The Kindle from Amazon is a super-cool device and I want one simply because it’s a gadget. For now, I’ve got my iPod Touch though and that’s good enough for me (so no, Ame I don’t really want one!). Also, I say Kindle, but I really mean all e-book reader devices. The portability is amazing, and, I know I hate the environment, but the paper-savings are enormous (a quick sidebar though – for all the R&D placed into the Kindle, is there really a net-gain?).

I’ve not used or even seen a Kindle in person, so all I have to go on are reviews and hearsay, but I hear the display technology is what puts it over the top: it looks and receives light like real paper with real ink on it. The only problem is there’s one page and, for all intents and purposes, nailed to the device.

The device I want is very simple to imagine. In short, it is the only book you will ever own. For the purposes of this discussion, I will describe my favorite book and backtrack later – it’ll make more sense this way, I promise.

Imagine a nice-sized hardcover book at about 250 pages – not too thick, not too daunting, but just right. Each of these pages is a double-sided version of the Kindle’s superpaper technology and looks, feels, bends, and even smells exactly like paper (extra credit for bits of pulp thrown in). You can start any book you like on page one, and flip through to the end on page 250 without pushing a single button.

Well, not quite no buttons, but close. You can select which book you want to read, by using the touch interface on the front cover. To keep the aesthetic value of this book high, no touch-screens as we know them like on an iPod, but an optical projection with adequate sensors to detect what choices  are made (very much like those laser projected keyboards out there). Storing text is trivial and flash memory is ridiculously cheap and falling dramatically on top of it, so space for books is effectively unlimited.

Some questions immediately arise though. First, what if the book you want to read is not exactly 250 pages? The weasel answer is of course, “it’s up to you,” but there are some options: Have the book’s software typeset the text for you; shrink or enlarge the text to fit the space; or if there’s more than 250 pages in the book and you reach the end, place a bookmark and simply close and re-open the book to an earlier physical page and resume reading (which leads into the next point, even).

Physical bookmarks are problematic. If the text of the book can fit in those 250 pages and that is the only text you read, then a bookmark will suit you fine. You can place a bookmark, close the book, and resume reading later – just like a low-tech book today. If you change texts, the bookmark will be on the wrong page – or will it? Again, options: Changing texts when a physical bookmark is present will simply move the words to accommodate the bookmark, so when the book is opened, the last page you were on (or even the first page, if you never opened it before) will show; Ignore the bookmark and display the text to whatever page is opened – this seems a more likely and elegant solution. To elaborate on this second point, the book likely doesn’t care where you put a bookmark – it has no way of knowing what a physical bookmark is. What the book does know is on what page you were last. I submit that is all that matters to the reader; picking up where you left off.

That’s just my book though. Yours might be a paperback, or be like an unabridged War and Peace. The number of pages doesn’t even matter – it could be as few as one or as many as 10,000. The important part is there should be pages you can turn and touch. The interface and storage don’t necessarily have to be in the book itself, but certainly helps for portability. One possible scenario is the book has no interface or long-term storage, but simply an antenna with which to receive the appropriate data.

I said it would be the only book you will ever own, but really, where’s the fun in that? Sometimes you want a large hardcover, other times a magazine format. Maybe you want to scatter your house with them so you can pick up and read wherever you are. Portability is a selling point to be sure, but hey, “what if?”

I’ll leave marketing departments and focus groups to the name of this device, and you know it’ll be something stupid like Kindle. Yes, I said it. The name Kindle is terrible. You’re Amazon of all things! You’re named for a rainforest! Pick a tree that grows in the Amazon Rainforest and make sure you pick a cool sounding one! That’s enough rant for now, but I want my damn book!

I’m not an original thinker on this one (Google Image Search), but I want to make a suitable-for-framing personal take on Team Fortress 2 with female characters. There’s only one out there that’s any good, and I think I could be on par with the quality, but be thematically better.

