Anyone for a good book?

Something to say about Reading

Some of my many books

iPAQ software ebook readers

When comparing electronic reader programs for the PocketPC platform, I'm dismayed by the paucity of offerings. There aren't too many options available for free, and a lot of the programs are somewhat limited by the small amount of memory available to use on my iPAQ. For reading html, there's always the included Internet Explorer, for text, you can use Word, but those aren't usually what ebooks are delivered in. For example, there's epub, pdf, lit, pdb and a score of others. Programs that support one format don't usually support other formats, so to read all the formats, I have to install multiple programs.

I finally found something positive to say about Microsoft's Reader program - at least on my little iPAQ, it works better than the competing Freda and hasn't hiccuped once on any of the .lit books I've fed it. In contrast, every few pages or so in Freda, I'd have to drop into "Book Properties" and back to the page before I could view the next few pages, as otherwise I was presented with black screens, or the screen simply wouldn't refresh with the new page. What a shame I can't actually activate Microsoft Reader on my device, as Microsoft doesn't support running the ActiveX applet on the iPAQ. In addition, I'm stuck with the size of the font the program chooses to display some book text in, which isn't the same as the fontsize in the font settings page. If the .lit file specifies a font size, I'm unable to override that. Add to that, the only format the reader program seems to support is Microsoft's own .lit, meaning I have to go somewhere else for anything else.

Mobi software released Mobipocket, which supports some common formats (pdb, txt, html) but not others (pdf, epub); in addition, it costs. In comparison, Freda is free software, and supports reading epub documents, but doesn't support pdb or pdf. And to read pdf, I had to install PocketXPDF—thankfully it seems to work well if I use the "Plain Text" mode. This does the job much better than trying to run Adobe's official offering, which seems to assume we like panning the page back and forth to read a page, and seems to have been built for devices with screens that are 640 pixels wide, or even 800 pixels, and doesn't provide a "render in plain text" mode.

Other alternatives

I've been looking for an effective portable device to read ebooks in multiple formats; PDF, epub, lit, HTML or even plain text are the formats I seem to be dealing with recently, but I suspect I won't be dropping $299 on the local eReader—the Kobo. Nor would I be able to afford the Sony eReader, and the Amazon Kindle isn't available in New Zealand (though this has since been remedied)—and costs a bunch, just like the others. I suspect the disadvantage of all these eReaders is that they only read books (or occasionally play music in addition) and are expensive for what they do. If you add in the cost of the books, often you have a ebook solution that isn't much less expensive than a paper version, with the only real positives being the fact you can store multiple books on one slim device, and you can—depending on what country you're in—purchase and download books wirelessly. But you'd better not drop it, or you'll be paying out more money.

In addition, I could quite imagine having more than the thousand books capacity that the Kobo provides internally. Thankfully the Kobo designers included a SD slot, though when putting a large SD card into the Kobo you'd better be prepared to wait a while until the Kobo has finished cataloging the books. I put my 2Gb SD card into a shop's sample Kobo, but after three minutes I gave up waiting. Clearly, if you're going to put books onto a 2Gb SD card, you'll probably leave the card in the device. In addition, I quite often want to do other stuff with a portable device aside from just read ebooks—sometimes I want to browse the web, play some music, play a quick game of Sudoku to while away the time, or maybe even take some pictures. Devices that do most—if not all of these things—are available for nearly the same cost as the more expensive readers, and provide me with all the other stuff I want to do. About the only negative is the shorter battery life in comparison.

In addition, I want colour screens. Some of the books I read have (wow!!) colour diagrams in them, and I'd hate to reduce them to 16 greys. So colour is pretty much mandatory for me—one reason why the battery life is shorter. Nobody's made an e-ink device in colour yet, or not that I've seen.

Anyone for a book?

Books are dead, long live Ebooks, A debate?

I recently watched a debate whose premise was "From the book to the hard drive: books are dead", featuring some of our local literati and other notable presences. In essence, two teams of three members had to debate whether books in paper form were well on the way to being buried, or keeping pace with modern alternatives. Needless to say, the debate was adjudged a success for the team for the negative—that is, that the book has not died, and is still relevant.

But that rather begs the question, doesn't it? Personally, I find I'll read an e-book in preference to a real book for one reason—portability. With a real book, it can come in any one of six different formats—fourteen if you add in children's book formats—and can be as thick or as thin as the pages allow. In addition, you have to remember to carry around some sort of bookmark if you can't remember the page you're on. I refuse to dog-ear my pages just to retain the current page number—eventually, folding those page corners will mean the corners start falling off. Then there's the weight, again dependent upon if the book's a hardcover, a trade paperback (my preferred format) or a smaller paperback, and—again—how many pages were put into the book. Occasionally, publishers will add extra pages in to promote further books either by the author themselves, or other authors that the company just happens to also publish for. Then there's the dustjacket if the book's a hardcover.

Then there's the quality of paper used—most books seem to use a paper that yellows readily, and very few books I own actually have the "white" paper so loved by booklovers. Leaving them in the sun—or even strong light—causes this yellowing that's impossible to reverse, and looks ugly. The paper becomes quite brittle, easily tearing and difficult to repair correctly. Using sellotape is a definite no-no, but there aren't many cheap repair tools that actually work. Also, if the glueing job isn't up to snuff, then you start losing pages from the spine almost as soon as you start reading. I have at least three paperbacks that run the risk of losing tens of pages this way.

Instead, with a portable device it's always the same size, it's always the same thickness and weight, has no corners to dog-ear, only has to be charged up every so often, and is eminently readable in most conditions if you've got decent hands. For the readers that have their own backlight, you can have the device in most lighting conditions, but with the ones that don't, you do have to consider ambient lighting conditions, but at least for the e-ink displays, you don't have much reflectivity of the screen. Then there's the fact that you don't have to break a book's spine—a pet peeve of mine, but rather easily done in today's books. In fact, you don't have to turn any pages, you simply press buttons or stroke the screen to turn pages.

