ebooks anyone?

[Gary M. Mugford]

I had occasion to have an appraiser in to look at my media library for will purposes. There are a LOT of magazines and A LOT (what would be the magnum vs jeroboam version of A LOT vs A LOT A LOT) of comics. The numbers, which actually has stopped growing, came to 7782 magazines and 81760 comic books. Then there were the books. Turns out I've managed to accumulate 24989 of them. The interesting fact is that in my family, it's only the second biggest collection of media. My youngest brother and his partner have a home that make my little library of stuff look pale in the comparison. But I've got them beat in electronic documents. So I win.

Have I read everything in that immense cavern of dead trees? No. But I've managed to get through a good chunk of it. Certainly, all the magazines except for my extensive collection of pre-World War I National Geographics. Those I bought on speculation ... and found they were worth a little LESS than what I had paid for them. Missing maps. Harrumph!! Oh well. The comics have not been individually inspected one by one, but I've read reading copies of almost all of them. I still think the world has overlooked the role comic books played in developing young readers. Monthly picture books. Instead, they were, and still are, looked upon with some disdain. My mind boggles at the small minds of such people ... probably the parents/children of trolls. And I didn't type that with a smile. I have been involved in the comic book store business for decades and you STILL hear that dismissive tone in parents' voices every now and then. They've been dragged TO the store by their coercive child or children and they think their social status and IQ will drop by the minute spent inside the store. It's how we make the Marching Moron Society a reality.

Calibre has as many uses as users. We all use it the way we want to. Are there piratically-inclined book converters out there? Absolutely. I'd be an idiot to pretend that's not going on. Are there document compilers who are using Calibre in research of good and great projects, storing, searching and analyzing great gobs of data? Yep! I'm helping college professors organize student papers through Calibre. And I've been digitizing my various writings for a while now, since I now have a place to put them. It reduces the piles of stuff that we accumulate, thus forcing us into ever-increasing bigger houses for that stuff. Granted, all of us hoarders simply off-put containing the stuff to places more properly outfitted for the job (including bank vaults for the REALLY great comics [G}). I have no problem with anybody having more than they can read. What percentage they HAVE read into that pile is to their credit. What they CAN SHARE is an even larger earned credit. I can actually 'compete' in that 30K league, play "Can you top this?" But, it's not a case of HOW MANY, it's a case of how it's shaped the owner.

Sharing and giving's good at the time of the year. Indeed, it feels great all year long. I hope passing 'it' along has helped someone. Any one. Even a troll. GM

[pj]

Library, not reading list. There are many, many authors that I'll sample, but not read their entire works. There are many more authors that found their way into these collections that make up my library that I'll probably never read.

As to the sacking of the Library of Alexandria, well, somebody had to do it!

Placed end-to-end, based on the hardback I pulled from my bookcase (yes, I still also have "real" books, including a personal favorite: a signed edition of Nancy Kress' "Beggars in Spain") such as James P. Hogan's "Kicking the Sacred Cow" measures 9 1/2 " x 6 1/2 " (24 cm x 16.5 cm for the "enlightened" world beyond the US), so my 42K (I did say 30K PLUS) books would create a line of books only 6.2 miles long, perhaps a distance encompassing roughly 100 pubs from your average location on the merry, merry Emerald Isle.

The convenience of taking the entire works of multiple authors with me in a 12 ounce package (plus charger) far outweighs any purist concerns of atoms vs. electrons. Jim's single book above weighs easily twice that, and, although less than 20 years old, the commercial paper is already deteriorating. Another 100 years or so and the text may be unreadable. My Nook and a power supply (hand-cranked generator if necessary) can last almost forever or 200,000 write cycles of the SRAM, whichever comes first.

As for the content, my reading is generally for pleasure, mainly SF, with the occasional mainstream fiction series, science essay, technical book or manual thrown in. I know the direction of my life was honed over the years with my love of the possible and impossible that I read from a very early age (Ben Bova's "Giants of the Animal Kingdom" was one of my pre-school readers), but left all the "serious stuff" behind when I finished the required readings in college. Also, like Gary, I find ebook manuals much easier to use than paper versions. I don't find any pleasure in stacking and balancing a paper manual like the 4 pound MS Programming Visual Basic 6.0 that hasn't left the shelf in "a while" on an already over-crowded desk.

