The Literate Wench in the Wilderness

2010-05-28T18:35:00.001+09:30

Obsession: Free e-books

2010-01-29T01:32:00.002+09:30

So I haven't posted on here for a while, just figured I'd give a rundown of some of the free e-books you can find these days.

First, how to read them. Of course you can download free e-books as PDF files on your computer and read them leased to the screen. You've been able to do that forever. But these days, why would you? Surely you have some sort of mobile platform - an iTouch or iPhone or generic clone thereof, a Kindle or Nook or some other e-book reader.

I don't own a Kindle. I find their prices, proprietary formats and DRM irritating. I love Amazon.com for their services to the old-school book, but truly dislike their e-book style. So instead, I've gone with an iTouch. Now, there is a free Kindle app on the iTouch, in case you decide you just have to have your Amazon.com. Barnes & Noble also has a free app on the iTouch comparable to the Kindle app; check book prices and see which store suits you better, I suppose. Or get both and use whichever is having a sale at the moment.

Now those are all well and good; but if you'd like to get away from the pay sites and explore the world of "free", follow me this way. The best iTouch book application out there at the moment is the e-book reader "Stanza", from Lexcycle. It's free, and you can use it a couple ways. The first way is to download books wirelessly directly to the device from the Stanza-provided links. These links come in two categories: free and paid. In the paid links, of course, you can go with a bunch of sites; Books On Board, Feedbooks, SmashWords, etc. Some of these also offer free books, but there's an entire section of links in Stanza which only provide free books.

Best of all, you're not limited to the links provided by Stanza on the application; you can find any PDF file you like, download it, and then upload it to your wireless device from your computer.

Let's discuss a few sources: Random House Free e-reads, the Baen free e-book library and Gutenberg.

Random House has provided a dozen free books, all modern, all very high quality. They include Charlie Huston and a couple other big names. They get huge props for their selection and their decision to give away these books. As a bonus, you can download these straight from the Stanza application.

Baen was doing e-books long before the other publishers, and they have a lovely set of free books available on their website. Here's a link to the instructions for accessing Baen from Stanza: http://www.webscription.net//t-iphone.aspx

And then there's project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg is awesome. They have the largest, most interesting, most diverse free library anywhere online. Most of the other sites which advertise "free e-books" are just copying parts of the Gutenberg library, and they don't even have the more interesting stuff.

So what's good on Gutenberg? Well, if you ignore the basic classics like Jayne Eyre and Wuthering Heights, the complete works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, roman classics like Tacitus, childrens' lit like Alice in Wonderland, the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe - if you ignore all these there's still a couple hundred thousand books to pick from. And some of them are excellent.

The best way to find books on Gutenberg might be the bookshelf option. Here you go: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Category:Bookshelf

The bookshelf at Gutenberg sorts your books into categories. Fantasy, Humor, Crime Fiction, Love - all there. Just browse away. I personally like the Science Fiction shelf, it's got some classics.

Of course, there are places besides those I've mentioned to get e-books. I've found free books hidden away on websites devoted to TV shows, on personal web pages, in links on Twitter - there's tons of reading material out there. Then there are the paid sites - There's Lulu.com, the self-publishing site, where you can buy original works and download them in PDF format; sort of a hit and miss as to quality, but some original ideas do exist on there.

All in all, there's a whole world of awesome out there in ebook land, and a lot of it is free.

Note: a corporate lawyer has some bad news about Stanza: http://www.teleread.org/2009/04/27/amazonlexcycle-acquisition-is-bad-for-ebook-classics/

Ruby Gap #3

2009-07-27T05:04:00.001+09:30

Ruby Gap 2009, #2

2009-07-27T04:58:00.000+09:30

Ruby Gap, 2009

2009-07-27T04:53:00.000+09:30

Haori from kimoyes.com.au

2009-01-19T12:30:00.001+09:30

We improvised the hangers from a long thick dowel with an eye-hook drilled in the center balance point, threaded& hung from rough twine.

Unknown birds now known :)

2009-01-11T10:07:00.002+09:30

Apparently the birds in my backyard were called Little Corellas. I was thrown by how much the look and act like galahs. Good info though!

Unknown birds (maybe galahs? definitely cockatiels) p2

2009-01-11T09:29:00.001+09:30

Unknown Birds p1

2009-01-11T09:03:00.001+09:30

Bush Pigeon

2009-01-11T09:00:00.002+09:30

19: Not everyone finished; and the trucks look a little out of place in a parking lot.

2009-01-11T02:48:00.002+09:30

18: All done, heading home

2009-01-11T02:43:00.003+09:30

17: They're off!

2009-01-11T02:33:00.001+09:30

16: Morning Light

2009-01-11T02:30:00.001+09:30

15: Evening, Night and Dawn

2009-01-11T02:26:00.000+09:30

14: In the Evening Air

2009-01-11T02:21:00.001+09:30

13: End of day 1, we chill & collect firewood.

