Kindle Colorsoft

When the new Kindles were announced this week, I pretty much jumped right in and ordered a Kindle Colorsoft. I used to be a lot more cautious/frugal about ordering new bits of hardware, but I seem to have decided that “you only live once”, as the kids say, so now I have a fancy new color Kindle on its way to me. It should be here on Nov 4. I traded in my old Kindle Paperwhite, so the total cost after trade-in discount is around $233. I got the Paperwhite in 2018, so I was due for a new Kindle.

Of course, I also bought a Kobo Libra Colour just a few months ago. So now I’ll have two color e-readers to choose from. Part of me feels ashamed for my flagrant consumerism here. I feel like I should have held out and waited for the new Kindles, instead of buying the Kobo. Or decided to stick with the Kobo and give up on the Kindle. But, eh… you only live once.

I’m using the Kobo to read my Wheel of Time books right now, despite having bought them through Amazon. Once I get the Kindle, I’ll probably switch back to it, and see if the screen is as good as (or better than) the Kobo. (The Kobo screen is definitely better than my 2018 Paperwhite, but that’s to be expected.)

If I like the new Kindle better than the Kobo, then I guess the Kobo will become a secondary device. I’m pretty sure I’ll hold on to it, either way.

thoughts on the Kobo Libra Colour

I got my Kobo Libra Colour in the mail on Friday, and started setting it up and playing around with it over the weekend. I didn’t get to play with it as much as I would have liked though, since I was sick and didn’t have much energy. Still, I wanted to write up some initial thoughts.

Overall, I like the device. But I’m not sure if it’s good enough to pull me away from my Kindle and the Amazon Kindle ecosystem. I think I’ll probably keep using my Kindle as my primary E-Reader, and maybe use the Kobo as a secondary device for certain kinds of books and documents. I’m really not sure how it’ll settle out.

To get into the specifics, let’s start with the obvious stuff that makes it different from the Kindle. First, color: The color screen is nice, though obviously it doesn’t compare to, say, an iPad. It’s nice to see book covers in color, but it’s not necessary and it doesn’t add much value, really.

I thought the color screen might make the device usable for reading comics, but my experiments with that aren’t encouraging. The device is too small for normal-size American comics to look good on it. It’s about the right size for manga, but I didn’t have much luck with that. I had a couple of DRM-free manga volumes that I thought I’d try, but they didn’t work well. I might try that again with different files, but I’m not in a rush to do that.

The second main feature would be the stylus. You can use the stylus to take notes, with the built-in notebook app, or to highlight passages in books and mark them up. I tried the notebook app, and I don’t think I’m going to get much use out of it. I think I’ve gotten to the point where using a pen just isn’t that comfortable for me anymore, whether it’s a “real” pen and paper, or a stylus and tablet. And I think both the device size and the texture of the screen make using the stylus a bit harder than using a regular pen and paper, for me. I did get a little kick out of how much it reminded me of my old Newton though!

I haven’t tried a Kindle Scribe, so I can’t compare it to that. I’ve occasionally thought about getting a Scribe, and that’s still in the back of my mind as a possibility, but I’d say I’m a little less enthusiastic about trying it now.

The stylus cost $70, so I should probably return it, but I’m probably going to hang onto it. Maybe I’ll find a good use case for it at some point.

So I think I’ve figured out that the two main features that set it apart from my Kindle Paperwhite aren’t compelling enough to get me to switch away from the Kindle.

There are a bunch of other interesting features on the device that aren’t specific to the Libra Colour, but to Kobo in general, and I think some of those are quite interesting and maybe useful. I’ve had a chance to set up a few of those and try them out, so I’ll go through some of them here.