My only regret is that the manufacturers haven't been able to bring the manufacturing costs down to the extent where a good—and I am talking good book reader won't cost you much more than it would cost to get ten or twelve books. Devices currently tend towards smaller page sizes because it's easier to produce a small display (or a larger greyscale display) than it is to do a full colour screen of say, an A4 page in size. Small screens also make for a more portable device—one that can be slipped into a pocket, instead of a bag. Indeed, with cellphones, there are already e-reader programs that duplicate what the Kindle and their kin do. And in addition, it's a computer and communications device. Wonderful!

But...

However, in favour of books—and I am talking about paper and hardboard here—are some of those same things I have mentioned. Publishers are able to produce books in multiple formats, small for handbags, large for coffee table presentation and large format imagery. In addition, they can add in pictures from esteemed artists, cover the books in a protective dustjacket (mostly to market the books) or print directly on the cover—typical for paperbacks of any size—again, to market the book so someone would want to pick it up and buy it. Some publishers even add their own bookmark for hardcover books. And fold-out maps are a rare addition that you'll never seen on any electronic device—who has a fold-out screen on their e-reader?

They don't require batteries, don't require energy to operate—except when lighting conditions are poor, will often take a drop without damage unless you happen to be reading in the bath, in that case books of any type will get wet. The only storage they require is a space on a bookshelf, preferably not dusty, not flooded with light, and not prone to mold. In return, books give joy, tears, thoughtfulness, or in some rare cases, inspiration.

Vive la book!

What, Windows again?

Install woes

Yep. I finally got sick of the fact that my Solaris wouldn't boot. So I turned the 10 Gb drive into a Windows XP Home install. The install worked well enough, but the Windows installer needed to put files onto the first drive into a special partition. Linux lost a bit of swap space in the end, but I figured it was worth it. It had been the first time I'd spotted an install where the system drive wasn't the boot drive. The other weird thing to get my head around was that my Windows drive was called H: and not C:—which was the boot drive.

I soon found out that 10 Gb was nowhere near enough for the games I wanted to add. So I retired a 40 Gb hard drive out of brick, copied my Windows install over to the drive using gparted, then tried to get it bootable using the Windows CD. Unfortunately for me, the Windows installer insisted on putting boot files onto the first hard disk, and wouldn't continue unless I allowed this to happen. In the end, I gave up, toasted the copy, and created three partitions. One partition had grub and Linux kernels so I could still boot Linux from the first drive, even though the rest of the Linux files were held on the second drive, I just had to do the normal twiddle with the file system tables. The second partition was for the Windows files, and the third partition was for Windows virtual memory.

Hardware issues

I stuck the Windows CDROM back in and booted the computer. The Windows Setup program merely said "Setup is examining your hardware configuration", then the screen went blank, and the drive activity light started flickering about six times a second. In the end, the only way I was able to get Setup to continue was to pull the power plug out of the first hard disk while Setup was examining the hardware, then plug the power back in while Setup was loading the rest of itself into memory. I don't recommend doing that, of course. But I finally got Windows XP installed last night and spent the rest of this morning, and most of this afternoon installing all the updates, along with SP3, Quicktime, Adobe Reader, and so on, as well as Quake 4 and the Command & Conquer games I bought.

One thing I found out rapidly is that Windows requires reboots after most of the updates I'd put in. Take Acroread as an example: I installed the latest copy of Acroread, and was fine. Then I told Acroread to check for updates, it then downloaded the update, installed it, and required me to reboot the computer. I even saw that same issue with Windows 7. I seriously don't miss that aspect of Windows.

So now I have two copies of Windows XP, one Pro and one Home. The main reason for installing XP Home is so that I can actually play games on a machine with an AGP video card. The machine's also considerably faster than the 1GHz Duron, although it doesn't have as much memory. I'd probably add some other 3D programs too, such as blender, OpenCobalt and Second Life clients. I have a lot of older games that might work under Windows XP that won't work under Vista (or Windows 7) so my machine will be good for that.

Twelve games and a drenching

A ‘new’ old adventure

I finally tracked down a copy of “Command & Conquer - the first decade.” I’ve been looking for a while for this version, rather than the original Command & Conquer game that doesn’t work on Windows XP (or it doesn’t for me, anyhow). This collection is the first twelve "episodes", i.e. C&C, Red Alert, Tiberian Sun, Generals, the expansion packs, and so on. I’ll let you know how much fun I have. I wasn’t having much luck finding it until EB Games had themselves a sale, and finally brought some in. The last time I saw the collection was over three years ago, and I had to turn it down at the time because I didn't have the money—nearly $90. Thankfully I didn't pay that much today, due to the special, I only paid $35.00

The key to future typing

Anyhow, I’m typing this on a new cheap keyboard, because somehow my keyboard got drenched in tea when my teapot overflowed onto it. It feels quite different from my keyboard, so no doubt it’ll take me a while to get used to it. I had to go for a bargain keyboard, and I can feel it. My finger memory will need to be retrained as my previous keyboards were a different feel, with keys in slightly different places than this one. The Enter key is flaming huge in comparison, and the pipe symbol ‘|’ and backslash ‘\’ are down beside the right hand shift key. I haven’t had a keyboard like this for years!

I had a bit of an adventure when I bought the keyboard though. I need a PS/2 dongle to connect to a KVM I’m using. The first keyboard that I bought didn’t have the dongle in the package, so I had to take the keyboard back and get another one that had the PS/2 dongle. Now I’ve got it home, and it works well aside from the squashy keys. Let’s hope that this keyboard doesn’t have another spill, though the price is at least cheap enough to afford a replacement in a reasonably short space of time. I know I’ll hang onto the dongle though, so that I don’t have to go through the hassle of buying a keyboard just for the dongle.

