eBook Reading

#2 read. One of my favorite birthday gifts this year was a Sony eBook reader (the PRS-505). I am loving it. It’s not one of their newest models. Fairly plain jane. But really cool. I like that I can be reading three or four (or more) books without having to lug around a bag of books. It’s just this little notebook. A plus that my family gave me along with the eBook reader was a new cover for it that has a battery-operated light-up panel that fits right over the eBook reader screen. A book light. Love that.

Here’s what Ted had to say back in January 08 about “Why I purchased the Sony PRS-505 Reader.” Although mine was a gift, I had mentioned previously to the gift buyers that I was considering a Sony over the Kindle (although the Barnes & Noble Nook looks interesting too). Ted’s reasons #1, #2, and #4 were important. I’m going to have to delve more into his #5 reason – converting HTML to ebook formats. That sounds like something I’d like to do.

Yesterday I was trying it out with headphones, listening to music with it while reading. Nice, although I’ve got to load my own music on it. It came with just a couple of songs – a waltz and something called Sleepy Time. I already tend to get sleepy while reading, don’t need music that puts me to sleep as well.

Now it won’t be of much use with books that rely on lots of photos and illustrations. It will show images but they are limited to grayscale and can’t be enlarged. So it won’t work for a lot of graphic design and craft reading. But for books that are mostly just text to begin with, works great. And no more losing my place because I dropped the book or a bookmark fell out. It remembers where you are and you can set electronic bookmarks with a button push.

I still love printed books. But I’m loving my eBooks too. Just means I’ve got more, more, more reading to be doing.

Now, one thing I’ve noticed: ebooks I’ve purchased through the Sony ebookstore so far share a common feature – more typos than I usually see in printed books. (This is evidently common to a lot of ebooks.) I do find myself zeroing in on typos in books and magazines all the time. Some have more than others. But these ebooks seem to have an inordinate number of typos (and by typos I mean words that are misspelled as well as two words that run together as one, stray characters in place of letters, and transposed letters and words). I hope that as ebook readers really catch on that publishers will take greater care in their conversion to ebook formats.

Do you have an ebook reader? Which one? How do you feel about ebooks in general?

I Built an RC Car

#5 create. My husband, Mike, is the RC enthusiast in the family. He runs a Website about radio controlled vehicles. I like to build things but it’s usually with wood and nails. I’ve been looking at various kits for building things for awhile and finally decided I was going to try to build an RC. With his help I picked out a nice basic, beginner-level kit. I started mid-morning in late September. By evening I had a finished RC.

It was so much fun that since then we teamed up to build another, much more complex RC car. As for driving them, that’s fun for a bit but I let him do most of the driving. Building and painting – that’s the part I really like.
 
Here’s a pic of my first RC built from a kit, the Tamiya Grasshopper.

On Mike’s site we put up a gallery of photos I took while building my Grasshopper.

Windows LIVE Writer

#3 write. I know that Windows Live Writer has supposedly been around for a while but I knew nothing about it until my recent upgrade to Windows 7. Got the Windows Live Essentials and it was part of it. So, I’m trying it out with this blog post. Tried earlier but it wouldn’t publish. Reading online tells me it may be because there was a picture in the post – evidently blogger has a problem with that when using offsite blogging tools. So I’m trying text only to see if that works any better.

If it works, I may start blogging more. Being able to work offline or without using the blogger interface is a plus for me.

Next will be getting it to work with my WordPress blog.

Extending the Circle (Table)

#5 Create. Now this isn't something I created. Someone else did. But I thought it was cool. Or maybe I just don't get out much. Whatever. Anyway, I was window shopping at some upscale furniture store the other day ($3000 for a basic bookcase? Ain't no way.) when I spotted this nifty round table design. My mother always had these dinner tables which we would make longer by adding a leaf (extension) for the holidays so it would accommodate more people. Square tables became rectangles. Rectangular tables got longer. Round tables became ovals. Well this round table I saw got bigger while staying round. Instead of pulling apart at the middle and inserting new pieces, this one had about 6 or so arc'd pieces that attached all around the circumference of the table. More space, bigger table. But it's still round.

Reading Magazines and Books

#2 Read. Rambling session here... Got a bunch of magazines passed along by my mother when she was here on Monday. Mostly Good Housekeeping and Better Homes & Gardens -- not ones I usually buy myself so they're all new for me. I've been reading them each evening. Hmmm... I know she reads O Magazine. She must be keeping all of those to herself. I enjoy it from time to time. But except for the occasional (used to be much more than occasional) decorating or remodeling magazine, I tend to read things like Scientific American, Astronomy, Psychology Today, Popular Science, and such. Not topics (except maybe astronomy) I was particularly drawn to until the last few years.

I like to watch history shows on PBS and read history books but haven't really delved into many history magazines. May have to see what's out there and take a look. I have a huge stack of old National Geographic magazines from several years back. Never read. I use them for the pictures for personal art/craft projects -- I scan what I want to use so the magazines stay in tact. Perhaps I should pull them out to actually read.

I'm considering getting one of those electronic reading gizmos such as the Kindle or one of the newer breed. I like reading regular books but I've also found that for certain types of books I enjoy the audo version. I get the CD and then transfer it to my little Shuffle and listen while taking a walk, riding my recumbent bike in the living room, etc. Having a bunch of books available on a little electronic gizmo I can carry around (instead of a backpack full of books) would be cool... I think. Still trying to decide.

OK, enough rambling. My son just brought over his laptap. It's in need of my diagnostic skills (Ha!)