And at the same time, I’ve had to deal with another life change. The company I work for closed the office I was working at. Since they closed the previous office in April, I had been going into the further-away office two days a week and working from home the rest of the time. Now I’m working from home 100% of the time. I don’t like it. I need the occasional social interaction, plus I like having at least a semblance of a separation between work and home. But there’s no real choice.

Those of you who work at home know how important it is to have a comfortable work environment. There’s a lot of problems with mine, but until I get a new house or get the basement finished, I have to deal with what I have.

One thing that helps me get through the day is listening to music while I work. Not only does it help to block out other sounds and distractions (the neighborhood kids can be pretty noisy), but listening to music I like just makes for a more pleasant work environment in general.

I’ve also found that I’ve been really getting into music lately, like I haven’t for a long time. I think that’s partly because there’s just so much good new music out there these days – I’ve been downloading like crazy from eMusic, AmieStreet and Amazon lately. More on that in future posts. It’s easy to do, almost too easy, when you’ve given up physical media and are going all digital – which I’ve talked about in recent entries. And the CD archiving project has renewed my interest in music I already own. It’s a kick to hear something cool I haven’t listened to in years.

I’m sure there’s a fad aspect to this. I tend to go in cycles with my interests: music, video games, comics, blogging, movies/TV, etc. At any one time, I’ll be bored with all but one those. And right now, that one thing is music.

It’s important for me to listen to the music in the best possible way. I’ve got my music library (downloads plus ripped CDs) in iTunes on the PC, and that’s my primary listening venue these days. I also still listen on my iPod nano when I work out at the gym 3-4 days a week, but I no longer have the all-important car listening experience, since I don’t have a commute any more. My iTunes library is over 23,000 songs and growing quickly. When I’m working, I alternate between playing the entire library on shuffle play and listening to whole individual albums at a time – usually ones I’ve recently downloaded or ripped.

The problem is that iTunes is on my home PC and not my work one. The two computers are at a 90 degree orientation from each other in my computer room. My home office stereo was setup to optimize the listening experience at the home computer. I tried playing around with the stereo balance when at my work computer, but the experience was just not optimal. Headphones work okay, but I can only wear them for so long, the cord gets in the way, and I’m not crazy about the sound quality with comfortable phones.

Then I had the brilliant idea to hook up another set of speakers to the stereo. Because of the work space limitations, I would need some pretty small ones. I have a couple of pairs of small computer speakers that I could’ve just hooked up to the headphone/speaker jack of the home computer, but I don’t really like the sound of any of them, and the cabling for that presented some obstacles.

So I looked around in my basement and found an old pair of Realistic (i.e. Radio Shack) speakers that I had bought a long, long time ago for some long forgotten reason. I probably used them for rear speakers or something back in the dawn of surround sound. I did however remember that I liked the sound of them, even though they were small 4-inch cubes. So I strung some speaker wire and placed a speaker on each side of the work monitor.

Wow – I was blown away. I don’t know if they’re actually good or if my hearing is just really going in my old age, but I’m extremely satisfied with the sound these tiny things pump out. Yeah, I do have to crank the bass a bit on the amplifier, but no big whoop. What really gets me is the sound field. The stereo separation is fantastic, and I feel totally enveloped in the sound. Maybe that’s just because of where the speakers are placed in relation to where I’m sitting, and I would get the same effect with any speakers that fit in the space. But I don’t know – there’s just something about the sound of these things that I really like. Perfect for digital music.

I can’t believe how much this has improved my work situation in general. I feel more energized and productive having these things surround me with my tunes all day. Thank you, Radio Shack of old!

Latre.

Note: I’ve joined last.fm and have installed their Scrobbler, so you can see what I’ve been listening to by going to my profile. The most recently listened-to tunes are also displayed on this blog over to the side.

Pet Peeve of the Day: Brokers, lawyers, accountants, and plumbers.

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “why do contact lenses for distance mess up my close up vision”.

Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Update: Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3)

So I ditched that drive, a Fantom, and upgraded to a new Western Digital 1TB external USB drive. In fact, it was the 1TB version of the 500GB drive that was still working. I immediately started having problems with it. It came formatted FAT32, so I reformatted it to NTFS. After I did that, then my PC refused to boot while the new drive was attached. It wouldn’t even make it into Windows – it would stall at the boot screen. That didn’t make any sense to me that the drive would be the problem, since I didn’t have that issue when the old Fantom drive was attached, and this was just replacing that one. I researched the problem and there was a lot of info on the WD site and elsewhere about USB 2.0 legacy support in the PC BIOS causing the USB drive to look like the boot drive and stuff like that, but none of the applicable setting were in my BIOS. So I just learned to unplug the drive whenever I wanted to reboot the PC.

But then it started acting even weirder. One day, Windows kept losing connection with it and then getting it back, which was highly annoying. And then once, it looked like Windows actually tried to install a Windows update to that drive instead of to the internal drive. I had enough. It was still within the 30 day return period so I sent it back to the online retailer for replacement. However, they were all out of that model so they refunded my money and I ended up getting a 1.5TB Iomega drive from a different retailer, for not much more money than the 1TB drive.

The Iomega drive already came formatted NTFS. I hooked it up and then tried to reboot the computer. It wouldn’t boot. I had to turn the drive off (this one actually has a power switch, which helps) and then boot the PC again. That worked. So I’m thinking “WTF?”. It can’t be the drive if the same thing happened with two different sized drives from two different manufacturers. (Although for all I know, the actual drive inside the cases could’ve made by the same company.) So I’m thinking the problem is with the PC after all.

At least the manual that came with the Iomega actually addressed the issue in its Troubleshooting section under “What can I do if my computer will not boot with an Iomega USB drive attached?” Answer: “If the capacity of your Iomega drive is larger than 500GB, the BIOS on the computer probably has a conflict with large capacity removable drives. To work around this problem, power off the drive before starting the computer. Power on the drive after the computer finishes starting up. Or, if your drive and computer supports it, you can connect the drive to the computer’s FireWire port.”

(Too bad I didn’t get a drive with FireWire support. Although I used to have one (another WD), but it died.)

Well, that explanation kind of makes sense. It would explain why the 500GB Fantom drive worked okay and the 1TB and 1.5TB drives don’t. But I love how the solution is “Power off the drive before starting the computer.” Sheesh. You can’t come up with anything better than that? Guess I better check and see if there’s a BIOS update for my PC…

I guess I’m not surprised that it’s the computer’s problem. The PC is Pentium 4 HP Pavilion desktop that’s over four years old. I really do need a new PC to properly attend to this archiving business. I’m definitely pushing the limit of its resources with this project. So, add “new PC” to my list of things I need to upgrade.

Oh, and even the whopping 1.5TB is going to be cutting it awfully close with the amount of FLAC and MP3 files I’ll end up with. My estimates put it right around 1.3 to 1.4TB. Which means I’ll need another drive the same size or bigger for backups. But at the rate this project is going, I figure I have plenty of time to buy bigger drives (and a faster PC). Those 2TB drives are getting cheaper all the time…

Latre.

Pet Peeve of the Day: We bought a bag of pistachios on sale, and there seem to be a lot of empty shells in there with no nut inside. I don’t like paying for shells, even if they’re on sale.

Odd Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “do you feel taller with progressive lens”.

Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Update: None, though I just got Batman: Arkham Aslyum (PS3 version) for my birthday and am looking forward to starting it.

So in a semi-nutshell (emphasis on the nut), here’s what I go through to archive a CD:

