One helluva big book

It's big. Massive. Gargantuan. And it is expanding. It's my magical book - your's too, if you still don't know it. Some chapters are nice, some aren't, and some are rewritten each day.

If I still haven't told you yet about this one book I'm reading, let me tell you what it is - Internet.

Yep, the way I see it, Internet is one large black hole of a book - there's no telling when the book will reach its final version (and fans of Harry Potter claim their wait for the seventh book was agonising!).

So from the Internet today I read, discovered and learnt several things - just from a few minutes online. My most interesting discovery today is a word which I rarely (maybe never) came across before: extant.

Dictionary.com says extant means still existing, or surviving. Apparently extant must not be used in direct replacement of the word exist, as extant also implies survivor qualities. Hmm I guess you can head to Dictionary.com for better understanding.

But if I understand the concept of the word enough, I'd say extant is perfect for describing my big, magical book, the Internet...

Kindle Fire is da bomb!

I have nothing against Apple products, in fact I do think iPod is one of the best inventions ever. But I kinda agree with this particular article on Kindle Fire's advantage over iPad. The article lists five key advantage the former has against the latter device, and the non-stop streaming part is what got me truly excited.

Imagine with Amazon Prime premium service that you get for a month with the purchase of the Kindle Fire, you can access movies, shows and borrow ebooks at the Kindle Lending Library. That's easily 5,000 titles - including current and former bestsellers - more than what you have right now.

As an ebook reader I support this borrowing initiative as I get to sample the writings of fresh authors and if I like that one book, I won't hesitate as much before buying their next title.

Now if only this kind of stuff are available here...

Why you still have to go back to classics

They may be outdated, they may lack the cool factor, they may be too lengthy for your liking. But after lots of chic-lits and fanfics, you just gotta go back to geniuses like Dahl, Poe and Wilde.

Simply because there is a level of standard, in terms of language command and grasp, that you need to maintain. Especially in my line of work, where one day is about goofing around with young animators and the next day you're interviewing a guy who will shape the national space industry.

Thus now that I've just read like 100-odd titles of Smallville, Harry Potter, Supernatural and what not... I'm gonna go back toooooooooooooooooo................

ENID BLYTON!

Why I don't dig .PDF, but...

There's a few things keeping me away from downloading too many e-books in PDF version. Yes, as you may have guessed, I'm a sucker for .TXT.

Why? Cause they're simple, lightweight, takes only seconds to download and I can read my books virtually anywhere I like.

Then again, .TXT has its limitations. For example font styles, font effects and simple stuff like italics and bold do not translate well on some e-readers. You can't tell if the paragraph is a flashback, an e-conversation or an internal thought as the whole text body will have the same look.

So even if I don't really dig .PDF, I get a sense that sooner or later, or maybe when I migrate to a new e-reader, I'll have to spend a bit of time to download them books...

And in case you can't guess, my almost two year old son is getting into this I-like-to-throw-phones-coz-I-like-to-see-the-inside habit...

Word of the day: apropos

I've been searching for great kiddie songs for my kid on YouTube, and in one of the items I found searching for Sesame Street songs is the La La La Song, which Barenaked Ladies covered. One of the comments I found below video summary for the cover track had this sentence,

"At the very end, if you turn it up really loud, you can hear Kevin sing 'La la la leukemia', which is apropos coming from him."

making me wonder - since I have seen the word many times but yet to find time to investigate its meaning - what the hell does apropos means?

So there we have it, thank you Dictionary.com:

Cool. Now I just gotta find ways to use the word appropriately... Mean time the song is real good too... and it's really cool that Kevin Hearn is now in clean bill of health...

An hour and fourty minutes of e-reading

... can make you go a bit woozy, especially if you are riding a bus going through a very congested city. The reason for the traffic jam is cause Malaysia Day celebrations will start tomorrow, and from what I gathered the whole of city center of Kuala Lumpur is packed with people and celebration-related stuff.

I guess it is really a good thing to have a nice piece of e-book to read on the stop-go-stop-go journey. I was reading a Fanfiction.net piece, The Last Job You'll Ever Have by Isabel5. Yeah the title sounds like a self-help book doesn't it? But it turns out to be quite an interesting piece.

