Cheerful Curmudgeon

I have learned to change lead into gold, and back again, for real! Well, sort of. Thus far, it only works within the virtual world of programming languages like Python. Here is the recipe. (If you are not into geek-speak, skip to the bottom where I natter on about reading ebooks on an iPad.)

class Lead(object):
    def prestoChango(self):
        self.__class__ = Gold

class Gold(object):
    def prestoChango(self):
        self.__class__ = Lead

pb = Lead()
print pb             # prints Lead
pb.prestoChango()
print pb             # prints Gold
pb.prestoChango()
print pb             # prints Lead

Voila! First it’s lead. Then it’s gold. Then it’s lead again.

I understand why you might want to do something like this but, at least within the projects that I work on, it would obfuscate the program too much for my liking.

I learned this from reading the Python Coookbook ebook on my iPad, which has been thoroughly enjoyable. I like the iBooks app more than I expected to. I can highlight portions of the book, without actually trashing the pages. I can scribble notes next to my highlights. I can easily browse a list of the sections that I highlighted/noted. Perhaps even more useful, I can select a word or phrase from the text of the book and instantly search either Google or Wikipedia for it.

I am thrilled to report that the magic software which Sony requires me to use to download ebooks from their on-line bookstore finally runs under VirtualBox. For reasons which I understand, but do not agree with, Sony requires use of their special software to download anything from their eBook Store, even free ebooks. Since I use Ubuntu Linux on my computer, the only way I am able to use the store is by running Sony’s software under Windows under VirtualBox. Unfortunately, that did not work, as many of us reported to VirtualBox.

Being barred from use of the Sony eBook Store did not bother me very much. I refuse to buy DRM-locked books so there was not much in the store which I wanted. That changed this morning, though, when I read that Sony and Google have partnered to make 500,000 public domain ebooks available through the store. I wanted access these books so I downloaded the latest version of Sony’s eBook Library software and installed it on Windows XP running under VirtualBox and, lo and behold, it worked. I have successfully downloaded a book from the store onto my computer and then transfered it onto my PRS-505 ebook reader.

The Sony eBook Library software is kind of flakey. I have had to kill and restart it twice to get my PRS-505 “authorized” and to get a batch of books downloaded, but at least it runs. All of this would be completely unnecessary, of course, if the publishers did not DRM-lock their books. One of these days, they will get a clue and give that up. It has taken several years for the music industry to figure it out but they finally seem to have. I do hope that the book publishers will “get it,” too.

We all know the story of Benjamin Franklin flying a kite in an electrical storm. I always thought that it was kind of fanciful, along the same lines as the myth about George Washington cutting down a cherry tree. Guess what: I was wrong. Franklin not only flew the kite in a storm, he held onto the string, and he stuck his hand near the key so that he could fully experience the “electric fire.”

I just finished reading the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, downloaded from Project Gutenberg. At the end, I found a letter Franklin wrote to Peter Collinson in 1752 describing the electrical kite experiment in exquisite detail.

Make a small cross of two light strips of cedar, the arms so long as to reach to the four corners of a large, thin silk handkerchief when extended; tie the corners of the handkerchief to the extremities of the cross, so you have the body of a kite; which being properly accommodated with a tail, loop, and string, will rise in the air, like those made of paper; but this being of silk, is fitter to bear the wet and wind of a thunder-gust without tearing. To the top of the upright stick of the cross is to be fixed a very sharp-pointed wire, rising a foot or more above the wood. To the end of the twine, next the hand, is to be tied a silk ribbon, and where the silk and twine join, a key may be fastened. This kite is to be raised when a thunder-gust appears to be coming on, and the person who holds the string must stand within a door or window, or under some cover, so that the silk ribbon may not be wet; and care must be taken that the twine does not touch the frame of the door or window. As soon as any of the thunder clouds come over the kite, the pointed wire will draw the electric fire from them, and the kite, with all the twine will be electrified, and the loose filaments of the twine will stand out every way and be attracted by an approaching finger. And when the rain has wet the kite and twine, so that it can conduct the electric fire freely, you will find it stream out plentifully from the key on the approach of your knuckle. At this key the phial may be charged; and from electric fire thus obtained, spirits may be kindled, and all the electric experiments be performed, which are usually done by the help of a rubbed glass globe or tube, and thereby the sameness of the electric matter with that of lightning completely demonstrated.

I also love the illustration:

"You will find it stream out plentifully from the key on the approach of your knuckle"

I think it is certainly fair to say, Don’t Try This At Home.

But if you do… be sure to let me know how it works out!

My Sony PRS-505 ebook reader continues to delight me. I have chewed my way through a couple of books and several short stories, all without the bother of braving the mall to reach Borders or the traffic to reach the library. As I have finished these books, I simply let them evaporate into the ether, smug in the knowledge that I have neither filled the recycle bin with nascent packing materials nor killed trees and burned petrol to just to sooth my addiction to reading. There is still a problem: sometimes, I come across a book that I would like to keep and I still have not figured out a satisfying way to keep ebooks.

The underlying problem is that I like being surrounded by bookshelves filled with dead trees. I like the colors and the patterns. Even more, I like the warm memories that surface whenever I look at the books. I have books which have followed me around since childhood; I don’t read them any more but my soul remembers reading them the first time and delights in the presence of these old friends. Someday, my children will wonder what the heck these old things are doing here and, with luck, they will guess the answer to the riddle.

I try to imagine a way to surround myself with ebooks with the same satisfaction and I fail miserably. I imagine my house with every bookshelf gone, replaced by a shared folder on a computer in the basement. Anyone in the house can easily open \\Library\ebooks\fiction (or, for the Linux users amongst us, ssh://Library/ebooks/fiction), browse by genre or author, pick a book, and read it. The ebooks are accessible by everyone at once, so there is no need to wait your turn for the new releases. Since the ebooks can be freely copied, the worry about losing a book is gone forever.

