subversive ramblings 0 » reviews

3rd Gen Kindle : good where it’s good, great where it’s great

Nigel — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 19:34:24 +0000

My Kindle in full sunlight showing a page of the 'show me my books' home menu

What’s the new Amazon Kindle really like?

My Kindle arrived a few days ago.

Interesting.

It’s the latest version of Amazon’s e-book reader, and the pundits have made it clear this marks the beginning of the end for printed books. Me, I got one cos I’m a nerd, and cos publishing these days more or less requires you make electronic versions available so I need to understand them.

Overview

I’m using it every day, and like it. There are limitations (see below) imposed by the current state of technology, and the need to keep the price within reason. Wait ten years and much better stuff will be available, but even at this stage the Kindle is worth buying. If you read text quite often.

First the good points:

It’s a nice comfortable size and shape to hold, and as light as a paperback.
The screen really does look nice, with their ‘paper’ effect. Unlike normal computers, the brighter the ambient light the easier it is to read. There is no back lighting, which was a wise decision since built in light would kill the battery fast.
Turning pages is easy, but not intuitive. I’ve got it now, but initially I was paging forwards when I wanted to go back. Not a problem, it’s clear and quick to learn.
Jenny (my wife) has been wanting to read novels by Émile Zola, but all the versions in the local library have very small print with close line-spacing, and she finds them tiring to read. With the Kindle I can download free copies and she can set the font size and line spacing to suit herself. So plenty of classics available free, and no need for large print editions.
They can do high quality graphics, but at the moment only in shades of grey. When the machine turns itself off it posts a random literary picture and that stays with no power drain, which is a fun feature.
I’m finding it comfortable to read, although so far not as comfortable as a printed book. I’m sure that’ll improve. Sixty years of practice with printed stuff compared with a few days on the Kindle!
Magazines and newspapers are available for a relatively cheap subscription rate compared with the paper version. The range is severely limited, but it’s early days.
With many items it’s possible to download a free trial. I’ve already bought one novel after reading the free first chapter, and a Thesaurus after checking its ease of use on the trial version.
There is a search feature which seems to be available at any time – just start typing the search term. For instance once I’ve opened the Thesaurus I just start typing my word. It appears at the bottom of the screen, and when I say to search it looks within the current document. I get every occurrence of the word or phrase I’m interested in. For some types of use this is fantastic, and far better than the half-witted indexes some printed books include.

The rest of the good you can find on Amazon’s Kindle pages.

Now for the minor bad points (all of which will no doubt be fixed as technology advances):

It’s not a touch screen. That’s fine, I haven’t had a touch screen since my Palm PDA fell out of my shirt pocket for the last time many, many years ago.
The keyboard is very small, and just alphabet – no numbers or symbols (except via a secondary window and cursor keys). This was a bit annoying when I needed to log on to my home wireless network whose password includes digits, but otherwise no problem. Jenny has very limited feeling in her fingers, so can’t use the keyboard because it’s too small for her, but if you’re okay with modern mobiles then no problem. This will improve a lot once they bring out a touch-screen version, but I may decide not to afford that.
Very few fonts are available, but that’s a personal whinge that won’t affect most people.
No page numbers. Instead each page shows how far through the document you are, and a line graph along the bottom shows this visually. At the moment I really miss having page numbers, and once having selected size and spacing the page numbers would be consistent. Sometimes I’ve accidentally held the page forward/back buttons, and then needed to go back a page at a time checking text. This is as much a cultural problem as anything, but I can’t see why the % can’t be complemented with a current page/total pages display.
Publishers have almost no control over page layout, which is as you’d expect with variable font size and line spacing. I’m guessing that one day we will have more control here.
Some documents won’t let me change font size or line spacing. Are they PDF docs? I don’t think this is made clear before you download, and it doesn’t seem to be shown on the book list pages.
Turning the page can be quite slow, but later models will be faster. Believe me, the early handheld electronic devices in the seventies were far slower. And I can still remember my first electronic calculator: all calculation progress showed on the display. Multiplying two large numbers together showed a visible calculation whirring for a second or two. Mind you, dividing by zero was amusing. For a while. You had to power off to stop it.
The root menu of what books are stored is painful. I’ve put a photo below. I don’t have that many books, but already the contents takes 8 pages. Part of the problem is that here you can’t change font size or line spacing, and their decision was to go for very wide spacing allowing just ten books a page. Okay, you can sort by most recent, title, or author, and of course irrelevant words like the are ignored and author sort is on surname, but all the same, come on Amazon! You say I can store up to 3,500 books. Well, with this navigation system, no thank you. You have given us a nice search system, but getting there requires several key presses, and then use of the keyboard.
As with sub-directories on a normal computer, here you can create ‘collections’. I haven’t tried yet, but with 80 documents already I think it will be slow. Now given that you can recharge via USB, why isn’t there a Kindle equivalent to the iTunes software I use with my iPod? It would be so fast and convenient to be able to do Kindle housekeeping and organising with a proper keyboard and mouse via this USB interface.
I bought a cheap Maths book that interested me in order to see how a mix of text and graphics is handled. The pictures are often on pages of their own. Fair enough, but the quality of some very simple line drawings was abysmal. I’m guessing this is because the publisher failed to supply pictures in the optimal format for the Kindle, so it can be fixed, but why don’t Amazon’s notes to potential publishers explain how to get this right? If they do, I was unable to find this information on a quick flick through. Maybe Amazon rushed into production to avoid being too far in the red on R&D.
Basic use is straightforward, but there are many subtler features available. You can find out about some (all?) of these in the ‘Kindle User’s Guide’ which comes ready installed. It is useful, poorly structured. I speak as a classroom teacher who writes. The information is not in the right order, and it is tedious flicking through to find what I want – even with the occasional hyperlink. Hey, Amazon, please test your stuff on people who don’t already know how to use it. And listen and observe. And then pay a writer with teaching experience.
Some books, including some I paid for, are not formatted for use on the Kindle. I bought a novel called ‘The Darwinian Extension: Initiation’. The text supplied by the publisher to Kindle includes page headers and footers, which have transferred across. But of course, page breaks are not where they’d be in the printed version. So you get footers cropping up frequently mid-text. Elsewhere in this book is a list with line breaks enforced in all the wrong places, which makes for confusing reading.
When I press ‘Home’ to leave a book and return to the list of books I am always returned to the first book listed, not to the book I was just reading.

