It's the end of the world as we know it...

Good Morning, and Happy End of Days to you all!

I hope everyone got showered and shaved and all cleaned up this morning, we gotta look our best for the end of everything.  And please, plan your outfit, I mean do you REALLY wanna be remembered as the guy who went out in a pair of khakis and a white tshirt.

End of the world, doomsday, apocalypse.  There are lots of ways to say it but there are even more ways it could happen.  Let's think about that, just a few.  The sun could supernova, rogue asteroids strike the planet, God just says "get lost", or maybe the 144,000 good people will finally go to heaven and stop knocking on our doors.  What's scary is that those are the ways where humanity can still say "I didn't do it!"  There are a lot more we can't say that with.

Let's consider some.  The greenhouse effect could turn the entire planet into a giant microwave oven.  World War 3 could turn the world into Mad Max 4 (please please no).  Some bio-engineered disease weapon gets out and kills everyone who has to breathe air.

Then there's the idea of computers taking over the planet.  I mean come on, Arnold warned us in '84 that it was gonna happen, but no, we didn't stop our tech shit, we just kept going, building, designing, making blogs like this one, and now look what happened.  We're going to be killed by humanoid shaped liquid metal things that still use old fashioned guns.

Ok, more seriously, just for a moment, instead of technology trying to kill us, imagine life without it.  Through evolution of intelligence, tools became electronics, which became computers.  They were meant to make our lives easier, but now they've made our lives dependent on them.  And I'm not saying I'm any better than you, my livelihood is programming, and my pastimes and hobbies are largely things that get plugged in.

I want you to stop and think for a second.  How many friends could you contact if you lost everything electronic this very moment.  No computers, no cellphones.  When I was in high school, I had all my friend's numbers written down, and memorized from calling them so often.  Now I just say a friend's name and my phone calls them.  I could drive to my friend's houses back then, now I use my GPS.  How many of you could see friends that live more than 15 minutes away without checking a GPS or looking up their address.

One more thing to mention.  The Mayans that everyone keeps talking about didn't say this was the end of the world, just the end of an age.  Just like so many hours ends a day, so many days ends a month, and in this case, so many years ends an age.  Everything doesn't end when you buy a new calendar each year, does it?

So go out, have a Happy New Age party today!  This is the perfect time to make a new age resolution, to make a better you.  Visit the friends you don't see often, talk to your family, or donate to charity.  This is a new beginning, not the end, so make yourself something even better than you were yesterday!

Besides, the world can't end today, I didn't get my damn Christmas presents yet....

Happy Holidays everyone!

Kindle, an E-Reader of a different Calibre..

Today we'll be introducing the mega-sale concepts to my Blog.  This article will be discussing three products, all for the cost of the usual one-item blog, isn't that amazing?  I'll be discussing why I got a Kobo e-reader, and why I would suggest just about anything else, Calibre and why I can't live without it, and Kindle, the e-reader that has this skeptic completely sold.  All I ask is that you show the true christmas spirit and slug at least two people on the way to reading this blog...

So to the meat of the story, as I got more and more into reading, it was suggested to me that I get an e-reader.  I didn't care for the weight of tablets and LED screens, though, and liked the feeling of reading off of a page, not a screen, so I was hesitant.  I have to admit, after using my girlfriend's Kindle for a few pages I was sold on the E-ink concept, just not the price.

When Borders bit the big one a few years back I went and picked up a Kobo Wireless, and as in true geek fashion, I got it, cheered, loaded some books onto it immediately, played with it relentlessly for an afternoon, then set it in the corner of my office and didn't touch it for 6 months.  Horray, new toy, ohh.. look, shiney...

So I finally thought I'd like to read something, remembered my Kobo, and pulled it out.  It worked well, had a decent page turn speed, and was easy to load with books in ePub format.  I thought I was happy, it was a geek to geek-toy romance made in heaven... just a really small, fake-gold plated heaven.  About 2 months into using it, I bumped it with my foot one night.  No, I didn't stomp on it, I clipped it.  I picked it up and with a flurry of curses, from me not the kobo, I learned that it was entirely fubarred.  It turned on, but the screen was toast.  And not even with butter, this was like... toast with maple-flavored engine oil, and who wants that?