And my library is nothing compared to what the DW has via her Kindle through her Amazon Prime account: "Choose from over 600,000 titles, including all 7 Harry Potter books and more than 100 current and former best sellers, to read on your Kindle." So if my little collection of 40K+ books boggles your sensibilities, then please don't contemplate the multiverse of a quarter million romance novels, hundred thousand novels, and thousands more YA books than you could possibly imagine, all just waiting to do battle with the verses of Plutarch in your head!

------------------------
PJ (fully expecting to live longer than the Nook, Obamacare be damned) in (sunny but cool) FL

[nikos]

that reminds me of a friend of my brother's who has a whole room full of hard disks full of downloaded movies. The guy is paying for TWO internet connections simultaneously so he can download more. Does he ever have time to watch any of these movies? Hardly. It is some kind of squirrel disorder

[theo_neandonly]

When you have a good system of organization, and take a little time every day or every few days to sort recent acquisitions into it, nothing else is really needed.

I like simple tools. Henry Thoreau had it right when he said, "Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify! Simplify!" That being said, I am naturally a very detail-oriented person. But I don't like having my life frittered away, so I fight the tendency with simplicity and organization. I save my obssession with details for cases where it's necessary, or useful, or can produce awesome results.

(Which is why I'll never get around to using 95% of xplorer²'s features, much as I dearly love the program.)

I've been using the same folder structure to organize my files for many years, and as a result, I can lay my hands on any file in seconds. I never have to wonder where I put them, and I never have to memorize any file's location. I know where it will be, because I designated a place for everything long ago. I recommend the practice to everyone. Who doesn't hate hunting for things? Anybody? Show of hands? Especially when they find themselves in a situation where time is tight?

The root directory contains these broad categories:

• DOWNLOADS
• -
• BACKUP
• -
• TEXT
• GRAPHICS
• AUDIO
• VIDEO
• -
• <PERSONAL FOLDER>

"DOWNLOADS" is the catch-all receiving dock for new files. All programs are given this as the download directory, and if I need to quickly copy something locally it gets dumped here. As often as I can, I go through it and move all the new files into their permanent locations. Extremely simple system, and it works.

"BACKUP" is self-explanatory, except that, since the advent (or should I say repopularizing?) of "portable" apps, they also go here, and run from there. If I ever need to put a program on a flash drive so it's literally portable, I know I'll be copying the same version I use every day, with all my settings intact. BACKUP's sub-folders look like this:

• BACKUP
  • APPS
    • INSTALLERS
    • PORTABLE
  • SYSTEM
    • COMPONENTS (Codec packs, runtimes, etc.. -- things that integrate into the system)
    • DRIVERS (Separate folder for each computer and peripheral device that I own)
    • FONTS
    • OPERATING SYSTEMS (installer .iso's)
    • START MENU (copy of all folders and shortcuts)
    • TWEAKS
    • UTILITIES (usb format tools, norton ghost .iso, etc.)

Only makes sense, right? Then there are the folders for all the "media", in the four basic types:

• TEXT
• GRAPHICS
• AUDIO
• VIDEO

The subfolders of these ennumerate the subject matter of the files, so it varies from folder to folder and according to what I download/copy. Naturally, some folders with the same name get put into more than one of these four. For example, one of my favorite musical artists is Apollo Poetry, so there's an "APOLLO POETRY" folder in all four, because I have .mp3s of his music, pictures of him, his lyrics in an .rtf file, and most of his music videos. The one exception is the Text folder, it has two sub-folders, FICTION and NON-FICTION. After that it's folder-by-subject.

This has worked for me for YEARS. Name a file on my hard drive, and I'll tell you right where it is. Pick any of the 16,000 pictures I've collected in the last 3 years, I'll have it posted to your Wall before you finish your next sentence. You see? Simple tools, so that the human mind is freed for better purposes than slogging through a mess.


(I had to blur out one of the folder names so poor Nikos wouldn't have an aneurism, LOL! *wink* *wink*)



Anyone else have a SYSTEM? I'm ever so curious...

[Gary M. Mugford]

Whatever works for you works for you. Some of the rest of us are unfortunately lesser-abled mentally or have a few more things of a few more types of a few more years in the collecting. I prefer simple tools like Calibre and multiple multi-terabyte drives. But that's just me. Hey, they went to the moon thanks to two off-setting bugs that eliminated each other from crashing the rocket.

