And for comparison sake, here’s the edited version of the post:

WordPress and Android

I discovered that there is an android app for working with a WordPress blog and it seems to work pretty well. However, as with all tablet apps the real limitation is in input. I’m attempting to use Nuance voice recognition here, and in some sense it is working surprisingly well; although it requires me to keep tapping the screen to add a new sentence after every time I pause. I have to figure out if there some way to correct the voice recognition and to learn from my mistakes as with the desktop version of Dragon. However, the voice recognition is surprisingly good; and I would rate it about on par with the desktop version albeit someone easier to use. It definitely seems superior to the version of Dragon for the Mac, and maybe on par with the version for Windows

P.S. I am deliberately leaving a lot of mistakes in place so you can see just how good this is or is not.

Bottom Line: This is actually sufficient for writing a first draft of a text heavy, formatting poor post ; but it’s not a replacement for real keyboard.

Update: editing on the tablet is really painful. I think I’ll have to go back to keyboard for that.

Once an external hard drive has failed, it is usually not possible to erase it, much less securely. However the most common mode of failure for an external hard drive seems to be that the enclosure fails, but the data on the platters is still there and can be recovered with enough effort and tools simply by pulling the platters out, and shoving them into a working enclosure. It’s not something I would usually do unless I didn’t have backups. However more often than not it’s something that could be done, either by someone who intercepts the package, a tech working at the hard drive company I return the drive to, or the next warranty servicee who gets back a reconditioned drive with my data still on it. Usually they’d have to use a disk recovery tool to see that data, but sometimes not even that. One third party Mac repair shop once sold me a “new” hard drive that came complete with the contents of someone else’s system: Quicken files, college essays, personal letters, etc.

I recently had the uncommon experience of getting enough warning to erase a hard drive before it failed completely. One of the Western Digital Elements 2.0 TB USB drives I use for rotating Time Machine Backups began making a whining noise. That’s a pretty reliable sign of imminent failure. For a little while, it wouldn’t mount at all, but after some coaxing I got Disk Utility to recognize it and did a single pass erase with all zeros. After that, I was reasonably comfortable sending it back for replacement under warranty. I paid for postage, but otherwise, Western Digital made the process relatively painless. I just entered my serial number in an online form, entered a reason for return, and they gave me a shipping label. I packed the drive up, took it to the mail room, and sent it off. And then a week later they sent me back the wrong drive.

I sent Western Digital an Elements 2.0 TB USB drive. They sent me back a larger, heavier, My Book drive that doesn’t stack with my other Elements drives. The model I sent them is still in production, and can be bought at Amazon for about $99. Is it too much to ask that they send back the same model that failed? The model they sent me seems to be a few dollars more expensive new than the model I sent them, but it’s not the one I wanted. Every different enclosure and power supply just adds to the mess on my desk. And when I e-mailed them about this, they sent an automated reply saying they wouldn’t read the message I sent them. After 18 minutes on the phone with them, they agreed to advance ship the drive they should have shipped in the first place.

I don’t know how to fix a manufacturer that sends me the wrong drive, but maybe there’s some way to fix the warranty returns. I could encrypt my backups and other external hard drives. However that means backups take longer, and files are much harder to recover if anything does go wrong. Plus encrypting a volume with FileVault means it is no longer effectively backed up with Time Machine. PGP Desktop does seem to be compatible with Time Machine, but makes it much likelier that you’ll have a soft failure on the hard drive that requires a restore from backup. TANSTAAFL. Or maybe next time I’ll just drive a few nails through the hard drive before sending it back, and see if they’ll still replace it. :-)

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OK. I know my handwriting is bad, but it’s not that bad. From the mistakes it’s making, I suspect MyScript is doing letter recognition alone and not trying to recognize entire words or phrases.

Apparently it doesn’t do such a good job with printed text either:

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Better, but still not remotely as good as typing.

Presumably this would get better with practice, but what really surprised me about trying to write in long form is that:

1. Even though I’m an awful typist, and even if the handwriting recognition were perfect, I’m still faster typing than handwriting.
2. Writing with the pen is actually more painful than typing. I can type for a couple of hours before I start to notice problems. Writing with the LiveScribe Pen, I didn’t even get to 200 words before my right hand was throbbing. This might be easier if the pen were more appropriately sized like a Bic rather than a Magic Marker.

At best, this pen is only useful for note taking. Ultimately, this seems like little more than an overly complex way to take a snapshot of a notebook page. Annoyingly you can’t even export that to a standard format in any obvious way. Your data is locked into Livescribe’s proprietary program. I had to print to a PDF and take a screenshot of that just to get this picture:

And that’s not even as good as the actual text! My printing is bad, but not that bad. Here’s a photo of the actual page taken with my cell phone:

Actually that doesn’t look so good either, but that’s because my cell phone camera doesn’t take such great pictures, and in this light there’s a lot of color noise. However you can see that the pen saw things that just aren’t on the paper at all. Apparently, the pen “recognizes” motions that are too close to the page but not quite close enough to make a mark with the ink on the paper.

