This new year’s eve has been a nice and quiet one, we enjoyed fresh baked bread, a turkey soup that simmer some thirty hours before serving, and a plate of brownies. Just the right pace before next year descends on us like some maddened bird of prey.
Beyond the cooking we sat about reading and listening to music. Management, enjoying far more leisure than I, tore through two books today. The gauntlet has been thrown down! Well, I managed to squeeze out a book today, Poul Anderson’s New America. Not a bad read, the first half of the book was good–a novella–but the last half wasn’t quite as engaging though the last story ended in such a tantalizing manner as to leave the reading to surmise the true ending. I’ll be moving on to LeGuin’s Worlds of Exile and Illusion, I’m not too certain as to the arc of the story but it has gotten solid praise from the press.
Happy new year to all!
Business Week writes in their article, Curling Up With a Good E-Book, about the next generation Libre from Sony and I find it very tantalizing. I was, and deep in my heart still am, a huge fan of the Franklin eBookman which by all rights was way ahead of its time, just like the Rocket eBook, but was done in by a perfect storm of manufacturing woes, the collapse of the technology market, and less than stellar marketing and product placement–I still own two eBookmans, a 911 and 901, which I really ought to drag out, dust off and show some love to.
The trouble with eBooks is largely a matter of form factor; the concept of carrying some 200 novels and magazines in one’s pocket is a great but holding a small screen to read is a cold and often uncomfortable proposition. Reading for long periods of time still seems to be best done with paper as the print is easier on the eyes and the weight of most books is comfortable on both the hands and shoulders. Bear in mind that my observations are unscientific and personal in nature, I am only comparing my experience reading on paper versus my eBookman, which I spent a year reading exclusively on.
It is possible that Sony does have an iPod like device to storm the ebook market with though given Sony’s recent track record with hardware and consumer usability (Network Walkman with regards to MP3s and the original Libre with the brutal 60-Days-To-Read-It-Before-I-Delete-It DRM scheme) I’m going to remain neutral. Judging by the picture on the right of the original Libre it looks as if they have approximately the right form factor in that the screen is large and appears to be bright and the image clear and well defined. The keyboard at the bottom, though, appears to be bolted on and could conflict with comfortably operating the unit. Engadget has another picture of the unit, likely the US version, and it looks as if they have shrunk the screen slightly but have kept the keyboard.
Moving beyond the form factor, Sony is looking to support PDF natively as well as their own proprietary format. Supporting PDF is what could make this unit worthwhile to myself since I have an extensive bookshelf over at Fictionwise that has been languishing since I moved back to Treeware. If the Libre supports user provided content, such as books from Fictionwise or the latest issue of Tux than I will be clamoring to get myself one of these devices. Additional bonus is that Sony will be using SD cards rather than their own line of memory sticks which means that I should be able to load content to my device without needing some janky application that only works on Windows to hold my hand.
All in all, I am excited for the new Libre but that excitement is tempered by the realities that ebooks and dedicated readers have faced in the past. Is the market now ready to support them? I suppose we’ll see when the Libre hits the streets sometime next year.
After much blood letting, gnashing teeth, and rending claws I managed to eek out my top twenty albums of this past year. Now, for those of you who might have been following along at home there are some changes to this list: Khohiba and Minus The Bear fell off and Nitin Sawhney and Colette moved in. I spent some time going over my statistics at Last.fm and at home and concluded that the former artists did not enjoy the same level of play that the latter did and that the list should really reflect those albums that seized my imagination and made demands of my attention.
Alright, so the really hardcore among you might be saying right about now, “WTF, James! This list is alphabetical! Take a stand!” Fair enough but the trouble is that there are only so many hours in the day and coming up with a group of twenty was hard enough. I will commit to this though, Sufjan Stevens’ Illinoise is my top pick for the year.