1. Update the CD in my music catalog (Music Collector, $29.95 or free). This includes getting the track info, release year, and label/catalog number, scanning the cover art, and even inputting the producer and musician credits. Actually, I do some of this during the next step, since the ripping takes some time and multitasking is possible during this process. But I at least have to scan the cover before doing the ripping, because I copy the cover art file to the ripping working area directory so it can be embedded in the archive. I utilize the allmusic guide to acquire or recheck data (especially release dates and musician credits) that may not exist or may not be accurate from the sources that MuC uses for its automatic updating.
2. Rip the CD as both a single FLAC image and multiple MP3 files (one per track) using Exact Audio Copy 0.99 with REACT2 (and Akkurat’s mod). (The MP3 ripping uses the LAME encoder, included with REACT2.) I use a FLAC compression level of 5 and a LAME VBR compression setting of 1. Sometimes I will have to adjust the name of the FLAC file to match my sorting scheme. (I could write thousands of blog entries on sorting issues alone.) I usually also copy off the .jpg and .cue files to a different directory than the one where I keep the FLAC archives.
3. Re-rip the CD using my second drive if the EAC log reports errors or the AccurateRip data does not match for one or more tracks. So far, I’ve never had a case where neither drive could accurately rip a CD, though I’m sure I’ll encounter some.
4. Play parts of the FLAC file to see if it’s okay using foobar2000 player, which can also be used to play the MP3 files. This is also good for verifying that the FLAC metadata is correctly embedded (cuesheet, cover art).
5. If the CD has a long track at the end, I play the MP3 of it to see if there is a hidden song or two in the single track (i.e. the main song followed by a long silence, followed by another song). I don’t like having long tracks with lots of silence in my iTunes library – it’s wasteful and messes up playlists. If the CD has one, then I use Direct WAV MP3 Splitter ($19.95) to split the track into multiple tracks and discard the silent bits. I like this particular tool because it has a decent, simple user interface (including showing the waveform), a good silence detector, and it splits the track without recompressing it. (It’s important to me to preserve the encoding and gain applied during the original ripping process.) There are some free tools that work almost as well, but I liked the way this one worked well enough to actually pay for it.
• After splitting the MP3 track, the VBR header is destroyed. This is the bad thing about the splitter not recompressing the track. You can tell because the track duration and bit rate are listed wrong in players – usually the track time is listed as being a lot longer than the actual duration. I use the VBR Header Repair utility in foobar2000 to fix it, though there are many other free utilities that will do the same thing.
• Use Mp3tag to copy the tags from the original track to the two (or more) extracted tracks. I also use it to change the track names, track numbers, and filenames on the extracted tracks. I usually give the hidden songs titles like “[Untitled Track 14]“, though sometimes the lyrics of the song will suggest a better title. Note: Mp3tag is also very useful for viewing and changing the metadeta in the FLAC archives if necessary. Good free tool.
6. Run Mixmeister BPM Analyzer to set the Beats Per Minute on all MP3 tracks. This is necessary for making my “fast tempo” smart playlist in iTunes that I use for my workout iPod.
7. Import the MP3 files into iTunes.
8. Sometimes I will use EvilLyrics to scour the Internet for the song lyrics and embed them into the track in iTunes.
9. If I have problems with any of the above, I check out what the good folks at the HydrogenAudio Forums have to say.

That’s it! Simple, eh? As I said, I’ll be going into greater detail about the individual steps in future entries. Assuming I don’t drop off the face of the blogosphere again.

Now everyone go forth and archive! Become obsessed, like me, and then report back! Thanks!

Latre.

Pet Peeve of the Day: A new Maxïmo Park album has been out for months and I didn’t even know about it!

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “love like a battlefield stupid”.

The most accurate representation of a CD as stored on a file on the computer is traditionally the WAV format. But those take up so much space, that even with the cheapness of hard drives these days, we’re still talking a heckuva lot of moolah for a drive big enough to hold my entire collection. Plus, WAV files are so unwieldy.

I’d heard of FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) for awhile, and have even downloaded some songs in that format. Since it’s a lossless compression scheme, it preserves all the original data from the CD. MP3 is lossy compression scheme, so it’s essentially throwing away part of the data. The lower the encoding bit rate, the more it throws away, and less like the original recording it sounds. Even at higher bit rates, I can sometimes hear compression artifacts on MP3 files, like the flanging effect it adds to cymbals, which drives me crazy.

Besides the space savings (a typical FLAC file will be around 60% of the size of the corresponding WAV file), the FLAC format has other advantages over WAV as well. You can embed metadata into the FLAC file, which is kind of like tags in an MP3 file. You can identify the artist and album name, etc. I make one FLAC file for an entire album, and it has the cuesheet embedded into it. The cuesheet contains the list of songs on the album and where they start and stop. That can be used to play individual songs from the file on players that support FLAC and cuesheets (such as foobar2000), and it can also be used to split out the FLAC file into individual track FLAC or MP3 or other files, and to write the FLAC archive back to a CD-R, replicating the original CD exactly. The cover art can also be embedded into the file, as well as “ReplayGain” information, which tells ReplayGain-equipped players to play the album at a lower or higher relative volume level than it was written with. I’ve really just scratched the surface here, there’s more you can do with FLAC files.

