Tree Weasel Weekly

How not to win ebook friends and influence people

I have been reading ebooks for nearly 10 years now, and have amassed a large (perhaps very large) library. After being locked out of some of my early MS Reader purchases I have endeavoured to only buy formats that I can clean the DRM wrapper off for future proofing. This has worked well, and I have been able to bring my books to PDA, Windows Mobile phones, iPhones, Sony Reader and iPad. This is a familiar path to many ebook veterans, but I present this as a bit of background to my current tale.

One of my favourite set of books, and one that I have been waiting to arrive in ebook format, is the Patrick O'Brian series of tales about Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. I have these in battered paperbacks, and also in audio book from Audible. Nevertheless I would be happy to buy them again in ebook format for convenience. So I was delighted to discover that they have just been released, with the joy slightly tempered by the fact that their publisher has a pretty indifferent record with ebooks, being by far the worst offender in my library for error-strewn titles. I downloaded a sample through iBooks and it looked clean, the opening ship diagram was reasonably sized, viewable on 10" screen without obvious pixellation. No OCR errors were visible. The only wrinkle was that the cover was missing - a fairly frequent problem with eBooks, and one easy enough to remedy.

So I purchased the book from Kobo, where I have purchased many titles. I don't like, or use, their reader software, but the titles are standard ADE ePub files, easily liberated and sideloaded into iBooks or Bluefire Reader. However, this title is grievously polluted with custom CSS and Javascript so that it only displays nicely in the Kobo app. In Bluefire Reader  it displays in a monstrous font size, even at the smallest setting that BF Reader allows. This is worse than DRM. This is embedding metadata into the book, presumably after it was supplied by the publisher, that ties it to a vendors software. It may be a mistake, and they haven't checked to see that the CSS/JS combo they use degrades satisfactorily in readers that don't understand it. However it arose, this renders this title unusable in the reader of my choice, even though that reader fully supports ADE DRM. The ebook has been damaged by the vendor.

Unless there is some way to detect books that have been Kobo-ised I can no longer buy from them. I have a ticket open with them, but doubt that they will be able to supply a clean copy. I hope this isn't the start of a trend.

Fun and Games at the Blackwells Kitschies gathering

The Kitschies gathering at Blackwells last night was a wondefully convivial occasion. Adam Roberts framed a challenging question for people to engage with if they wished, but most chose to engage with the splendid Kraken Rum first, before delving into whether it was right to look at Victorian times through rose-tinted goggles. I think this is a valid concern, for all the reasons he outlined, but the majority of the steampunk I have read feature dystopian takes on the era anyway. So glorification isn't really to the forefront on those. 

But for the majority of the evening it was flitting from group to group, attaching faces to Twitter handles, and obtaining the odd signatures. Philip Reeve, Sophia McDougall, Alex Milway and Gary Northfield even went further and drew small illustrations as well. 

There was a sinister thread though, in the form of stitched cephalopod, Plarchie, looming ominously over the proceedings! 

A thoroughly satisfactory evening.

 

A Blackwell's Kitschies Steampunk Rum Night!

I have a long history with steam - probably springing from the Goon Show's recurring use of steam powered devices. When I left New Zealand for a 3 month working trip to London in 1983, my Dad gave me a business card (see Business Card) whch demonstrates this affection. Note that this was in the days before PCs, desktop publishing and was hand crafted. It also had an advertisement for Dr. Zonbrone's Thunder Pills on the back.

I dug this relic out to take to the A Blackwell's Kitschies Steampunk Rum Night! tonight, where it will be my sole item of "costume". Apart from my distinguished appearance of course.     

 

What's it all about, then?

What do I do on my iPad?

Read books. My preferred reader is Bluefire Reader, though iBooks wins points for the ability to read on iPad and iPhone with progress synchronised between them. Some deride iBooks for having graphical frills to make it look like a “real” book, but the screen is big enough that these don’t get in the way. They are also static and don’t obstruct my reading.

Read comics. The iPad makes a wonderful vehicle for reading comics, despite the confusing array of apps, each with their own distinctive way of navigation and zooming.

Listen to books. I have listened to lots of books via Audible (mostly on iPod/iPhone) when walking to work, or at other times when my eyes are needed for other tasks. I am a big fan of audiobooks, especially with a skilled narrator. Sometimes they include the odd bit of music, but usually only when announcing the title.  When commuting, even with background noise, I can usually keep up.

Listen to radio plays. Less often I might listen to a radio play. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a big favourite. Music, sound effects, lots of voice actors. Very effective and engaging, but not so effective on the move, where background noise can mess with the atmosphere.

Watch movies. Don’t do this very often to be honest, but they work pretty well. Just like a radio play, but with moving pictures!

Play games. The iPad is not short of games, my particular favourites are mostly board game conversions that feature tight rule sets and online asynchronous play. There are even a few electronic editions of the old Fighting Fantasy books, and a wonderful program called Frotz that lets you play the old Infocom interactive fiction adventures (and modern pretenders).

Play with digital toys. There are a number of cute apps that serve no real purpose except for being something tactile that you can fiddle with. Interactive music apps like Bloom, or kaleidoscopes like Annamika are neat diversions that you can interact with in a number of satisfying ways.

Now what would happen if you took all these activities and blended them into one? Well, if they were all fruit you would end up with a delicious smoothie. But these are all quite different activities and the effect is more like taking a five course meal, popping it into a blender, and making an amorphous slurry from it.

Where is this leading? Well, I won a copy of Papercut in a Twitter retweet contest, so perhaps it is a bit uncharitable to dismiss it. I am just not sure what niche it will fill. It is an interactive iPad “book” app. With sound. And touchy bits. Technically it is solid, my only gripe on that front is that sometimes it isn’t apparent what to do, but perhaps input is blocked when certain sounds or events are being played?

