Kindle Trouble

Kindle is not sending ebooks that I've uploaded via Gmail to my Kindle device for some reason. I get an E999 or Send to Kindle Internal Error meaning that the document(s) could not be delivered due to an internal error. Please try sending your document(s) again in some time. The documents were in epub format and in the past there has been no problem with that. Gemini suggested that my device, a 6th Generation Kindle Paperwhite, was too old but other sources say that shouldn't be a problem.

I sideloaded the epub books from my laptop to the Kindle but they failed to register. However, I used Calibre to convert the books to AZW3 format and all was well. Lesson learned. Clearly Amazon makes this conversion online before sending the files to your Kindle. Once again, Calibre proves its usefulness and reminds me that I really should back up my library that resides on an SD card external to my laptop.

Calibre Reborn

My USB 3 Card Reader was delivered today and thankfully, after inserting my microSD card, my laptop recognised the storage device and I was able to copy an old backup of my Calibre library from an external hard drive to the new card.

Opening up Calibre on my laptop I was able to redirect it to the new library and so I'm up and running again. I don't know how many ebooks I lost by not backing up more regularly but it's no matter. I had thousands of books and wouldn't have been able to read them all given several lifetimes. It was in essence a vanity project with me collecting ebooks and trying to create a massive e-library that I could brag about.

Not that there's anyone much to brag to. Nonetheless, it's good to have recreated the library even if its not quite in all its former glory. I know also not to trust in SD cards and so I'll make sure that I backup regularly to an external hard drive. As I've said before, it's time to replace my old mechanical hard drive with a newer SSD that doesn't need to be massive in terms of its storage capacity.

Figure 1

Figure 2

My old drive was one terabyte in capacity and the same sized SSD costs around two million rupiah or about two hundred Australian dollars. See Figures 1 and 2. However, it's not urgent as the mechanical hard drive is still perfectly serviceable.

ADDENDUM

Even though some books from my Calbre e-library were lost, they may reside on my Google Play Books website or via the Kindle app on my iPhone, so those locations can be checked as well.

SD Card Reader

I ended up ordering a SD Card Reader online rather than going to Bintaro Plaza, thus saving money in the process as items are always significantly more expensive in the malls. Here are the specifications:

It all looks good but I'll to wait and see if it does the job. At least it has a USB C connector as well so it is future proof if I move to a more modern laptop in the future. If it is functional, I'll transfer my Calibre library that is on my external hard drive to the micro-SD and continue saving books to the relocated library. It should arrive between the 15th and 17th of March.

I should invest in a new external SSD drive at some point because my current mechanical hard drive is a little unstable, a slight movement can cause a break in the connection. One step at a time however, and so for the time being I await the arrival of my latest accessory.

MIcro SD Cards

Having bought a 128 GB micro SD card, I could not find an adaptor to insert it into, even though I knew I had some laying around somewhere. In the end, I ended five of them online (the smallest number that could be purchased). Unfortunately, the SD card reader on my laptop doesn't recognise the card and two old USB 2 card readers that I found where also of no use. I'll purchase a USB 3 card reader and hope that does the job.

The reason for my purchase is that I want to store my Calibre e-book library on a storage device other than my hard drive. When my laptop crashed after updating Linux Mint, I lost all the data on my hard drive and even though I had a backup on an external hard drive, it was sadly out of date. It was quite a tedious and slow job to back up the library which is why I procrastinated in doing it. 

The SD card, even with the adaptor, is more compact than a thumb drive and can sit less obtrusively in my USB hub that currently hosts a fan and a dongle for my mouse. There are two slots left. My laptop has two USB 3.0 ports, one hosts my TP-LINK WiFi dongle and the other hosts my USB hub. 

It would be nice to have everything working on my laptop but that it's nearly 11 years old now I can't complain. Currently my Elementary OS that I have installed doesn't recognise the internal WiFi card, the webcam or, seemingly, the SD card reader. Nonetheless, I'm happy with the current performance of the laptop.

