Recently, I wanted to get Survival of the Dead on Blu-Ray (yes, I am a Zombiphile, why do you think we have a Zombie Apocalypse category?); I wasn’t even aware it was available for home consumption, until I saw it advertised in Best Buy’s flier, you know, the one that is waiting for you when you enter the store.
I assumed based on its presence within said advertisement that I would be able to procure said goods at the store. But lo, not so!

During my last 3 trips to Best Buy, (the most recent occurring last Sunday), they haven’t had Survival of the Dead in stock. Each and every time (after spending a few minutes looking on my own), I went hunting for an employee and asked if they had it in stock, just in case it was displayed somewhere special and I couldn’t find it. Each time I was told it was not.

This was a bit frustrating to me and not the first time I have had this experience. The time before this, it was Crank 2. Best Buy’s flier showed both it and Crank 1 for a very excellent price and I thought to myself, “self, you don’t have these movies… yet!” I then stalked the aisles looking in vain for these titles, and again, an employee informed me that the titles were not in stock.

In the end, I guess I find myself in a similar position to the ones Jon has described, twice before, in his articles Hard to buy books via Brick & Mortar and Why bother buying local?

Oh well, at least I know I can always depend on Amazon.

For the last couple years, I’ve been threatening to go back and start playing FFXI.  Every time, John tries to dissuade me because… well, it’s probably the smart thing.  Recently FFXI was on sale on Steam for $5, too cheap to pass up, so I bought it (just in case… you see).  Well this past holiday weekend I had a little time on my hands, and a hankering to play (because I couldn’t get into the FFXIV beta)… so I installed.  After the requisite day of downloading, installing, & patching… I was ready to go.  I re-activated my old account (this time I remembered my information) and plopped myself back into Vana’diel.

I’ve only had a chance to play for a few minutes, but what really took me by surprise is how much of the game I remembered and/or picked up again almost immediately.  The control scheme in Final Fantasy XI is quite unique; I’ve never seen a game before or since that is even similar.  The entirety of FFXI can be played on the 10 key (num pad).  Every action including moving about, adjusting the camera, selecting targets, attacking, rest and accessing the menus… are all handled in the 10-key.  It is, obviously, very unusual, but fantastic once you learn it.  I’ll admit, I struggled for the first minute or two I was in game – I haven’t played in 4 full years – but then suddenly it clicked back in.  I was running about and menu navigating like I never left the game.

The second thing I noticed, was the fact that I didn’t need the maps.  When I first connected into the game, I found myself standing naked (well, I had a fishing pole) in the Chocobo Stables of Southern San d’Oria.  Lacking proper gear, I ran my way back to the local Mog House entrance and geared up.  When I was done, I left the mog house, checked the AH, grabbed a chocobo and started a run off to The Grand Duchy of Jueno… all without a map.  Sure, during my long run to Jueno I pulled out my map a few times, but that was to verify I was taking the most efficient path.  I realized that I really didn’t need the map, though it made things faster, and in the old days I could have done the “most efficient” path without a map, but I thought I was doing damn good.

In the end, I didn’t get to play for nearly as long as I thought I had, but it was great to be back.  I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to play, especially with the release of Final Fantasy XIV looming.  Playing FFXI was worth the nostalgia trip.  That, plus the ability to get the monthly fee on FFXI discounted with FFXIV (so I read), I will keep it around for a while.  Now I just have to find people to play with.

In other news, SurvivingTheWorld.net points out that the Living Dead are already among us (for certain values of “among” limited mostly to India).

Let me explain my geography.  I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the (arguably) most tech friendly areas of these United States of America.  Up until recently, I’ve not been in San Francisco much, and AT&T has done me well enough.  I had one house that the phone didn’t work in, but it worked out… annoying but understandable.  My new location has fantastic cell coverage with great speeds.  I run speed tests and get 2 megabits down and 1 megabit up.  Damn fantastic on a cell phone, upload beats my home DSL line.  Sure, I’ve got dropped calls here and there, but life is good enough.

That is, of course, until I started traveling into The City (translation: San Francisco proper).  Suddenly, I almost never have service and for those times that I do… GPRS would be faster.  No not EDGE, GRPS… yea… it’s that slow.  I can accept that San Francisco has a lot of people using their cell phones, and therefore the speeds suck… but I can’t even make a phone call.  Let me give you an example…

In my office in the city, we get basically no AT&T service.  Verizon and T-Mobile work just fine, just not AT&T.  Fine, whatever, we’re indoors after all.  Last night, I left for the day and on my way home, I called my mother.  She had been borrowing my truck and I wanted it back.  I talked to her as I was walking to BART, no big deal.  As soon as I walk down the stairs to the main level of BART, my call dies.  Now, according to my phone… I have service.  According to AT&T, they have service in the stations and on the platforms and in the tunnels of SF AND in the transbay tube.  So I go down to the platforms and try to call my mother back.

