Lightly Organized Chaos

I just finished American Gods (for 1 Book, 1 Twitter #1b1t). Pretty good, better than my previous read; which was The Dream of Perpetual Motion. That book started out well enough, but I think the author either didn’t have a satisfactory ending planned, or needed serious editorial input. It followed the typical not ready feel of good beginning, slow middle, flip and disappointing ending. Pretty much it blew off any investment the reader had in the characters.

In the queue at the moment, The City and the City (in progress), Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, and the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

You know those Internet sweepstakes that just about every website seems to host. The ones that end up getting you spam every couple of days, and that no one seems to win. I won one of them.

OK, it was the Esquire Augmented Reality give-away, and I only won one of the fifty webcams (Blue Microphones Eyeball 2.0), but it was a nice surprise to receive it in the mail. They were suppose to notify me back in January, but I never heard a word; it just arrived.

As far as getting spam, that particular contest didn’t increase my incidence of spam. Probably because at the time I was actually a subscriber to the print edition of Esquire. I do wonder if it helped my chances though…

The best thing about the iPad is that it removes the clutter from reading. Traditionally, there’s a stack of books next to my bed that I’m currently “reading”, which is to say that I’ve started them, and not finished any. With the iPad (and the iPhone before it), I have that stack of books in a convenient digital device. I’ve been using the Kindle app mostly, since it manages to keep my Mac, iPhone, and iPad synced with my current position in each book, so that I can use whichever is most convenient at the moment. Most importantly, you don’t need to actually own a Kindle.

But recently I’ve been somewhat ticked off at Amazon. I purchased a couple of eBooks from them 4 years ago, and they’ve since closed down that particular store and associated format. I have my original (encrypted) PDF files, but they’re now worthless since Adobe has shutdown the associated authentication servers. The result is a bunch of bits I “own”, but cannot access. Amazon customer service is no help and based on comments in their own forums, I don’t think Adobe would be either.

So this week I’ve taken to converting all my Kindle books (of which there are many). It works out to be a fairly easy process once you gather all the software. I’m using iPhone Backup Extractor to retrieve the eBook files, a Python script to “modify” the files, Calibre to handle format conversion to the open ePub format. On the devices iBooks and Stanza read the results in pretty close to the same quality as the Kindle apps (sans location syncing). All but one of my eBooks was painless, and that other book was handled by a different tool that I don’t expect to need very often. The nice thing about this setup is that the Python script can be configured as a plugin to Calibre, and once you get the Kindle PID for each device (for instance, using kindlepid.py ) that part becomes seamless. If I can figure out the PID for my Kindle for Mac, I’d be able to eliminate the backup extraction, and could do everything from inside of Calibre.

As a side effect of all of this, I can convert and read any PDF I have handy on the iPad/iPhone as well. More importantly, I’ve future-proofed my eBook purchases against another boneheaded move from Amazon. Now I just need to figure out how to access those older files…

Here’s great article about the ideological path from open computing to computing appliance and the two Steve’s of Apple that were at the vanguard of pushing both ends of that spectrum:

Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, and the long road to the iPad. – By Tim Wu – Slate Magazine.

I have long contended that computers have the same trajectory as automobiles. Initially the domain of cutting-edge enthusiasts, moving through eras of: mass-production (Model-T v. IBM PC), large-differentiation (trucks/cars v. laptops/desktops), into customization (hot-rods v. case-mods). Eventually, the car market evolved into what we have today, a highly commoditized market were owners are are unlikely to tinker with the vehicle and depend on specialists to maintain and repair their car. Rather than increase the performance of their car through tuning, adjustment, or upgrades, consumers choose to just purchase new cars. The same is probably now true of computer users as well. It has been common industry knowledge that a segment of the population only upgrades operating system by purchasing a new computer.

As a thoughtful and long-time computer user, I applaud the design and functionality that modern Apple products represent. As a long time computer enthusiast, I bemoan the increasing commoditization of computing. As a computer science researcher and educator, I worry over the fact that our students seem to be increasingly the former rather than the latter.