Repair of an older computer’s OS

Some days, it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed. Someone I know had one of those days recently. They got given a computer by their boss, that had Windows XP installed onto it, but nothing had been updated since. They requested that I come over to help them as they couldn’t get email or the Internet going. When I got there, I immediately pulled the USB cable out of the DSL modem, which at least fixed the Internet problem, but only in part. I even managed to plug a printer in, plug a digital camera in, and print photos, all without issue. But I got stumped on the email, so I left it for the owner to talk to the ISP about. Yesterday, they spent most of the day on the phone to the ISP, trying to sort out the email problem, with the eventual decision by the ISP that the computer must be somewhat broken. That’s when I suggested they bring it over here, so I can work on it at my leisure. So far, it's got to me with these symptoms:

• Updates won’t install onto it, due to the OS being not patched.
• Google Chrome can’t be installed on to the OS, as it hasn't been brought up to SP3
• Service Pack 2 won’t install on the OS, claiming it can’t be installed on this version of the OS
• The web browser won’t go to Skype.com, the browser sits and waits, but doesn't go any further. The same thing happens when the user clicks the “webmail” link on the ISP’s home page—the browser simply sits there and the progress bar moves up to about five bars, then seems to stop.

Frankly, I smell a rat, and no doubt I'll be spending a fair amount of time just getting the computer to “do email”—I’ll let you all know what luck I have.

Another calculator, same as the first?

A new purchase

I recently got another calculator for $10 from an online store. I saved $19.95, so I was happy. There was a reason not to be happy, but more about that later. It's still my first honest-to-goodness modern Hewlett Packard calculator—my previous HP was a HP34C and died long ago. But something struck me as soon as I received it in the post. It's another one of these calculators with a display that has two lines, one for the input calculation, the other shows the output from previous calculations. The display's almost exactly like the Casio FX-82MS with the same characters and annunciators, and the HP 10s even has a very similar keypad layout, only the occasional keys have been transposed, and the directional keypad is in a different position.

As well, the internal menu system is exactly like the FX-82MS, to the extent that if I compared the HP documentation and the Casio documentation, I'd find no mistakes on either calculator. Their documentation certainly differs though, even though they've both printed their respective instructions on a single sheet in multiple panels, the Hewlett Packard documentation is separated into distinct pages, and those pages don't take up an entire column as the Casio instructions do. I also found that the self-test on this calculator is almost (but not quite) identical to the FX-82MS. The key combination to start the test off is even the same: Shift-7-On. Once starting the test, keys in the keyboard test are pressed in exactly the same order as they would be on the MS, which makes for a slightly odd order on the HP's keypad. And I still haven't found out what all the numbers mean at the end.

So, is it a clone?

It's not absolutely a clone, and it has the advantage of being solar-powered like the FX-85MS, though I haven't seen one of those in this country. Nice for when you've got some nice bright sunshine, it keeps the watch-cell battery topped up with solar power, and makes the battery life a lot longer as a result. It also has a slide-on case just like the Casio, but slightly differently designed. The fit is tighter, for one, so the top's not quite as likely to fall off inadvertedly. It has exactly the same default ranges too, so if you couldn't find the FX-82MS, this HP 10s would do fine and be literally a drop-in replacement for it.

The LCD display and the colours selected for the fascia and keys mean that everything can be read clearly, and is easier to read than the MS, and it reminds me of the other white calculator body I have from Casio (the FX9750G Plus). However there's a slight anomaly when you look at the M+ key, the DT is supposed to be associated with it, but the way the design was done for that key isn't quite as together as for the 82MS. However, I can certainly live with it. The keys have a good positive travel and don't have a tendency to offset, unlike the keys on the Casio body which can on occasion look a bit higgledy piggledy. All in all, the Hewlett's quite a good calculator, though the lack of programmability is reflected in its price. It seems strange that somewhere in the documentation on the HP web site, there is mention that the calculator has 128 Kilobytes of memory, I'm trying to figure out what on earth uses up all that space, given there's no programmability.

And the reasons for being unhappy?

About the only problem that I had was when I first received the calculator and turned it on, the display wasn't quite right. In that top line of the display, there was a missing line of dots. I'd normally have shrugged this off, but in the case of this calculator, there's little enough font information as it is, as the font on the top line is only six pixels high by five pixels wide, with an additional pixel's worth of space between each character cell. So having every single character missing its second line of pixels was a bit disconcerting. If it wasn't so cheap, I'd have probably returned it to the retailer by now, asking if I could have another one of the same value. But the cost of return is nearly as much as the calculator cost me to begin with, so I probably won't bother. And as it was, using the self-test cured the missing line of pixels, so I don't have to send this back to the company after all. I would have felt like a charlie if they'd slung it back my way saying "It works, deal with it". I was also hoping like anything that this calculator was programmable, but it was not to be. Ah well.

Accuracy!

For simple tests, it shows roughly the same degree of accuracy as other models, though there are some differences. For example, this test:

(asin (acos (atan (tan (cos (sin(9)))))))

results in the figure

9.000000002

being displayed, instead of the FX-82MS' result of 8.999998637. So maybe there are differences after all. After taking away the 9.00000000 and then multiplying by 1E9, we get 2.124, which makes me wonder if this calculator has an extra couple of digits of precision up its sleeve. Weird.

