Random tangent (blog)
Ameel Khan's personal blog. This is a blog about life, technology, photography, typography, the internet, science, feminism, books, film, music, and whatever other random stuff I come across or happen to be interested in today.
Growing up in the early 80s there were only three TV shows I was allowed to stay up late to watch:
That is all.
This is probably the best cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ that I’ve ever heard:
Today was the fifth and final day of Aussiecon 4, the 68th World Science Fiction Convention.
I am tired, brain-stuffed, geeked-out, hugely inspired, and incredibly happy.
This despite the fact that there was so much more I wanted to do but simply wasn’t able to get to. Oh well…next time :)
It is now one of my life’s goals to attend every single Worldcon and win at least one Hugo award.
Today’s program changed quite a bit – I think the Hugo winners were doing interviews while the Hugo nominees were sleeping in! – so I attended the following sessions:
High stakes: the television world of Joss Whedon
Losing the plot: plotting in advance vs writing as you go
Reading: Charles Stross
This was a great reading. Stross read from his upcoming book, ‘Rule 34’, that’s due out in July 2011.
Hand-waving, rule-breaking and other dirty tricks of hard sf
Fantasy fiction and the Bechdel Test
Closing Ceremony
When one Worldcon ends, another one begins. Aussiecon 4 is dead. Long live Renovation!
The 69th World Science Fiction Convention, called Renovation, will be held in Reno, Nevada, USA from 17-21 August 2011.
I will do my best to be there.
John Scalzi, Charles Stross, Gail Carriger & Melinda Snodgrass are awesome.
I have craploads of books to read. I have lots of stuff to write. I have many magazines to subscribe to. I have a bunch of fan clubs to join.
I have autographs from Gail Carriger & Charles Stross. I also have photos of them (from their readings) and with them.
Here’s Carriger:
Here’s Stross:
And here’s me with Stross (somebody asked if I was his stunt double!):
All in all, it’s been a fabulous five days.
Now back to the real world…
Four down, one last day to go at Aussiecon 4.
I made a few changes to the sessions I attended today, which ended up being:
Novellas: the perfect format
Reading: Gail Carriger
How to review
The short half-life of strange television
According to the panel and audience members, the following good TV shows were cancelled before their time:
Science fiction and the television industry
The future of gender and sexuality
Taking it on the chin: authors and reviewers
The Hugo Awards
Here are the sessions I plan to attend tomorrow, which is the last day of the convention:
This con has been a blast so far and tomorrow shouldn’t be any different.
I have now had three fantastic days at Aussiecon 4.
The best part is that, even after three whole days of awesomeness, there are still two more days to go!
Today was particularly fantastic because I went to Gail Carriger’s book signing at which she signed my copy of her third book, ‘Blameless’ :)
I also got my photo taken with her:
:)
All three of her books – ‘Soulless’, ‘Changeless’, and ‘Blameless’ (collectively known as the Parasol Protectorate series) – are really good, by the way. They’re fun, funny, and creative and they feature Alexia Tarabotti who has quickly become one of my favourite science fiction characters.
These books, if I could describe how they feel, are like chocolate cake without the calories: they’re delicious, decadent, lots of fun, and you don’t feel guilty about gorging on them.
Maybe at the next Worldcon, instead of wearing my ‘What would Ripley do?’ t-shirt (as I am in the photo above), I might have to make and wear a ‘What would Alexia do?’ t-shirt, instead.
I attended the following sessions today:
Copyright in the 21st Century
The best SF novel you have never read
As if I didn’t already have a huge list of books to read, I now have more; including:
I also have a book that was published as a podcast series to listen to:
The James Bond enigma
Melinda Snodgrass: writing for television
Kim Stanley Robinson's guest of honour speech
Cyberpunk and the city
Just a Minute
Academic Panel: Fantastic females: reworking feminism in women’s fantasy
Masquerade
Tomorrow I’m planning to attend these sessions:
It should, again, be an awesome day – by the end of which we’ll find out who’s won this year’s Hugos :)
Thus endeth another fantastic day at Aussiecon 4. Well, at least for me. Others will party late into the night, I’m sure.
Today I:
These are the sessions I attended:
The Last Airbender: race and Hollywood cinema
Making a living: Professional writing for speculative fiction authors
The future of privacy
Eowyn and Sam: underappreciated heroes in The Lord of the Rings
To the stars: the never-ending history of Star Trek
Academic Panel: These are not the people you are looking for: race in SFF
Tomorrow I’m planning to attend these sessions:
It should be awesome :)
I’m attending the 68th World Science Fiction – Aussiecon 4 – that’s being held in Melbourne, Australia from 2-6 September.