One thing that is confusing about FLAC is that there is a compression level parameter consisting of 0-8 levels. I wondered why there are different compression levels if FLAC is a lossless compression scheme? Wouldn’t the resulting file always be the same? It turns out that the compression level affects the speed of encoding and also the resulting size of the file, but does not actually affect the sound quality. Regardless of the compression level, all of the original data is still there on decoding, and decoding speed is always fast regardless of the encoding compression level. Yeah, it doesn’t make much intuitive sense, but just go with it. So level 0 is the fastest compression with the largest file size, and 8 is the slowest compression with the smallest file size. Level 5 is the default. I’ve found that the file sizes aren’t dramatically reduced by a higher compression level, so I just stick with the default.

Keep in mind I’m not a sound engineer or compression expert, so take everything I say with a healthy dose of skepticism…

Anyway, my goal became to produce a single FLAC archive for every CD, and also MP3 files of every track that I could import into iTunes. Sounds like a hassle? Not really. Actually, it’s pretty easy.

But I’ll get to that
Latre.

Pet Peeve of the Day: Why is it impossible to get an intact Butterfinger fun size bar and not one that’s crumbled into pieces?

In previous posts (like here and here), I’ve talked about my desire to transfer all my compact discs to the computer, by ripping them to digital files and importing them into iTunes, my media player of choice because of all the iPods I have. The reasons given back then were:

• Easy access and listening everywhere (the same reason I have for switching to digital downloads for new albums)
• Transferring to iPods
• Backup of my collection in case anything happens to the physical media
• Completion of CD cataloging (completing the disc info in Music Collector)
• Obsessive compulsiveness

Another potential reason is I was probably thinking that by transferring all my music to the computer, I could then get rid of the CD collection and free up space in the house. Of course, to remain completely legal, I guess I would have to destroy the collection rather than sell it or give it away. (Keep in mind that the discs in the collection are stored in individual plastic sleeves along with the booklet and tray card, instead of in the jewel boxes they came in. I sold the jewel boxes long ago. The collection takes up approx 1/4 to 1/5 of the space it would if I had kept the discs in the jewel boxes. But even with that much space reduction, it still takes up a helluva a lot of room, and it’s sometimes hard to find individual discs.)

When I first started ripping my CDs to the computer, I used the Apple AAC codec. But then I quickly decided that was too proprietary, or didn’t have any advantages I could distinguish vs MP3s, or I didn’t like the acronym, or whatever, and I switched to 128kbps constant bit rate MP3s. Then I decided that wasn’t good enough sound quality for permanent archival purposes, so I switched to 256kbps. And that meant starting all over again. But I was bound and determined to do it. Whenever I start over ripping the collection again, I always find there’s more information I want to add about the disc in Music Collector (cover artwork at better resolution, catalog numbers, etc). So that gives me another reason to start over and something more to obsess over.

(It occurs to me that I don’t really need Music Collector these days, since I could probably track all the same information for the discs when I rip them and import them into iTunes, most likely in the “Comments” tag. However, that would take up additional space in each track, and seems wasteful. Plus, MuC formats things much nicer and makes it easier to search for data. And it has that nifty corresponding iPhone app so I can view my collection prettily on the phone.)

Anyway, I started thinking about The Future and wondering if MP3 was really the way to go for archiving my precious CD collection. As I mentioned in the above referenced post, what if a better compression scheme came along later? Technology always marches forward. I think this worried me so much that I put the project on hold.

Then as I started researching the issue more, I came to a decision about what I wanted to do. Therein lies the roots of my current obsession.

But I’m writing this late at night and getting tired, so I’ll have to tell all about that later. I hope I don’t catch any flack for leaving anyone in suspense!

Also, I’m kind of wanting to indulge my obsession a bit before bed.

Latre.

