Get $100 off the Kindle

Through Sept 8, Amazon is running a "sale" on the Amazon Kindle, for those who have not gone paperless in their reading or perhaps now need to pick up a second unit for a family member. First, $30 of the discount is gained by applying for an Amazon Visa credit card, so if you already have this, you miss this portion. The remaining discount applies when you checkout (don't use 1-click; instead add the Kindle to your cart and go through the normal checkout process) - add the Kindle to your cart, set up payment using your Amazon Visa card and enter the discount code VISACARD. This part of the discount should work even if you already have the Amazon Visa credit card.

Here are all the details.

On the Nightstand

Courtesy of Thomas Nelson publishing, one of the books on my nightstand is The Faith of Barack Obama (also available for the Kindle and as an Audiobook). I read the first two chapters on my Kindle (after converting the PDF to the Kindle format, free courtesy of Amazon's email conversion service). My first question is: do all books about Obama have to start with his speech to the Democratic Convention in 2004? Does his campaign hand out a "how to write a book about Barack" press kits that outline that first chapter for them? More later... In the meantime, read the intro and the first two chapters for free (pdf) or for those with a Kindle, download the free sample here .



The rest of the "books" on the nightstand are ebooks - most on the Kindle, Amazon's ebook reader. Another on Barack Obama (and yes, it starts with the same "just before the convention" retrospective/impressions/interview) is Obama: From Promise to Power. Neither of these are attack books, but claim to offer a more impartial perspective (and perhaps a less politically self-serving) view of the Democratic Party's Presidential candidate. For McCain, I've only picked up Hard Call: The Art of Great Decisions so far - and it really can't be considered as more than a snapshot view of a portion of his life and one that happened long ago.
The last two are fiction, even if the first sounds like a political commentary: A Match Made in Hell (Nicki Styx, Book 2) and Exit Strategy (Nadia Stafford Series, Book 1).

I've had the kindle for a couple of months now and finished several books. Overall, it is in many ways a much better reading experience than many paper books. It's lightweight, so that huge trilogy Quicksilver (Quicksilver, The Confusion and )The System of the World, by Neal Stephenson, that I've been meaning to read and weigh in at nine lbs. and an average of 900 pages per volume, instead has no weight at all. The same 10.3 oz. package holds them along with a couple hundred more books -- and many, many more can be stored on SD cards (along with MP3 music and audiobooks, which are large enough I'd recommend not storing them in your main Kindle memory). You can lay the Kindle flat when reading at the table (assuming you eat alone or are snubbing those with you) or read it in bed using only a single hand (actually, prop it on your knees and you only need a finger to bump the Next Page button now and then, no need to let your hands freeze because they have to hold the book open. And if you fall asleep - the Kindle automatically drops into a screensaver mode and saves your place.

It's true, the buttons are big, so if you leave the Kindle on and pick it up by the sides, you'll often lose your place (then again, I've done this many times with paper books). But after a day or two you learn to do one of two things - either put it into screensaver mode when you set it down or pick it up by the bottom edge, where the keyboard is. With very few exceptions, the keys are dormant when reading and the chances of you mashing enough of them by accident to cause the Kindle to do anything is remote.

For those who prefer audiobooks, the Kindle handles them with ease (I've downloaded both MP3's and a few thru Audible and Overdrive - but not all DRM schemes work with the Kindle; then again, the same is true of some of my other MP3 players). These show up as entries (usually one per chapter) in the Books Table of Contents on the Kindle. You pick one to "read" and it plays in the foreground; leave the book adn the audio stops. Music MP3's can be loaded onto the Kindle or it's SD card via the supplied USB cable. These can then be played as a background while reading or performing other operations on the Kindle (Alt-P toggles play on and off). The only mode supported is shuffle, no playlists allowed, so this is obviously not a good choice for audiobooks. Then again, if you are listening to an audiobook, it isn't likely you want to then read another at the same time (although it would be handy for those trying to improve reading skills to listen and read at the same time, to the same book).

Rounding out the collection of "things I am reading" are a number of newsfeeds and blogs, also on the Kindle. But rather than having them update continuously, as with the subscription oriented blogs from Amazon, I update mine manually and use FeedBooks' Newstand application to automatically update them when I plug in the USB cable to the Kindle (you can also update via the built-in and free Whispernet from the "newspapers" themselves, after loading them manually the first time). Not all blogs or news feeds work well this way, though - unlike the Kindle's paid subscription to the New York Times, for example, the RSS feed only gets the first line or so and a headline. Many partial RSS feeds lack even a link to read the entire original article (something Feedbooks is working on), so you'll have to play around with this feature to find what feeds work well and which don't (or else use your phone or PC to read the news - which I still do as well).

Why "The Knob"

knob

Pronunciation:

\ˈnäb\

Function:

noun

Etymology:

Middle English knobbe; akin to Middle Low German knubbe knob

Date:

14th century

1 a: a rounded protuberance : lump b: a small rounded ornament or handle

2: a rounded usually isolated hill or mountain

— knobbed \ˈnäbd\ adjective

— knob·by \ˈnä-bē\ adjective

Source: Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary

I don't know when this place became The Knob - in the 50's, my grandfather bought a number of parcels on top of a ridge, some to steep to easily walk on, the others only flat by comparison (perhaps gently graded might suit - although a fair portion is somewhere in between). Some were old home sites (a cistern lasted until the late 80's), the rest possibly part of an old farm (the old barn sort of lasted that long - held up only by the vines that had ripped apart the corners, it fell to the same bulldozer that had to be called when that old cistern fell in). The only flat spot is on the very top of the ridge and was once used as the emergency water tower site by the local water utility (long since gone, now there are air relief valves there, but I suspect the water department has forgotten they exist, since they never use them, even after several incidents where all water pressure was lost due to either large leaks or a crossover to the larger supply lines a few years back.