Today was the first day and, so far, it’s been awesome.
The biggest problem with conventions like these are that there are multiple sessions running concurrently (in multiple rooms, of course) so you have to choose which one of those you want to attend.
The organizers do, however, try to make your life a little easier by dividing sessions into topic streams – such as kids, young adults, academic panels, academic papers, writers workshops, film programs, signings, talks from guests, and so on. That way, if you have any special overarching interest in one streams, it makes it a little easier for your to make your choices.
Today, aside from the opening ceremony, I attended the following sessions during which I learnt the following things (though, of course, this is just a small sample of what was discussed there):
Breaking the fourth wall: Supernatural and its audience
Perfectly packaged: designing and marketing science fiction
Things to do in Melbourne when you’re geek
Tomorrow I’m planning to attend the following sessions:
I’ll also go check out the dealer’s room and go to the Friday Night Filking session (which should be lots of fun).
Following on from my post on ‘How to be Alone’, I have two articles two share. One that I remembered from earlier this year and one that I read today.
In ‘Why I Returned my iPad’ Paul Bregman talks about the importance of boredom and unproductive time in his life:
Being bored is a precious thing, a state of mind we should pursue. Once boredom sets in, our minds begin to wander, looking for something exciting, something interesting to land on. And that's where creativity arises.
My best ideas come to me when I am unproductive. When I am running but not listening to my iPod. When I am sitting, doing nothing, waiting for someone. When I am lying in bed as my mind wanders before falling to sleep. These "wasted" moments, moments not filled with anything in particular, are vital.
They are the moments in which we, often unconsciously, organize our minds, make sense of our lives, and connect the dots. They're the moments in which we talk to ourselves. And listen.
While in ‘How Do You Process Your Life?’ Tara Sophia Mohr talks about the need for downtime during which she reflects on and process what’s been going on in her life:
I need reflective processing time desperately, I’ve learned. Not because I’ll stop functioning without it. On the contrary, I look more “normal” to others when I don’t have it.
[…]
But to be the woman I want to be – emotionally generous, not cranky or erratic or jaded; to be spacious and open and deep, to have a presence that feels to myself and others to be grounded and alert and graceful; to be someone who brings more sanity into this world instead of contributing to the craziness, then I need downtime. To deal with colleagues and professional partners in a rational and calm way, to manage the challenges of my work effectively, to show up creative and focused everyday, I need to process what comes into the ecosystem of me.
I agree wholeheartedly with both Bregman and Mohr.
Here’s an awesome poem by Tanya Davis:
I love being alone.
In fact, I need to be alone a lot. That’s how I recharge. That’s how I de-stress. That’s when I truly relax.
A lot of things that people seem to like doing with others, I like doing on my own. Such as watching TV or movies, going to the cinema, eating lunch, cooking, and shopping.
This is not to say that I don’t enjoy socializing or doing all those activities with others. I do. I love to hang out and do stuff with Nadia, my family, my close friends, and all of my colleagues at work. I enjoy those social interactions very much and they, too, recharge me (though in a different way).
Afterwards, however, I need to be alone again. If only for a little while. At work, for example, I make it a point to eat lunch away from my desk, in the break out area, with my earphones on (usually listening to a podcast). There are people around me, of course, but I’m in a little world of my own.
I need to be very alone particularly after hanging out with lots of people in a highly social situation – like at a party or conference. In fact, I need to go hide under a rock for a little while after attending events like those!
Being alone or on my own doesn’t mean everything around me has to be peaceful and quiet or that I have to be lonely. I sometimes like being alone in the middle of a really crowded place. To me, being alone means having my thoughts to myself, or reducing my sensory inputs, or simply letting my brain idle (like, for example, while commuting to and from work every day).
Why do I like being alone so much?
I don’t know. That’s just the way I’m wired or have come to be configured. I enjoy my state of aloneness. It makes my brain happy. I haven’t bothered analysing why. Some day I might.
I do know that I’m not depressed on antisocial, though. So it’s not because of that. And I’m not a loner, either. I have plenty of friends and acquaintances who I love to hang out with and who, in turn, enjoy hanging out with me. I make it a point to say this because, in my experience (which I have subsequently generalized a little), many extroverted people tend to jump to erroneous conclusions – something must be wrong with him, then! – when they find out how much I like being on my own.
