The Lair

There are people who love being read to – that is, someone else sits down with a book or magazine or newspaper in front of them and reads aloud. I know several people who like this.

I’m not one of them.

I have often wondered if my childhood had anything to do with this (it probably did, we are all influenced by our childhood in some way or the other). My parents never read aloud to me. Not that I feel the lack at all, I was always given a book – or found myself one – and read it. There was never a question of someone else performing the labour intensive activity of actually reading to me, I’d read it myself thank you very much.

Why is this a problem now? Because I am completely unaccustomed to someone reading an entire book to me now. I simply cannot concentrate on the contents of the book, nor does it make it easy for me to visualize what is going on when I have to concentrate on the next words being read. When I am reading text off a page (or a screen), it’s easy. I read at my own pace. When someone else is going the reading for me, it’s pure torture. It’s always either too slow or too fast or just plain “uh. yeah, what did you just say? because I wasn’t listening”.

Which is a pity – because in my seemingly unquenchable thirst for new things to read, I have discovered that an mp3 player and a podcast directory, or an audiobook directory or two can be very useful assets. For most. For me? Well, I don’t have the patience to listen to podcasts. Not even when I’m driving and stuck in traffic. Give me a transcript any day.

Perhaps it’s an acquired ability.

Someone has convinced me that my life would complete if I purchased one of those newfangled iPod things. You know, touchscreen. Exactly like my trusty PalmOS device had for the last … uh … decade, but cooler? Yeah, one of those. It apparently allows someone to listen to music too, but I wouldn’t know about that – I’d be too busy holding it up so that all the laydeez can see how hip I am (and simultaneously dodging all the would-be muggers out to wrestle the fancy toy out of my sweaty palms).

This could be the fabled slippery slope, people. The point where I start paying money for software like this instead of using the perfectly serviceable (and free! for my use via the corp) alternative on a much stodgier computer.

But seriously – Omnigraffle seems to be very very cute. If only they had something that worked on Winders or Loonix… Alas. Maybe I need to try Balsamiq instead, since I have been pressganged into that line of work for now.

In other news – Tintin could have been written by a racist after all. We’ve had conversations about Tintin in Congo before, with inconclusive results. Also, I never quite figured out how so many kids in my neck of the woods were exposed to Tintin and Asterix growing up when it allegedly isn’t all that popular in the UK.

And these photos are eerie, since I know the places, but find the streets unrecognizable without a constantly bustling foreground of people and vehicles.

Two cutesy adaptions (or derivations or mashups) that I thought I’d share.

Batman by Dostoyevsky. Fairly self explanatory, I believe.

The complete set of CDs from Mark Vidler’s mashups for download. I listened to CDs 1 and 3 last night. Some of them are rather bizarre mashups and the man appears to have a serious fascination with mashed up Michael Jackson (see what I did there?) but it’s all free!muzak!available!for!download.