Operative word: Try.  My phone shows full coverage, 3G and everything.  I try making the call, nothing happens. I try again, the call dies again.  I ended up trying 6 times (eventually to different numbers too), and I couldn’t make a call.  The last thing my mother had said is “So I’ll be there in 15 minutes” because she thinks I’m already at home.  If I can’t contact her quickly, she’s going to spend the next 45 minutes at my house, wondering where the hell I am.  What’s a guy to do?  Well luckily for me I carry a spare pre-paid phone that is NOT AT&T.  I power on that phone, punch in my number, and my call goes through with absolutely no problem.

It is absolutely, totally, and utterly unacceptable to have service so shitty, that someone cannot even call their own mother (or anyone for that matter).  What if it was an emergency and I had needed to call 911?  If you’re in San Francisco and have AT&T, you’re better off walking to the nearest hospital (even if it is 5 miles away).  I’ve read that AT&T knows that their service sucks in San Fran & New York, too many iPhones or something like that.  Well if the iPhones are sucking up so much bandwidth that I can’t even make a call, TAKE AWAY THEIR DAMN DATA.  I’d rather have absolutely no data service at all, then not be able to make a phone call.  A CELLULAR PHONE is of very little use to me if it can’t even be a PHONE.

I’m going to Verizon. They’ve got Droids.

I’m not sure if a documentary about guys riding around the world is really something that can be spoiled (after all they are still alive, obviously didn’t die as part of it), but if you feel it could be spoiled, then be advised this will contain spoilers.

In Long Way Round, Ewan and Charlie start out in London and then drive east… all the way around the world on motorcycles. During the first part of the series they are discussing what bikes to use; Ewan wants to use BMWs, while Charlie wants KTM (a brand I knew nothing about, apparently they are an Austrian company that makes motocross/off-road bikes). Ewan acquiesces to Charlie’s request and the Long Way Round team goes and talks with KTM. KTM after learning what they are trying to do opts to NOT provide bikes to them as they think they will fail and it would look very bad for the brand. Charlie gets super pissed (which is of course part of the show), but then agrees that they should instead get BMWs. The bikes are the very beautiful BMW R1150GS Adventure.

Their is a third biker with them, Claudio, who is their cameraman and rides with them. They also have 2 SUVs filled with support personnel (including the director and a doctor). Throughout the show they encounter a variety of people and situations, the former are in general very welcoming and more often than not they ended up spending the night in someone’s house, rather than at a hotel. The situations (specifically the off-roading) do get very trying for everyone, but thanks to the technical expertise they gained before the trip, they are able to surmount all the obstacles they are presented with.

Toward the last part of the trip, they get a few other bikers joining them, forming a small gang, if you will. The last episode has some teasing about them wanting to do this again, which is what lead to the Long Way Down.

Long Way Down once more sees Ewan and Charlie on BMWs, though this time they are riding BMW R1200GS Adventures (the successor to their previous bike). This time the journey is from John O’Groats, Scotland to Cape Agulhas in South Africa.

The situations in this series were a bit more problematic, specifically, trying to organize so many border crossings (which required delays of up to 12 hours). Additionally, at the start of the series, Charlie decided “to use the ‘bomb’ word” in the airport while leaving England, which of course caused a major ruckus. Most of the crew went on without him and he was eventually released without charge. It doesn’t happen very often, but throughout this show and the last you see Charlie acting like the big time movie star, demanding various things and causing various problems (such as accidentally splashing petrol in Ewan’s eyes, repeatedly), whereas Ewan acts so congenially that he really comes off as just an incredibly nice person, a real everyman.

Partway through the journey, Ewan’s wife, Eve, meets up with them and rides with them for a bit. Her personality is similar to Ewan’s and I think she really helps us all to understand how we would react in that situation (riding for hours and spending the night in a random village by the side of the road, for instance).

In the final bit of the show, as Ewan and Charlie arrive in South Africa they are followed by a very large number of motorcycles. Some of the shots they show… you can’t see the end of the line. This is a gang of motorcycles.