Pet Peeve of the Day: Fast food establishments that don’t have self drink fill/refill stations (I’m looking at you, Wendy’s), and then give you a Coke when you ordered a Diet Coke.

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “do i have to wear my progressive reading glasses all the time”.

Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Update: None.

Also upgraded my 1st gen iPhone to OS 3.0. Looks pretty cool so far. It added a “Voice Memos” icon to my home screen and pushed my “Messages” icon to a screen by its lonesome, so that necessitated totally redoing my screen real estate, which is something I needed to do anyway. Glad to see that copy/paste works, though I haven’t played with it much yet.

And since I upgraded to from WordPress 2.6, I could now finally install the upgrade to the WordPress iPhone application. Finally, no more pesky badge on the “App Store” icon!

More reports from the field as I play around more.

Latre.

The main list manager I used on the Palm was ListPro, which doesn’t yet exist for the iPhone. More on that in a future entry. The three main things I listed in it were my CD collection, my DVD collection, and… my weight log. I’m not sure… it’s one of the obsessive compulsive things, I guess… but every day for nearly five years, I’ve been weighing myself and recording the result. Oh sure, I would miss a day here and there, especially if I was on vacation, but I’d say I’m hitting around 99% of the days. I started out writing the weight down on a piece of paper, and then when I filled up a page, I would transfer the numbers to an Excel spreadsheet. That became tedious, although it was “fun” to chart the data in Excel and see a graphical representation of my (lack of) progress. When I got the PDA and installed the handheld and desktop versions of ListPro, I imported my spreadsheet into it, and then switched to entering the daily weight directly on the computer. The only downfall of that is that I had to remember what the weight was between stepping on the scale and going to the computer.

(Digression: Those of you who obsessively weigh yourselves most likely have a weighing routine like I do. Those of you who don’t may or may not be surprised to learn there is so much to the routine. It has to be done around the same time every morning, and before some activities but after others. I will not bore you or freak you out with the details, but if I remember correctly, the book Thinner by Richard Bachman (aka Stephen King) has a wonderful description of just such a routine. So check that out. Oh, and btw, my digital scale says “Thinner” on it, which I find eerie, as it brings back memories of the book. Plus, it’s like a command. “Thinner!” the scale rails at me, “YOU MUST BECOME THINNER! Or I will electrocute your naked toes with my tiny watch battery.”)

So in order to track my daily weight, I decided to have a little fun with it and I bought a recommended iPhone app called Weightbot. Yes, bought. I paid $1.99 (it’s up to $2.99 now) for an application whose sole reason for existence is to record a number up to once a day. But it’s got a cute user interface, and it does have a couple of different graphs of the weight data it can display when you turn the iPhone sideways. Oh, and it estimates your Body Mass Index (BMI). That’s it. It sure don’t do much, but it’s kind of cute, like Kate Hudson. And I can have it with me the bathroom and enter the weight immediately, instead of having to remember it when I get to the computer. The iPhone does not care if you are naked.

The downside is that there’s no way to export the weight data to the computer for manipulating and viewing there. Not to mention there’s no reliable backup (I don’t trust iTunes for backing up data). So… you guessed it… I still also enter the weight into the desktop version of ListPro every day. It’s so nice to have direction in life.

Note: I have not included any screen shots of the app itself, since I don’t want you guys knowing my current weight and comparing it to the weights I listed back in the daily posting days when I was constantly revealing it. That was dumb.

Latre.

Songs That Came Up On The iPod While Exercising Since Last Bog Update:

• “Damage Done” (Veruca Salt)
• “Trip To Life” (Circus Guy)
• “I Don’t Agree” (Stranglers)
• “Just A Little” (Frank Black)
• “Length of Love” (Interpol)
• “Why Don’t The Buildings Cry?” (Youth Group)
• “The Cap’m” (They Might Be Giants)
• “Poison In The Wall” (The Go-Betweens)
• “Brainsaw” (Therapy?)
• “Farewell” (Trotsky Icepick)
• “Money On The Dresser” (Local H)
• “No Sympathy – No Violins” (Classix Nouveaux)
• “Comfortable Place on the Couch” (Midnight Oil)
• “Drug Free” (Anton Barbeau)
• “Barrier” (China Drum)

Yes, I went to the gym and worked out and ran on the treadmill yesterday even though my right foot still hurts. And I went to the doctor about it today. Remind me to tell you about that someday.