  1. Google Drive and Dropbox integration: I set up the Google Drive integration. (I assume the Dropbox support is similar.) This feature let’s you take books from your cloud storage account, and copy them down to the device from there. So it’s mostly just another way of getting books onto the device. It works well, though copying books over USB is more convenient for me, really.
  2. OverDrive integration: This is a really nice feature. OverDrive is integrated right into the device OS, so you can borrow library books directly from the device. Mind you, it’s not really difficult to borrow books via the OverDrive web site and send them to my Kindle, but this does make it a little easier. When I mentioned above that I might find myself using the Kobo as a secondary device for certain use cases, this it the one I’m most likely to use it for, I think: borrowing and reading library books.
  3. Pocket integration: This is interesting. I’d prefer Instapaper integration, since that’s my read-it-later service of choice, but I do have a free Pocket account, so maybe I’ll try it out and see how it works. The Kobo might be a better device than my iPad for reading, say, a long New Yorker article. (It is possible to send articles to the Kindle with Instapaper, but it’s a bit of a hack.)

So that’s it for the oddball features. The most important thing, of course, is how well it works as a reading device. I’ve only done a little bit of reading on it so far. I copied the Wheel of Time book that I’m currently reading over to it, and read part of a chapter. It worked well. I could increase the font size to something that worked for me. The display is bright enough, clear enough, and easy on the eyes. I’m not sure that it’s better than the Kindle, but it might be.

There are a couple of things that I have on the Kindle that I will probably miss (to some extent) on the Kobo. The first would be Goodreads integration. That’s not really a big deal, but it’s nice. The second would be the X-Ray feature on the Kindle. That’s really a hit-or-miss feature, but when it works, it’s nice. Especially on the Wheel of Time books, it’s nice to be able to use it to look up a character name. It is really hit-or-miss though. I often find myself going to an external reference. (I’ve been getting a lot of use out of the WoT Compendium iOS app lately.)

One more topic I should really cover is how it works with Calibre. I haven’t spent enough time on that yet though. I’ve made sure that Calibre recognizes it and lets me copy books down, but nothing more than that. I may come back to that in a later blog post.

So overall, this thing was an unnecessary expenditure, and I probably won’t get much use out of it. I don’t know, though. I get so much use out of the Kindle that it makes sense to try an alternative and see how it works for me. And my vision is so screwed up at this point that it’s worth experimenting to find the device that works best for me and my old broken eyes.

Kobo Libra Colour

I got kinda curious about Kobo earlier this year, after buying an ebook bundle of Kobo books. I’m perfectly happy with my Kindle, but I’m always curious about other hardware and software, whether it’s computers or phones or tablets or whatever. I couldn’t really talk myself into buying a Kobo back then, but Kobo has just released two color e-readers, and that was enough to get me to break down and buy one, just for the novelty of trying out an e-reader with color.

I got the higher-end one, the Kobo Libra Colour. And I also got the stylus for it, and a case, so I’m spending around $350 on it, which is a lot for something I don’t need and might not get much use out of, but, well, I can afford it. I get a lot of use out of my Kindle, so if I find that I like the Kobo more than the Kindle, then it was worth spending the money.

And I’m curious about the stylus. I can’t really see myself using the Kobo as a notebook on a regular basis, but it’ll be interesting to try it out and see how it works. The last time I regularly used a handheld/tablet/whatever with a stylus was probably my Palm i705, in 2002.

The new models are being released on April 30th, so I’m assuming mine will show up in early May. I’ll post some thoughts about it after I’ve received it and had a chance to play around with it a bit.

Fun with Kobo, Calibre, and Discworld

Following up on my previous post: I decided to fool around a bit again today with Calibre and the Discworld books from Kobo. This time, I installed Adobe Digital Editions, “downloaded” the books from the Kobo web site, brought them into ADE, then from there into Calibre. That actually worked. So I now have 39 Discworld books as DRM-free EPUB files that I can (hopefully) read on my Kindle. (I only loaded one of them to the Kindle, and it worked, so presumably the rest would too.)

I also decided to try loading some DRM’d books I’ve gotten from The University of Chicago Press into ADE and them Calibre. That worked too. Previously, for those, I’ve followed the instructions from UChicago, which was to download them directly to the Bluefire Reader app on my iPad. (That app is tied into Adobe’s DRM system.) I’ve discovered that I can take the files from Bluefire, save them to OneDrive, then strip the DRM with Calibre. So that’s cool, and it means I can finally read those books on my Kindle. (I have about a dozen unread books from them. Maybe this will actually get me to read some of them. Or not… I have over 600 books in my TBR pile on Goodreads right now.)

