Amazon Prime Reading

Amazon seems to be rolling out a bunch of random stuff to Prime members lately. I blogged about Audible Channels last week. Now, they’ve started up something called Amazon Prime Reading. This is a service that lets Prime members read a variety of books, comics, and magazines for free.

This is distinct from the Kindle Owners Lending Library, which is available only to Kindle owners, and doesn’t require Prime membership. And from Kindle Unlimited, which lets you read an unlimited number of books (from a broad but still somewhat limited selection) for $10 per month (including audiobooks). And also from Kindle First, which lets Prime members “buy” one book per month for free from a selection of six or so new releases. It’s all very confusing.

I’ve used the Kindle “lending library” once or twice. It’s not easy to find books that are part of that program, and there’s not really much of a selection. I’ve been getting a book from Kindle First every month since the program launched, but, until recently, had just been letting them pile up. I decided to read a few recently, and I was pleasantly surprised. There are some pretty good books in there. (There’s probably a lot of dreck too, but I haven’t hit any yet.) I’ve never been tempted to sign up for Kindle Unlimited. I already “own” plenty of ebooks that I haven’t gotten around to reading yet, so there’s no reason to pay a subscription fee to get access to more.

So I guess it’s a good thing that there are more and more ways to get access to free reading material. But I’ve got plenty to read, regardless. Looking at Goodreads, I see that I’ve got 179 books currently tagged as “to read.” That ought to be enough to keep me busy for quite a while.

Post 2001

I have nothing much to say here, just that I noticed that yesterday’s post was #2000. So this is #2001. I started blogging in the year 2001, and (for some reason) never stopped. So here we are. Post #1000 happened in September 2007. At that point, I was still using Blogger. I switched to WordPress in 2014, and I’ve been happy with that decision, though I never had any big problem with Blogger.

I’m not in the mood for a lot of self-reflection this morning; I just wanted to make note of the milestone. I do have a lot of things I want to blog about though, so I’m going to get on with that.

Cable TV

A few days after blogging about how I was likely to keep paying for TiVo and cable TV, I got a letter in the mail from my cable company. I’ve been on an old, discontinued, plan for years. They’re finally dropping that plan and forcing me to change to a new one. To start off, they’re giving me a slightly better plan at a slightly lower cost, with Starz thrown in for free, so that’s good. But after a year, that offer ends, and I’d presumably have to start paying the regular price for that plan, and I’d lose Starz. So I’m not sure what I’ll do a year from now. Next October may be finally time to drop cable entirely.

In the meantime, though, my new plan includes BBC America and Disney XD, which weren’t on my old plan. This means that I can watch stuff like Doctor Who, Dirk Gently, and Orphan Black on BBCA. And I can catch Star Wars Rebels and maybe the new Milo Murphy’s Law (with Weird Al!) on Disney XD. So that’s pretty cool.

Audible Channels

I’ve never had a subscription to Audible, but I have a few books in my Audible account that I’ve gotten for free over the years. I saw that the audiobook for Mike Carey’s The Girl with All the Gifts was on sale for $3.95 yesterday, and it looked interesting, so I went ahead and bought it. I’ve read and enjoyed other stuff by Mike Carey, and this book seems to be well-reviewed, so I’m hoping it will be good. I usually try to buy audiobooks only if I can get them in DRM-free format, either on CD or as MP3s, but I’ll buy a DRM’d audiobook if it’s cheap enough.

After buying it, I opened up the Audible app on my iPhone, with the idea that maybe I’d go ahead and download it. It wasn’t logged in to my account, and I get the feeling that I hadn’t actually launched Audible since getting my iPhone SE earlier this year. That’s not surprising, since I haven’t been listening to any audiobooks lately.

After I logged in, I got a popup screen, letting me know about Audible Channels for Prime, a free service from Audible that lets Amazon Prime members stream and download a bunch of podcast-like material. There are some original series on there that look interesting (including stuff from Jon Ronson and Eugene Mirman), along with some stuff that’s already available elsewhere (including most of the podcasts from WNYC). I don’t think I’d want to use the Audible app to listen to podcasts that I can get elsewhere; as an app, it’s not going to be nearly as good as Overcast. But the original content looks like it’ll be worth delving into.

They’re also making a limited number of audiobooks free for Prime members, but they’re streaming-only and can’t be downloaded. There’s not much there, but there are a few interesting books that I wouldn’t mind listening to.