Finally, SQL Server Express 2008 is installed

It was a bit of a struggle

... but I did it. After a couple of false starts, that is. I initially selected SQL Express 2008 for download and installation, (that's Microsoft's server for those not in the know) and then found that I probably should be installing the SQL Express 2008 with Advanced Tools. Well, I tried. I really did. The problem was, the file wasn't playing ball. Either I'd download it and attempt to install it and find that it was broken when it was decompressing, or I'd not even manage to get it to download. So I gave up and went ahead and installed just the plain server from media I already had. Then there was the little debacle I had just getting the Management Tools working. I also wanted to install some sample databases I'd seen on a Microsoft website in relation to the SQL Server, but every time I kept trying to install it, it kept failing stating I needed to enable Full Text search. That particular facet is only supplied (at least in the Express versions of SQL Server) with the Advanced version.

I had a feeling that Full Text Search was an option that I could tweak by installing the Management Tools, so I gave that a go again. That eventually got installed today, after I downloaded the standalone executable for the tools to add to the standalone SQL server. I did have a struggle when I tried to execute the management tools executable the first seven times, but all I kept getting was the SQL Server Installation window. What I hadn't realised is that because I hadn't (apparently) completed the install of the SQL server the first time, I had to complete that step first. Once I actually did that, then things started working. I ticked off the box for Management tools, then waited while it spun the drive platters, and installed. Whew. Finally I had them installed. I tried the tools out, but found out that I did really have to install the Advanced version, just to get the sample databases installed.

So, I decided I was going to give the Advanced install a try, given that I'd had success with the installation of the Management tools. So, I clicked the executable that I needed to run, chose "Advanced", and waited. Finally, it actually installed properly. So then all I had to do was choose the facets I needed. I ticked off the Report module, and the Full Text Search boxes, completed the process, and sighed after I saw the two "Success" boxes.

Another struggle

... I'm going to end up with (now I have the AdventureWorks databases) is simply getting my head around how to use Microsoft's variant of SQL; either as a simple SQL server (which is normally how I'd use it) or in any other aspects of how to get it running better. I'm used to that, though I'm pretty new to the whole SQL scene. My only previous experience has been creation and maintenance of databases and tables in a PostGreSQL environment, as well as issuing queries against that database. I've also tried out two GUI front ends to browse databases.

Other issues include how I can make full use of the whole Visual Studio environment (at least the Express portion), and how I can compare it with the equivalents under Linux/FreeBSD/Solaris. Namely, that's gcc for Linux and FreeBSD, and Solaris' compiler suite in addition to gcc running on Solaris. Once I get enough programming experience under my belt, I eventually want to get to the stage where it really doesn't matter what environment I'm using or what compiler, I should be comfortable with the tools in use.

I'll let you all know what luck I have.

Of mice and batteries, and calculating.

Charge it!

No, that's not the plastic fantastic, which is probably just as well in the current financial situation. Instead, this is just a wee update to my post from April 6th, 2008 about batteries in my mouse, when I posted that Alkaline batteries seem to average in my mouse about seven months. Well, when I bought some NiMH rechargeable batteries a little while ago, I decided to give them a try, after previously having disappointing results with a couple of sets of NiCad rechargeable batteries (500 mA/h). I was charging the older ones up, and was lucky to get a week out of each pair. Anyhow, when I charged up the new batteries, I put them into the mouse on about the 14th of November. They ran for more than four weeks of use before changing them, and it's the 27th of December before I had to put another pair into the mouse. Frankly, I'm somewhat surprised, even though the batteries are only the "cheaper" 2000 mA/h capacity, and not the 2450/2700 mA/h batteries I really wanted. I also heard that someone wasn't too impressed with Eveready batteries, which were exactly the brand I'd bought. Never mind, I'll see how the batteries behave.

The batteries were a steal—at only $20 for four batteries, and with a normal 18 hour charger effectively thrown in for free, it was a better price than paying out $32.50 for one 18 hour charger and two batteries that I'd seen by Energizer; that wasn't including the $13.45 cost of two more batteries to make up the foursome. Other "cheap" batteries I'd seen were only $19.85 for four batteries, not including a charger. Again, that was for 2000 mA/h capacity, just a store brand for K-Mart. I'd hate to think what it would have cost for a fast charger—either a one hour charger or an eight minute one, apparently neither of which are any good for the batteries.

Hack it!

With regard to the previous sets of batteries, I at least was able to save the cost of the power for charging them by using two solar panel garden lights I'd found at the side of the road. The first one took one rechargeable AA battery, and could happily be left in the sun, to give me a charge over two days after having removed the LED. The second solar cell garden light was a bit interesting, as I had to hack it a bit to get a pair of AA batteries added beside the space for a single AAA battery. In essence, I hacked the battery cradle out of a dead TV remote, got out my soldering iron, and set to work melting plastic and rewiring the cradle, then mounting the cradle onto the back of the cell, opposite from the solar panel. In the end I did all this without having to strip the single AAA carrier out. Once that was done, I had charging for free, for three NiCad AA batteries and one AAA battery, all in the sun.

Unfortunately, given the restrictions for NiMH batteries, I can't use this same method for charging them, and instead have to use the provided charger, to make sure I don't overcharge the batteries by accident.

Hack it again!

While I was at it, I thought I'd convert a Casio FX-82TL (cheap scientific calculator used for secondary school) over to a FX-85TL/FX-300TL (effectively), though with a slight twist... instead of using the normal LR44 the FX-85 has inside, I'd retain the AA battery from the FX-82 (so I didn't have to wreck the case any more than necessary), and make it rechargeable via the solar panel instead. The wiring was rather simple, as all I needed was wire to the solar cell (which I'd already "filched" from another solar four-function calculator), and a diode to prevent the battery discharging through the solar cell again. So, first off, I soldered wire on to the contacts of the cell very carefully—copper pads on glass takes no time to heat up, even with a little soldering iron like I use. Then, I connected the solar cell in place of the battery, turned on the calculator, checked it works—yup, no trouble. Added in the diode (the right way around), checked that the calculator still works, which it does, though it now needs a bit more light due to the voltage drop across the diode. Finally, place the rechargeable battery in place, cover the solar cell so there's no light, and test the calculator one last time. Yup, all working.

