Random assorted things

[lizbee]

1. Not to take away from the genuine hilarity of the OP ("I was reminding myself this morning that it's a sign of weak character to take long showers. Anyone who does this is a soft sister -- a person looking to hide inside the warm amniotic fluid of his mother's womb, which is what a nice hot shower feels like. This realization goes back to when I was in my early 20s. If I happened to notice that a roommate or some guy or girl who was staying over was taking ten- or twelve-minute showers (or worse), I would instantly write them off."), but for me, the lolarious part of this wank is the multitude of comments saying, "But I could never get clean in less than ten minutes!" or, "For the purposes of saving water, I keep my showers down to six minutes."

To which I say, I SURVIVED BRISBANE'S LEVEL 4 WATER RESTRICTIONS AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS INCREDIBLY EFFICIENT SHOWERING ROUTINE. Which reminds me, we need a new four-minute shower timer. I used to have, like, five lying around, but I think most of them vanished in the interstate move. And Melbourne is a city of water-using weaklings who think level 3 restrictions are a crime against humanity, so I'm not sure if the councils here give them out like candy. Investigations shall take place.

2. In preparation for the House o'Squid's upcoming move, I have filled an entire granny bag with clothes that no longer fit. GO ME! Of course, now I actually have to get it out of the house and down to the Salvation Army, but, you know, one step at a time.

3. MESH.

4. Nail polish that cracks within an hour of application: unimpressive.

5. Borders Australia has brought out Kobo, the Kindle killer. You guys know I ♥ ♥ ♥ ebooks, right? Sometimes I read them on my EeePC (which is better than nothing, but not as portable and quick-loading as you'd want for an ebook) and sometimes I read them on my iPhone (the backlit screen is tiring for the eyes, and the tiny screen means frequent page-turns). I've been keeping an eye on the eReader market for a couple of years, but devices have been slow to come to Australia, and prohibitively expensive. (I think the Kindle starts at $375? Which is a bit OTT for something that can only read Kindle-formatted files; for that kind of money, it could at least be a bit versatile. Not to mention Amazon's increasing tendency towards evil.)

Anyway, Kobo is $199, light, small (approximately the size of a comic book), uses e-ink technology, and reads PDFs and ePub formats. (Which are widely available, and it's easy to convert an ebook from, say, .lit to another format using Calibre or similar.)

Along with Kobo, Borders has launched the ebook store, and an iPhone app carrying same. Oddly, the iPhone version of the store is much more user-friendly and better-organised than the web version, but I'm hoping that will change soon. As it is, a bit of digging turned up, for example, a book I've been meaning to buy from Amazon for a couple of years. And I'm sure any decade now, the libraries will implement an actual ebook-loan system, instead of just linking to online databases and calling them ebooks.

Frankly, it's almost enough to make me wish I still worked at Borders. Rumour has it -- because I still have a lot of industry blogs on my feed -- that Borders America was all, "Oh look, Borders Australia's putting out it's own version of the Kindle. Isn't that cute? Let's all point and laugh." Which sums up why the American company lurches ever closer to bankruptcy, while the AU parent company just posted a record profit for the quarter. Apparently Kobo is selling out all over the place. And, since between the impending move and being (as usual) stone broke, I'll be living on instant miso soup for the foreseeable future, I shall have to wait before I get one. #firstworldproblems

6. I slept until ten this morning. But a nap would be might nice right around now. Hmm...

Comments

[rivendellrose]

Borders America was all, "Oh look, Borders Australia's putting out it's own version of the Kindle. Isn't that cute? Let's all point and laugh."

Figures. My first thought when you described the Kobo were "gee, that almost sounds like the kind of e-book reader I might be interested in!" Ah well. With my impending intention to actually buy a new phone for the first time in 7 years or so, I don't really need another tech toy to be considering, I suppose. :P

[lizbee]

Turns out that Borders US will be launching Kobo in June, so, you know, if buying a phone isn't enough for you...

[sabra_n]

o_O I just don't get how the 4-minute shower...happens. I take about twice that long when I'm really, really hurrying. Good thing I usually shower at night. :) Seriously, I salute your efficiency.

But I can do water restrictions - I just take an Israeli shower. (Which basically just means turning the water off while you're shampooing, soaping or whatever.)