I do think that my wanting to be on my own a lot might have to do with the way, or the speed at which, I process things. I’m not the best at thinking on my feet, for example. I like to take my time. I like to plan things slowly. I like seeing the big picture. That’s just a guess, though, and I’m sure it’s only part of the story.
Anyway, I don’t have a point or conclusion to make. This is not some big revelation or something I’ve been dying to tell the world about myself. I just watched that video, enjoyed it very much, and wanted to put my rambling thoughts on the matter out there.
One of the reasons I bought a tablet PC was so I could be truly mobile in my computing. An important part of mobile computing is to have Internet access wherever you go. And the obvious and most reliable way to get that access is to have your own mobile broadband connection.
Last year I got that connection from 3. I bought from them a USB mobile broadband modem and signed up for a prepaid month-to-month data plan.
[Source: PC World]
This year I went one better. I bought and got Lenovo to preinstall an internal broadband modem (the Qualcomm Gobi 2000) when I bought my tablet PC.
I did that because I didn’t want to carry around a USB modem that I’d have to plug in every time I was out and about and wanted to connect to the Internet.
My plan was to transfer my existing 3 connection over from the old modem to the new one. I considered going to a 3 store and asking them to do that for me but then realized that, being a technology geek, I could probably do all that (i.e. the SIM installation and network configuration) myself. And I was right :)
So, here’s how you do it…
If you don’t already have a mobile broadband connection it’s pretty easy to get one from one of your local mobile carriers.
If you go with 3 in Australia, for example, you:
Do read the BYO Modem page on their website before you go ahead and do that, though.
In my case all I had to do was take the SIM out of my USB modem.
Inserting the SIM card into your laptop (or tablet PC, as the case may be) is really easy.
In the Lenovo ThinkPad X210 tablet PC – as in other ThinkPad X-Series computers – the slot for the SIM card lies behind the battery bay (click images for larger photos):
Take the card, orient it according to the etching on the metal plate below the slot, and push it all the way in:
Then put the battery back on and you’re done.
Assuming that you actually have a broadband modem installed in your computer and that all your drivers are up-to-date, you now need to turn your modem on.
To turn it on, use Lenovo’s Fn+F5 keystroke to bring up the ‘ThinkPad Wireless Radio’ window and press the ‘Power On’ button for the Wireless WAN Radio:
That should change the colour of the ‘Wireless WAN Radio’ text to green and should also light up (again, in green) the WWAN status indicator light just below the screen:
[Source: Laptop Mag]
If this doesn’t happen you probably don’t have a modem installed (check in Device Manager in Windows) or your modem isn’t configured properly (run Windows Update to get its latest drivers).
Next, you need to set up the connection to 3’s mobile network.
Since I use Lenovo’s Access Connections utility to manage my connections that was pretty straightforward to do. All I had to do was create a new Location Profile by clicking on the ‘Location Profiles’ tab:
And then pressing the ‘Create’ button:
Since I already have a Location Profile for my connection – called ‘3 Mobile Broadband WWAN’ – I’ll show you what its configuration is by clicking the ‘Edit’ button instead.
Under the ‘General Settings’ tab I’ve:
Under the ‘Mobile Broadband Settings’ tab I’ve said that this is an HSDPA/GPRS network that requires ‘Custom Settings’:
These ‘Custom Settings’ (which you get to by clicking the ‘Edit Settings’ button) are:
There’s no need to change any advanced or additional settings. Click all the ‘OK’ buttons and you’re done.
Go back to the ‘Connect to the Internet’ tab and you should now have ‘3 Mobile Broadband WWAN’ listed in your Location drop-down list. Select that and click the ‘Connect’ button next to it.
In this screenshot I’ve already clicked ‘Connect’ so that button has changed to ‘Stop’:
It should take about 10-20 seconds to connect…and off you go!
If the connection doesn’t take place then something hasn’t been configured properly or your account with the mobile carrier hasn’t yet been activated. I can’t help you with the former (because I’ve already told you all I know) and the latter you should already have worked out with the salesperson at the mobile carrier’s store.
If further tweaking fails and you can’t find the answer on the Internet then you should take your laptop to the mobile carrier’s store and ask for help (or, alternatively, call them up and get help over the phone).
But if all this has worked then you should now be connected to the Internet via your mobile broadband connection. Yaay!
So the Lenovo X201 Tablet PC that I ordered on 6 May arrived rather unexpectedly on Monday, 17 May…the day after I wrote that its expected delivery date was anything from 18 to 28 May.
This was doubly unexpected because others around the world have reported that it’s taken them 3-4 weeks to get their X201 tablets. Mine, luckily, left the factory six days after I placed the order and took only four business days for delivery (since it weighs less than 5kg).
