Day: September 6, 2010

Shocking Gates Drama

On By Michel McDonaldIn TVLeave a comment

I love this new show The Gates on ABC. It’s about a rich community that all live in the safety of “The Gates” with round the clock security. They have their own schools, their own shops, their own police station. Nobody gets into the gates unless they live there.

What’s different is that there are supernatural beings living within the gates. Vampires, Werewolves and even a Succubus.

In last nights episode, the main vampire couple Dylan and his wife Claire deal with the kidnapping of their daughter Emily. But we find out in the episode how they adopted her. Claire it turns out killed her parents but then discovered after the fact that they had a baby sleeping upstairs.

Instead of leaving the baby in the house until the parents are discovered so that she can grow up with her next of kin, they take her. They justify it by saying that they thought that the parents (who were both on drugs at the time that she killed them) were scum and nobody would care about them.

Nick the vampire who kidnapped Emily, brought her to the same house she was taken from to stay with her aunt and uncle who have been searching for her for the last 8 years and it turns out her birth name is Piper.

The moral question is, when Claire and Dylan finally figured it all out and went to the house to get her back, should they have taken her away from her true family? I mean sure, when they kidnapped her they legally adopted her, probably from vampires no doubt but should that adoption have continued? Shouldn’t they have done the right thing and say “look, we know what we did was wrong and we know that she should spend the rest of her childhood with her true family”?

With all these child abductions and child murders in the news lately, I think that the answer is they should have surrendered her to her legal family. The reality of it is, the only way they are going to continue living as docile vampires is if they keep Emily. If they lost her they would go back to their old ways of killing people. And even though it’s wrong for them to keep Emily, they need Emily more than she needs them.

I can’t condone their actions but it is however just a tv show. In real life they would’ve been expected to give her up, as they should have in the show.

I wonder what Nancy Grace thinks of all of this.

PC Magazine for Nook

On By Michel McDonaldIn NookLeave a comment

Last night I was thinking about the customer reviews on PCMagazine for Nook and then I was thinking about how they gave the Los Angeles Times such a bad review but I bought an issue at .75¢ to see for myself and it wasn’t as bad as they made it out to be. So I thought, why not try the 14 day trial for PC Magazine. I only get 1 magazine a month and I have 14 days to cancel, I get to sample a free magazine at no cost to me and I don’t have to keep paying.

I could have bought the 1 issue at $2.49 and been out a couple bucks just to check out how it looks or I could get the trial and not lose anything. I am so glad I chose the latter because it is very nicely done. The subscription is only $1.49 per month or per magazine if you will and I get it automatically on the first of every month. Not bad.

I used to get PC World magazine years ago and I had that subscription for I think 10 years but canceled because I couldn’t afford it anymore. Also I had stopped reading it so every issue that came to the house got ignored. I might look at a couple of articles but I didn’t really give much time to it as I used to. They didn’t want to let me go, they fought for me but I had made my mind up, I just couldn’t afford it. Eventually they gave up. If they had PC World for Nook I would gladly start my subscription back up.

I read a few articles this morning of the PC Magazine and although they were good, they weren’t as good as PC World. But it’s the best that I can get for $1.49 per month and since it’s the only PC magazine that is in e-subscription for the Nook then it’s all I got.

Nook Fun

On By Michel McDonaldIn Books, eBook, Nook, Products I LikeLeave a comment

I’ve been having a bit of fun with my new Nook. Since I’ve learned what makes it freeze I have learned to avoid certain ways of handling it and it hasn’t frozen all day.

Today I read 2 more chapters from “Dead Until Dark” and I finally came across a word that I wasn’t sure about. I’d heard it before but wasn’t quite sure what it’s meaning was for that particular sentence and/or circumstance. I happily touched the screen to make it light up and inthe menu was able to put the cursor in front of the word to look it up.

Don’t ask me what the word was because now I forgot but then I found 2 more words and although the definition of the 3rd one didn’t make much sense I just happily kept reading.

Reading with such big text means I have to turn the page a lot more than if I were reading an actual book but I don’t mind waiting the 1 second it takes for the screen to refresh.

When I was finished reading for the day I decided to crop and resize some images that I found on a website called nook-Look. They are True Blood images and I don’t know why they weren’t cropped or resized properly to 600×800 but whatever. I put them on the Nook and went to the settings and made them my screen saver. Every time I turn it off (or in standby) it loads 1 image. The next time it loads a different image. It keeps loading a different image in the folder that you have chosen and then eventually goes back to the very first image.

I was looking at one of the images and it was basically all black, it was an image of a werewolves eyes with the true blood logo at the bottom but the image was all black except for the eyes and the logo. It then occurred to me that “screen burn” might happen. You know when you have an image on the screen for so long then the next time you turn it on you see that image all the time because it got burned into the screen.

I decided to go searching the internet and found a nook message board and apparently I wasn’t the only one who was concerned about it because there was an active post.

Fortunately they said that e-ink screens don’t do that like an LCD screen might. WHEW!

So after I got that off my mind I was able to move on to other things and started looking around for Xanth images so that when I read the next Xanth novel I can use that for my screen saver too. Unfortunately I couldn’t find very many, only a few really. I did find enough that I am satisfied though.

I went back to that nook-look site and started going crazy downloading different screen savers lol. I think that I will not put too many on there until I am ready for them. I know they don’t take up too much space but still, I think that I’d rather not take up any more space than I really have to until I really need to.

One cool thing that I did find while browsing the Nook store via the Nook is they have some books listed through Google books and they were all free. I wasn’t expecting that. Although I didn’t download anything because I have enough books in my queue as it is but knowing that I have the option available makes me happy.

Oh and the Lend feature, I don’t know if I mentioned before but it’s kind of bogus. You can only lend a lendable book to 1 person… ever. Once they borrow it, when they lose it and it’s back on my Nook they and nobody else can ever borrow it again. It becomes unborrowable forever. That sucks so I really have to pick and choose who I lend anything to because what if I lend it to someone who decides they don’t have time to read it but then someone who actually wants to read it can’t have it because I lent it to some dipwad who couldn’t be bothered. Like I said before… LOTTERY lol.

I changed my “I am reading…” widget in my sidebar to the anobii.com image of my current book reading because for some strange reason the e-book pages are different from an actual book. Like Dead Until Dark has like 336 pages but in my Nook it only has 222 pages. So if I say I’m on page 92 you might think I haven’t gotten very far but really I have. Also, there are some books that can’t be listed through that widget that I have to enter manually in anobii. And anyway, who really needs to know what page I’m on? I mean sheesh.

So if you see the book that I am currently reading then you’ll know I’m still on that one but I highly doubt anyone really cares lol.

In my previous post I spoke of how I made my own book cover for my Nook. Well, a friend of mine who sent me all the Xanth novels in the mail last year also sent me a “Mighty Bright” lightwhich clips on the book but I thought I couldn’t use it any more because it might crush the Nook lol. Well, I was pleased to know that it clips to the cardboard of my book cover right behind the Nook. So it’s centered in the middle of the top of the Nook allowing me the brightest of lights to read in my poorly lit bedroom.

Well, tomorrow is another day to explore more of my new toy hehe. My ambien are kicking in so I better go to bed. Tootles!