My OperaEtext transition
Sunday, June 19, 2005 1:25:18 PM
I’ve wondered how long it would take me to actually shift my reading habits from books to a handheld device, fully believing the transition would come, not just for me but ultimately for the masses.
When I’ve talked about that notion with friends and acquaintances I’ve often heard: “I like a book to hold,” as an argument that it won’t happen. As Christine often points out to me on various issues: “It’s not about you.”
Indeed the transition is about those who grow up glued to the web and the gatling gun of hypertext, and those who already have their whole world on their cell phone.
Eyes trained not on the page but the screen will adopt etext over printed matter, and as for the rest of us wed to the notion of holding a printed tome we’ll adapt or die off just like the dinosaurs.
iPod strikes again
But I mentioned I’ve started to change. I’m by no means an early adopter. People with a lot of PDAs have probably experienced this for years, but I never bothered to get one.
It’s my iPod again, and the wealth of turn of the century etexts out there that have captured the imagination of my 2005 self.
A paper book that helped
A few years ago, when I first discovered Project Gutenberg <http://www.gutenberg.org/>, I tried reading Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Monster Men online. Didn’t work. Kept getting distracted from the computer screen and I finally reverted to a paperback.
Now, after enjoying a host of other great things about my iPod, through the virtue of iPod and iTunes: Missing Manual <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0596006586/qid=1119186197/sr=8-2/ref=pd_bbs_2/104-6910621-4464736?v=glance&s=books&n=507846>, I sit in my living room, or more importantly in waiting rooms and other boring places, spinning the wheel to scroll up a column of back-lit text. The Missing Manual pointed me to the program "iPod library" that will convert .pdfs, .lit files and of course plain text files into chunks iPod’s “Notes” feature can accommodate.
Got through the first three novellas about ghost buster John Silence that way, and a story about The Thinking Machine by Jacques Futrel. Working on The Beetle by Richard Marsh now.
I have a paperback novel with a bookmark in it on my coffee table that I’m working on, but I sense something is changing.The bookmark is moving slowly through the book's thickness. My eyes may fail or the newness may ware off, but I’m not sure. I sense one of those moments has occurred. You know, I may have just left the chrysalis and the pupa stage behind.
More texts
I dumped a couple of things not quite adaptable to iPod onto my laptop including
F., an unproduced screenplay <http://www.wga.org/WrittenBy/0603/f.html> by Howard A. Rodman about the pulp villain Fantômas and a couple of other bad guys, well worth reading.
Now the laptop is crowding the paperback more often than not on the coffee table. The cats like that. It stays warm.
Those of you who’ve been reading things on PDAs for years know what I’m talking about, but I’m basically a new convert, and I wonder if the iPod’s market penetration is a herald of more change.
Check out my stories in html for your handheld devices:
Good Kids <http://www.gdarkness.com/goodkid.html>
The Handbook <http://www.plotswithguns.com/HANDBOOK.htm>
When I’ve talked about that notion with friends and acquaintances I’ve often heard: “I like a book to hold,” as an argument that it won’t happen. As Christine often points out to me on various issues: “It’s not about you.”
Indeed the transition is about those who grow up glued to the web and the gatling gun of hypertext, and those who already have their whole world on their cell phone.
Eyes trained not on the page but the screen will adopt etext over printed matter, and as for the rest of us wed to the notion of holding a printed tome we’ll adapt or die off just like the dinosaurs.
iPod strikes again
But I mentioned I’ve started to change. I’m by no means an early adopter. People with a lot of PDAs have probably experienced this for years, but I never bothered to get one.
It’s my iPod again, and the wealth of turn of the century etexts out there that have captured the imagination of my 2005 self.
A paper book that helped
A few years ago, when I first discovered Project Gutenberg <http://www.gutenberg.org/>, I tried reading Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Monster Men online. Didn’t work. Kept getting distracted from the computer screen and I finally reverted to a paperback.
Now, after enjoying a host of other great things about my iPod, through the virtue of iPod and iTunes: Missing Manual <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0596006586/qid=1119186197/sr=8-2/ref=pd_bbs_2/104-6910621-4464736?v=glance&s=books&n=507846>, I sit in my living room, or more importantly in waiting rooms and other boring places, spinning the wheel to scroll up a column of back-lit text. The Missing Manual pointed me to the program "iPod library" that will convert .pdfs, .lit files and of course plain text files into chunks iPod’s “Notes” feature can accommodate.
Got through the first three novellas about ghost buster John Silence that way, and a story about The Thinking Machine by Jacques Futrel. Working on The Beetle by Richard Marsh now.
I have a paperback novel with a bookmark in it on my coffee table that I’m working on, but I sense something is changing.The bookmark is moving slowly through the book's thickness. My eyes may fail or the newness may ware off, but I’m not sure. I sense one of those moments has occurred. You know, I may have just left the chrysalis and the pupa stage behind.
More texts
I dumped a couple of things not quite adaptable to iPod onto my laptop including
F., an unproduced screenplay <http://www.wga.org/WrittenBy/0603/f.html> by Howard A. Rodman about the pulp villain Fantômas and a couple of other bad guys, well worth reading.
Now the laptop is crowding the paperback more often than not on the coffee table. The cats like that. It stays warm.
Those of you who’ve been reading things on PDAs for years know what I’m talking about, but I’m basically a new convert, and I wonder if the iPod’s market penetration is a herald of more change.
Check out my stories in html for your handheld devices:
Good Kids <http://www.gdarkness.com/goodkid.html>
The Handbook <http://www.plotswithguns.com/HANDBOOK.htm>