Those are all wonderful advantages but they do not make up for the fact that my life would be poorer without bookshelves. Many books simply cannot be satisfactorily read on a 6″ diagonal screen in black and white. Some need large paper and color. Some need indexes. Some need to be savored by three of us at a time.

Ebooks can serve another purpose, however, as a trial license for the paper book. Several authors and publishers are experimenting with releasing a free ebook in conjunction with a traditional, for-fee physical book and are finding that the ebook certainly does not hurt, and may even boost, sales. James Boyle discussed this in more depth in Text is free, we make our money on volume(s) at the Financial Times’ web site. This makes a lot of sense to me: I can download the ebook and browse it to my heart’s content in the comfort of my easy chair. If I like it, I then buy the paper, thoroughly enjoy everything it has to offer, and finally add it to my wonderfully crammed bookshelf.

Perhaps I have been trying to make ebooks into more than they will ever be, at least for me. I think that, along side the ebooks, there will always be a place for real books in my life.

Having spent almost a week with my new Sony PRS-505 eBook reader, I am way past infatuated and well into love. For reading books, it just plain works. No fuss; no muss. I have grabbed several books, some old, some new, and am thoroughly enjoying reading them. The first line of the main menu, visible in this picture, is one of my favorite features.

The reader can “Continue Reading” from where I left off, not only in the last book I was reading, but from where I left off in every book in it’s memory. So I can merrily skip around between Arthur C. Clarke’s The City and The Stars (borrowed from the St. Louis County Public Library) to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (downloaded for free from Project Gutenberg) to Dan Reiter and Allan C. Stam’s Democracy at War (borrowed from the St. Charles County Library District) and back again. The reader automatically remembers the last page that I read in each book. Of course, I can also set bookmarks and that is handy for remembering all of those passages that I want to share with Candy while she is crocheting (and unable to escape).

Between the local public libraries and Project Gutenberg, I have found a reasonable pool of books. Unfortunately, the PRS-505 does not grok HTML files. Why Sony chose to omit this format is beyond me. Fortunately, I found directions for downloading, configuring, and using Book Designer at the MobileRead Wiki. This sweet piece of software allows me to easily convert the HTML files from Project Gutenberg into Sony’s proprietary BBeB format. It takes me a few minutes but the end result is an emminently readable ebook which contains a nice table of contents.

The PRS-505 supports three levels of magnification, which is great when my eyes get a little tired late at night. Here is a page from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin in all three magnifications. (Click on the pictures to see larger images.)

As you can see, all are perfectly readable and it is nice to have the “large-print edition” just a button click away.

The screen snapshots also show a couple of other points. The highlighted “[16]” is actually a link to a footnote. Pressing the center of the wheel in the lower, right corner jumps the reader to the footnote. If you then press the left arrow on the same wheel, the reader jumps back to the page you just came from. You have probably also noticed that the “F” chapter initial is not correctly placed. The reader can properly display these but the freebie Book Designer software seems to have misplaced it during conversion from HTML to BBeB format. It does not keep me from enjoying the book so I have not poked around to see if this is fixable.

So what’s not to like? The PRS-505 does not support HTML files which keeps me from downloading portions of web sites which would make great reference material (e.g., the PHP function reference). There is no way to search for a word within a book, which limits the reader’s usefulness with reference texts. Neither Adobe’s nor Sony’s ebook library software runs on Linux, which means that when I want to check a book out from the library, I have to fire up my Windows virtual machine just to “authorize” the book and transfer it to my reader.

The big bug-a-boo is not with the reader at all; it is with the DRM-locked ebooks. O’Reilly has the right idea; they are beginning to sell ebooks which are completely unlocked. Once I buy them, I own them and can do with them as I like, just as I expect with any other purchase. All of the other publishers that I have checked are selling books which are restricted; after I buy them, I cannot give them away or sell them to a third party. Guess what: I won’t buy a book under those conditions.

I bought the PRS-505 to run Reader Plates when I fly. As a miniature electronic flight bag, containing all of the IFR approach plates for the entire US, the device is well worth the price. Knowing what I know now, would I buy one just to read books? No. It is just too expensive. Would I buy one if I could buy current books without DRM? Absolutely!

I bought an ebook reader this week (a Sony PRS-505, more on that in another posting, I promise) and have been so busy figuring our the whole ebook game that I have not taken the time either to read many of the blogs that I follow or to write. Here are my first impressions of ebooks, in emotional order.

1. I love the concept. They appeal to the geek in me. They appeal to the ecologist in me.
2. Having a device designed for reading ebooks made all the difference. They went from being an interesting curiosity which I could not imagine actually using because I would have to sit in front of my computer to being something which is, in some ways, significantly more convenient than physical books.
3. Selection sucks. Much of what I want to read is not available as an ebook.
4. The copy protection, a/k/a digital rights management (“DRM”) sucks. If I buy a book, I don’t want the publisher to keep me from selling it when I am done with it or donating it to my local public library or from giving it to a friend.
5. I love that my slim little ebook reader carries lots of books around inside it and remembers where I am in all of the books. I can bounce back and forth from one book to another and never worry about losing my place in any of them.
6. There are lots of good, free ebooks out there. And it bothers me that Netlibrary, which I think my local public library pays money to, has a bunch of those free books in the collection. Does that mean that my tax dollars are being used by my library to rent and distribute free materials?

Must go to work now. More later when I can tear myself away from Sherlock Holmes.