Bowen's teacher was complaining about his writing. My solution was to get a handwriting practice book and then pens and make him practice. He didn't enjoy it though, and the pens get lost a lot.
I remembered my years as a kid in Singapore schools practicing with a fountain pen. Fountain pens can only be held in a particular way, which makes them great for getting everything right. The Pilot Metropolitan was cheap, which is important for something that's going to be handle by a kid. Dropping a fountain pen on its nib will pretty much destroy it.
Well, Bowen didn't like the fountain pen either, but I discovered a very nice property of a fountain pen. Nobody else in the house wanted to borrow one, which meant that my fountain pen could always be mine, and I'd always have a pen instead of constantly losing it. The fine nib is scratchy, and the built-in squeeze converter holds very little ink, so I went in search of a better pen.
I ended up with the Kaweco Classic Sport, also in a fine nib. This pen's a little more expensive, but it writes much smoother than the Metropolitan, and is also much smaller. Unfortunately, the pens don't use interchangeable cartridges, oh well.
What surprised me about the pens is that modern fountain pens seem to be much better than the stuff I had in school. They don't leak, even on airplanes. (I carry a pen to fill out custom forms, and again, it's such an exotic instrument that nobody ever asks to borrow mine)
I have to say that I'm surprised by how nice it is to have a fountain pen. I never would have guessed it.
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Monday, September 24, 2018
Friday, April 27, 2018
Review: LG E42.5" UHD 4K monitor
I normally like to wait for a bit before reviewing electronics, but there's a limited time deal on the 43UD79-B monitor ($530), so I'll make an exception.
I've used wide-screen monitors like the Dell 3818 before, but I've found them to be impractical if you're a writer or programmer: the extra width might give you multiple side-by-side windows for comparing photos or viewing graphs, but when you are writing, it's the amount of text you can fit in vertically that matters. So when I thought about what was practical, the standard 4:3 ratio is what you really want, along with a big screen.
4K is not useful on TVs because of the viewing distance. But 4K is great for computer monitors. With a big screen like the LG 43" display, you can use the screen without turning on resolution scaling, giving you huge amounts of text for writing. The screen comes with 4HDMI inputs, 2 of which allow for 60fps when driven by say, an Nvidi GTX 1030 (yes, I had to upgrade my wife's Optiplex 790 so it could drive a 4K display) , and a display port input as well as a USB-C alt-mode-capable input. The device won't switch automatically between them, requiring you to push "OK" on the remote (yes, the monitor comes with a remote!) in order to flip between inputs.
I was skeptical of the remote at first, but it's turned out to be much better than the usual buttons at the bottom or sides of Dell's monitors, which respond slowly (if at all) to text input and are frustrating to use. The monitor also comes with speakers, which lets you declutter your desk by eliminating the speakers.
Like all screens, your first impression upon unboxing it is that "it's huge." But by the next day, you're going to think: "all the other screens are so small! How the heck did I get anything done on them?" It is amusing that the various collection of monitors in the house show their age by the kind of connectors available on them: DVI-D inputs are no longer provided on the modern monitors, and one monitor actually has a VGA-input, and composite-video input which are no longer found at all anywhere. All this in the space of 10 years. It looks like mini-display ports are going to go next.
By far the worst feature of a 4K screen is that compression artifacts such as those imposed by Google Photos are readily visible. I used to think that Google Photos did an acceptable job of compressing pictures, but now that I regularly see those same photos on a 4K screen I no longer think so: edges that are even a bit off look blurry, and faces don't have the same clarity that you can clearly see from the original Canon RAW file and/or the Lightroom uncompressed JPG output. I'm glad that I have a decent backup solution for my RAW images, as I'm pretty sure I will have to re-render many of them to not be annoyed by looking at them on the 4K screen. I'm doubly happy that I have high resolution cameras and don't go through life shooting pictures of my kids with crappy cell phone cameras. I'm afraid the price of a monitor this good is that the limitations of your photo gear will become readily apparent, and you'll have to buy better cameras to keep up.
I'm red-green color-blind, so I can't comment on color accuracy. If you care about it, use a color-calibration tool.
It's very rare that the cheaper device (the LG 43" monitor) outperforms and is more practical than the more expensive device (the Dell 3818), but this is clearly the case here, especially if you use your screen for real work (programming, writing, photography). If you fit into one of those categories, take advantage of the current prices and get one (and if you're a manager of a team of programmers/writers, you owe it to your team to buy one for every member of the team --- this is one of the best bang for the buck upgrades you can get for your team, right up there with SSDs back when they were first introduced). If you don't like buying from Amazon, Costco has it for a bit more ($550). Given Costco's longer warranty coverage that might be worth the extra $30 anyway.
