My Thought Spot

I am looking forward to my trip to Ethiopia this week. I will be there visiting friends for the next 3 weeks. Two of the three people I will be visiting I have met before. The third one has become a dear friend via email and I look forward to meeting him in person.

Part of the purpose of the trip is to get to know these ministries in a personal way. Really I am supposed to go over there, spend time with them and build a relationship. I like those types of assignments. Of course, I will also have plenty of opportunities to preach. If it is like most trips I have been on I will exhaust all the sermons I have prepared and still have two weeks left. They always ask visitors to preach often. Sometimes you finish one sermon and they are still hungry for more. You end up preaching 2 or 3 sermons in one sitting.

I would appreciate your prayers while I am there. I am taking some running clothes so that I can challenge a couple of Ethiopians to a race. Of course, I will only pick competitors who are no older than 10 years.

This morning in church a friend, and former runner, came up to me and said, “I saw you gutting it out on a run yesterday.” Boy, his choice of words couldn’t have been better. It was a tough one.

I ran 9.5 miles on an out and back route. It is generally uphill for the first half, though the hills are rolling so you don’t get as much of a sense of one half being significantly worse than the other.

What was difficult is that I had no thought of any kind of wind on my way out. It wasn’t until I hit the turn around point that I realized that I had a tailwind pushing me the whole way. Though it wasn’t strong, the 5-7 MPH wind was very noticeable on the way back. By the time I hit the 6 mile mark I was ready to call my wife to come get me. I talked myself out of it, but it was tough. I even had the phone out and ready to make the call one time. I decided to try to make it one more mile before calling. By the time I finished that mile I was within a half mile from home.

“Oh! That was you?”

Also this morning in church one of the ladies came up to me needing to tell me something. She said, “I was thinking yesterday when I passed you while I was out walking I should tell you this.” I know I looked puzzled. I asked her when she saw me while she was out walking. She said that she had talked to me and I waved at her. It was then that I remembered there was someone who passed on the other side of the road, but I didn’t recognize her so I completely forgot about seeing someone yesterday.

When she reminded me of the encounter this morning I remember thinking at the time that whoever it was talking to me mistook me for someone she knew, because I certainly didn’t recognize her. I thought that she was probably embarrassed when I spoke to her and she realized she didn’t know me. I was the one slightly embarrassed when I realized this morning that I should have known her.

Ball of String

One of the fun things I enjoy while running is to see some of the odd things on the side of the road. Besides the tree full of 15 buzzards, I found a bunch of twine. I saw one piece that was probably 1/2 mile long. I kept thinking I would pick it up and bring it home as I ran by. But I talked myself out of it.

Then when I saw a broken section, I decided to pick up the second string. As I wound it up I finally came to a parking lot where I saw the string was wrapped around a couple of poles and probably would not pull loose. I didn’t have any way to cut it, so just threw the big bundle I had over into the parking lot.

At the end of the parking lot I saw the string again and decided to ignore it this time. I continued to watch it as I ran along. Not too far away, maybe a quarter mile, I saw the end of the twine and it was bundled up already. I found the source of twine and knew where the other end terminated. This time I picked up the bundle and started winding up what I had already run past.

All this happened between about mile number 6 and 7. It provided 10 minutes worth of entertainment on an otherwise difficult return run.

It has been a long time since I ran a half marathon. This is a distance that I call my favorite race length. Yet, it has been almost 2 years since I ran a half marathon. It is time to take care of that.

I have been working on longer runs each week and trying to be more consistent in my workouts. Though traveling has thrown me off a little, I have still managed to get some longer runs each week. This week was an 8 mile run.

The last couple of Saturdays have been difficult days to run (if I have been home). I decided that I would do my longer run during the week. I am a morning runner, but running for 8 miles (1 hour 30 minutes) means I would actually have to be disciplined and get up early before going to work. That meant I had to do an afternoon run if I was going to accomplish the task.

Tuesday was chosen as that day. I planned to leave the office at closing time (4:00 pm) and run the 8 miles to my house. Of course, things rarely go as planned. I was on an international phone call until 4:45. By the time I got changed and out the door it was a little after 5:00. I was concerned about it getting too dark before I got home, but I had 30 minutes to spare when I got there.

