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Showing posts with the label ereader

Running... Again?

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  If you know me you know there was a time about 10 years ago or so where I was running. A lot. At least 5 days a week and at least 5 miles a run. I wasn’t training, I wasn’t preparing for a race or a marathon. I just found myself enjoying the time spent running. I wasn’t obsessed with numbers, but I kept track of them all and liked seeing improvements in time and distances. It was good physical health and mental health. Then I tweaked my knee. Not bad enough that I couldn’t walk on it, just a tweak that told me I needed to back off of running for a little bit. So I decided on 2 weeks. At the end of 2 weeks I aborted a run very early as the pain was still there. 2 weeks became 3, became a month, became 5 years. 
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Fave 5 From 2012 Part 5: The End

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Under the Pier It's the last Thursday of 2012, and with it comes the last of my favorite five shots. These aren't the blog's most popular photos (which you can see on the right side), but are the photos that I enjoyed taking, working on, and looking at the most. The order picked is random, so today's shot is not the least-favorite or the most favorite shot of 2012. Along with my photo picks of 2012 I thought I'd highlight five books that I really enjoyed. I mean to write more about the books I read, but am finding it hard to do. Two types of ratings I don't generally bother with looking at are for books and for music. They're so subjective that people can and do often times have opinions that very much differ from my views. So think of these not as reviews of the books, but more of why I liked them. About the Shot This is a shot that had been percolating around in my head for a while now. I had seen a lot of great shots, and the under the pier s...
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Fave 5 from 2012 Part 4

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A simple sunset With only two Thursdays left in 2012 it's time part four of my five favorite photos taken by me in 2012. These aren't the blog's most popular photos (which you can see on the right side), but are the photos that I enjoyed taking, working on, and looking at the most. The order picked is random, so today's shot is not the least-favorite or the most favorite shot of 2012. Along with my photo picks of 2012 I thought I'd highlight five books that I really enjoyed. I mean to write more about the books I read, but am finding it hard to do. Two types of ratings I don't generally bother with looking at are for books and for music. They're so subjective that people can and do often times have opinions that very much differ from my views. So think of these not as reviews of the books, but more of why I liked them.
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Fave 5 From 2012 Part 1

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Infrared Black & White With only five Thursdays left in 2012 it's time to count down my five favorite photos taken by me in 2012. These aren't the blog's most popular photos (which you can see on the right side), but are the photos that I enjoyed taking, working on, and looking at the most. The order picked is random, so today's shot is not the least-favorite or the most favorite shot of 2012. Along with my photo picks of 2012 I thought I'd highlight five books that I really enjoyed. I mean to write more about the books I read, but am finding it hard to do. Two types of ratings I don't generally bother with looking at are for books and for music. They're so subjective that people can and do often times have opinions that very much differ from my views. So think of these not as reviews of the books, but more of why I liked them.
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Tech Stuff

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CES, the Consumer Electronics Show has come and gone. In the past I followed this closely to see what's coming, and check out the new tech. The problem with this show though is that nothing gets released anytime soon. If it comes out in 6 months that's considered quick. This year I paid only a little attention to CES. The "big" thing this year are smart TVs; TVs connected to the internet. Apparently 3D is being put on the back burner due to there not being a whole lot of content available and the need to have to wear stupid glasses while watching. The only thing I was hoping to see were color e-ink screens. There were a couple out there, but nothing that's coming out for mass production in a Kindle or Nook. Probably the coolest thing I've seen, and the one I look forward to adding to my house is Samsung's Smart Window. Check it out:
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Happy New Year

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Happy New Year! I hope everyone had an enjoyable New Year's eve. This year, 2012, I have a couple of goals or projects (not resolutions) I'm hoping to achieve and will probably be chronicled on here, or on Google Plus. More than likely a little of both. Last year I posted 93 times to this blog, and this year I think I'll be improving on that.
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Amazon is on Fire

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Amazon is finding itself in the spotlight recently and for good reason. Their new Kinde e-readers look great, and more importantly have a starting price of under $99! They also, thank goodness, got rid of that horrible looking keyboard. With different models offering different features it's hard to find a reason not to buy one. The entry evel model has a buttton interface for page turning, wifi connectivity, and shows well designed ads on the home screen and as screen savers. The top of the line e-ink e-reader features an infrared touchscreen (like the latest from Barnes & Noble) and adds 3G cellular connectivity for buying books from Amazon. At these prices I'm having a hard time seeing how Barnes & Noble can compete. Their entry level Nook is $139. The only other thing I used to be able to cite as a big selling point for Nooks were their ability to check out e-books from libraries, but earlier last month Amazon announced their file format was now avaiable in librar...
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Nook 2.0