This might take awhile, and I’m definitely going to make each individual class member full size, meaning that if I wanted to, I could make a print of just that class and be happy with its resolution. This will be my most ambitious project yet, but it is very reminiscent of something I did in high school.

I made sketches of everyone in the drumline, including myself and the directors and put them all on a shirt. It took a few retries, plenty of scanning, and laying out on a computer that could barely handle the task, but it turned out pretty awesome – and it was in glorious color! There must’ve been thirty or so people in the section, so it was no small feat to pull it all together, but I think this will be even bigger and better because:

1. Just like webcomics, nobody knows who your friends are on the Internet, so leave them out of your comic; make new characters or use pre-existing characters that people know
2. Hi-resolution baby! Each of the class members will be printable at 14 inches tall and look nice. The drumline shirt only had to look good on a t-shirt at a couple feet away
3. My computer doesn’t suck nuts!

I’ll post my progress as time permits, hopefully I’ll have at least one to show off this week!

Hope your Valentine’s Day was as awesome as mine. Ame got me some workout clothes and cooked an awesome dinner. I got a little sloshed and we watched Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I got Ame some Hello Kitty stuff, chocolate, and, of course, roses. Oh, I also got Ame these hilariously awesome cards:

Brandon Bird's Law & Order: Special Valentine Unit

I’m sure you may remember me mentioning Brandon Bird at least once before. I saw these on his site a long time ago, and also pretty recently, and I had to get them for Ame. She’s a Law & Order: Special Victims Unit fan so these were a big hit!

Not much to say, check it out!

Harley

All in all, this took only a few hours to complete from thumbnails to end-product. Not perfect, but no piece is. I’m glad this kind of fell out of my head the way it did and Ame helped a little on the editing process.

My Watchmen experience has come to a close, and what now? I don’t want to reveal the plot or the ending or anything, so it makes it a bit hard to really talk about. Number one: I recommend it. It’s a quick read, and just so you can gauge for yourself, it took me about 7-10 hours to complete it and I’m a slow reader. The protagonists are engaging, and, just like everyone else I’m sure, my favorite character is Rorschach.

Rorschach is popular because he’s one of the three really developed characters. Nite Owl is realistic in that he’s an aged masked-vigilante, and having a bit of a mid-life crisis. And then there’s the chick – I guess that really speaks to how great I thought she was, eh? But Rorschach is a man of action, and while we can sympathize with Nite Owl and his problems on a more human level, we want to root for the hero who can (or tries to) get things done! The other characters don’t really seem that involved or important.

One thing I really love about the setting, is the “norm” is there are no heroes with super-powers save for Dr. Manhattan, who, funny enough, suffered a super-science accident to get his powers. The heroes are simply people with their own agendas and problems. Again, I don’t want to reveal anything, you’ll just have to see what’s under the hood (hah!) for these folks.

I’ve got a major gripe about a part of the book’s presentation though. At the end of each chapter, there’s a bit of extra “world-building” thrown in. It could be an excerpt of a character’s autobiography, a news clipping, or a journal. I tried reading them, but these sections seemed to get in the way. After the first couple of these, I outright skipped them. Honestly,  I skimmed a couple of them, and if a phrase looked interested, I looked a little harder, but for the most part, it was boring. I imagine there were complicated back-stories for all the characters, and, rather than fully developing them for a graphic format, the authors went for the “brick of text” approach. Yawn.

In contrast, I would, however, love to see the adventures the characters allude to in their eariler days. I guess that’s what I love about The Venture Bros.. Much of its meaningful story-telling narrative is in flashback. Some are put-off by this, and I can understand completely, but what I believe they’re missing is the presentation is internally consistent: moving pictures, action, and dialogue. Watchmen is not consistent in this regard, and the curve-ball is not appreciated.

The story as a whole is quite good, the plot is well-laid out, and the ending has a nice twist if a little… odd.

Milhouse: When are they gonna get to the fireworks factory?