|
|
Woe be unto ye
On Jan 9, 5:47*pm, Mark Allread none@none wrote:
Some day, I'll have to retire the old Palm M515 I've been using as a "book" in favor of the real thing. It'd be nice to be able to see more than one paragraph at a time. Still, for now it seems that all I read are college textbooks. I'll wait a few months until I can once again read for pleasure rather than the memorization of facts and factoids. Not to belittle memorization of facts and factoids (as noble a pursuit as most humans seem incapable of imagining.....let alone pursuing or accomplishing), but reading for pleasure (which, it should be remembered, by no means precludes edification) is, at one and the same time, among both the most selfish and most selfless of all the activities that one can engage in. But, as is often the case, Mr. Clemens said it better.....and more succinctly: "The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them." Food (and good, nutritious food at that) for thought. Wolfgang |
Woe be unto ye
On Jan 9, 9:17*pm, Giles wrote:
The trouble with the iPad (as well as the applications mentioned by Steve W.) is that it isn't a book. *Neither is the Kindle, of course, but it looks, feels, and behaves (more or less) like a book. *[snip] *And I don't mind any of that.....but I like BOOKS......and if I'm going to use an electronic ersatz book, I want one that looks and feels and behaves much like A BOOK!.....or, better yet, a library which is, after all, simply a book to the nth power. My cheesehead friend, I too prefer books. However the Ipad Kindle app gives you the book behaviors you so mention, but it also shows the illustrations. Neither here nor there, |
Woe be unto ye
Giles wrote:
On Jan 9, 5:47 pm, Mark Allread none@none wrote: Some day, I'll have to retire the old Palm M515 I've been using as a "book" in favor of the real thing. It'd be nice to be able to see more than one paragraph at a time. Still, for now it seems that all I read are college textbooks. I'll wait a few months until I can once again read for pleasure rather than the memorization of facts and factoids. Not to belittle memorization of facts and factoids (as noble a pursuit as most humans seem incapable of imagining.....let alone pursuing or accomplishing), but reading for pleasure (which, it should be remembered, by no means precludes edification) is, at one and the same time, among both the most selfish and most selfless of all the activities that one can engage in. But, as is often the case, Mr. Clemens said it better.....and more succinctly: "The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them." Food (and good, nutritious food at that) for thought. Wolfgang I'll read just about anything. From classic stuff to tech manuals. Started that well before I started school. Had an extended stay in a hospital when I was about 4 and got so bored I started reading anything I could get. I had nurses bringing me in books from home and the local library as well as the ones my parents would bring down. Fast forward a few years to a speed reading course in HS. The teacher there started out with a speed and comprehension study to see where we were starting at. The only problem was that I was way off the top end of the chart. Without skipping words or paragraphs the way she wanted us to do. I ended up taking the final the second day of class. During the same time frame I was also a Literacy volunteer at the local neighborhood center. -- Steve W. |
Woe be unto ye
On Jan 9, 10:22*pm, Wayne Knight wrote:
My cheesehead friend, I too prefer books. I've seen some of your books. I carried one around for a few days, afraid to touch it and kept awake nights for fear that bandits might be coming for it at any moment. :) However the Ipad Kindle app gives you the book behaviors you so mention, but it also shows the illustrations. Neither here nor there, Neither here nor there is one of the two important things to bear in mind. The Kindle was a gift, a thing I was delighted to receive and am happy to have, but not something I desired or would have gone out of my way to purchase. The second (somewhat less important) thing is that I'd like it better if it behaved more like a real book.....with certain qualifications. Some of the features, like bookmarking, searching across multiple volumes, and other data retrieval and manipulation functions are the cat's ass.....things that would be welcome in REAL books, were they possible. But beyond that, the point of the thing, as far as I am concerned, is that it be a BOOK.....not a computer, one of whose functions is something booklike. The iPad, one of which I have sitting here as I type, is a fully functioning computer, and appears (based on my very limited experience with it) to be a very good one, but I already have a laptop and a phone with more funtions than I'll be able to learn about and use to their fullest effect before it wears out or is superceded by something with even more useless (to me) bells and whistles. The iPad also has a backlit screen. I assume that the Kindle application on the iPad (I don't see it here) cannot get around that; the Kindle's very paper and ink like screen is presumably a different technology. And that screen is, for me, the single most important esthetic feature of the device.....not to mention the matter of eyestrain that Russell brought up. So, again, I'm thrilled with the Kindle.....but there is room for improvement. Meanwhile, you should be making plans to get your slenderized ass up here in the spring. Many fish in many excellent streams (the nearest of which is about a four minute drive away), and deluxe free accommodations* in a beautiful sylvan setting. Ask Frank. Wolfgang *including two heart-healthy meals a day at no extra cost. |
