"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
As part of my own lil Jólabókaflóðið (“Christmas book flood”), I started an ebook that was supposedly 800+ pp in length. Opened it. Every line is double-spaced. Double that between paragraphs. Does NOT improve the reading experience, just fakes up a 400pp book into a supposed 800+pp. *smh* That doesn’t even count the times I caught the writer padding the word count in the first few pages. Setting aside. Not even written all that well.
Moving on. . .
Interfaces on computing devices have been simplified to the point that most folks expect things to just work–almost magically. But it ain’t necessarily so, of course. Case in point: my Kindles (both the original Fire and the Fire HD) seem, most of the time, to just work. But. Not always.
Case in point (of more than a few): today, my Fire HD was handiest when I needed to take a picture of a couple of mugs (ordered trough Amazon, of course) out of a dozen that came broken. Pics were fine–perfect for my need sending documentation to the seller. But the pics just would not upload to my cloud drive, no matter how many times the device said it was uploading them.
*gak*
So. . . connected the device to a laptop via USB. *sigh* Finally located the pics and offloaded copies to the lappy. THEN the device decided to actually upload ’em to my cloud drive.
OK, not pushbutton simple.
Book I bought listed by Amazon as delivered to the Fire HD. Yeh, could see it, but not open it. Rebooted the device. Nope. Back to Amazon to re-deliver it. Nope. Rebooted. Now it loads.
Simplified isn’t always simple.
Well, not all that many, but. . .
I keep forgetting to return library books. Now that a majority of the books I read are eBooks, it’s just a pain to have to get in the car, schlep six miles and mosey on back.
Reading too many different books at the same time. No, not simultaneously. I’m not that fantastic. *heh* But a several open and “in process” on one computer (in browser, in Kindle app), another on my Kindle Fire and maybe another one or two on one or more other computers on top of a hardcopy book or two sometimes becomes a bit cumbersome. *meh* It’s a problem I can live with.
Buying too many books. Yeh, yeh, that bundle of seven eArcs is tempting. OK, bought. Free books? I’m in. What? Amazon’s running a deal with a few hundred eBooks at “up to 85% off”? Sign me up for the marathon shopping spree.
It’s too easy to buy more books. Too easy. What? I’m complaining? *heh*
I’ve made no secret of the fact that my first gen Kindle Fire is just fine and dandy for the uses I have for it. One thing that did stand out, though, as a usability PITA from the beginning was the onscreen keyboard. For typing, not much fun. So, one of the first things I did was to locate some conductive foam in my stash of junk, urm, parts and equipment and make some styli. They worked and were a help, making “typing” on the Fire almost Good Enough, and easily OK for typing brief notes in books.
But actually buying a stylus? Fuggedaboutit. All of ’em I found on the web were too much money, once I’d made some from castoff junk, urm, parts and equipment for essentially nothing.
Page forward to today when I was standing at the checkout at our local “fell off the back of a truck” store and saw mini-styli (with handy lil 2.5mm/3.5mm plugin tethers) for a buck apiece. Since my home made styli have long since become well-worn, I picked up a couple. They work quite well, but “mini-styli” means using something about the size of a pencil nub, so. . .
At the same “fell off the back of a truck” I buy a particular ball point pen that has a Parker-compatible refill. A buck apiece. Cheap and useful, since I have more than a few Parker (and Parker compatible) ballpoint pens. While the barrels of these cheapies are fairly nice bamboo tubes, I junk the barrels and keep the refills handy. (Where “junk the barrels” means “put ’em in my stash of someday useful stuff” *heh*).
Do you see a convergence coming up here? Right. I just mated one of the mini-styli to one of those spare bamboo tubes (with a handy pocket clip already installed!) and have a pen-sized stylus that works a charm and even clips nicely to the leather case my Fire regularly occupies.
The smaller surface contact area of a stylus really makes a difference when using the onscreen keyboard, and the more normal pen size of the bamboo barreled (with the conductive part protruding for index finger contact) stylus is just right.
Rabbit trail: it’s also a wee tad easier using TeamViewer on the Fire with a stylus, well, for most things. Pinch-n-zoom isn’t all that improved. *heh* I do kinda enjoy accessing the Win8 Media Center compy with TeamViewer on my Fire. Comes in handy sometimes.
One and a quarter years later, actually.
Is it still the “Gee whiz!” tech toy it was when I got it? Yep. Do I use it in all the ways I had envisioned when I got it? Nope. For instance, I rarely use it to browse the web and almost never use it to check my email. So, how do I use it? In order of frequency:
Between #1 and #s 2 and 3 above, big gap. I read 7-10 books/week (7 has long been my base I have almost never fallen below since I first began reading), and since the advent of ebooks (on either computers or specialized devices), my reading has tilted toward that medium, simply because of space and convenience–there are no decent bookstores closer than a couple of counties away. Now, my reading is generally mostly ebooks, some hardcopy from county library and from our own library (fairly large private collection– some I’ve not read yet, some worth re-reading for various reasons)–some hardcopy from used bookstores, and a few (perhaps 10-12) hardcopy books a year bought at retail. So, the Kindle Fire has been a BIG help in saving space and feeding my “need to read”.
Given the brilliant sound (when using a decent pair of earbuds) and really, really nice display–even on this first gen device–I find watching HD videos on the Fire to be a delight, and listening to mp3s (again, when using a decent pair of earbuds) yields sound that’s as good as it gets with mp3s (mp3s are necessarily lossy, but with my tinnitus *sigh* it’s less noticeable than one might think).
I’ve not been all that surprised that I’ve not found more apps I’ll really use. As far as calendaring and scheduling apps–something many have found useful on portable devices–nah. I’m still more of a pen and paper kinda guy there. I thought one of the Bible reading apps might be appealing, but I really do prefer hardcopy there. An AV, a file management app and the bubble level app really do pretty much define my app use. *shrugs* It gets many hours of use every week anyway.
Yeh, I “rooted” it once to play with it but didn’t even try to make it permanent, so Amazon overwrote with an update, which was fine with me, as. . . see above usage breakdown.