Notes from Fry's Electronics

1) It hadn't occurred to me before, but given the recent proliferation of small, fingertip-operated touch-screens as seen in smart phones everywhere, and the expansion of camera-back LCDs, I suppose the emergence of the touch-screen camera was inevitable. My immediate reaction was that I get enough fingerprints on my camera display as it is ...

2) I'm not enthused by the way the netbook market has gone. Everyone seems to have standardized on 10.1 inch screens, which are hardly enough smaller and lighter than my 12-inch, four-poundish Butterfly to be worth the trouble. Also, M$ has come up with a really mean trick; the Starter Edition of Win7 has desktop customization disabled. I haven't seen a non-customizable desktop since before Windows 3, and I enjoy displaying my favorite photos that way. Fair enough not to include the rotating-desktop function of the fancier Win7 versions, but to allow no customization at all is a fairly blatant attempt to drive people to upgrade -- at a price that's a fair fraction of the cost of the netbook. (Also, if there's no second-monitor support, would it even work for showing Powerpoint on a projector?) There are still XP models available, but buy a seven-year-old operating system on a new machine? I don't think so. So if I was to get a new netbook, it would end up being another Linux one, and I may as well live with the limitations of the 7-inch Eee for a while longer.


Edit (11.27): And five days later, I bought myself a cute little red Eee 1005. With XP, as that seemed like the least of the three evils, and I had a hunch it wouldn't be around much longer. The irony is that it has a better webcam than the one on the dragonfly laptop.

Amanda Downum, The Drowning City

Debut novel from one of the authors behind Shadow Unit., in which a young necromancer is sent with a couple of mercenary bodyguards to foment revolution in a colonial city. I had a bit of trouble keeping all the sides straight at first, but eventually I came to the conclusion that there weren't really any sides, just loose alliances of people with similar agendas, very few of whom are what they first seem. Even the ghosts -- mostly of slaughtered villagers -- have a political angle. The city, its people, its surroundings, and the various kinds of magic, are vividly evoked, and the magic system is different enough to be interesting but familiar enough to feel solid, and not just by-the-numbers. (The necromancy is not, on the whole, the gruesome sort.)

The novel pretty much stands alone, but I believe there's a sequel in the works, and I look forward to it.

Back

We made it back, though the connection in San Diego was a bit tight for comfort. ( Details and a quandary )