At the time, he combined the parcels into one "farm" and raised pigs and a garden (but lived in "town" - about 8-10 miles away in the city, this was considered quite far into the country then). Years later, he found a better location 15 miles further out - bordering a lake, it had it's own water source and rich, flat bottom land (ok, sure it flooded out some years - but that little inconvenience just meant a long drive thru a neighbor's farm and taking down a few fences when that occured). Dad purchased the property and rented it out for many years, then we purchased it and moved here in the 80's - fleeing the crowds of southern CA after a stint in the Marine Corps. It was perfect ... almost.


But it was always, from as far back as I can remember, The Knob. A farm on a perhaps not so gently rounded hill. The pigs were long gone by the time I first remember visiting, but not the garden. And on the same road was an old chicken farmer, with a huge brick chicken house. They still candled eggs by hand (and let any kid that stopped by have try at it) ... and had grapes that they, with my grandfather, turned into wine (and yes, I'll never forget the truly awful taste, in my early teens, when they let me "try" some that was only about half fermented -- something that would cure most teens of even considering alcohol until long after turning a legal drinking age). A commercial apple orchard was next door and several others on this short, less than one mile road, raised cattle. All are now gone (although the apples trees remain, abandoned, it's just a matter of time, it appears, until they too, like the cattle farms, are sold off to become housing developments).


But when we moved in, all that was left were a very few fruit trees, all well past their prime, and a falling down mobile home (ok, it was a trailer) ... from the 50's, a single wide eyesore that we lived in for several years, while clearing that flat spot at the top of the ridge and then building the house we now call home. Since then we've cleared out the old orchard (covered with black locust from seedlings to full grown trees), removed all but one of the old trees as they died (one old apple simply refuses to die - this year it is once again completely covered in fruit, despite being at least 35 and more likely 50 years old) and replacing them with newer ones -- and with a larger selection. Instead of just peaches, apples and sweet cherries (which at 40' high, were unharvestable), there are now figs, nectarines, pluots, apriums, sweet and sour cherries, asian and european pears, several varieties of apples and even pawpaws (only 6 years from seedling to first harvest, these are NOT for the impatient). Grapes dont' do so well in the field (no irrigation), but muscadines are an easy to care for substitute - even the kiwis have a harvest now and then and the organic vegetable garden (in it's second location for the last dozen years) always has something to harvest, even in a dry year. Closer to the house, strawberries (which never survive the wild predators if out of sight) and blueberries (currently under attack by both squirrels and birds) are planted, while in between there are several berries growing wherever nature has planted them: blackberries, red and black raspberries and japanese wineberries (an import gone wild in this area). Rather than compete with tame varieties, we just try to mow these into pickable patches and let them do their thing - in return, they need no fertilizer, spraying or other care, but yield several pints of sweetness every year. There are even a few elderberries here and there - but if you've ever tried to harvest these, you know you really need hundreds of them to make the effort worthwhile.


So, this is The Knob. An organic farm on what is now the outskirts of town (and a fairly large one, at that). On the top of a steep ridge, we have over 450 feet of elevation change from the top to the lowest point (obviously, this isn't Florida, since that entire state has only a 300' feet elevation change and they call that a mountain there). Our house sits right on top of one of the highest points in the county, but the county is in a valley between two mountain ranges - this is definitely only a ridge, not a mountain we live atop. It's also quite a bit louder than when we moved in: a major interstate passes by about 3 miles away as the crow flies and the truck traffic can be heard all night long, while the view away from town now includes numerous houses that light up the night, where at one time you could make believe no one else lived within miles. Compared to those in the city of even nearby subdivisions, it is still quite wild - 20+ acres of mature deciduous forest and the other ten a combination of fields, orchards, garden and homestead. You still can't see those surrounding houses in summer, during the day - but in winter or at night, they are clearly now close by. A small waterfall with tiny pond, home to our amorous bullfrog, helps to cover the noise of nearby roads -- but it doesn't compare with the silence of a truly remote area (such as small town South Dakota, which we visit now and then). Then again, it's a lot less than 25 miles to the nearest store and it's never snowed up to the second story windowsills here, so there are trade-offs to every location.


Oh, and the "Bees" part - they sit in the hives on the border between field and woods. Although there were plenty of wild bees when we moved in, our garden and orchard began to suffer in the 90's due to the die-offs that here hitting wild populations of European Honeybees (at that time, tracheal mites and varroa mites were to blame, rather than the current unknown problems). The trees were often empty of fruit and what was there was misshapen -- even the zucchini didn't have many fruit on them. So, we put in a couple of hives of bees and there they still sit, although the two now there were once up to ten, the two remaining do a more than sufficient job, filling the trees with so much fruit that we often lose branches from the weight.


As to the residents - neither of us are your typical farmers or even true farmers at all (and one only participates under duress). Instead, both of us are from technical backgrounds: electronics and computers. Any work done around here is fitted into spare time and the subject of my posts are as likely to be technical (or about books) as they are to be about outwitting those wily voles that I know are looking for the potatoes again this year.