ON BOOKS

I have been listening to audio books and find that a lot easier than reading as I can do other things while listening.  Most of the classics are available free from Libravox (libravox.org).  Many are available, also free, from the Google Play Store.  I use the Nook HD+ with a 64gb micro SD card and can load books via the charging/USB cable but find it much better to remove the memory card and plug that directly into the computer.  I am surprised at the quality of the books available.  I was most impressed by "The Sea Wolf" by Jack London but have also enjoyed "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (Harriet Beecher Stowe) and "Twelve Years a Slave" (Solomon Northup).  I also check out audio books from the library and have listened to Bill O'Reilly's KILLING series, Mark Levin's "Ameritopia" and especially enjoyed "Christmas Carol" read by Patrick Stewart.  He puts his actor's skills to work and makes the familiar story enjoyable for the umpteenth time. Lynn Chaney's book about James Madison "A Life Reconsidered" was excellent as well as "A Time To Try Men's Souls" by Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen.  History is a favorite subject and I never get tired of reading or listening to those books. "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" was very good and is available at the Google Play Store.

I also read printed books and have, in the last two months finished "Men in Black" and "The Liberty Amendments" by Mark Levin, "Guardian of the Republic" by Allen West and the best of all "Redemption - the Last Battle of the Civil War" which I have in both printed and audio format.  The latter is especially interesting because it has a link to Volusia County.  Adlebert Ames, the last surviving General from either side of the Civil War and reconstruction governor of Mississippi appointed by Lincoln,  lived at Ormond Beach.

Sometimes something lighter is fun.  Right now my wife and I are listening to "Fifty Shades of Grey"!  This book would have been banned in Boston and burned in most communities a short while ago.  It is the most explicitly sexual book I've read since "Fanny Hill".  "Peyton Place" and "Lolita" are tame by comparison.

Books, whether audio or written, are one of the joys of life.  I owe it all to my 8th grade teacher who used to read to us for 30 minutes every day from the Hardy Boys series.  I couldn't wait to hear the next session and started going to the library to find other books like that.  When I went in the Navy I started Mickey Spillane novels but soon decided that, as much as I enjoyed them I should read a better grade of material in an attempt to improve my poor education.  In about 1960, while serving at the Naval Radio Station at Cheltenham, Maryland I landed an evening job selling "The Great Books of the Western World" published by Britannica.  The first thing I wanted to know after the introduction to this wonderful set of 53 volumes, was "How can I get a set of these books?"

"The Great Books of the Western World" was put together at the University of Chicago by Mortimer J. Adler and Robert Maynard Hutchins.  Together they represent a classical liberal arts education.  The set begins with the Bible (not supplied, everyone has one.) and includes the Iliad, the Odyssey, Plato, Aristotle, The Greek classics, Shakespeare, Thomas Aquinas and all of the important books up through the last volume which is "Moby Dick".  The set represents what Britannica called "The great conversation."  Each author is assumed to have read the previous authors and use their writings to develop their own ideas.  The really amazing part of the collection is the "Syntopican" or "Synthesis of Topics Contained" which is an index of ideas.  You could follow the idea of love or hate or any other subject by consulting the Syntopican and reading the references in order from volume one through volume  fifty three.

I quickly learned that I was not a very good book salesman.  Britannica insisted that we go through a rigmarole that I considered dishonest and it became harder and harder for me to make a great show of accepting a $10 down payment then dumping on the person who had just bought the books.  When I accepted the down payment I was about half way through the presentation.  I told the boss that it was a great set of books and we should just sell them with a straight forward presentation.  He said that if I attempted that he would fire me on the spot. After a while I didn't think the emotional strain was worth it so I quit but was happy to pay for the set of books which I still have today. And have recently been rereading the Federalist Papers.  The pages are a little brown now but I won't part with the set and will pass it on to my daughter and grand daughters and hope they will come to love it as I do.

I just checked and the set is available on Amazon for around $50 or, for a collectors set $475.  The shipping would probably add a lot to that.

Nook Color Rooting

One of the best 7" eReaders is the Nook Color, and now the 7" Nook HD and the 10" HD+.  The machines are cheap compared to many of the others.  B&N is stopping production on the latest model, the HD+ and the price is down to $149.

I have been upgrading on my Nook Color eReader.  It is now running "Jelly Bean" or Android 4.3, the latest upgrade of the of the Android operating system.  This makes the Nook Color equivalent to the Nexus 3.

Rooting the Nook Color frees the machine from the restrictions placed on it by Barnes and Noble.  Once rooted the Nook Color becomes a mini computer capable of almost anything a notebook computer can do. There is even a normal keyboard that connects via blue tooth if you need that.

Developers have given us two choices, root the Nook via the external memory card or root directly to the emmc or internal memory of the machine.  If the latter method is used you should first back up the factory operating system in case you want to return to stock operation.

The new operating system is called Cyanogen.  I have been using Cyanogen v7 (called CM7) for a year of two.  Recently the project programmers have made available CM 10 and have moved that through 10.1 and now 10.2.  Every night they post the version they have been working on that day.  You can stay with a proven version or get right on the cutting edge and update your operating system with the "NIGHTLIES" that are posted.  I try to stay back a few days.  There may be bugs in the software but I've never found a significant bug.

