The Dimensions Of Our Doom

This post has since been updated. There is now a fourth component. If you’ve read this post before, come back to read the final piece.

This post is a permanent sticky. It will remain here even after the completion of this blog on December 31, 2008. Scroll down one for the latest posts.

On January 1, the first day of this blog, I did a post titled And Now A Word About Our Future….

I could see even then things were going to get Bad.

What I didn’t know at all were the total dimensions of our doom. Since then I’ve seen a bigger picture.

That larger picture has caused me to change my blog banner and create this permanent sticky post. Update: The fourth link necessitated yet another blog banner change.

The Conclusion Of Mike Cane 2008

Pull the strings! Pull the strings!

And for a year, I have.

I had no frikkin idea what nearly a solid year of blogging would be like.

Dear God. I am wiped out!

Some days made me absolutely fucking insane. Even without Simvastatin rotting my mind!

And now I have reached the end.

Two bits of advice before I go.

The first for dealing with the financial chaos of 2009:

The second for every writer and would-be writer out there:

And that’s all there is.

Thanks to everyone who stalked this blog, irregularly popped in, and also linked to it.

My online presence will now flatline. I’ll likely — maybe — pop up on Twitter for reaction to MacWorld Expo and CES introductions.

But a new blog? I have no plans for one.

I need rest!

Leverage: The Bank Shot Job

The usual yelling at you: If you haven’t yet caught up with Leverage on TNT, you’re depriving yourself of the best new TV series of 2008.

Roll credits:

Writer Jeff Schult Has A New Blog

Into Temptation: Sexual Networks, Culture and Society

“Into Temptation” is a not-necessarily safe-for-work (or anywhere else) forum about evolving social-sexual networks and how they have changed and are changing lives. It will also loosely chronicle the research, writing and publication, I hope in 2010, of a book by the same name.

Jeff was ahead of the curve with medical tourism (see below links).

I wonder if he’s read Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis?

That might be news for him!

Previously here:

Jeff Schult: New Medical Tourism Site
Spitzer: The Last Drop
Meet Jeff Schult (And His Teeth!)

But It’s Still A Fine Madness

Some Days Are Better Than Others

I’m sure that all of you who write have experienced it.

Things seem to be going well. The words are coming out smoothly. You’re in the flow. And then…

You hit that place, that certain point, where you can’t seem to go any further. The words and ideas have suddenly stopped. It’s like beating the bottom of that damn ketchup bottle, and nothing, but nothing, will come out!

Oh yeah.

But it’s still a fine madness …

… even when it makes us feel like that!

Follow Arjun Basu On Twitter

And you’ll get a wonderful story in a tweet. He calls these “Twisters.”

This is a collection of some from the past few days:

Follow Arjun Basu on Twitter.

Reading Is An Investment In Thinking

The Long Decline of Reading

It takes hours to finish a book, even for the fastest readers. This wasn’t a problem when books had less competition, but with the three massive timesinks of cable TV, videogames, and the internet, people look at that massive time investment, and they get apprehensive. Sure, they know that books can be just as enjoyable as movies or games, if not more. They may even feel guilty about not reading. But what if this book is no good? What if I end up hating it? What if I can’t understand it? Imagine all the time wasted! And so they stop before they even start.

A long, detailed, and excellent article.

Strangely, public libraries aren’t mentioned at all.

Interster Episode Two: Saboteur

The basic story is this. Earth is testing a new Star Cruiser, the SK Woltemade, that has a powerful weapon.

The Krokons are still intent on gaining inroads against Earth.

Buks de la Rey is assigned to personally deliver orders to the Captain of the Woltemade because Professor Zed thinks communications lines are being spied upon. We are introduced to a robot named Pikkie who insists he should accompany De la rey as Lieutenant Buys has come down with Mars Flu. De la Rey tells Pikkie to stay on Earth.

The Krokon Prince goes to that fixer of all things, the slimy Gorman. In exchange for some concessions (as usual!), Gorman agrees to plant a saboteur on the Woltemade, to cause it to plunge towards a nearby star. When the crew have been overcome by the heat, the Krokons can move in and tow the ship away to disassemble it for its secrets.

Pikkie stows away on De la Rey’s ship against orders. Also on board was the saboteur! In a neat little twist later on, the stowaway Pikkie kills the stowaway Saboteur.

Pikkie also winds up doing a spacewalk to save the life of Buks de la Rey.

Now onto over one hundred screensnaps!

Blog Notes: 1

We race towards Zero Hour here!

There are less than twenty-four hours left to this blog!

“But,” people ask, “What will you do after this?”

