Burlaki on the Hudson

My kids love to ski. I don’t. So, on our weekend skiing trip, I had ample opportunities to use my new reading gadget, whiling the time away at the lodge.

Overall, I am happy with my choice. I like the design and the feel of the reader, the user interface and the navigation is simple enough, and the reading experience is not at all taxing on the eyes. There are few bells and whistles beyond plain book-reading, but I neither care to listen to music while I read nor have any interest in carrying grayscale versions of my favorite photos on the device. Absence of 3G connectivity (and of the ability to buy and download books on-the-go) does not bother me in the least.

PRS-505 is not as small as to fit into an average shirt or jacket pocket, but a ski jacket provided me with a perfect compartment for it, and on other occasions I think I’ll be fine carrying it in a bag. On the other hand, I wanted the device with at least a 6″ screen, and I appreciate the fact that its navigation buttons do not demand too much of “dead” space around the screen to be accommodated.

Since this particular model is no longer being produced by Sony, it makes little sense for me to go into a detailed review. Let’s just say that if it was still freely available in the stores, I’d lean to strongly recommending it to others.

It is not without shortcomings, though. The one that bugs me the most is that there does not seem to exist an option to select the initial font size when the book is first formatted for reading. The device defaults to “small”, while I find “medium” more acceptable. Pressing the font change button causes the book to be re-formatted, which can take 15-20 seconds. Having the formatting process run twice before I start reading is a minor annoyance.

The device also self-reboots on me occasionally. In fact, when the “currently reading” value exists and I want to change to a different book, the reader is certain to reboot during “new” book’s formatting. After it restarts (45-60 seconds), the “current” book is no longer marked, and the formatting goes ahead without a problem. But with one book, I could not make the font larger, as the device kept rebooting during each “second” re-formatting. I am willing to attribute this as a side effect of russification, but I need to play with various formats to find out if it can be overcome. Strangely, I have all of the books on the device currently in its native .lrf format, which I least expected to cause me problems.

[update 02/26] After playing with different formats for a couple more days, I can conclude that initial formatting step (as well as re-formatting for font size change) is specific to native Sony .lrf book format. The involuntary reboot is definitely due to using .lrf with the russification hack – it does not occur with other formats. I do not have much of a choice if I want to be reading Russian books, because support for .epub format is currently limited enough so that I’d have to perform manual task of font embedding into each ePub file, and PDF does not really do it for me (table of contents gets dropped during conversion to PDF; re-sizing of the font size does not re-page the document, but simply breaks one page into two or three with the bottom of the initial page occupying just the portion of the screen and breaking off in mid-sentence – very disorienting), so I’ll probably ignore the few annoyances that .lrf causes me now. For an English-language-only user, seems like ePub format offers the best reading experience with practically no downside. [/update]

So, no, not perfect. On the other hand, I’ve yet to see a device of any kind that would not cause me some sort of annoyance design- or performance-wise. I have already practically recouped the money I spent to buy the reader by saving on skiing rental equipment and two days of lift passes for myself. Ability to not do something I don’t especially enjoy while generally accompanying the kids and keeping myself entertained – priceless!

Gadgets

A junk-mail envelope felt to touch as if it had some sort of a card inside, and my curiosity took upper hand. As it turned out, a run-of-the-mill “invitation” was accompanied by the following:
 

 
How do I end up on their mailing list, I’d like to know!?

Chronicles

What a joke NBC’s Olympic coverage is!

A single Olympiad occurred during my time in Europe and, having watched it in two different countries, I was impressed with the coverage both on BBC and also on Italian TV. It was much closer to what I remember from my Soviet days, when during the Olympics, practically every event could be seen on TV in its entirety, either live or earlier recorded, with the focus on the present competition.

Now, NBC has done its darnedest best to prove its uniquely inept approach to covering the Games.

Listen, NBC! I don’t need to hear for the fifth time in a couple of days that a Canadian skier draws inspiration from his severely-handicapped brother, or that his Australian rival is actually a Canadian born in Vancouver who bolted Down Under because of a conflict with Canadian team authorities, or that Chinese figure skating favorites have given 18 years of their lives to their pursuit of a gold medal. I already heard and saw that all on the last night’s broadcast! It is no longer enlightening if you keep repeating it. And it is not even news anymore if you simply re-cut the same video segment differently.

Least of all do I need two minutes of commercial breaks for each four-five minutes of event coverage. Especially when there’s been no athletic performances shown in the last 5-minute segment.

In the three hours of prime-time Olympic coverage that I watched last night, we’ve seen about ten downhill runs, a handful of snowboard cross heats and half a dozen or so figure skating pairs’ programs. With charitable approximation, that’s about 70 minutes of the actual event coverage out of 180 minutes spent in front of the TV. Ridiculous!