[lilacsigil]

My house had town water, but my best friend's house had tank water. Showers were two minutes then the water got turned off - on the Saturday night/Sunday morning shower shift the girls got four minutes for extra hair washing (they were evangelical Christians and all the girls had to have very long hair). Now, of course, I live in one of the few areas of Victoria that hasn't had any water restrictions at all and my skills are useless!

I use my iphone for ebook reading but I look forward to the day when anything I buy, anywhere, will actually work, and I don't then have to track down a pirated version of what I just purchased. Borders has made a big step in the right direction.

[nineveh_uk]

I love long hot showers and baths, and the OP is clearly a nutter, but I'm still deeply amused at the desperate scrambling of people who won't actually just say this, but justify "but I need to wash my hair/shave my legs because I am a Woman and Women must do this thing". Both of which can be done outside the shower, using much less water and unless you actually have very short hair, less time. (OK, in plentiful water circs up to a point it saves time to do them at once, but in non-plentiful water circs it wastes water.) I especially love the plaint "But high-end conditioners take five minutes to work!"

[geek_anachronism]

I really don't get how people take a 10 minute (or 30 minute!) shower and insist they need all that time to be hygenically clean. I never once shaved my legs in the shower (not only wasteful but seems inefficient) and there's no way I'm going to sit wasting water in order for my conditioner to work! I understand how lovely showers are, and baths, but enjoying the spray is not essential to being clean.

I did have an ex who liked to sit down and have a bit of a rest in the shower. That was...odd.

(I did like the mildly histrionic "but if after I wash my private places I have to throughly scrub for five minutes!!!"

[yiduiqie]

i suspect i can rustle up a timer from around the place if you'd like. i come into contact with them all the time.

[marymac]

See, my incredulity about three minute showering comes from enforced (by which I mean, turns itself off) three minute showers in circumstances where I had waist length hair and was generally coming in from something that left me covered in sea water, mud, bits of forest or all three. I hate three minute showers. Can't get clean in that at all.

On the other hand, day-to-day with my good shower at home, I can take less than three minutes if I'm rushing. It's the righteousness of him about it all. Off his wee rocker.

[drjon]

I saw a Kobe on Thursday evening. It's cute. If it can handle txt files, and HTML-with-embedded-images, I may well get one.

Actually, I might get one for Professional Reasons anyway, given our company's about to start doing PDF "e-books".

[drjon]

^H^H^HKobo

[myniamh]

Hardware places give those timer things away free. You may have to take the free thongs, fridge magnets and gloves as well though.

[alienist]

I shudder to think what the man thinks of baths.

"Kobo the Kindle Killer" should be a super hero name.

[neadods]

Borders America was all, "Oh look, Borders Australia's putting out it's own version of the Kindle. Isn't that cute? Let's all point and laugh."

They're starting to advertise it, but only in the "hey, it's cheaper than anyone else's reading toy" sense. They haven't mentioned the iphone/itouch app at all (although I'm going to go looking for it, because I'm not going to buy another tech toy when the Touch is supposed to be handling all that.)

[jennaw]

Borders US is selling the Kobo. It's available for preorder already: http://www.borders.com/online/store/MediaView_koboereaderspecs

It looks pretty good. I'd just done research on e-readers for my nephew and I think this one stands up well in comparison with the others and is much cheaper.

[renshai]

Chapters/Indigo has it up for sale in Canada. It's actually kind of interesting looking, which none of the other eBook readers have been - at 150$, I could buy it and not feel too bad about turning it over in a couple years' time when OLED screens and 3G access become standard.

Also, it has ePub support, which is what all the books on my iTouch are in. I think I'll wait a couple months, though, and let the launch-kinks work themselves out.

[ceebee_eebee]

Wow. I sleep in the shower. No joke. I lie down on the bottom and nap. Apparently I am the weakest human being alive. Oh well. As long as no one tries to take away my happy zen place, I can live with the disdain of others.

[geek_anachronism]

I mentioned this whole thing to Linc and apart from the detour to explain 'weak sister' (him: wtf does his sister have to do with anything?) he started out 'rar what a dick' and when I mentioned 10/30 minute showers went "oh, well shit, they are long fucking showers" but still agreed that it was a little over the top.