So there are many additional options I’d like to see in future generations, and publishers need to take care before passing a book on for Kindle use. But that is one reason I bought the beast in the first place.

That’s a brief overview.

Next post I’ll talk about more serious limitations inherent in the e-book medium. Then in a third post I’ll look at what I think the long-term impact will be on publishing. Remember, when desktop computers first arrived:

They had very low res monochrome screens (anyone remember Space Invaders?),
They were incredibly slow,
Few applications were available – most of what you did was programmed in by yourself,
There were no mice, and no touch screens, and backup was to audio-cassette tape,
We were confidently assured computers would lead to the paperless office. Joke.

Technical data not obvious on Amazon site:

I’m using the Kindle DX (3^rd generation) Graphite model, bought at Amazon UK.

Memory: It has 4 Gb of flash memory, but only about 3.3 Gb is available for personal use.

Display: 3.6” by 4.6” (9.1 cm by 12.2 cm), 600 x 800 pixels, 16 level grey scale (note that is 4 bit greyscale)

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RS 7.5 : Until the Skies Fall

Nigel — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 08:52:12 +0000

So far I’ve read just one book published by BeWrite Books (see yesterday’s post). It’s one of Liza Granville’s called Until the Skies Fall. What follows is the review I posted on Amazon:

— Five stars —

I loved this book. Apparently it will have a sequel. I can’t wait.

The story could be described as a cross between ‘Lord of the Rings’ (but without the fantasy) and Iain Banks’ ‘Feersum Endjinn’ (without the strange language), but it isn’t either. It is unique.

This is hard science fiction set in our future after unspecified advances trigger some kind of devastating war – I’ll not spoil it by giving any details. The world is very different in many ways, but that is merely the backdrop to this saga. The focus is on a disparate group of people shoved into trying to achieve something nearly impossible. The characters are well-drawn, and some of them quite endearing. They struggle to maintain friendships through hard times and in some cases the strains of growing up. I enjoyed their company as I read the book.

But this is not Dostoyevsky. The plot moves along. Challenges are very much physical as well as psychological. Okay so some parts were a bit slow for my taste, but other parts had me turning pages into the night. Actually come to think of it that’s also true when I read Tolkien or Banks.

Most of the SF I find on the shelves at Waterstones I either own or is not to my taste. This novel was a breath of fresh air with its readability, reality, humanity, almost hidden science, and gradually unfolding secrets. Liza Granville is an author to watch. This is an early work with only a couple of other titles so far available, but it shows something of what she will one day be capable.

