18 Apr 2010

New toy!

So after a month or so of shopping around, the man /finally/ decided to pick up a new TV.  Such a difference from our old tv, I must say.  I'm just waiting impatiently to see how the games play on it!

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17 Apr 2010

Testing out some email posting features

Just a quicky post to see if posting via email works or not.

I realize I haven't updated in a while, but I'll get back to it asap.  I finished reading The Strain and I enjoyed it, however I totally forgot to write a review for it so... yeah.  Maybe I'll try and do one from memory or I'll wait until I've finished the trilogy (2011!) before posting a review on the series as a whole.

Currently reading The Little Giant of Auberdine County for my Novel Ladies group read and then I need to tackle The Time Traveler's Wife for my Refer-A-Book Friday read.  Once those are done I need to get back on track with my year long challenges.  The books are sitting here collecting dust... I neeeed to get them moved to my 'read' bookshelf.

Other than that, it is pretty much business as usual around here.  Big kid is out doing tagging for his Air Cadet squadron this weekend.  Middle kid is chasing toddler around the house and the man is having a veg out day for the moment.

Until next time.

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3 Apr 2010

New toy...

So.  I had been saving up my loonies and toonies (that would be Canadian $1 and $2 coins for those of you not in the know) in a sealed can for a while now.  I just really wanted to see how much the can would hold before it got full.  The other day I couldn't jam anymore coins into it so I took a can opener to the sucker and proceeded to roll up all the coins.  Much to my surprise and delight the damn can holds just over $700 in loonies and toonies.  I was tickled pink that I'd managed to do that just by tossing my change into a can.

Anyway, I took all the rolls to the bank today and walked out with crisp new bills instead and then proceeded to Best Buy to have a gawk around.  Picked up Brutal Legend for the PS3 because it was on for $20 and I enjoyed the demo like mad.  Then I found their ebook reader section.  Not a whole lot of stuff there to gawk at.. just the two Sony devices and the Aluratek Libre, which I had been eyeballing (it's pretty much an exact duplicate of the Ectaco Jetbook).  Still fence sitting on if I'd even like reading on a device vs good old books, I decided to take the cheaper route and picked up the Libre.

It is currently sitting in the kitchen charging up, but the man and I tinkered with it a bit in the van (he's got a usb charger thingy in the van for his blackberry) and I'm actually really impressed by the little thing.  The screen is so so so much crisper than the Sony ones and, because of the tech this device uses, there is no annoying black flash on page turns.  It came loaded with 100 classic books on it already, so I don't even have to spend any coin unless I want to grab new releases.  It has decent file support (PDF, TXT, FB2, ePub, MOBI, PRC, and RTF) and will even play mp3s/audiobooks if you want it to (I doubt I'll be using that function at all).

For a first step into e-reading it really is a nice deal.  It cost me $159.00 at Best Buy and, for a simple basic ebook reader, it comes with all those books, a carrying case, wrist strap, earphones, usb cable and usb wall charger.  It may have a small internal memory, but you can slap a 32GB SD card into it if memory/storage is an issue.

I'll post more after I've actually sat down and played with it/read something on it, but at first look for a device to read on it really was a nice deal for the price.  Annnnnd if it turns out that I hate reading on a machine, I didn't just toss $300 out the window.  I can see if my kid will read on it or toss it onto ebay or something.

2 Apr 2010

Book Review - Going Bovine

Title: Going Bovine
Author: Libba Bray
Publisher: Delacorte Press
ISBN: 9780385733977
480 pgs

Meet Cameron.  He's a sixteen year old high school student who's just getting by.  He doesn't try hard to succeed, he just sort of meanders his way through his life and that suits him just fine.  Then, one day, Cameron's body starts rebelling against him and the doctors give him dire news.  He's contracted mad cow disease and there is no cure.  Now Cameron's in the hospital hoping that some new treatment will show up to help him get better.  What he wasn't expecting was the punk rock angel who shows up to tell him he has to go on a road trip.

At first I wasn't overly impressed with the book; it just seemed to take too long to get moving.  However, once it did get moving, I managed to finish it off as fast as I could just to see how things turned out.

Libba Bray manages to convey 'teenage male' fairly reasonably; all the obligatory guy stuff is in here -- chicks, cars, possible armageddon, things blowing up, good music, beer, etc. --- and, even though some of the characters come off as fairly flat, I was still amused by the antics of the main characters and that was a good thing.

Personally I liked the ending.  I think it was the only way the book could have ended and it worked.  Anything else would've felt contrived and/or pointless, in my opinion.  Overall a good enough read, one that I won't mind recommending to my own kids.