Category Archives: Books

Leftovers

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The Wheel Of Time dreams have begun. Being hunted, chased, traps, unseen plots and most delightfully a new series of dreams where bad personal assistants are beheaded, heads wrapped in aluminum foil and then sectioned up using a breathtakingly sharp cleaver while the big bad, apparently played by a middle aged Adrienne Barbeau, dressed in a white silk blouse and white pants reclines in a simple chair, holding a fork and picking at the freshly sectioned decapitated head. All the while calmly, almost thoughtlessly menacing the hapless next personal assistant as they sit across the table and witness the spectacle unfold. It’s creepiness amplified by the context of humdrum boredom at eating a sectioned decapitated human head wrapped in foil. Like it was a half-forgotten ham shank that you found in the fridge and nearly forgot all about.

Yeah, bits of WOT, bits of the Dresden series and some classic horror movies, but this stuff is way more disturbing. Thankfully for these sorts of dreams I am more like an audience than a participant, so there really isn’t a nightmarish quality to any of this.

Yippity do dah, yippity yay!

Norman Rockwell Museum

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We just returned from Stockbridge, MA and the Norman Rockwell Museum. There was a comic book feature artist, Alex Ross and his collected artwork. Alex Ross claimed one of his biggest inspirations was Norman Rockwell. The museum was wonderful, very nicely laid out and the area screamed New England at the top of its lungs. It was so picturesque that it made my eyes ache.

We both picked up a few small souvenirs to remember our trip.

I didn’t take pictures because it would have been tacky and gauche. So it’s just my words that will have to do.

Chunky Pork Shoulder Ragu

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Today I started on one of our favorite meals, Chunky Pork Shoulder Ragu. It’s from a wonderful cookbook titled “The Italian Slow Cooker” by Michele Scicolone.

This recipe is on page 67 and it involves browning a pork shoulder in olive oil, some onion, fennel, sage, rosemary and quite a bit of tomato. Then you place it all in your slow cooker for six hours. At the end of that time the pork shoulder comes out falling apart. You just need to transfer it to a pot, attack it with a fork, and it falls apart without much effort.

Here’s a photo of it about three quarters of the way through:

Chunky Pork Shoulder Ragu

Chunky Pork Shoulder Ragu

At the end I cooked up a bit of Rigatoni pasta and used it as a substrate for this Ragu. Altogether a wonderful meal, and yes, it made leftovers.

If you don’t have this wonderful cookbook in your collection I can recommend it at least for this recipe. I’ve included a link to B&N, so buying it there will go a long way in fighting the scourge of Amazon.com. 🙂

Barnes & Noble's Nook HD+ Is Clever

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Barnes & Noble just sent an email out announcing their two new tablets: The Nook HD and Nook HD+.

Previously to this release I was discussing with my partner, who works for Barnes & Noble ways that B&N could compete with Amazon and Apple in the tablet space. There was a concern that B&N had lost traction and that the company was going to spiral out of control and crash, eventually. These tablets have just eliminated a good portion of that worry.

For full disclosure, I came across a rather pleasant and unexpected windfall in regards to money and I’ve been kvetching about the poor performance of my 1st edition iPad and in a way, Apple has sent a clear message that they regard the device as dead because they are no longer writing software updates for it. I went ahead and purchased an iPad 3 and I’ve been enjoying it quite a lot.

This news from B&N is very interesting to me as this new device has several key areas that put up more bang-for-less-money. The first surprise is the processing speed of the Nook HD+ in comparison with the iPad 3. 1.5GHz dual-core versus 1GHz dual-core. Ever since 2003 when the world pretty much stopped worrying and loved the bomb that is processor speed ratings this distinction isn’t as compelling as it appears on paper. The two units have different core technologies, the iPad has an A5X processor and the Nook HD+ has an OMAP 4470 processor. We have seen from manufacturers like HTC and Samsung that even when you pour huge muscular processors into devices to compete, that if the experience of the user isn’t done correctly then all the computing horsepower in the world means very little. It’s not about the muscles, it’s about the refinement of the motor cortex. It isn’t how strong you are, it’s your dexterity – at least in the phone and tablet space. I do hand it to B&N when it comes to pumping numbers and keeping costs suppressed – that’s a win in their column.

