The Reading Void

One thing I don't like about reading a good novel is that once you've finished reading it, it's so hard to find the next one to read. I become so absorbed with the world the author has created in my imagination, that it is so difficult to part with it. I want more. But there is no more. I've read [almost] every book from the author, and there is simply no more. It takes effort to open a new book; to forget the familiar worlds and start anew. Such is the effect after I've read The Evolutionary Void, the third and last book of the Void Trilogy. Too many praise have already been said about the book that I feel inept. As such I have nothing more to add. Don't believe me? Try reading the reader comments. It is simply a grand space opera, a masterpiece of world-building and story-telling in the traditional Hamilton style.

The worse part is I knew this was coming. Every time I read a Peter F. Hamilton novel, I am met with this frustration at the end. It is a good frustration, but a frustration nonetheless. I would scour the bookstores for the next best thing, and nothing will satisfy. Sad and quite unfair for the next book I read, I assure you.

I need another cake, and I want it to be like the one I just finished. Please?

I wanted to start the Heechee Saga, but I can't find my copy of Gateway. (Damn, where did I put it!) I wanted to try Neal Asher's Polity novels or Iain Bank's Culture series, but I don't have any of the books yet. For now, I return to a work of another distinguished (but unfortunately not as consistently good) scifi writer - Dan Simmons, with his collection of short stories, Worlds Enough and Time.

Kudos to Mr. Hamilton for another well-written novel! I'm sure it will be a bestseller and a classic. I look forward to his next works. I'm hoping there will be a short story collection about the Commonwealth, much like The Confederation Handbook and A Second Chance at Eden for the Night's Dawn trilogy.

^_^)

Just call me Kindle

One week has passed since my Kindle arrived, so I think it's time I say something about it.

First of all, I love it. It's very light, and easy to read with - basically, it lives up to the hype! I've bought only one(1) book so far - The Evolutionary Void. And to limit it to one book really took a lot of self-control. I also loaded it up with my Apple tutorials and other PDFs, and I should say it provides a better reading experience than the iPod (although I had to rotate it to read PDFs with a proper font size).

However, this post is not meant to highlight how good an e-reader the Kindle is. Instead, I want to say something about what name to call it. I've been using the pronoun "it" to refer to my Kindle. In the tradition of ship-naming (and yeah, yeah, male ego), I would normally give my devices female names. In my case, female anime names. After all, my iPod is lovingly named Chibi Mina Tepes - small but tenacious and mature. (Now that I think about it, I probably should have named her Loli Mina Tepes :P) It's a sign of affection, mind you. It's kind of hard to show my affection if I named my iPod Sgt. Slaughter, right? Besides, I would rather people hear me say "it's so much fun to read with chibi Mina," instead of "it's so much fun to read with Sgt. Slaughter." Perish the thought. And, no, I am not inspired to name it after an author.

I've been mulling what name to give to my Kindle, but so far no good name comes to mind. I'd call it Nagato Yuki (who is after all a book lover herself), but it just feels too long and... ill-fitting. In any case, the search for a good name is still ongoing! ^_^

Aside from a name, it's been difficult to find a dress for her. Unlike the iPod, the Kindle is not yet mainstream, and practically nobody (aside from Amazon.com) sells decent accessories that will protect her. I really wished I ordered the Kindle leather cover along with her. Sigh. (-.-') So far, I'm making do with plastic book covers and a pouch.

What? You want to know what features the Kindle has? As I said, this is not what the post is meant to do! :P But, okay, just to satisfy that curiousity, here is a list of features I really liked about her:

• e-Ink display (crisp and paper-like with no backlights - exactly how books should be!)
• 0, 90, 180, and 270-degree orientation;
• Free 3G access (via Amazon WhisperNet) - sooo convenient for buying books;
• Well-positioned page keys at the side (just right where my thumb would be);
• Tactile-feedback keys; meaning: I can feel myself pressing her buttons (no pun intended) - after all, they are physical keys, not plain-vanilla touch interface - and yes, call me old-school, but I prefer them over touch (although swipe would be nice);
• Multiple bookmarks;
• PDF support;
• Loooooong battery life (beat that iPod!);
• Real-time dictionary (very, very handy);
• Screensaver of classical authors and images (see the pic? That is Mark Twain);

She also has an "experimental" web browser and MP3 player, but I haven't used them. ^_^

Gadgets Galore

Ok, I admit I've been a shopaholic lately. What you see here is my new iMac! I bought it two weeks ago, and has been enjoying it ever since. I've never been an Apple fanboy. In fact, I've never really used one! This will be my first time. But after this, I'm becoming a big fan of that particular walled garden now. ^_^)/

Did I mention I bought an 8GB iPod along with it? :P And the nice thing about it is that, in total, both just cost me less than 115,000 JPY! But hey, it's for development use. Yeah, that's right... development use. (^^;


And today. Today, this very unassuming package arrived:

 And guess what's inside! o_o

An Amazon Kindle.

It arrived earlier than expected. I thought I'd get it sometime October - one day, my Amazon account indicated that they will send me an email once a shipping date has been fixed; the next day, it indicated that it has been shipped already, and I am to expect it to arrive a week later! Now that was a surprise. A pleasant surprise. b(^_^)d










 Nice packaging inside, despite the messy outer box.








The USB cable even comes with a power adapter - something I wished the iPod came with.

So what did I get myself into? Tons of distractions! Lolz! Between the games in my iPod and the books in my Kindle, I think I'm going to have to willfully force myself to go to work. :D Well, I'm hoping that means I can catch up on my iPhone programming (self)studies, which was my original intention... yeah, I did intend that.



Time to prove that I can keep my word... especially to myself. ;P