Just for amusement and to refresh my memory, I started working the examples at Khanacademy.org. The guy there uses a (soft) notepad and pen to sketch out his graphs, write the equations etc. I found that a really neat way of playing, since I often 'think' graphically. I sketch out ideas in text and diagrams to help clarify ideas in my head. I.e. I wanted one. A little googling and I found xournal, at sourceforge. Full colour, multi pages, Highlighters, you name it it seems to do it. Brilliant tool. Then it has a quirk, something I'd never have thought of. I wanted to review a PDF paper and submit comments. You know, 'On page 5, para -3, you have .....' that sort of thing. I get so annoyed doing that and it's equally annoying to the author to whom I'm giving the feedback. Anyway, xournal slips the PDF in as a background.. and I scribble away on the top of it. All I do is underline/hightlight a para, write [6] in the margin, and my text notes reflect my comments. Easy! Depends on having a graphics tablet, which I've had for a number of years. Not cheap, but IMHO so worthwhile. I even built a 'shelf' under my screen stand so I can slide the tablet in and keep it out of the way when I'm not using it, yet it's handy when I do need it. More and more I'm 'scribbling' on the screen when I used to use dead trees. I can save as PDF if needed which is handy if ever I want to share my doodles. I do find it harder to create neat drawings, i.e. it's not as easy as a pen and paper - perhaps just me not being used to it. Either way it's usable, very handy and I'm delighted with it. It seems to be Linux only. Needs gtk+, libgnomecanvas and poppler-glib. I'm sure there are alternatives, just that this one worked so well for me. One of the reasons I support open software?

My other toy is very new. With the release of the Ipad (iPad?), I've taken an interest in epub format again. I generally don't read much on screen, only books I'm reviewing. Occasionally I want to read something and go hunting for it on the net. Recently a radio 4 comment about the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam made me go hunting. I thought I had my fathers copy, but couldn't find it (must sort out my books, they are taking over) so I went hunting and found the Gutenberg version in epub format. I'd seen IbisReader which seems to read only from their collection, with seemingly no way of reading a file I have on my disk, so I went hunting again for a reader, even though Gutenberg did offer html. I came up with fbreader which is available for all sorts of platforms, and gave it a whirl. It did the job nicely! I can now spend the odd rest period still at my screen... but reading something less technical. Only thing I'm missing (or haven't found as yet), is the bookmark. Does what it says on the tin though.