2009-01-11T02:14:00.003+09:30

12: Spinafex = don't touch!

2009-01-11T02:09:00.001+09:30

11: Intermission: A Tree

2009-01-11T02:04:00.001+09:30

10: Blue skies over our tents

2009-01-11T01:59:00.002+09:30

9: Suddenly, the skies clear!

2009-01-11T01:53:00.002+09:30

8: And they're off!

2009-01-11T01:49:00.002+09:30

7: Spinifex, a Helicopter, and Everybody Gets Bogged Sometime

2009-01-11T01:43:00.001+09:30

6: Camp, and Near Camp

2009-01-11T01:38:00.000+09:30

5: Halfway there, and Setting Up

2009-01-11T01:33:00.001+09:30

4: Pretty and Muddy

2009-01-11T01:28:00.000+09:30

3: And a little bit muddy

2009-01-11T01:23:00.000+09:30

2: The drive is wet

2009-01-11T01:19:00.000+09:30

1: Starting On Our Way Out To Finke Desert Race

2009-01-11T01:05:00.001+09:30

Ayre's Rock / Uluru

2008-07-10T14:42:00.002+09:30

They don't let you out of the country unless you have a stamp on your passport that says "I visited Ayre's Rock".

Ok, so not really, but it's pretty darn close. Look quick: this is the only time I'll ever post a picture of the thing. It's a really damn big rock.

Supergreen!

2008-07-10T14:37:00.001+09:30

A tree in the middle of a major city... What a concept!

Graffiti?

2008-07-10T14:30:00.000+09:30

Nope. There's an art gallery down there; call this an advertisement, cleverly disguised.

Sparkle

2008-07-10T14:26:00.000+09:30

Detail from an oversized chandelier sculpture lying across the top of a Melbourne alleyway -

Another pretty sunset in the outback

2008-07-10T14:20:00.001+09:30

Pelican giving us the eye

2008-07-10T14:13:00.000+09:30

pier

2008-07-10T14:11:00.000+09:30

Rainbow!

2008-07-01T21:28:00.000+09:30

There was water; of course I took a picture of it!

2008-07-01T21:24:00.000+09:30

Territory Day

2008-07-01T21:22:00.003+09:30

The natives are setting off fireworks in large, unsupervised numbers. It's been a very, very dry year. If they set my backyard on fire I'm going to be peeved with a chance of irked. I may even get to be wroth.

It also means there's very, very little chance of actually getting any sleep until about 2 am.

Can't deny it's really damn pretty, though.

Stalactites in a cave south of Perth

2008-07-01T21:16:00.000+09:30

Geranium on the side of a lighthouse

2008-07-01T21:14:00.000+09:30

Central Australia as viewed from the window of our plane

2008-07-01T21:06:00.001+09:30

Continuing with the photos: Lunar Eclipse

2008-05-28T19:43:00.003+09:30

Wish.

2008-02-02T15:24:00.001+09:30

I wish iTunes had a wishlist.

The HPV vaccine

2008-01-28T10:04:00.000+09:30

Open note to those parents who think they shouldn't give their kid the vaccine because their kid shouldn't be having sex anyways: given the perfect child who always obeys you and never thinks you're a little slow and has no hormonal impulses whatsoever - "Just Say No to Sex" works great unless your kid gets raped. Or say they make it safely through life but they don't marry a virgin and hey, their spouse picked it up somewhere and they didn't know because, HPV? mostly no symptoms...

...gah. Stupid people piss me off. Get your kids vaccinated, boys and girls both, and you'll be a smart person who will make me very happy.

DVD complaints

2008-01-24T08:37:00.000+09:30

moving all DVD's from cases to binders, I have come to 2 conclusions.

1) those little tabs they sometimes have to hold the cases shut suck.
2) I like the thinline cases a lot more than the fancier regular sized or multi-dvd cases.
3) I only hate CSI Miami because of David Caruso aka Horatio Caine; but him I hate enough to make me ditch the whole series.

So it's 3 conclusions... sue me.

A Reasonable Explanation #2

2008-01-15T23:28:00.000+09:30

Continuing with the theme of utter geekiness, I bring you my second TV sci-fi reasonable explanation. This one is a DR Who thing. I've recently become somewhat addicted...

In the TV movie for DR Who back in '96, they said he was half-human. A perceived story continuity flaw has been discussed where said Doctor's ability to regenerate is uncontrolled, whereas when another time lord was shown to regenerate it portrayed her as having full control over her new self. So... if he's only a half Time Lord, couldn't that mean his abilities are somewhat different - even stunted - compared to other Time Lords? Including his ability to regenerate?

Just saying.