My favourite geek, Chloe Sullivan gets to kick Lex Luthor's ass with the help of Green Arrow and the Justice League, Batman and Spiderman! Well I'm not sure if there will be other superhero cameos, but at the moment I'm already enjoying the chapters.

And no, even after an hour and fourty minutes of reading, I'm not even halfway through. Gosh I love long chapters that are well written. What would I give for a nice digital comic equivalent!

E-books hoarding for Raya holidays

Festive season, Aidilfitri in particular, so far has been different for me every year. We do have traditions, the prayers in the morning, salam session right after, big brunch, and the relatives we must visit... but at times there will be a few things that will change how my family celebrates it.

There was that one raya my cousin said he'll arrive for lunch from Taiping. We waited and waited, postponed visits to relatives houses... and finally he showed up for dinner.

There was that one raya my sister didn't get any leave, so we packed our bags the day before raya and head to KL instead.

There was that one raya my nephews had exams coming, so we Raya without fireworks so that they could study.

There was that one raya where the relatives that we're supposed to visit to fulfill our yearly quota went to raya in Mecca, so we had very few houses to visit.

There was that one raya my aunt got her first grandchild, so we all pooled at her house to marvel at that little thing.

So this raya, I'm expecting it to be different. I'm also preparing myself in case it gets boring. So I've been hunting for more e-book titles to download into my CSL Blueberry.

Got any suggestions? Tell me!

Selamat Hari Raya & Maaf Zahir Batin.

New words in Malaysia's Kamus Dewan

There are certain things you can never escape, and evolution is one of them. Malaysia's most respected dictionary for the Malay language, Kamus Dewan has evolved.

Today's NST reports that some 50,000 words has been added into the dictionary, and you can check em out www.dbp.gov.my. This site also contains links to Dawama site on which you can buy online literature in Malay language from as low as RM2. One of my fave mags, Dewan Sastera is also available for RM6.

Binging on Smallville fanfics

There are many cool TV shows out there and I love many of them, Supernatural, Grey's Anatomy, Scrubs, House, Desperate Housewives etc....

But in terms of Fan Fiction, there's no TV Series better to 'fanfictisize' than Smallville. Smallville has many great characters, and so many untied ends, so many worlds to account for - so much so that there are more than 13,000 titles within this category of fan fic over at www.fanfiction.net.

My favourite fan fic has gotta be pairings of Chloe and Olliver as well as crossovers of Chloe and Bruce Wayne.

A snapshot from Calie 15's livejournal - she's one of the Smallville fanfic authors I read and I love the rest of the writers in her posse eg smallvillefics, slytherinpunk et al.

Of late I've been meticulously downloading (more like copy-paste-save in my e-reader kinda thing) titles of fan fics for Chollie (read: Chloe x Oliver).

I'm still clueless about the terms these fan fic authors' use, eg AU and only recently discovered what 'xover' means. But that did not stop me from enjoying my reads.

The reason why fan fics are sooooooo cool is because while you've seen how the episodes evolved over TV, you can't help thinking such things shouldn't have taken place, this person shouldn't have done that, this couple are not right for each other (eg Lana and Lex), so the authors, just like you they're not happy with how things go and produce alternate happenings and imagined endings.

If you have never read a fan fic before, I really do suggest you try read Smallville. Simply type www.fanfiction.net, do not get perturbed by its humble looking landing page and click on TV Shows. The find from the alphabetically arranged titles, Smallville. You can even choose the characters you like and read fan fics made by people who also like the same characters.

For example my fave pair is Chloe and Oliver (authors love putting combined letters of the character name in their summary so that you have an idea who will end up with who eg Chlollie), yours could be Clark and Lois (Clois). There's even Clark and Lex (Chlex) - if you wanna go there, that is.

But more importantly, the reason I suggests that you start with Smallville is because there are many really good writers writing for this category. Once you've found the writers you love, click on their name links - you'll discover more of their stories, some for different categories and some of the authors also have their own page (blog, livejournal, website etc) that you can even find their own original work (not fan fic) which makes more stuff for you to read.

Another great category to start with is Harry Potter, but you need to choose Books instead of TV Shows in the main landing page to get to this section. Again, many many great fanfic authors and many many cool alternate stories here. Eat your heart out, Rowlings... JK!

