Like a lot of people, I’m something of a fan of O’Reilly books. When I was first getting to grips with HTML and CSS back in the twentieth century[1], it was O’Reilly books that were the most useful. When I briefly attempted to work with Perl, before wisely deciding that my brain didn’t need that particular variety of torture, it was O’Reilly books I turned to. I’ve used their books for work purposes, too. I’ve still got my old Exchange 5.5 book written by Paul Robichaux, which actually has my actual name in it[2]. Paul still hasn’t paid me for that, you know.

In more recent years, I’ve taken to buying eBook versions of their publications, on the quite sensible grounds that they’re cheaper, can be downloaded in any format you like (PDF, ePub, Kindle), and you can download updated versions when they become available. All very nice indeed.

But they’ve just made things even better. You can, if you choose, link your O’Reilly account to your Dropbox account. And if you do, any new books you buy from O’Reilly will automagically be saved in your Dropbox, so you can get them from any of your computers or other devices. Nice. And once you’ve linked your accounts, you can have all your existing O’Reilly purchases saved to your Dropbox with one click. There are options for which formats you want to have added to your Dropbox, and you can pick as many as you find useful. Even nicer.

And if for some reason you haven’t got a Dropbox account, feel free to use my nice referral link, which will give both you and me some extra space:

Sign up for Dropbox

[1] Quite late in that century, but it was still a long time ago
[2] It’s a screenshot of an Outlook Web Access Page showing a mailing list I used to play on

This has been going around a lot, so I thought I’d join in:

Looks better than we’ve had in the UK this year

UK readers who haven’t managed to completely ignore the news, or missed yesterday’s post on the subject might have heard that the government is planning to revise the test taken by candidates for UK citizenship. The plan is to remove all that nonsense about “rights” and indeed anything that happened more recently than about 1945 with much more relevant questions about Byron, Shakespeare and well, whatever Theresa May thinks is important this week.

But some people have given some serious thought to the kind of things that people wanting to live in the UK really need to know, and have produced a much more sensible test than either the current version or whatever they come up with next. I’m happy to say that I got full marks, having spotted the trick question[1]. Can you pass the test?

The Real UK Citizenship Test.

[1] Only people intimately familiar with life in the UK will spot it.

Up until now, I haven’t really paid much attention to Android devices. Not for any real reason other than the good ones being quite expensive and the affordable ones being a bit rubbish, not to mention the little detail that I’m quite happy with my assorted Apple devices.

But the recently announced Nexus 7, which Google are selling direct, and which comes with a shiny new version of Android, does look quite nice. And the price is quite reasonable – £159 for the 8GB model, £199 for the 16GB, with a small delivery charge of £9.99.

I’m not sure what Google’s game is here – by selling a nifty tablet under their own name, with a new OS version, they’re sure to take sales away from Samsung and the numerous other companies selling Android tablets. I can see some people getting a wee bit upset about that, though possibly not as upset as companies selling Windows -based tablets will be with Microsoft’s Surface thingy…

More about this in due course, or not, as the case may be.

Nexus 7 – The new Android tablet from Google.

After our last breakfast at the B&B, it was time to take a nicely indirect trip back to Pencoed. First stop was the Bala Lake Railway, for a quick look at the station. The first train was somewhat later than our arrival, and as it wasn’t the brightest, or driest, of days, hanging around for a soggy ride around the lake didn’t seem like the best option. But it’s something to put on our list for a future trip. Pictures of that to follow, etc.

We then headed to Brecon, where we had a quick look at the canal before moving on:

Brecon Reflections

I’m sure it’s a lot nicer on a sunny day. It certainly looks like a nice canal…

Brecon Reflections 2

Our last stop was Goytre Wharf, where we had a cup of coffee, but didn’t hang around as it was raining a wee bit too much. It’s another place to visit on a better day at some point in the future.

And now we’re back!