Woe be unto ye
On Jan 9, 10:53*pm, "Steve W." wrote:
Giles wrote: ...as is often the case, Mr. Clemens said it better.....and more succinctly: "The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them." Food (and good, nutritious food at that) for thought. Wolfgang I'll read just about anything. From classic stuff to tech manuals. I'll read tech manuals......under either of two sets of conditions. One, I absolutely MUST have the information, and there is no other way to get it or, two, there is absolutely nothing else to do and abolutely no other reading material available. Fotunately, both sets of conditions are rare, and the latter increasingly so as I now have a virtually unlimited set of books available at all times.....no more sitting in the waiting room and suddenly discovering that there are only two pages left! There's other stuff that I won't willingly touch, but not so much that I don't feel justified in claiming rather broad tastes. I've only got a few pages of Burroughs' "A Princess of Mars" left. Classic trash.....but trash nevertheless. Luckily, Twain's dictum does not preclude ingestion of materials entirely devoid of nutritional content. :) Wolfgang |
Woe be unto ye
|
Woe be unto ye
Meanwhile, you should be making plans to get your slenderized ass up
here in the spring. *Many fish in many excellent streams (the nearest of which is about a four minute drive away), and deluxe free accommodations* in a beautiful sylvan setting. *Ask Frank. Wolfgang *including two heart-healthy meals a day at no extra cost. Bring a "suit of lights" and your favorite set of varas for access to the stream. Frank "Pick-a-Door... Any door" Reid |
Woe be unto ye
On Jan 10, 12:51*pm, Frank Reid © 2010 wrote:
Meanwhile, you should be making plans to get your slenderized ass up here in the spring. *Many fish in many excellent streams (the nearest of which is about a four minute drive away), and deluxe free accommodations* in a beautiful sylvan setting. *Ask Frank. Wolfgang *including two heart-healthy meals a day at no extra cost. Bring a "suit of lights" and your favorite set of varas for access to the stream. Frank "Pick-a-Door... Any door" Reid I guess the proper term is picas, though why you would fight a bull by throwing little guinea pigs at it, I do not know. Frank Reid |
Woe be unto ye
On Jan 10, 12:57*pm, Frank Reid © 2010 wrote:
On Jan 10, 12:57 pm, Frank Reid © 2010 wrote: On Jan 10, 12:51 pm, Frank Reid © 2010 wrote: Meanwhile, you should be making plans to get your slenderized ass up here in the spring. Many fish in many excellent streams (the nearest of which is about a four minute drive away), and deluxe free accommodations* in a beautiful sylvan setting. Ask Frank. Wolfgang *including two heart-healthy meals a day at no extra cost. Bring a "suit of lights" and your favorite set of varas for access to the stream. Frank "Pick-a-Door... Any door" Reid I guess the proper term is picas, though why you would fight a bull by throwing little guinea pigs at it, I do not know. Frank Reid In their native range they are plentiful and inexpensive.....like rats. Elsewhere, they breed.....um.....well, like ****in' rats (which, let's be frank here, they are). Bottom line.....cheap ammunition. A few hundred, fired in rapid succession would, at the very least, wreak havoc on bovine traction.....not to mention distraction on an scale impossible for ANYTHING to ignore. However, speaking frankly (oops, just spilled a gallon of wine on the keyboard, breaking an ankle and severing a relatively major artery in the process.....but, no matter) such measures should hardly be necessary for most ordinary mortals. Prevarication, dissembling, circumlocution, joshing, kidding, or outright lying should be sufficient. In short, don't be.....wait for it.....frank. Meanwhile, a day slated for reading from the new device that inspired this thread has turned into a nightmare of trying to sate the monster. I'd already made a trip to Project Gutenberg and downloaded a number of items that had never particularly excited my interest but seemed like the sort of thing that a literate boy SHOULD be familar with. Fair enough.....into the hopper they went. O.k., let's see what we've got. Hm.....roughly 3 gigabytes of capacity remaining. Allright, back to PG. Hm.....Shakespeare. Yeah! That ought to do the trick! Download. Roughly 3 