A Reasonable Explanation

2008-01-15T23:17:00.000+09:30

I have, in the past, watched "Angel" - the TV show now canceled. It always struck me that the main character, Angel the two hundred some odd year old vampire, was a little.... thick. Possibly a slow learner. I mean, two hundred, right? You'd expect he'd be perfect at human interaction by now. Or at least vaguely competent. But no- he's a little bit lame. He wears his heart on his sleeve, he's not got the basic social skills of a high school girl. Hence what could have been a deeply unequal relationship - between Buffy and Angel - turned out to be fairly straightforward in more than simple physical terms. I think I know why he's so far behind the learning curve.

It's his soul, and who he was before he turned humanoid mosquito. He has memories stretching over two centuries, but absolutely no experience. Effectively, he began as a person accumulating life experience when he got his soul back - and he didn't try and learn how to actually talk to people again for another century after that. He hadn't started trying to be a good person until he saw Buffy - so his emotional and moral development was deeply stunted. And face it, before he went all "papercuts are yummy!" he was no sweetheart - he was essentially a lazy, selfish slob. His trying to be responsible and heroic was, to him, a new thing - even more so than for most people of his apparent age.

That's all.

The Three Best Viral Videos.

2008-01-15T23:07:00.000+09:30

Since I'm not taking pictures (too darn hot, as the song says) I figured I'd best write something.

I will not simply write "something" on a line there, just for giggles. Promise.

No, seriously.

Ok, so instead I decided to put in the three videos I love most. Or the three with the most mind-virus longevity in sticking in my brain unwanted. Or some quality... If there are any of the following three you have not seen, a) you have been living in a cave for the past 6 years and b) you ought to give it a click.

#1: The Badger Song. Very trippy. The longer you listen, the less it sounds like what they're actually saying and the more hypnotic is gets...
www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/badgers

#2: The Internet is for Porn, done in Worlds of Warcraft characters.... Ok, sounds lame but really funny. Don't drink milk and watch this unless you want to wash out the inside of your nose with moo juice.
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=nQac90N43WU

#3: Still Alive, from Portal. Oh, dear. This does require a little explanation... See, there's this video game. And the computer in the game is very sweet and helpful and homicidal... and, well, it's you or the computer, and the cake was a lie, so.... Just listen to the song.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RthZgszykL

Before and After

2007-09-03T09:08:00.000+09:30

The day after we arrived at the cabin by the lake (you saw a picture of that last post) this is what it looked like.

The day after that, when we were scheduled to leave, *this* is what it looked like...

2007-09-03T08:57:00.000+09:30

We drove up for a while into the mountains -

And after the scariest road I've ever driven (because there was so little of it from side to side and so much of it from front to back, and a lot lees of it underneath than I was really comfortable with) we ended up here. This is the husband, feeling sick adn miserable in front of the fire.

And this is me out checking out the locals. It's a kookabura! I think. Well, he laughed, so he's probably a kookaburra.

And the day after that -

2007-09-03T08:48:00.000+09:30

We went chasing waterfalls...

Here there be cheese! The waterfall was on a side road, and on the way in we saw this little dairy. So on the way out we stoped and had some of the BEST cheese. It was delicious. And they deliver!

Went fishing, caught a rock. (It's on the drive. Pretty cool...)

Next Day

2007-09-01T19:27:00.000+09:30

On the way the next day, we stopped at a wilderness park. It's a mad badger! No, it's a little devil:

Then I wanted to se more water....

And here's another cutesy shot. Of us. Looking at water.....

Supper

2007-08-10T07:41:00.000+09:30

Then we went down the hill again and hung out at another beach, then we went to yet another beach and hung out there with this fellow while we waited for a restaurant to open.... What? No! The bird wasn't supper! Although he definitely expected us to provide him with some for the pleasure of his company. Justin fed him some hot n spicy corn-nuts. It didn't seem to phase the little greedy-bill, so maybe birds don't taste spice.

Up the hill!

2007-08-10T07:34:00.000+09:30

After the husband woke up, we went for a drive. Got some jam and wine at a place called Kate's berry farm, then got lost (NOT my fault, it looked like the road connected on the map, I swear!) then found the place we were going and parked the car and climbed up a reall big hill to see Wineglass Bay. Essentially, we climbed for a couple hours to look at.... a beach. ;)

This is what it looked like:

More pretty pretty

2007-08-10T07:27:00.000+09:30

So we finaly got where we were going, and I then promptly dragged Justin down to yet another beach. I have mercifully not included any of the 50 pictures of water I took there. The next morning I let sleeping husbands lie and went down to the becah before dawn, got some pictures... oh, yeah. More beach, more water. But... Pretty!

Heh.

