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A quick PSA

So until I figure out how to link to other blogs on some sort of sidebar, I wanted to return a friend's favor:

My buddy Bradley Phillips is running his own blog. Right now it's mostly on health training, but he's written some good posts on workflow and efficiency in the past, and I can't imagine his posts going anywhere but up from here on out.

So if you have a minute, check it out.

Work and life have been crazy and rewarding the past two weeks... expect more (somewhat) regular programming the coming few days.

Potentiality, or how an ebook reader got me thinking about the future

I can barely remember a time before books were digital in my life.

They still are, for a lot of people, and my foray into the world of Kindles and e-reader apps is by far the exception rather than the rule. But it still strikes me as odd that I’ve turned the page (apologies for the pun) and I am now in the both exhilarating and frustrating process of accommodating a new piece of technology into my life.

Like most new technologies for me, the Kindle was not a purchase but a gift, a piece of technology highly vetted by my father and now available to me for my own evaluation. (I have been using Kindle for iPhone for quite awhile; the iPod Touch running it was similarly a gift). At first I was quite excited by the sheer amount of free content - I spent a few hours combing through the Kindle Store, eagerly snapping up free-for-a-time and public domain works to access on my iPod. Gifts carry a bit more discretion, but when it comes to free, why be choosy?

On one level, I wish I had been more choosy - my Kindle archives are littered with discarded books, some that I will return to “one of these days” and others I will probably never read. On another level, I am left with a few really good PD books that I’ve been meaning to read (mostly Russian authors, though I worry about the quality of translation), as well as a good digital copy of the ESV Bible.

The ability to download sample chapters, the second major advantage of the Kindle, was an option I discovered soon after my raid into the public domain storage bins. Amazon allows Kindle readers to download a certain portion of the beginning of any book in the Kindle store for sampling, with a quick purchase option available at the end for interested parties. This was the game changer for me, and seems potentially revolutionary.