The second surprise, and I’ve been half expecting someone to notice this glaring deficit in tablet OS design comes down to what I believe to be Barnes & Noble’s knife-held-confidently-behind-its-back killer feature. Barnes & Noble is going to bring profile control to the tablet space. This casts a huge pall over both Amazon and Apple devices and redefines a tablet to be a multiuser device. It is exceptionally clever for Barnes & Noble to do this because it draws a clear bead of connection from everyone’s computer experience (where you have an account and profile) off to your device. When it comes to Apple, they rejected this model and regard a device to be a one-person-only deal, which has been a weakness in the iOS OS design. Apple may be too far along to make such a fundamental change to iOS so we may see the creation of a new track of tablet technology. Is a tablet multiuser or single-user? By being multi-user, and if B&N does it elegantly, it can cast B&N in a family friendly light, more than an Amazon or Apple product because one relatively inexpensive device can serve an entire family. Instead of the onerous cost of a Kindle or iPad for each person, because each device is single-user, one Nook HD+ can be used by different members of a family without having to worry about security, privacy, preference or profile leakages between people. It’s a failure of the Apple iOS OS and here is why: When I come across another persons iOS device, I am utterly lost – I don’t know their preferences, their security settings, where they have placed icons, and I find myself having to relegate to the search screen to even find where they put the ubiquitous “Settings” icon. If B&N does profiles elegantly, this will be a non-issue. Rendered moot because each person has their own settings that they are used to, making the confusion evaporate.

I think that B&N will pursue a marketing strategy that elevates the personal touch and the family friendliness of their Nook HD and Nook HD+ devices. That will be key, with profiles, the ability to use LendMe to share books, and their admittedly well-done “Parent recording storybooks for their children” technology they will position themselves to be “The Booksellers who care about you and your family” and they will occupy a third niche in this space. The first niche is the deep-discount one, that’s occupied by Amazon. The second niche is the elegance-at-all-costs one, which is occupied by Apple – and then last but certainly not least, the third niche which is the Friends-Family-Kids one, which is going to be Barnes & Noble Booksellers.

This niche may be the best hope for Barnes & Noble to retain their 21st century relevance.  They should maintain their “Brick and Mortar” presence and cater their stores to being a place where you feel welcome, with friendly staff and a coffeehouse/library atmosphere. The elevator sales-pitch is that B&N is more personable and immediate than Amazon could ever hope of being – you don’t know Jack at Amazon, but you know Jack at B&N. B&N’s approach to kids and family with their very deep roots set throughout America means they have already beat Apple to the market in terms of the personal touch. Yes, Apple has the Genius Bar and yes they are friendly geeks, but you don’t go to a Genius Bar to find out about Apps and Woodworking! You can only do that at a Barnes & Noble!

The real competition isn’t between B&N and Apple anyhow, since Apple touches B&N only in this one market-space. The real competition here is between Amazon and B&N. It’ll be an interesting evolution to say the least – which do people prefer more? The cold, impersonal, sterile deep-discount algorithms of Amazon or the instant-gratification, warm, personal, and direct approach of Barnes & Noble Booksellers? It may simply come down to how people refer to these two competitors. You USE Amazon and you VISIT Barnes & Noble Booksellers. That right there is something that Jeff Bezos can never buy himself into, but B&N already exists to cater to. Which do you value, the impersonal or the personal?

Barnes & Noble Booksellers may have just secured their direct relevancy in the market for the next decade with these two new devices. The proof is in the pudding of course, these devices, once in the stores, will be the final arbiter on the survivability of B&N in the tablet market space.

 

Hopping on the Wagon

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Comic Books. I was quite a fan of them before Mr. Johns sucker-punched me with the travesty of Brightest Day and then pushed me off the train completely with the New 52. That all being said, and in an effort to forgive some of that transgression I’ve decided to tentatively start buying comics again.

I’ve been not-reading for a very long while, despite it being very easy for me to start reading again since my Local Comic Book Store is actually in my basement, it’s all the comics that Scott has collected as he never fell off the wagon. No point in buying comics again!

Except, there is a reason to buy them again. And now we get to my three classes that I’m approaching comic books with. There are three, named, One, Two, and Three. What they mean has everything to do with how much I enjoy the books and my feelings on “rewarding” the comic book company with sales they wouldn’t have otherwise with my discretionary money.