Poking around in my Audible account reminded me that I never finished listening to Metatropolis, which I got for free from Audible back in 2010. I remember that I’d listened to the first two of the five stories in that book, so I started in on the third last night.

I may start listening to more audiobooks and audio dramas again. It’s a good change of pace from reading regular books (both print and ebooks), and it’s much easier on the eyes.

TiVo Bolt, second year

Evernote just reminded me that my free year of TiVo service is just about up, so I need to decide if I want to pay $150 for a second year, or trade in my TiVo Bolt for something else.

I bought the Bolt about a year ago. The first year’s service was free. After that, it’s $150 per year. That seems a little steep, considering it’s mostly just paying for the TV guide service. After a year with the Bolt, though, I don’t think I’d ever want to go back to the cable company DVR. It’s just so much better.

I might also consider ditching the Bolt in favor of the Bolt+, which is a pretty nice upgrade, but totally unnecessary for me. It’s got a larger hard drive, but I’ve never run out of room on the Bolt’s drive. And it’s got six tuners instead of four, but I’ve never needed to use more than two or three tuners at a time.

I’m not particularly worried about TiVo getting bought out by Rovi. That happened almost six months ago, and there have been no issues with the service since then. It looks to me like that went smoothly and TiVo is continuing to function as always. So I’ll stick with the Bolt and let them charge me $150 for a second year.

I’ve also thought about ditching cable TV entirely, of course, but there’s still enough interesting on to make it worthwhile. I am, though, thinking about dropping Netflix. They raised prices last year for new members, but held the price down for existing members for a year. I just got the notice that my year is up, and my price will go up to $10 per month. With the new TV season starting up, I probably don’t need Netflix right now anyway, though I was looking forward to Luke Cage. There is also some other good stuff coming to Netflix this month, but I don’t think I really need it. I heard someone on a podcast mention recently that they subscribe to Netflix only during the summer months, and cancel it in the fall. That might not be a bad plan. Cancel Netflix, then resubscribe when Agents of SHIELD, The Flash, and Supergirl go into reruns. (Speaking of which, I need to remember to check my TiVo OnePass for Supergirl and see if it’s still valid, since the show has switched networks!)

Oh, Yahoo

After the recent disclosure by Yahoo that hackers stole a bunch of data from them in 2014, I of course changed my Yahoo password. I could see in my 1Password file that I had last changed my password in 2014, probably after this reported incident in January 2014.

I used to use my Yahoo Mail account as my main email, back in the days before Gmail. Lately, I just use it when I have to give an email address to somebody I don’t really want to get email from. So, now, it’s a dumping ground for email from various retail store reward cards and stuff like that, and I check it only very occasionally. I should probably close it out entirely, but I do still need a Yahoo account for Flickr. I don’t use Flickr as much as I used to, but I still like it as a place to keep my photos.

This time, I also went in to Yahoo and cleared all of my security questions too. (Yahoo actually encourages you to do this, and switch to using two-factor authentication for password resets, instead of relying on security questions.) I’m more worried about hackers having the answers to those questions, than I am about them having my old password. Back when I first set up my Yahoo account, it was fairly common to answer security questions with, well, accurate responses. So the question about my first pet actually has the name of my first pet. Doing a full-text search in 1Password, I see that I used that “first pet” question on a number of other accounts too, and gave a correct answer in those cases also. And, checking on those accounts, I see that changing the answers to your security questions isn’t even possible with some accounts. (I guess they just figure that the name of your first pet is never going to change, so why let you change it? That probably made sense at the time.)

So, in some cases, I guess I’m stuck with a little security issue, if somebody in possession of that Yahoo data ever decides to try a password reset on an account where I used the same security questions. On nearly all of the important accounts I have, I’ve set up two-factor authentication, so hopefully that would kick in and prevent someone else from taking over the account.

Meanwhile, for accounts that still use security questions, I always make sure I answer them with random words that don’t relate to the actual questions and that are unique across all accounts. I know people who answer them with random GUIDs, but that might be a hassle if you ever have to recite them over the phone.

Weird Al and Weird Art

My weekend didn’t go exactly as planned, but it went well. I skipped the Star Trek thing, and instead went to MoMA and saw the new Kai Althoff exhibit. It was interesting, but easy to make fun of, if you’re the kind of guy that likes making fun of modern art. The NY Times review is a bit harsh, I think, but, yeah, it would have been fine to see the paintings without having to step around an old suitcase full of dirty dishes.