Borders... gone? No..!

As much as I am pro e-book, I do admit that there's nothing like being curled up on a comfy sofa reading a good paperback. And today's piece of news about Borders collapsing is hitting me some.

According to the Yahoo!Finance article, there is a good chance by September, we won't be seeing anymore Borders in operation, given that come Friday, the liquidation of the company will kickstart. Owh man, Berjaya Times Square will never be the same without Borders around.

I've been going to the store not just to buy books and magazine, but it is also my meeting point whenever my sis and I are due for our cinema treat. We'd wait for each other there, and whoever's early can catch up on a bit of reading too. She knows where to find me - the chicklit corner, of course.

And to think our randevous days at Borders coming to an end... ah well. In my son's words, "What to doooo, what to doooo?" 

I admit...!

... that sometimes e-books have its limitations.

And one of its bigger limitations is the e-reader battery life. Just this morning as I was commuting to work via Monorel and Putra, reading Adrii's Caden which I got from Webook.com, my little CSL Blueberry blipped.

I scrolled down a few pages more, then it blipped again.

Sigh. Low bat. I hate low bat. I hate the symbol slash icon, I hate the status flash, I hate the damn blipping.

Finally the screen just went black for a second then the track I did not choose to signal the end of the battery span played. It is not a nice song. Kinda like that tune from Grey's Anatomy which is quite an impressive tune, but it signals the end of something good and therefore I hate it too.

But all the same, the phone, aka my little trustworthy e-reader died on me. Drats. I hate not having anything to read while commuting, it's so time-wasting.

OK lah. I was at that time at the Monorel station so I sat down on one of its narrow makeshift steel bench aka pillar, and pulled out something out of my bag.

I know you can guess what it is.

Yep. Tis a book. A real book. The one you get to hold in your hands, keep in your bag, gets torn if your one-year-and-a-half little prince at home gets his ways with it. The one that gets yellowed in pages and dog-eared on its ends and all scrunched up kembang semangkuk-like if the rain hits its cover.

The book, Jane Costello's chic-lit Girl on the Run, is not a title you can get for free at any of the major free e-books suppliers online. So I got it for days like this, when the battery runs dry.

I guess while technology is great to have, sometimes something as 'analogue' or 'manual', or rather 'physical' as a paperback will save your day.

The good, the bad, the norm of everything

I was tuning in to today's news online when I stumbled across this link, Why E-Books Are Bad For You. Written by Katherine Noyce of PCWorld.com, I glanced through her short article and here's what I've gathered:

Number one, it's not the e-book itself that is bad for you, tis actually the e-reading technology that is the issue.

Why? Because of such a thing called "restrictive licencing" that applies to certain e-book format.

Take Amazon.com. This online reseller sells e-books in a certain format that complies to the  Digital Restrictions Management  that they've also incorporated in their e-reader Kindle. This also enables Amazon to remotely destroy it, anytime they deem necessary - and they've done this once with a George Orwell title in 2009.

In other words, when you buy a book, you own it completely, but when you buy an e-book such as one sold by Amazon, you do not get full ownership.

Irked by such a predicament, Richard Stallman, founder of the free software movement and the GNU Project even calls for a boycott on such e-books "until they respect our freedom" - and that's the second part of what I gathered from the article - which worries me.

Stallman also suggests two solutions - first, pay the authors via tax fund proportionately to their popularity; and second, design players that allows readers to send authors payment voluntarily.

Even Noyce admitted in her article that she's not sure what's the best solution for this. I don't know where this is going to lead, but one of the comments she received says, "One thing mentioned in the article that I am vehemently against and that's paying authors with tax money. Government subsidized art is one sure-fire way to suppress art, as can be seen in the case of the National Endowment for the Arts and the kind of garbage that boondoggle has produced."

Tolkien, Sweet Dreams and Fairy_Lucky_Me

Ever heard of Sweet Dreams books? If you were a teen in the mid-90s, you'd probably come across this teen romance series at your local second hand book hut.

Thing about Sweet Dreams is not the boy-meets-girl or classroom-crush thing. It is about how easy it is to enjoy the titles, even when your English is poor. Believe it or not but my dad took me to a run-down book store in Ipoh back then in 1991 and there he let the shopkeeper recommend some books for me, the one who gets a red mark for English at school.