Elementary OS: Initial Impressions

Given that I've just recently install Elementary OS on my 2023 Macbook Pro (see previous post), it seems appropriate to make some initial observations about its functionality. The OS doesn't come with much software installed and my first order of business was to download the Chrome browser which is my browser of choice and upon which I am heavily reliant. That proved relatively painless thanks to Google's clear instructions. The OS has a so-called App Centre but Chrome was not listed there and so was of no help whatsoever.

The App Centre Software Categories

Next I installed my ExpressVPN and once again that was easy enough thanks to their very helpful website. No help of course from the App Centre but typing "torrents" into the search bar of the same brought up Gabut Download Manager that supposedly handles torrent files and I needed that. Happily, the app works fine when I downloaded a test ebook but that's when the awful realisation downed on me that I'd erased my Calibre library of ebooks. For some reason it didn't cross my mind and given that the laptop wouldn't reboot, the library was probably lost anyway. 

Opps! I forgot to keep my eLibrary backed up

I do have a backup of the library but my last back up was quite some time ago so many books have been lost. I got out of the habit of backing up regularly and have paid the price. The library is too large to back up online. Calibre is not listed at the App Centre but I happened to notice a small link that leads to Flathub and a message that apps can be side-loaded from that source. The download was successful. I also noticed that Chrome and a great many other apps are available on Flathub so that's probably the best place to retrieve apps from. 

The native video player opened an AVI file that I'd downloaded but played only audio with no video. However, VLC from Flathub came to the rescue and I had video as well as audio!

Thoughts on Backing Up My Calibre Library

I thought it was time to back up my Calibre library that now is 39.8 GB in size and so I dusted off my trusty 128 GB SanDisk and thrust it into the USB 3.0 port on my old 2013 MacBook Pro. From previous experience I knew that this would be a slow process but today I got to thinking about how slow. Figure 1 shows the situation.

Figure 1

The USB 3.0 ports on the MacBook Pro can transfer data at the rate of up to 5Gbps. Now that's 5 gigabits per second. There are 8 bits in a byte and 1024 x 1024 bytes in a megabyte (MB) so that translates to a transfer speed of up to 640 MB/s.  For my file transfers I'm achieving a rate of around 4 MB/s which is 160 times slower than the maximum possible! This seems impossibly slow.

However, if we look online we find the following (see Figure 2):

Figure 2

Even SanDisk only claims a speed of up to 100 MB/s for this particular device and  presumably this is for reading of data and not writing. Furthermore, the thumb drive spends more time checking that writing and so if there are many small files (and I am transferring 34,646 of them), the transfer time will be very much longer than if I were transferring a single 39.8 MB file.

On this particular site, it's claimed that 3.0 USB has a 10~20 MB/s write speed and if that's the case then the 4 MB/s for my worst case scenario (thousands of small files) is not unreasonable. Overall it's not a problem for me because I'm in no hurry and I only carry out the backup every couple of months or so.

I'm also merging the latest library with the older one and this probably adds to the checking time as the new folder (every book has its own folder) has to be compared to the older one. It would probably be quicker just to delete the old library and simply copy the new one across.

An alternative approach would be to make a note of any new books added and then drop their folders into the library backup from time to time. On reflection this makes the most sense and the update would then be almost instantaneous given the small file sizes involved. The current library on my MacBook's SSD and the library backup on my SanDisk will be identical once the transfer is complete. This would be a good time to implement such a scheme. I'll test it out and report back.

Even if I don't make a formal note of my added books, it's easy to identify them by looking at the current library (arranged in chronological order) and noting the dates of books that are newer than the time of my last backup. This could be painful if I let too much time elapse before checking because I will have to locate each book's folder in the database and then copy and paste it across. For a few books it's no problem.

