“Translators must act as representatives of the author’s intentions, language, and style, but they must also be sensitive to the needs fo readers in the target language. Editors here act as both the first reader and the first critic, working with translators to balance readability and integrity, fluidity of the new text and fidelity to the original.”
– Jenna Johnson, via The Elements of Subtitles, D. Bannon
In conversation with a student who had just undergone project work (PW) last year, I gained some insights into their particular PW experience. Continue reading
I am putting my foot down. No more rubberised surfaces for me.
This is something that has been nagging me at the back of my head for some time. Rubberised surfaces have never survived well in the tropical climate where I live, and yet I keep buying new products with them. The old Xbox steering wheel. Rubber grips on pens. More recently, the Logitech MX Revolution and the Cyborg RAT 7. In all these cases, the rubbery parts degraded after a year or two, became sticky, and refused to let go of any dirt or dust that got stuck to them.
It is easy to say “well, just clean the damn things then”, but quite another to actually do it. I kept the Xbox wheel in my storage closet for a couple of years when I stopped using it, and how often do we take out unused things from the storage closet to clean them? Besides, the RAT 7 mouse degraded while I was still using it. Once the rubber surface turns sticky, there’s nothing you can do to reverse it. Cleaning it with solvents usually just degrades the rubber surface even more, and cleaning with water is ineffective.
I’m sure these devices survive just fine in more temperate climes, but why do so many device makers not fix this inherent flaw for products marketed and sold in tropical regions? This is a particularly sore problem for products marketed at gamers. It seems the only way that these unimaginative companies can give their products a better grip is to slap a cheap rubber surface on them. Well, I’m swearing off such products from now on.
For those with degraded rubber-surface products, here’s what I did with them: Degrade the rubber further and remove it. This works better on more heavily degraded rubber. I just use isopropyl alcohol with plenty of gauze swabs, attacking the rubber coating until it comes off, revealing the stock plastic underneath. It worked pretty well for my RAT 7.
For now, I’ve found a better product that has found a more ingenious solution. I really loved the thumb buttons and thumb wheel on the old Logitech MX Revolution, and since then have been buying only mice with thumb buttons and a thumb wheel. The Logitech G700 does not meet this criteria, but has four thumb buttons instead—an acceptable alternative to this button-thumber. It also has a scrollwheel that switches between click-scroll and freescroll at the press of a button, a feature I sorely missed on the RAT 7. And out-of-the-box support in Linux was pretty fantastic, with no issues causing it to become unuseable, unlike the RAT 7.
Best of all, it does not use rubber surfacing anywhere on the mouse, except for the gripping strip in the middle of the scroll wheel. Instead, on the left and right sides of the mouse, Logitech used a grippy sand-textured plastic surface that actually works amazingly. More mouse companies really ought to be doing this.
As I’ve done for previous mice I own, this is the xbindkeys config I use for the G700, using xdotool, with button mapping information from gavingc. No xorg button remapping was necessary! The G4–G10 buttons mentioned below are labelled on the mouse buttons.
###########################
# xbindkeys configuration # For Logitech G700
###########################
#
# Version: 0.1.3
#
# A list of keys is in /usr/include/X11/keysym.h and in
# /usr/include/X11/keysymdef.h
# The XK_ is not needed.
#
# List of modifier (on my keyboard):
# Control, Shift, Mod1 (Alt), Mod2 (NumLock),
# Mod3 (CapsLock), Mod4, Mod5 (Scroll).
#
# This file is created by xbindkey_config
# The structure is :
# # Remark
# “command”
# m:xxx + c:xxx
# Shift+…#keystate_numlock = enable
#keystate_scrolllock = enable
#keystate_capslock = enable#Ctrl-PgDn: G7 button
“xdotool key ctrl+Next”
m:0×0 + b:11
Control+Mod2 + Next#Ctrl-PgUp: G6 button
“xdotool key ctrl+Prior”
m:0×0 + b:10
Control+Mod2 + Prior#Alt-Left: G4 button
“xdotool key alt+Left”
m:0×0 + b:8
Alt+Mod2 + Left#Alt-Right: G5 button
“xdotool key alt+Right”
m:0×0 + b:9
Alt+Mod2 + Right#Vol-down: Wheel left tilt
“xdotool key super+bracketleft”
m:0×0 + b:6
Super+Mod2 + bracketleft#Vol-up: Wheel right tilt
“xdotool key super+bracketright”
m:0×0 + b:7
Super+Mod2 + bracketright#Ctrl-F4: G10 button
#”echo ‘KeyStrPress Control_L KeyStrPress F4 KeyStrRelease F4 KeyStrRelease Control_L’ | xmacroplay :0″
“xdotool key ctrl+F4″
m:0×0 + b:14
Control+Mod2 + F4#
# End of xbindkeys configuration
When it comes to good service, I see many companies/outlets focus on the outward politeness aspect, sometimes to the exclusion of all others. While the service attitude is important, I beg to differ from this perspective, with an anecdote.
My iPad screen cracked—a result of the iPad’s bedside proximity, a half-awake kureshii, and uncoordination of the half woken state. (Mini-rant on the fragility of modern devices in a near-future post.)
A quick google later, I had the contact numbers of six repair shops; I had not bothered with purchasing a fruity protection plan that costs almost 20% of what I paid for the device sans accessories. Right away I sent out identical SMSes reporting my problem and requesting a quote, in the usual Singaporean terse-verse: “Hi, how much for iPad4 cracked screen repair?” (Economy trumps correctness in terse-verse.)