Class Three – Comic Books I’m going to buy in digital format and catch up with. These books are my most favorite and I want to vote-with-sales the writers and artists attached to these books:

  1. Green Lantern
  2. Flash
  3. Nightwing
  4. Green Lantern: New Guardians
  5. Green Lantern Corps
  6. Red Hood and the Outlaws
  7. Teen Titans
  8. Atomic Robo

Class Two – Comic books that I want to read, but I don’t feel I want to pour money into. Since we already have these books on the premises I am going to read them. Is that theft? Reading another persons comic books? Technically I suppose if you wanted to be a huge anal dick about it you’d insist that selling a comic book has nothing to do with the paper and everything to do with the license to access the media and that license is expressly designed just for one person and not more than one person. So is reading a comic book I dig out of a white-box in my basement, theft? If so, all I really need to know is from the comic book companies, if this bothers you, please tell me and I will ignore these books below:

  1. Superboy
  2. Journey into Mystery
  3. Unwritten
  4. Wolverine and the X-Men
  5. AvX
  6. Extreme X-Men
  7. Blue Beetle
  8. Batman
  9. Detective Comics
  10. Batman and Robin
  11. Amazing Spider-Man
  12. X-Factor
  13. Avengers Academy
  14. Captain Marvel
  15. Ravagers

Class One – These are books I used to have but no longer want to read. Thankfully the ones on this list I haven’t bought in a long while and DC has actually come along and nailed them off for me. There aren’t any comics on this list.

Just in case people get really worked up about their favorite comic ending up on the Two list or the One list, know that if a comic really does well and touches me, that these are classes, not castes. I will always be open to pushing comics from One to Three or Two to Three. Just the same as comics from Three to Two or Three to One. Although it’s really quite something to ever leave Three, just so we are all on the same page.

Now it’s time for me to set up my order with Comixology. Still wishing they had a subscription model, but that’s an argument best left for another time.

Sherlock

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We sat down to eat dinner and enjoy some television. Our DVR had recorded the entire second season of Sherlock. When I say “second season” I mean three shows, each one exactly an hour and a half long. They are on WGVU’s PBS Station and they are underwritten, so there are no commercials.

These shows are superlative. They are so far beyond the lame floppy gasping wretches of American television programming that there really is no use even starting to compare. The first season takes your breath away and the second season is equally amazing. This show is beyond a pleasure.

If you get PBS and can find this show replaying, you really owe it to yourself to watch it. If you have Netflix then by all means order up the first season, pour something delightful to drink and enjoy every moment.

Easter Tidings

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It’s Easter time, which is one of the very-important-so-lets-go-to-Church Christian Holidays. Many Christians, well, the good ones, have been involved with some sort of lenten fast for the past forty days and it doesn’t end until Easter Sunday, which is in two days from today.