My fingers will still be busy:

With a series of children’s books!

The Happy Stabby Family!

There’s Junior Stabby:

Papa Stabby:

And Uncle Fun Stabby:

Oh, I just know you’re all waiting for this! I can tell.

I can feel your reaction through my screen:

All of this is my kindly way of saying:

Avanti!

The Horror Of Paper Books

This is a post I’ve kept putting off. Things happen.

Then Wayne MacPhail tweeted this photo he took inside a bookstore:

It gave me a feeling of absolute horror — and I knew the time had come to actually do this post.

There I was several months ago in a bookstore. One of the few still remaining in Manhattan that offers overstock at incredibly-reduced prices.

And I found a book I would have liked to have.

But I couldn’t bring myself to buy it.

I kept having flashbacks to all the times I’ve had to get boxes, put the books in boxes, carry the damned boxes, move the damn boxes, unpack the damn boxes, and again arrange the damn hundreds and hundreds of pounds of printed paper books.

That book would have been another pound to lug around. Another frikkin object hanging like an albatross around my neck, limiting my mobility, weighing me down, reminding me that it will remain when I’m gone.

Let me say again: I really wanted the book.

But I physically could not buy it.

I’ve developed a bizarre allergy to printed books — of the kind that are bought and owned and have to be moved around and that are always looked at and that are also a reminder of one’s mortality.

Library books I don’t have that problem with.

I can temporarily lug them home, even have a pile, read them, and then poof! back to the library they go.

But I want to own books.

I feel a guilt at not giving writers their rightful payment for reading.

Plus, with things being the way they are — and have been — I can no longer count on any public library having a copy of anything on its shelves. I once had to go to the Northern part of Manhattan just to read a short story by Barry N. Malzberg because only the City University had a back issue of the pulp magazine it was printed in!

This is another reason why I am an eBook militant.

I’ve never been a paper fetishist. My first collection of books were mass-market paperbacks. I never liked the size and weight of trade paperbacks and hardcovers. But I eventually amassed a collection of those too. I couldn’t help it: Publishing had changed and there was no longer a guarantee of anything in hardcover or trade paper moving down to cheap paperback!

But the book as an object I came to see for what it is: A cage for the words within it.

It’s the words — it’s always been the words — that interested me. Never the packagaing, never the jail the words were locked-up in.

I can’t be the only one out there who feels a sense of material liberation with eBooks.

Recently, a writer I’ve written about in this blog left a Comment offering to ship me a whole big bunch of books I’d blogged about. I never published that Comment because I couldn’t explain why I couldn’t accept more printed books. Even free ones. Even free ones from a writer whose work I admire!

So, this post has been something I’ve needed to do, in reply to that writer.

And to also explain why I have come to absolutely hate printed books.

Yes: But they’re better weapons as eBooks!

ECTACO jetBook: Built-In WiFi Coming?

I’m asking ECTACO directly about this.

I got a bit of a shock with YahooMail moments ago. Not one of their usual useless banner ads. This one was aimed right at me:

Composite image. Click = big.

Of course I had to click on that M218!

Click = big

I knew as of last night that this was being sold in China. I never thought it’d be sold here in America.

And yet here it is listed on ECTACO’s American store!

This is the paragraph to note, the built-in WiFi and its unique feature:

Click = big

The text of that:

With built in high-speed Wi-Fi, Chinese eBook reader M218B can easily connect to wireless network. Then you can immediately search and download numerous eBook, Pdf files and music. Another exciting feature of Chinese eBook reader M218B is that it supports end-to-end transmission. You can copy and exchange files, music, picture with another user, who can be your friend or just another “eBook-pal”.

Emphasis added by me.

I can hear the nascent heart attacks of the dying dinosaurs of print out there!

Alas, the beauty photo of the M218 highlights the calculator-like nature of its screen, and not its ability to be mistaken for eInk under direct lighting:

But I have to wonder: Will ECTACO be releasing an English-language jetBook version of this?

Would WiFi then justify its $299 price tag? Well, not just WiFi — but its upcoming ePub and MobiPocket capability too!

An ePub/MobiPocket WiFi eBook reader would suddenly help shake things up.

Both Amazon and Sony would have a formidable new competitor, I think.

Previously here:

ECTACO jetBook And ePub
Eejit Geeks. Things Should Just Work!
Micro Fondle 2: ECTACO jetBook eBook Reader
ECTACO jetBook Ups ePub Stakes
ECTACO jetBook At Blowout Price!
More About That ECTACO jetBook eBook Reader
Micro Fondle: ECTACO jetBook eBook Reader