And, since this has gotten me thinking about e-readers and tablets and stuff, I decided to finally trade in my old 2015 Fire tablet. It only cost me $35 when I bought it, and it no longer powers on, but Amazon gave me $5 for it, plus 20% off a new Fire tablet. (That’s assuming they accept it. I guess they could reject it, but I already told them it doesn’t power on or hold a charge, so it should be fine.)

I don’t really intend on using that 20% off on a new Fire tablet, but I poked around a bit, just to see what they have. The Amazon Fire HD 8 Plus is on sale right now for $75. So I’d get another $15 off, bringing it down to $60. That’s not bad. Of course, I have no particular need for a Fire tablet, so I need to remember that.

I’m still kind of curious about picking up a Kobo Libre 2 maybe, but of course I don’t need that either. Still, e-readers and small tablets are a lot cheaper than, say, the Apple Vision Pro, so if I’m going to get tempted into buying gadgets I don’t need, I’m better off with e-readers and cheap tablets, right?

Beats Studio Pro

As mentioned in my previous post, I ordered a pair of Beats Studio Pros from Costco yesterday, and they arrived today. Setup was simple. They’re definitely more comfortable to wear than my Solo Pro headphones, so that’s nice. The sound quality is probably better too, though I haven’t spent any time comparing them. I listened to a bit of Mammoth WVH II, and it sounded pretty good.

The one weird/annoying thing is that they don’t automatically turn off when you fold them up, like the Solo Pros. You actually have to press the power button to turn them off and on. It’s funny — I’ve gotten so used to my AirPods turning off when I put them in the case, and the Solo Pros turning off when I fold them up, that having to actually use a power button seems weird.

An interesting feature that I haven’t tried yet is that you can use them wired, either with a USB-C cable or an old-fashioned 3.5 mm cable. At some point, I may try the USB-C audio with my MacBook, just to see how that works. And maybe I’ll try the 3.5 mm cable with my old stereo receiver, and see how they sound as “traditional” headphones.

Speaking of USB-C, these charge via USB-C rather than Lightning. I guess that’s OK, but it a little inconvenient for me, since all of my other Apple devices charge via Lightning, except for my MacBook Air. So, to charge these, the easiest thing for me to do will be to unplug the cable from my MacBook and plug it into the headphones. I guess, eventually, all the Apple stuff will use USB-C, but for now, it’s a little annoying to have to deal with both connectors.

They’re playing Christmas music outside again today, so I’ll probably try them with the Apple TV later, and watch a movie, so I can find out how well they work with that.

audio stuff (mostly)

In my last post, I made mention of an audio issue with my home desktop PC. It was bugging me again, so I decided to take a stab at solving it, and I think I have. (At least for now.) My old speakers where hand-me-downs from my brother, and were at least 20 years old. I remembered that I also had a pair of speakers from my Dad’s old computer. Those are at least ten years old, but they’re probably a little newer than the other speakers. They’re also taller than the other speakers, so I can’t put them on my desk surface like those, since they don’t fit under the hutch. So I put them on the hutch, behind the monitor. (There isn’t enough room to put them on either side of the monitor, so they have to sit mostly behind it.) That’s not perfect, but it works, and I’m not getting any interference now. I’m not sure if that’s because the speakers are better shielded, or just because they’re a little further from the router, but I’ll take it.

The old speakers came with a subwoofer that I kept under my desk, and that really improved the overall sound. These speakers are just a basic stereo pair, but they’re pretty good. And I don’t really need great sound quality at my PC. It just needs to be good enough for some background music while I’m working.

On a semi-related topic, I ordered a pair of Beats Studio Pro from Costco last night. They’re on sale for almost 50% off at a bunch of places right now, so I decided that $180 was a reasonable price to play for a set of headphones that will get some use, but probably not as much as my AirPod Pros, which I use nearly every day.