Some scheduling decisions are impossible to understand, period. I realize that with the 3-hour difference, some prime-time events are simply occurring too late for the younger kids to stay up and watch, but why would the broadcast of a final of a day-time event be pushed all the way back towards midnight? Kimmy was rather fascinated by snowboard cross, but only quarterfinal runs were shown before her bedtime. Semifinals were slotted in between figure skating performances around 10pm, and even I did not stay up beyond 11pm to see the final run. On the other hand, in one of those prime-time segments, we were treated to a riveting spectacle of a Chinese figure skater throwing a football at the beginning of his warm-ups. Followed by the drawn-out medal ceremony for the aforementioned Canadian skier.

Is there anybody out there who enjoys watching the coverage of one of the biggest sporting events on the calendar with the actual competition taking backseat to fluff? NBC has been at it for as long as I can remember. I suppose exclusive broadcast rights mean that my only alternative is not to watch Olympics at all, and since I do want to watch, I will unwillingly contribute to the ratings that will continue to fool NBC into thinking that their coverage was successful. If only I could move back to London for the couple of these Olympic weeks.

Sports

The kids will be out of school for two weeks in late March-early April, and we are suddenly faced with a dearth of places to go for a holiday.

The big part of it is undoubtedly our “spoiled” attitude after several years in Europe – we simply do not find many destinations in North America all too exciting. Add to that the upper limit of three hours in the air that we are currently willing to entertain, and our lack of enthusiasm for a beach holiday, and, as one of my friends jokes, “it’s Colonial Williamsburg or stay home”.

Where did we go for a spring school break from London? Cotswolds, Tuscany, Wales, Central Europe. Fairly inexpensive, either by air or by car, comparatively short flights when driving was not an option. Ok, one year the girls went all the way to the US for spring break, but while the flights were of the longish variety, the overall travel expense was still quite minimal…

Back in the US, we can’t come up with an option of a nice place that can sustain our collective interest for longer than a couple of days, be relatively near and comparatively inexpensive to get to and spend time at. Preferably, where we haven’t been to yet. Desirably, warmer than Northeast US. Hopefully, not overrun by hordes of vacationers also taking advantage of school break.

I already admitted – spoiled.

Travel

The best snow-blower is four guys with snow shovels.

20 minutes, 40 bucks, and I have not had even to step out of the house.

I don’t know why they did not show up and offer their services after previous snowfalls, but I sure hope they’ll be showing up the next time.

Chronicles

The second big storm of the winter – and just like the last time, northern parts of the Tri-State metropolitan area got no snow to speak of, while we got over a foot and parts to the south of us even more than that.

Is geography broken? Shouldn’t it be colder and more snowy as you move towards the North Pole rather than in the opposite direction?

Chronicles

I did not decide to look for an electronic book reader solely after perusing information about iPad. An e-reader was on my to-buy list for quite some time. But the iPad announcement gave me a push and I finally spent money on a gadget that I long wanted.

My procrastination was partially explained by indecision. There are quite a few of interesting devices out there and I spent a long time figuring out which one to choose.

I already stated in that iPad article that I wanted the benefits of an eInk screen for my electronic reading. iPad, with an LCD screen, was not seriously in contention, to be honest.

I have absolutely no need to “buy the book and start reading it in 60 seconds”. My only impulse buys when it comes to books are in the segment of gorgeous travel and/or architecture photo-books. Not exactly something you’d buy for reading on a smallish monochrome device. And, anyway, I read a lot of public-domain books, and the rest only on someone’s recommendation. Surely, upon hearing a most effusive of endorsements for a specific work, I can wait until I get home, download the book onto my PC and then transfer it to my reader.

As an aside, I don’t really know how book publishing economics work, but if I can get a 1000-page mass market paperback for $7.99 at Barnes & Noble, I cannot think of a case for a digital file – no physical materials, nil physical storage space, nothing-can-be-simpler no-expense on-demand reissue – to cost $9.99. Especially, when you consider that a member of my family cannot pick up that same file when I’m finished with it just as they would a traditional tome.

So, the main advantages of a Kindle or a Nook are not really that important to me. I know a couple of people who own Kindles, and they are happy with them. But their reading habits differ from mine. I heard of only one person I know who’s getting a Nook so far and it’s too soon to judge how he likes it, but regardless, it is too new a device for me (remember, late adopter).

Considerations of storage are not of big import to me. Books are not songs – you can’t go through several dozen in a day. Having your entire library constantly with you is a completely unnecessary luxury, IMHO. I’m sure I’d be fine with having just a few books that are next in my reading queue. In any case, the e-readers with the least internal memory on the market can still carry around 160 books. I don’t think I’d ever buy a flash card specifically for the reader.