2007-08-10T07:17:00.000+09:30

On the other hand, pics of the husband - in this case, half freezing his ass off, and half falling asleep in the sun on a cliff with some serious waves making noise on the rocks behind us - never get old. Did I mention that at the beginning of this trip we were both sick as? No, seriously - sinus infections all around. It was awful. And then I go dragging him down to the only truly cold place in Australia and make him walk all over the place so we can take pictures and go "Ooooh! Pretty!... " Somehow we managed to get better, though. Mostly.

And the reward for the stress was...

2007-08-09T23:22:00.000+09:30

...a beach:

A weird old bridge, which you can see the stop of the side-walls here; it was all hand-built by convicts, and the spines of rock serve absolutely no useful purpose that anyone can figure:

And more beach, of course. What? I haven't seen ocean for a while! I'm being nice and leaving out the 100 other pictures of water I took. Trust me, my pictures of waves are lovely but possibly a bit repetitive after a while.

Of B&B's and Scenery

2007-08-09T23:11:00.001+09:30

Vacation in Tasmiania! First night in Hobart. So I booked a B&B for our first night, but their web-based booking system was broken and we ended up having to find another place to stay. The other place was a nightmare of pink and green, smelled like something old and wasn't particularly clean. No pictures. Sushi that night barely ofset the misery. Here's a picture of the nice, pretty, clean place we almost stayed:

Upon leaving Hobart, I determined that the tourist map showed a scenic route, and we followed it. It was paved a little at first, so it wasn't until we were well and truly into the scary stuff, quite trapped, that we determined that dotted line on a tourist map, no matter how thick, is BAD. However, it did bring us out to a pretty overlook:

Then it was back to the scary stuff. Tassie? Here's a note: Your roads are a little alarming at times. This is not the most significant grade we faced in our little economy rental, and that stuff is sheer mud. Slip slidin' away!

Cat-Sitting

2007-08-09T23:04:00.000+09:30

Borrowed a friend's furry monsters for a week while they moved up here. Here's the cool picture:

Alice Show, 07/07/07

2007-08-06T12:11:00.000+09:30

Every year, early July, the Show comes to town...

...Including the flying pigs.

This is why we have bridges over dry, sandy rivers.

2007-08-06T12:07:00.000+09:30

Because sometimes, even here, you get a rainy day.

Out Back. No, really...

2007-08-06T12:01:00.001+09:30

Took this picture out my back window. I think he was around for a while, because I saw a roo (no way to tell if it's the same one) standing in the street out under a lamp one night. Very surreal - like one of those paintings of people in a cafe at night, or dogs playing poker.

Ghost Gum

2007-08-06T11:59:00.000+09:30

Things that fly and cheep

2007-08-06T11:51:00.001+09:30

I got lucky: caught a flolck of wild budgies on camera! Pretty.

Further along the drive, we saw...

2007-08-06T11:41:00.000+09:30

some very old aboriginal paintings, symbolizing catapillar, I think. Very cool. It's ochre and clay on rock, protected and just sitting there from like forever...

And some very green scenery for a desert. It had recently rained.

And road hazards!

We went for a picnic drive

2007-08-06T11:25:00.001+09:30

There's a popular tourist song here in Central Australia, it goes like this -

"Give me a home amoung the gum trees, with lots of plum trees
A midget or two and a kangaroo..."

Whups. Sorry - a friend sort of corrupted the song and now I can never remember the real words. I'm pretty sure it's not a midget, it's a sheep, but.... never mind. Carrying on -

"A sheep or two and a kangaroo, clothesline out the back, verandah out the front and an old - rocking - chair!"

Ther are gestures that go with every line, and you're supposed to make these semi-obscene hip-thrust motions when you do the rocking chair bit. Anyways, in case you wondered what a gum tree was, the leaves in the top of the frist picture are gum leaves. It's a river gum - there are loads of varieties of gum tree. River Gum, Blue Gum, Ghost Gum, all sorts. All very pretty. Someone joked that this place really is upside down: gum trees shed their bark but keep their leaves, swans are black instead of white, the seasons are reversed and the local boat races are canceled when the rivers have water in them.

Right - on to the pictures. We went for a picnic drive along the ridge that runs through town, stopping at some of the gaps in the ridge to take pictures.

And some pretty rocks and trees:

And a nice slice of rocks.

Settling In

2007-08-06T11:08:00.000+09:30

So we got into our house, and got our stuff, and started trying to settle in. It's a two story housr - we have stairs! - and we have a balcony that overlooks Heavitree Gap. This was the view one morning -

First Post

2007-08-06T09:38:00.000+09:30

Well, we got back here to the Au (meaning Australia, also the chemical symbol for gold... coincidence? Well, maybe. But fun nonethless.) a few months ago but I had trouble getting the blog to upload pictures, so no posts for a while. So I'll start at the beginning and work my way forward... Here's a shot from our day in Sydney between flying into Aus and flying in to town. This poor woman wasquietly eating her lunch when some ibis decided she ought to share...