I received an Amazon Kindle as a Christmas present from my parents (thanks Dad, thanks Mom you’re the best!!), and after having finished my first book there – The Hobbit (a Tolkien book, but of course!) – I am now extremely enthusiastic about this device! It only took several pages for me to get used to it. Soon enough it just feels like reading a regular book. E-ink is such a revelation!
My favorite feature is the ability to adjust text size. My eyes nowadays easily get tired reading, but with a sufficiently large font it never happens anymore even after extended reading sessions. Just lovely. Another great feature is the text-to-speech. Sometimes I couldn’t put down the book but I’m off the train and have to rush to work. No problem – turn on text-to-speech and listen to where you left off! Turning it off brings you to the page where you stopped listening. And you know what, the text-to-speech voice isn’t bad at all.
To add to those, there’s also the ability to take notes and highlight text (I do this when I find quotable stuff). And of course – instant word definition lookup via built-in Merriam-Webster dictionary!
E-book prices from Amazon are reasonable, at least to me. Some would think otherwise, being that some e-books cost more than their paperback counterparts. Sure, but those paperback fonts are too small for my old eyes to read, alas. So if I buy books I buy trade paperbacks or hardcovers anyway – more expensive than the e-book editions.
But of course there’s a wealth of FREE e-books out there! The Amazon store has lots to begin with, popular ones now under public domain (e.g. Jane Austen, Dostoevsky, Arthur Conan Doyle). And I just found another DRM-free site: Manybooks. Heavennnnn
I have to say I have been spoiled by this device. It’s really hard for me to go back to dead-tree books, mostly due to the ease of reading Kindle text. Viva la e-book readers!
Another tune played live using the monome + the Akai LPD8 pad controller. Lights galore!
This is a remixed version of a remix I made as part of the Monome Community Remix Project v1. I think I like this version better than the previous one – playing everything realtime adds the human element in an otherwise precise electronic genre. Another day, another lesson learned!
Higher quality audio/mp3 of the above, but slightly modified:
A few weeks ago I acquired what is probably the most awesome “instrument” I have ever owned: the monome. It’s a seemingly simple device but with an open standard (it communicates in serial via the USB port, and an app called monomeserial converts the stream into either MIDI or OSC) one can do virtually anything with it – except maybe make a cup of coffee.
The monome community is thriving with very enthusiastic people with a common passion in both music and computers, and has a strong “open source” philosophy wherein information is exchanged and communicated freely. There is no greater proof of this than the monome itself – the hardware specs is open, free for anyone to use and build one for himself.
So being all these things it was very easy for me to get drawn and warm up to this crowd and their ethos of sharing, not unlike what Prof. Lawrence Lessig and co. are currently doing with Creative Commons. I really dig this movement, a movement that encourages the proliferation of culture through less draconian copyright (the CC counterpoint is called “copyleft”) laws that severely lock down creative works.
Idealisms aside, I love my monome. The community – like I said, a bunch of computer whizkids – has come up with tons of apps for it, and I have only scratched the surface.
Here is the first song I was able to make with the monome’s help. All parts were recorded, created, looped in Ableton Live, with the monome acting as controller (clip launcher), through the use of the pages app.
Being that the arrangement was done “live”, meaning the loops were triggered in realtime, I made it a point to record the action:
Not that I was doing anything significant… like other instruments, it takes practice to gain skill in the art of monome-ing. Next time, fingers will hopefully be busy with actual playing – nay, comandeering – of the tunes.
One fateful Saturday friends were gathered and some form of music was made.
Personnel:
Anthony Cheung – keyboard
Joon Guillen – loops,beats,bass
Stefan Janssens – mix,sequencing,lyrics
Sandra Kong – lyrics
Donna Macalino – guitar
Agnes Ngim – vocals,lyrics
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