Putting a Tolkien down, the bookworm rummaged through a section of the nearby shelf and pulled me a few Sweet Dreams book. She said she enjoys reading them too (she's a lovely looking Indian lady which thick spectacles and a few greying hair) and I should try it.

True enough, now that I'm in my 30s, I still pick up an old Sweet Dreams from time to time, and they still provide me that relaxed reading I crave after a chapter of The World is Flat 2.0 (on which I'm still struggling to get to Chapter 4).

Whenever I've reread my Sweet Dreams title a little too often, I go for projects reading at Webook.com. This site has a bunch of aspiring writers loading up their work for others to review. Currently I'm waiting for Fairy_Lucky_Me's Chapter 35 of Falling For Adam, which I have bookmarked since several months back.

Now be informed that these writers are not as good as published authors, but for a good, relaxing read over desk lunch, these are good enough.

Will Wheaton inspiration

For those of you who loves to blog, like me, and been blogging for years, secretly harbouring a dream of becoming an author and all... don't fall for that 'blogging losing steam' hoots. I believe writing is a skill that you can hone much faster when you read a lot.

And if you ever encounter moments that go, "Aiyo, so maa fan to blog lah. Facebook or Twitter enough lah..", go visit Will Wheaton's blog, http://wilwheaton.typepad.com

If you've not heard of Will Wheaton before, check out movies Stand By Me and Flubber, or YouTube Star Trek: The Next Generation series. He's a really cute actor who started young, one of those who didn't gracefully shave off the babyface demeanour to take on more mature roles exempli gratia hacker in Leverage and serial killer in Criminal Minds.

The thing I admire the most about this guy is the fact that he is one of the bloggers I followed back then when I first started blogging, and he managed to secure a book deal just by writing his blog. Check out his book Just A Geek at Amazon.com. He's got a few more books if you like his kind of writing.

^ Search for Will Wheaton on Yahoo! Image Search and these are some of the results.

So do not stop blogging and continue reading, you might be a Will Wheaton in the making.

Vim and 'vim'

Been downloading free e-books like crazy these days, thanks to my lovely CSL Blueberry I can now read on the go - when I consider all those hours riding in LRTs, cabs and buses, I kinda regret not resuming the frenzy days of 2005 when I discovered that there are so many sites that offer cool e-books for free... Back then I got hooked on Oscar Wilde, these days tis P.G. Wodehouse.

So I was reading Wodehouse's The Prince and Betty, a really funny romance set in those days when people can still travel across continents on titanics without using passports. If you guys have the time download this e-book at OnRead.com, in TXT form it'll take you only a couple of minutes.

You have to be able to stomach long paragraphs that goes...

"The enterprise had started well. To begin with, he had found the ideal editor. He had met Mr. Renshaw at a down-East gathering presided over by Mrs. Oakley, and his Napoleonic eye had seen in J. Brabazon the seeds of domestic greatness. Before they parted, he had come to terms with him. Nor had the latter failed to justify his intuition. He made an admirable editor. It was not Mr. Renshaw's fault that the new paper had failed to electrify America. It was the public on whom the responsibility for the failure must be laid. They spoiled the whole thing. Certain of the faithful subscribed, it is true, and continued to subscribe, but the great heart of the public remained untouched. The great heart of the public declined to be interested in the meditations of Mr. Philpotts and the humor of Mr. B. Henderson Asher, and continued to spend its money along the bad old channels. The thing began to bore Mr. Scobell. He left the conduct of the journal more and more to Mr. Renshaw, until finally--it was just after the idea for extracting gold from sea water had struck him--he put the whole business definitely out of his mind. (His actual words were that he never wanted to see or hear of the darned thing again, inasmuch as it gave him a pain in the neck.) Mr. Renshaw was given a free hand as to the editing, and all matters of finance connected with the enterprise were placed in the hands of Mr.

Scobell's solicitors, who had instructions to sell the journal, if, as its owner crisply put it, they could find any chump who was enough of a darned chump to give real money for it. Up to the present the great army of chumps had fallen short of this ideal standard of darned chumphood."

... and follow through without losing the essence nor missing the beat so that you get to enjoy the writer's observation in exactly the way it is meant to be devoured.

