Into The Land of Ebooks

There's a very interesting article over on Ars Technica about ebooks that is worth your time. The author, John Siracusa makes some great points about the state of the technology, the history of the ebook, and the problems with publishers. The short version is that people, be they readers or publishers just don't get ebooks.

The observations that Mr. Siracusas makes are in line with my own. I started reading on my Palm III just a few days after I got it. That device was followed by a Handspring Prism, then a Trieo 300 and a host of other devices. In 2006 I got a Sony E-Reader 500, and last year I got a Kindle from Amazon.

All along the way I tried to share my love of ebooks and my conviction that most of the dead media we consume today should be distributed in digital format. The bibliophiles have insisted that dead tree media is better, with poetic allusions to the feel and smell of paper, while the anti-DRM crowd have decried the inability to lend books to others or sell them at the used book stores. At no point in time have either camp explained why I should get my news from a dead tree copy of the New York Times, or why the planets valuable resources should be used to produce items that will be read once then thrown away.

New Year, New Start

The new year has arrived, and with it an opportunity to try new things, and retry some old things. I've been thinking about this blog again, and what my intentions had been for it. I think it was a mistake to try and combine my personal blog with a tech news blog. Too confusing for me and everyone else.

From this point on Living in the Cloud is going to focus on web tech and services. There's a lot of neat stuff out there, and I'd like to share it with my friends. For personal stuff you can find me on my trusty LiveJournal account.

Good Morning America, how are you?

The 4th of July has always been one of my favorite holidays. For the last several years the Angel and I have spent the day with our household, eating hamburgers and hot dogs, drinking and hanging out. This year it was the same, and as usual it was a whole lot of fun.

We had some guest this year. Astra came down, as did Aliskye, along with Astrither and Ericer and their kids. The only difference is that this year I didn't go along to our little park in Garden Grove for the lighting of the fireworks. I decided that a soak in the jacuzzi was more to my taste, and I was right.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to put one of my constitutional rights to work and go shooting.

Tonight I get to drive to LAX and pick up a fan at 10:20. Then I get to go to Disney at 1 AM and install the fan. Not that I'm complaining, it's what I do. I just wish I could depend on Tech Support to give me the right part information and Parts to call me back when they say they will. Honestly, if I left it up to those guys I'd never get anything done.

Spinning Wheel Goes Round and Round

The great wheel pictured above was build by my friend Philip for his wife. This is a project that he's been working on for a few month, and it's been a lot of fun to watch its progress, and even get to help a little.

As I said in my first post, Philp is about fearless when it comes to this kind of stuff, it's one of the things I admire most about him. He's also (unlike some of me I could name) really good at completing things. If this had been a project of mine I'd have half a steamer, a dozen new hand tools still in the boxes, and a stack of lumber warping in the driveway after being rained on.

It is terribly cool. He brought it to household dinner last night where it got several rounds of well deserved applause. I know I'm not the only one who's looking forward to see what he'll take on next.

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