Kobo N905, Kobo GLO and the Dragonwar Thor Mouse

As title says, random blog, so random entry of the day

After years of convincing myself of why I would not pay a ridiculous amount of money for reading e-books on a grey-scale screen that simulated paper I finally started to consider looking at e-book readers.

I considered looking because a friend of mine who lives in London and commutes 3 hours to get to her lab in the Imperial College told me about her Nook Reader and how it had been the handiest thing she ever bought and how she has been reading a lot now that she has books in it.

I burned a little, I like to read, but I haven't been able to. At all. From being someone who read a book a day to someone who doesn't manage even one in a month has been something that makes me very sad. My personality is altered when I stop reading I become surly, I laugh less, my punning co-efficient goes down and I become mentally lethargic.

I've been carrying my hard copy books around to lab in hopes of reading it sometime during the breaks. However when you read a book, or even carry it around, it is mis-interpreted (especially considering the colourful covers of Discworld) as wasting time. I may be wrong but the looks that are shot towards the book I'm carrying make me uneasy. Although this may have something to do with the habit I have of pulling it out during a very boring seminar or a talk when I'm trapped. But then again, why should one waste time and not make the best of it?

So the idea of a tiny paper-like screen that would let me read without strain (LCD's and PDF's are so not good for the eyes) grew on me. However

I'd already seen the Kindle with another friend in the lab and I found it a hilariously expensive device for INR6,056. A grey scale touch screen with top-side illumination for that amount of money was a little too much for my pocket. I would rather have some device with a colour screen for that amount.

I looked through E-bay to check out the prices of the Nook and that is when E-bay put a cookie on my computer that I was interested in E-book readers. Soon the Kindle and the Nook became a regular highlight on the advertisement panel on Facebook and I would see prices going down until suddenly one day it said 3500 INR. Curiosity piqued, I clicked on the link to be led to ebay where the Kobo was selling for 3500 INR and it was a touch-screen, 6inch WI-Fi and extendable memory with a micro SD card. I followed up the model on to a youtube demo video and there!, I was convinced and ordered it right away.

It has been a couple of weeks since I've had it and I have finished Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett and Strange Beautiful Music by Joe Satriani on it. It is small discreet and easily read. I can pull it out anywhere and start from where I left off. The battery lasts for a week I guess. I've dropped it once on a hard asphalt track and besides some abrasion to the rubber finish it has been fine. I finally feel a little better about life and I think this might have been a good thing after all.

Here is the Kobo N905 Chess at Grandmaster level beating Microsoft Chess Titans on Level 10. Chess Titans "thought" for at least a minute before each move, meanwhile the Kobo was instantaneous and brutal in its responses. Although I should play them against each other more times to see if this was just a one off but the brutality with which the Kobo beat the computer suggests that this might not be necessary. If I happen to do it later I will post the results here.

The second thing I ended up buying was a Gaming mouse called the Dragonwar Thor. I do not game. I however anticipate a scenario when I create 3-D models that I would need a variable DPI mouse for precise rotation and control. Plus I had this 1000 rupees that I got as an honorarium for writing a book chapter. Well not really an honorarium since those guys at the publishers didn't pay up and when I asked my boss he offered to pay me from his own pocket and after taking an assurance from him that he would collect it from them I took the money from him. A crisp 1000 rupee note that lay in my wallet, crystallized, because I did not want to spend it for odds and ends like petrol and consumables. I wanted something symbolic that would remind me of my 3 week 18 hour marathon writing sessions when I sat and wrote that book chapter. So when I saw that this mouse was on a discount and retailing for 957 INR instead of the usual 1250 INR I bought it instantly, cash on delivery.

It came in a box that was as huge as the ones my LEGO's came in. Well, that was because it came with this big mouse pad as well. The cord of the mouse is covered with a weave of the kind used in cables to protect them from being burnt like the electric cord of an electric iron.  The mouse is very nicely shaped and a perfect fit for my hands and the coating feels real nice. There is a dragon logo that goes RGBCMYW fading lights. The tracking light is invisible and there is a DPI switch right below the scroll wheel which allows tracking at resolutions of 800,1600,2400 and 3200 DPI. The tracking is PERFECT, I was instantly at home with the acceleration characteristics. The two buttons at the left side of the mouse by defaults play the role of back and forward buttons on the browser and in folders. Other buttons would need some settings to be done by installing the software I suppose but for now I am mighty pleased that I bought it.

Update: 05-06-2015

I found a Kobo Glo, new for cheap (6600 INR) from Ebay. It is smaller than the N905 but a little fatter. The glowlight is very evenly dispersed as has been claimed in online reviews compared to the Nook or the Kindle. Unboxing pictures towards the end!