Monitors last forever (though my HP ZR2740W had to be replaced under warranty once), so it's not worth replacing them unless something dramatically better comes along. It looks like the LG 43UD79-B is that something. Recommended.
I've used wide-screen monitors like the Dell 3818 before, but I've found them to be impractical if you're a writer or programmer: the extra width might give you multiple side-by-side windows for comparing photos or viewing graphs, but when you are writing, it's the amount of text you can fit in vertically that matters. So when I thought about what was practical, the standard 4:3 ratio is what you really want, along with a big screen.
4K is not useful on TVs because of the viewing distance. But 4K is great for computer monitors. With a big screen like the LG 43" display, you can use the screen without turning on resolution scaling, giving you huge amounts of text for writing. The screen comes with 4HDMI inputs, 2 of which allow for 60fps when driven by say, an Nvidi GTX 1030 (yes, I had to upgrade my wife's Optiplex 790 so it could drive a 4K display) , and a display port input as well as a USB-C alt-mode-capable input. The device won't switch automatically between them, requiring you to push "OK" on the remote (yes, the monitor comes with a remote!) in order to flip between inputs.
I was skeptical of the remote at first, but it's turned out to be much better than the usual buttons at the bottom or sides of Dell's monitors, which respond slowly (if at all) to text input and are frustrating to use. The monitor also comes with speakers, which lets you declutter your desk by eliminating the speakers.
Like all screens, your first impression upon unboxing it is that "it's huge." But by the next day, you're going to think: "all the other screens are so small! How the heck did I get anything done on them?" It is amusing that the various collection of monitors in the house show their age by the kind of connectors available on them: DVI-D inputs are no longer provided on the modern monitors, and one monitor actually has a VGA-input, and composite-video input which are no longer found at all anywhere. All this in the space of 10 years. It looks like mini-display ports are going to go next.
By far the worst feature of a 4K screen is that compression artifacts such as those imposed by Google Photos are readily visible. I used to think that Google Photos did an acceptable job of compressing pictures, but now that I regularly see those same photos on a 4K screen I no longer think so: edges that are even a bit off look blurry, and faces don't have the same clarity that you can clearly see from the original Canon RAW file and/or the Lightroom uncompressed JPG output. I'm glad that I have a decent backup solution for my RAW images, as I'm pretty sure I will have to re-render many of them to not be annoyed by looking at them on the 4K screen. I'm doubly happy that I have high resolution cameras and don't go through life shooting pictures of my kids with crappy cell phone cameras. I'm afraid the price of a monitor this good is that the limitations of your photo gear will become readily apparent, and you'll have to buy better cameras to keep up.
I'm red-green color-blind, so I can't comment on color accuracy. If you care about it, use a color-calibration tool.
It's very rare that the cheaper device (the LG 43" monitor) outperforms and is more practical than the more expensive device (the Dell 3818), but this is clearly the case here, especially if you use your screen for real work (programming, writing, photography). If you fit into one of those categories, take advantage of the current prices and get one (and if you're a manager of a team of programmers/writers, you owe it to your team to buy one for every member of the team --- this is one of the best bang for the buck upgrades you can get for your team, right up there with SSDs back when they were first introduced). If you don't like buying from Amazon, Costco has it for a bit more ($550). Given Costco's longer warranty coverage that might be worth the extra $30 anyway.
Monitors last forever (though my HP ZR2740W had to be replaced under warranty once), so it's not worth replacing them unless something dramatically better comes along. It looks like the LG 43UD79-B is that something. Recommended.
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
Review: Writing Great Fiction
Every so often I get one of those Great Courses catalogs in the mail. The prices are usually tempting, but audiobooks aren't a great medium for me: I prefer reading (I can read many times faster than I can listen to someone talk). Finally, when a $6.95 deal came along for Writing Great Fiction, I decided that for the price I could give it a shot.
It took me close to 4 months to listen to the entire course, and I have to say that I'm impressed. I've long been the kind of person who understood a topic better by understanding the implementation, rather than being the kind of person who could understand the theory all by itself. For instance, I understood continuations better when I realized that it was simply allocating the activation record on the heap rather than on the stack.
Similarly, this course can be treated as a set of instructions for writing fiction, but I chose to treat it as a discourse on the implementation into fiction, which gives insight about how great fiction is constructed. For instance, I find "stream-of-consciousness" novels a complete bore and cannot bring myself to read more than a couple of pages of Ulysses or Mrs Dalloway, but James Hynes' analysis of the techniques behind those novels as well as why they're considered great made them completely comprehensible to me. (It also absolves any remaining need for me to read those books)
Similarly, he analyzes Anton Chekov's short stories, and uses examples from Alice Munro, J.R.R. Tolkein, Dashiell Hammett, Herman Melville, and James Ellroy to make various points about how to go about constructing a plot (and explains what the difference is between a character-driven story and a plot-driven story), writing dialogue, the use of first and third person narratives, and when to use narration versus painting a scene in detail. As with many college classes, he provides writing exercises at the end of each 30 minute lecture, in case you want to try your hand at some of the techniques he describes.
