Teaching with Kindle, Take One

Well, today I had my first class where I tried to teach using the Kindle instead of a real book. Epic fail. The students were throwing out page numbers, and as Kindle users know, Kindle don't got no page numbers. I might have had better luck searching for keywords, but I didn't want to ask students to give me a searchable phrase so I could catch up to them.

Anyone out there teaching with ereaders or the like? What's your experience?

UPDATE: Just yesterday, Amazon announced that Kindle will now feature real page numbers through an OS update. Glad I could be the straw that broke the camel's back. Thursday I will attempt to teach with Kindle again and report back.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20030926-1.html?tag=cnetRiver

The Les Paul: Is it worth the dough?

This is a tough question. One that I've pondered for a long, long time. Not exclusively about the Les Paul, but about about expensive guitars in general. I've been playing guitar since I was five and, well, that was 35 years ago (eek!), and I've had a lot of guitars over the years. Some good. Some kind of expensive, some bad. Right now I have 9 guitars and all of them are good for something. My Martin D-15 was the first really nice guitar I ever bought for myslef. I did used to have a 1976 Telecaster Deluxe, but it was never a great player for me even after a refret, so I sold it to a dude in Australia on eBay. I hope he's happy with it, because I never was. I also had an American Tele for a while, but didn't love it. When I sold the Tele Deluxe, I bought an Epiphone Dot to replace it. I went to every guitar shop in NYC and player every Dot they had until I found the one that played well. I never even plugged it into an amp. I took it off the wall, strummed a few chords, and just by the way it was ringing out and the neck was fretting I knew that it was a solid guitar and if needed could be improved. I still have that  guitar and still think it's a fine player. It has a plastic nut and the Gibson pickups that are in it aren't the greatest, but they get the job done.

The Guitar Wall

And this kind of leads me to my first point about whether or not it's worth it to buy a Les Paul: I'm a firm believer in the idea that it's not the tools that build the house, it's the craftsman wields the tools. Like I said, I have a lot of guitars, the Les Paul is by far the nicest and most expensive, and yes, it is my best playing guitar, but it's not a panacea for everything. Yes, when you plug it in and you strum a chord or play a lick, it has a sound that is a very familiar sound. One that we've been hearing on records for over 60 years. And yes, it is easy to get that sound out of the guitar. Really easy. And the Les Paul is an easy guitar to play. Really easy. Like I've said, I've been playing for 35 years. And I make no claims to being a shredder of any kind. I play to back myself up. I'm a good rhythm player. But after a week or so of playing the Les Paul, I was most definitely a better player than I had been before, there's no doubt about it.

So is it worth it? Well, as you can guess, my short answer is: Yes. These guitars are hand crafted, they use the best materials out there and they have premium pickups. All of those elements make it easier for you to do your job as a player. But the cost is steep. I bought a used 2008 Les Paul Traditional. The Les Paul Standard was changed pretty significantly in 2008 to compete more with makers like PRS and to appeal to players looking for a more modern sound. The have what are called Burstbucker pickups in them and I found that I didn't care for the, The Standards are still the priciest non-custom shop guitars. They run about $2700 and up. The Traditional line is more like the Standard from the early 80s. these are heavy ass guitars too. Mine weighs upwards of 9 or 10 lbs. They are loaded with the '57 Classic pickups, which have more of a vintage sound. That's what appeals to me, so that's what I was looking for. But I didn't know that at first.

That brings me to my second point about these guitars: You absolutely cannot order one off the rack, sight unseen. When I went out shopping I had 6 guitars in a semi-circle around me and I went from one to the other for the better part of two hours and every single one of them was different. Not just different feeling, but different sounding. Drastically so. Yes, they were all made of the same kinds of wood. Yes, they all had basically the same hardware, but these are handmade instruments. Each one has taken a slightly different journey to your hands and you need to factor that into your decision. A hard thing to wrap your head around in this world where everything seems to be interchangeable.