The app has three short stories to it, each with its own unique look, and different means of navigation. Sometimes sound plays, or videos play in a part of the screen. Some text appears in a portion of the screen and can be scrolled, which triggers further events or items to appear on the screen. This is where it all starts to fall apart for me. Reading a story is linear, one paragraph after another. This is still linear, but with interruptions and distraction, with few clues as to whether any of the interactive bits are important or simply ambience. Do I just concentrate on the text? Or explore everything on screen in case it goes away suddenly. I don’t want to miss out on anything.

I haven’t sat down and read any of the stories from beginning to end, which I suspect is meant to be done in a single setting, with headphones. More like a semi-interactive movie with lots of subtitles. Whatever it is, it needs a new name. It may be the future of something, but I don’t think that it is the future of books. It seems to me to be a technical solution in search of a problem. Perhaps it would a good way to bundle electronic training material?

 

Bank Holiday Empires

2 games of The Rivals For Catan at the weekend, using the Princes of Catan variant at the end of the rulebook. In this all 3 expansions are in play (with selected cards removed) and just 1 each of University, Hedge Tavern and Merchant's Guild. Initial setup was a little fiddly, removing expansion cards with crescent moons on them, but retaining event cards with crescent moons. A bit odd. Anyway it played out well, plenty of options for pathway to victory. The first game was rather one sided, as I suddenly accelerated away, but the second was extremely close. Raphael won 13-12 with me set to win on my next turn. I do like the refinements in this version, it all is a lot smoother and just seems to hang together well. Since I had rated the previous version a 10 I guess that means I would have to give this an 11.

In between these 2 I exhumed my copy of Through the Ages, which I got in a Maths Trade a long while ago. Raphael and I had a long and muddlesome game when I first obtained it and it was then confined to the game shelf along with a memory of considerable confusion and catastrophic failure (on both our parts) to get our economy working. This time it didn't seem anywhere as intimidating or fiddly and although we only played the Simple game, we really enjoyed it, I look forward to trying the Advanced game soon, while the memory is clear!

Revised iPad App Recommendations

A burst of new iPad owners recently has led to me answering the same question. What are some good apps to get? These are ones that have stood the test of time for me. Of course the list of games is obviously skewed to my love of turn based games and aversion to twitch gaming. Still, there may be something of interest!

 Altered/new recommendations are in italics

 News/Social apps

 Instapaper - excellent offline reading tool

Twitterific (paid) or Twitter (free official app) for Twitter

Reeder is the best RSS reader I have found

Flipboard is also quite cool, as is Zito, in a new category of web magazines

Guardian Eyewitness is pretty nice eye-candy, featuring 1 photo each day from Guardian newsroom

WeatherProHD is the weather app I like best

 

Books and Documents

 There are a number of excellent PDF readers (PDF Expert, GoodReader or ReAddleDocs)

 As well as iBooks I would recommend downloading Bluefire Reader to cover all bases. The Kindle app is fine too. eBooks are my main use of the iPad (time-wise) and worthy of separate attention, both in choice of format and future-proofing, here are my recent thoughts.

 OmniOutliner for iPad (excellent list/outlining tool, well worth the money)

 Comics

 Comics by Comixology has a good selection of comics and a good browsing engine.

Graphic.ly, IDW, Dark Horse and Ave! Comics also have their own apps with good selections.

You might also get on with izneo BD which is French and has a large selection of French language comics.

(There is quite a lot of overlap and fragmentation in the comics market, if you like all things in one place you will find it frustrating)

 

Art/Photography apps

Artists Touch

Brushes

Colour Splash

Comic Life

PhotoForge2

Procreate

 

Reference/Coffee Table Apps

Articles (wikipedia front end)

The Elements

The Solar System

 

Musical programs

Garage Band

BeBot

Bloom HD

Galactica HD

Planetary (off beat interface to iPad music library)

 

Toys (don't really do anything but are fun to tinker with)

 Pottery HD

Annamika

Koi Pond HD

Uzu

Zen Bound 2

Tiny Tower

Pocket Frogs

Sand Pictures

 

Family/Co-Operative activities

The Ultimate Alphabet (really well done hidden object game)

Doodle Find Pro

Little Things

 

Strategy games

Plants vs Zombies HD (the definitive version)

Battleheart

Lego Harry Potter

I Dig It HD

100 Rogues

Civilisation Revolution

 

Touch-type games unique to iPad (or just really well suited)

Osmos HD

Sneezies HD

Steambirds HD

Spirits

Flight Control HD

Dungeon Raid

PuzzleQuest HD

Can Knockdown 2

World of Goo

Defender of the Oasis

Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint (odd but fun)

Casey's Contraptions

Coin Drop!

Tiny Wings

 

Then there is a long list of truly excellent board/card game conversions:

Carcassonne (excellent online asynchronous play)

Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer (excellent online too)

Disc Drivin'  (a wonderful Pitch Car style game, with excellent asynchronous online play)

Ticket to Ride (really well done)

Par-out Golf

Ghost Stories

Small World

Kingdoms

Medici

Battleline

Everlands HD

Samurai

Modern Art

Money

Ra

Reiner Knizia's Labyrinth

Hey, That's My Fish HD

Everlands HD

Kingsburg (iPhone)

Through The Desert

Neuroshima Hex

Army of Frogs HD

Roll Through the Ages (iPhone)

Tichu

 

Finally a few Action Type Games:

 Inifinity Blade

Reckless Racing HD

Ninjatown Trees of Doom

Linkoidz

Plunderland

 

That should keep you busy for a while