New artwork: Whatsoever You Seal on Earth II.
Blog
Things on my mind #8
- I realized recently that I never use Siri anymore. Voice input isn’t my thing, apparently.
- The importance of saving mental state when working on something. (Usually via keeping a journal/log or a to-do list.) Makes it much easier to pick the project up again months or years later.
- Another thing I noticed recently: my dreams are never in a secondary world. A pity. I have no idea why this is.
- I’ve set myself a rule where I need to spend at least ten minutes blogging each day before I’m allowed to read books. It’s working, as you may have noticed with the increase in posting this past week or two.
- I was today years old when I learned how to do jumping jacks. I’ve apparently been doing them wrong my whole life. (Not that I’ve done them a ton. But still.)
- Our local theater charges around twice as much per ticket as it used to. I have no idea when it changed.
- On my phone I much prefer reading with fonts that are slightly heavier. Digital type is often too anemic, too wispy. No substance.
With Marvin’s recent disappearance from the iOS app store, I’ve started feeling an itch to get my own ebook reading system set up sooner than later — ideally before the sad day comes when I can’t get Marvin to work on my phone anymore.
I’ve tried other iOS ereader apps and they don’t yet meet my needs (and let’s be clear, by “needs” I mean high-maintenance wishes), such as custom fonts, good design, configurable typography, and nice page numbers (ideally the 1,024 characters per page rule that Adobe Digital Editions and Marvin use).
Also, I want to use my phone since I have it with me all the time and can read more often, thus I’m not considering a dedicated ereader like a Kobo or a Kindle. And I have a large collection of ebooks I want to read, so print books don’t meet the need.
The default for me here would be a web app (PWA), with a backend built in Django or FastAPI or Go. That’s probably where I’ll land, but from a research angle I see this as a good time to explore possibilities I wouldn’t normally consider. Some ideas along those lines:
- PDF — convert EPUBs to phone-sized PDFs automatically and then use a PDF reader like Documents instead of a dedicated EPUB app, possibly with the analog filters I recently posted about
- Images — convert EPUBs to images (one page per image) and then read via an album in the system photos viewer, deleting each page as I read it (half joking here)
- HTML — splat the ebooks out into all their HTML files and then put those up on a server behind authentication, reading them in a browser like normal web pages
- Retro ebook reader — web-based app that feels like a Game Boy or one of those tiny consoles, with a chonky pixel font, possibly using game mechanics for page navigation (I’m intrigued by this idea but in reality it would probably feel super gimmicky)
- 3D app — deboss the type, procedurally generated paper texture, etc. (also feels gimmicky)
- Email — export each chapter of the EPUB and then email it to myself (fully joking here) (it would work, sure, but I don’t want to read books in my email)
The PDF and HTML options hold some promise, so I plan to continue exploring them for a bit before I cave and write a PWA.
New artwork: We Shall See Him as He Is.
New artwork: By the Holy Spirit of Promise.
Links #98
Margaret Olsen Hemming’s interview with Jennifer Champoux about the Book of Mormon Art Catalog.
Nolen’s Talk Paper Scissors game, where you play rock paper scissors over the phone with strangers. Ha. (I have not actually played this.)
Maggie Appleton on ambient co-presence on the web. Yep. The introvert in me is, uh, 100% fine with the current lack of co-presence, but it would be nice to be able to toggle this kind of thing on from time to time.
John Gruber on ebooks vs. web pages, particularly the quote from Sebastiaan de With: “There are no good ebooks. The ePub file lacks all the delight of the beautiful website.” Good point. Food for thought… (This is relevant to an upcoming post.)
Eli’s December Adventure. Ah, I love dev logs like these. I used to write similar logs in text files when I was a young programmer. This makes me want to a) build some kind of larger software project and b) write a public dev log for it.
Alexander Obenauer’s lab notes. Love these. Lots of thinking about the future of the computing. When I’m in my research mode, these types of notes (well organized, detailed, etc.) are the kind of thing I wish I were producing. Note to future self: do this.
Sapling, “a highly experimental code editor where you edit code, not text.” Interesting idea!
New artwork: That Same Sociality II.
Booknotes 3.6
Nonfiction
- Chip War, by Chris Miller (2022), about semiconductors. A fascinating read, particularly (for me) the history of the early days of semiconductors. Learned a lot.
Fiction
- Blackwing, by Ed McDonald (2017, fantasy). Maybe a tad too edgelord grimdark and crass for me. Trying to be sophisticated but failing, perhaps; I’m not sure. The voice grated on me a bit, too, though not enough to stop me from reading. And oh how I wish fantasy novels would stop overusing capitalization. (In this book, for example, darlings and spinners didn’t need to be capitalized.) Hi, this is me being obnoxiously pedantic. Anyway, I have no idea if I’ll keep reading the series.
- System Collapse, by Martha Wells (2023, science fiction). Latest entry in the Murderbot series. Loved the voice as usual. I also continue to enjoy the archaeological(ish) part of the worldbuilding. Looking forward to however many more of these there are.
- A Local Habitation, by Seanan McGuire (2010, fantasy). The second October Daye novel. It had been long enough since I read the first that I remembered almost nothing, but this was easy to pick up. Basically a murder mystery. Enjoyed it, even though I picked up on one of the twists pretty early on.
Links #97
Frederic Edwin Church’s painting Our Banner in the Sky. This type of art is a bit gimmicky, I know, but it’s still fun.
Mandy Brown on risks and benefits, with two angles that aren’t brought up as often. Great points.
Adam Newbold’s printable full-year calendar. I like that this fits on any size paper. This seems like perhaps a better way to distribute charts. (Though I do love the static solidness of PDFs.)
Patrick O’Keefe on some of the production design for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Fun. As I’ve said before, I kind of wish all comic book movies were done in this style.
Jenny Li on how to paint various textures.
Peter Gainsford on the camel, the rope, and the eye of the needle, making the case that the word wasn’t rope after all.
Spencer Ackerman on Henry Kissinger as war criminal.
Asun Álvarez’s interview with Victoria Goddard. Lots of interesting things here for those who’ve read Goddard’s books (or are curious about reading them).
Freight Text, the tasty font that Reactor (formerly Tor.com) is using for body copy.
Mitxela’s tiny spinny volumetric display. Cool.
Lipi’s Ikat Devanagari pixel font. Love this. And chonky pixels in general. (A byproduct of when I grew up, no doubt.)
Lea Verou on eigensolutions “Rather than designing a solution to address only our driving use cases, step back and ask yourself: can we design a solution as a composition of smaller, more general features, that could be used together to address a broader set of use cases?” Yes, this.
New artwork: The Long Absence.