The Les Paul Studio

The first Les Paul that I bought was a Les Paul Studio. These are the less frilly step brothers to the Trads and Standards. There are several differences that I won't go into here. Suffice it to say if the Les Paul Studio were the only guitar I had to play for the rest of my life I'd be pretty happy. But I was spending over $1000 for the guitar ($1300 to be exact). I got it home and noticed some of the lacquer was popping out on the neck where the frets were. I thought that wasn't right. So I took the thing back. I looked at the other Studios in the shop and none of them were that great. Some of them were terrible. I just couldn't see myself taking one home. And then the shop guy took me to the used wall and asked me to check out the Traditional that had just come in. When you shop for a Les Paul, you'll start to read phrases like "Chambered" and "weight-relieved." The former means that big sections of the mahogany body have been routed out to take off some of the weight. The latter is similar, but insetead of routing the guitar out, Gibson drills out 9 strategically placed holes in the body. Now, these aren't visible because the Les Paul body is two layers: maple on top and mahogany on the under side.

Well, this Traditional was freaking heavy. It must have was a full two or three lbs more than the Studio. I sat down and before I plugged it in I finger-strummed a G chord. I could feel it the whole way through the guitar. The thing just felt right. I knew I was going to buy it before the cable went into the jack. Since it was used, they were asking $1800 for it, but I got a great Labor Day deal and walked out with the guitar for $1500.

2008 Les Paul Traditional Plus (Desert Burst finish)

And do I regret the purchase? Not at all. That guitar has made me a better player. The better materials make a difference...a big difference. But like I said, not every Les Paul is equal and not every player will feel the same way about every guitar. I actually don't recommend that someone who's just started playing go out and buy a Les Paul (or any other top shelf guitar for that matter). It's important to have a good guitar that plays well, doesn't fight you, stays in tune and makes you hum with pride, but an investment of $1000-$2000 was something I felt I needed to earn for myself and I didn't feel like I got there until I'd been playing for a long time. Maybe I'm still not, but I'm glad I made the purchase. This guitar is the perfect complement to the rest of my collection. It fills in a sound in my pallet that my other guitars were and it's versatile enough that I can get a lot of surprising sounds out of it. And it looks effing cool as hell.

What are your experiences with expensive guitars Les Pauls or otherwise? If anyone's interested, I could try to do a little shootout with the LP and my other electrics to give you a flavor. Might be a couple weeks before I can do it, but let me know if that's interesting to you.

The Les Paul gets 5 Wallet Moths!

So is the Les Paul worth the $$? I say yes, but be sure you're getting the guitar of your dreams when you buy one. And that will require you spend some time and give everything a lot of thought.

I'm an IBMer?

What the heck does this mean? Can someone please tell what IBM is trying to sell with these "I'm an IBMer" ads? I mean, can I go out and buy Watson and have a super computer to play Jeopardy against? Can I go out and buy a better traffic grid?

When I'm forced to watch ads over and over again, I at least like to know what they're trying to cram down my throat.

Anyone?

Kindle 3 Unboxing

This is my first shot at an unboxing video. Don't know if I'll do it again. I picked up a Kindle 3 over the weekend because I was advised to take some money that's coming my way and spend it all on something. And since that money has to do with writing and reading, I figured I'd spend it on the same. And yes, I have an iPad and a Sony Reader (well, the Sony's been sold), but the Kindle 3 wore me down for several reasons, chief amongst those I have a bunch of Kindle books that I've bought and have read on my phone and the iPad, and I had an eye exam the other day and the doctor told me if I was feeling eye strain (and I was) I should consider an eInk device for reading.

The first Kindle I got went haywire and kept crashing, so I returned it for another one. Aside from that, the reading experience has been really great. I finished a book last night and start reading another this morning as well as work on some manuscripts for the journal I've been editing. We'll see if this Kindle holds up. I'll be back periodically with updates.

Disclaimer: Sorry the video is blurry throughout. I used my Flip Ultra HD and it didn't like the up-closeness of my shots. Still, the audio is pithy...

RocketFish LED book light

Rocketfish™ eReader Clip-On LED Light on Best Buy

I bought this to go along with my new Kindle and as soon as I took it out of the box I knew it was going back. I'd rate the quality of the materials used as comparable to something you'd get out of a gumball machine. But look and feel aside, I figured I'd try it. The thing doesn't even cast light on the ebook reader. It shines on you instead. The light that is cast on the reader is wavy and dim. Completely unacceptable.

