Angry Robot

Magic Books

The web and news readers

I use a newsreader heavily. I am much more likely to subscribe to sites with fewer posts. I still read sites with mega-heavy numbers of posts (newspapers, pro blogs), but I go to them on the web, and I don’t try and be a completist or anything.

Google reader is what I use now, as it syncs effortlessly between the multiple machines I use. I sort feeds into ‘A’ and ‘B’ lists, where the A list contains only must-reads, and the B list can have “mark all as read” inflicted upon it with the minimum of hesitation. I also have some collections organized by topic (if I’m researching a project) that come and go as needed. My news reader time is usually short, fast and found in between other tasks, and is essentially the activity of gathering. I do my reading elsewhere.

Instapaper

Anything more than a few paragraphs gets sent here. It’s amazing how quickly Instapaper went from “why would I want that” to “I cannot live without this thing”. It has three interfaces I use: the web-based text version, which in a pinch is great to strip out unnecessary distractions from your articles (there’s also readability); the iPhone version, which is beautiful; and the Kindle export feature. You can make a version of your Instapaper cue that will display on the Kindle or other e-readers, and that’s the interface I prefer.

E-reader

I’m now using ephemera to get my Instapaper articles onto the Kindle, where they join newspapers, magazines, and books. So the Kindle becomes the ideal reading tool.

Essentially, it’s ideal because of e-ink, which is almost as nice to read as paper – let’s call it better than a trade paperback, but inferior to a nicely-designed hardcover. The important point, though, is that it’s far superior to reading from a backlit LCD display. Reading from a light source is always going to cause more eye strain, and after spending all day staring at LCDs, I have no desire to read that way for fun.

It’s also awesome because of the size, both in comparison to to most books, and certainly in comparison to a whole shelf of books, which is what you can fit on it. And it’s more portable than any electronic device other than a phone – it’s smaller and lighter than iPads, netbooks, etc.

I’ve really come to love what Amazon calls “whispersync” – you have to pronounce that in a whisper – which is essentially the syncing of last page read that occurs between the Kindle hardware and its software incarnations. For me, the crucial bit is the iPhone app: if I didn’t bring my bag on a given day I can still read my book on my phone.

Finally, it is a dedicated reading device. It doesn’t play movies, post to twitter, or run Doom. This means it is pleasantly distraction-free: the only thing that may pull you away from your book is another book, or – God help you – the newspaper.

(A bit of an aside: While I love the Kindle, I’m certainly not married to it and there are a number of e-readers either out now or soon to be released that all seem similarly compelling – that’s why I titled this section ‘e-reader’, as I don’t imagine it’s Kindle-specific. But I’m not sold on the iPad or any LCD tablet as a Kindle replacement, because of the lack of an e-ink display.)

Audiobooks, podcasts

I hate gyms and don’t play any sports, so I realized I had to do some sort of exercise to avoid a rapid descent to morbid obesity. I settled on walking to work every day (takes about 50 minutes), and soon realized that this was a great opportunity to do some reading – through the earholes. Audible is a great service, and their books are available through iTunes. Free podcasts are a decent way to keep up with news, indulge nerd obsessions, or even learn something (I’m looking at you, Hardcore History).

Calibre

Calibre is an ugly but powerful free app for Mac/PC that functions as iTunes for books (that sounds a lot less snappy now that iBooks are a reality and they are managed by iTunes). Calibre will manage your ebook collection, converting between formats, and copying files to and from your e-reader. One slick trick it can do is convert a bunch of news feeds to ebook form. It can do this on a schedule. So you can use it to subscribe to those newspapers and magazines that offer their content for free on their website.

It can also function as a server for your books, and as I understand it Stanza on the iPhone will function as a client – but I have yet to try this feature myself.

More books, more problems

The biggest beef with this stuff is incompatibility. One of the greatest things I’ve seen the normally regressive big media industry do is the “digital copy” that gets included with some Blu-Ray and DVD hard copies. I know it’s designed to disincentivize the theoretically illegal and certainly DRM-bypassing ripping of said hard copy, but it is an important concession of a point I think all consumers instinctively feel: when you buy the thing, you are entitled to shift formats. So I feel like you should get a digital copy of a book plus the audiobook with purchase of a hard copy. And digital copies should work across all readers, just as the digital music industry has settled, after much tumult, on mp3. Right now every major commercial ebook format is DRM-laden and thus compatibility-challenged and future-averse. Haven’t we learned this lesson already? Can’t we just skip ahead to seamless digital abundance?

All that said, with the appearance of tablets like the iPad, and an explosion of dedicated e-readers coming to market, and the viability of whole print-based industries in question, it’s bound to be a rocky yet thrilling decade for the reading enthusiast.