The Weird Al concert was as good as I expected, with a few fun surprises. I’ve seen Al twice before, so I was already familiar with a lot of the stuff he typically does as part of his stage show. There was a brief guest appearance by Lin-Manuel Miranda, which I wouldn’t even have known about if I didn’t see it on Facebook the next day. (At the time, I didn’t catch his name, and I wouldn’t have recognized him, even if I was seated close enough to see him clearly, which I wasn’t.)

I stayed overnight in an embarrassingly fancy hotel, and went home Sunday morning. Then, after I got home, I drove down to south Jersey to visit a friend. Normally, I would consider that to be a bit too much activity for the weekend, and… I would have been right about that, since my neck hurt quite a lot on Monday. I managed to get through it all without any migraines, at least, but I was definitely in some pain yesterday. And today, the neck pain is gone, but I feel like I might be coming down with a cold. So I’m limping my way through this week, and hopefully I’ll get myself back on the straight & narrow soon enough.

Weird Al and Star Trek and other stuff

Fairly soon, I will be heading into NYC for a day of (hopefully) fun. The main purpose of the trip is to see Weird Al at Radio City Music Hall tonight. A secondary purpose is to drop in at the Paley Center and maybe watch a couple of episodes of Star Trek. So, yes, I’m a nerd.

I’ve been working on my migraine problem over the last few weeks. I haven’t actually had a migraine with aura in more than a month, so that’s good. But I’ve been getting (relatively) minor headaches on a somewhat regular basis, and sometimes they’re bad enough and last long enough to be a real nuisance. I’m hoping that I can get through the day today without any problems. But I do have a hotel room booked, so if I get a headache this afternoon, I can always hole up in my hotel room, draw the curtains, and take a nap.

iOS email apps

As I’ve mentioned in a recent post or two, I’ve been messing around a bit with third-party email apps for iOS. I’m not really that picky about email client features. I just want something that can do a good job of letting me read my email, and navigate from message to message easily.

Most third-party clients add on a bunch of bells and whistles designed to make it easier to “manage” your email. I don’t really have the kind of problems that these features are designed to solve. I don’t need a “focused” inbox, or an ability to “snooze” messages, or any of that stuff.

I do want to be able to apply Gmail labels and stars though, which is what I use for organization. Aside from the official Gmail app (and Google’s fancier Inbox app), no third party app fully supports Gmail labels, as far as I can tell. All of the ones I’ve tried support starring an email by flagging it. And they all see Gmail labels as standard folders, so you can move messages, but you can’t apply multiple labels.

The standard Apple Mail app was tweaked a bit in iOS 10, and is mostly a good solid app, but I’m still a little annoyed that they got rid of the next & previous buttons on the iPad version. It just makes it harder to move through messages.

None of the other apps I tried have next/previous buttons either, which is a bit of a disappointment. They all do, however, allow you to move between messages with left & right swipes. This sometimes works well, but it can be a problem if you’re trying to zoom & pan an HTML email that isn’t well-formatted for a mobile screen. (Panning and swiping are a bit too similar.)

Microsoft Outlook is a very nice app, except for the glaring issue I mentioned in my previous post: on the iPad, you can’t hide the message list, so you can’t see an email in full-screen.

Today, I gave Spark a try. It’s a really nice app, and has a lot of features similar to Outlook. It does allow you to view messages in full-screen on both the iPhone and iPad, so that’s nice. About the only thing I was disappointed with was that some HTML emails weren’t rendered as nicely as in Apple’s mail app. This isn’t a big problem, and only seems to affect certain messages. I’m guessing that those are messages that aren’t optimized for mobile, and Apple maybe takes some liberties with them, or perhaps they’re slightly malformed messages and Apple does a better job of “failing gracefully.” I’m not really sure. (I’m also not really sure where iOS email apps stand, in terms of HTML rendering. Are they all using the same rendering engine? I would have thought they were, but then I can’t explain why there are some differences.)

So, anyway, I still haven’t made a decision on which app(s) to stick with, so for now, I’m keeping the Apple app, the Gmail app, Outlook, and Spark all installed, on both my iPhone and iPad. I should really whittle that down though; it can’t be a good idea to have four separate apps all checking my Gmail box all the time.

I think I can rule out Outlook for now, so I should probably get rid of that. And I’m keeping the Gmail client, since it comes in handy when I want to do something tricky with Gmail labels. (Though I could also just use the Gmail web site for that. It works fine in Safari.) I think I’m going to keep Spark around for a while longer and see if I find it easier to use than Apple’s client. I may switch over to Spark as my preferred app at some point, possibly just on the iPad.