Somewhere out there! » Books

Future of the Digital Book

Nicholas Lee — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 20:30:58 +0000

Watch the first 20 mins or so; clear view of the current state of the word and culture.

From Alchemist Author Pirates His Own Books.

Google Books

Nicholas Lee — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 06:46:40 +0000

Google has just released a personalised version of Google Books. It looks quite cool. I’ve been meaning for a while to move my delicious monster library set to librarythings, might have to consider Google Books instead.

From lifehacker.

Polymer Vision to offer rollable eBook reader

Nicholas Lee — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 20:46:28 +0000

From jkOnTheRun: Polymer Vision to offer rollable eBook reader. One of these will certainly make it easily to give an ebook to my mother.

Technorati Tags: ebooks, hardware

Trade Balances – What is Fair?

Nicholas Lee — Sun, 21 May 2006 02:27:43 +0000

I think this comment from Stiglitz: What the IMF Must Do to Reestablish Legitimacy clearly states the complication of international trade.

This poses a dilemma for Chinese policy makers. Subsidising their own farmers would divert money from education, health, and development projects. Or China can try to maintain an exchange rate that is slightly lower than it would be otherwise. If the IMF is to be even-handed, should it criticise American farm policies or China’s exchange-rate policies?

As a side note, three books on economics I can recommend to any are: Naked Economics, Freakonomics and one I finished this weekend The Undercover Economist. The last one being a very good

Technorati Tags: china, economics, international, books, trade, usa

Richard Morgan

Nicholas Lee — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 23:19:47 +0000

I’ve just finished reading the latest two books from Richard Morgan, Broken Angels
and Market Forces. With these two books is now pretty much on my default for consistent quality buy list, along with Greg Bear, David Brin, Peter Hamilton, Robin Hobb and David Zindell.

Broken Angels is the second Takeshi Kovacs novel, which started with Altered Carbon. This series is set in the twenty-fifth century, where humankind has spread throughout a section of the galaxy using the technology of sleeving. Physical transport is still at slower than light speeds, but using technology discovered on Mars a person’s consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or “sleeve”). A person’s consciousness can also be sent FTL across the galaxy to be resleeved into a waiting body. In a galaxy where sending a physical police force with be too late, the spread of humanity is monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. envoys, an elite corps trained to be able to sleeve into any situation by a combination of mental training.

Although Broken Angels is not as good as the first book it is still a very good read. Altered Carbon introduced some very interesting ideas and quite apart from being an excellent story is worth reading purely for the exploration of the interesting idea of sleeving and what a society like this would be like. Broken Angels however fall squared into the second book category. We find the character of Takeshi Kovacs is fleshed up, but the story line lacks the punch of the first book.

Market Forces is a completely different story with definite quality and imagine, a good sign that Richard Morgan is not a one shot author. Set in a near future world were only the corporate elite can afford cars a new breed of business has arisen. The corporate gladiator, a sharp-suited, hard-driving gunslingers who operate armoured vehicles and follow a pseudo Samurai code. Our main character an anti-hero, at the start of the novel begins work for Conflict Investments at Shorn Associates, where in the superheated global village of the near future, big money is made by finding the right little war and supporting one side against the other–in exchange for a share of the spoils.

eBooks

Nicholas Lee — Thu, 04 Nov 2004 10:38:15 +0000

I’ve started reading ebooks on my Psion 5MX and sometimes like SE P800.

After downloading some stories in lit format from Fictionwise I converted to mobipocket format by first using Convert LIT and changing them to OEBF. Then with Mobipocket I created some I could read on my Psion 5MX.

I must say its very cool being able to open my Psion at exact the right page.

Some other useful ebook resources at this site.

The advantage of being useless

Nicholas Lee — Thu, 15 Jul 2004 10:14:10 +0000

The Advantage of Being Useless, by George Sweet is one of my favourite books. The headlining tale is one of Chung Tzu’s goodies:

A sage, in rambling about the heights of Shang, saw a large and
extraordinary tree. The teams of a thousand chariots might be sheltered
under it , and its shade would cover them all! Said the sage, “What a
tree this is! It must contain an extraordinary amount of timber!”

The sage looked up at the smaller branches and saw they were so twisted
and crooked that they could not be made in rafters and beams. At the
roots its stem was divided into so many rounded potions that neither
coffins nor shell could be made from them. Licking one of the leaves
left the mouth feeling torn and wounded. The small of it would make one
frantic, as if intoxicate, for three whole days together.

“This indeed is a tree good for nothing, and it is thus that it has
reach so great an age.”

The cinnamon tree can be eaten, and there is cut down.
The varnish tree is useful, and therefore incisions are made in it.

All know the advantage of being useful, but no one knows the advantage
of being useless.

- Chuang Tzu.

Bulgarian Background

Nicholas Lee — Thu, 15 Jul 2004 09:13:49 +0000

Reading Bulgarian Background, by Bernard Newman. Travelogue published in 1961 about the authors journey though Bulgaria during that period. The two main monasteries, Rila and Bachkovo, sound like interesting places to see. One particular comment about a bicycle journey down the Danube has inspired maybe a holiday next year. Cycle tour though Austria and maybe a long term plan to cycle the whole way around the Black Sea. The later is definitely something that requires some planning.

Anyway the book is quite interesting, provided me with some insight into the Balkan history from the Bulgarian point of view.