Lost Season Six Episode Thirteen, "The Final Recruit"

What’s going on with Sun? Her aphasia is either TV’s lamest plot twist or part of something yet to be explained. Why does she say that Locke caused the problem, and in the alternaverse how does she know he’s Mr Bad Man? One answer is that there is some bleeding of consciousness from one universe to another going on, as with Des (or with the other characters when confronted by death or love). Now, in these split-consciousness cases, what is the chronology? It is looking increasingly possible that they have seen more of one or both timelines than we have right now.

I’m used to watching Lost and making little mental notes of when things may not be how they appear to be – when there could be events missing between time cuts, when a character may know more than they let on, etc. etc. In this episode, there was plenty of that. But of course we’re running out of time for a) the writers to wrap up existing mysteries, and especially b) the writers to create any new mysteries. So I’m not going to read too much into any of the little ellipses in this episode.

Here’s hoping the writers don’t actually wrap up too many little details, as it’s more fun the more open-ended they are. I thought they did a fairly decent job of this in season five; the details of the Man in Black’s manipulations are left for the viewer to review – especially the things he did as Christian Shephard (“you’re going to have to move the island,” “you’re going to have to die, John”), which they’re only getting around to clarifying now.

A stupid little thing: in the ABC promo last week for this episode, there was a muzzle flash in a shot of Sayid with the gun (implying he shot Des). We actually nerded out freeze-frame style on the spot and thought there was something fishy about how it looked. Sure enough, in this episode, Sayid doesn’t fire at all. So we can pretty much assume Des is still alive and it was YAN Lost Character Death Fakeout.

Proposal: Locke wants to go over to Hydra island not because he wants to take the plane and the candidates off-island, but because he wants to use the electro-magnetic shocker shack to zap all of them permanently into the alternaverse. (I’m sure he’d like to kill Widmore and his nerds, too.)

Finally, what happened to Jacob? He’s been absent for what, three episodes now? In his absence, Des seems to have picked up the slack, with heavy duty interventions in the alternaverse and even a possible de-zombifying of Sayid (remember it was Jacob’s order to bring Sayid to the temple in the first place). Not sure what that means. Shit, I might as well wrap up every post with that sentence.

Shoot Em Up Spot

Say, I made this promo that I like. You may like it too, if you like shooting. The movie airs tomorrow night on Space.

Lost Season Six, Episode Twelve "Everybody Loves Hugo"

I got in a heated conversation with a fella at work (whose opinions I generally respect) about the Ilana detonation scene. I loved it; Juice and I reacted viscerally, and then laughed. My co-worker hated it – thought it was cheap, saw it coming, they had done it before, etc. etc. I took more of an issue with some clunky dialogue – “I guess that explains The Whispers” or whatever – and how rushed Hugo’s acceptance of the alternaverse seemed toward the end. But I loved other moments, including pretty much everything with fake Locke and Desmond, in both worlds.

The episode moved the plot ahead nicely. The remaining candidates are now in Locke’s camp, ready to be tempted. There wasn’t a whole lot of food for thought, though; there were only two things worth marinatin’ on for a minute. One, the kid appeared again, the one that cropped up in The Substitute, when he appeared to Locke and Sawyer, telling Locke “you know the rules, you can’t kill him.” This time he appears to have dark hair. Why does the boy have a different colour of hair now? Who is he? Smart money’s on Jacob or the MIB, though as reincarnation or ghost, I don’t know.

The other thing that seemed to merit some reflection was the final scene, in which alterna-Des alterna-runs over alterna-Locke. It does indeed seem that Widmore had more detailed instructions for him than we got to see last week. But is he trying to kill Locke (as I thought) or trying to give him a near-death experience (as Noel Murray at the AV Club thought )? Or is he trying to force an encounter between Jack and Locke, when Locke goes in to the hospital? One thing’s for sure: heavy alternaverse shit is going to go down at what we must assume is alternaverse LA’s only hospital, as Claire, Sun and Jin, Jack and now Locke (with Ben accompaniment?) are all going to be there. Will Aaron be born? Will Jack save Locke’s life? etc. etc.

Speaking of Aaron, here’s some speculation I was working on before this episode: why is the Man in Black as yet nameless? It’s starting to get awkward. Things are often left out in Lost because the writers are saving them for a big reveal. So, perhaps there is something dramatic about his name. Two theories: 1. he and Jacob are the same person, 2. his name is Aaron (or someone else we have already met).

The Aaron theory holds up well when you consider the conversation MIB has with Kate about his mother earlier in the season – he could be talking about Claire, or Kate, or someone else (we don’t know yet who raises Aaron). I’m not sure however that a) all the details really make sense and b) the writers want to go back to time travel paradox loop territory. I personally hope they do, I loved season 5.