So for a little bit of solder, a solar cell from a four-function calculator and a diode, I have a scientific calculator with what is effectively a new ID and a battery that'll last just about uhm, forever? I vaguely thought about the same trick on my FX-82MS too, but there isn't the same space for the solar cell, as the battery space takes up 90% of the space above the display. At least on the TL, I'd be able to cut out a slot and have space to spare, if I wished to do a tidy job, and not just a sellotape job over the top of the case.

I also wanted to try this trick with one of my other calculators, but I don't know enough people with calculators with solar cells on for sacrificing (I'd need at least three cells)... what a shame. Not only that, but two other aspects of this calculator lean me away from solarising it—first off, it uses alkaline batteries, though this isn't necessarily a bad thing. It affects the voltage I have to provide the calculator, of course. Secondly, the reason for the alkaline batteries: this calculator draws more current than the FX-82 I converted over. I'd also have to fit a special plug so I could detach the solar circuit from the calculator, which would remove its usefulness somewhat.

What I was thinking of initially would be: three little cells (or maybe even four) wired together in series to provide either six volts, or eight volts to allow for halfway usable voltage at low light conditions, connected via diode to charge the batteries. Again, being NiMH batteries, I'd have trouble making sure the batteries weren't overcharged, and I'd have to build the same sort of circuit into the charging as a normal charger has. I.E. a bit more sophisticated than two wires, one diode and a solar cell. So for the moment at least, that project will either never get off the ground (usual for me) or I'll actually have to put some cash into the project to ensure it doesn't look like an ugly hack. If I were to do justice to the job of course, I'd put the whole calculator onto a "charging" cradle like the Palm Pilots used to have, and simply solarise that instead, my only problem would be sourcing (or making) suitable cradle to take one FX-9750G+ on its end, with plug. Interesting, but probably will never be done. So, what other mean hacks have been done to the humble calculator?

Poor brother to the big king

The Beginning

Gawd, the fifth edit... mainly to stick back in all the pictures that disappeared from other places. Anyhow, on with the show. Whoops, make that the sixth edit to finally show a proper screen from the grocery program, more below. I have just added to my small collection of calculators, and thought I'd describe something about them in this post. Casio make a line of programmable graphical calculators: the FX-9750G, the CFX-9850G, the Plus versions of these, and so on. My latest acquisition is the FX-9750G+. It's just about the bottom end of their range of this sort of calculator, and doesn't have a three colour screen (orangey-red, green, and blue) like the big brother. But it'll do. Yes, there is a difference between this and the previous FX-9750G: this one has had some finance functions added, which I've already taken advantage of. This programmable graphical calculator might be the little brother of the family, but there's enough in here to keep me reasonably happy.

Anyhow, I thought I'd compare it to two other calculators that I have here - the Casio FX-82MS, and the Canon F-804P. Neither calculator is programmable, though the Canon can accept a small number of user-provided functions and store them for later recall. I'm deliberately not comparing it to the HP 50g, because there frankly isn't any real comparison that can be made. The Casio's not RPN, doesn't advertise 2,500 functions nor widespread usage among professionals. However, for what it is made for, it does seem to be a good performer.

First off, I'll introduce the FX-82MS, and here's a huge version, so you can count the pixels on the display (image originally copyrighted by unknown author, and shown on a website that no longer exists). Look at how crisp they look.

Umm, why did you buy them then?

Well, I bought the FX82MS as an upgrade to the FX-82TL (which I then gave away to a friend for his course work - who needs TWO FX-82 calculators?) because I loved the idea of the navigation keys on the MS, which the TL never had, and neither had any FX82 model previous to that. The extra 14 functions helped out too. Literally the only thing this calculator wouldn't do was base-N calculations, you had to buy at least the FX-100 for that. Which is where the Canon comes in. Just as an aside, I now have the FX-82TL back, as the previous owner hasn't used it since the coursework I gave it to him for.

I saw the Canon F-804P on a table in a store that was selling off all their little consumer electronics range, and changing the range of products they sold; as a result, I picked it up for only $20. The only reason I picked it up is because it appeared to do base-N calculations. It does, but more on that later. I most recently bought the FX-9750G+ because I wanted a programmable calculator; the fact that it is graphical is also a bonus. The calculator was also discounted by 25% - purely because it didn't have the outside box which I probably would have discarded anyhow. I wasn't going to complain at the price, or the discount, though I did try for more of a discount.

Do I have to have a degree to understand the Manual?

Studying the rather large 454-page manual of the FX-9750G+, I find a lot in here. We start off with a page informing us of the difference between the FX-9750G+ and the CFX-9850G+/9850GC+/9950G+ variants (the CFX has sort-of three colour screen, the FX doesn't). Then we follow with an insert describing how to put the batteries in, and what happens directly afterward. Directly following that, there's an additional 20 page Quick Start section. This covers just about everything the "I want to use it now" users probably ought to read, even if they don't read the rest of the manual. The rest of the subject matter is distributed among 22 chapters in the main bulk of the book, and is followed by Appendices and a not-very-complete index. My main complaint is that I find the depth of information provided in here tantalisingly superficial. All the examples they provide work as stated, though I'm having a little trouble understanding the financial section or repeating the same output for the same input; that could simply be Operator Error. When I say superficial, I mean superficial in a "Name-Your-Subject Unleashed" kind of way, as if they've covered everything they think the average user ought to know, but I don't find that it's detailed enough for me, especially in the programming area. I looked online for a manual describing the BASIC-like language that the calculator uses, but the only language I could find it in is French. Bleah.

In comparison, the FX-82MS manual is actually a fold-up booklet which covers the essential aspects of the calculator, but doesn't break a sweat doing it. If you know what you're looking for, you'll either find it or you won't - it's at least clear and the English is well written. Again, the examples work, but they don't spend much time on explaining them as it's reasonably obvious.

