I don’t know what happened there, but that’s a big drop today.

And back up again. It’s all too random…

Oh well, down the teeniest bit today. One day I might find some motivation and do something about this….

Oh dear. Up again, to an unusually high level.

If you’re one of those odd people that visits here more than once[1], you might recall me talking about my no/maybe/yes dithering before I actually bought the Sony Reader last year. Since then, I’ve used it intermittently – not so much because I don’t still like it, or a lack of stuff to read on it, as the fact that I’ve had loads of other dead trees books and magazines to read. But that’s an aside to the main point of this little mutter. The really big name in eBooks these days has to be the Amazon Kindle, which due to, err, something or other to do with geting deals with mobile operators, isn’t available in obscure little places like Europe yet. Now I wasn’t all that bothered about that initially – the original Kindle looked bulky, awkward and just a bit naff, especially when compared to the sleek minimalism of the Sony.

OK, the Kindle does let you annotate what you’re reading, which is nice if you need to do that (I generally don’t), but its real trick is that it downloads material from Amazon over a persistent wireless connection – you pay for the books or newspapers or whatever, but you don’t pay for the wireless service. Which leads me to this xkcd item:

xkcd: Kindle

Click to see the whole thing. Now assuming you’ve seen it and come back here[2], what I want to know is this:

Is this true, and if so when can I have it? Have Amazon done a special deal with the publishing corporations of Ursa Minor Beta? Or has Randall[3] sold out, and agreed to do a sneaky marketing campaign to make geeks[4] want Kindles? Hmm? Hmm?? I think we should be told!

Oh, and if you’ve no idea what I’m going on about, you have some listening and reading to do. And maybe some watching, but that’s optional.

Start here: The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: The Primary Phase (BBC Audiobooks)

Then go here: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Secondary Phase (Audio CD)

And of course here: The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy in Five Parts

And finally: The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy [DVD] [1981]

And I’m not linking to the movie version.

[1] Hi guys
[2] Which might apply to 0.000001% of the 25 people who might see this
[3] The xkcd man
[4] Estimated as 125% of his regular readers

Mutter. Up again today, which won’t have been helped by the footlong from Subway I had at lunchtime. However, I made up for it by having a lighter meal this evening, and moving more DVDs from the storage area (or “spare bedroom” as it will eventually be) to the new shelves in my living room, which was a bit of exercise.

That’s better! Maybe it was some odd random bloatage thingy over the last few days.

Hmmm. Not a big change, but another step in a downwards direction, which is a Good Thing.

Early yesterday evening, I wandered into the kitchen and noticed a warm orange glow coming from the windows. I glanced outside, then went back to my office, picked up the camera and went upstairs to the spare bedroom, where I opened the window[1], and took some pictures of the quite lovely cloud patterns:

Clouds

More clouds

More can be seen in this Flickr set

[1] I selected windows that would open completely, just so I could do this sort of thing