As a used-to-be-Christian who now regards himself as somewhere between a secular humanist, a buddhist, and a neo-pagan this holiday is much like all the other Christian holidays, which is to say, a giant batch of goof in order to facilitate cultural assimilation. The big holidays for Christians are Christmas and Easter. The birth and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Now, Christmas has it’s own special sort of silliness. We chop down trees and dress them with baubles and we have figures that occupy popular consciousness and the “Baby Jesus” only appears as a sideline player in that yearly conflagration of economic stimulus and material goodwill. The other holiday, the one we are adjacent to now, is Easter. Once again we have a cultural hodgepodge of really goofy things all colliding at the same time. At the core of it should be, but isn’t, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I’ll get to the silliness of that later on, but bear with me. The holiday is supposed to be solemn with a celebration of this one mans ability to somehow pop back to life after being dead and through resurrection cleansing our sins in the eyes of God. Except none of that matters. Children don’t give a flying rip about Jesus Christ, he’s just a suave white guy (usually) who appears in quickly flashed artistic impressions of historical events and kids just get a general sense about all the hocus-pocus behind it all and just shrug because for a child the notion of death and resurrection are meaningless concepts. To Children, summer lasts forever and nobody dies. What kids associate with the holiday is the exact core of what the Christians tried to subvert by laying their tripartite-dead-notdead-heavy_mystery_time-God on top of pagan rituals. Like Eostre. A pagan germanic tradition that occurs in April and involves candy, rabbits, brightly colored eggs, and a host of deities from faiths that Christians find distasteful, like Eostre herself, a goddess, or Freyja, a teutonic goddess. So, in order to culturally assimilate the unwashed barbaric hordes you don’t try to kill them off en-masse, instead you co-opt their rituals and you pretend that it’s always been this way. You get to their children and before you know it, after a few generations come and go, the entire backstory has been whitewashed and a new narrative has been put in it’s place. The problem with whitewashing an old narrative is that it quite often hangs around. People still do the same things even if they don’t really know why any longer. So Christians assemble (like the pagans), they celebrate Easter (the pagans celebrate Eostre! Wait, it’s so close!), people assemble Easter Baskets full of candy, dyed eggs, fake plastic grass and a host of rabbit icons… holy crap. We’ve fallen completely off the Christian wagon kids! This is all dirty no-good filthy pagan crap! Where did Jesus go, we misplaced him, oops. But at the end, after all the egg-hunts and eating of chocolate rabbits, which, I must say is about as pagan as you can get, turning an icon into something edible and sweet, BOGGLE… and then to eat an Easter Ham, which I think is a really mean thing that Christians do as Jesus was a Jew and !@#$ KOSHER and last I checked PIG WAS NOT KOSHER oh whatever. After Easter dinner then everyone gets in their finery and toddles off to Church. Then and only then do we get heaping helpings of the steaming pile of Jesus Christ narrative. It’s a lot like Jesus Christ the cannon, being packed with Jesus Christ grapeshot and aimed at the belching rabbit-icon-eating/pig-eating/non-kosher horde of barbarians and fired with magical Jesus Christ gunpowder of guilt.

Even the timing of the holiday is annoyingly pagan. The Christians really don’t get how to whitewash and properly murder and cannibalize mythic narratives. They establish that Easter is the Sunday closest to the first full moon after the vernal equinox! What the HELL does the vernal equinox or the !@#$ MOON have to do with Jesus Christ? Huh!?! Oh wake up! It’s got nothing to do at all, it’s just a bunch of confused old men trying to retain control on what amounts to being an uncontrollable herd of sweaty messy barbarians. When you go to Church next, look around. Now imagine what it looked like 1600 to 1800 years ago. Never mind, it’s the same thing, only now you all think it’s true and believe and that’s really all that matters. You’ve bought the Christians cart of goods that they have for sale, but you still do quintessentially pagan things! If belief gives godlings life, then Krampus, Santa Claus, and Eostre are very much alive and well. Keep being good, keep eating rabbit icons, and keep on futzing about with dyed eggs! Eostre needs all your belief energy to even stand up to Big Daddy, JC, and the Spook.

Speaking of dead things coming back to life, the resurrection itself. What a monumental pile of hocus-pocus if I’ve ever seen it. We have never seen anyone go from well and truly dead to alive all on their own, except for once, 2000 years ago. Sure. What’s more plausible? That Jesus Christ died, went through hell, and then was resurrected, OR that he was nailed to a cross as a form of capital punishment, where he lapsed into a coma from exposure, malnutrition, and poor hydration then when “dead” hauled off the cross and then laid in state. Then after recovering from being in a coma, got up and wandered off?!? What if that was really what happened?

So Christians elect to believe that a dead man suddenly popped back to life and then they see the miracle of that and then tacitly agree to suspend all rational thought thereafter. Accept it, it’s the word of God. Accept it, it’s in the scriptures. Accept it, you have to if you believe. Accept it, or you’ll be a sinner.

Get off the collective cross, we need the wood.

So, enjoy the Easter fantasy. The pagan rituals you still perform without knowing why. Still buy into the narrative sold to you by the Christians and never feel any hint of awkwardness that you’ve suspended your own rational thoughts and given control of your actions over to old men who don’t even notice your existence. It sounds so silly, but, there it is.

And people wonder why we haven’t been visited by aliens or have mastered space travel. If you were an advanced alien culture, and you saw the kind of hocus-pocus that we humans readily believe in, would you elect to just do nothing or would you watch us very carefully to make sure we never leave the third planet from this unremarkable star on the edge of a very unremarkable galaxy?

So embarrassing. We aren’t ready, at this rate we won’t ever be ready. Not really.

