Category Archives: books

Amazon Kindle e-readers are showing a blank screen – Good e-Reader

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Amazon Kindle e-readers are showing a blank screen – Good e-Reader:

Amazon Kindle e-readers are suffering from a major bug. Customers are receiving new Kindles with a blank screen out of the box and the e-reader cannot be used, existing e-readers are also suffering from the same issue. The problem stems from the new Kindle UI that the company implemented last year, that makes the Kindle e-reader look similar to the apps for Android and iOS. Kindle users have petitioned Amazon and the company says they are working on a fix.

There is no rhyme or reason why this glitch is happening. Some users are just using their Kindle normally and all of a sudden they have a blank screen. Some new users go through the setup process and are reading an ebook and all of a sudden the entire e-reader becomes unresponsive. Reboots and wiping the device seems to have no effect. Users on Reddit speculate that some of the backend services provided by Amazon that power the Kindle experience are having problems.

I stopped trusting Amazon on updates years ago. Here’s my solution; YMMV:

  1. Get to a version of the Kindle Firmware which makes you happy, or at least doesn’t fill you with rage
  2. Turn on airplane mode
  3. Delete your wifi information from the device
  4. Go to Amazon and delete your saved WiFi information
  5. Download your books to a PC or Mac and transfer them to your reader
  6. Use a tool like Calibre to help you manage your device
  7. Search out legal non-DRM options for when Amazon eventually blocks downloads for USV¥B transfer 

My advice for other ebook vendors is basically the same.

September Media Diet

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TV

Evil (Paramount+; 5/5) – still great. The show is equal measure funny, scary, topical, sincere, fun, earnest, skeptical, and then above all totally bonkers. Get the free trial if you don’t already have it to watch this and …

The Good Fight (Paramount+; 4.5/5) – in its final season, I’m only two episodes in of the three released so far but am as on board with it as I ever was. I marvel at the leads in the show and the quality writing by the same crew as do Evil.

What We Do In The Shadows (Hulu; 4/5) – Still funny. Not everything worked this season but the story of the creature that clawed its way out of the torso of the corpse of Collin Robinson made for a comedically brilliant through line.

She-Hulk (Disney+; 4/5) – Tatiana Maslany. I’m not too into Marvel, especially compared with some I know, and as such a lot of the fan service goes right over my head. I’d watch her read the proverbial phone book, so I’m in for the humor and the satire of both super hero and lawyer tropes.

Maggie (Hulu; 3/5) – I looked for a light sitcom and took a flyer on it. Not mentally or emotionally taxing, just a show about people I’d like to hang out with. The episodes I did not care about were the ones the show was meant to be built on. Thus, canceled by Hulu before I even watched it.

Reboot (Hulu; 2.5/5) – I should like this show better than I do. Great cast for the most part. Judy Greer is a treasure. It has its moments, but I don’t think I’ll see this through.

I watched other things like Only Murders In The Building. I’m finding I need a new calculus for the various shows as the commercials offered, especially by Hulu, actively take me out of enjoying the content. We cut the cord from cable to streaming to end up with something far worse.

Movies

The Talented Mr. Ripley (Netflix) – Somehow I missed this or forgot about seeing it. I loved the clothes and locales. The movie lost me when it hit me over the head with the fact that I didn’t like any of the characters, well acted though they were, and didn’t actually care about what happened to them.

I might have watched other movies, but they made little impact.

Music

So much music! Check out Papa Jojo Radio for more info.

Books & Audiobooks

The Ministry For The Future, Kim Stanley Robinson – still making my way through it. It gets too heavy after an hour or two, as much as I’m enjoying it and learning from it.

Rat Girl, Kristen Hersh – reading up for a Throwing Muses piece I’ll do on Papa Jojo Radio soon.

Library Patronage

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I renewed my Chattanooga Public Library card. It cost me $50 because I no longer live in the city. My town, for reasons perhaps lost to time, doesn’t participate in the greater Chattanooga library system.

The town library does some things: readings for kids; events, or did in the before times; sells used books; and … hmmm … not much else.

I wonder about the rationale to keep the local library independent of the city system.

Anyway, if you are not part of your local library system or a nearby larger one, consider doing so. Libraries are wonderful resources. Support them.

Rules of Career Movement

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The Brent Venables Rules of Career Movement:

Takeaways

Doing excellent work is the best way to increase your odds of moving up.

Wait for the right opportunity.

You need a little luck.

Your new job will be different from your old job.

Success isn’t guaranteed.

(Via Three Star Leadership)

Paul here. There’s something to be said for showing up and doing consistently solid work as rule 0.

I suggest changing #3 to something more Stoic, like “there are elements outside of your control”. I find attributing “luck” to be lazy thinking.

Lastly, beware of mimicking modern athletic coaches’ work ethic, especially in American Football. They tend to willing sacrifice their families, friends, staff, and players for the power, adulation, and payday the top echelon receive. If you really want a coach who was well rounded, you can do no better than John Wooden. Check out his works.