This is probably a great English literature class for those of you whose mind is like mine (i.e., prefers implementation over declaration/theory). I'm now even more sorry that my public University had so few spots in its creative writing courses that I was never able to snare one of the spots in those classes. While James Hynes might not be a great novelist (I never read any of his novels before starting this), he's a great instructor and quite capable of providing multiple examples for each techniques
The android Audible app (which I used to listen to all 12 hours of this course/audio book) is very well done. It remembers the state of your listening, and lets you resume precisely from where you left off at any point. I listened to this course on my android phone while hiking or doing other activities. It made a nice change from listening to music or NPR broadcasts.
Highly recommended, even for those of us who may never write a novel. This gives me more confidence to pick up one of those "Great Courses" at a good price the next time I find a deal.
It took me close to 4 months to listen to the entire course, and I have to say that I'm impressed. I've long been the kind of person who understood a topic better by understanding the implementation, rather than being the kind of person who could understand the theory all by itself. For instance, I understood continuations better when I realized that it was simply allocating the activation record on the heap rather than on the stack.
Similarly, this course can be treated as a set of instructions for writing fiction, but I chose to treat it as a discourse on the implementation into fiction, which gives insight about how great fiction is constructed. For instance, I find "stream-of-consciousness" novels a complete bore and cannot bring myself to read more than a couple of pages of Ulysses or Mrs Dalloway, but James Hynes' analysis of the techniques behind those novels as well as why they're considered great made them completely comprehensible to me. (It also absolves any remaining need for me to read those books)
Similarly, he analyzes Anton Chekov's short stories, and uses examples from Alice Munro, J.R.R. Tolkein, Dashiell Hammett, Herman Melville, and James Ellroy to make various points about how to go about constructing a plot (and explains what the difference is between a character-driven story and a plot-driven story), writing dialogue, the use of first and third person narratives, and when to use narration versus painting a scene in detail. As with many college classes, he provides writing exercises at the end of each 30 minute lecture, in case you want to try your hand at some of the techniques he describes.
This is probably a great English literature class for those of you whose mind is like mine (i.e., prefers implementation over declaration/theory). I'm now even more sorry that my public University had so few spots in its creative writing courses that I was never able to snare one of the spots in those classes. While James Hynes might not be a great novelist (I never read any of his novels before starting this), he's a great instructor and quite capable of providing multiple examples for each techniques
The android Audible app (which I used to listen to all 12 hours of this course/audio book) is very well done. It remembers the state of your listening, and lets you resume precisely from where you left off at any point. I listened to this course on my android phone while hiking or doing other activities. It made a nice change from listening to music or NPR broadcasts.
Highly recommended, even for those of us who may never write a novel. This gives me more confidence to pick up one of those "Great Courses" at a good price the next time I find a deal.
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Wharton Business School Presentation
One question that came up was where can you learn to code? While I'm not a big fan of the various programming boot camps for professional programmers, for MBAs, it could very well be just the thing. The school itself had fantastic facilities, and the lecture hall was the best room I'd ever given a presentation in, with stadium-style seating and the lecturer standing in the pit subject to questions all around. Definitely an experience to be had.
As usual, the above slides are sanitized for public consumption. The presentation given to the business school students is a lot more peppered with interesting case studies from industry. Having said that, with my new full time job, my time for speaking engagements is a lot more limited and I will curtail them going forward.
Wednesday, November 07, 2012
The Endorsement I'm Proudest Of
I wasn't allowed to blog about this or write about this until today for the obvious reasons. But the best endorsement I'd ever heard from was from the CTO of the Obama for America campaign, Harper Reed. Reed bought a copy of Startup Engineering Management, and wrote back to me after reading it:
I have suggested to all of the tech leadership on the Obama campaign (and the DNC too) to read your book. I hope they take the advice and check it out. It was very good and worthwhile to read. We are not failing.Needless to say, neither I nor the book can take any credit for the success of the Obama campaign. They did an amazing job and would have done so with or without the book. I can say that from outside the campaign, there were many days when I had my doubt about whether Obama would win, but like any good startup, the campaign labored on regardless of what everyone else said or thought. It is nice to hear that they thought highly of the book, and I'm glad to have done even a tiny bit for the campaign. For an indepth-look at what the Obama campaign built and how it built it, please see this Ars Technica article. I'm obviously very pleased with the results of yesterday's election, and hope to see the promise of Obamacare fulfilled.