gigabytes left. :( Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," Stowe's "Uncle tom's Cabin," and Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." Roughly 3 gigabytes left. Gibbon's "Decline and Fall....," Shelley's "Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark," and Kafka's "The Trial." Roughly 3 gigabytes left! Ack! Christie's "The Mysterious Affair at Styles," Swift's "A Modest Proposal," Twain's "Life on the Mississippi," and "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," Wodehouse's "My Man Jeeves," Cervantes' "Don Quixote," Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass," the KJV, Smith's "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations," Grose's "1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue," Kipling's the Jungle Book," Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil,".....HAH! Roughly 3 gig......AAAARRRGGGHH! So, I bought Twain's autobiography (the 2010 edition....volume 1, as it turns out) from Amazon ($9.95), the Complete Works of Twain (sans 2010 autobiography) 300+ works with active table of contents ($0.99), & the Complete Works of Kipling 100+ works with active table of contents ($0.99). That shou......roughly 3 g WTF!!?? :( help me! Wolfgang who will gladly accept any reasonable recommendations. |
Woe be unto ye
On 01/10/2011 07:42 PM, Giles wrote:
On Jan 10, 12:57 pm, Frank Reid © wrote: On Jan 10, 12:57 pm, Frank Reid © wrote: On Jan 10, 12:51 pm, Frank Reid © wrote: Meanwhile, you should be making plans to get your slenderized ass up here in the spring. Many fish in many excellent streams (the nearest of which is about a four minute drive away), and deluxe free accommodations* in a beautiful sylvan setting. Ask Frank. Wolfgang *including two heart-healthy meals a day at no extra cost. Bring a "suit of lights" and your favorite set of varas for access to the stream. Frank "Pick-a-Door... Any door" Reid I guess the proper term is picas, though why you would fight a bull by throwing little guinea pigs at it, I do not know. Frank Reid In their native range they are plentiful and inexpensive.....like rats. Elsewhere, they breed.....um.....well, like ****in' rats (which, let's be frank here, they are). Bottom line.....cheap ammunition. A few hundred, fired in rapid succession would, at the very least, wreak havoc on bovine traction.....not to mention distraction on an scale impossible for ANYTHING to ignore. However, speaking frankly (oops, just spilled a gallon of wine on the keyboard, breaking an ankle and severing a relatively major artery in the process.....but, no matter) such measures should hardly be necessary for most ordinary mortals. Prevarication, dissembling, circumlocution, joshing, kidding, or outright lying should be sufficient. In short, don't be.....wait for it.....frank. Meanwhile, a day slated for reading from the new device that inspired this thread has turned into a nightmare of trying to sate the monster. I'd already made a trip to Project Gutenberg and downloaded a number of items that had never particularly excited my interest but seemed like the sort of thing that a literate boy SHOULD be familar with. Fair enough.....into the hopper they went. O.k., let's see what we've got. Hm.....roughly 3 gigabytes of capacity remaining. Allright, back to PG. Hm.....Shakespeare. Yeah! That ought to do the trick! Download. Roughly 3 gigabytes left. :( Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," Stowe's "Uncle tom's Cabin," and Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." Roughly 3 gigabytes left. Gibbon's "Decline and Fall....," Shelley's "Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark," and Kafka's "The Trial." Roughly 3 gigabytes left! Ack! Christie's "The Mysterious Affair at Styles," Swift's "A Modest Proposal," Twain's "Life on the Mississippi," and "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," Wodehouse's "My Man Jeeves," Cervantes' "Don Quixote," Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass," the KJV, Smith's "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations," Grose's "1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue," Kipling's the Jungle Book," Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil,".....HAH! Roughly 3 gig......AAAARRRGGGHH! So, I bought Twain's autobiography (the 2010 edition....volume 1, as it turns out) from Amazon ($9.95), the Complete Works of Twain (sans 2010 autobiography) 300+ works with active table of contents ($0.99), & the Complete Works of Kipling 100+ works with active table of contents ($0.99). That shou......roughly 3 g WTF!!?? :( help me! Wolfgang who will gladly accept any reasonable recommendations. All I know it that "War and Peace" and two volumes of autobiography by Ulysses S. Grant don't make a dent. Russell "There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza . . . " |
| All times are GMT +1. The time now is 01:46 PM. |
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2025, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004 - 2006 FishingBanter