One application still is not running properly on my machine.  That is NETFLIX.  When I first loaded CM10 NETFLIX would not load.  After a week I upgraded to the latest NIGHTLY version and now NETFLIX loads and appears to run normally but when I start a movie the lower half of the screen is random colored bars.  I expect they will fix that problem soon.

eBook Formats

Re: B&N eBook Format

‎08-01-2010 10:55 AM - edited ‎08-01-2010 10:56 AM

ArCar wrote:

Can someone explain these formats to me? I am researching a nook purchase and I read on facebook from one nook user that he did NOT choose kindle because of the proprietary nature of file format...

REPLY

The important consideration is formats with DRM (Digital Rights Management, or copy protection). All of the e-books from all of the big publishers come with DRM, and DRM limits what you can do with your e-books. In the US, it's illegal to remove or circumvent the DRM, so you're stuck with whatever DRM your e-book comes with.

For e-books without DRM, like the free e-books from sites like Project Gutenberg or from some of the smaller publishers, you can convert them into many different formats using a tool like Calibre. Which format your device uses is not particularly important.

So, back to DRM. There are four main DRMed formats in widespread use today:

Kindle

B&N

Apple

Adobe EPUB

There are some other DRMed formats in limited use, such as Secure eReader, MobiPocket, and Adobe Secure PDF. I'm not going to discuss those here.

The Kindle format is only readable on Kindles or on Kindle apps (for computers, phones, iPad, etc.).

The B&N format is readable on NOOKs and on B&N reader apps (for computers, phones, iPad, etc.). It's also readable on some newer e-readers, although most of those sank out of sight after the price wars began a couple of months ago. About the only one left at the moment is the Pandigital Novel. We can hope that there will be more in the future. Also, Adobe has said that sometime this year they'll make Adobe Digital Editions able to read B&N e-books, but I don't think there's a platform that runs ADE that can't run the B&N reader app.

The Apple format is only readable on iPad and iPhone.

The Adobe EPUB (ADE) format (which is called a dozen different things) is readable on almost every dedicated e-reader device except the Kindle and some of the cheapies. This is the format that library e-books usually come in, and it's the format that most e-book stores other than Amazon, B&N, and Apple sell in.

So the big knock against Kindle here is that it won't handle Adobe EPUB format. If you want to read a DRMed e-book, which is just about any major title, you must buy it from Amazon. You can't buy it anywhere else, and you can't check it out of the library.

Furthermore, once you buy a DRMed Kindle e-book you can only read it on a Kindle or a Kindle app. Every DRMed Kindle e-book that you buy locks you more and more into the Kindle world. If you ever want to change to a different e-reader, you'll have to walk away from that library of e-books. Not such a problem if you're planning on going to a tablet like an iPad, because there'll almost certainly be a Kindle app available.

RESTARTING HALE'S LOG 

Saturday night Aug 24, 

It's been a long time since I last posted.  I feel a need to have a forum to attempt to enlighten some of the "low information" voters out there.

President Obama has been an unmitigated disaster.  He is determined to jam socialist programs down our throat and doesn't mind ignoring the Constitution to do it.

His latest outrage is to bring forth a plan to "rate" colleges and universities and increase or decrease their funding according to how they rate.  His goal is to control what is taught just the way the government controls what is taught in our public schools.  This is a basic move for budding dictators, control the minds of the young and you can get away with anything. This has to be countered and stopped.

I would not be surprised to see Obama making a move toward changing the term limit law in order to stay in office past 2016, keep your ears open.

I am totally fed up with the Republican Party and do not call myself a Republican any more but a Conservative leaning toward Libertarian.  I see the Tea Party as the only counter balance to the country being dragged toward socialism or worse.  The establishment Republicans (Boehner, McConnell etc ) will do not have the will to stand up to the Democrats and stop them from imposing Obama Care &, gun control on us and preventing Eric Holder from interfering with the states who want simple voter ID laws.  Who could possibly object to showing a picture ID before voting?  Only those who intend to stuff the ballot box.

The size and complexity of the income tax code is simply a tool to favor the people and businesses who can afford a legal department and punish those of us who want to do our own taxes. I support the FAIR TAX or Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan.  If 10% is enough for God it should be enough for our government.  It it is not enough then the government should live within that amount and stop all non-essential actions which mainly serve to complicate our lives and make it difficult for small businesses to thrive.

 If you are interested here are some great books:

by Mark R. Levin
Men in Black - How the Supreme Court is Destroying America
Liberty and Tyranny - Conservative Manifesto
Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America
The Liberty Ammendments - Restoring the American Republic

Bio of Mark Levin [Wikipedia]
An American lawyer, author, conservative commentator, and the host of American
syndicated radio show The Mark Levin Show. Levin worked in the administration
of President Ronald Reagan and was a chief of staff for Attorney General Edwin
Meese. He is president of the Landmark Legal Foundation, has authored five books
and contributes commentary to various media outlets such as National Review Online.

Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War

by Nicholas Lemann [Available at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Redemption-The-Last-Battle-Civil/dp/0374530696]

This book tells the real story of the reconstruction and why every black person was a Republican. Also how they voted Democrat because they would be killed if they voted for a Republican.

Central Iowa  [under construction]
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~iamarsh2/

Opening comments

Margot & Jerry Hale

This is the last day of February 2010 and we begin the BLOG with a weather report from Florida.

In Deltona today it is bright, sunny and chilly for this time of year. The temp is about 69.5 on our old thermometer. Yesterday was the coldest Feb 27th in history and we've got more cold weather on the way.

Bike Week in Daytona Beach is opening, some have been here for a week already. Not a very pleasant experience, riding a motorcycle in this chilly weather. At the Daytona 500 a couple of weeks ago people were abandoning their camping sites and looking for hotels. Rooms were scarce and going for around $200 / night!

More later . . .