I really want a Kindle...

Yeah, I really want to get a Kindle...  "But Ian you hardly ever read, why would you want one?", well, here's my answer to that. For ages I haven't read any form of written literature for a long time, I read when I was in Primary School, but that was for Homework, I read lots of Shakespeare Scripts in Secondary School, and that was for studies. And in College and University I read a lot of IT Text Books, because as you can guess, they were for studies... Since then, I haven't read a lot of anything since school, people like to blame it on other media like the internet, music, TV, Videogames, etc, etc... Though I figured out that it's sorta correct...  Not because people prefer those over books, but because in this day and age there are so many different ways to get entertainment through many types of media, it's easy to forget that books exists, unless you're REALLY INTO BOOKS, like my Mother...

The Amazon Kindle eBook

Still, I think the Kindle is a great excuse for me to get into reading! I mean come on, it's a gadget right? Gadgets and excuses aside, it's proven that the Kindle in the Market is as big to books as the iPod was to music; after all, the Kindle can hold many, many books on it, the same way that an iPod can hold your entire music collection on! One slight problem though...  The price...

In the UK, the Kindle 4, the latest model, shown above, cost £89, which turns out to be about $140 US. There's another model, the Kindle Keyboard with 3G, which is £149, which turns out about $235 US! Comparing the prices on Amazon's US site, the prices are MUCH lower than Amazon UK's prices. First off there's more models, not only is there the Kindle 4 and the Kindle Keyboard, but there's a Kindle 4 with a touch screen, and these models come with a choice of having commercials and adverts for books as a screen saver, which reduces the price if you pick the model with adverts.

This is the selection that Amazon UK has...

And here's the selection made available on Amazon US, and I put the UK price next to them

It's crazy, if I was in the States, I can get a Kindle touch cheaper than a regular Kindle 4 in the UK. Now, I understand that US prices have always been cheaper than it is back home, but really though!? When I can get a model up cheaper than the model I want, something is a little wrong there! What's funny is that Amazon UK this week is doing Black Friday deals, this is a part of a commercial event the US does to sell cheap good before Thanks Giving and the Christmas Holiday. Thing is, the UK doesn't do this, since we don't celebrate Thanks Giving, after all Thanks Giving is about Pilgrims coming to the US, desperate for food, and the Native Americans help them by giving them food and water to survive. This is an American thing that I'm talking about there, lol. However it turns out that Amazon UK did this last year, which I wasn't aware of, and turned out to be a success, so they're doing it this year, which is great! But the Kindle 4 is still at £89...  :/

Amazon! Make my  Kindle cheaper damn you!!! D:<

For the time being though, I'm using the Kindle App on my HTC Android Phone... But it's not quite the same as using a real Kindle. Not is it the size of my phone, but it's that it has a lit screen, meaning that it glares into your eyes after a while reading what book you're reading, making the actuall Kindle with eInk work better, since it's not a lit screen.

Now there's actually a good mode on the Kindle for Android app, it's "White-on-Black" mode. Shown in the image above, with my HTC Desire, since the majority of the screen is black, and only the text is white, it makes it easier on the eyes as not as much light is going on the eye from the screen, which makes reading a little better, but I'd still want to read with a real kindle though, as it relies on light being reflected from the Kindle screen, which is matte like paper, onto the eye, making long term reading easier on the eyes.

Now...  again...  If only Amazon reduced that damn price! LOL!

Dentist Drama, the Conclusion!

Ok, it's Wednesday, the 16th of November, AND FINALLY I go to the dentist again! OK I sound really weird then, as if I really like going to the dentist, but with the bloody fake chip that he put on my tooth that felt like a tooth wrapped in sand paper, I WANTED TO GO! Get rid of this abrasiveness that's been scratching the inside of my lip for the last 2 damn weeks!!! I still don't know why he didn't just do everything there and then in the first place, apparently he used "too much time" and needed to get to his next patient. Still, I'm glad that it's finally over, and that the chip is silky smooth, and the inside of my lip doesn't have to slowly bleed each time I talk!

Another terrible picture of me, but with my new better, smoother chip!

Anyway, I'm just going to keep this short, I received my Copy of Super Mario 3D Land which I'm enjoying a lot!

Until next time...

Why I dislike (certain) technophobes...

If any of my readers know me personally, you may know that my patience towards certain people isn't the best. I have a bad tendency to get cross easily when I can clearly see a solution and someone else in my vicinity is still scratching their head about it.

One of the types of people are Technophobes, individuals that are scared of technology and can't seem to keep up with up coming future advancements of technology. Now before people do that the whole pointy finger "You're so mean Goobs" thing; there's a reason why I put "certain" in brackets in the title. What I've discovered through my journey in life is that there's no such thing as one kind of "Technophobe".

• The "Absent" Technophobe
  
  This is more or less what most people, at least in the UK, think is a technophobe, a person who never used technology, therefore as they haven't used technology, are a scared of technology purely on the basis that they never used it before. These can be people such as older generations, such as my grandparents, who didn't have the same education as I had where I had computers in schools and they didn't. Fortunately these Technophobes can be educated, and can take things in, they can be willing to learn, unlike the others below...
  