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I'd been waiting for today for a couple weeks, at least, since I heard Barnes & Noble was rumored to be releasing a new nook e-reader. By the way, before I go on, I wish I knew the proper capitalization for the product. On their own site I've seen "Nook", "nook", and "NOOK". I wonder if they own the copyright to all versions. Anyway, the gadget. The gadget blogs seemed pretty split between it being another Nook Color, this time with the updated Android Honeycomb 3, or a new e-ink based design with a touch screen. I was hoping for the e-ink version, and my hopes have been fulfilled.
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Nook Update

IF any of you are on the fence about a nook, maybe this will help you. Today Barnes and Noble released a slightly scaled down nook, the nook Wi-Fi. I failed to mention in my write up about the nook that the original nook comes with wi-fi and 3G access thanks to AT&T. What this really means is that I can browse the B&N store and get any materials that I'm subscribed to anytime and anywhere that I can pick up an AT&T signal. (I'll leave the evaluation of the AT&T network for those of you with iPhones). The original nook was also able to hook up to B&N wi-fi networks, serviced by AT&T.
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Calibre: iTunes for Your E-Reader

Yesterday I wrote about how I was enjoying my Barnes & Noble nook, and mentioned a specific software program that doesn't come with nook that I think has been essential in my enjoyment of it. Calibre is like iTunes for my nook, though if you don't have a nook it works just as good with Kindle, and many other physical and software based readers. This means if your phone has software to read e-books you can use this software. As I mentioned yesterday, a simple folder of the books I owned worked well for, say, 20 titles but as the library grew it became increasingly difficult to manage books both on the computer and on the nook. I was using iTunes to manage books on the computer, but as it won't recognize anything other than an Apple iPod/iPhone/iPad it was of no use to me for the nook. I was quickly becoming disenchanted with the whole e-book/e-reader world and was beginning to feel that an iPad would be in my future, if only for the book management. Then I ran across n...
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2010: The Year of Reading?

One of my resolutions for 2010 was to read more. And to kickstart it, for Christmas I asked, and received (thanks mom) my first read for 2010, Open - Andre Agassi. This is the autobiography of Andre that originally drew attention for his use of drugs during his career. I've not got to that point in the book yet, but that wasn't why I wanted to read it. Andre, and his nemesis Pete Sampras, were huge influences in my tennis development. Everyone I knew wanted Pete's serve, and Andre's return. Then there was the whole rivalry between the two of them. The supposedly outlandish "Image is everything" Agassi and the very private very quiet Sampras.
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Popular posts from this blog

Running... Again?

Image
  If you know me you know there was a time about 10 years ago or so where I was running. A lot. At least 5 days a week and at least 5 miles a run. I wasn’t training, I wasn’t preparing for a race or a marathon. I just found myself enjoying the time spent running. I wasn’t obsessed with numbers, but I kept track of them all and liked seeing improvements in time and distances. It was good physical health and mental health. Then I tweaked my knee. Not bad enough that I couldn’t walk on it, just a tweak that told me I needed to back off of running for a little bit. So I decided on 2 weeks. At the end of 2 weeks I aborted a run very early as the pain was still there. 2 weeks became 3, became a month, became 5 years. 
Read more

The Pros and (Mostly) Cons of Upgrading to a 4K Monitor

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I'm in the process of getting back into photography which will mean a new camera, more on that in a later post. But the first step for me was a new computer, one with the horsepower to handle a modern day camera and its RAW files. Along with the computer comes a new 4K monitor. 4K is great for media consumption, right? Your characters on your favorite show or movie really look detailed and realistic. Scenery looks wonderful. Everything looks great, right? Wrong. You know what doesn't look great? That photo I took in 2012 that I thought was sharp but is very much not. I transferred over my past catalogs of photos over to Lightroom Classic and eagerly began opening up some of my favorite photos. At first I was happy with how the colors looked and how the scene was composed. Then I noticed it was a little soft. Well I had just gotten a new contacts prescription so that must be it. Changed to my glasses and the photos were even blurrier! I went through photo after photo and most ca...
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