Rocketfish is Best Buy's house brand. They knock off other company's products. I've bought a few Roctetfish products in the past and they've been OK. Best Buy should be ashamed of themselves for selling this piece of junk. For the same price you can buy something of better quality through Amazon. This product should be removed from the shelves. Immediately.

Pros: It's returnable.

Cons: The product.

CDBaby gets into the DIY book business.

So now worlds collide and CDBaby has gotten into the DIY book biz with BookBaby. I use CDBaby to get my records onto the various digital stores and now it looks like they're providing a similar service for ebooks.

I don't know how their service compares or if they're a day late and a dollar short when dealing with outlets like lulu and CreateSpace, but this'll be something that I look into.

In other news, I have a new draft of the novel that's been streamlined in a few places and I've sent it out again. We shall see how that goes. I've made a pact to send it out to at least three or four places each week and if there's nothing going on by June, I'm going to do the DIY thing.

And I've also vowed to take the word self-published out of my vocabulary when I talk about this stuff. I like DIY or indie a lot better.

Here's a link to the bookbaby site if you want to check out what they're offering. http://stuffidontneed.blogspot.com/2011/01/cdbaby-gets-into-diy-book-business.html

I'll look at it more closely soon. If nothing else, the fact that they've jumped into the fray means someone outside the DIY pub industry is seeing potential here. Or am I wrong? Thoughts?

Update:  I just did a little more research (I looked at their splash page). They want $99 to distribute your book. Sounds like a crap deal to me.

The Social Network

Just watched The Social Network. I'm left wondering if I should admire Mark Zuckerberg or feel sorry for him. Probably both.

In which I offer my headphone wisdom

My go-to cans

  There are millions of headphones out there today. Some really expensive, some really cheap, some free with your phone or iPod, but no matter where they came from or how much you've paid there's only one real requirement for a pair of cans: they have to sound good.

I have been searching for some good phones for a long time. And I've found some, so I thought let you all know what I've discovered. Maybe it'll help you out.

First off, let's get this out of the way: whatever phones came with whatever player you have are terrible. There's no wiggle room here. If you want decent fidelity, you're going to have to bu something else. The closest I've ever had to good free cans were the phones that came with my Samsung Captivate. They sounded really good, very flat and clean, but they aren't very well-made and didn't fit very well. Fit's almost as important as sound, so I tired of them pretty quickly.

You might also think that if you spend over a hundred bucks you'll be in good shape. Not so fast. You can spend a lot more than that and get some pretty terrible phones. I bought a pair of Dr. Dre Beats Solos on a whim once and tried them out before I left the parking lot of the Best Buy. They were terrible. I couldn't even listen to one full song. They were back in the box and I was in the return line within ten minutes. I didn't try the $250 Beats, but they seem more like a fashion statement and a money grab by the good Doctor than anything else.

So without further ado, I'm going to give you my picks for the best phones I've bought in different price ranges. I should tell you that I am not someone who likes hyped sound in anything I listen to. As someone who's worked in the studio for years, I know engineers work really hard to get records to sound the way they want them to, so who the hell are we to jack the bass to rump quaking levels. When I buy headphones I want to hear the music as intended, not artificially basements, so any set of phones that amplifies the bass is out for me.

Nice, long cord, Brillo pad earcups, great sound.

For sitting around the house and listening I pick the Grado SR80. I bought these moments after I returned the Beats. They are everything the Beats aren't; smooth, detailed and open sounding. They are also very open. That why I recommend them for home use, and preferably when your significant other isn't trying to sleep beside you. The Grados have what's called an open-backed design. This helps them get their open sound, but they are also very audible to anyone else in the room when you're listening. The other downside to the Grados is the ear cushions. They are like wearing Brillo pads on your ears. I got the old design. The newer ones (the SR80i) are more cushy, but just FYI. But they do sound fantastic.

Cheap, but effective. Not the best, but fine fit and sound for commuting.