GM (and a farthing from you Milord. I think I was .... THIS POSTING INTERRUPTED BY THE EMERGENCY MEDICAL BROADCASTING SYSTEM.... the sound of flatlining)

[theo_neandonly]

That is an impressive collection of which you speak, Mugford. 42,000? That's not just impressive, it's... intimidating. At least you've read the majority and aren't just letting all that verbal goodness go to waste.

"Hey, they went to the moon thanks to two off-setting bugs that eliminated each other from crashing the rocket." Ha! I am utterly unsurprised. And thanks for giving me my new trivia question for the day!

[nikos]

are you using some windows 98 skin for your win7?

[Gary M. Mugford]

Nikos,

Count me amongst those that are, in fact, still using XP themes. My own preference is for solid lime green caption bars for the active window and solid red bars for inactive windows against a field of grass green ... you know the colour nature thinks is the easiest on the eyes. And, since I have no baby pictures I MUST look at whenever possible to bring joy and mirth to the task of working ... well, technically the task and joy of STOPPING working ... I use a solid background. Faster by a billionth of a second in response time, which adds up over the years to ... a fraction of a second. But a fraction gained nonetheless.

I have NEVER understood Windows' choices of blue and white for colours of caption bars. Particularly ugly versions of both. And the see through stuff is beyond useless really. Going for subtlety for reasons that confound me. Useless in the main, eye-straining at best with the delicate differences between active and inactive windows. There was some fumbling around with Windows Blinds and Skin Factory to try and get what I wanted EXACTLY with Win 7. But I tired of the endless fiddling without getting my obvious stop 'n go colours of red and green (never asked, but are those colours globally agreed to at stop lights?). I did get better scroll bars, but ...

Now, if, as MOST users do, you run everything full-screen, then caption bars don't require ANY specialized treatment. But, it's called WINDOWS. Which means I have xplorer2 up, and Pale Moon for web-browsing and a portable Google Chrome for GMail and space left over for a corner here and there of whatever else up and running that should be up and running. Like Help files [G]. Along with the indispensable WizMouse to scroll NON-active windows when hovering over them, It's possible to scroll with the mouse and then type into the active window. Great for reading Help files on coding and then type in the codelet you are looking for at the moment. Highly recommended for we WINDOWS users. www. antibody-software.com.

My main drive has a folder called SHEZ on it where I throw everything until I can sort it out. SHEZ was the name of the program I used in the mid 70s to download software from the Internet. I am an old fuddy duddy who resists change. And green and red remain the best of choices, just like they have since Windows 2.1.

So, I'm going to try and insert the now-required screen shot. Let's see if I can get this right (If I fail, just imagine a sea of green and, well, how different will be from the actual article?): the image can be found at https://www.flickr.com/photos/123333225@N06/16004852081. Still trying to get around the "It was not possible to determine the dimensions of the [PNG} image" message ... nope, still hates it. If you're super curious, you know to go to the above.

GM

[Gary M. Mugford]

The screen pic shows DARK GREEN title caption bars rather than lime green, a preference of my hardware guy. And I didn't even notice he'd swapped themes with me. And, to be honest, I do go BACK to the default aero Win7 themes when programming ... because that's what I'm programming against most of the time. So PERSONALIZATION gets a good workout!

All of this is based on the colour schemes I have been using since Win 95. I see no reason not to do things right. Think of the MS Colour Schemes as just a different department's answer to tossing away the IBM Scelectric keyboard layout. Bloody idiots is RIGHT.

Every blind squirrel, etc.

[Kilmatead]

Holy Toolbar-Overkill, Batman! What kind of mental illness inspired that? I think you just became the poster-boy for this thing. Madness! I need an aspirin. Or smelling salts. Or resuscitation. Barkeep! Whisky, neat! Feck the glass, give us the bottle!

Jesus, my hands are shaking. Like the kid just came home with a tattoo of Sgt. Pepper's album cover on his forehead. My eyes are scarred for life.

[pj]

All of this is based on the colour schemes I have been using since Win 95. I see no reason not to do things right. Think of the MS Colour Schemes as just a different department's answer to tossing away the IBM Scelectric keyboard layout. Bloody idiots is RIGHT.

Ah, the Selectric Keyboard, may that bit of engineering perfection RIP

The tactile feedback of the buckling spring technology made each key so easy to press and know without looking when it was "pressed".

As to layout, my true favorite was the 10-function key layout of the original IBM PC/XT keyboard. The easy sideways motion to get to the 10 F-keys (40 when you include the alt, ctrl and shift combinations) made practical the use of the function keys in programs, similar to the 12 key pattern on the right side on the IBM 327X terminals, and so much more user-friendly than the top-of-the-keyboard layout of 12 f-keys that came out with the evil IBM AT .