My wife was gone that afternoon and I was in charge of serving supper for the rest of us. Fortunately, she threw everything into the crock pot so that I did not have to actually make supper. The kids were ready for me to be home by 5:30 or 6:00. I finally arrived at 6:45.

When riding my bike back and forth to the office it is exactly 8 miles. However, when running I can take a couple of short cuts. I ended up having to run 2 houses past mine before the GPS on my phone said I reached 8 miles.

As I have always considered 8 miles to be mentally difficult, I know that I can do any distance now. Don’t know when I will get my 9 miles in, but I am looking forward to these long distances again.

I have never been a fan of DRM (Digital Rights Management). This is the system that is supposed to stop people from illegally sharing files across the Internet. I don’t know of any DRM that has completely stopped file sharing. It is trivial to do a search on the Internet for the file you want and download it. DRM hasn’t accomplished its goals.

It has, however, managed to frustrate and punish legitimate users. Here is my story of a book I acquired legitimately but yet find almost impossible to enjoy. To the point I have stopped reading it.

A Trip to Amazon

I love Amazon. I am a prime member. I buy what I can at the site when it is cheaper, which it isn’t always. I also love my Kindle. I love their customer service. But this isn’t about Amazon, it is about a book I wanted to buy there.

The book is The $100 Startup. I have heard several podcasters talk about the book and I have read quite a few reviews. I took a trip to Amazon to get the book for my Kindle. A few things stood out as soon as I got there. First the hardcover version of the book is only $13! That’s a great price for all that paper and ink. Independent bookstores are selling the book for less than $11 through the Amazon marketplace. That’s an even better deal!

But I don’t want paper, I want a Kindle version. I know plenty of people say that the ebook version is not as good as paper. I used to be one of those. However, I now see the digital version as being superior. I can highlight passages and take notes on my Kindle. I can then view all my notes and highlights online and use that information anywhere whether my Kindle is with me or not. Try that with paper. One other thing about digital is that I am paying for the content and not the paper.

Checking out the Kindle version of the book I saw the price was $11.99. That’s more than what I could buy a paper and ink version of the book for. I then noticed that Random House was the publisher. They have a history of setting prices at Amazon for their ebooks. Though they are not part of the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Apple and five publishers for collusion, the result is the same in that they set the price of their books and not Amazon.

I am spoiled by Amazon’s price of $9.99 for Kindle books and I don’t like paying more than that. Rarely do I even pay that much for a book since I can often find good sales on books I want. And I certainly don’t like paying just $1.15 less than the hardback version of the book (or less if I buy it from a third party).

A Trip to the Library

I looked up the book at our local library hoping to score a copy for free. I did not find a physical copy there, but they offer it through their digital library system which is handled by Overdrive. “Great!”, I thought. That would be even better. I can take notes on my Kindle and have the book in a format I prefer.

When I got home I logged into the digital library system and found the book. Disappointingly it was only available in EPUB format and not the Kindle format. I didn’t think it would be that big of a deal to get the book as an EPUB and then convert it to .mobi (the format for the Kindle).  However, after waiting in line for a couple of weeks to get the notification that it was my turn to borrow the book (yes, you still have to wait in line for other people to “finish” reading the book and “return” it to the library) I eagerly downloaded the book to my computer.

Opening the Book

The file wouldn’t open in anything I had as a reader. The file was DRMed with the Adobe Digital Editions system (ADE). This means you have to have some type of approved reader that will allow you to authenticate with an ADE account. There is no such reader available for Linux that I could find. So no way to read the book on my computer or convert it (without breaking the DRM and facing prison time for a DMCA violation).

Here is the problem with DRM. I legally obtained the book. I have done nothing inappropriate to acquire the book. Yet, because of DRM I am not allowed to read the book on the hardware I have. From my understanding, if I had a Barnes and Noble Nook eReader which has ADE on it, I still would not be able to transfer the file through my computer because I am running Linux. The file I got from the library was not the book itself that could be placed on the Nook. It was an authentication file that has to be approved by Adobe which then lets me download the book to place on the reader. All of which would have been impossible as a Linux user.