Hmm, the text is a little more blurry presumably because of the light diffuser that makes the screen thicker as well. The touch response is fast and well the glow light is also nice, but the slight fading in the text is a little miff-inducing. Also Kobo removed Chess from the Extras! Argh, Why Kobo? It is a kick ass chess engine, beats Android, Microsoft and GNU chess effortlessly, please bring it back. They removed Chess on the latest update for the N905 as well.

Okay obviously Kobo is not going to listen to some random blog, so I found this on the Kobo forums on how to restore chess.

Source: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=261305

• First of all, create a tile on the homepage launching any of the extra present in the settings / beta features. For instance sudoku.
  Be sure that you have now a tile called "sudoku" on the homepage.
• Connect the kobo to the PC
• For safety reason, make a backup of the file <koboDrive>/.kobo/KoboReader.sqlite (so that you can recover it in case something goes wrong during this procedure)
• Open the file <koboDrive>/.kobo/KoboReader.sqlite with the Sqlite3 editor software you prefer (for instance SQLiteSpy for Win, but there are many free editors for any platform)
• In the table "Activity", find the row with Id=sudoku, and change the value of Id=chess; save the modified DB
• Disconnect the Kobo, now you should have a tile with the chess

Simplified procedure, using Sqlite3 command line tool:

1. Be sure that you have the sudoku tile on the homepage (if you don't have it, just play a sudoku game and it should appear)
2. make a backup of the file <koboDrive>/.kobo/KoboReader.sqlite (so that you can recover it in case something goes wrong during this procedure)
3. Download Sqlite3 command line for win, linux or mac
4. Create a folded on your PC and put into it:
   • The executable Sqlite3 files you downloaded
   • The sql file attached to this message (chess.txt)
   • The kobo DB file (<koboDrive>/.kobo/KoboReader.sqlite) copied from Kobo
5. Open a shell, go the folder you created and launch this command:
   
   Code:

   sqlite3 KoboReader.sqlite < chess.sql

6. Copy the patched KoboReader.sqlite file back to kobo (overwriting existing file)
7. Disconnect kobo and you should have the chess tile on homepage

chess.sql is a text file containing the following SQL commands.

BEGIN TRANSACTION;
update activity set Id="chess" where Id="sudoku";
COMMIT;

The box highlights the fact that this is a Kobo GLO, the screen seems to gently glow against the blue beckground. Compare this to the Nook package and your heart goes a little fuzzy when you see this. Utilitarian packaging is economical and nice I suppose but those beige bricks that I got with the Redmi Note were rather dull. The Nook box is matte finish and everything but still won't give you the fuzzy feeling. Although, for all you know, it just might.

When you open the packaging the first time, the Kobo always needs to be charges and in this case, it is shown as sleeping and that you need to connect it to a computer. I don't know why Kobo is so cute about using anthropomorphic representations of the ebook reader, but then it is very cute. Connecting it to the computer begins to charge the battery. The factory state is probably set to sleep and so the battery invariably is too low to turn on the e-book reader when it gets to you.

So booting up the ebook reader, it asks for language preferences and makes you set up the Wi-Fi connection so that it can download the firmware updates and be up and running. In my case I did not know that running the firmware update was going to remove Chess from the Kobo or at least make it inaccessible unless some modifications to the sql database in the ebook reader wasn't made using command line.

Oh, they did provide a USB cable for the Kobo, also an instruction manual which again has cute pictures of the Kobo in the sun and under the moon implying that you can read it at night.






Unlike the diamond patterned finish of the N905, the GLO has diamond cuts which look graceful and the logo is stylishly emblazoned at the back. As I said earlier, it is thicker than the N905 so it will be a very tight fit inside a cover that you bought for the N905, thankfully I have a Accessorize cover that was for the Nook Touch and it fits very nicely for the Kobo GLO






So yes, that is it for the unboxing, I loved the GLO too, I think that it is really important to not have a flashy gizmo for reading, because a book and reading it was all about letting the printed text take over your mind and turn on the internal screen and animation of your mind and making everything come alive. It is quite hard to do it when your device keeps going, "ooh, look there flashy button, press it right away!". The ebook readers are an austere form of technology, you can say they are steampunk versions of ARM based tablets. No distractions, very long battery life and just plain text on a plain screen that looks like paper.

 Anyway, I had to see if the Kobo chess engine was really good at playing itself. So the Kobo GLO played White and the Kobo N905 played Black at Grandmaster level.

It was a tough and evenly played game, the pieces were all lost in the same order, it lasted 72 moves. Most other chess engines do not last over 40 moves against the Kobo chess engine. So evidently a close match and finally White queened and checkmated Black, the only reason for which I see is that, White gets to move first and therefore has a slight advantage.