Would you like to have a whollotta text-based cheat sheets available any time right from a terminal? Me too.

Enter Cheat

Just type “cheat sheets” to see what sheets are available…

How come I never heard of this? Very, very handy.

It sounds crazy, but I’ve never read any of the Harry Potter books. I just haven’t been interested. Late last night I finished reading Bad Monkeys - the first complete book read via the Kindle - and enjoyed it so much that I thought I’d find something new. For some reason Harry Potter came to mind. Surprisingly, it wasn’t available for the Kindle. At first I assumed that this was a crazy oversight by Amazon, but it turns out that Rowlings has never allowed any of the Harry Potter books to be published in electronic form. Whaaaat?!

According to this article…

Her objection is more philosophical than mechanical. Her books are written in longhand and she has long favored having them read unplugged as well.

Rowlings seems to want to dictate how I enjoy her work by limiting its access. I don’t think so. There are something like, oh, a gazillion other books available to me (92,000 via the Kindle currently, and climbing) so I think I’ll just move along.

With so few people reading as it is, it seems shameful for an author to deliberately limit her audience for “philosophical reasons.” Yes, I know I could just buy the book, but you know what I mean. I don’t like it.

How can you not love Christopher Walken?

My Kindle arrived last week, finally, and I’ll cut to the chase: I love it.

What a relief the Kindle turned out to be! Scoble and others trashed it in their reviews. Amazon’s own ratings are still hovering at 3 stars. I was worried that I’d made a mistake. I didn’t. The Kindle is terrific. Following are some notes after a few days of using it. I’ll split them into pros and cons to keep things easy.

Pros

• The screen is awesome. The e-ink screen makes reading for extended periods no problem at all. Much better than on a laptop or PDA. It really does look like a printed page. My daughter’s boyfriend thought the screen was covered with a printed sticker when first seeing it. Just because you can read on a PDA or your iPhone doesn’t mean you should.

• WhisperNet and the Amazon Store. The wireless is free, but is going to cost me a fortune. Buying books could hardly be easier. I’ve also sent other documents and books to the special Kindle email address and (for a dime) they are converted and automatically delivered to the device.

• No computer required. I think having my pleasure reading and computing completely separate is a good thing.

• 200 books in my bag. Having access to so many books in one place is not unique to the Kindle, but damn it’s handy just the same.

• No Growl support. What I mean is, no interruption support. And no silly social networky nonsense. Just reading.

• Reading in bed. The Kindle is better than a book for reading in bed. I typically read hardcovers - big ones, and reading them in bed is a pain in the ass. Turning pages is a chore, and no matter which way I position myself, I always get uncomfortable after just a few minutes. Now, all of my books are exactly the same size, and it’s a good size. I hold the Kindle by the lower left corner and turn pages with my thumb. Perfect.

• Battery life. The battery lasts forever, or at least quite a while, especially with wireless turned off.

• Dictionary everywhere. Select a line, click a button and the definition of every word on that line pops right up. I just may tackle Infinite Jest again. Nah.

Cons

• Those damn page buttons. It took me three days to learn how not to turn the page accidentally. The problem is that the buttons are positioned perfectly when reading, but horribly when handling. Either way, there’s got to be a better design

• The case. The case included with the Kindle blows. It’s barely suitable for storage and traveling but that’s it. I’m looking forward to after market folks coming up with something better.

• The UI. I don’t care for the UI, and I really don’t like the lag. Again, this is only an issue when using it for things other than reading.

• DRM. I almost didn’t mention DRM at all, since I’ll probably never notice it. Like iTunes, DRM done reasonably well is a non-issue for me. I’ve been buying music from iTunes for years and have yet to notice it. But since DRM is, philosophically at least, evil, I’ll list it.

Notice I didn’t spend a lot of time discussing what the Kindle doesn’t have. I don’t see the point of that, since what it doesn’t have is mostly moot. Other, similar devices don’t have them either for the most part. I’ll leave lamenting missing imaginary features to others.

Conclusion

As I said at the beginning, I love my Kindle. It’s not nearly as ugly as I thought it would be based on the photos. But, it is a version 1.0 product that could use a number of improvements. It’s also a version 1.0 product that is disruptive, highly useful, and like nothing else I’ve seen or used.

If you’re a gadget head first and a reader second, you may not like it as much because you’ll always be lamenting the things it doesn’t do. On the other hand, if you primarly love reading, the Kindle does reading very very well. So, for people like me, it’s wonderful. I’ll be first in line for version 2.0.

I use Safari now, so I don’t get the fabulous Web Developer Firefox plugin unless I go way out of my way. There’s no replacement that works with Safari, but Allan Jardine’s Design bookmarklet does give us some nice tools.