Illinoise was like a ragged old piñata covered in sun-faded crepe paper, something that you would normaly pass over looking for something brighter and shinier. My friends convinced me to pause, pick it up, and run home with it so I could beat its goodness right out of it. I’m not a huge fan of the singer-songwriter schtick, often seems too contrived, but there is something about Stevens that drew me in and the piñata that is Illinoise continues to yield a bounty of gems and moments to pure clarity with each listen. Illinoise takes the number one spot because it has gripped my thoughts so strongly, changing my mind about the state of rock and the role of the singer-songwriter, and opened up a new landscape of music for me to explore.
Over the next couple of days I’ll be working out a playlist of my favorite track from each album and will post it here for all to enjoy and explore.
Published by james on December 28, 2005
in Site.
I’ve been fiddling a little more with the site and added my Last.FM charts as well as trimmed my Dugg stories from the fifteen to five. The challenge with this theme, Plain Vanilla, or any two-column layout, is that space is at a premium and you need to make the best use of it and I have been feeling that I’m getting things a might bit crowded in there. My gut feeling is that I’m going to need to revisit the sidebar again to address the continual growth of the archives and categories and their tendency consume so much vertical space. That, however, is a task for another day.
I dugg this article about the benefits of power napping but the trouble for me is that naps are often like some sort of somnolence grenade tossed under my pillow blasting me into Stage 4 and it is this that often destroys my dreams of spending an afternoon reading, the quiet ripped by deep snores and occasional lip smacking. My goal yesterday was to wrap up The Gripping Hand and to be honest I was lucky to get twenty-five pages in before the book was on the floor and drool was slowly spreading across my chest. Four hours, that is how long I was out according to my wife and by all accounts that means I stitched together four Lazy Man’s naps.
Now, there are many in my life that have leveled the charge that I do not get quality sleep and that I need to concentrate on that before I can begin reaping the benefits of a micronap or at the very least find cover from nap-time ordnance. I suppose that the root of the problem is my sleep schedule. Since we got the dog I’ve been finding that I begin waking up around four in the morning, reaching complete wakefulness a little before five, and coupled with an often late bedtime–blame it on procrastination, surfing, or general desire to stay up with Management–makes for one crappy night’s sleep. I’ve always been one to awaken early on anticipation of needing to get up and it used to be that I would wake up some five minutes before the alarm clock but now it has stretched to some two hours–if it maintains that pace than I’ll be waking up before I go to bed.
So I suppose my goal would to try and maximize my time asleep or at least structure my time in bed to be most beneficial. The question then becomes, “How in the hell do I do that?” Well, The Better Sleep Council offers the following tips:
- Maintain a regular bed and wake time schedule, including weekends. (Check–Dog ensures this.)
- Establish a regular, relaxing bedtime routine such as soaking in a hot bath or hot tub and then reading a book or listening to soothing music. (Nope–Management might get suspicious if I start taking bubble baths all the time.)
- Create a sleep-conducive environment that is dark, quiet, comfortable and cool. (Check–Bedroom is like a crypt.)
- Sleep on a comfortable mattress and pillows. (Nope–Mattress has seen better days and the pillows are like smashed white bread.)
- Use your bedroom only for sleep and sex. It is best to take work materials, computers and televisions out of the sleeping environment. (Check–TV is barely on and no computers.)
- Finish eating at least two to three hours before your regular bedtime. (Check–Dinner is consumed some four hours prior.)
- Exercise regularly. It is best to complete your workout at least a few hours before bedtime. (Check–Last long walk with the dog is some two hours prior.)
- Avoid nicotine (e.g., cigarettes, tobacco products). Used close to bedtime, it can lead to poor sleep. (Check–Don’t smoke.)
- Avoid caffeine (e.g., coffee, tea, soft drinks, chocolate) close to bedtime. It can keep you awake. (Nope–Fierce soda habit.)
- Avoid alcohol close to bedtime. It can lead to disrupted sleep later in the night. (Check–Don’t drink.)
So maybe the fact that I scored 70% on this checklist is why I drop like Glass Joe taking a jab in the face when nap time approaches. More bubble baths, less soda, and a better pillow should get things rolling and allow me to actually read a book when I want to rather than succumbing to the sweet succor of slumber.
Well, that was certainly easy; the upgrade to WordPress 2.0 went smooth including the plugins. Now just to get used to the new layout for the admin console.