ADDENDUM: November 4th 2020

I've tested the folder copying update method out and it works fine. Quick and painless. Definitely the way to go in future. I downloaded Walter Rodney's "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" after a recommendation by Jeremy Corbyn shown in this tweet.

The classic work of political, economic, and historical analysis, powerfully introduced by Angela DavisIn his short life, the Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution, leading movements in North America, South America, the African continent, and the Caribbean. In each locale, Rodney found himself a lightning rod for working class Black Power. His deportation catalyzed 20th century Jamaica's most significant rebellion, the 1968 Rodney riots, and his scholarship trained a generation how to think politics at an international scale. In 1980, shortly after founding of the Working People's Alliance in Guyana, the 38-year-old Rodney would be assassinated. In his magnum opus, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Rodney incisively argues that grasping "the great divergence" between the west and the rest can only be explained as the exploitation of the latter by the former. This meticulously researched analysis of the abiding repercussions of European colonialism on the continent of Africa has not only informed decades of scholarship and activism, it remains an indispensable study for grasping global inequality today.

Ubuntu Upgrade

Maybe it was changing from the main server to an Indonesian server that finally enabled me to begin the upgrade from Ubuntu 20.04 to 21.10. Figure 1 shows the early stages of the upgrade process. Let's hope that this upgrade will resolve some of my problems but knowing Ubuntu I'll probably a whole new set of problems. In terms of hardware, my only persistent issue is that the webcam on my 2013 MacBook Pro isn't functioning. Sporadically however, as I've mentioned in previous posts, the mouse, trackpad and keyboard all freeze. Software-wise, there are many issues: few installations proceed smoothly but I would have to single out WINE and Flatpak as being especially troublesome.

Figure 1

After a few hiccups, Ubuntu 21.10 has been installed and so far so good. Flatpak, Stacer, Calibre, Wine and Astrolog have all been successfully installed. I must say that Flatpak, once it's up and running, makes software installation very easy. You need to remember however, to log out and then log back in again in order to see the programs that you've installed. It took me a while to realise that.

I've also managed to install SageMath which I'm quite happy about. Figure 2 shows a screenshot of my first use of it. However, just as I was getting excited, the whole system froze again and I had to reboot. I suspect the problem may arise when I have too many tabs open. The poor old laptop's fan was working hard and I had many tabs open when disaster struck. I need to close down tabs and applications that I'm not using. The freeze may be the result of overheating but I need to investigate further.

Figure 2

I should keep a log of these freezes in an effort to discern any patterns.

Reviving My Kindle

Read this 2013 review of the device

I'm trying to renew my relationship with my venerable Kindle Paperwhite 6th Generation that I purchased in China back in 2014 or thereabouts. It still works fine but I've been neglecting it. I tend to watch alternative news videos on the Internet and read short articles but my actual digestion of books has slowed considerably over the past six months. I also spend perhaps too much time watching movies and various television series. 

This is an unhappy situation that I am trying to address. This evening I came across a short video by one of my favourite historians, David Irving, in which he was talking about 1956 Hungarian uprising. In researching for a book about this topic, he become aware via CIA files that he had access to, that in its initial days at least it was an anti-Jewish uprising. The book he wrote is titled "Uprising" and I have a copy of it in my Calibre library. I used my Kindle email address to mail it to myself so it was in the Amazon Cloud and then downloaded it to my Kindle. It is now ready for reading.

I wasn't sure whether David Irving was still alive but he is, now aged 84. I'm interested in the Hungarian Uprising because it was the first time that I was made aware of world events. I was aged seven in 1956 and I remember the nuns at the school I attended being very grim-faced about what was happening. Like most historical events, it has been simplified to the point where I seven-year old could understand it. The brave people of Hungary rose up against their Russian Communist oppressors but were ruthlessly subdued. That's it.