The Canon F-804P manual came from Japan, and it looks like it. Instead of being a large book, it's a small booklet that's been glued along the edge like a paperback. The language used in the English is certainly not the best used, featuring such phrases (apologies to the Canon people here, but this is meant as a criticism) as (for the ON key):
Turn on power, cleaning up / cleaning independent memory / cleaning statistic memory


• Push it down to open power source if the electric source is closed.
• Push it down to clean up the input characters and wrong identifiers.
• Push down [SHIFT] first and then this key to clean up the contents in the independent memory.
• Push down [ALPHA] first and then this key to clean up the statistic computational registers (statistic comprtional mode).

Eeeek. And yes, that spelling mistake is really in the manual. In the other half of the book we have the Japanese instructions - and they look far better written than the English. It's a pity I don't read Japanese, as they might explain some of the English instructions better.

The Interface

One of the more confusing aspects to the FX-9750G+ at least for me (being used to the FX-82MS, this threw me for a couple of seconds) is the menu that shows when the AC/On button is pressed. However, I simply hit the [EXE] button, and go straight into what looks like a knock-off of the HP-48G/GX/S/SX, except it isn't. Simple four-function calculations work the same as they always do, with ×,+,÷, and - all having their own keys. Instead of a = key (which is on another key) you use the [EXE] key, which makes sense from a programming sense, but not so much for a new-to-calculators user. At least it's in the same place as the = key on the FX-82 and many other models, at the bottom right. The two other calculators are dead simple: turn them on, start entering numbers. Aspects such as choosing Radians or fixing the number of digits of result displayed are easy if you read the manuals.

Command recall

One niggle I have about the FX-9750G+ and the Canon is the fact that the command history doesn't work quite the same as the FX-82MS; on that, you simply hit the up-arrow, and are presented with the previous command, and as you keep hitting the up arrow, you scroll through the last ten calculations issued. With the FX-9750G+ however, if you want anything but the previous command (reached by the left or right keys), first you have to hit [AC], then you can scroll through the remainder of the command history. That's described in the manual too, but isn't intuitive to me when compared to the FX-82MS. For the Canon, you can only recall the last command you typed by using the left or right keys. Deletions on the FX-9750G+ are handled differently too, more like a PC's Delete key, rather than the behaviour of the Backspace key that you find on both the FX-82 series and the Canon F804P. Basically, back up the cursor to the point you want to start deleting from, then hit the [DEL] key to delete characters.

The display

The screen size for the FX-9750G+ is a nice 128 pixels wide and 64 pixels high; the font size for the text character set is 7x5, giving a 7-line text display and leaving some extra room down the bottom for drawing labels. The text size for graphical-mode text is a little smaller, at 7x4 pixels. The size of the screen is readable, but not exactly large. My wife has a hard time reading something that small, but most people should at least be able to read it.

The FX-82MS has a two-line display, the top line is 12 characters, each of 6x5 pixels. The numbers are clear and easy to understand, and the bottom line holds the usual ten digits plus sign and 2 digits of exponent (plus sign) display of seven-segment, with the nice addition of comma separation for larger values. As a side note, this toggles between the usual American/English system of 123,456,321.45 and the Spanish system of 123.456.321,45 - useful, though not for me. There are several additional annunciators for Shift/Alpha/Hyp and lots of other symbols, though three of them aren't used on the FX-82MS. I think they used a display module from the more powerful calculators that support complex numbers, matrix calculations and vector mathematics. I note that the new FX-82ES (where do they think up these designators, anyhow?) has gone to a fully pixel-addressable screen too, though it's still not large when compared to the FX-9750G+, but it's large enough to display "proper" equations like you'd see in a textbook, which is exactly what they're marketing this function as. It's an expansion on the S-V.P.A.M. theory.

The Canon's screen has a two-line display that is similar to the FX-82MS though the top line is made up of 5x5 blocks instead, and the quality of the letter shapes suffer as a result. The bottom line shows the same ten digits and sign, plus 2 digits of exponent, and these numbers all use a seven-segment display, though I find the "shapes" not as nice as the Casio. It also has annunciators, but they're down the bottom of the display, and there aren't as many as are present on the FX-82MS.

The keypad

For the keys, I'd have to say that Casio did their job really well for both models of calculators I have. The legends are clear, and the alternative functions that show above some keys are also clear, with good contrast and visibility. Unfortunately, I can't say the same about the Canon. Why am I not using the Canon F-804P instead of the Casio FX82MS? Frankly, though the features of the Canon are nice, they're put into a case that's frankly not very well designed. The keyboard is cluttered, the legends above the keys require the user to have good lighting conditions merely to see the legends, and the keys just don't feel right, having a short travel. They're also small and close together, which doesn't exactly help. The fascia (the bit surrounding the keys) is shiny, which makes the act of reading the legends harder, and though the white text on each key is quite readable, the orange and pale blue colours are anything but readable against the reflection of the fascia if the average user has light behind him shining on the calculator.

That doesn't register

The FX-9750 family (including CFX models) gives the user 28 registers—the 26 letters, rho (r) and theta, for polar coordinates. If you know Greek or mathematics, you'll know these symbols. In addition to this, they support lists, matrices and collections of lists called files. Storage of up to twenty formulae, six pictures, six "lists" of numbers, multiplied by six "files" of lists, twenty six matrices and six graphs is also provided, making quite a collection even for a programmable graphics calculator.

The 82MS has nine registers (A-F, X, Y, and M) that can be used to store numbers in, these registers are also supported as sources for numbers in formulae that are typed in; i.e. AX^2+BX+C. The FX-82ES only has seven, though the FX-82ES Plus has the full 9.

The Canon has 26 letter registers, an angle register and a memory register that is separate from these, and the same support for using the registers in functions.