——

She’s doing okay

I’m now on another of her books The Tor. It’s started well. Arrived yesterday, and I’ve put the latest Iain Banks on one side to read it. Which is quite a tribute to Liza.

If you can handle hard science fiction with just a hint of fantasy, and if you like the characters to be real and interesting, then get hold of a copy of Skies.

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‘How You Can Survive When They’re Depressed’ by Anne Sheffield

Nigel — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:06:36 +0000

I’ve been learning to live with chronic depression for over forty years, and this book has helped.

I lived with a chronically depressed dad, and reading this helps me make sense of my childhood and understand both my parents better.

Jenny, my wife, has severe attacks of depression which have no obvious cause. I cope using a range of strategies I’m still learning, and because I love her very much. Anne Sheffield’s book has rejuvenated my efforts to help and support Jenny, and has provided a wealth of useful information. Despite forty years of study I found this book a revelation. Thank you Anne.

During the eighties Jenny became frighteningly depressed with occasional manic phases and a brief period of mild catatonia. Over six years she spent two and a quarter years in psychiatric hospital making no progress. Most of the doctors either ignored me or treated me as an irrelevant annoyance. After a couple of years I was at my wits end trying to support Jenny, cope with my own depression, and look after our two sons. Someone at the hospital arranged for me to see a psychiatric social worker who came across as tired and distracted – certainly over worked. I asked if there was any way we could be helped as a family. “Are you asking to have the children taken into council care?” he asked. “Hell no!” I said. “In that case there’s nothing we can do to help. Good bye.”

A nuclear bomb doesn’t just affect where it explodes. When I’m badly depressed there is fallout. Other people suffer and have to cope. I’m very fortunate to have known so many people prepared to live with my mood swings – not least Jenny and the boys (sorry guys, we know you’ve been men for a long time but we can’t help thinking of you as our ‘boys’).

If you live with someone who is depressed you know exactly what I’m talking about. The trouble is that most people around you do not understand, and this includes a frightening number of medics. The situation is improving. Medics are better trained now. People are beginning to understand. But having someone close to you depressed will never be easy.

Anne writes with knowledge based on experience of being depressed and living with depressed people. She includes many true examples from people she knows and has interviewed. I think every aspect of the situation is covered, and the result is an eminently readable book full of useful information, great coping strategies, and hope.

If you live outside the USA then you do need to allow for a natural bias towards the situation and culture in the States, but that should be no problem. Inevitably there are sections which are incomplete or slightly biased, but that doesn’t matter. My experiences living with Jenny when she is depressed bear little relation to the scenario described by Anne, which makes me feel extremely fortunate and blessed. There are forms of talking therapy Anne is not familiar with. But her writing has expanded my understanding and clarified a lot of stuff that was scattered and confused in my head. The book was first published in 1998 so a few parts are now slightly out of date.

The book is aimed at anyone who lives with a depressive or manic depressive (bipolar) person. It has sections specific to you if the depressed person is a parent or a child. It looks at the differences between male and female depression, between child (up to about 25) and adult depression, and between different types of depression. It looks at the range of treatments available, both chemical and non chemical. It does all this using simple language and considerable human warmth.

Anne has not just based the book on her own experiences and those of people she helps at the Mood Disorders Support Group in New York City. She’s also gone to a great deal of trouble researching the facts, and has had her writing checked by medical professionals.

If you live with a depressed person buy and read this book, and keep it to hand for reference and encouragement.

If you are depressed then get this book for the person closest to you, and when you’re feeling well enough try reading it yourself.

Anne Sheffield’s related web site is here.

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‘The Songs of Roxy Music Revisited’ is out and it sounds great

Nigel — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 09:00:27 +0000

The slip case cover for CD3, the one which a couple of Grammar School at Leeds bands earned places on

Last November Oliver Whawell got me involved in helping with a couple of Jazz bands at my old school They were recording tracks to offer for possible inclusion on a professional album set. The original post is here. My role was to secure funding and arrange for a quality sound guy (Paul Gowlett) to record and engineer. I ended up doing far more – good thing I no longer teach or I’d not have had time.

The CDs have arrived. I was lucky enough to receive a free copy of the triple album and I’m knocked out.

While not particularly a Roxy Music fan I do have their ‘Avalon’ album. Obviously I’ve heard of Brian Eno and Bryan Ferry, and I remember their single Virginia Plain being a smash hit during the summer I was floating between university and my first teaching job (1972). This album is introducing me to so much more. Thank you.

The few songs I already knew have been lovingly transformed into fresh, exciting and inventive interpretations. All too often cover versions either stick too close to the original or make changes which don’t quite work. Here you have the results of 42 bands from around the world putting a great deal of skill and sweat into getting it right. The result is great! And it really does work because I now want to hear the Roxy originals.

The back of the slip-case cover. Our bands are 'Jazz in 6ths' and 'Out of the Blue'. Oliver's is 'The Strawberry Thieves'.

We thought Oliver’s arrangements for our two songs were beautiful. Both bands are heavy on saxophones, and it works. The raw tracks sounded bad when we listened back because the only suitable room we could have for three days has very bad accoustics (why design a music room like that?). Paul Gowlett removed the inappropriate echoes and created final mixes which were good. Burning Sky records then had these mastered in some way that improved the sound even further, and the final CD results are better still. I wish I understood what these sound engineers do.

The album is no back-street ramble produced by a bunch of kids for their Mums and with the vague hope it’ll do as a demo for that big deal.

We have here excellent musicianship, enticing production, professional engineering, and a product way better than a lot of the stuff on the racks in HMV. It is a labour of love. These tracks were not just thrown together in a spare moment. Each one has been worked on hard, but not over-worked. There is variety. There is excitement.

Marketing something like this is risky. In the book world you can sell on Amazon while printing to order (POD). You no longer have to invest a lot of money up front, or decide how many copies to risk paying for. Alan Heaton has taken a risk, but also limited it by only making 1000 copies. If the right people get to hear this work it’ll take off. It deserves to.

The bands were great fun to work with. Giving up a whole weekend to this project was tiring (depression had overtaken me by the November recording sessions) but you made it worth while.

Thank you to Alan Heaton for coming up with the idea and making it work. There is no way Alan will make a profit from this first run – not if you factor in the number of hours he’s put into it over the last fifteen months. Maybe someday we’ll meet, Alan. It’s been good working with you.

Copies may be ordered from Burning Sky Records. Just click on those three words. You’ll also find more info about the global project.

The single CD album is also available on Amazon. I think I’ll get my copy there. Might boost coverage by helping the album’s rating.

There’s photos and more info on the GSAL contributions on my web site at this page. You can also listen to samples of our tracks there.

Finally to quote from the booklet notes written by Alan:

…can you hear the toll of the bell at the grammar school at leeds? a school so cool they have furnished not one but two bands for this record…

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Book review: ‘Outliers – The Story of Success’ by Malcolm Gladwell

Nigel — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 07:06:20 +0000

A fascinating book that's a delight to read

I loved reading it and was sad to reach the end. Despite having been a bestseller it’s highlyrecommended.

Gladwell has an engaging style, throwing in plenty of human interest material that is well presented.

What enables a few people to achieve so much more than the rest of us? Is it luck, upbringing, intelligence, hard work, or what? The findings are enthralling but be warned: do not expect this book to tell you how to succeed. That is not Gladwell’s intention. What he does is to shine a spotlight on a wide range of connected exceptions such as:

> Bill Gates: what enabled him to be ready when the right opportunity arrived?

> The Beatles: how many hours a week were they performing in Hamburg? The answer is astonishing.

> What is the most important factor if you want to be a successful pro basketball player? And no, provided you’re tall enough it’s not height, and it’s not the potential you were born with.

> On commercial airliners the Captain and his Co-pilot share flying time about equally. Obviously the Captain is more experienced. So why do far more accidents happen when the Captain is flying?

> What has the nature of rice farming got do do with Chinese excellence at Maths? (There’s a hint buried in this post).

If you never read another book in your entire life I’d strongly advise you keep the fact quiet lol.

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Athlete and Arctic Monkeys

Nigel — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 10:35:24 +0000

(This is an extra post because I feel like it.)

This week both Athlete and Arctic Monkeys released their new albums. I’m getting into Athlete because Graham (younger son) is a fan, and I have the previous Arctic Monkey’s albums. So I’ve just finished listening to both. Legally (on Napster). In the background while I work though. Yes I have just spent over two hours writing: nerdy or what. Here are my first impressions thoughts.

Athlete: Black Swan

Definitely worth a second listen. Relatively gentle music, but with many attractive touches. On first listening it feels a bit samey, but I wasn’t giving it my full attention (it’s on for a second time now, and sounding more varied). I’ll probably put it on my Amazon wish list – haven’t got any of their stuff yet.

Arctic Monkeys: Humbug

I’ve mixed feelings about their music, but it’s growing on me. Loved that one about looking good on the dance floor. Might do it in public one day. This feels like more of the same with some new bits, and one track that kinda sounds awfully derivative from one of their previous tracks but I’m probably wrong there. I’ll definitely be giving it at least a few more listens, and I’ll pay more attention next time.

Random thought on listening to new music

When the Rolling Stones album “Beggars’ Banquet” was issued I rushed out to buy it. I’d loved almost everything they’d done to that point. As I recall I was a fresher at Durham and short of cash. I got the vinyl LP back to my room in college and it was straight on the slightly crackly, mono record player. (Worked all the next summer to get a decent stereo system). I hated their album. I mean it was incomprehensible, repetitive, a total waste of money. That included classic tracks like ‘Sympathy for the Devil’.

But I’d just shelled out a whole pound for this useless bit of plastic, and I hadn’t at that time read Stuart Sutherland’s book ‘Irrationality’ (which hadn’t been written lol). I stuck with it. Actually I reasoned that this was the Stones, and they were incredible, so it must be a good album. The problem must actually be with me. I listened again. Still bad. And again. And again and again. Full marks for determination Nige. It wasn’t till the seventh listening that something clicked and now I think of it as one their most inspired albums. What I didn’t know was that it was far closer to the blues stuff they’d played before they were famous than most of their commercial stuff. A friend started introducing me to blues-related band Cream (who’d sadly already disbanded). The next year another friend introduced me to blues-based bandfs Led Zeppelin and Ainsley Dunbar. Understanding the blues properly still took many years, and I still can’t figure when to come in with the vocal if singing Crossroads with a live band, but it was worth it.

Moral: don’t give up too soon on music that sounds different and doesn’t immediatelt float your boat. The best stuff usually takes some work.

Ricky signing CD covers, hands and ties after free concert in Leeds day after first album released

Random thought on recording

I’m a big fan of the Kaiser Chiefs. And not just because they’re a Leeds band. But I wish they would spread out recording an album over a much longer period. Preferably at least six months. The last two albums have had some great material but somehow felt far too repetitive in style. The first album was seriously varied. And it sounded raw despite the polishing, which frankly is when they sound best. Pity you won’t read this Ricky you dozy git How about a live album? And don’t go back into the recordings dubbing over your mistakes like Paul McCartney does; the incredible pianist Richter didn’t – mind you he didn’t have the technology.

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Why am I so self-centred?

Nigel — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:20:03 +0000

Blogging heroes

I’ve been enjoying the book ’Blogging Heroes‘ by Michael A. Banks, but one paragraph made me stop and think about myself.

Michael was interviewing Mark Frauefelder of the BoingBoing blog. Mark described his interest in ’700 Hobo Names’ by John Hodgman, and how putting it on his blog had triggered the 700 Hoboes Project. Here’s the bit that worried me (and it’s good to be worried occasionally):

Seeing that just makes me feel happy to know that I was in some way responsible for it – for inspiring all these really talented people to get together online.

My immediate thoughts were: “I don’t usually think like that but I’m glad Mark does, and I wish I did. Why don’t I?”

You see most of the time I’m pretty self-centred, and even when I’m doing things for reasons I admire my motives are always mixed. People saying the sort of thing Mark says makes me feel bad about myself, so if I’m already in a depressed phase it makes me feel worse. I start to dwell on all the other ways in which I’m self-centred, and all the times my motives were almost entirely ones I dislike.

But then again I have no idea how much of Mark’s happiness is generated by knowing he’s helped a load of people, and how much is because it’s boosted his own success. My guess is he’s as human as me, so feels both. Maybe I should be less hard on myself. Maybe I should be pleased that there’s even a bit of my motivation that’s not selfish, that there’s at least the seed of me being the type of person I’d rather be. Maybe I should think of myself more as a work in progress.

Does anyone else have these kind of thoughts?

By the way, the book’s great. Every chapter is different, reflecting the personalities of the thirty successful bloggers interviewed. If people or blogging interest you then give this book a try.

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Don’t Make Me Think (Steve Krug)

Nigel — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:48:38 +0000

Don't Make Me Think

A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

I know when someone’s web site is annoying, but until I read this book I hadn’t figured out most of the reasons.

If you run a web site or are planning to set one up then get hold of this book. It’s laid out to be a joy to read, puts things in a sensible order, is clear, and covers everything I can think of except how to be artistic. It caused me to make major changes to my own site; you may still dislike the result, but at least it should now be easy to use.

There is some stuff for people working in organisations. It’s easy to skip, but I enjoyed it. Now I understand why some business sites are so bad lol.

Cost me £18.74 from Amazon UK.

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