In the earbud category, I have had a set of Shure se210s. They sounded really good, but they had phone controls they kept breaking. Totally unreliable. I've given up on phones with phone controls. I used the Samsung phones for awhile, but they started to fall apart. I bought an expensive set of klipsch earbuds that were highly recommended on other, more fancy review sites. They sounded terrible. And then on a whim I bought a set of skullcandy ink'd earbuds on a whim. They were on sale for ten bucks. Low and behold, they sound great. So much better than the klipsch that cost ninety dollars more. The bass in the ink'ds is a little hyped in the low mids, but not so much as to muddy the sound. For ten dollars, you'd be crazy not to try them.

Tried and true. The old workhorses.

But now, for the best headphones I've ever had: the Sony MDR 7506. I bought these in 2002 when I first started recording. They were a little bright when I first got them, but after a while they smoothed out and have been great ever since. I've had them for almost ten years. Wow. The faux leather on the ear cups has peeled, and I don't like the coiled cord, but longevity and fidelity can't be argued with. They are closed back, so you can wear them without disturbing anyone. And now they're under a hundred bucks. If you're looking for solid, all-purpose phones, these are hard to beat.

Now, this is by no means an exhaustive review of headphones. This is my experience with what has worked for me. I'm sure that hundreds of dollars would get you phones that would blow any of these away. But headphones aren't really worth spending hundreds of dollars on, if you ask me. They are secondary means of listening to music. There are more important things to spend your tech dollar on unless your in a more rarefied tax bracket. And most of us aren't.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Basement couch

Self-publishing continued...

OK, I've been researching this self-pub thing all week. I've order a test copy of my book through lulu.com (it arrives today. I'm actually really excited, even though it's only for me), I got a draft of the book ready to put on amazon.com in less than TEN minutes. I've also sent out the book to a couple more small presses and a couple more agents. But I just found this blog : A Newbie's Guide to Self-Publishing. It posts some pretty mind-boggling numbers. Like these:

"These are DECEMBER sales figures for some indie authors. In other words, they account for only 31 days of sales.

Are you ready to be blown away?
Blake Crouch - 2500+
Nathan Lowell - 2500+
Beth Orsoff - 2500+
Sandra Edwards - 2500+
Vianka Van Bokkem - 2500+
Maria Hooley - 2500+
C.S. Marks - 2500+
Lee Goldberg - 2500+
Lexi Revellian - 4000+
Zoe Winters - 4000+
Aaron Patterson - 4000+
Bella Andre - 5000+
Imogen Rose - 5000+
Ellen Fisher - 5000+
Tina Folsom - 5000+
Terri Reid - 5000+
David Dalglish - 5000+
Scott Nicholson - 10,000+
J.A. Konrath 10,000+
Victorine Lieske - 10,000+
L.J. Sellers - 10,000+
Michael R. Sullivan - 10,000+
H.P. Mallory - 20,000+
Selena Kitt - 20,000+
Stephen Leather - 40,000+
Amanda Hocking - 100,000+

For a more detailed breakdown, visit Derek J. Canyon's blog http://derekjcanyon.blogspot.com/2011/01/keys-to-epublishing-success.html. This was compiled by him, and Robin Sullivan."

Amanda Hocking, 100K+?!?!? I mean, that's hard to fathom.

There's one commonality amongst them all that gives me pause, however: They all write genre fiction of one kind or another. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a lover of good genre fiction, but the book I'm considering self-pubbing is not genre fiction. There's no niche market for this book, unless you count Appalachians, and we all know they can't read (I joke, I joke!). So can anyone out there point me toward numbers for self-pubbed literary fiction? I'll keep looking myself and report back.

In the meantime, I promise to post some tech stuff here too. I'm working on something about headphones and also thinking about the Motorola Atrix, which everyone seemed to be abuzz about during CES, but my question remains, when you have a computer, a TV, etc, why would you want to plug you phone into one of those devices and use it as the content provider. Stay tuned!

Self-published is a bad word, right?

I know, this is a tech blog, but bear with me, I have some stuff to work out.