• The "Wanna-be" Technophobe
  
  These are more of less the people that drive me crazy, they're the kind of person who even though they have the kit, and have used it for a long time, you can't seem to learn them anything! They'll use a mobile phone for years, know how to make calls, can send the occasional text message, but showing them that they can receive their emails through their phone too, and they're instantly lost. You can show them plenty of times how to do it, but they just block out things because they make it look hard for themselves and not realise how easy it is, they only want to learn something if it's something that they have to do all the time rather than something that might be done every other day. A good example is my Mother, I don't want to give her grief, I really don't want to, but on a daily basis she'll scream at me from downstairs and demands that I solve a problem for her, thing is we have had the same amount of time exposed to technology, we have had a PC or a Mac in the house since 1994, yet simple thing like "Finding the Spell check" and "How to send attachments" can still be a challenge to my Mother, even if I show her plenty of times how to do it!
  
• The "Protesting/Gullible" Technophobe
  
  Oh boy...  This came up in a conversation that I had with a customer, fortunately the customer was on my side. He was telling me about a client of his who was against have a wireless router in their room because of "Techno Smog". Yeah...  Fortunately I don't have to bare with these kind of people so much, but I have met a few of them, the kind that are scared of mobile phone signals giving them cancer, despite the fact they own a microwave! They believe in what I call "Electronic Conspiracies", nonsense that other technophobes have written that try to claim that technology is out to kill us and we need to live our lives in more simple ways. In irony in most cases like this is that most "Electronic Conspiracies" target certain types of technology, be it mobile phone, wireless networks, even thing like electrical pylons! They then get conned by other technophobes to purchase crazy clothing made of tin foil to so called "Protect them", despite the fact that last time I did physics I swore it was lead that blocked radio waves, not tin!

What's worse it that the more I look into things, the internet is (slowly) becoming a way to spread technophobia onto others. Be it against video games, social networking or the new trend of saying that ALL mobile phones have hidden microphones inside that the FCC and the CIA are listening to everybody, even when it's turned off! I mean come on, when it's turned off!? Someone didn't pay attention to physics again, I might advise taking night classes at your local highschool/SixthForm and learn a little about how electronics work before telling me that there's a microphone in my phone and can listen on me even when it's turned off!

Plus I was randomly looking things up on Google and StumbleUpon when I discovered this Cartoon...

All I can say is "Really?", I know cartoons are there for comedic purposes, but it does put me in a mode of thought where even in a fraction of a percentage; there's a chance that the artist may believe that what's he's draw is correct, that Twitter will be the fall of Human communication. Again this is Technophobia kicking in and not realising that there's more ways to get your voice on the internet other than just Twitter, there's Facebook, Google+ and other social networks. Not only that but you have Forums, instant messengers, IRCs, Skype/VOIP, the internet isn't just an evolution of communication technology, it branches out different ways to communicate, not just Twitter...

Anyway, before I sound like I'm ranting a bit too much, there is light on the other end of the tunnel here. I follow @stephenfry on Twitter and he wrote a Tweet about an event that the BBC is doing called "Go-On Give and Hour", an event where people like me give an hour to an "Absent" technophobe to encourage them to get online and enjoy what the internet can give them. I'm very tempted to get onto this, and use my skills to get someone to enjoy the internet rather than avoid it. Maybe I can get a reader of mine to get involved too! :D

Preemptive apology!?

Ermm...  yeah! Saying this before I get caught up with "You have a blog yet you don't write anything" issue. Today a package came through the post with a copy of Skyrim in it. And yes, I'm playing it, and I'm very, very impressed, considering that fact that I didn't jump onto the "OMG A NEW ELDER SCROLLS GAME!!!!!" band-wagon. To be honest when my friend got his XBox 360 many moons ago, his first game he got with it was Elder Scrolls Oblivion, which sounded really cool since I read up on many sites claiming how great it is and stuff. I wasn't that impressed with it though compared to my friend who really got into it. Instead I got into another Bethesda game, Fallout 3, which I bought cheap copy on impulse to discover how amazing it was! Shame Fallout New Vegas wasn't as hot...

This is the reason why I didn't leave the house today!

Now I have this game and been playing it for the majority of the day, I then realised that Zelda Skyward Sword and Super Mario 3D Land is out next week! I'm going to have to apologise in advance that if I don't blog for next few weeks, you'll know that I'm being anti social playing videos 'till some crazy hour at night and not sleeping enough to handle the coming working day... It's Christmas time, people are going to be buying stuff left, right and centre! So what a better way to sell games than the holiday season!

Next weeks obsession!

Truth be told though, even with the up coming anti social behaviour I'll be having, I'll DO MY BEST to review these games and blog them! And don't you worry, I won't be using some stupid score based system that game websites like to use, it'll all about reading the actual review rather than skipping pages to find a score! So keep your eyes on this blog for up coming reviews over the holiday season!

Google+ Pages

The Brand New Google+ Logo!