I bought a set of Beats Solo Pro headphones in 2021, and I only use them occasionally. The Studio Pros should be, hopefully, a noticeable improvement on the Solo Pros. I feel a little bad about buying these, when the Solo Pros aren’t quite three years old yet, but hey, at least I’m (still) not buying the $550 AirPods Max.

So I now have my old AirPods (bought in 2019), the Solo Pros (2021), and those 20+ year-old PC speakers to get rid of. I guess I should just recycle the old PC speakers. They’re probably still fine, if you’re using them in an environment without any wifi interference, but I’m not likely to find anyone looking to buy them. And the AirPods and Beats both still work (and hold a charge, though probably not as good as they were when new). I’m not sure if I want to go through the hassle of selling them on eBay though. Maybe I should see if Goodwill accepts old headphones. I know a lot of people don’t like the idea of used AirPods, but if you clean them up a bit, they should be fine.

We’re having some kind of Christmas Jubilee here in Somerville tonight, and they’re already playing Christmas music outside. I just looked at the schedule, and it looks like it’ll be going on until 9:30 PM. And I’m guessing the noise level will get louder once the main part of the event starts up. So I guess it’s going to be another night of drowning out Christmas music with Monarch: Legacy of Monsters and other loud TV shows. (Maybe the new season of Reacher? That’s loud, right?)

I’ve found one new Christmas album that I really like this year: The Frostbound Wood: Music for Christmas by Peter Warlock. (It’s not really new, of course, just new to me.) It’s nice and calm.

progress? (maybe a little.)

I thought I’d post a follow-up to yesterday’s post, with a few little items.

  • I did manage to send my Christmas cards out yesterday. I only sent out seven cards. And, two seconds after dropping them all in the mailbox, I realized that I hadn’t put return address labels on any of them. Oh well. My handwriting is atrocious, so they may or may not make it to their intended recipients. And, if they don’t, they won’t make it back to me. But, eh, I did my best.
  • I did get that email from our “talent team” confirming that the guy I assumed was going to be my new boss is, indeed, going to be my new boss. Also, there is no change in my title or salary. So that’s (probably) good. (Certainly better than getting laid off or demoted or something…) That reminds me that I never did find out if I got a raise after my year-end review. My old boss was supposed to let me know, but never did. So I guess that’s another thing I’ll have to figure out at some point.
  • Still no clue when my work machines are going to get upgraded to Windows 11. Theoretically, that should happen at some point this week, and I’d like to get it over with, but I guess I still have to wait.
  • I still want to write a new blog post about subscription prices. In addition to the aforementioned Instapaper price doubling, I got an email reminder today that my Evernote subscription is going to renew in January, at the new rate of $130/year. (The old rate was $70/year.) I knew that was going to happen, but hadn’t been thinking about it lately. I’m going to let it renew, since I couldn’t convince myself to switch to Obsidian, back when I was experimenting with it over the summer.

And one thing that’s unrelated to anything from yesterday’s post: Ever since I got a fancy new router last year, I’ve been having an intermittent problem with noise coming through my PC’s speakers. I have the router on my desk in between the speakers, so it’s not that big a surprise that this would happen, but it’s never been a problem with any of my previous routers.

I’ve read a few articles about ways to fix this. The obvious thing would be to move the router away from the speakers, but that’s easier said than done, given the constraints I’m working with. There’s really no other place to put the router. I’ve seen conflicting opinions about whether or not putting ferrite core(s) on the speaker wire(s) would help. And I found one suggestion that wrapping the speakers in aluminum foil could help. (I’m not trying that. But I’m tempted…)

My speakers are pretty old. I got them from my brother Pat, and he passed away in 2004, so they’re at least twenty years old. So maybe I just need new, better shielded, speakers. But trying to get info on which speakers are well-shielded and which aren’t is a little tough. One other thought I had was to switch from a pair of speakers to a single soundbar. If I did that, I could put the soundbar right under my monitor, and that way, I wouldn’t have a cable running right past the router. But the speaker would then be right above the router, so maybe that’s not any better… I don’t know.

