Random News from Yesterday, Today, and July
I'm just going to keep coming up with excuses for not replying to comments. This one is good: a brief but powerful storm took out power in much of my area so I had no electricity from about 5 last night until about 6 this morning.
Other than that, my yesterday was good. I went to the beach in the morning and alternated reading on a towel and splashing around in the water. I have my choice of several types of beaches in this area with the further away ones being the best. I opted for a close, small one on the James River rather than going all the way to Virginia Beach to get on the Atlantic Ocean itself. I think it was a good choice because it was very quite, just me at one end and a guy fishing at the other. He struck up a conversation for a bit after he went up to the parking lot and saw my motorcycle as he also rides, but other than that we just left each other to our own relaxation.
I bought a Nook HD+. I have a Nook simple touch, an eink reader, that I absolutely love. I've been debating getting a tablet computer but don't know that I need one so couldn't justify the expense. This week only Barnes and Noble is having an amazing sale on their Nook tablets, a 40% or more price drop across the board that I found too good to pass up. I don't like walled gardens and Barnes and Noble has always been more open in what you can put on the tablets than either Amazon with its Kindle or Apple with the ipads. Something like a Galaxy or Nexus just running a straight Android OS would be the best, but they are way more expensive, Barnes and Noble recently opened the Nooks up to the Google Play store which made them way more open and almost as good as a straight Android build, and I can always root it back to the original Android OS if I decide I want to do that so at the current price there was just no reason not to go with a Nook. I ordered it offline and it should arrive today. I hope yesterday's storm and power outage didn't slow things up because I really want to play with my new toy. Maybe I could use it to reply to all the comments!
Any BBC Radio fans remember a while back when I posted a link to a tweet from a BBC Radio publicist saying they'd have another Neil Gaiman thing soon for fans of Neverwhere? We now know what it is and I'm a bit disappointed. Gaiman has a new book out this upcoming Tuesday (The Ocean at the End of the Lane) and I'm very much looking forward to reading it. It will be the Book at Bedtime reading sometime in July (exact dates unknown to me). I usually shy away from the Book at Bedtime readings because I prefer dramatizations over readings and because they are typically heavily abridged and if I want a reading, I want all of it. Gaiman has said the narrator is "a fantastic, wonderful, award-winning, perfect, top-of-the-line actor," but the name hasn't been revealed yet. If it is someone really good, I might give the program a listen, and I'll probably download it to have it just in case no matter what, but I'll have already read the book by the time the reading airs so I doubt I'll listen to it anytime soon.
Source for the news generally and the Gaiman quote, also includes a summary of the new novel
Other than that, my yesterday was good. I went to the beach in the morning and alternated reading on a towel and splashing around in the water. I have my choice of several types of beaches in this area with the further away ones being the best. I opted for a close, small one on the James River rather than going all the way to Virginia Beach to get on the Atlantic Ocean itself. I think it was a good choice because it was very quite, just me at one end and a guy fishing at the other. He struck up a conversation for a bit after he went up to the parking lot and saw my motorcycle as he also rides, but other than that we just left each other to our own relaxation.
I bought a Nook HD+. I have a Nook simple touch, an eink reader, that I absolutely love. I've been debating getting a tablet computer but don't know that I need one so couldn't justify the expense. This week only Barnes and Noble is having an amazing sale on their Nook tablets, a 40% or more price drop across the board that I found too good to pass up. I don't like walled gardens and Barnes and Noble has always been more open in what you can put on the tablets than either Amazon with its Kindle or Apple with the ipads. Something like a Galaxy or Nexus just running a straight Android OS would be the best, but they are way more expensive, Barnes and Noble recently opened the Nooks up to the Google Play store which made them way more open and almost as good as a straight Android build, and I can always root it back to the original Android OS if I decide I want to do that so at the current price there was just no reason not to go with a Nook. I ordered it offline and it should arrive today. I hope yesterday's storm and power outage didn't slow things up because I really want to play with my new toy. Maybe I could use it to reply to all the comments!
Any BBC Radio fans remember a while back when I posted a link to a tweet from a BBC Radio publicist saying they'd have another Neil Gaiman thing soon for fans of Neverwhere? We now know what it is and I'm a bit disappointed. Gaiman has a new book out this upcoming Tuesday (The Ocean at the End of the Lane) and I'm very much looking forward to reading it. It will be the Book at Bedtime reading sometime in July (exact dates unknown to me). I usually shy away from the Book at Bedtime readings because I prefer dramatizations over readings and because they are typically heavily abridged and if I want a reading, I want all of it. Gaiman has said the narrator is "a fantastic, wonderful, award-winning, perfect, top-of-the-line actor," but the name hasn't been revealed yet. If it is someone really good, I might give the program a listen, and I'll probably download it to have it just in case no matter what, but I'll have already read the book by the time the reading airs so I doubt I'll listen to it anytime soon.
Source for the news generally and the Gaiman quote, also includes a summary of the new novel