Photos coming soon

Unloaded graphics in my email app added a little unintentional humor to this commercial email.

(It's from Viv Thomas in UK. Their site is nothing special, but they have made some very good adult DVDs (the Pink Velvet trilogy for example), with really cute girls going at it with each other, and the girls don't have high hair, or thick makeup, or black lingerie, or plastic tits. It's way more cute and natural than 98% of adult fare.)

Pogue reviews K3 (update)

David Pogue reviews "what everyone (except Amazon) is calling the Kindle 3". (Yeah, I wonder what the reasoning is behind not calling it "3"? It's just confusing to have no separation of models. Accessories have to be described as fitting "the latest generation", not very precise.)

It's a very positive review, which makes me happy, for I ordered one weeks ago, and I should get it within a few days.

I already (today actually) got my red leather cover with a clever little LED night light built in (does not add to the bulk, it draws power from the Kindle and is very flat and pulls out from the corner), and it really is a very nice object. Very pleasing. It should look nice with the "graphite" colored Kindle. (Took them long enough to realize it should be darker than the grey screen.)
(Hah! The cover is almost half the price of the device! Funny.)

Like Pogue says, the Kindle is now competing with the iPad in precisely the areas it has going for it: size, price, and weight. It's roughly a third of the price, a third of the size, and a third of the weight. And it seems this is striking gold, if you order now in the UK, delivery is two or three weeks later than originally promised, so I guess they're selling better than ever. (Actually, I think this is the first model which is being sold from the UK, so that may aid the size of the crowd who wants one.)
(A UK review here from The Independent. Weird article, though, it really does not say much.)
Update: TCG found this unpacking video from a publishing CEO.

Update:
What I'd like is something with a good screen like the iPad's (smaller would be OK), and weighing less than 300 grams. Should that be so hard? Why have all the ebook readers that awful e-paper? Battery life? Would it be so terrible to have to charge it every couple of days?

OK, I'll see tomorrow, they do say the new Kindle's e-paper is not quite as awful (dark) as the older models'. But still, there should at least be room for a model with an LCD screen, no? 

Has anybody heard anything about why all the makers have selected the e-paper screens? 

Mountain road body-surfing

This looks like fun, and not a little dangerous.

I can't imagine he overtakes a motorcycle, and with a good margin too! He must be going damn fast. 

Jackie Evancho

In the series of Little People With Big Voices...



It must be a difficult life to explode into stardom like this, especially at such a tender age.

Interesting that when he mentions her dress, she glances down, like a man. She is not a woman yet, a woman is always aware what she's wearing. (There was an episode of the (very good) Dilbert animated show which featured this.)

Unspeakably horrible hands

The Fifth Invader Force, I guess.

Some funny characters

♧✖Ωµ
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∑⊄ϖψ
⡡⡟⠿⠵
➾➾➾↵↵↵
⑨✥₧¢£€
✞✠✙

These are ❝funny characters❞. I just found out about OS X's special characters palette (System preferences/Language and Text/Text/Edit menu), and I wanted to see it they would reach all the way into a blog post.

Porn Industry Successfully Commercializes iPhone’s FaceTime

Porn Industry Successfully Commercializes iPhone’s FaceTime, article.

I saw it coming. 

“The happy client from the United States ordered a ten minute show with Brees Kelly but was satiated enough to hang up after just over five minutes,” the company said in a statement.

Now that's funny, to quote Snoopy.

Making web TV/Cali Lewis

Doubtlessly a key ingredient in Cali Lewis' success is that she just is durn cute. I know that's why I looked up her podcast in the first place.
But it is also a good podcast (vodcast, videocast, whatever). It's entertaining, and often has interesting information. I watched a couple of episodes of it on my iPhone 4 over lunch in a café yesterday. (It really is an amazing new world.)

I had been vaguely wondering just how amateur or professional the production actually is. And the most recent episode tells the answer: professional! Wow, the lights alone...



I find it interesting that anybody can make decent video, even pretty good, with just an iPhone or iPod Nano. But at the same time, if you want it to be really professional, it takes a lot more work and money. Almost paradoxical, the amount of effort it takes to cross this little bridge from "good" to "really good".

Hope For Autism & Asperger's Syndrome: My Story

TCGirl found this very interesting video told by a young woman, Taylor Morris, who used to be autistic. She seems highly capable and communicative now, more than most people in fact, and it's nice to see that the condition can change, I didn't believe it could.



"I love being able to say that I'm a successful person, and I'm not a normal one."

Indeed. Many people, not the least kids, are scared of not being "normal". But nobody is normal. And appearing normal is a lot of work, for no reason.

It's great when you get this rare phenomenon of a person who can explain something about her and a group of people, which they normally can't communicate.

America in Color from 1939-1943

[Thanks to Jimmy]

America in Color from 1939-1943, picture post.

Color pictures, particularly such good ones, were very rare indeed pre-war.

(As usual, click for big pic)

Stanza reader software

Before the iPad, the most popular and respected ebook reading app for the iPhone was called Stanza. It took a while for an iPad version to appear, but it's been here now also for a while, and since I only have three or four major ebook reading apps on the ol' pad, naturally I decided I needed one more.

It's a good one though. It's the first I've seen (compared to Kindle, iBooks, and Nook) which lets you choose from *all* the fonts in the system. The text size adjustment is virtually stepless, which I love, most apps have too crude steps. It has stepless variation of margins. The other apps don't even *have* such an adjustment. It has in-app access to many online book sources, paid and free. (Oh, and amazingly, the app itself is free too.)

I've only used it a bit so far, but right now, it's a clear Recommended.

How to trick people into thinking you're good looking

[Thanks to Miserere]

I think something has happened to satire in the past decade or so. Perhaps because a ton of more people now have access to making it. It seems that they miss the little point of little *hints* for the audience that it's satire.

For example, it's very common now in DVD Extras to have interviews where the actors are *ragging* on each other, in a way that's completely socially unacceptable, and it's clear that it's meant to be funny and a satire, but often it's not really funny, and easily mistaken for reality. I think that's a mistake.

I think this girl lands on the right side of the line though, just.