So I scoured the internet, working very hard in my simple ebay search and found another Kobo at a relatively cheap cost.  My thoughts were that perhaps I hit the device harder than I thought.  I got another one, new in box from ebay.  This time I had a case, and every time I went to bed I put it in the case, then slipped it against the side of my nightstand on the floor, out of the way.  If I kicked it this time, I'd need to be quadruple-jointed, not to mention 2 inches wide.  Well low and behold, I picked it up one night to read, not two months after I got it, and the screen was toast again, same as the first one.

So end of chapter one, Kobo is stable, useful, and a decent e-reader if you never plan to move... ever...  It is highly recommended that all breathing be delayed until after the reading is finished.  You might want to consider zen meditation to lower your heartbeat too, the vibrations might mess it up!

Chapter two, Calibre, the most amazing book management software I've ever used.  Ok, it's also the only one I've ever used, to be fair, but it really is more than I ever expected.  It recognizes a plethora of different devices, from Kindles to Kobos to even my Android Phone running Aldiko.  In addition it converts just about every format I've heard of to every other format, from epub (generic e-book format), to mobi (kindle), to lib (obsolete Microsoft e-book format) and more.

All the E-books that I have I keep in calibre, rather than on the e-reader I'm using, so I only have a dozen or so to sort through while reading.  I mean really, yes you can store 4 gig worth of books, but do you need to read 2000 books at the same exact time?   Personally I'm not bug-eyed, so I have to focus on one at a time, so having more than a dozen books on my e-reader at once kinda sounds like overkill to me.

Finally, the main point of this article.  This past birthday I got the new Kindle Paperwhite.  This reader is by far the most advanced I've ever used.  Let's go over the basics first.  The page turning is lightning quick, with left or right swiping to turn pages.  The best part though is the light.  It uses a crystal refraction of some type to front-light the e-ink page from inside the device.  While it does have a glow, it's far less than any phone or tablet I've used to read, and it feels like I'm reading a lit book, instead of a back-lit screen.

In addition, there are a number of other features this e-reader offers, though the most convenient is the way that Amazon handles e-books you've bought.  All you do is purchase a book on amazon.com, in Kindle format, and then connect your Kindle to your Wi-fi, or enable the Whispernet connection if you got the 4G model.  It will connect and tell you congrats, here's your new book, now go read.  Once you've done this, you can even use Calibre to migrate the mobi file back from the kindle to your computer, to move back and forth at your leisure.

Looking at the more advanced functions, holding your finger over a word brings up a dictionary definition of it, which on occasion is exceptionaly propitious.  (see?)  Also, on kindle-bought books you can check out the "bones" of the book, giving you details on how important various characters are, synopsis of plot and the like.  Moving onto the "Why" category, you can even browse the web using this e-reader.   Remeber, though, it's just black and white and e-ink, so it's more of a novelty, or an in-a-pinch tool, but it wouldn't be your first choice.  I mean really, do we need to have EVERY device browsing the web?  Your phone does, your computer, your tablet, your television, your playstation, xbox, or wii.  Google's making glasses, so now you can even browse while you WALK!  Come on, people, we already know you can't text and walk at the same time, now you're gonna full-on browse all your web porn while strolling through Starbucks?  What's next, your watch?  Oh wait, they're gone now, everyone uses their phone instead.  Is anyone else getting confused here?

So where was I?  Oh right, the paperwhite.  Well the moral of my story is that I tried to cut corners and buy cheap ereaders, but in my personal experience they were just that, and since Amazon's newest product seems to take the price of their older product's top-line, it's really not escalating that cost all that much, so spend the extra $30 or whatever the difference is, and get a really good product instead of a just decent (or worse) one.  Is it worth years of wishing you had bought a better product, or replacing the lesser one enough that you could have bought the good one anyway, just to save enough to eat at TGIFridays once?

If anyone wants a more detailed look into any of these products, GO TRY IT!  Or if you're really too lazy, just ask, and I'll do a focused review of one.  Looking forward to hearing from you guys soon!  See ya next time.