2019-10-18 - Bubbles and Baubles
--------------------------------
Mostly caught up on my gopher-reading catchup now. I have a lot of
stuff to read, and a whole lot of new things to look into, thanks
to the gopherverse. Vim-wiki isn't something I'd ever heard of
before, and now I'm finding all sorts of use for it, so thanks
everybody!
Just two things I wanted to talk more about, and I hope I'm not
coming to these things too late.
Gallowsgryph wrote about their changing workflow processes, and,
like many, many nerds before them, complained (a little) about
having to relearn mutt. I'd like to put my oar in, and say that I
can't stand mutt. It, like a lot of other nerd-cred programs,
appears to me to be *wilfully* obscure. The design decisions appear
to be almost calculated to frustrate the user, not to empower them.
For years now, I've been using alpine. This was something I had
shuddering memories of in the days of yore, but, once I started
using it, I realised that those memories were clearly false. It is
a joy to use, with clear unambiguous instructions present on the
terminal at all times while in use. If you've never tried it on
your own box, give it a whirl, I think you'll be surprised with
what you find. If not, then continue using what takes up the least
amount of headspace for you.
Plugd over at the Lambda Lab writes an ode to their Ebook Reader.
Its a lovely piece, and I applaud all of it, particularly their
choice of reader - the Kobo. I and all the menfolk in my home use
Kobos, my wife and daughter, for historical reasons, are Kindle
users. The Kobo is a great little device, tough and with a fine
screen, and, on occasion, cheap and cheerful.
Kindle's DRM-encumbered system is something every self-respecting
techie with aspirations towards the free should be wary of, so its
wonderful to see someone else using these epub-enabled readers.
When my girlfriend and I pooled our resources so many years ago,
more than half of our baggage we toted into that first apartment
consisted of books. In the years before and after our marriage, we
continued to amass them, to the point were the bookshelves in our
home are filled two- and three- deep with the things.
Our kids are *horrified* at this waste, both in terms of the space
they take up and in terms of the environmental cost of their
production. While they do permit us to give particularly nice books
on occasion as a gift, they've made it clear that they'd prefer the
trees to stay in the ground, thanks muchly, and have embraced the
digital lifestyle wholeheartedly.
This, naturally, leads to a slight problem. If, as in the past, we
bought a book for one of the kids, then all of their sibs would
benefit from that purchase, and the book would be available to them
in their turn. With a digital copy, particularly one purchased from
Amazon's rental site, that's not an option.
So, we decided, a long time ago, that we're not playing that game.
When we buy a book, we try to buy it directly from the publisher's
own site, or the author if it means they get a wee bit more money
from it. That book is then loaded into calibre, and any DRM is
stripped from the file, and the book is made available to all the
kids on a dedicated calibre-server.
On the rare occasions when we can't strip out the DRM, then once
we've completed the purchase, I have no compunction whatsoever
in visiting the greyer parts of the internet and grabbing a
pre-repaired file. Once the author has been paid for their work,
and the publisher's avarice has been sated for a book, then I
cannot see that doing this hurts any legitimate interest.
Finally, just on the issue of the Kobo:-
I don't like Kobo's `Nickel` reader. I've replaced it with KoReader
on my device, but my sons are perfectly satisfied with the default
option.
I also don't like Kobo's default fonts. For ages I used Amazon's
`Bookerly` font, obtained by hacking my wife's kindle. Recently I
read about the Bitter typeface, from one of my favourite type
designers, Huerta Typografica. Open source, freely available, and
just has nicer (subjectively) enclosures to Amazon's proprietary
one.
This has already wittered on far longer than I'd intended, so,
until next time...
KoReader:-
https://koreader.rocks/
Bitter:-
https://www.huertatipografica.com/en/fonts/bitter-ht