Not that the Lenovo website told me any of this: The package arrived before the website’s order tracking page had even been updated with the DHL tracking number!
Let’s start with the system specs:
This what it looks like:
I’ll post more photos and some video of it over the comings weeks.
It’s awesome.
I don’t have the time right now to explain just how awesome it is so here are some quick thoughts:
Since the X201t arrived earlier than expected – that, too, in the middle of a really busy week at work – I haven’t had much time to play with it, explore it as thoroughly as I would like, or put it through its paces (like editing HD video on it, for example).
It has already become part of my daily work life, though:
More broadly, I have started to collect and centralize my work and home lives into OneNote on it.
Before I start using it at it fullest potential, though, I need to do some housekeeping. Specifically:
All that will happen in good time (particularly the last bit). For now, though, I’m having a blast using it and will keep you updated as it becomes a more central part of my life.
Oh, one thing, though: Using it to read e-mails and check my RSS feed subscriptions (using Gmail and Google Reader, respectively) is brilliant!
I have exciting news! Ten days ago I ordered the Lenovo ThinkPad X201 Tablet PC from the Lenovo Australia website and, if all goes well, I should receive it in another ten days.
[Source: Engadget]
So, yes, more than three years after I first blogged about wanting a tablet PC, I am finally about to get one :)
Yes, I was.
I did, however, say in my last tablet PC post that the Lenovo X210t was “still my #1 choice if I could afford it”. And, as it turned out, thanks to a massive sale at the Lenovo Australia website I could.
In fact, I ended up getting a system worth $5,400 for only $3,200! :)
Towards the end of the month.
It was shipped from the Lenovo plant in Shenzhen on the 13th and will take about 10 business days to arrive. I don’t yet have its tracking number – the Lenovo store site takes a frustrating couple of days to get updated – but I’m guessing it’ll get to me on the 28th.
The funny thing is, there were two other items in my order: a Bluetooth mouse and an extended warranty. Both will get to me before my tablet PC does.
I should get the mouse tomorrow, in fact, because it shipped separately a day before the tablet PC and packages under 5kg take only 4 business for shipping. And I already have the extended warranty because I got a confirmation e-mail from Lenovo telling me that it had been processed.
Oh, and to make it even harder for me to be patient, I even know the computer’s serial number because it was included in the extended warranty e-mail!
Actually, I shouldn’t complain. There’s a global shortage of Intel Core i5 and i7 processors so, when I placed the order about 10 days ago, the website said the tablet PC would ship from the plant “within 4 weeks”. I’m just thrilled that it shipped from the plant 8 days after I placed my order and not 28 days after!
There is one glimmer of hope, though: The tablet PC itself weights under 3kg so, if I’m lucky, the entire shipped package will weigh less than 5kg. If that’s the case then shipping will take 4 business days and I could get it as early as the 18th! I’ll find for sure tomorrow because that’s when the order tracking page on the Lenovo website will most likely get updated.
Meanwhile, if you want to know more about the X201t, check out these reviews:
I will, of course, post my own review once my tablet PC arrives :)
A couple of weeks ago I went to Sydney to attend a the ConnectNow Conference. That took place on Wednesday and Thursday so I took the Friday off to explore the city (as much as I could in one day).
The photos from that day are on my ‘Sydney April 2010’ Set on Flickr but here are some of my favourites.
The second day of the conference ended around sunset and the sunlight on that overcast day was quite delicious. This is the Law School building:
The Harbour Bridge is, of course, am imposing structure:
Even when it’s in the background:
It was fun, also, to see people doing the bridge walk on it:
I also managed to get a good perspective shot of the Sydney Tower from within the Sydney Explorer tour bus.
Finally, like my photo of Melbourne from Port Philip Bay, here's a photo of Sydney from its harbour:
All in all, I had a great day wandering around this gorgeous city. I would have liked more time to explore but that’s no fun without Nadia so we’ll check the city out properly when we go there for TAM! Australia 2010.
Oh, I also got to try out my new camera – the Canon IXUS 120 IS – which, as you can see from the photos I took, is quite awesome.
Quick reminder: You can see all the photos from this trip on my ‘Sydney April 2010’ Set on Flickr.
Nadia and I have maintained our website at insanityWORKS.org since 2004. It was overhauled once (in 2007) and is past due for another major upgrade.
This time, though, the plan is to move it on to a Content Management System (CMS). Much as I love getting down and dirty with HTML code (via Dreamweaver, of course) a CMS-based site will be much faster and significantly easier to maintain. At the very least we won’t be stuck managing it from only those computers that have Dreamweaver installed on them.