Monday, September 24, 2012
First Impressions: Google/Asus Nexus 7
I'm writing this review late, since there are plenty of Nexus 7 reviews out there. However, I did get the Nexus 7 as a birthday present recently, so that's my excuse. Why the Nexus 7, instead of say, one of the latest flock of Kindle Fires?
I could complain about my frustration with not having access to the native GMail App, and how I dislike the forking of Android, even though I understand the business reasons behind them. However, by far the most annoying one is that the latest Kindle Fires simply do not have GPS! Now, you might think that the lack of a GPS shouldn't matter to a device that doesn't have always-on connectivity, but first, Google Maps recently offered an off-line capability (though one that's not quite completely useful --- for instance, navigation absolutely does not work when off-line). Secondly, Frank Spychalski pointed me at this article about using the Nexus 7 for outdoors, and it looked quite usable: you do have to spend $15 for U.S. Topo maps (which is easily paid for by the $25 Google Play credit), but it's a much better screen than say, the Garmin Edge 800, and a better deal than the Garmin Topo U.S. at $60.
By the way, I spoke to a Kindle designer on my recent Birthday Trip and he assured me that the next iterations of the Kindle Fires will have GPS. So what about the device proper? My brothers splurged and got me the 16GB Nexus 7, so the first thing I did after charging it was to login and start loading up all the apps I had deleted from my phone ages ago due to the N1's meager 256MB of internal storage. It's interesting to see which applications makes a difference versus just using the plain old web-browser: apps like Quora, for instance, are surprisingly useful because the web-site is mis-designed for a smaller device. Apps like Delicious, for instance, are required otherwise the other apps wouldn't know how to share to delicious, not because anybody sane would want to use the delicious apps. By far the most sophisticated apps are games. The big screen, high definition display, and touch screen and tilt device makes the games great. The battery life was also decent: I could run MyTracks for 2 hours and change, and still run the machine intensively for the rest of the day without draining the battery. That was a surprise. Outdoors, the screen was usable, though not as bright as I would like it to be.
The speakers are the weakest part of the Nexus 7. They sound pretty terrible. Fortunately, the headphone jack works without fuss.
I paired the Logitech PS3 Media Board to the device (it was what I had lying around, and I'm not about to buy a new keyboard just for the device), and it worked great. My typing speed is as fast as on a real computer, and I couldn't out-type the machine. What's even more impressive was that the touchpad worked! That was unexpected and as a result I can IM as quickly from the N7 as I do from the desktop --- my friends couldn't tell the difference.
Despite all that, I still found myself returning to my desktop machine for blogging, and I still refrained from reading important articles on the Google reader app. The truth is, if you're a photographer, you still end up booting your PC to read photos off an SD card, and I can't imagine preferring a 7" screen to a 27" display for serious writing. However, what I do see myself doing is using this to do a quick check of e-mail without booting up my power hungry PC in the morning, checking my Calendar, and so-forth. Also, I had been contemplating buying another laptop for travel purposes so that XiaoQin and I could each have a laptop, and I could see this eliminating the need to carry another laptop. Of course, carrying the Logitech keyboard is not ideal (I'm certainly not about to carry it onto the plane), but on the plane, I expect to just watch movies on it.
Ultimately, if the Nexus 7 died tomorrow would I run off and buy another one? Probably not. It's still not as good a fit for my life as say, the Kindle Keyboard in combination with a smartphone. In summary, I recommend the Nexus 7 over say, the Kindle Fires or the iPads.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Startup Engineering Management Beta Program Closed
Due to overwhelming response to yesterday's post about Startup Engineering Management, I have all the beta-readers I need for now. (And yes, the feedback has been coming in, and I'm very grateful for everyone who's sent me e-mail)
Needless to say, I'm inspired by the response and will proceed with the project. Thanks to everyone who has participated. I may reopen the program later as rewrites and revisions warrant.
I know the web page originally said June 18th was when I would close the beta, but when beta-signups got to the point where they were almost overwhelming I had to change the plan. I honestly had no idea I'd get this much response.
Needless to say, I'm inspired by the response and will proceed with the project. Thanks to everyone who has participated. I may reopen the program later as rewrites and revisions warrant.
I know the web page originally said June 18th was when I would close the beta, but when beta-signups got to the point where they were almost overwhelming I had to change the plan. I honestly had no idea I'd get this much response.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Pengtoh Has Started Blogging
Pengtoh has started blogging, and on a very consistent basis. This is great to see. For those of you who don't know, Pengtoh was the smartest person I knew in college, and being his roommate for one semester must have raised my IQ by at least 10%. Amongst other things, he:
- Fixed his car's radiator with chewing gum.
- Modded his Amiga's motherboard to fix a broken chip, and while he was at it, set it up so he could reboot without dropping the modem connection.
- Bought a Sun 3, and fixed a fuse problem with a penny.
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