Comments | athelind: In Which Your Obedient Serpent Discovers Something Dangerous

athelind

In Which Your Obedient Serpent Discovers Something Dangerous

Mar 26, 2010 10:53

The single biggest reason I've avoided e-books is comfortMost PDF e-books are formatted in a portrait layout-tall and skinny. Most computer screens are oriented landscape-wise-short and wide, and these days, even wider ( Read more... )

sci fi, motivation, the revolution will be digitized, book

Comments 16

the_gneech March 26 2010, 18:27:08 UTC

Actually, one of the reasons I'm interested in the iPad is because it'd be a handy way to take, say, a favored blogger up to read at bedtime.

-TG

pen_umbra March 26 2010, 18:35:17 UTC

Wow, thanks! I just like paper, personally. I can't ever give up books.

athelind March 26 2010, 18:55:59 UTC

Oh, neither can I.

On the other claw, my Hoard Impulse (reflected in the boxes and boxes of books in quelonzia's garage has long clashed with my Life Should Be Portable impulse (shaped by years of traveling in an RV, living aboard a Coast Guard Cutter, and moving as much as eight times in an 18 month span).

Cramming my entire library into an OmniTome has been a Holy Grail for me since the days when a Macintosh Apple was a good source of vitamins and fiber. If I could just turn a decent wardrobe and a comfortable bed into something EQUALLY portable, I'd just sling it all over my shoulder and start walking.

threegoldfish March 26 2010, 19:24:30 UTC

You might want to check out Calibre. It converts pretty much every ebook format into every ebook format (so say if you have a Kindle file and want to read it on your Sony machine) and it also converts PDFs. I find that depending on the coding on the PDF, it can lead to a decent file or gobblygook, but it's really useful pretty much everything else and you can set your output style to best match your machine.

cpxbrex March 26 2010, 19:38:42 UTC

Dood! It was ONE BOOK I didn't like! I mean, okay, I really, really didn't like it and don't intend to read anything he writes every again but I had no intention whatsoever of bring up my personal feelings about Little Brother! ;)

And I'm only sorta a socialist. For progressive post-democratic movement to work, I feel that it must find a way to outreach to the middle class in constructive, non-violent ways. Which definitely means deconstructing media that enhance middle class privilege, yes, but once a person understand that, hey, fantasy is fantasy. I don't judge what other people like (except when I'm feeling cranky, but then I feel bad about it afterward) just what I don't like. So, go ahead, knock yourself out. I don't see the appeal, but I don't have to! :)

athelind March 26 2010, 21:22:40 UTC

Yeah, but I knew that throwing the footnote in there would get something interesting out of you!

cpxbrex March 26 2010, 22:06:32 UTC

You could have just asked. ;)

athelind March 27 2010, 04:52:28 UTC

But it's so fun to watch you sputter!

araquan March 26 2010, 19:58:41 UTC

I think the biggest problem for me is not the formatting so much as the light. I like a bright computer screen for the contrast it can provide, but I also spend time looking away when not immediately keying something in. The result is a good balance for me.

But reading a book is another matter- the eyes tend to want to be on the page all the time. That pretty much means a regular computer screen, LCD or not, is out. And no, adjusting the brightness doesn't help much- it goes from bright and snappy to darker and murky, which bugs me just as much after an hour or two. E-book readers negate this problem somewhat but, then you have an expensive and dedicated device. The iPad may yet combine the worst of both worlds for this particular role (though it does have wider uses than the E-readers do).

So with dead trees I will stay, for now.

athelind March 26 2010, 21:20:38 UTC

I thought the backlight problem would be more of an issue, but once I settled into reading, it never even occurred to me. If I'd had a headache or something, that might have been a different matter.

I've found that a non-white background is easier on the eyes for me, so I try to get my text editing windows as close to Cosmic Latte as I can. Now that you've reminded me, I might try setting up my PDFs with that as a background color.

araquan March 27 2010, 02:58:03 UTC

I think part of it for me is also the idea that something on a computer screen (or computer-type screen in the case of another LCD-based device) is not as... real. Aside from the eye thing, I just find it harder to mentally focus on the stuff, a problem I don't have with the printed page. I don't know if it's the mutability of most computer-based data or the distractions I'm used to having on such devices, but... There's something there that I haven't found a way to completely overcome yet.