Twelve Golden Rules to the Art of Conversation

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The Art of Conversation: Twelve Golden Rules by Josephine Turck Baker (web | index)

  1. Avoid unnecessary details.
  2. Do not ask question No. 2 until No. 1 has been answered.
  3. Do not interrupt another while they are speaking.
  4. Do not contradict another, especially when the subject under discussion is of trivial importance.
  5. Do not do all the talking; give your tired listener a chance.
  6. Be not continually the hero of your own story; and, on the other hand, do not leave your story without a hero.
  7. Choose a subject of mutual interest.
  8. Be a good listener.
  9. Make your speech in harmony with your surroundings.
  10. Do not exaggerate.
  11. Indulge occasionally in a relevant quotation, but do not garble it.
  12. Cultivate tact.

Kanda Used Book Festival

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This weekend and last (26-27 Oct & 03-04 Nov), the Kanda Used Book Festival took over the main drag surrounding Jimbocho Station.

The Kanda Used Book Festival is one of the largest annual events in the Jimbocho district of Kanda—renowned as a town of used and antique books. The organizers go further to claim it’s the largest event of its kind in the world.
For the festival, bookshelves are placed on the sidewalks of the area’s main street (Yasukuni Dori), creating a long corridor of books that faces the local bookstores. In addition to the street market, a variety of related events are scheduled during the festival, including a Special Used Book Sale Fair (at the Tokyo Used Book Kaikan underground hall)—featuring rare and valuable books—and library seal workshops.
A delivery service is also available for purchased books, so you can buy up lots without having to worry about carting your loot home.

(Via tokyocheapo.com)
As my well documented (and commented upon) deficiencies with my Japanese studies have no quick fix, I choose to look upon this as an advantage: the number of English language books is limited so I won’t blow my whole month’s budget on books I might not get around to reading until the next Kanda festival.
And yet, I still managed to spend a healthy sum of ¥2200. But the rewards … 

  • The Discourses and Manual, Vol. 1 by Epictetus
  • Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy
  • The Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antonius, Translated by George Long
  • The Story of Old Japan by Joseph H. Longford
  • Moral Essays, Vol. 3 by Seneca (Loeb Classical Library)

In all cases they are first editions and except for the Ogilvy and Seneca tomes are over 90 years old. All are in remarkable shape for their age, even the Epictetus one with the Japanese handwriting in it. The author of those notes was both tidy and brief – the notes only continue for about 10 pages.
All in all, I am pleased with my purchases. I could have gone down a deep dive on Robert Lewis Stevenson, for example. The likelihood of actually reading those was slim, so I wisely if begrudgingly resisted purchasing them.

Schneier's "Click Here To Kill Everyone": pervasive connected devices mean we REALLY can't afford shitty internet policy

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Schneier’s “Click Here To Kill Everyone”: pervasive connected devices mean we REALLY can’t afford shitty internet policy:

Bruce Schenier (previously) has spent literal decades as part of the vanguard of the movement to get policy makers to take internet security seriously: to actually try to make devices and services secure, and to resist the temptation to blow holes in their security in order to spy on “bad guys.” In Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World, Schneier makes a desperate, impassioned plea for sensible action, painting a picture of a world balanced on the point of no return.

(Via Boing Boing)
I haven’t read Bruce’s latest yet but it is on my list. If you have it on your Books to Read, give this review a good once over.

NYTimes: The Art of Drawing ‘The Art of War’

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The Art of Drawing ‘The Art of War’ https://nyti.ms/2lYxqAl

… you should win before you go to war. And that when you lose a war, it’s because you haven’t prepared adequately. Also, that you shouldn’t fight without there being clear goals. You have to have some reason to go to war. Also, that anger is something one should be very cautious about when it comes to warfare. That it shouldn’t be a pretext to warfare.

All the books Bill Gates has recommended over the last eight years

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All the books Bill Gates has recommended over the last eight years:

Bill Gates has become a powerful influence on publishing. An endorsement from the philanthropist and Microsoft cofounder can cause tangible sales spikes, reminiscent of the golden ticket that once came with being picked for Oprah’s book club.
So just what does Gates read? Quartz manually compiled all 186 of the books mentioned on his blog, which dates back to January 2010, and organized them by topic. We’ve included all titles, even those of which Gates was mostly critical, like Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist. But this is relatively rare; Gates usually only blogs about books he recommends.
Gates reads little fiction, as he readily admits, but will dabble in YA, comedic memoir, and graphic novels on occasion. As the co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, he is wont to recommend books on development, poverty, disease, and education on his blog.
Gates, of course, reads books on scientific topics like biology and physics, but he’s also a big fan of books that offer a scientific or mathematical framework for seeing the world, like What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, by xkcd’s Randall Munroe. Many of the books Gates endorses, especially those that focus on the long arc of human civilization, both its past and future, argue for an optimistic outlook. Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong about the World—and Why Things Are Better than You Think, a book by the late Hans Rosling, his son, and his daughter-in-law, does both: It argues for an optimism about the world through principles of sound scientific thinking, and it got a strong endorsement from Gates this year.
Vaclav Smil is the author Gates has mentioned the most on his blog. Smil is a highly prolific academic emeritus from the University of Manitoba in Canada, who writes about energy and public policy, among other things. Over the years Gates has recommended so many books by Smil that they warrant their own category.
In the scheme of things, Gates surprisingly does not frequently recommend books about business success or digital technology.

(Via Quartz » Technology)
Quartz classified the books, so check out the article (or save it for later asI am doing).