Pet Peeve of the Day: Damn 70 degree weather in February. What is this, frickin’ Florida?

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “apartment fire alarm constantly beeping cold”. That sounds bad.

Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Update: The old same Castlevania: Order of Eccelsia (DS). Hey, I think I’m going to end up actually finishing this one. And fairly soon, too. I’m deep into Dracula’s Castle.

Oh, it can be cool and everything, but will it ever really rise above “gimmick” status? James Cameron says (I think) that all his movies are going to be 3D from now on, which probably explains why it takes him ten years to make one. Yeah, I saw Beowulf in 3D IMAX, and that did draw me into the movie, but I never did see the non-3D version to compare.

Recently, there were a couple of SuperBowl ads in 3D, including a trailer for the upcoming animated movie Monsters Vs Aliens. Even though I knew about the gimmick beforehand, I didn’t go out and seek the 3D glasses. I wasn’t even quite sure how to do that, though I knew that it was a promotion through Sobe Life Water and I guess that glasses were available at store displays. Did you have to make a purchase? From the commercials, the glasses didn’t look like the old standard red/blue glasses, which I have plenty of from old 3D comics. Anyway, when I saw that 3D trailer without glasses, it of course looked fuzzy, like there was an aura around everything. That lessened my enjoyment of it and I was bummed.

I haven’t been watching the TV show Chuck this season, since I was pretty marginal about it the first season. But as part of this same promotion, last night’s episode was in 3D, which you needed the same glasses to view. It wasn’t enough of an enticement to get me to watch the show again, although perhaps I would’ve if I did have the glasses. My friend Pilto does still watch the show, and when he attempted to watch it (DVRed) without the glasses, he was too bothered by the fuzziness and couldn’t do it. Today he was searching out the glasses so he could watch it tonight, and I guess I’ll find out tomorrow if he was successful. He may end up just having to delete the episode unwatched, which says to me that this gimmick failed.

And even when 3D works, is it too distracting? Does it draw too much attention to itself and pull focus (ha ha) away from the story? I don’t believe that any kind of audiovisual enhancement technology where you have to wear something on your head is ever going to catch on in a big mainstream way. It’s just too uncomfortable and dorky. It’s bad enough I sometimes have to wear wireless headphones when watching noisy shows TV in order to not disturb the girlfriend. (Although I must say it does make understanding dialog easier for these aging ears.) Once they get 3D working without glasses, then perhaps it will become the entertainment norm. But since the world is a hologram anyway, will it really matter?

Latre.

Yes, I know I used the word “glasses” approx 200 times in this post. You try finding another word for it. I suppose I could’ve stuck in one or two uses of “spectacles”, but what’s the point?

Songs That Came Up On The iPod While Exercising Since Last Bog Update: None, since I haven’t exercised. No sooner did I get over my cold then my right foot started hurting when I walk. Good thing I’m getting a lot of use out of that new gym membership!

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “how to get rid of crabs for guys”.

Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Update: Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS)

Longtime readers of this here blog know that I’m a big advocate of eBooks. I like being able to read books anywhere without having to lug a big wad of paper around. eReader on my Palm T|X PDA was very useful, especially while on vacation. There are also eBook readers for the iPhone – how do they measure up? On my vacation last weekend, I was able to give the iPhone a thorough testing in this department.

Even though I installed eReader on my iPhone a long time ago, I couldn’t really use it initially. In the beginning, there was no way of getting the DRM-protected eReader-format eBooks I bought for my Palm PDA from the Palm eBook website onto the iPhone and readable by the iPhone’s eReader. That recently changed. The eReader website now has a “Personal Content” area, where you can upload eBooks acquired from other vendors and then download them to the iPhone. You then unlock the content using the same unlock code needed to read them on the Palm. Very handy. I stored all my eBooks in the web library and then downloaded them to the eReader application in the iPhone with no problem.