It was also from The Prince and Betty that I discovered new words such as 'anon' (in a short time, immediate, at another time), 'chump' (a stupid person, a thick piece of wood), 'wuxtry' (extra - btw this one is dated slang, an interjection apparently used by newspaper sellers back then) and 'soliloquized' (to talk to oneself).

But one word stood out, as I passed Chapter XII, and the word was 'vim'.

And my first thought upon casting eyes on this particular little word was, "Eh, isn't Vim a concocted word to name a brand of toilet cleaner?"

^pix above borrowed from fudj aka Paul Lim http://www.flickr.com/photos/fudj/82932373/. Thanks!

My dear friends, Vim, is what I grew up with. I remember hating the days I have to be the one among the siblings to clean the toilet floor, only because I had to use Vim and its white powder eats up the skin on my palms and fingers like some invisible maggots..

Upon a revisit to Dictionary.com I found out what 'vim' means.

Upon finding out what vim means, I now truly understood what Vim the toilet cleaner brand stood for! What a clever name for the brand. No wonder and you really gotta brush (energetically), brush (spiritedly) and brush (with vigour) to clean! Unlike Jif, the other brand, a detergen sort of which you simple squirt then swipe, no hard brushing required.

So there you go, ladies, gentlemen and dear friends, vim. Man, this one will really light up the bulb in my brain the next time I see a bottle of Vim.

Back to books

Through work I discovered that book lovers need not be hanging around libraries like nerds in order to get a dose of a good read. Add in a bunch of devices, a steady Internet connection and a host of website proprietors who dispense literature for free, I'm one happy reader on the go.

If you too love books and you already own an e-reader, tablet, smartphone (a semismart phone will do too) or any form of device that can support e-books, do share with me what you know about e-books, e-readers, e-book websites, titles you love, better e-book formats, great e-books app, new trends and everything else connected so that we all can continue what we love to do the most, which is to read.

Though I first discovered e-books years ago, I didn't have time to truly explore this particular digital phenomenon. But lately with Kindle and iPad becoming so popular and the term e-reader being included once again as a standard specification, I believe it is time we reserve the trees for something more important and help build the e-book wave once more.


The benefits are clear:
1. No more lugging around thick books across schools, libraries, countries. Hurrah for mobility!
2. You help conserve the environment, reduce tree cutting for paper, reduce your carbon footprint. Go green!
3. Make full use an important functionality of your e-reader device, which you've paid for anyway. Kaching!
(So the cheerleader chant goes, "No lugging, no logging, get kaching!")


Noted that for the book industry there are several dilemmas:
1. Printing companies will hate our guts for encouraging e-books over the generally 20-30% more expensive hard covers and paperback copies.
- But what's wrong with pricing the physical copies and e-copy the same? That's the worse they can do, given that these days they release the cheaper e-book version of a title only after getting the profit from the hardcovers and paperbacks versions, but as a reader if I really want to read it, I'll buy it.
2. Bookstores may have to change their strategy. If everyone buys only e-books who's gonna come into their stores?
- But what's wrong with trading in shelves for servers? Brick and mortar for online? And won't they be able to save money when they don't have to rent such big building to house all those books anyway?

And some stupid points to go over:
1. Will my eyesight gets bad from staring too long at the screens? I'm already tied behind my computer 8 hours a day and the kids spend at least 4 hours in front of the TV and 2 more hours in front of the Wii.
- Of course, if you stare at those screens like zombies! You get woozy even if you do the same with paper-based books. Do some eye exercise. Take a break. Blink! Capishe?
2. I know there are many e-book titles given out for free. Won't I have to spend a lot of money on the e-reader? As if anyone's gonna give me one for free?
- What, no one love you enough to buy you  a present? Give yourself more credit! No one? Really? Well, work hard. No such thing as a free lunch. And when you buy an e-reader, consider it as an investment. Imagine the wealth of knowledge you'll be able to acquire. And find one that is cheap. If you can afford it, get one with Internet connection, so you don't have to do all those files transferring and the device also gives you more functionality.


So there you go, ladies and gentlemen. If I haven't convinced you into sharing my sentiment on e-books, come visit this blog whenever you can. In time, I hope you will.