In summary: 2 guys riding BMW Bikes show us an adventure. These guys did not ride alone and they did have support personnel and vehicles with them. This means it isn’t something you or I could do by ourselves. As much as Jon and I like riding our bikes (and we are fairly decent at it), we would not be able to attempt this journey. I’d say the most we could do is cross country. Personally, I’m fine with that.

Lastly, if you’d like more info about these trips, I invite you to take a look at the movies or read the books: Long Way Round and Long Way Down.

(Note: Added to Category: Stupid Companies, because KTM lost out on a lot of business and publicity when they shot down Ewan and Charlie)

Let’s be totally honest, the Kindle Lighted Leather Cover is fairly pricey, as cases go.  The Kindle is $190 and the lighted case is $60, making it almost a third the cost of the reader itself.  You could go and buy the non-lighted Kindle Leather Cover for only $35, but in my case… the LED light was just too cool to pass up.  I know it’s only a light, but it is the concept that really got me.  Additionally, I’m not particularly impressed with Amazon’s execution of the light, but it does work.

So first, let’s talk about what I do like. In storage mode, the light fits entirely within the case and really had very little sticking out.  The transition from leather to plastic isn’t perfect, but good enough that you’d have to seriously work on catching it on something.  The light itself is a good brightness level to me.  It is bright enough to assist in low light situations (like say a restaurant with “mood lighting”), while not so bright that is it blinding in the pitch dark (like say in bed).

The other nifty piece is that the light is entirely integrated into the Kindle 3′s power.  If the light is extended, it only turns on when the Kindle turns on.  If you turn the Kindle off (or it idles off because you fell asleep), the light also turns off.

Moving on, let’s cover what I don’t like.  The biggest single problem with the light is the fact that it is mounted in the top right (specifically off to the side).  So that corner is well lit while the bottom left is much dimmer.  Not so much as to make it unreadable, but enough that it irritates my sense of balance.  I’d much prefer a centered light.  Also, due to how the plastic for the light is bent, it can require a bit more finesse than I’d like, just to get it in the case and stored again.  It would also be nice if there was a brightness control for the light.

One major caveat.  People don’t realize this, but the Kindle manages it’s truly amazing battery life by the fact that it isn’t in fact on and running most of the time.  The Kindle screen, being E Ink, is only drawing power when flipping a page or updating content.  The wireless, if you have it on, is only pinging out every once in a while to check for updates.  Why do I mention this? Because the light sucks batteries.  The light is, in fact, always on.  This is in contrast to everything else on the Kindle.

I’ve read reports that calculated the battery life of the Kindle, with light on, is approximately 20 hours.  This roughly jives with my experience.  I charged the Kindle last Thursday and used it to read at least 3-4 hours a day.  It lasted to the end of Monday, so roughly 4 full days.  During this time I left the Wifi AND 3G on the entire time, along with using the light most of the time.

To me, this is perfectly acceptable.  In reality I make a point of only turning on the wireless when I need it.  I also do not need to have the light on while riding BART; I only use the light at night.  I find it a little more pleasant to have a dimmer light to read by, rather than a 100W bulb lighting up the entire room.  I will probably be able to go 2 weeks between charges, even using the light.

In summary: The case is good, not great, but good.  I’d prefer they’d make some changes, especially to bring down the price.  The case will definitely be kept because if nothing else, it is a nice high quality looking case.  Besides, I enjoy being the one on BART with Chairman Mao’s little burgundy red book.

Of the three books I looked at, Chobits was the closest I came to actually buying.  In Borders it is $24.99, on Amazon it is $17.99.  I have a hard time overlooking $7, especially when the brick and mortar is going to add tax, which would make the different over $9.  I wasn’t sure if I wanted the book, which is what actually stopped me from buying that particular item.  The next two books… were much more clear cut.

Next on the list is The Official Ubuntu Server Book.  In Borders it is $39.99, but only $26.39 on Amazon.  A $13 difference (Plus Tax) is just not even close.  After flipping through this book, I decided it was actually quite nice and rather wanted to buy it.  So I purchased it from Amazon right there in Borders, using my Amazon Android application. The book will be here shortly.

Last was the LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell book.  In Borders it is a tech-book typical $49.99.  Demonstrating that it just isn’t financially feasible to use brick and mortar stores is Amazon with a price tag of just $31.49 which is an $18.50 difference (not including tax).  I realize that the $49.99 value is list price, but how can any consumer seriously consider spending 60% more on one single book, just to buy it in store.  Sure, if you absolutely, positively MUST have the book right that second, you’ve got no choice.  If I had any option whatsoever, I’d Amazon it.  $3.99 for overnight shipping is still much, much cheaper.