If you've been paying attention, you'll know that I've been getting into Google+ a lot recently, it's a nice, clean and advert free social media site that incorporates my gmail and creates a profile. On Tuesday, Google released Google+ Pages, their equivalent of Facebooks groups and fan pages. This is primarily made for companies to show off their businesses on Google+, however it can also be used to make pages for fandom, blogs, or almost anything else. However there's a bit of confusion, so I'm here to clear things up. I'm going to go through how to make your own Google+ page and explain a few things about the "confusing" terms that I've discovered.

First off you will need a Google+ account, assuming you already got one, lets through ourselves in!

On the bottom right hand corner on Google+ you'll see this new link, click it and you'll start, the step by step process...

You'll need to pick a category out of these selections, since my page is based on my blog, I picked "Other".

Next you'll need to give the Page a name, you have a choice of linking the page to your own web site, if you have one, and then you have to say if your page is suitable for Any Google+ user, to to mature audiences. If you select any of the other categories you'll need to select a sub-category such as Music, film, money, etc. After that you'll need to make a profile picture for your page by either using a photo of a logo of your company.

You can now start to work on your  page, the first thing to do is to invite people to it, click on the "Spread the Word" button.

You'll get something like this, very similar to what you do when you post a link on Google+, here you're simply making a link to your page for others to see.

You'll create something like this for others to see, but here comes a little confusing, you don't "Join" pages, and "Circle" them, just like other people's profiles. It sounds weird and doesn't quite sound right, but as it's Google+ it only natural that they kept the same word to keep things consistant, maybe we shouldn't be so comfortable with Facebook! Heh!

This took me some time to figure out when I first created my page, I was freaking out that I was called "Goobs Says Blog" rather than "Ian Guebert". Thing was I didn't see this drop down link just below the name of the page here. This is where you switch between your profile and your page.


Here are a list provided by Google of things that show the differences between a Google+ Profile and a Google+ Page...

1. You Can +1 a Page to Show Support or Add Them to Your Circles

We know you love some brands and businesses. Others you may want to show a quick note of support, but not see all their updates. So just drop a little +1 and keep going, or add a page to any circle you want. You're in control.

2. No Google+ Page Can Follow You Until You Follow Them

We want Google+ to be a place you love to share. Pages cannot circle you until you follow them first. Of course, if you are in their circles, they can share great deals, exclusive coupons, product tips and hangouts, but the relationship is yours to start.

3. In Fact, Google+ Pages Can't Even Mention You Unless You're Connected

That's right. The Google+ page can't even say your name unless you're following. No +mention spam.

4. Google+ Pages Automatically Unfollow You If You Unfollow Them

If you remove a Google+ Page from your circles, you are automatically removed from their circles. You always are in charge.

5. You Can Find Google+ Pages In Google Search

With a new feature we call Direct Connect, just type + followed by the brand name in Google Search, and you can see pages automatically display. Type +Pepsi to see Pepsi, and +Dell for Dell. It's that easy.

Google themselves have provided their very own "How to" on how to make and work on a Google+ Page, so if I'm not helpful at all and you're still stuck click here, http://www.google.com/+/business/index.html

Dentist Drama...

Ok, I know, I haven't been keeping up with my blog writing recently, so here's an excuse to do so. For those who don't keep up with my Facebook or Google+, I chipped my tooth on Halloween at a party. Now it's not as bad as it sounds, how it chipped that is, in the spirit of Halloween I was eatting on Halloween Sweets, and drinking beers at a party that a friend of mine took me to, to then rip out the fake part of my chipped tooth out. Now back in 2003, I had a bit of a nasty cycling accident that involved me getting my face slammed face first into concrete! Even with a cycle helmet on! I chipped my two upper front chip and was sent into the hospitable in case I breathed them in during the collision.

That's history though, thing is, I left that Halloween party with a gap in my teeth which I wasn't too pleased with, so a few days later I got myself an emergency dentist appointment to put a new fake chip into my tooth, as far as I was aware, the first time the dentist did this 8 years ago it wasn't so bad, this time though it was HELL!

First off was the local anaesthetic, delivered by needle, and holy crap was it nasty, I don't know what happened back 8 years ago, but it sure didn't hurt as much, that and it left like it was going deeper and deeper into my mouth! I was freaking out! Next was this crazy vacuum thing that I had to stick under my tongue to prevent too much saliva getting in the well of the dentist's work, but it kept on grabbing my tongue like a damn leech, which bloody hurt too! Then there was all the chemicals the dentist was using to make the tooth and bond it to what was there, some of the glue went down my throat, which didn't taste very nice at all!

The worst bit off all was that when I thought he had finished he told he he didn't have much time and arranged another appointment. What's left in my mouth is a new fake tooth, but imagine a tooth covered in fine sand paper! The whole time it's been scratching the inside of my lip, and as the edge of the tooth is borderline razor sharp, I've been biting my bottom lip by accident! My next appointment is on Wednesday of next week! And I bloody hope the drama ends quick!

Here's an ugly mug shot of me, you should be able to notice the fake chip that's been giving me bloody drama!

GGRRR!!!!!