Childhood's End

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I saw this opinion article on the New York Times: Children’s Books… and I have the exact opposite opinion as the author that the New York Times published. He states that adults should not read kids books. That they are beneath adults and that there are better things that adults should read.

I don’t want to know anyone who has this opinion. Wadding up your childhood and locking it in the basement of your soul is the quickest way to become an autumn person. Courting the death of joy should be anathema to any vibrant living human being. There is more than enough room, and respect, for anyone wanting to read “The Lorax” at the tender age of 36! The ability to embrace childish things means you have not let your soul ossify with the banality of our cold and horrible world.

People who judge and then sniff imperiously when they see an adult reading “The Hunger Games” or “Harry Potter”, or even “Horton Hears A Who” are in my opinion spiritually bankrupt and repellent. They exude the ardent seriousness of stupid adults. Life is best led reading whatever it is that you want to read. Judging puts you in hell, with the pedants, grammar, and spelling nazis. This cold and desolate region is filled with angry bitter shades who refuse to axe anyone a question. They refuse to deal with anyone who ain’t like them. And they burn with rage when you express alot of affection for anyone who doesn’t toe the strict line that English doesn’t have.

Your childhood is a diamond. It has to be loved. It’s as much a part of every passionate living adult as rationality. It’s your inner child that powers your curiosity. He or she is the gatekeeper to your imagination and your creativity. Denying him or her damns you to a life lived in shadows of gray. In that state you might as well be dead for all the good you are to anyone else.

Everyone needs to keep doing things that are good for your inner child. Don’t turn into an autumn person. They are animated corpses who don’t know they are dead.

Thoughts on Nook

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I have noticed that the Barnes & Noble Nook Cloud service seems rather half-baked. I’ve been comparing different cloud services to each other and I’ve noticed that there is a distinct functionality deficit between many services on one side and the B&N service on the other.

It comes to user-added content. Every cloud service maintains a file storage area online and then establishes a sync using client software to tie it all together. In certain cases this difference has never actually been present, such as with Dropbox. Anything you store there are your own files and the sync client can display them (or play them sometimes) on any device that is attached to the Internet. Some of the more interesting examples are actually more contemporary than Dropbox, as it’s rather well-tread and venerable.

Specific services such as Apple’s iCloud are definitely centered in my sights for comparison sakes. With Apple’s provisions you could opt-in for iTunes Match which will assay your iTunes library and match the files with standardized files on their service. In an effective way if not in a literal way, Apple allows user submitted content to be stored on their service and then spread across the network amongst your connected devices. In Apple’s case you have to buy in to iTunes Match as a service, but I don’t see this as being a barrier to adoption and it fits squarely in the “Fair Dealing” camp as I would expect such a service to be paid and I applaud Apple for their letting users do such a thing.

Google was next on the scene with Google Music. It is a direct competitor to iTunes Match and is actually a more compelling service than what Apple provides as you upload your own music to Google’s storage system and then you can stream that information across the network to any of your devices. This service is free and Google is, along with Dropbox, embracing the true sense of cloud storage as far as I’m concerned. This service that Google provides (and arguably along with Dropbox) is the most stinging rebuke against what Barnes & Noble provides.

Now to the core of it, the Nook cloud infrastructure is half-baked because it is split in half. The division is visible on the Nook devices and Nook Apps that sync with the service. The Nook is all about books, so instead of music types like MP3 or AAC we’re instead talking about PDF and EPUB types of files. The fully baked Nook experience comes when you buy an eBook from Barnes & Noble. B&N stores the ePub on their cloud infrastructure and all your attached devices and apps can see everything in this storage area and enjoy the secret sauce of being able to track reading position between devices. Each device (or app) that you work with watches how far you’ve progressed in an eBook and synchronizes that back to the B&N cloud infrastructure. This is the core of the magic as far as I’m concerned with B&N’s entire Nook experience. It doesn’t seem like a very compelling feature, but to be able to escape from the tyranny of the bookmark or the dog-eared page is very valuable to a reader like me who reads in short little fits and spurts. Now where this goes from fully baked to not baked at all comes when the user approaches the B&N cloud infrastructure with their own eBook collection. The visible division I wrote of earlier on the devices is actually a kind of lame fairness conceit by B&N. You can certainly add extra storage to all the B&N devices and then store your own files on that add-on component, and for most people this would be an acceptable compromise. It is not for people like me. It denies my user data the access to the secret sauce of bookmark synchronization. I wouldn’t be so prickly about it if B&N wasn’t so pricky about how they assemble their devices. Every Nook has an amazing amount of storage on the device, but in the fine print you discover that the storage space for user data is pitiful. This forces end users like me to buy extra parts, specifically microSD cards to beef up storage on our Nook devices to compensate for B&N being an arguable dick about how their devices are designed. It is not pro-consumer, it is pro-company. So here it is, B&N only will allow you to store ePUB and PDF data on their service if you buy it from them. They even put the lie to the argument: “They do this because you should pay for the storage” because you can “purchase” free eBooks and they end up on that side of the cloud divide just fine and can take advantage of the bookmark sync functionality. What then for end users like me who come to Nook with gigabytes of ePub content? What is it that I’m after? I want to upload my ePub content to B&N so I can sync it amongst all my B&N cloud connected devices. Specifically I want to be able to read-anywhere all my books, not just the ones I purchase or “purchase” through B&N! I have to start asking “Why does B&N do it this way?” when it’s obvious that other cloud companies go about it in a much more pro-consumer approach?