Functionality

The FX82MS has (according to its manual) 240 functions, including support for advanced statistics, regression formulas and combinatorial functions. Quite a lot for a cheap student calculator. The Canon has 145 functions, has the ability to store multiple user-provided formulas, and also has ten constants from the engineering/science field. In addition, the Canon has the ability to do base-N calculations for the binary, octal and hexadecimal bases. No floating point support, but then even the FX-9750G+ doesn't have support for base-N floating point, though it can convert integers between bases. The Casio website states that the 9750GA Plus has 900 functions, and also states that it's the same as the 9750g+. This may seem like a low number of functions but purely because of its programmability, you can quite often synthesise what you need from what you already have. I've managed to code a rather accurate "natural log of Gamma" function from someone else's description on a web page.

One other thing that really surprised me about the HP-34C (one of the first programmable calculators I owned) was what I later found out to be called the Gamma function. At the time, I called it factorials on non-integers, but the function that Hewlett chose to implement is actually Gamma(n+1). This gives the same value for normal factorials as the factorial equation, but takes a little longer to generate. None of the other calculators I've come across will do it, but that old calc will. It seems that some other calculators in the HP stable will also do it, but not all of them. I still rather wish I had that, but it's gone, long gone. I did manage to get a cheap HP-50G far later, but that's another tale.

Accuracy

Both the Casio calculators are accurate to ten decimal places on display; the FX-9750G+ is accurate to fifteen digits internally, in comparison to the FX82MS and Canons' 12 digits internally. However, I've found to my surprise, that the Canon is the most accurate calculator I currently own, bar none. I suspect that unlike most calculators I've used, which use a certain number of digits of precision, the Canon says it uses 12 digits of precision, but actually uses floating point at its core, and rounds down to 12/10 digits of precision when displaying the final result of a calculation. Take this as an example, which shows what I mean (use the symbol for PI, not the letters P and I): (PI-3.141592653)*10000000000 That's 1E10 for you engineer types. On the FX-82MS, I get a result of 5.9, on the FX-9750G Plus, I get 5.898, showing a greater degree of precision of 15 digits as opposed to 12. However, the Canon comes up with an answer of 5.897932385 so where'd those extra digits of precision come from? We've got rid of ten of them when we took away the original 3.141592653 (ten digits worth) but we're still left with ten digits, at least for simple single-stage calculations involving the constant PI. Extending the concept does eventually run into a barrier, at least for Pi, as I end up with: 3.14159265358979323846_198694562nnn... as compared with the real value of 3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399 37510 (five digit spacing, fifty decimal digits.)

Other calculations appear to indicate that the Canon does indeed work with floating point internally, although I've found that I can't simply enter in as many digits of precision as I can, just to ramp up. The calculator will only take the first ten digits of input and discards the rest, though numbers generated internally retain their precision until display. So for a crappy-looking calculator, it's impressed me for precision. Another common test that can be done with any calculator that's scientific is called the "forensics" test. Here's the formula, and here are the results for my four little machines and the Palm SciCalc 2 program, with the extra internal digits added. Make sure you set each calculator to Degrees mode first, or else the results will look really naff.

(arcsin (arccos (arctan (tan (cos (sin (9) ))))))
Occasionally arcsin will show up as sin-1

	Displayed result	Internal result
FX-82MS	8.999998637	8.99999863704
HP 50G	8.99999864267	8.99999864267
FX-9750G+	9.000000007	9.00000000733343
FX-9750GII	8.999999998	8.99999999759468
Canon F-804P	9.000000000	9.0000000000000000000...
Palm SciCalc 2	8.9999999999999999	8.99999999999999999999999998482

It was this result, and the description in the Forensics table of the only calculators to pass the test, that showed what was happening. Calculators such as the HP-30S, Kinpo SG1, SR19S1 and SG2 were described as having the same floating-point chipset, the Sunplus SPLB30A.

To achieve the extra digits shown in the "Internal Result" column, I simply took off the Displayed Result from the Internal Result, multiplying by 1E10 to get the scale to fit, which is why you see far more digits displayed for the Canon. The same also appears to be true for this calculation: (sin 60 - 0.866025403) * 1E10

	Displayed result	Internal result
FX-82MS	7.85	7.85
FX-9750G+	7.84439	7.84439
HP 50G	7.84435	7.84435
Canon F-804P	7.844386467	7.8443864671232000709...
Palm SciCalc 2	7.8443864676372317(see next column)	7.84438646763723170752931984524

For the Canon (assuming I'm correct in my assumption) I have found I can simply keep on peeling off ten-digit slices of the result, and I've gone out to thirty digits of result so far.

In total contrast to the form factor and shoddy case of the Canon, we have the FX-9750G Plus, which comes in a fetching white and green plastic case. Say what you like about the colours, but at least the legends above the keys can be read, as they contrast with the white nicely—I suppose they could have used blue instead of gold, but I'm not complaining. I understand that other models come in slightly different colours and form factors. It's still heavier than the FX-82MS though, small wonder, as it takes four AAA cells in addition to the back up 3V lithium battery.

The Program

Previously to this, I was using the FX-82MS to motor around the supermarket, adding up what we'd bought, in about seven different categories. I came across a nice way of doing this: [ALPHA] A + ([ALPHA] X x 1.175) [SHIFT] [STO] A which looks like this, once it's in the top line of the 82MS: A+(Xx1.175)->A

Basically, that takes whatever's in register A, adds (X multiplied by 1.175) to it, and sticks the result back into register A. A variant on this removes the multiplication, and simply acts as an addition, storing the result back into the register:
[ALPHA] A + 2.25 [SHIFT][STO] A which, again, looks like this: A+2.25->A

I simply used the six letter registers for different categories of goods, used the X and Y registers for price-per-kilo costs, and combined with the previous program, substituting register letter as I went. Once I'd finished I could get a grand total simply by adding together the entries in the six registers, thus: A+B+C+D+E+F= Try doing that with the original FX-82 from years gone by. However, I didn't buy the FX-9750G+ just for the ability to do the same as the $20 FX-82MS. Instead I chose to do something else and actually write a program. Just as a note, Casio put out a number of different versions (upgrades) of the FX-82 since 1981 or so, including the FX-82A, FX-82B, FX-82C, 82D (which used fractions), 82L/LB, 82SX, 82MS and the FX-82TL. The Solar version of the 82 is the same as the FX-82D, or at least similar enough (i.e. it can also do calculations using fractions.)