Using My Phone

I downloaded the Overdrive Media Console (the Overdrive ebook reader) for my Android phone. Thankfully I could download the book using Overdrive’s software. I even started reading the book.

The reading experience on Overdrive’s Media Console was worse than a paper book for me. I have not found any way to make notes or highlights within the text of the book. Right at halfway through the book the author gives a 39 step checklist. The perfect kind of thing you would want to highlight and save for future reference. I can’t do it. I don’t even have the option of sticking my phone on the copy machine and grabbing the list since there are so few words that appear on a page with such a small screen. The list takes up 20 screens worth of text. I don’t want to make 20 pages worth of copies to get this seemingly valuable list.

On top of that, almost every time I open the book using Overdrive’s software it opens to the page previous to the one I was reading when I stopped. I say “almost every time” because 3 times so far I have been returned to the start of a chapter and had to click through several pages before getting back to where I left off.

The app is slow too. It takes 20 seconds to open the book. Then each time I change chapters it takes 20 seconds to load in the next chapter. That is just opening the book once the software is running. My Kindle takes just under 2 seconds to go from an off state to reading a book.

My solution? I am giving up on The $100 Startup. Chris, I am sure your book is a fine one. I have heard you interviewed by several podcast hosts that I respect; however, to legally read your book within my requirements of price and convenience I just can’t do it. I spent 2 weeks waiting for the book from the library. I have had the book for 11 days and am frustrated by the reading experience (which has little to do with the quality of the book). I’m done with it.

Circumventing DRM

I will admit that I did a little digging into the process of breaking the DRM on the book. It seems trivial. I have never done it on an EPUB, but I have converted a few Kindle titles that I own that I wanted to read on another device. For the Kindle books I have done it takes importing the book into Calibre with some special plugins and clicking a button.

For The $100 Startup it only took a few seconds on Google to find an Kindle formatted copy on the Internet for free. I could illegally obtain the book for my Kindle with much less hassle than the legally obtained DRM version of the book. Plus I would have a much better reading experience. However, I won’t do that. I am happy to pay the author for the content at a fair price (as determined by me). What I don’t want to do is pay a publishing company essentially the same price for the content that they are charging for the content, paper, ink, pretty cover and something I can put on my bookshelf.

Again, I don’t mind paying the author for the content. The truth is though, with the pitiful amount he will be paid by the publishing company for each copy sold, he could probably self publish the Kindle version, sell it for $3 and make 250% more per copy than he does currently. This sounds like it would be more in keeping with the spirit of a $100 startup than using a traditional publisher that has no interest in the author–only in their pocketbooks.

What’s your thoughts on DRM?

As someone who is interested in the creation and formatting of ebooks I eagerly picked up Accessible EPUB 3 from O’Reilly’s blogger review program. I know little about the EPUB format as most of my study of ebook creation has been for the Kindle. Reading about EPUB would have given me more tools for complete ebook formatting.

I read the title, Accessible EPUB 3, to mean that the author would show me in an easy to understand (accessible) way to create and format books for the EPUB platform. Even reading the short description at the O’Reilly website did not change my thoughts on what the book was about. But I was completely wrong on who their target audience was. This is not a book for people who are new to EPUB and wanting to learn about it. In fact, the EPUB spec is not even explained in the book. This book is written under the assumption that the reader is already familiar with and understands EPUB.

The book is actually about how to make ebooks that are accessible to people with different abilities. There are sections specifically on how to make books with pictures more accessible to visually impaired readers as well as making audio content more accessible to those with hearing disabilities. This is what is meant by the word accessible.

After getting a better understanding of what the book was about, I enjoyed the book from a thought experiment point of view. There were specific examples on how to implement the concepts the author was proposing. However, as someone who doesn’t even understand EPUB programming, this information was merely theoretical and thought provoking. There are even points in the book where the author, Matt Garrish, admits that there may be a better way to be even more accessible in the future. His point is that he wants readers to think about people with various abilities who will be reading books. What is it they need and how can you go about programming your ebook to fit their needs?

Accessible EPUB 3  is an excerpt from a larger work expected to be published later this year (2012) called EPUB 3 Best Practices.

Accessible EPUB 3 is available for free at both O’Reilly and Amazon.

[Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book through O’Reilly Media.]