reading

All posts tagged reading

The Neverending Story - (1984 movie)

2021-08-07
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The Neverending Story

Entertainment > Movies >

(on Wikipedia)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088323/

A boy skips school, is assaulted by bullies then hides from them in a bookstore which he robs, then hides out in his school's attic to read.

An extraordinarily powerful movie.

There's a certain feeling with movies in the 1980's which were positioned for children but had unashamedly-adult themes running through them. The Neverending Story has, at its core, themes of literacy, imagination, will, loss, hope and determination.

  • Originally titled Die unendliche Geschichte



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The Princess Bride - (1987 movie)

2021-08-04
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TODO - having six fingers is called polydactylism

The Princess Bride - (1987 movie) image

Entertainment > Movies >

(on Wikipedia)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093779/
https://www.princessbrideforever.com/

Soon to enter into a loveless marriage with the king, a common woman's only hope lies in a daring rescue attempt.

A classic movie of fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love and miracles. This is a kid-friendly movie in the sense that the 80s didn't have kids who were complete pussies. There is hatred, danger, death and blood, and yes proper torture, and this is a fine family-friendly film.

The only flaw in this movie is the grandfather-narrator, who is terribly overdone to the point of distraction.



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Improving e-reader speeds for Internet Archive books

2018-10-08
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Kobo Aura ONE 01a

Problem: Given an item in the Internet Archive, e.g. The works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, you may be tempted to download the PDF for its exactness. Admirable! However, my e-reader is horribly slow for opening it and turning pages. I find slow page turning aggravating; it makes me lose my train of thought and strains my reading comprehension.

Solution: Download a different format of individual images, bulk-scale them down exactly to your device's screen, then package the images back into one single file.

This extra work is well worth it for me.

  • TODO - See also PDF? I haven't tested it, but I wonder if "repairing" a PDF would also help with e-reader speed.



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Kobo Aura ONE

2018-10-06
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Kobo Aura ONE 01a

Computers >
Hardware, Reading >

(on Wikipedia)
https://www.kobo.com/
https://ca.kobobooks.com/products/kobo-aura-one

An E-book reader.

Because this is my first e-reader, I can't judge it against it's peers. It works well.

It is spectacular hardware-wise. Its software works, but it is sometimes obviously or even critically lacking. It lacking a file browser and respecting directories is bad enough that I can't really use it for its intended purpose, and almost regret buying it.



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