The noise comes and goes, and it’s usually not noticeable if I play music through the speakers. For some reason, it was really bothering me today though. That might just be because I was unusually twitchy today. I’m also wondering if I should wait on this until I get a new PC. (Assuming I do get a new PC… that’s another thing I’m dithering about…)

Sonos Ray

For my ten year anniversary at SHI, I got 2000 points to spend on a gift for myself. SHI uses a service that has an online catalog of random stuff that you can pick. 2000 points seems to equal somewhere around $300. At first, I thought this system was overly complicated and kind of dumb, but when I thought about it, I guess it’s better than the obvious alternatives. The two other likely options would have been (a) just giving me an extra $300 in my paycheck, or (b) giving me some random corporate gift. For that first option, the money would have just gone into my bank account, and I would have forgotten about it. For the second option, they probably would have given me a nice pen or watch or something that I didn’t want or need. So I guess the “points” thing is actually a pretty good option, since it allows me to pick out something cool that I actually want.

So I got a Sonos Ray. I’d been thinking about buying one for a while, but hadn’t previously talked myself into it. I figured it would be a good way to get better sound out of my TV, without too much hassle. Up until now, I’d been using the built-in speakers for everyday use, and switching to my big old-fashioned stereo for movies or anything else where I wanted good sound. Routing through the stereo works well, but it’s a little bit of a pain, since it requires some button-pressing, and since I have no way of adjusting volume without getting up off my couch.

I’m already in the Sonos ecosystem, having bought a Sonos One in 2018, and a second one a bit later, which I have configured as a stereo pair. I use those often to listen to the radio, and sometimes for Apple Music. That works pretty well.

The Ray showed up yesterday, and was quite easy to set up. The Sonos app recognized it on the first try and added it to my system. It’s set up as a separate target from the Sonos One pair. In theory, I can stream music to it, the same as to the Ones, but I think I’m just going to use it for the TV. Setting it up to work with my TV remote was easy too. I can set the volume or mute it easily from my TV remote (or my TiVo or Apple TV remotes).

Overall, I’d say that the sound quality is better than the TV speakers, but not quite as good as my big old stereo speakers. But those are probably overkill for most TV. I’m not sure if I’ll be tempted to switch back to the old stereo speakers for movies or other stuff where I want the best possible sound. If I do, it’ll be a bit of a pain, since I’ll need to reach behind the TV and move the audio cable from the Sonos to the DAC that I use to bridge from the TV’s digital out to the stereo’s analog input. (Maybe I could find a DAC with a digital in, analog out, and digital passthru out. That would work…)

It occurs to me that, if I stop using the stereo for TV sound, then I’ll have pretty much stopped using the stereo entirely. I listen to the radio through the Sonos Ones now, since it’s much easier than trying to pick up over-the-air radio here. And I route Apple Music through the Sonos, because that’s the easiest way to do it. I don’t really listen to CDs anymore, and I don’t really use my little Volumio box anymore either. I don’t plan on getting rid of the stereo, but it’s interesting to think about how my listening habits have changed.

Old Media

I went down a rabbit hole over the weekend, and I thought it might be fun to write up some notes on it. I had decided that I wanted to watch Magnificent Butcher, a Sammo Hung movie from 1979. I have it on DVD, so I pulled it out of my random DVD pile and stuck it in my Xbox.

The Xbox appeared to boot up, but I couldn’t get anything to show on the screen, and I couldn’t eject the DVD. Long story short, I eventually got the DVD out and the XBox working, but it was stuck in 640×480 resolution. I eventually got it back to normal 4K resolution, but that’s another long story.

So back to the Sammo Hung DVD: I decided that this might be a good excuse to experiment once again with DVD ripping, and watching ripped DVDs on my Apple TV. I have HandBrake installed on my PC, with libdvdcss, but I haven’t used it in a long time. Well, it still works, and I ripped the DVD with no problems.