The question then becomes: Which CMS do I choose? I’ve been using both proprietary and open source systems since 2001 so I know a lot about a lot of them. That means I can use pretty much any one that’s out there quite effectively; though I do plan to use an open source one for this site.
Fortunately, my choice is limited by the ones that my web hosting provider, E-Starr, provides automatic support for (specifically, installation and upgrade support). I’ve used a bunch of these CMSs in the past, too, so I’m already quite comfortable with most of them.
What’s also good is that my personal website needs aren’t what they used to be three years ago. For example:
What’s left, then, is mostly text content and a couple of archived websites. Any old CMS can handle the former and latter will remain the way they are so, all told, my CMS requirements are actually quite simple.
What I think I’ll do now test a bunch of the CMSs available to see which one I like the most. I do have lots of options, including:
Not to mention WordPress, which can be tweaked to make a pretty good CMS itself.
So, if all goes well, I will report back in a few weeks, by which time I hope to have the newest version of insanityWORKS.org up and running.
Wish me luck!
So, after my previous post in which I explained why I’d settled on buying the HP TouchSmart tm2 convertible tablet PC for myself, I talked to one of the people at TabletPC.com.au. I was thinking of buying my tablet PC from them and also wanted their advice before I committed myself to a particular machine.
It’s a good thing that I did talk to them because I have changed my mind once again: I will now be getting for myself a Fujitsu Lifebook T900.
[Source: Fujitsu]
Just to explain: When I use the phrase “changed my mind once again” I don’t mean to imply that I am indecisive or unsure about what I want to get.
I keep changing my mind because I continue to:
That helps me define my tablet PC requirements better which, in turn, helps me choose the specific make, model, and system configuration that will suit me best.
The reason for my switching from the HP tm2 to the Fujitsu T900 is simple: the T900 is significantly better than the tm2 without costing significantly more.
In my previous post I listed the things the tm2 had going for it. The T900 has most of those as well:
I also listed a few things going against the tm2. The T900 has none of these:
Further, the T900 has some other things going for it:
It also has one thing sort-of going against it:
The catch is that the Fujitsu T900, while still cheaper than the Lenovo X201t (still my #1 choice if I could afford it), costs quite a bit more than the HP tm2:
So while I will be spending 50% more on the T900 than what I would have spent on the tm2, I’m confident that I will have a significantly superior overall tablet PC experience. And that makes all the difference.
There is one further catch, though: I won’t be able to afford this till the middle of April. Oh well, better late than never (particularly for a better overall system).
I have once again changed my mind about which tablet PC I’m going to buy.
My original choice was essentially a fully featured laptop that you could use as a tablet. This was the Toshiba M750, which has since been upgraded to the M780:
[Source: Engadget]
Then, once I got a desktop PC at home and a really good PC at work, I realized I didn’t need another full-power computer in my life.
So, instead of going for the normal-laptop-plus-tablet-PC type of device, I decided to get the thin-and-light type that was:
This was the Lenovo X200t, which has since been upgraded to the X201t:
[Source: Engadget]
Since then, however, two things have happened:
So, now, the HP TouchSmart tm2 is the tablet PC I’m going to get:
[Source: Engadget]
For much more on the tm2, check out:
Definitely – even though it costs half of what the Lenovo X201t does. And, while it certainly doesn’t have all the features of the X201t, it does have all the ones I really want.
For example, it has these awesome things going for it:
That said, it has some things going against it:
All told, these compromises – which you’d expect from something this low-cost – aren’t that much of a issue after all.
So, here we are and, if all goes as planned, I should buy one of these by the end of the month! :)
So earlier this month I was fortunate enough to see one of my favourite musicians, Moby, live in concert (with opening acts Kelli Scarr and Tim & Jean) at the Palace Theatre in Melbourne.
This was probably the best concert I have ever attended. Yes, it was even better than watching The Police live at the MCG on Australia Day a couple of years ago. I guess it helps that I own almost every Moby album and that I knew all of the songs he played :)
Instead of writing much about it, I’m just going to share some of the photos and video snippets that I took.
Opening number:
Joy Malcolm and Moby:
Kelli Scarr and Moby:
The whole band at the end of a song:
Joy Malcom and crowd participation:
‘Feeling so Real’ and concert end
It was awesome.
This is personal website of Nadia Niaz and Ameel Zia Khan. Here we document our lives in Melbourne, Australia.
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia