Which e-Reader for Christmas?

(from grandteuton.blogspot.com)

This seems to be the year of the e-Reader.  While I'm still a confirmed paper addict, the newest generation of e-Readers is getting close to changing my mind.
I've been reading e-books on my PC and on my Palm (don't laugh) for years now, so I do have some experience with ebooks, but I've never really considered them a good substitute for the real thing.  Still, with some books coming out only as ebooks (also those that are out of print or the stuff at the Gutenberg project), these readers are becoming more valuable, even as their prices decline.  So, here are some of my thoughts on the current options:

• Kindle has done the most to popularise the category, largely based on Amazon's being the largest single bookseller in the world.  They have done almost everything right with this, from making it very easy to buy books, to updating the hardware regularly and significantly.
• Sony, Nook, and Kobo seem to be the next level of players, mostly because of the bookstore advantage which Amazon has - even over Border's and Barnes & Noble.  Still, their hardware is basically on a par with the Kindle line.
• Apple's iPad seems like a reasonable alternative - even sporting a Kindle app - but while it can read lots of ebook formats, the battery life and the reading experience using a backlit LCD panel is a bit sub-optimal.
• WiFi and USB are more than adequate for getting books into a reader - 3G is probably nice, but shopping on your Kindle seems a lot less convenient than shopping on your PC, which means you can order there and either WiFi it in or USB it in.

So, what's my recommendation for your Christmas shopping this year?
I'd go with the latest Kindle WiFi version.  It has a 6" screen (nice e-ink for reading anywhere paper would have worked), can store more books than my living room shelves (at least I think so, I'll have to count them up when I get home), and has battery life to spare.

If you feel the need for 3G, it's only $50, but I'd rather spend that on some books or a case and light.

There you have it - Enjoy!

Carnage du Jour - 09 November 2010

(from grandteuton.blogspot.com)

A nice taste of the Belgian Provinces tonight: trout braised in beer and herbs!

I had a couple of Trout filets (Ruby Red, as the fishmonger would call them), and it was time to cook them up, so what to try this time?
Aha! Drop them in a baking dish, cover with a bottle of beer (I used a bottle of Ichabod pumpkin ale) add a bay leaf and a few sprigs of fresh thyme from the herb garden and let them marinate until it was obvious that they fish had absorbed a bunch of the beer (and thus the herb flavours as well).
Then, into the oven to bake at 350 for about 20 minutes, as I recall.  At any rate, it was until the fish flaked nicely.  Removing them to a warmed platter, the liquid, with the herbs removed, was poured into a sauce pan to be thickened by boiling and then the addition of some creme fraiche.
An accompaniment of lima beans and a nice rice rounded out a very enjoyable repast.


(By the way, the cookbook on which this was based is A Taste of the Belgian Provinces by Enid Gordon - highly recommended as a fun and useful cookbook.)

A Great Appliance

(from grandteuton.blogspot.com)

I don't know how many of you remember those old Daisy Seal-A-Meal commercials, but the real thing these days is actually a great addition to the kitchen.  I have a feeling those early ones were kind of a waste of money, but not the ones that are around today.  In fact, this might be a nice gift item for the right person (i.e. the type of person who won't be offended at receiving a utilitarian gift rather than an extravagance - or maybe you should just make it in addition to an extravagance to be safe).

We've had a Food Saver machine for a few years, and it is quite spectacular.  I'm not sure which model it is, but it has held up pretty well over that period, given that it's been sealing lots of food every week for those years.  Fresh food sealed into the custom-fit vacuum bags last vastly longer than in other packaging, and the plastic of the bags is sturdy enough to handle the freezer quite well.
In fact, having no air in the bag when it's dropped into the freezer means freezer burn is basically eliminated from the get-go.  Oh, and the bags are good enough to wash and reuse, so it's not like we're adding tons of plastic to the world's landfills either.

All around, they pay for themselves in short order, and are highly recommended to all and sundry.

Enjoy!

A Highly Recommended Book

(from grandteuton.blogspot.com)

I've recently finished reading an excellent book by James P. Hogan.  I had enjoyed much of his fiction, but this is a non-fiction work, based on his experiences with working scientists in a wide variety of fields.
The title is Kicking the Sacred Cow, and it's out of print, but still available in various e-book formats from Baen Books.  You can find used copies of the printed book, but the prices were a bit steep for my taste, and the ebook experience was actually quite good.

The basic premise of the book is that while science accuses religion of excluding non-standard beliefs, the scientific community deals with scientific heresy in much the way.  It's a fascinating survey of alternate theories in everything from physics and cosmology to medicine and biology.

Very highly recommended. 
No, really - go get this book. 
I'm serious.
Go get it now.

Some Current Projects

(from grandteuton.blogspot.com)

I'm working on a few things right now.  As I've finally gotten my great-great-grandfather's book published to Amazon (as noted here in a recent post), my thoughts are still largely in the literary vein.

• First, it's nearly November, and November brings National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)!  So, it's back to my in progress second novel, which I really plan to finish this year (as I have for the past few).  [I'm also wondering about getting my first novel up on Amazon, but that's something to think about later.]
• Next, apart from that writing, I'm also getting back to the revision of my Mass setting.  I really like much of it, but there are a few movements that just don't quite work yet, and I think I need to revise some of the accompaniment as well.  It's for small mixed  chorus, soloists, and organ.
• I'm also working on a cookbook - well, actually I'm working on two cookbooks right now:

1. I'm scanning and transcribing my Grandma's handwritten recipes from the [handmade!] cookbook her brother made for her as a wedding present; and
2. I'm compiling my favourite  original dishes, along with stories of their creation (or other happy occurrences related to their eating).

• A tedious (but likely useful) project is upgrading our computers to Windows 7 from XP.  The bad part is that it's not a direct upgrage - I have to back up the documents and reinstall all the applications.  The good part is that they should all be happier and run faster (and the disks will be cleaner, too!).  Microsoft seems to have done a good job with the latest version of Windows, and by offering the family pack - 3 users for less than the price of two - they're likely to get a lot of people going legal. (Not that anyone ever installed the same copy of Windows on more than one machine ....)  Well done Steve and company.

My new computer

is almost fully loaded.
(from grandteuton.blogspot.com)

Oh, it's running just fine, but I haven't had the time to finish loading all the software that I use, and it's still on the road to an upgrade to Windows 7 in the near future.  It's pretty darned nice, though.

4GB of RAM (DDR3 stuff at that), a Western Digital 1TB HDD, AMD Athlon II X4 (quad core) CPU, Biostar AM3 MB, a nice 24-bit SoundBlaster card, an old (extra) gForce video card, and a fun case with a nice orange accent.

I have more room on this machine than we had on all the other drives in the house combined - it's amazing how drives have grown over the years.  The first machine I used with a hard drive had a massive 5MB drive.  This one has a 1TB drive, that's 200,000 of those huge 5MB jobs packed into a space that's actually smaller than the old 5.25" Winchesters.

Pretty cool.  It will keep my techno-lust at bay for a while.

Reading List Update #3

(from grandteuton.blogspot.com)

Well, I've thought of a few more books I'd like to recommend to my loyal readers here.
As before, I've included the full list from earlier posts so you don't have to go looking through the archives to see what all was on there.

• The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith
• Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville
• The Federalist Papers, A. Hamilton, J. Madison, J. Jay

Here's the original list (including the earlier updates), just in case you haven't finished them all yet:   Read, learn, and enjoy:

• Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury 
• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein 
• 1985, Anthony Burgess
• A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle 
• The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis 
• Bridge to Terabithia, Katherine Paterson
• Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt
• Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler
• Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
• Anthem, Ayn Rand [free gutenberg.org version here]
  
• The Unheavenly City, Revisited, Edward Banfield
• The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis
• That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis
  
• Little Brother, Cory Doctorow [free creative commons version here]
  
• 1984, George Orwell
• Animal Farm, George Orwell
• Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
  
• We, Eugene Zamyatin
• The Martian Way, Isaac Asimov
• Freehold, Michael Z. Williamson
• Ted, White, and Blue, Ted Nugent