Besides eReader, there’s another eBook reader for the iPhone called Stanza. Stanza lets you acquire eBooks from a number of different sources. The main one is the Fictionwise website, which also has a Personal Content area where you can upload your eBooks acquired from other vendors and download them back into the iPhone. So I did that again with my eReader-format books and downloaded them back to the iPhone where I could read them with Stanza. Yes, this means that I have multiple copies of the books in the phone, but they don’t take up much space.

So anyway, I took the time during the vacation to read some chapters from A Feast For Crows, which I’ve been working on since my Pennsylvania vacation last June. Both eReader and Stanza compare favorably to eReader on the Palm, but I’m giving the nod to Stanza. It has far more settings than eReader, including the ability to change the foreground and background colors (I prefer white text on a blue background to the default black on white) and a much greater variety of fonts and font sizes. It’s kind of strange that iPhone eReader doesn’t have those abilities, since the version on the Palm does. Stanza also seems to be faster with loading and reformatting the book.

The Palm T|X screen is about the same size as the iPhone screen, so at my preferred text-viewing size, I get about the same amount of words on a single screen for both. Which of course means a lot of page turning, especially if you’re a fast reader. On both eReader and Stanza, you can turn the page by either tapping or doing the “swipe” gesture, but only Stanza lets you do either one at the same time. This also means you have to learn the art of tapping “differently” when you want to get the settings menu on Stanza rather than wanting to turn the page. The iPhone screen is clear and bright enough to read in almost any light, from full to darkness, although I don’t think I tried actually reading outside in sunlight. As I’ve probably mentioned before, one place eBooks come in handy is when you want to read in bed while your significant other wants to sleep, especially if the SO is disturbed by any type of light including a book light. The iPhone emits so little light that that’s not a problem. Even the gentle tap or swipe of a page turn is less audible than the actual page turning of a paper book.

So, thumbs up on the iPhone eBook experience. Both eReader and Stanza work fine, but I go with Stanza because of its greater range of options and ability to read more eBook formats. Both are free in the App Store.

Of course, if you do have the paper version of the book handy and don’t have to read in the dark, then by all means read the paper one. I did take the actual Feast For Crows paperback with me to Estes Park and used that whenever I could. Yes, I must admit there’s nothing like the feel of a real book in your hands. But it’s good to know I have an alternative.

The funny thing is that there are so many other diversions on the iPhone that if I’m alone waiting some where, I end up not automatically defaulting to reading eBooks like I did with the Palm on hand. Oh the wonders of being infinitely tethered to the Internet.

Latre.

Pet Peeve of the Day: They can put a man on the moon, but they can’t cure the common cold.

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “save me subtitles”.

Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Update: Lots of Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS)

I can’t believe it, but I actually laughed at a Garfield strip in the paper this morning:

This seems like a throwback to the original Garfield strips, which were actually, y’know, funny at times. Hard to believe, but true.

Or maybe my sense of humor is just getting… old. That must be it, since today’s Dennis The Menace also made me laugh. Or at least nod in agreement.

Speaking of getting old, Pioneer has announced it’s finally going to stop making LaserDisc players. What the…? Who knew they were still making them after the advent of DVD and then Blu-Ray? Maybe there’s a market for my old LD’s after all…

The mid-season premiere of Battlestar Galactica from last Friday night continues to haunt me. Wow. The Chicago Tribune’s Maureen Ryan has compiled a number of writer interviews and such about it in her column. (MAJOR SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE EPISODE! Even the URL was a spoiler, so I had to tinyurl it.) I spent a long time this morning reading through that, and it was very illuminating. I was a little disappointed with the first part of this season (from way back whenever it was on – last summer?), but it looks like they’re going to be making up for it heading into the final stretch here.

Speaking of Spoilers (and BSG), commenter yellojkt has an interesting discussion about that in his Foma* blog entry yesterday. Yellojkt also recently had a fascinating in-depth series on what he considers to be the four big failures of the Bush administration, which starts here. Well worth reading. Yello brings the whup-ass!

Latre.

Pet Peeve of the Day: Guess I have to use my $10 Circuit City gift card really quickly! Like this guy, I won’t miss the chain. I’ve had too many bad experiences in their stores. But I don’t like losing $10!

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “lardbutt oprah”.

Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Update: Still none! No time!