaska which we did a little of but it really was more about the environment and geology. Led by a retired high school teacher, the presenter was energetic and had great examples. I'm sure the kids at his school miss him. He was excited about his topic and very entertaining. I'd love to find out if he gives geology tours during the summer - that would be a blast. He demonstrated some of the ways that he uses google earth and some of the ways his student's used it for science fair projects. What a great tool. Here are a lot of layers and add-ons available that people have created to really take advantage of its features.

The second session was on shipwrecks of SE Alaska - namely the two most famous: Princess Sophia (1918) and the Princess Katherine (1952) and the presenter not only a gave a good background on the history of the incidents but she is also an underwater diver and photographer. She had some great slides of fish, creatures, and the actual wrecks seen from underwater. I asked if she had any on a website or in flickr and she said not yet but she's working on it. Since this was advertised as Lifelong Learning there were several people in the room who grew up in Juneau and remembered when the Princess Katherine wrecked on Lena Point very close to town. Apparently the first mate on the bridge forgot to tell the guy at the wheel to adjust a correction the mate had made earlier and ran aground. Due to the weather and the tides they couldn't get off and the ship sunk. Everyone was able to walk off so that was good. Apparently until a few years ago the wreck was in really good condition with a lot of the structure, furnishings, stained glass, etc. still in tact. I'm not sure of the legalities but the presenter referred to it being recently pillaged. (at least it wasn't burned and pillaged–that would be really bad–arrgh).

I recently finished reading a book about the Princess Sophia, Sinking of the Princess Sophia, Taking the North Down with Her - what a tremendous tragedy. Described as the worst wreck in the Pacific Northwest – all 285 passengers/crew perished – its place in history being trumped by the ending of WWI. Waiting for better weather to try to evaluate its passengers, after being stranded on the reef for about 14 hours the ship sank. Watch out for Vanderbilt Reef!