Yes, I like to be able to pick up the books and flip through them before I buy them.  Yes, I like to just browse the shelves of a bookstore.  But no, I will not pay a $39.10 premium to do so.  That is enough to go and buy a copy of Ubuntu: Up and Running: A Power User’s Desktop Guide AND the Ubuntu Pocket Reference Guide AND still have $6.00 left to buy a coffee at Starbucks.  Sorry, Borders loses.

This proved not to be so easy as the Roku didn’t seem to fit into any of the existing categories of Television, Amplifier, Cable/Satellite Box, Video Recorder, DVD, Music Player, Game Console, Mini System, Computer, Home Automation, or More Device Types. Well, I thought it fit into Mini System or Home Device Types, but those two categories were comprised of Mini System (DVD, CD, Radio), Mini System (CD, Radio, Cassette), and Mini System (DVD, VCR, Radio), and Tape Deck, Minidisc Player, and DAT, respectively. After some playing around I finally found it. Apparently, the Roku is a DVD Player! Or at least that’s what Logitech says.

Inside the Logitech Harmony Remote Software (I have version 7.7.0), do the following:

1. Go to Devices
2. Click Add Device
3. From the first dropdown, select DVD as the category and DVD as the subcategory
4. Select Roku as the Manufacturer
5. Enter your model (mine is an N1100, the example is N1000)
6. Click Next
7. It will show your device, then click Next again
8. Scroll through your list of devices and click Settings on the one named DVD (this is your Roku’s default name)
9. Select Rename this device from the list
10. Click Next
11. Enter the new name (i.e. “Roku” or “Roku HD”)
12. Click Save
13. Click Done

Congrats! You now have your Roku player associated with your Logitech Remote. Now you can add it to any activities you like or create new ones.

The Screen – I never really thought of the screen on the Kindle 2 as “pale”, but looking at the K2 and K3 side by side, text on the K3 is much darker.  Amazon says the screen contrast has been up’ed by 50%, and I’ve got no way to prove that – but it does look much nicer.  They also made the screen flips faster.  I’m not sure how much faster, maybe another 50% faster.  Needless to say it is very fast and shouldn’t be problem unless you’re stabbing the page button as fast as you can.

Size and Weight – Amazon says the K3 is 21% smaller and 15% lighter than the K2.  This is obvious right off the bat; as soon as you pick up the device you will feel the difference. At this point, the weight of the device only makes a difference for long reading sessions, but I know the K3 will be nicer to hold in the longer run.  As for the size, if you take off the top bar and right bar of the K2, you’ve got the size of the K3.  The one thing I will note, the K2 and K3 are exactly the same thickness, so nothing has changed there.

The Exterior – Everyone knows the Kindle 1 was not exactly a sleek device.  The K2 definitely fixed that issue.  The K3 improves yet again upon the sleekness.  First off, they moved the speakers to the top (back) of the K3, so your hands aren’t covering it.  Second, they moved the power button, headphone jack, and volume control to the bottom of the device.  I do mean the absolute bottom, on the same line as the power charger (which is still Micro-USB, thankfully).  Lastly, One very nice and unexpected change was the case itself.  They made the entire unit one type of plastic (no more brushed metal back).  This (what I am assuming is a new) material also has been given a slight rubbery feel.  It isn’t so much that it feels like you are holding a tire, but just enough so the Kindle 3 doesn’t feel so slippery.  Plus you can prop it up on a slippery surface (like a hard plastic palm rest of a keyboard) and it is much less likely to slide.

The Speakers – While the Text-to-Speech feature on the Kindle is nifty, I rarely use it.  Generally, when I want to read, I want to actually read.  That being said, I’ve been known to load up a few MP3s on my Kindle 2 so I can listen to some tunes as I read.  Just for fun, I loaded up the same MP3 on the K2 and the K3 and I’ve got to say, the Kindle 3 sounds much better. The Kindle isn’t going to win any awards as an MP3 player, but the speakers do play a fairly good rendition of the music.  They are much less prone to clipping on the high volumes, and possess a much more balanced tonal range.  Heck, I can even feel the slightest hint of bass coming from the unit on the drum beats.  Sure, it isn’t going to blow out any windows, but for an eBook reader, it is impressive.

