Part of my post-surgery rehab is that I have to go walking every day. Apparently this builds strength and flexibility, so 2km a day it is for me!

Anyway, one thing that I have noticed while walking around my neighbourhood is that you see the world from a completely different perspective. You start noticing things around you that you just don’t see when driving a car.

We will start by looking at some of the houses in my street. On the right is Eric and Anya’s house – they are both very creative people, as you can see by the mosaic on the outside wall. It was all done by hand – I think it is pretty impressive.

Further up the road, somebody has turned their gate into a sailing boat – a bit cheesy, but kind of cute.

I live in Lakeside, which is about 2/3 of the way down the Southern Suburbs train line, and yes, we still have boom-crossings on this line for cars. In fact off the top of my head, I can count five crossings on this line (2 in Lakeside, 2 in Retreat, and 1 in Kenilworth).

This particular crossing (which I use at least twice per day) is constantly backed up or breaking down. I am convinced that one day a car is going to hit a train. Actually, my sister once saw a train hit a car at the crossing, but it turned out that they were using it for a movie shoot, so nobody was harmed. But still, that crossing makes me nervous.

Lakeside is spoilt with the views. To the south, we have the Kalk Bay mountains, and to the West, we have the wonderful Constantia mountains, were you can see the Constantia Wine Farms – home to some our our best wines, just ask Jane Austen or Napoleon!

We also have the wonderful Zandvlei at the bottom of my road, but that is for another walk.

There are some interesting little businesses on the Main Road. Here is an estate agent, architect and dog parlour – all sharing the same premises!

You can also see the inevitable cyclists at this time if year. They are all training for the Argus Cycle Tour. Ok, so I should be one of them, but I can’t cycle at the moment, a bit more recovery and I will be back on my bike!

And of course you can leave the children at the pre-primary school down the road. 

And here on the right, you can have a cup of tea, a tarot reading, and decorate your house – all at the same time.

If this is all too much stress for you, how about some Body Stress Relief? Although I have to be honest in that having missed almost two months of work, I am feeling very little stress at the moment. However it will keep it in mind for the future.

Do any of you remember the old bakery on Lakeside main road? Well, now it is a wonderful shopping centre. There is (amongst others) a Woolworths, two great restaurants, a shop that sells wonderful fresh fish and a health shop. And the best thing is that it is 650m from my house. Brilliant!

There are also some strange things on the main road. Above we have:

1. a telephone box- yes there are still a few people that don’t have cell phones
2. a postbox – did you know that we still have those small collection boxes? I dropped a letter in this box, let’s see if it arrives…
3. a mileage sign – it was difficult to read, but I think that it tells you the distance to the city centre. Anybody know how old it is?
4. somebody who has still not taken down their Christmas decorations.
5. Remember Shawn Phillips – well he is going a gig next month!
6. Looks like Humpty not only fell off his wall, but he took half the wall down with him!

If you think that Lakeside is a pretty cool, there are plenty of places for sale.

Now, get out your walking shoes, hit the road and see your neighbourhood like you have never seen it before!

PS: Which side of the track are you on?

Microsoft, you are making me confused again!

Firstly, why is it that if I install Office 2007 Service pack 1 from Windows Update, it is over 600meg big, and if I install it directly off your website, it is only 220 meg.

Secondly, why do I have to click on five links to get the actual details of what is in the service pack from the Windows Update site?

And finally, why is it that after I have installed the service pack, and I have verfied the installation, Windows Update still tells me that it is not installed?

Grrr….Please explain!

The move to Linux draws closer…..

Today, I went for my first drive in over three weeks! Wow, it is great to have some of my independence back. This is of course after my back surgery just over three weeks ago.

It is quite amazing how you don’t see much change from day to day, but when I look over a few days, I can really see the recovery. Three weeks ago I was stuck in bed, but now I can drive (ok, just to the shop and back, I can’t drive any distance yet), but I am at the stage of recovery where I can be up and about as much as I like, but I must just not take things too aggressively!

It is so exciting to start becoming more mobile (it might sound like a small thing, but you try staying in bed for three weeks).

Three more weeks and I will be back to normal (and back to work – guess I can’t have everything).

I have had my Sony PRS 505 EBook reader for about three weeks now, and I have read about 5 books on it, so time for a review.

I will start off by saying that in general I am very happy with it – it does exactly what it is designed for (to read books!) very well.

BTW: The bookstore says that you need to be in the USA to buy books, well I am not in USA and it accepts my (non-USA) credit cards just fine.

Below are my thoughts:

Likes

• It is small, slim & light
• The cover magnetically clips closed, so it shouldn’t accidentally fall open
• You can load plenty of books on the 200meg build in ram, and there are both an SD and a Pro-Duo card slot for more books
• There is a good selection of books on the Sony website – but it could be better.
• If you buy your books via the included software, it automatically imports the book into your library for auto-sync next time you plug in the book reader
• You can create custom catalogues "categories" of books (such as to read, read, fantasy, classics etc)
• The rechargeable battery lasts for plenty of books, and charges fully via USB in about 1 hour (there is an optional plug in charger as well)
• The books on the website are inexpensive
• I found some easy to use and free software on the web to convert text files into formatted ebooks (it does natively support text files, but then you cannot format them nicely. eg justified text). You can download BBoE Binder here.
• Very high quality screen – you can read for hours without eye fatigue.
• Portrait / landscape mode. If you use the screen in landscape, it is roughly the width of a standard paperback book.
• You can view the books in different font sizes
• A lot of gadgets are made for right-handed people – as a "lefty" I had no problems with the interface.

Dislike

• It is slow to transition pages – but I believe that it is much faster than on the 500 book reader. I am sure that future version will be faster and faster. You can learn to time the transitions for minimal disruption to reading.
• It does support PDF’s, but they are difficult to read.
• The PC software is clunky to use.
• The built-in clock can only by viewed when setting it. It would be nice if you can see the clock on the status bar – next to the page number. Currently the clock is pretty pointless.
• You cannot see how full the memory is – well I couldn’t find out how!
• The proprietary book format worries me. Am I buying books that I will be unable to read in the future on a different book reader? I wish that Sony, Amazon etc would come out with a standard ebook format that will work across all of the book readers.
• The forward and backward buttons are too small (but then Amazon Kindle users complain that they are too big – so perhaps a happy medium is needed)
• MP3′s don’t support playlists – but then I didn’t buy an MP3 player – I bought a book reader.
• You are supposed to be able to read RSS news feeds but
  • You can only select from a predefined list of feeds.
  • You have to login to the store and manually update the feeds.
  • I could not find the actual feeds on my book reader – I have no idea where they are.

Oh, the full specs are here.

Looking back, I see that most the dislikes that I have can be fixed via fairly simple software updates, so I hope that a few patches are in the pipeline.

I know that some people will say that the Amazon Kindle allows for you to buy books online directly from the reader, but how often do you REALLY need to do that? Ok, the Kindle does allow for you to get you newspapers delivered to you (if you are in the USA), which is pretty cool.

So, would I buy it again? – YES

Would I recommend it? – YES

I hope you all had a good break this festive season, and are ready to get back to work. So, how about a simple game of Sudoku to get the grey matter working?