A few years ago, I got rid of all my paper books and switched exclusively to eBooks. Whenever I tell bibliophiles this, they usually shriek in horror. What about the smell of books?!!? What about showing off your bookcases to impress people!?!? What about your signed first editions!??!?! But the other day I had someone scoff at me and say "Good luck reading when civilisation collapses! I'll still be able to read by candle-light." This is nonsense. In the case of a Zombie Attack, am I really…
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Before I start this blog post - here's a big fat warning. You will get no support from Boyue if things go wrong with your device. I have their previous model, the Likebook Ares. After less than a year of use, I noticed screen discolouration. The eBay reseller wasn't interested in helping me with a return. Boyue ignored my repeated complaints - and I was stuck with a defective unit. So I waited until Boyue released their new version and cheekily asked if I could review it. They happily sent…
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Alvin Toffler's book "Future Shock" is one of the defining texts of the 20th century. In it, he correctly predicts the insanity of living in the 21st century with its constant bombardment of the shock of the new. I thoroughly recommend you read it. But there's no official eBook copy. Why? If you trawl the Dark Web™ (2nd page of Google) you're sure to find hundreds of samizdat copies. Some laboriously typed up by hand, others scanned and OCR'd by machines. All of them filled with i…
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I like to go on holiday in order to read books. After last year's post a few people expressed surprise that I hadn't included many female authors. I felt compelled to rectify that, so I decided to read only female authors this holiday. I only had 7 days, and did quite a lot of sight-seeing, so there's only 6 entries here. Will try for a more relaxing holiday next year! First up, "Station Eleven" by Emily St. John Mandel. A cracking "end of the world" novel, neatly tied together via…
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by Terence Eden, aged 35 & ⅚ths. I often wonder how much I read during the average day. A few thousand words of tweets, couple of hundred in Facebook posts, a dozen articles on blogs and news sites - and an unhealthy smattering of Reddit and other fora. All told, I am probably reading the equivalent of half a novel per day. (Now, there's an idea for a "quantified self" app - "how much have I read today?") And yet... it doesn't feel like I'm doing proper reading. I don't get my teeth stuck …
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Three years ago I promised to convert the Voynich Manuscript into an ebook. The recent news that it may have been deciphered spurred me to finish my project. So, here it is, the world famous mystery that is the Voynich Manuscript now in convenient eBook format. PDF - suitable for Kindle, nook, Kobo, Android, iOS and for most devices (60MB) CBZ - suitable for comic book readers, tablets, etc. (60MB) As the book is pure images, I decided not to convert to .mobi or .epub. Those are …
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One of the "perks" of running a moderately popular blog is that sometimes people send you stuff. I've been sent wine, phones, apps, and all sorts to review - usually by PR people who realise that engagement with bloggers is a little different that their regular way of doing business. Yesterday, I received this delightful email from the publishers Simon and Schuster. NEW book by the "Prophet of Silicon Valley", Jaron Lanier, available for your review! Dear Mr. Vogels, I'm writing today to…
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I haven't been to an unconference in ages - so it was nice to get back into the swing of things with LibraryCamp. It was a delight to spend time with a collection of committed professionals doing amazing things with books. As requested, I recorded all the sessions I could. Here are my notes, and the audio from each session I attended. I've based some of the information from the excellent LibraryCampLondon Wiki, including the session proposal page. Hidden Collections Katie Birkwood lead a…
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I've been thinking a lot about libraries recently. When I was a child I was taken to a library every two weeks and made to check out the maximum allowance of books - that's what having an English teacher for a mother gets you! Once I went to university, I stopped going to the library. Even university libraries are pretty poor for computer science books - and the ability to buy cheap paperbacks online obliterated my need to visit them. It wasn't until Surrey libraries started offering…
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My shelves are empty. The half-dozen Billy Bookcases I bought from Ikea are now little more than scrap. I have burned my books. A bonfire of ideas and ideals. My bookshelves used to burst at the seams. Every individual shelf bowed violently from the over-stuffed mass of paperbacks squeezed onto it. Shakespeare rubbed up with Straczinsky. A complete set of Terry Pratchett was enviously glowered at by a patchy Enid Blyton collection. Half-read oddities nestled with well worn volumes. A copy…
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Two quick patches which should be in the next version of Calibre PHP. Adding File Size This shows the sizes of the eBook files. Screenshot shows a demonstration using the free "Hacking The BBC" eBook. (more…) …
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(These are mostly notes to myself!) I love Calibre, it's the perfect eBook management tool. It comes with a built in WWW server so you can easily access your library on the go. The only problem is that this really only works if you have a single machine dedicated to Calibre. For various reasons, I don't have a single machine. I have a desktop, laptop, and server. The Calibre Library is just a database with a set of files and folders - so all three machines sync via DropBox. As long as I…
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