As David Irving explains however, 1945 marked the return of the Jews who had fled Hungary during the war and they were put into positions of power in the newly established Hungarian government, especially in the secret police. This marked the beginning of a period of unprecedented suffering for the Hungarian people. Anyway I'm looking forward to reading his book and I must aim to read at least one book a month. I've been making my way slowly through Robert Kennedy's "The Real Anthony Fauci" on my iPhone but I need to set aside regular sessions for reading to make reasonable progress.

I've now have Robert Kennedy's book on my Kindle so I'll continue reading it from there. The problem with reading on my iPad is that it's now quite old (bought in 2015) and the battery is quite weak. My iPhone is new and the battery is still strong but continuing to read on this device will unnecessarily drain the battery, The strength of the Kindle is that one can read for hours on end without recharging and my Kindle battery remains quite strong even after eight years. 

So this can be considered my birthday resolution: READ MORE BOOKS!

Installing Calibre and Other Software on Ubuntu

At long last, I've managed to get Calibre working under Ubuntu 20.04 on my 2013 Mac Book Pro. I just followed the recommended procedure using the terminal as outlined on the Calibre website:

sudo -v && wget -nv -O- https://download.calibre-ebook.com/linux-installer.sh | sudo sh /dev/stdin

I'm sure I tried this before but perhaps whatever bug was stopping Calibre from working before has now been fixed. Calibre and the Windows-based Astrolog were the two programs that I really wanted to get working under Ubuntu and now I've succeeded.

My VPN is also working and so the laptop is fully functional again from my perspective. There's nothing that I was doing under the Mac OS that I can't now do in Ubuntu. On the general topic of software installation, I watched an interesting YouTube video titled Flatpak Tutorial - Setting up Flatpak and installing Packages:

The author references the FLATPAK website that explains how to install the software on the various Linux distributions and FLATHUB that lists the software available for installation once FLATPAK has been installed. I managed to install it on my granddaughter's HP Pavilion x360 so far attempts to install it on my 2013 Mac Book have failed. I'll keep trying. Nothing of course is ever easy or straightforward with Linux.

There's no urgency as the normal software installation works fine. I've just installed Stellarium and TexStudio and TexMaker without any issues.

The Price of Mainstream Divergence

Having replaced the Mac OS on my Mac Book with OS Chrome Flex and Windows 10 on my granddaughter's HP Pavilion x360 with Ubuntu 20.04, the consequences are now being felt but it's OK, I'm retired and have plenty of time to deal with these problems. For a working person, who needs his or her laptop to be fully functional so as to maintain productivity, I wouldn't recommend my course of action.

On Ubuntu, I decided to install Calibre that I use to organise my collection of ebooks. However, once installed it wouldn't launch. Apparently, there are problems getting Calibre to run on the latest version of Ubuntu.

To add to my frustrations, I wrote in my Astrology blog about a similar problem:

... the Astrolog website links to openastro.org that has an Ubuntu repository that I'm keen to test out. Figure 1 shows a screenshot.

Figure 1

Unfortunately, I get the following error message:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:

openastro.org : Depends :  imagemagick

E: unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

Given that Ubuntu is a far more mature OS than the beta Chrome OS Flex, these failures are disappointing. 

Meanwhile the problems with the latter OS are many. The webcam doesn't work on my Mac Book and the touchpad is all but useless. I had to resort to using a mouse again, a practice that I abandoned over a decade ago. Fortunately the mouse works fine unless I connect an external monitor in which case the mouse becomes unstable.

While I seem to have successfully installed the Linux development environment in Chrome OS Flex, I get the following error message when opening the terminal:

Starting the virtual machine Error starting penguin container: 5

Launching vmshell failed: Error starting crostini for terminal: 5

This of course means that no installations of Linux applications are possible. None of these things are game changers but there's also the temptation to go out and buy the M2 Mac Book Air when it comes out later this year and have all these frustrations disappear.

On the positive side, it's interesting with Chrome OS Flex to be actively involved in the ongoing development and testing of the operating system.