The History

What inspired this program was the very ability to program that I'd first come across with a HP-34C I'd come across: one with a Red LED display, and nice chunky buttons with a good solid "click" to them I've not found on any other calculator since. This calculator had the ability to store a key sequence, and also had multiple registers I could stuff numbers into and retrieve from, in addition to a prompt for number, so it had nearly everything I needed, except for reliability. The calculator was getting long in the tooth when I got it, and it was showing it - with occasional times where I couldn't see the display, the Run/Stop switch wouldn't always make the calculator change modes, and the battery hatch was falling off. In the end, the calculator was retired into the bin, though I wish now I'd kept it. I'd managed to make a really simple version of the program that simply asked me for a number, then added it to the internal register I'd set aside, displayed the total, then asked me for a number again. Simple.

When I tried to do the same thing with the FX-82MS, I was missing the programmability, which means I couldn't get the calculator to ask me for a number, then add that number to the internal totals, then display the total, then go around the loop again; I had to compromise, which is where the above scriptlet came from. The saving grace, at least for the scriptlet, is that because of the command history recall, I didn't have to keep typing in the scriptlet from the beginning, I could simply recall it with the up-arrow or left-arrow, complete with assign to register, only changing the variable amount (for example, 2.25) each time.

In comparison, not only does the 9750 support asking me for a number, it also has the ability to display arbitrary text and graphics simultaneously anywhere (mostly) on the 128x64 pixel screen. This very feature is used by the calculator itself to present functions for the top row of keys, and shows what I'd call keylabels on the bottom of the screen. These keylabels are used as a menu with up to six choices, which can be completely tailored. I decided on this means, as the program should be intuitive to use for my wife - a set of abbreviations makes more sense than simply remembering that register A is used for fruit and veges, register B for meat, register C for cleaning stuff, etc. What I've ended up with looks a bit like this:

The World?

The programmability of this calculator is quite impressive, even with only 28,000 bytes available (or so). The frustrating bit of that impressive programmability is the fact that you have to press heaps of keys to get work done, purely because the alphabetical keys aren't separate from the main keyboard, they're integrated and reached with the use of the [ALPHA] prefix key. Casio must have thought about that, because they provided this calculator with what amounts to a serial port, although it's a non-standard one. It runs at 9,600 baud, so it's not fast, and it expects different stop bits for each side of the transmission—two for transmitting, three for receiving (I think). So, I could (theoretically) type up the average program on my PC, plug the cable (not a cheap purchase, it'd cost me more than the calculator itself cost) into the calculator and the PC, and pipe the data over in less time than it'd take to laboriously hammer keys to get the program entered in manually, correct the inevitable errors, and fine-tune the results. I personally would have loved a slot where I could add memory, but for the cost, Casio won't provide that. I already have one extra cost to outlay—a 3V lithium battery used for memory backup while the main batteries are being changed. I'm simply not flush enough to afford the $139 RRP (2008) for that cable in addition (not the SB-62, which is simply two stereo 2.5mm plugs wired crossover fashion, but rather the FA-123 serial interface or its big USB brother the FA-124.) If possible, I'm going to attempt to make my own, using the rather well-known MAX232, otherwise known at Dick Smiths as a IS232 (I think); some wire, and two plugs. I hope to make the cost all up to be only about $25. I can solder the project together myself, I just need the bits. Once the cable is assembled correctly, I'll be able to put nearly anything on the calculator that I can uhm, fit, and that the calculator understands. We shall see.

What the young can teach us.

Mirrored from The Flying Brick Commentary over on Microsoft's Spaces. Hey. It's a blog.

It seems strange, but even given the length of time I've been banging around computers, I still have plenty to learn. This fact got brought home to me when my sister in law rang me with a problem her (nearly) 3 year old son had instigated. The phone conversation began with:

My delightful son has hit a couple of keys on the keyboard, and managed to turn my screen upside down. How do I get it back the right way up?

I hadn't heard of this particular little wrinkle of Windows, though it made an insane sort of sense once I thought about it for more than two seconds. Of course, her son couldn't tell her which keys he'd managed to toggle, given he's barely saying "buhss" for bottle, and "pahpah" for brother (you have to think a bit for that one). So it was up to me, the resident techmonkey, and Google Search for Microsoft problem. Thankfully, the problem came up in the first couple of hits I looked at. You see, given the key combination Ctl-Alt-Up or Ctl-Alt-Down (I'm not sure which), Windows will then go and flip the screen that way up. I vaguely wonder if Ctl-Alt-Left and Ctl-Alt-Right rotate the screen? I ought to try it, just to see if my poor old Win XP Home System with a CRT can actually do such a thing. Last time I tried it under Linux, the system locked up and I had to reboot. Yeesh.

One of the hits states

This doesn't work with all displays—only with certain drivers that have this provision for rotation.

Obviously her display supported it. To the best of my sketchy knowledge, I had thought that only certain LCD screens and laptop screens actually supported such an idea, though it turns out that it's a function of the display driver, not really of what's connected to the video output connector. Her screen is most certainly a CRT, and wouldn't have supported it unless the driver was able to do the job.

So, I learned something new today, from a three year old!