A short review of "the Good, the Bad, the Weird"

I just finished watching "the Good, the Bad, the Weird" on DVD, but I don't think its out anywhere in the west yet so thought I'd mention it.

It's not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination. At best its a good if deeply deeply flawed movie. It is, however, utterly bonkers. And is easily insane enough to be a lot of fun. Both my wife and I thoroughly enjoyed this Korean mess. Its well worth seeing if your into action movies and subtitles don't put you off. I look forward to watching this one again sometime (perhaps with beer and pretzels).

Bugger

Apple seems to have an uncanny knack of really annoying me sometimes. The latest story about their Patent lawsuit against HTC has got me a little upset. Its just another lame attempt at money grabbing and competition stifling (no matter what they say). I don't argue against someone having the right to making some money of their own invention, or someone being able to protect their work. But Apples love of patenting ideas is just ridiculous. You should patent the technology at the transistor level, patent the code, but not the idea. Isn't there a better way of doing that.... *** copy write *** (and I'm aware that there are plenty people around that do this rant better than me).

Also, I'm becoming increasingly interested in buying an iPad after a few months to see how things fair. It doesn't have flash, but its likely to be the only tablet with a healthy amount of comic distribution and game distribution for some time. Such things interest me.

This leads me to my conclusion of - Bugger.

eBook Readers ..... the future?

I bought a Kindle in December, a Christmas present to myself. Thought I'd talk about it once more then try not to mention it again.

First off, I really like it. Its a great little device for reading and the screen is much better than I expected. Mostly I've been downloading classics on to it and reading them. One of the things I find I particularly like about it is holding it. I find it so much more comfortable to hold than a book, I can read one handed without having to hold the spine open. I even figured out I can quickly check the time on it if I don't want to look at the clock on my bedside table. And as a bonus Lok likes it too. She likes making the font bigger because its easier on her eyes. She has also been spending money on Amazon buying books she'd otherwise have to go to a city and spend lots of money on. All in all its seeing a lot of use.

Being a geek I have tried to read some RPGs on it. And its about as good for that as I'd hoped. But thats not saying much. I'm reading Deadlands Reloaded on it at the moment. I cropped off the edges and took a couple of pages out before loading it on to the device. Landscaped its a bit small but readable. Portrait its tiny but actually just about readable. But its a slow affair skipping forwards and back to read 2 columns. And it takes up way more space than a book. But heres the thing - I'm reading Deadlands cover to cover, when I'm done I'll probably take it off the Kindle and use the PC to reference it. I'm okay with this. It takes me off the PC for most of the books reading time. This is a good thing.

It does sum up one of my main ideas about this kind of eReader though. Which is that its great for books but the further you get away from simple books the worse the experience gets. I can see why newspapers would be nice on the device, but you'd really have to work on cutting up the text and pictures to fit it better. This is not the device for comics or magazines (though manga could work).

Talking of newspapers Amazon has a service for that. But I'm not so happy with how they charge in the wider world. Not very happy at all. Good thing there are python scripts that let me get content from any of the UK or international eBook stores.

And finally, a bit of a look to the future. The distribution network and content design is going to be key if these devices are going to take off. Amazons Kindle is a good (if restrictive) example of a first attempt. With the right devices coming out (at CES today) publishers and retailers are going to have to work hard to come up with the winning services and products. It will probably take years though until we see the same freedom and options which we have in mp3's today. Its going to be really interesting seeing what comes out though. I'm hoping for a way to download comic books so that I can get rid of the rest of my bookshelves contents (moving all that stuff was a ******).