The Page Buttons – So the Kindle 1 had HUGE buttons that were way to easy to accidentally press.  In the refined Kindle 2, the buttons were much smaller, but still had a tendency for accidental activation.  For me they were a problem after longer reading sessions where I ended up wanting to hold the K2 almost on top of the button because that was most comfortable for me.  In the K3, the buttons are tiny.  The K2′s buttons measure 1/2″ in width, the K3′s measure in at about 3/16′s of an inch (that’s less than half the size).  Effectively, the K3′s buttons are just the edge of the unit.  They’ve also changed up the layout a bit so Next Page and Previous Page are on both sides, while Home, Menu, Back, and the direction pad have been moved to keyboard.

The Keyboard – With the exception of the addition of the Menu, Home, and Back keys, the keyboard doesn’t look much different.  They did remove all the numbers (they now appear after clicking the Symbols button) and the forward slash.  With the shrinkage of the case, the keyboard also takes up less real estate.  The keys themselves are the same size, but the space in between them is greatly reduced.  I haven’t done much typing yet, but the keyboard seems to be much of the same.  The new direction pad, on the other hand, is quite nice.  It is smooth and integrated.  Most importantly, the K3′s direction pad doesn’t stick out like the K2′s joystick.

The Reading Interface – Most of the Kindle 3′s interface is just like it is on the Kindle 2 (nothing major enough to worth noting), but they made a number of changes to the reading interface which are quite nice.  First off, once you are into a book, the title bar (containing title, time, etc) disappears.  If you press the menu button, it reappears to tell you the book title, time, wifi status, 3g status, and battery status. The only difference from the K2 is the fact that the K3 no longer shows you the amount of free space.  Note: this is only when reading a book; when you are at the home screen, pressing Menu will still show you the free space.  The second change was to get rid of the bottom “bar” of empty space that you had in the K2.  In the K3, the location bar is now directly flush against the bottom of the screen.  These two changes combine to give you 3-4 more lines of reading space out of the same screen (on the smaller font settings).  The third change is the addition of new options in the font settings.  In the Kindle 2 you could change only the font size and “Words per line”.  In the Kindle 3 they have also added “Typeface” which gives you the options of “regular”, “condensed” and “sans serif”.  You also have “Line Spacing” with the options of “small”, “medium”, and “large” which reduces the amount of vertical space between lines (the “large” option is the default, and the size the Kindle 2 used).

In conclusion: If you don’t already have a Kindle and have been thinking about it, go buy a Kindle 3.
As for whether it is worth the upgrade, to me it definitely is, heck I thought it was worth it when I first heard about them, which is why mine arrived yesterday (Editor’s note: Jon preordered THE moment he heard about it.).
The question you should be asking yourself is: Are there any items in this list that I really wish I had on my Kindle?

I had read somewhere that “Map Network Drive” was supposed to work with WebDAV in much the same way as in OSX.  I tried it out, but it never seemed to work.  I spent quite a while googling about for instructions that would work and eventually landed upon a semi-promising article that mentioned the need to install the “Software Update for Web Folders (KB907306)“.  Cool! Maybe that was all I was missing. I gave the update a shot, and a reboot later I was ready to WebDAV…

Of course it didn’t work.  That update does allow you to put in URLs directly into “Map Network Drive” rather than having to go into the more hidden “Connect to a website…” option.  Even still, I couldn’t connect to my WebDAV share. I saw the connection attempts on the Apache logs, but Windows kept telling me it wasn’t a valid share (Liars!).  After some more research, I found a post that said that the WebDAV connector didn’t allow ‘basic’ authentication, but you could fix that with a registry hack.  This time I knew better than to get my hopes up… which was a good thing, because it didn’t work either.

After still more research, I found the answer.  Microsoft’s WebDAV client only supports the use of ‘digest’ authentication.  I almost never use digest authentication, even though it is technically superior, simply because it is not well supported.  Any time you need “secure” authentication, you use SSL.  In the interest of being sure, I switched my authentication on the WebDAV share from ‘basic’ to ‘digest’… TADA… Windows 7 worked with WebDAV.

Of course, there is one CRITICAL flaw, I’m doing this against an LDAP back-end.  You cannot mix ‘digest’ authentication and LDAP.  The short reason is that because digest hashes the password before sending it (where basic sends the password clear text), and that hash is not compatible with your LDAP password hashes. It makes sense, and is nether LDAP’s nor Apache’s fault for not working.  The reality is that it is dumb (and typical) of Microsoft.

In summary: You cannot have Windows 7 natively talk to a ‘basic’ authentication WebDAV share, Period.  You can use Windows 7 native WebDAV with ‘digest’ authentication only, but that prevents you from using LDAP.