There are ways to address this from the B&N mothership. They could offer a “My Library” service for $20 a year which would then provide customers with 5GB of complimentary data storage on the B&N cloud infrastructure. This product would not be compatible with B&N’s LendMe service, and I’m fine with that, as it is fair, but it would allow end users like me to upload our ePub content onto our B&N cloud accounts and then read that content anywhere. I think that would really address the concern I have and maybe others do too of the Nook being a pro-company and anti-consumer device. This would help even out the field, and its fair dealing because the value of the data storage and the bookmark sync functionality I would peg at $20 per year. It’s a lot like iTunes Match in that regard.

While Barnes & Noble keeps their cloud infrastructure closed in this odd fashion I will be dissuaded from using it. By allowing user data on their devices, and then the conceit of adding microSD to make the device honestly equitable between company and consumer they create a kind of leper colony for books. I don’t want to use it because I can’t use it the way I want to use it. It used to be that companies dictated to consumers what they could and could not do with the products that the company sold, but in this age of service competition and device jailbreaking the consumer really is empowered to demand and expect that the devices we purchase will do what we want first, and whatever the company suggests to us can be acceptable or skipped altogether. I have six books in the leper colony in my Nook and a great deal more on my microSD card. On one side of the Berlin Wall in my Nook are all the free books in the west, and all the jailed books in the east.

So what of it? What if B&N ignores what people like me have to say about their cloud service? They’ll miss out on a new subscription model of service and a steady flow of $20 per user per year for what amounts to being a button-press. The real danger will come when someone creates a new Android firmware set for the Nook devices allowing customers like me to buy a Nook from Barnes & Noble and then eliminate all traces of Barnes & Noble from that device and go with a competitor who offers what I want. What if a company starts up, offers a truly equitable cloud infrastructure system and provides a download link for their own Android firmware that will work on any Android device? Just because Barnes & Noble put their marks on the Nook doesn’t mean that the device isn’t an Android device. So end users can just download the file, use the Android SDK tools to jailbreak the Nook devices and eventually get what they want.

What does it all come down to? Liberty, for our data. Being able to buy eBooks in ePub format wherever we like, such as Barnes & Noble and put them on our devices and sync them amongst all our devices… OR we can download books for free from Project Gutenberg and read those on our devices and sync them amongst all our devices.

Either B&N can benefit by liberating their service or consumers will do it for them.

Awful Books

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Reading the Steve Jobs biography is primarily a monumental headache. I’m filled with regret for buying that book. Every time I open it up I get angry. Great blazes of rage and all I want to do is throw it away, I want to stop reading it. But I can’t. It’s my curse that once I start a book I have to finish it, even if I’d rather pound my band into a bloody pulp with a sledgehammer instead of open it one more time.

It’s uniquely an awful book. It is the first and last time I’m going to read anything written by Isaacson. I need a quiet place where I can suffer through this awfulness. The only thing I really wish was that it was a paper book and not an ebook that way I could throw it in the backyard, douse it with gasoline and let the hateful thing burn.

I really have to renew my library card and get to borrowing this dreck. At least that way when these awful books manifest I can get rid of them without having to waste precious money on this printed crap.