When I first considered buying an e-reader, I was concerned with formats. Seeing as there are at least three dozen different ones out there, I’d rather not be tied to a specific one. All of the major players are now not as proprietary-minded about formats as they were in the past, or they provide conversion services, but I was for a while seriously considering Astak ezReader as a possibility, on the strength of it being the only e-reader on the market that seemingly handles practically every format directly. Then, I discovered Calibre, which does an excellent job converting practically anything into anything.

Finally, russification. I read quite a lot of Russian literature, and for any non-English work, I am not sure I’d prefer an English translation to a Russian one.

That more or less sealed Sony as the only serious choice. I knew for a fact that Sony readers can be updated to properly display Cyrillic, and I was not sure that any other readers had similar patches available. And regardless, I’d have to look “outside” for Russian-language books, which was another point against investing into Amazon or B&N service.

Several people I know highly recommended Sony in either PRS-505 or PRS-300 incarnation. The latter I deemed a little bit too small for my taste (5″ screen). The former has been discontinued for a while in favor of touch-screen PRS-600. But I heard a lot of complaints about the screen glare on the new model. I even went to the local Best Buy and performed a very simple test with the available display models: Sticking my finger in front of the screen of PRS-300 resulted only in some shadows on the surface; doing the same for PRS-600 resulted in a clear reflection of my finger. I don’t want to see my face reflecting back at me when I read. I am not so keen on touch-screen capability as to compromise on the reading experience.

Various online stores are offering PRS-505 at $300 and above, so I decided to try eBay first. There were quite a few listings for “brand-new, factory-sealed” items, and it did not take me long to win one of them, for a very reasonable sum of $227.50. I received the package within a few days; it was as advertized in pristine never-opened condition. I spent some time on russification, which went quite easily, and then loaded the tiny total of 47 books onto the new toy. Should last me at least a couple of months.

I’ll let you know how I like it some other time.

Gadgets

Monaco famously occupies a very tiny spot on the French Riviera coast, but its topology is such that if you move from one part of it to another on foot, you will be well-exercised from all of the climbs and descents along terraced stairs.

On our visit to the principality, we spent an entire day there with several sightseeing and entertainment targets in mind. Our planning rested on the notion that sights cannot be that far from one another, but after taking into the account time constraints for a couple of sights and the desire to have a dinner at the end of the day in the historic center, we ended up repeatedly shuttling between Monaco Ville, Monte-Carlo and Jardin Exotique area.

At some point towards the end of the day, we decided that we had enough of walking and instead took the bus. This was on the route that we already covered in one direction – a convoluted and lengthy walk over quite a number of slopes and terraces – but we were pretty sure that the bus ride would not take more than a minute or two, with at most a couple of stops.

We got on a completely empty bus and paid the fare to the driver. He gave us back a receipt. We sat down.

Not a hundred meters into the ride, there was the first stop. A man in a suit and a coat got onto the bus, said something to the driver, and stepped towards us.

“Les billets, s’il vous plait” he said, flashing some sort of a badge.

I did not expect anyone to start speaking to me in French at that particular moment, so my reaction must have been that of a complete confusion. The man caught up immediately.

“Your teekets, pleeze.”

I mimed utter relief in response and, after a second of difficulty trying to recall which pocket I had put the damned receipt in, produced said receipt.

The man carefully inspected the piece of paper, nodded with satisfaction, gave it back to me, said “Tres bien. Merci!“, and got out of the bus at the next stop. Which, as it happened, was the last stop and our destination.

I had to produce public transport tickets for inspection on quite a number of occasions in my life, but none of such occasions left a similar imprint on my memory. A completely empty bus, only two stops to ride, no more than a couple of minutes of time on the bus, the tickets bought directly from the driver – and still the inspector did not neglect to show his zeal. Those Monegasque must be really serious about law and order in their little country, I thought to myself.

I haven’t been back to check whether they still do, unfortunately.

Memoirs, Travel

We were on Brighton Beach on Sunday for a visit to good friends. The area has been officially branded as “Little Russia by the Sea” since the last time I set foot there. True as ever, the vast majority of people on the streets are Russian emigrants.

Natasha noted that Russian children that we saw were all properly warmly dressed in freezing air temperatures. Winter coats, wool hats, thick scarves and mittens… That was in contrast with American children that we oftentimes see around where we live, who wear what I’d charitable call inadequate clothing in cold weather, so much so that I start shivering just by looking at them. (I’m getting cold from looking at you is a common Russian saying addressed at anyone who is not dressed warm enough as the weather dictates.)

I found that cultural difference mildly amusing. People born in Russia are often stereotyped as being impervious of the cold weather (or even affectionate of it), but the truth of the matter is, we simply make sensible decisions what to wear on cold days. Which means we are not as cold as someone who wears a short leather jacket when it’s 24 degrees Fahrenheit outside, yet is perpetually impressed how Russians can tolerate cold temperatures.

From Russia, Of Russia, Stray thoughts