Blessed by the Potato

I recently tried out Fictionwise, an online ebook store. Putting aside the matter of ebooks for just a sec, I think the store is rather well done. You can set up a micropay account, or pay with a credit card, and they’re pretty good about offering a large number of formats (including Acrobat in almost all cases). Considering it is an ebook they’re offering, the prices are not spectacular: I just bought 9 short stories (all by Robert J. Sawyer) for $5.50 (US); the last book of short stories I bought had 23 and cost $12.54 (including tax), so the cost per story is just about the same. Perhaps the whole business with the ink, paper, and shelf space doesn’t cost as much as one would assume… though I suspect agreements not to undercut traditional publishers has more to do with it.

I did find it somewhat awkward to browse through their catatlogue, but that was more due to the nature of browsing for books online than anything specific to Fictionwise (I have the same problems with Amazon, though at least Amazon’s default font is a bit bigger).

“Books belong to a special class of inventions that have not been much improved over the years because they are already so very good, such as with the hammer, knife, or spoon. The computer will never fully replace that.”

Unfortunately, I can’t remember where I found that quote, but it’s very true. I read a ton on my screen at work, and perhaps even more once I get home, so I don’t really have any problem with the concept of an ebook. But it will never really replace a printed book for me. I’m most comfortable reading short stories on my computer, since I find the worst part about the electronic versions (well, after the eye strain and inability to lounge around) is how hard it is to mark your place and come back to it later. That’s not to say I wouldn’t consider buying an e-novel — I have read novel-length documents off the screen, and will again — but most of my long-format reading will be done with a real book. To me, there’s an added level of inconvenience associated with a long story on the screen, so I’d expect more of a discount than what I’ve seen with the short stories (also, buying single novels takes away the convenience/choice bonus of buying individual short stories rather than the hit-and-miss assortment often seen in printed collections).

Here’s a probably-true story that might blow your mind just a bit: one of the people in my office was riding her bike at dusk last night on the trail. She was going pretty fast down a big hill, when something big hit her right in the jaw: she figures it was a bat or maybe a bird. She keeps on biking home after that. This morning taking the path, there was a dead bat on the ground, right where she said the collision happened!

I think she killed a bat with her face.

I just got a letter today saying that the price of my Rogers Extreme service will go up by $7/month (15%) starting August. Apparently, they haven’t even properly told their CSRs, who are mostly finding out from irate customers who’ve been getting these letters this week and calling to complain.

I have to wonder if Rogers is trying to kill off its extreme tier of service now. This is a substantial price increase for a fairly marginal increase in speeds (more than double upload, and almost double the cap, but only going from 5 to 6 Mbps down). They even encourage people to downgrade to the “express” tier in the notice.

Edit: that seems to be the current conspiracy theory: Rogers’ network couldn’t handle the extra upload of extreme, and throttling has largely been circumvented lately, so they’re now trying to kill off the tier (or really make people pay for the upload bandwidth & cap) by upping the downstream speed of express (it’s already where extreme was 2 years ago) and encouraging people to switch down.

Well, it’s another extreme heat alert day here in Ontario, so air conditioned buildings are opened up to the public/homeless to prevent heat stroke and the like. People are encouraged not to undertake strenuous activity outside in the sun, and all the rest that the heat entails. Far away, some debate rages over whether global warming exists at all — let alone what we should do about it.

But I’m going to talk about the heat on a more personal note. I don’t care for the heat, not at all. I used to; but then, I used to be skinny.

I’ve got a lot of trouble sleeping in the heat and humidity lately, even with my air conditioner running. Of course, with the heat this bad, I can feel the oppresive heat draft coming in through the partially opened door (only my bedroom is air conditioned, and I have to leave the door open a bit for the cat).

Beyond that, though, I’ve got to worry about what it was that got me so fat in the first place: food. The stinking heat and humidity is just destroying the food in my apartment, turning everything mouldy really quickly. I usually have a sixth sense about that sort of thing, throwing leftovers out before they ever get the chance to go really bad. But lately I’ve been seeing spots of mould forming on, and in some cases even completely taking over, my food before I get around to tossing it. Icky. Also, and perhaps even worse than the mould, is that the heat is melting all the chocolate in my kitchen. My Twix bar came apart when I opened the package, leaving me with a mediocre cookie and some gooey chocolate & caramel to lick up. I picked up a Toblerone (that I thought was on sale, but didn’t ring up as such) today, and when I took it out of the cardboard, all the little triangles went smoosh in the foil. It’s a real shame, because most chocolate isn’t as good after being melted like that and then resolidified in the freezer. I need to remember that for the future, and either keep my chocolate in the fridge in the first place, or at least in my room that is air conditioned for part of the day. (Last year, it was August before I finally started remembering to do that).

Lots of people are talking about books lately, so I was going to put up a list of the books on mine, but then it occured to me that “the medium is the message” — while it’s true that the large number of sci-fi and fantasy books would give you a pretty clear idea of my personality, the clutter and disarray of the shelf would provide an even better idea. Not only do I have some books that just don’t fit on the bit of shelf that isn’t dedicated to school books, so they’re sort of thrown on top, in front of, or even behind the other books, I also have a shelf that is soley devoted to junk and clutter. Matches, spare keys, change for the laundry machine, my hat, duct tape — you name it, and it’s probably been misplaced there at some point, and taking up valuable book-displaying room.

So, I was taking some much needed time off last night and doing a bit of gaming. Wayfare came in to my room complaining that her air conditioning was making too much noise to sleep and wanted my bed, so I went out to the kitchen to play Civ4 on my laptop.

The game went well, I won a time victory (I keep thinking that as soon as I get modern armour, I’ll just roll over their regular tanks, but conquest just doesn’t go that much faster…). I left my laptop running when I went to bed…

And when Wayfare got up in the morning, the exhaust from my laptop melted the candle on the kitchen table! Wow!

I also tried the Evil Genius demo. I downloaded it over a year ago and just haven’t found the time to try it out. It was pretty cool, in the same vein as Dungeon Keeper, except without the goobering demons. I sensed something was missing in terms of ways to move my minions around — I recall dungeon keeper had a way of slapping them to a specific spot or planting totems to attract them or something, whereas here they were all milling about the back without guarding the front door. It was also really annoying to have to individually tag each agent of good for destruction; I would have figured a game largely built around not having direct control over your minions would also intelligently target intruders for death or capture. However, the animations were cute, and it’s a fairly unique type of game, so I think I’m going to get it next weekend ($20 US for a direct download isn’t too bad).

Finally, a picture I promised to post last weekend but didn’t get around to (apologies, as always, for my crappy camera phone):

“Out of the car! Do it now!”

Yeah, this was last weekend. I was stopped at a red light about 5 cars back on that giant hill at Don Mills & Finch, just sort of spacing out waiting for the light to change. Next thing I know, there’s a cop car with its lights on screaming up the hill behind me, then cuts in front of me, through a space in the right lane, and blocks in a car two ahead of me. At the same time, to other cars come rushing in from around the corner on Don Mills to block the car in from the front. Before the cars are even fully stopped, the cops are leaping out with their guns drawn yelling for the driver to get out of the car. He comes right out with his hands up, and they turn him around for a quick pat-down and cuffing. Before the light cycles again, they’ve got him in their car and a tow truck is hooking up to his car, while traffic starts moving in the left lane again… Pretty intense!