Secret Compartment Book for Nokia N800

Last night I decided to make a secret compartment book after watching a clip showing how it's done.

I used an old medical text, Aequanimitas, that I found in the library book sale. I chose this book because it's not worth much (according to ABE), because it's the right size and because it has a slip-cover. Originally I wanted to use a copy of Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation because that's what Neo uses in the Matrix to hide his stash in, but it turns out that hardcover copies of this title are too dear for me to want to cut.

In any case, Aequanimitas was on hand, as were all the other materials I needed: glue, a small utility knife, a ruler, plastic wrap and a paint brush.

I separated the first 25 pages using plastic wrap, and then applied the glue to the outer edge of the pages with the paintbrush.

If I do this again, I'll use a more concentrated glue solution. The solution I used was approximately 40% glue and 60% water, but it would be better if the ratio was reversed. I used WeldBond, but I'm sure any wood glue would work

Next, I piled a bunch of other books on top of Aequanimitas so that it the glue solution wouldn't warp the paper.

I let the glue dry for about an hour, removed the stack of books and then used a ruler to lay out guidelines for my cut.




Before I cut I used a cordless drill to drill the corners, which made it much easier to cut square corners. The small box-cutter also worked well, and imperfections in the cutting are largely because of operator error and not so much because of the tool itself.

Once the cutting was complete, I applied glue to the edges of the secret compartment and again to the outer edge of the book. I restacked the other books on top of it, and left it to dry overnight.

I'm fairly pleased with the end result. If I were to make another I would be more careful to keep my top page clean. I might also borrow a rotary tool to do the cutting with--this would speed up the process and make it easier to make a straight cut. You could also line the compartment with fabric if you wanted, or use a magnet to keep it shut if you wanted to carry it with you, although in this case the slip-cover ensures that it won't spill open.

Microsoft gets it wrong, again

Microsoft just opened up the beta for Office Live Workspace, and once again they've gotten it wrong. Although Office Live Workspace allows users to share documents online and collaborate with others over the internet, sadly its utility is severely limited because Microsoft Office is still required for full functionality. In its favor it's free (although MS Office isn't) and it gives 250 MB of storage (far less than Google Docs or other online word processing services), but this is overshadowed by its reliance upon the desktop dinosaur, Office.

Me, I still use Office because it's what we use at work, but I'm not going to install it on my next PC. I'll be using a combination of OpenOffice and Google Docs.

The Future and Portable Computing

Boing Boing recently pointed me to a Scientific American article, What Web Celebs Want. I'm totally on the same page as Ray Kurzweil. He wants a Nokia N82 phone. I am a big fan of the Nokia N series, and just today bought a Nokia N800.

I haven't played with it much yet--I'll install the newest OS before I do--but I'm excited. I believe that smaller, cheaper portable devices are the future of computing. Although most of us still run relatively powerful desktop systems, you likely don't need to unless you're a gamer or doing a lot of image editing. These days, an Asus Eee ($400 laptop) is more than adequate, you can do image editing online with it using Picnik or other tools.

This Picnik example is important, because it's indicative of the trend that will make cheaper portable hardware not only viable, but preferable: processes requiring significant resources increasingly live on servers, not end-users' terminals. What people usually need is access to the Internet, and all the better if it's cheep and portable.

A side effect of this will also be the end of Microsoft's (already crumbling) hegemony. Microsoft products are expensive to buy, expensive to run (think of the silly amount of computing power it takes to run Vista), and use DRM to reduce functionality. With my Nokia N800 or with the Asus Eee I can edit photos with Picnic, create documents, presentations, or spread-sheets with Google Docs, share my pictures with Flickr, send email via POP3 or webmail, check my RSS feeds, listen to podcasts, update my blog, watch YouTube, all from anywhere with Wi-Fi...

...which brings me back round to Ray Kurzweil's other Christmas wish, VR glasses:

Virtual displays using devices in our eyeglasses that beam images directly to the retina. Prototypes of these already exist. So my vision of computing and communicating in the future includes retina-mounted devices that can create stationary virtual displays even as we move our heads, and full-immersion visual-auditory virtual reality and augmented real reality. We'll be online all the time with very high-bandwidth wireless communication. Computing and communication will be a self-organizing mesh of nodes, so if you need a million computers for a second, it will be available to you. We'll live in a blend of real and virtual reality, and it won't always be clear where one stops and the other begins.

Maybe I read too much Sci-Fi, but I believe we can extrapolate the emergence of this kind of device from current trends, and in the not too distant future. Our N800s, Eees and other portable devices indicate we're well on our way.

Balanced Copyright Reform

Check out Online Rights Canada's new action alert, "Support Balanced Copyright Reform."

As they say, "Copyright reform legislation may be on the horizon. Tell your MPs to keep it balanced!" I wrote a letter to my MP... You should too.

Celebrity look alike.

Today someone told me I look like Paul Maurice, coach of the despicable Toronto Leafs.



What do you think?