Where Are You Now?

For those of you who are followers you are probably aware that these last two years have been beyond difficult for me. In fact since you last heard from me I became homeless. Being a stubborn lady I refused to give up my yarn OR my books. I stored them in the tree house I was living in. I recently managed to get back into a house and times are still very hard - but I have another blog that is connected to my Etsy store.

I will try to come back to you with more bookish gadgets and doo-dads but for those of you who are interested, while you wait, you can find me now posting on the new blog.

Where Have I Been and What Else Do I Have to Say About the Kindle Text-To-Speech Function

Well I do have some things stored away to post about and I did indeed give the Kindle text-to-speech a spin. But first an explanation of where I was. AT first I was just gloriously buried in knitting but a few days ago my husband received a FedEx from the military. He is being called back and then sent to Iraq. Things have been a bit hectic here - trying to figure out what will happen to me when he leaves, canceling any contracts that need to be canceled, and trying to still manage to enjoy each other in the time we have left.

Now about that kindle:

I tried to listen to The Torture Garden and all was fine until I realized that the kindle does not realize when to pause. Which really affects the tone of the story. The voice itself is not so bad but perhaps I chose a bad first book to try with this.

I also have the conundrum of when I go out needing access to my knitting patterns. What on earth does this have to do with the kindle? You can upload music, audio books, and in my case - knitting patterns to it. At first I thought I would need to buy the proper adapter. Not so! For any of you who have one or as considering one - you can remove the outlet plug-in to reveal a USB connector. The Kindle comes up like any other removable drive and you can drop and drag to the correct folders.

More specifically about loading knitting patterns. Since so many of them are PDF's you should know it is best for you to open the pattern and save as text instead of copy. When you save as copy your pattern isn't viewable. I do not recommend loading any pattern that requires a chart. I haven't tried to do it yet but I cannot see how that would fair well.

"Talk Amongst Your Shelves"

Thanks to hurricane Ike I have not had power until very recently. Here is the promised post that I told you was coming.

When reading isn't enough - why not arrange your books to tell their own story?




"The Sorted Books project began in 1993 years ago and is ongoing. The project has taken place in many different places over the years, ranging form private homes to specialized public book collections. The process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom. The final results are shown either as photographs of the book clusters or as the actual stacks themselves, shown on the shelves of the library they were drawn from. Taken as a whole, the clusters from each sorting aim to examine that particular library's focus, idiosyncrasies, and inconsistencies — a cross-section of that library's holdings."

You can now view other people's sortings here on Flickr.

Source

Je suis tellement terriblement désolé

The internet has been cut off at my house so once again I am unable to make regular posts.

I hope to be back very soon.

Computer Fall Down Go Boom

I have run into some electrical issues at my house. It seems everything on the upper floor is on the same breaker. The power cuts out frequently. My computer has also been possessed by the spirit of annoyance - and is not working properly. On top of all this I need to buckle down and do more wedding planning since the date this August. I will do my best to keep things posted from my school in the meantime.

Recently Finished:
TinTin in America
TinTin in the Congo
Herge

The Chocolate War
Robert Cormier

Oops

In case it looked as if there had been no new post over the last week. There have. Last Saterday I pre-wrote more entries and throughout the week published them.However, they all despite the date of publishing say the day they were wrote. So there may be newer entries you did not catch beneath the entry Proust's madeline. All of them will be released today.

Site Updates

I have made a few minor changes to the site.

1. I have learned the golden rule of blogging - and thus have begun sourcing more of my info
2. I have begun adding post labels for searchability - because if you're like me you like having that option available
3. Because there should always be a three

Recently finished:
The Stepford Wives
Ira Levin

Alright. I have now read the book and seen both movies. I can not say without a doubt in any form I get it - I love this story. Also, guilty Lifetime watch I sometimes am - I have even seen the Stepford Husbands a few times (btw - story still rocks that way too.)
I believe this now puts me at around 75 books out of the 300 I am hoping to read this year.