Next issue: how to watch it on the Apple TV. First, I decided to hook up an external USB drive to my new router. My old router supported an external USB drive too, but I tried it once and found it to be slow and unreliable. So I thought I’d give the new one a try and see if it was better. Well, it was. I hooked up an old 500 GB SSD, formatted as NTFS. The router recognized it, no problem. It automatically exposed it via Samba. I had no trouble accesssing it from my Mac or PC. And it’s pretty fast! So I copied the .mp4 file for the movie up to it, along with a few other random .mp4 files I had on my PC.

Next, I had to decide how to access that shared drive from the Apple TV. I already had VLC installed on the device, so I tried that. It connected to the Samba share, no problem, and let me watch the movie. So I guess I have a pretty good way of watching random .mp4 files on my Apple TV now.

So maybe I should go buy Ladyhawke from Rifftrax and watch that! I’ve been tempted to buy videos from Rifftrax before, but I’ve always held off, since I didn’t have a simple way to watch them on my TV.

I also remembered that I’d copied a few Akira Kurosawa movies from my TiVo to my MacBook several years ago (2016, apparently), via cTiVo. I gave one of those a try, and it works with VLC on the Apple TV too, so now I can copy those files over to the drive and watch them from Apple TV.

And that got me curious about whether or not cTiVo would work on my current MacBook. Well, it does. It was updated earlier this year, and should keep working for a while longer, though I guess it’s on its last legs.

So now I’m copying a few more Kurosawa movies up to my Mac, and I’ll copy those over to the drive tomorrow, so I can have a little Kurasawa marathon at some point in the future. (Of course, there’s no reason I can’t watch the ones that are still on the TiVo, on the TiVo, but…)

I also took an old scratched DVD that wouldn’t play on my Xbox and ripped it on my PC. It didn’t give me any errors, though that doesn’t guarantee that the .mp4 is perfect. I’ll try watching that soon, I think. (The movie is Syriana, and I’ve had the DVD for years, and just never got around to replacing it. So now I can finally watch it! Probably!)

As an alternative to VLC, I’ve considered Infuse, which is probably better, or at least prettier. And of course there’s Plex, which I’ve tried before, and was just too much of a hassle.

Looking at the Plex web site right now, they seem to be de-emphasizing their original purpose as a way to stream your own media, and are now touting the ability to watch free live TV via their app. Most of what they have seems like the same kind of stuff you can get via Pluto, so I’m not sure why anyone would be too excited about it. But OK.

So, anyway, I now seem to have a relatively hassle-free way to watch .mp4 files on my Apple TV. I don’t think I’m going to go on a bender, ripping a bunch of my old DVDs, but I may take some of the more questionable ones and rip those. (Maybe some more old Kung Fu movies that might be a little scratched up.)

Router and iPhone Follow-up

A few follow-up notes on my new iPhone and new router:

The iPhone is working well. Setting up MS Authenticator was a pain, as I knew it would be. Other than that, very few problems. My trade-in seems to have worked out. I just checked my Apple Card, and I see a $149 credit from yesterday, so that must be the trade-in. (There was a weird thing last week where it looked like they charged me $149 instead of crediting me $149, but I guess that was a temporary glitch.) I’m glad that this got done before end of month, since this means my Apple Card statement for September will include the credit.

As for iOS 16, I haven’t done much with it. I did create a custom home screen, but it’s just the astronomy one, with the moon showing, and a single weather widget. So nothing fancy.

I hooked up my new router today. That went pretty smoothly, except for one big issue. I have about 16 different wireless devices on my network, and I had no trouble with any of them except for my Sonos speakers. I jumped through a lot of hoops to try to get them working. Long story short, they eventually did, after doing a router reboot. But there was a lot of mucking around before I got to that point.

I did a before & after speed test, on my iPhone, and the new router seems to be a little faster than the old one (116 Mbps down vs 94). But of course there are a lot of variables there, so who knows if that means anything.

So that’s about it for today. Nothing too exciting. Time to watch some for football.