Long story short, I have a novel that took me five years to write, and has been done since November 2009. And by done, I mean that I wrote six drafts of it (a few completely from scratch) and when I put the final period on the last draft, the book was the book that I wanted it to be, maybe not perfect, but the book I wanted to write.

Fast-forward to the present day: The book has been around to several agents and publishers, most of whom have had very nice things to say about the book and the writing, but no one has taken it. Some have blamed the market, some have said they liked it but didn't "connect" with it. The list goes on. These are common rejections if you sit around a table with writers and listen to them tell their stories. Let me say right now that, while these rejections have been disappointing, I wouldn't go as far to say they were disheartening or discouraging. In some cases they were quite the opposite. Rejection is part of the writer's life and I've been rejected a ton, so I'm as used to it as can be. A sage teacher once revealed that he sent his stuff out expecting rejection, in fact early in his career he set out to collect rejections.

As the new year arrived, I wanted to start thinking fresh about my book and where I am with my writing and my life. Not only do I have this book done, but I'm almost finished with the first draft my next novel and I have a couple more in various stages of planning and completion. I have a job that keeps me in touch with writing and teaching, so I don't need to support myself with my writing.

The question becomes why do I write, anyway? Well, a big reason, the simplest reason, is that I'm a writer. Writers write, as the saying goes. But it's not just the acting of sitting your ass in a chair and pounding out a few hundred words. I do it because I can't not do it. I'm compelled by a drive that goes beyond the need for recognition and accolade and rests somewhere in the pit of my stomach: I have to say something and I have to say it for me. I have to write or I'm not me. There's more to it than this, but I don't want to get all self-helpy.

So back to the self-publishing thing. Most of my "professional" life has been in advertising, marketing and publishing. I've been a proofreader, a copy editor, an editor, a graphic designer, a marketing manager, a copywriter; I've done just about everything there is to do when it comes to the creation and promotion of printed media. I looked into some of the self-publishing options available now and, honestly, I'm impressed, particularly with LULU.com. Lulu has everything necessary to create a professional-quality book, including ISBN numbers, voluminous print options, templates for design, eBook distribution to Amazon and elsewhere, and other promo opportunities...the list goes on.  And I have the knowledge and ability to use lulu or another service to its full extent. Do I just go for it?

The only thing that continuing to send my  book out to agents and publishers would get me is the satisfaction of knowing that someone who already does what I know how to do has told me that I'm worthy of the effort of putting my book out there, right? Do I need someone to tell me that? Am I making excuses and short-cutting if I self publish? If the reason I write is because I have something I need to say that I hope others will find merit in, then why continue to court the middle man, when their tools are available to all now?

Yes, writers write. And I am a writer. But writing is an art form that is in many ways incomplete without the other side of the equation: the reader. If a writer's job is to give a reader just enough of the world in his mind that the reader can complete the picture in theirs, then shouldn't I seek out readers for my work? I felt strongly enough about this book to spend more than half a decade with it. Don't I then owe the work an audience, no matter how small? To put this in perspective, I started it when my daughter was one and now she's seven. Her whole life has been me with this book. I've grown it and suffered with it and felt proud of it. Should it then live the rest of its life in a box because others haven't found the same wonder in it that I have?

So, in  a world where the publishing industry is failing according to many and the means of production are available at a high level to everyone, should I release my book into the world to see how it fares and move on with my new projects, or is there a reason to keep pounding away at the traditional structure in the hopes of acceptance?

Any thoughts would be most appreciated.

2011, the year of the batch install: Ninite

Happy New Year, everyone. I'm spending my new year at home this year, tucking my girls into bed and sipping some Diet Cherry 7up (it has antioxidants). I'm also breaking in a new PC. Actually, my third in two weeks (more on that later).

I just had to share this new site/installer I found called Ninite. What it does is gives you a list of about seventy or so programs (Chrome, Firefox, VLC, Skype, iTunes, etc.) and lets you tick a box next to the programs you want to install and then you hit the button at the bottom of the page and the thing installs all the programs you want. Mine was done in less the five minutes. Very cool.

Here's the link: http://ninite.com/installer/84a22594182e17127063200e91257e647660ea03

Check it out.