Within an hour, I had five replies, all by SMS. The first one replied in seven minutes, and gave me the answer to my question: “Hi it’ll cost ____.” Speedy service; great. The second one gave me a price, and and estimated time of repair (1 hour! Wow). Nice.
The third one gave me the shortest reply of all, just a number. Perhaps rude to some, but as a geek myself this is the kind of answer I don’t mind at all—had they not followed it up with spam: “iRepair MORE THAN 10K FACEBOOK LIKES [etc]”. Guess which repair place is on my blacklist now.
The fourth one asked me to go down to their service centre for them to take a look before they could give me a quotation. Duly ignored.
The fifth one gave me a quote, informed me of the three-month warranty on the replacement part, gave me the addresses and contact numbers of their two outlets, with instructions on how to walk there from the nearest train station, then ended by informing me of their operating hours.
One might consider me a satisficer from this anecdote, and I won’t deny that. My semester starts in two days and I use my iPad almost exclusively in place of printed notes. Luckily for me, the service turned out to be great (and cheap). Kudos to The Repair Hospital, for competent and speedy service, and for knowing how to give customers what they want: timely and pertinent information.
I recently just chanced upon a new EPUB reading app: Readium. This is a project by the IDPF, meant to be an open-source reference system and rendering engine for EPUB files. At the time of writing, there is an OSX binary and a Chrome extension for Readium. I will be examining the Chrome extension’s rendering capabilities below.
Prior to this, I had been using Calibre as my reference EPUB rendering app for its extensive list of supported EPUB features. As we shall see, Readium largely supports the same featureset, in addition to new features introduced in EPUB3, which I have not had the chance to test yet.
As with my previous post, I use Fate/Zero Volume 1 as the test EPUB file.
Library interface
The Readium library interface shows a simple list of imported EPUB books; nothing fancy.
Readium reading and navigation
In reading view, there’s a contents listing in the left sidebar, which can be hidden. Clicking the green arrow in the upper right hides the overlay interface, leaving only reading view.
In the images below, bringing the mouse cursor over the images shows them with the overlay view; moving the mouse cursor away returns the images to reading view. The overlay images may take some time to load. Continue reading
For the past couple of years I have been waiting for an ebook reading device to tug at my wallet. It had to support e-ink, and EPUB formats, and not be locked down … and I ended up never buying one.
Four months ago, I finally caved and bought an iPad 3. If I were to use a tablet as an ebook reading device, I might as well get the one with the best screen, I figured.
I am happy to say that the iPad makes a fantastic reading device. It handles font catalogues (bold colours, sharp outlines), journal articles (with their typically tiny font sizes), PDFs, EPUBs, and just about everything I’ve thrown at it with ease*.
*with the right apps/software installed.
While I’ve tried the iPad with a variety of ebook formats, my interest still lies primarily in EPUB. This post is a look at the iPad as an EPUB reading device, a follow-up to my previous post on EPUB reading software on the desktop and web browser. I will not be working on a similar comparison for Android EPUB reading devices, since I do not have an Android tablet, nor have I found any EPUB reading app in Android comparable to Aldiko as yet.
The test file used here is Fate/Zero Volume 1, downloadable here. This is the same file I used in my previous comparison. However, I will not be focusing so much on rendering accuracy this time round, but rather on readability and other issues that editors/typesetters might care about. None of the three EPUB reading apps support @font-face embedding; all three have a variety of fonts for the reader’s picking instead, with font-shrinking/-enlarging options and night-reading mode. As such, I leave the exercise of picking on typeface availability and selection to other more typographically discerning sites.
This comparison takes a look at the following reading apps. Relevant sections of CSS are displayed where appropriate. All three apps are tested with their default themes (although with varying font settings; I no longer remember what the default font is on each). Continue reading
Edited and cross-posted from my reflections on a problem-based learning activity (part of my education studies coursework).
Under traditional, teacher-centred modes of instruction, the teacher provides direction and draws boundaries for learning. But under problem-based learning (henceforth PbL), the students are given much more freedom to explore and pick their own focus learning.
Typically, I read assigned references and any other literature I happen to find, note the key points I have identified, link key points to existing concepts I already know, and then assess my understanding with assessment exercises, or by creating something–an article, a piece of writing, a project–that incorporates this new information.
Under PbL, this process has remained largely the same, but I was able to focus more on my areas of interest, and lett other group members focus on their own identified areas of interest. In discovery and reporting, not only did I have to link my own reading to my prior knowledge, I also had to do the same for the readings of other group members, as well as their prior knowledge. The end result is that the content we covered as a group is certainly much more than any of us would have covered individually.
What I also discovered is that personal interest does play a big part in the depth of content covered by each group member. A group member investigating an area they are personally interested in is more likely to read the literature in greater depth, and draw links to their own prior knowledge, which should presumably be greater than average, if they are interested in the topic. My group members were able to draw much more from their readings on peers, family and environment influence respectively than I would have done on my own. I used to think group work was just about playing to the best of each other’s strengths, but I now see that combining interests is just as important as well.
However, although PbL has taught me a lot about the topics I looked into, the way it was implemented without in-depth content assessment or content creation, only presentation, leaves much of this acquired knowledge tentative and untested, and I am not confident to really apply this new knowledge. Continue reading