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.

Been a while since I had this much free time to myself. And by free time, I really mean time that I should be spending putting the finishing touches to some work – but I’m choosing to do other things. First, books – and there is truly nothing nicer than being able to catch up on some of the titles that I hadn’t read over the last year. Then, in orderly fashion – new book announcements, of which there are a few.

First, to no one’s surprise (certainly not mine, at any rate) – the final Robert Jordan WoT book is now three volumes. Why do I sense another potential money spinning venture here; with volume following volume? Perhaps I’m being overly cynical about this. Next, new Discworld. Note the timing of both releases – November and October this year, respectively.

And apropos of nothing – more than one person has already asked me how I manage to keep some (most) of the character names in the WoT series sorted out in my head. And the answer is; well – at least I think the answer is – I have read the books a few times now over the last decade or so. I do re-read books. These things get remembered. As an explanation, I always thought this sounded sort of weak – until I read about the woman who has perfect recall.

Except that the article takes the sheen off a pretty remarkable achievement by setting it in a slightly creepy context -

When it comes to the 2004 election, she opts out entirely. I soon find that except for her own personal history and certain categories like television and airplane crashes, Price’s memory isn’t much better than anyone else’s

and later …

The difference is that she scans her past relentlessly. Every time we think about something, and especially how it connects to something else, we get better at remembering it—a phenomenon that psychologists call elaborative encoding

And now? you find a picture of someone who seems to spend most of her time relentlessly scanning her past. Ooerr.

And on that note, I’m off to forget most of what I still remember about characters in the WoT series.

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.