Hello World (from WinPhone7)

I have been mulling over re-starting a blog again. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is listening, does it matter at all?

Locked Out

I managed to lock myself out last week. Using various means, I managed to break-in to my own house without doing any damage. The scenario has crossed my mind more than once and I had previously placed several back-up plans in place (like back-up keys), but this time I had locked my door with a chain from the inside, so I had to improvise the final step.

I have always wanted to learn how to pick locks. Just like Feynman.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

I’ve been on a reading spree with my Kindle app on my Windows Phone 7.  I finished reading “En Route: A Paramedic’s Stories of Life, Death, and Everything in Between” last week.  It was an entertaining little book—a very easy read, as each chapter was essentially an anecdote written in colloquial English.  There wasn’t much of an end to the book, and it seemed to lose its purpose near the end.  I rated it a 4 stars out of 5 on my Kindle page (though it seems others are rating it higher, I didn’t feel it deserved a 5).  A worthy book for casual reading.

For my next book, I decided to take advantage of all the free classics and out-of-copyright pre-1923 eBooks available.  There are so many famous classic novels out there for which I have never read the full-text, and it makes me feel somewhat ignorant and unlearned.  As I perused the classics list, my eye happened across “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, and I knew that I had found my next book.

I first heard of the character “Dorian Gray” in the movie “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”.  It was not a well-received film by the critics, but, in keeping with my history of liking bad superhero movies, I really liked the movie, and was intrigued by the character of Dorian Gray.

The book was awesome.   5/5!  It’s a short little book (20 chapters) that was full of plot and intrigue.  It took me a week to get through it.  For a book written in the 1890s, it was a pretty easy read (though nowhere near as easy as “En Route”).  I remember trying to read some Dickens books back in high school and finding my mind wandering more often then not.  The book is laced with great quotable quotes (mostly from the colourful character of Lord Henry Wotton).  It is an extremely colourful and descriptive book (too much so at times—there were a couple chapters in the middle that seemed to go on and on about nothing; my only complaint).  If you read up on the life of its author, Oscar Wilde, (who apparently really only wrote this one novel), it all makes sense.  (As Wikipedia states, the book was not well received when it first came out, due to its strong “homoerotic overtones”.)

I am quite pleased I managed to get a book written in a pre-twentieth century book under my belt—that hasn’t happened since I was in high school over ten years ago.  :)  I’m looking forward to my next Kindle book already.

Word

Saw this today and immediately thought of VP.  lol

Is it sad that the only person I recognize in that picture is Snoop Dogg?

Kindle for WP7

I never bought into the whole Kindle craze, as I felt that a dedicated device to reading books would never work, and I’m also not crazy about flipping virtual pages in an e-book.  I also can’t remember the last time I read a book from cover-to-cover (6 months ago?)—there’s just too much other stuff competing for my attention these days.  I do still head to the library at least once a month, mainly to catch up on magazines and the like.  I also put books on hold and check books out, but I’ve been short on time and motivation to actually bite into them.  (I have 6 books checked-out at the moment, and only partially dug into one—that’s been renewed twice already.)

Nevertheless, I did install the Kindle app on my iPhone last April (2010), and downloaded two free eBooks: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and Living Organized: Proven Steps for a Clutter-Free and Beautiful Home.  But after reading a couple chapters of the latter, I found that I wasn’t too keen on reading on the 3.5” 320x480 screen, so I left it at that.  (One thing I did really like about it though—it remembers where you were!  No more bookmarks!  Imagine that—an entire industry getting replaced by software.)

Anyhow, I’ve been playing with my new Windows Phone 7 a lot over the past two months, and they announced the new Windows Phone 7 Kindle app last week, I thought I’d give it another shot—this time one my 4” 480x800 super AMOLED Samsung Focus.

It’s actually not half-bad.  It took me a bit to get used to the WP7 Kindle app’s UX gestures—apparently you can tap the side of the screen to flip the page instead of having to swipe (nice!), and you can bookmark/flag a page by “folding down” the corner of the page.

I also discovered Amazon’s Top 100 Kindle eBooks (and apps), which has their top 100 free books too.  In short order, I found I had downloaded 30+ books from the list.  Naturally, there were many “classics” that I’ll probably never read in my lifetime, just because they’re so dense.  Looking at the “collection” at http://kindle.amazon.com afterwards, I can start to see the virtual analogue to having a bookcase full of books to stare at.  It’s nice.  I can see why some have tried to digitize their book collections.

The book I dug into this morning was rated #11 on the top 100 free list: En Route: A Paramedic’s Stories of Life, Death, and Everything In Between.  I don’t know if the current app lets you do this, but on the website you could leave notes for yourself (or others).  There’s some pretty neat potential there.

I’m about 1/10th of the way through this book.  Who knows if I’ll finish, but I think I’ll definitely try to steal more time away from playing useless games on my phone now and more time reading books(as opposed to random, poorly written, news articles).

[And in case you were wondering: yes, I’m still too cheap to go buy books—forget digital e-books!  I imagine someone (Amazon?) must come up with a concept analogous to a library soon.  If not that, then maybe something like Netflix, were you can subscribe for time-limited book collection reading.]

Sherlock

My sis pointed me to this BBC TV series “Sherlock”, which she described as a mix of CSI, House, Chuck, and British comedy.  (“It is so YOU,” she said.)  It’s a modern take at how Holmes would be in the 21st century, using tools at his disposal like an iPhone, a forensics lab, and text messaging.  (And Watson blogs!)  The acting is pretty good, especially the awkwardness of Holmes.

They’ve only produced the first season, comprising of three 90 minute episodes, and they’re all available for viewing online at PBS.org for a limited time (until Dec. 27).  I managed to watch all three, and they’re actually pretty good, sprinkled with occasional moments of pure screenwriting genius.  A worthwhile way to spend your extra holiday hours.

I look forward to watching the next season (available next fall).  Thanks, sis.

Spring Cleaning

I was doing a little spring cleaning Saturday (yes, I know it’s almost winter).  I’m a bit of a hoarder, and I’ve been trying to be better at throwing away stuff this year.  Here’s two things I came across.

• I found my college poster of “The Gashlycrumb Tinies” by Edward Gorey!  I was wondering where that went.  I’ll have to buy a poster frame for this to hang on my wall.  I love this poster.
• My Pentax Optio 230 point-and-shoot camera (2 MP) cost CAN$449+tax back in 08/2002.  Wow!  I still have this camera and shoot with it once in a while.  It had this 30 sec movie mode (no sound) and a flip out screen.  Quite novel back in the day.  Nowadays you can get a much improved P&S for less than a couple hundred dollars.  It’s amazing how tech has improved over the last decade.