I was hoping for something a little more conducive to writing.

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Just another example of monopoly incompetence.

• Must run Microsoft Word well. I wish it were otherwise; but OpenOffice just won’t cut it for professional tech authors. For computer books, Word is the low end. Past that, you’re looking at FrameMaker, TEX, or DocBook.
• A full-sized, keyboard, preferably with a decent set of full sized arrow keys and page up and page down keys. (MacBooks are problematic here.)
  Alternatively, I would be willing to consider a tablet PC with handwriting recognition that really works, especially if it works well in Word.
• A 15″ screen seems ideal. I might go a little smaller but not all the way to 9″ or 10″ like most netbooks. I could go larger if it were still thin and light.
• As cheap as possible, ideally under $500.
• As lightweight as possible. (Will pay more for less weight.)
• I will use this in my lap, so it must not heat up uncomfortably.
• Trackpad

They’re a few other requirements there are just assumed nowadays: wireless networking and a fast web browser.

Non-requirements include:

• Any particular operating system.
• An internal optical drive
• A big hard drive
• A built-in webcam
• Built-in speakers

The MacBook Air is nice, but it’s too expensive, and the keyboard layout doesn’t include all the keys I like. What’s the cheapest machine out there that meets my requirements? If it’s cheap enough, I may just grab one. If not, I may wait to see if Apple ever releases their rumored tablet.

Maybe a Dell Adamo seems to have the best keyboard but is at least 100% too expensive. ThinkPad X200? (no trackpad :-( )ThinkPad X300? ThinkPad X200 Tablet? Dell Studio 14z? Toshiba Portege R600?

I found one Pro version that’s bundled with a Philips 9500, but I’m not sure if they use the same recorder for the Preferred Mobile package or not. I suspect not since the 9500 is about $399 on its own.

I most certainly did not buy the extended 3 year warranty with onsite service. I have no faith at all that Dell would actually fulfill any part of that promise. However, this isn’t a mission critical system (I mostly bought it for Age of Conanexperimenting with Java 7) and I’m capable of supporting myself for most tasks.

I thought about CyberPower, but their support rep was even more hideous than Dell’s. (Dell’s support is bad. CyberPower’s is non-existent.) I also looked at Alienware, but they were both expensive and slammed in support.

I also looked at Fry’s and Newegg, but even building it myself (which I didn’t want to do) the price would have been higher than from Dell.

The big boys (Lenovo, HP, etc.) didn’t really offer the rig I wanted, especially when it came to graphics. Gateway I trust about as much as I trust Dell (roughly the distance I can throw one of their larger desktops), but they were quite a bit more expensive. If I had been aiming at a business/development box or a real high end gaming system, the results might have been different; but Dell did the best job of configuring me a relatively cheap system with a top-end NVidia graphics card.

Who Pays Who, Really?

Radio play is far more valuable to the artists and labels played than the radio stations playing them. There is far more music available than there is time to play it. When broadcast radio first came along, about a century ago and the musicians of the day negotiated with the stations of the day, radio suggested that airtime was so valuable that the music industry should pay the raiot stations for broadcasting their stuff.

Guess what? They were right, as the continuing payola scandals prove. Music labels can and do pay radio stations to play their songs. If major label RIAA members don’t want to pay-to-play on Internet radio someone else will; or at the very least independent artists will make their material available to Internet radio at no cost. If the RIAA is so stupid they’ll price their artists out of Internet radio (and they may well be exactly that stupid) others will replace them.

Pirate Radio

The United States and the United Kingdom and probably other countries have a long tradition of pirate radio. I’m not talking about microtransmitters in some kid’s attic. I’m talking about serious, commercial supported radio station broadcasting from just offshore. In the United States, Wolfman Jack became famous broadcasting from Mexico with a signal that could reach half the United States. In the U.K. ships anchored offshore played frequency hopping games as the BBC tried to jam them.

Guess what? In 2007 offshoring your broadcast is about a thousand times easier. There’s no reason anyone can’t set up their Internet radio facilities in a friendlier jurisdiction, be it Sweden or Sealand or Canada and pay zero royalties to anyone. Even if the RIAA comes after you there, pack up your software and head off to the next host and country. Bits move faster than lawyers.

The RIAA’s Internet radio purge is a temporary glitch, nothing more. Uncensored, free Internet radio is here to stay. The most the RIAA can hope to do is inconvenience a few American hobbyists for a few weeks before they find better solutions. The most they will do is transfer airtime from their artists to independents. Heck, if that means we don’t have to endure quite so many headlines about Britney shaving her head, I can only applaud. Go RIAA Go! We could never destroy you as fast as you’re destroying yourself.