Live or Memorex?

I've always been fascinated by technology and how we both we communicate with each other through it but also how it shapes what we say. So when the Kindle 2 came out and it was a product that people were really engaging in, I immediately thought about how does this affect poetry. We know it's a medium for novels and prose text, but what about the poem? Since I still had the layout files for Kali's Blade, I decided to transform the book into Kindle form. Because if I really want to know how this medium changes the face of poetry, I might as well dive right into it.

And not only put it up on Amazon, but also sell it at the special price of $0.99. Unlike the web, which shaped language, the Kindle brings about another important avenue for authors, the price of poetry. How does interacting with poetry on your iPhone change the experience? How does not having physical media to print change how authors make their work accessible to the public? And is the public willing to pay for it? If so, how much?

We know a good poetry book from a small press might sell 100 copies. 1000 copies would be astounding! But even author's who get their texts on their friend's reading course lists will be lucky to hit 1000 copies sold. Let's be honest. Plus how much of the actual cost of the book does an author really get? Not much because of the labor of production. But how many copies could you sell on-line for the right price? And while less and less people have room for shelves, there is growing storage on their computers. But do we want to interact with poetry through technology?

Right now Amazon isn't charging people to put their books on Kindle, so any price is a good price for now, but I suspect like the cuts publishers and distributor's take on paper books, how much Amazon eventually charges will affect the profitability of all of it. And since we're talking business, what of the publisher's, small print distributor's, and book stores? And even the non-businesses like Libraries? Imagine that libraries truly simply become cafes with reading tablets, instead of vast halls of books.

I'm not judging right or wrong, good or bad, I'm simply exploring possibilities. I've already had some lively exchanges with Jean and I'm looking forward to having lively exchanges with any of you!

Kindle Edition (will be up in a few days)


or

Print Edition

i want one

I got this vid from Guro Rocky.

The first half of the video is super impressive with the guy standing on the umbrella like a tightrope walker and the splitting of the watermelon. The 2nd half whacking the heavy bag wasn't that impressive.

Which brings me to this weekend's Kali seminar on Canes. We already train to be able to use the regular umbrellas which can be utilized in many nasty choky, joint lock, strangling ways. And this is just the $5 umbrella you get at the store. Frankly, I'd like to replicate the watermelon slicing and dicing at home. I wonder how heavy it is.

fuzzy logic

One of the things on our wedding registry 2.5 years ago was a fuzzy logic rice cooker. A fuzzy logic rice cooker is a high tech device with numerous settings for different kinds of rice from sushi, to regular, to porridge or just steaming or reheating.

The rice cooker basically stayed boxed at my mother's house in their garage. But as we are making way to make space for various cooking items and the fact that my cousin's roommate is taking off with their household rice cooker, we decided to pull out and finally use our wedding gift and hand off our old rice cooker.

I think we waited this long partially because we were scared of the thing. What do you mean you don't just push the button?

The rice cooker came with a rice recipe book with all sorts of stuff to make with the cooker. I haven't really been into the cooking mode lately, but the new cooker and recipe book have got me excited to try some new recipes.

For now, we are cooking an inaugural 2 cups of basmati rice and we'll see where it goes from here.

point and shoot

We've been looking to get a new point and shoot camera for a while now. We bought our last one about 4-5 years ago. It's still a good camera, but it is feeling slow and doesn't take as good of a resolution as the newer ones right now.

We have the hubby's real cameras, then we have the point and shoot what is nice and pocket sized so we can take pictures whenever inspiration strikes, which is nice. It's like a writer needing a pen everywhere they go. Our point and shoot has gone to New York, LA, Europe. A nice workhorse of a camera.

It's easy enough to buy a 8Megapixel camera for less than $300. Our 4MP cost that much 4 years ago. I tended to like the Olympus brand and had several very good cameras that were Olympus, but unfortunately their P&S were heading the way of the Sonys, the ultra thin with huge viewing screens. I'm not exactly sure who likes that, but I sure don't. Every time I tried to pick on up, I couldn't figure out where to put my hand and fingers to grip in. Am I supposed to delicately hold it between the thumb and forefinger of each hand with my pinkies sticking out? And how do I do that without it slipping through my fingers? And how am I supposed to do it with one hand?

From experience I know that we often hold the camera out at strange angles and just click, just to see what we get. And I don't think I could hold most of those cameras with one hand without smudging up the screen doing it. I love technology, but I most hate crappy design that prevents me from using the technology well. I don't need a smaller thinner camera, I need one that I can grip with one hand without getting a hand cramp!

So we settled for the Canon Powershot that (after the discount that the guy gave us to guilt trip us into buying a warranty that we still refused) was less than $200. A great deal!

Unfortunately, the store we went to had a lot of variety but none of the Nikon brand the hubby holds most dear. We do like to stay within the brand family. And we do like to stay with name brands that have traditionally been photography companies, so no Sony or Panasonic. Kodak is probably the only exception (and this is only because they were the last to get into the digital game and their first ones sucked; I don't know if that's still the case).

The Canon Powershot A720 IS still used AA batteries! (whoo-hoo!) While the others are running off of the Lithium batteries that run longer and hold more charge, for us they are not a good thing when we want to travel. When we travel, we don't want to remember if we recharged the camera, much less find a place to recharge the camera properly. And frankly, if you're desperate, you can get AA batteries everywhere in the world. And it's easy enough for us to have a stock of recharged rechargeable AA batteries with us. I know manufacturers are moving away from that as well, but like the rest of this post, obviously I dislike much of the direction of the P&S camera world right now.

In any case, I'm quite happy with what we got and it fulfills our biggest sell points: feels good in the hand/easy to grip, AA batteries, 8MP, good price. The pictures are pretty darn decent, especially the macros and the digital zoom ain't bad. The flash is really strong, so I don't know how long it will take to diminish the batteries using that, which is fine cuz we like using natural light whenever possible.

For accessories we got one of those small flexible tripods that you can wrap around anything, rather than precariously sit the camera on some ledge as well as a 2GB SD card. It's amazing that there's 2GB on something slightly larger than the SIM card in a phone. (That's postage stamp for folks unfamiliar with SIM cards). The guy tells us it'll hold about 600 photos one one card. The hubby then looks at me and asks, "Is that enough?" This coming from a guy who shot some thousands of photos on our 3 week trip to Europe. Um, 600 should be quite sufficient for me. Thanks!

Geeked out goodness

I'm a geek and I love tech stuff. A friend sent me a link to this shirt:


It doesn't just glow, it actually tells you the strength of a nearby wifi router!

[quizzical blank looks abound]

Well, like I IM'd to my friend, wear this shirt and you'll be the "envy of all Geekdom"!