The kindle, the library and spontaneity

I let my daughter go to bed with my tablet. She's reading a book on the kindle app, a book we borrowed from the local library. We have bought Daughter a Kindle Fire for her upcoming 8th birthday, but we have 3 weeks to change our minds. By the following morning I'm sold. She will indeed have the kindle.

We rely on the library quite a bit to supply my daughter with the steady feed of chapter books that she consumes. A lot of the kindle versions of these books sell for the same price as the paperbacks (~$3.99). Since she can zip through a couple of these in one day, I was concerned about how much it would cost to keep her device stocked. As such, it was a relief to learn that libraries now offer kindle ebooks.

After dinner, Daughter asked if she could read something on my tablet. I said "sure, let's see what the library has". We browsed the ebook catalog. Her first pick, a Big Nate book was already checked out. We browsed, we searched, looking for that which was both desirable and available. We picked Hungry Plants and A Horn for Louis. She went to bed with my device. She woke up this morning, an authority on Venus fly traps. And lots of sympathy for the boy who needed a horn but had only one dollar. Yay kindle!!

Not a Big deal, right? Big deal! Our local library has offered ebooks pre-kindle. But I don't think the user experience ranked anywhere near what you get with the kindle. What was so obvious, but yet blew me away was the spontaneity that was involved. No getting into the car to go to the library. Or, no sitting at a computer to read an ebook. Daughter could lay back in bed and read minutes after she desired to read a new book.

But all is not perfect. Yet.

• Only a subset of ebooks is available in kindle format. I hope/assume this will be rectified over time.
• Of those, most are already checked out by somebody else. More books in kindle format are checked out than books that are not - evidence that the kindle is encouraging reading.  It seems silly to artificially apply a physical world rule to the digital world. It brings to mind the joke about a secretary who requested an email be returned to her before she sends an amended version. She did not want the recipient to have two copies. Or the joke about the boss who accuses his assistant of not sending some fax because the assistant was still in possession of the originals. I digress. And I know the libraries are not to blame.

Despite the imperfections, I'm excited about getting Daughter a kindle. And I think things can only get better.

Caffeine in my vitamin (2)

This morning I started off my day with a caffeinated vitamin. The only positive outcome was that I seemed to have more energy at the gym. The 'weird' feeling I had lessened my motivation to go, but when I started doing jumping jacks in that boot camp class, the energy came through, and lasted till the end of the class. After which it was replaced with hunger. And that feeling (which I now realize is the same feeling I get from taking certain cold medicines, which is why I don't like to take cold medicines).

Somehow I got some work done in between googling caffeine effects. This webmd article provides a good overview and ends with advice on the best way to get energy. According to the article, energy supplements is a very fast growing sector as everybody....everybody (yay! not just me) is looking for more energy.  But the best solution is the natural way:

Sleep well
Exercise
Eat healthy

Sigh, I better get back to the basics (+ a normal vitamin supplement) because eating healthy just isn't easy.

Now, let's see if I can get to sleep.

HTML view in Blogger android app

I'm not sure what happened with my last post. In the middle of writing, I took a break, my tablet turns off. I turn it back on and my edit view is changed. Now I see all my html tags. I have to insert my own <p> paragraph tags. I have to create my own link. And I can't figure out how to switch to the normal view.

It's really nice to be able to tap out posts on my tablet instead of firing up a computer. But please Blogger Android App, don't switch views on me without warning. If you do (and even if you don't), I want to know how to switch views, after all, I just might want to play with html tags.

I do need to play with html tags because Blogger Android App, you only provide me with text options for bold or italics. No underline. No block text. No bullet points. So I need to play. And stop play when I need to. Do I hear "updated version"?

Caffeine in my vitamin

New blog. Lazy edition.

After months of deliberation and inaction, I finally got around to creating a new blog on Blogger. I know the process takes only a minute or two, but you'll be surprised (or not) by how hard the human mind can justify procastination.
I already decided many many posts before my last post on my old blog that maintaining my own Wordpress app was not for me. Yet, I kept it going. Frustrated whenever I saw that there was an upgrade I needed to install. Even more frustrated whenever the upgrade did not follow the happy path. Fearful whenever I put off the upgrade, for I had been hacked before.
One day, I decided to stop. Just stop. Then I spent hours archiving and backing up my posts in an attempt to migrate them to a Blogger blog.  Then, even more hours trying to decide which posts were worthy of migration, after all, I shouldn't start a new blog crippled with garbage. Hours turned into days before I realized that my old posts were unnecessary baggage (and that's why I'm not including a link). I reflected on how it is difficult for us as humans to get rid of old baggage, so I resolved to do so.
I cleaned out my closet. Sent stuff to Goodwill. There's still stuff that I kept, to decide on later (why?!). But you see, my focus had shifted from my virtual baggage to my physical ones.
Time flew and I deliberated on the persona on my new blog-to-be. Do I maintain anonymity or use my full name? Or do I create a pen name? What name should I pick for my blog? What should my focus be? There were many questions that i idly contemplated. (Note: idle contemplation is not highly productive.)
Today, I have a long weekend ahead of me.
Happy Thanksgiving!
And I have decided to get to it. No pen name - that seems like too much work. No focus either. If I learnt anything from my old blog, it's that I am the primary audience for my blog. (Unless you're willing to work hard at blogging, traffic isn't just going to happen.)  As the sole audience, I will write whatever interests me. As a mom of two kids (ages 8 and 4) parenting is a major focus for the foreseeable future.
Does anyone else find that acquiring a tablet has rendered their laptops or PCs obsolete? So far, I've done all the getting to it from my android tablet. I hit a snag when it came time to write this post and my keypad wouldn't come up. I looked up the android Blogger app and problem solved.