Version 7.0ish. Digital Humanities. Running. Linux.

I am quite disappointed with the Kindle Fire I recently purchased. I have shopped for a tablet for about a year, but haven’t been impressed by what I saw on the market. The $200 price tag intrigued me, so I picked one up during the preorder period. The Kindle Fire is, at best, a starter tablet, and, at worst, more or less just a portal to Amazon’s infrastructure with some, and I mean *some*, apps allowed in. I will hold onto it, but I see myself upgrading to something else eventually. Here are some other observations:

• Recently, I have looked for a new Twitter client to replace TweetDeck. After trying out Tweetcaster on the Fire, I have settled on Hootsuite as my client of choice not only on my Fire, but on my phone as well.
• The biggest problem with the Fire is how annotations are stored. On earlier Kindles, there was a simple .txt file called “clippings” that stored any portions of a text that were highlighted or annotated. This was simple and JUST WORKED. Every so often, I could plug my Kindle into a laptop and export the clippings.txt file. On the Fire, there is no .txt file and annotations are kept on Amazon’s server. I DO NOT want my clippings in the cloud, especially a third-party who has been known to delete things in the past. I just want it to simply work and the Fire is very pretty, but makes this extremely more complex than it needs to be.
• The best part was that Amazon’s customer service didn’t even know about the change. Wow.
• An Android tablet that can’t open any open source documents like an .odt is a pretty terrible use for Android. I was going to use the Fire to edit and grade student work, but that doesn’t seem to be happening now.
• No wall charger. Yeah, I know that most people charge via USB these days, but I would still like the ability to charge via a wall outlet from time to time. Having to pay extra for that is pretty ridiculous.
• I ended up ordering a Kindle Touch as well for book reading. This Kindle works just like my earlier Kindle. The touch screen interface is fantastic. I am quickly getting used to touch screens in general.
• I haven’t used the Touch in class much yet, but the other day I used it to follow along with a student led lecture. I will post more in the new year about classroom uses for the Kindle Touch.

This will be my last post for 2011. Grading and end of semester activities will take up the rest of the month. Afterwards, I will be taking some time off around the holidays. Normal posting will return early in 2012. See you then.

Been tinkering with this domain the past few days:

• Added favicons linking to my profiles on LinkedIn, FriendFeed, BackType, Vimeo, and StumbleUpon.  I’d love to have people add me on those Web Sites.
• Added FriendFeed widget showing my activities around the web.
• Added a “currently reading” widget.
• Removed “recent posts” widget because it was redundant to what is on the front page.

With the semester winding down and life slowing down a bit it is time to return to blogging. Here’s a quick update on what has been happening recently:

• Due to the necessity of revisions, my MA thesis defense has been postponed until January.  I think the requested revisions will make my thesis better in the long run so I am more or less content with this situation.
• I did my final ever graduate presentation, in the dark, last night.  Next week is our final class and what could be the last time I ever step into a classroom as a student.  Right now, keep your bets there.
• Last Friday I did a presentation at our program symposium entitled New Horizons For The Literary: N. Katherine Hayles’ Vision For The Future Of Literature which is going be turned into a longer article for the next issue of The Quarterly Conversation.  I am extremely excited about this opportunity.  I will upload a PDF of my symposium presentation soon.
• As of yesterday I am really stepping up my search for full time employment.  With my graduate school career winding down, the prospect of moving on to a job and not being a student anymore is very appealing.
• Over the holidays I am going to be doing a pretty significant remix of my domain.  I am strongly considering moving this blog to something like blog.wpwend.com and making the home page a jumping point for my endeavors.  I’m still thinking this through, but if things suddenly move or seem out of place, that is why.

As you have noticed I have been absent from this site for a little while. This is because I am finishing graduate school in a few weeks and things have gotten pretty hectic in my life. Hopefully at this time next week things will have settled down enough that I can return to normally scheduled programming. Until then, hang tight.

As a spinoff to my previous project Hardcore Show Flyers I have started Hardcore Punk Misc. Instead of archiving show flyers I am archiving record ads and other miscellaneous items. There hasn’t been a lot of traffic yet, but I am hoping that will change soon.

Could you please take a moment and fill out the poll on the right. I am trying to get some information about how/when readers view this blog as I think about how to implement some potential content changes. Thank you!

If you would again look to your right, I have also added a link to my LinkedIn account. I only have a few connections on that site, so if you are on it please add me!