I could create Kilmatead-like discourses on the ergonomic correctness of that keyboard, and how a text editor like Personal Editor could be used with remarkable efficiency using the F-keys and alt keys. Incidentally, PE by Jim Wyllie was sold via the very first APP STORE, the IBM Personally Developed Software Series, along with several other IBM employee personally developed software programs.

---------------------------
PJ (strolling down nostalgia lane) in FL

[Gary M. Mugford]

PJ,

I grew up typing on an Olivetti antique typewriter (a roughly 100 wpm rate) before discovering the Scelectric the year before I gave up journalism (and for awhile, being a PR guy--OH the shame) for computer consulting and programming. Up until then I had had a low serial number Apple ]{. We won't talk about that keyboard because it wasn't elegant and I didn't write much, before OR after I got the mod to allow for upper AND lower case characters. But once I moved into the IBM-dominated PC world, ergo the name, PC, I went through the various levels of Dante's Inferno when it came to keyboards.

AFTER making the incredibly bizarre decision to 're-invent' the keyboard layout the company OWNED through their electric typewriters, the company got it very close to correct with the 84-key AT keyboard. You are absolutely right that it was the best-laid out keyboard IBM ever produced. And some weinie trying to prove he was a needed employee did a make-work hatchet job to add the two extra function keys. One of my "win the lottery" dreams is to find some hacker that would give me a low-profile, AT layout with the F11 and F12 keys just above F1 and F2 on the left, with another set of those keys to the right of the number pad, each with tactile click. The keyboard would curve up at the top and would have indicators and even a low brightness lcd that would do things like track keystrokes and even have a resetable 'odometer' that would let me track words (multiple letters separated by a space). The curve would have extra touch keys that would have captions and functions and be programmable. The whole keyboard would be backlit, working with a f.lux like capability to match brightness with light conditions. I've always preferred typing in the dark. All of this in a lightweight body with rubberized feet. What would it cost me? A hundred grand? A half-million? For a lifetime (shortened thought that it may be) of typing bliss?

Of course, by then, I could have solid voice dictation and minions to do the typing. Sigh. It's the stuff of dreams....

[pj]

The keyboard production line at IBM in Lexington, KY (THE typewriter capital of the world in it's Selectric heyday!) was quite impressive. It produced the springs directly from wire stock with the "buckling coefficient" sampled on a regular basis to insure the springs met requirements. As you could probably tell, the lettering on the keys was equally high quality production, with the characters actually infused into the keys instead of printed on. Designing the keyboard was one thing, but designing the production line to produce it cheaply was the multi-million dollar question!

The Selectric and derivative designs were all done in Lexington, but the PC designs, including the keyboards (I mean, why ask the people who perfected keyboards to help ) were designed in Boca Raton, where Phil Estridge' s PC team was based. And Boca thought a whole lot of themselves after everyone realized how successful the PC had become. Thus was born the PS/2 line and we all know where that went....

Lexington also had the high volume (shudder) cadmium-coated typeball production line, at least until people realized how dangerous cadmium and those other RoHS-prohibited materials were, so the line was outsourced to Mexico and everyone forgot about the health risks .

My personal favorite was our variable reluctance stepper motor manufacturing line . It was a fully automated, progressive manufacturing operation from steel sheets and wire to completed motors . Of course I was prejudiced as I was working on the servo technology projects to use these motors in the Quietwriter and Wheelwriter along with DC servo motors and, later, off-the-shelf PM steppers. Ah, back in the day when I was a real engineer and working on hard stuff, not like now just working on rocket engine controllers. You know, it really ain't rocket science , just a LOT of paperwork....

BUT (desperately trying to make this less OT ) think of how great it would have been to have had those shelves of INTEL, TI, SIGNETICS and MOTOROLA databooks in one ebook tablet with searchable text and graphic displays!

[dunno]

Bought a Kobo Glo, I really like its weightlessness and the backlit screen, fantastic invention that, great for night reading.
I succeeded in grabbing hundreds of eBooks out of thin air which I then sideloaded via Calibre, but be warned, if OCD strikes you'll spend hours correcting the shyte formatting of those "free" ebooks.

I use Sigil to edit text/layout, and Calibre to convert and reformat text in ebooks.

[nikos]

how's the batterly life? You can't beat kindle on that respect