Written and Read

My loving and lovely wife has given me a Kindle for Christmas, and I also got a nice jacket for it. It is actually a very nice piece of kit – flat, smooth, good navigation buttons and a functional keyboard. Now, you might wonder why I would phrase it like that, but the sad fact is that I have got fingers that are too stupid for smartphones; and the keyboard on the Kindle is actually quite usable. One might be tempted to point to – let us call it inspiration by Apple with the white plastic and brushed aluminum casing. It seems quite sturdy, and I have been using it a lot. It is intended for people on the go, and it is good for that. I have just under an hour and a half on the subway when I go fencing at Sheridan Fencing Academy, and the same on the way back. Good to be well-equipped – and nice to be able to change books if I am in the mood for something else, without actually having to drag the entire library with me.

See the gallery for Kindle shots.

As for the content: They have certainly taken an interesting approach to integrating the gadget with the Amazon website. Included in the gadget is an unlimited access to the Amazon Kindle store online – which means that I can switch on the built-in wireless function and surf the Kindle store over Amazon Whispernet without having to attach anything else.
Surprisingly, they have not given into the temptation to lock the system down to Amazon-only text files. Maybe that is the lay of the land these days – that you can’t lock something like this to a single format, if you want to stay succesful (and aren’t Apple). It is certainly possible to use open formats and, even more surprising, use Whispernet to access eBooks files from other sources, most notably FreeKindleBooks, which offers a catalog of freely available books as an eBook, using which it is possible to download the book files on to the Kindle. These are from the Gutenberg project, an impressive project which collects electronic versions of books which are out of copyright. They scan the books and proofread the scans, crowdsourcing the effort using Distributed Proofreaders, where I have also contributed. The Gutenberg is an impressively massive text collection, and it is a beautiful that these materials are available; since these are materials out of copyright, there is a huge corpus of classics there.
Having said that, I have been shopping in the Kindle Store. I bought The Definitive H.P. Lovecraft – an anthology – for $0.99, which is quite affordable. I also bought an H. G. Wells Collection for $1.64, which I can just manage. The only book I got approaching full print price was The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross, a writer I find myself increasingly fascinated by; and that one only set me back around $7. So the pricing is okay.
Actually, there is experimental support for MP3s on the Kindle. What this means is not entirely clear – I have not used it, but I have seen people use headphones with it on the subway. Whether it adds the music files to the library or how it works remains to be seen.

Interestingly, the Kindle has also lead to an interesting debate about the ownership of one piece under different media, which was covered on the Litopia podcast in the episode All the King’s Men. From the almost-amusing-but-not-quite department, there has been heated discussion about offering readings, versus having the Kindle do it for you. This was mentioned by the EFF, as one would expect, but also featured in a piece in the New York Times by Roy Blount jr, as the president of the Authors’ Guild. This is actually a very open-ended discussion of the technology offering what a human used to do.
The Free Software Foundation has an ongoing project called Defective by Design, who did a feature on the Kindle, which they like to call the Swindle due to the DRM (Digital Rights Management) features built into the machine, and the fact that the books purchased on the Amazon Kindle shop can’t be transferred to another one, as you would be able to do if you gave a printed book away after reading it.
It is quite possible that FSF goes into this application a bit more, because the Kindle, in fact, is based on Linux. In the enclosed product documentation – enclosed as in included on the Kindle – there is licensing texts of the included components. Of course the Kindle is not by a long stretch an open device – it is not the thing you can just modify – but still, it is interesting to see the Linux kernel deployed in an impressive mainstream product.

So, what is the conclusion?
That this is actually a very, very sweet device – elegant application . The ePaper concept means that it is possible to look at the screen in much the same way as regular paper – it is not like a laptop where the angle decides whether it is possible to view it or not. Also, the power is used the first time the text is displayed on the screen; this means that even though the appliance isn’t using energy, the text remains displayed on the screen. Fascinating. It was a great gift.

Sometimes, strange events lead you back to a place where you have been and make you revisit past experiences.
And so, an unlikely, unfortunate and unhappy event leads me to bring up the author Tee Morris. The event is the tragic death of his wife, as I found out by Evo Terra at Podiobooker. More on the subject of Podiobooks another day, but – my condolences to Tee. As I wrote on Podiobooker, he has been an inspiration and lifted my spirits with his storytelling, and I hope that someone can do the same for him.
I was working when I saw the announcement, but it stuck in my head, and thinking about how fortunate I am to have a healthy wife and son, I wanted to take a moment to tell you about Tee Morris.

Tee is the author of the odd tale of Billibub Baddings. I listened to his book The Case of the Singing Sword (in print at Amazon). The unlikely basis of the story is the dwarf Billibub Baddings, born, raised and fighting in a Tolkien-like universe, who gets sucked into a portal – and is transported to Chicago, 1929, where he becomes a private detective. What could be more obvious?
In this curious blend of genres, we hear of Billibub’s Dashiell Hammet-style private investigator’s office, complete with secretary, gangsters (Al Capone’s in there)  and snappy dialog in the style of Bringing Up Baby, as also imitated by the brilliant Black Jack Justice series… but coupled with Billibub’s decidedly medieval axe-wielding angle. As an indication, the title of the first chapter is Trouble Is a Princess in High Heels.

I leave you with this; if you are not afraid of a little old-school genre blending, I recommend that you listen to this quirky tale of hoodlums, fedoras, beards, booze, guns, high society, spicy women and axe-wielding action.

Today’s adventure – apart from the usual quest for a place to live and our good son’s gym classes – lead us to the curious building, symbol and institution that is Brooklyn Public Library.

This massive structure, as one would suspect, houses an immense collection of books. As the well-cultured and literate people we are, we came in, sat down and had a late lunch in their café. Which was good. Having taken care of those more basic needs, we started exploring the place.
What I should have expected, but had not taken into consideration, was the fact that the collection of Russian literature in this library is immense. In the short time we have been living in Brooklyn, I have heard Russian spoken on the street many times, and even the electronic ticket machines in the subway offer a version in Russian – not to mention the library website itself. And so, the library is most well-equipped. If we choose to stay in this part of the city, I will certainly have something to look at. Also, looking through their catalogue, I found a lot of interesting historical material. Good times.

Now, what I found most interesting was their incredible list of activities. Not just because it is extensive – they get into a lot of different areas – but because it is clear that a large group of volunteers put a great effort into helping with homework, teaching languages and the like. And it does remind me of something I often thought of back home in Denmark: The way it is possible for a community to tap into the resources in it. At one point I offered my experience and abilities in IT to the library in Odense, but it was clear they did not want volunteers, because they felt that it was a job for the library, a part of their service. Here in Brooklyn, however, I came across a Japanese class while browsing the Russian books. A small group seated beside the language teaching materials, they were going through the Japanese what is this, what is that questions. They were just sitting there in the open room with a lot of people passing by, while the teacher was showing the students how to go about it and directing the questions. This was a fascinating way to channel the cultural diversity into something enlightening.

Most of our stay here so far has been dictated by the need to find somewhere to live. A lot of practical questions have been resolved over the last couple of days, and since we came here – almost two weeks ago, how incredible is that – we have seen a lot(!) of this town, getting around to look at apartments with real estate brokers, one more colorful than the other. That is why it was such a positive experience to see a cultural side. We are not here for the real estate, after all.