Design is a suite of web-design and development assistive tools which can be utilised on any web-page. Encompassing utilities for grid layout, measurement and alignment, Design is a uniquely powerful JavaScript bookmarklet.

Growing up, we didn’t live near water but we spent much of our time seeking it out. Every weekend and 4 weeks every summer were spent traveling, camping or boating. Usually all three.

There were a few smaller boats when I was very young, but the one I remember most was a 1975 22’ Sea Ray. I found a couple photos of her taken during the early 80s.

My family took that boat everywhere. I recall trips from Saugatuck up the west coast of Michigan all the way to Mackinac Island and beyond. We’d stop along the way at any port or small island that looked interesting. I would go ashore and wander alone for hours in tiny towns and on empty beaches. Many nights I’d sleep below in the tiny v-berth, waking up to gentle waves and oppressive heat. There was fishing, skiing, scuba diving, tubing, and on and on. It was awesome. In later years I’d take her out with friends and we’d always find girls who wanted a ride. Turns out girls liked boats, and guys who drove them. Go figure.

My folks bought a place in Florida some years ago and the boat has stayed there since. I don’t recall the last time I rode in it, which is unfortunate, because today she, finally, stopped running for good. After long discussions with a local mechanic and boat guy, my dad decided not to repair her this time. She’s being scrapped for parts

32 years is a pretty good run. My dad is a little sad and I suppose I am too. Silly maybe, but it feels like the end of an era. A good era.

James Russell has a piece at Luminous Landscape called Leica M8 Revisited. The reason I bring it up is that I want one. I mean really want one.

Shooting the Leica is like going out with Pamela Anderson. The camera keeps saying you can make me clean, cook, raise the kids, but I won’t be very good at it., though if you let me do what I’m good at you’ll be very happy.

Even without the Pam Anderson bit, I know what he means. My old film M6 was the most amazing piece of gear I’ve ever fondled held. I miss it. Going through my photos from that period reminds me how much I loved that stupid, expensive, manual-focus beauty.

Mr. Russell knows what I mean…

50% of everything I shoot with it is not in real tack focus, 50% has too much noise, 50% has surprise framing, but no camera I have ever used has touched me so deeply.

So the plan has been to sell the entire Canon kit and shoot with my little GRD II for a while to sort of sweep away the cobwebs. I thought I was going to revisit things later, perhaps with a 5D, but I think maybe deep inside I’ve been missing the Leica, and that can’t go on forever.

Thought #1. At what point does the quantity-over-quality value proposition of user-generated content so overwhelm us with with crap that quality content becomes impossible to find? Seems it may have already happened.

Thought #2. Something feels wrong when the value of a viral video becomes more important than the rights of those of artists and authors whose work was used to create it.

In the fall of 1980 I was a junior in high school. I was a good student, but had recently discovered girls, whiskey, and loud rock music. Girls were seldom available and drinking whiskey was illegal, so my time and attention was taken over by the music. 1980 was a great year to be a metal fan. We had Ozzy, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and others all really hitting their strides.

But there was nothing more important than Led Zeppelin. By 1980, Led Zeppelin was not referred to as “The Biggest Band in the World” as much and folks seemed to consider them obsolete. That hardly mattered to my circle of friends. One of the first four Zeppelin records could always be found in the car’s tape deck.

No doubt “Led Zeppelin II” was in the tape deck here.

In the fall of that year, the newly-opened Joe Louis Arena was to play host to the midwest leg of Zeppelin’s US tour, October 29th and 30th. We bought tickets for the 29th. This was huge for me, as it would’ve been my second real rock concert. The first was Rush (the Permanent Waves tour) earlier that year in Kalamazoo, MI.

We all know what happened next. Drummer John Bonham died on Sept. 25th. The rest of the tour was cancelled. A few friends and I wore black armbands to school the next day to commemorate. It may have seemed a silly thing to do at the time, but considering that we’d never really get another chance to see them perform live, I think it was appropriate.

Anyway, it was great to see that recent reunion show in London was so universally loved. Wish I could have been there. If they tour, I’m going, no matter where I have to travel.

Even though I recently purchased every one of their albums from iTunes, right now I’m listening to Led Zeppelin II on vinyl, as it should be.

Thanks Mr. Gruber for pointing out this interview with David Foster Wallace.

That’s one of the things, structurally, that’s going on. It’s actually structured like something called a Sierpinski Gasket, which is a very primitive kind of pyramidical fractal, although what was structured as a Sierpinski Gasket was the first- was the draft that I delivered to Michael in ‘94, and it went through some I think ‘mercy cuts’, so it’s probably kind of a lopsided Sierpinski Gasket now. But it’s interesting, that’s one of the structural ways that it’s supposed to kind of come together.