This morning I read that Amazon, in response to Barnes & Noble lowering the price of their e-reader, NOOK, has lowered the price of the Kindle to $189. I thought about it for a minute, do I want an e-reader? I admit I do think they are convenient and have their advantages like being able to carry over 1,000 books with you in a small device. Plus, if you got an Apple iPad, you have way more than an e-reader. But when it comes down to it, for me, I like books. I like holding a book in my hand, feeling the pages, turning them. I like the smell of books, I like the smell of libraries and book stores. With a physical book people see the cover and ask you about it, with an e-reader, they ask you about the reader, not about what you’re reading. And who really needs over 1,000 books with them at all times anyway?

So, no e-reader for me. However, if I were not an English Lit major, where most of our books for class are novels, an e-reader would have been a more serious consideration for me. I would definitely choose a gadget if the alternative was lugging around heavy text books.

I cannot end this post without mentioning that Nintendo has stated that e-reader features may be in the 3DS, now that would be something else to consider since I already want a DS.

I love this!

Noteboek from Evelien Lohbeck on Vimeo.

If you read this site through an RSS reader you’ve probably noticed that I’ve merged the feed from my Flickr account with the site feed. Now up to five of my recent photo uploads will show along with my regular posts. What do you think of this? Good, bad, neutral?

I wish it would show recent uploads as one single post instead of five individual posts. A mosaic of thumbnails of recent uploads would be cool. I know I could do that myself and make a new post with it, which in a way would be better because then I would have the added benefit of the post showing on the actual site, but this is automated and therefore easier.

Thoughts?

Check out Asthmatic Kitty’s Christmas page.

It has Christmas goodies from Sufjan and others including an e-card, games, ornaments to color, videos, and 8-bit (Nintendoesque) Sufjan Christmas ring tones.

I don’t remember where I came across this site, and sure there are other similar sites out there, but there’s something special about FaceYourManga.com. First of all, I can’t decide if the title even makes sense, “FakeYourManga.com | Shake Yourself!” Um, okay! The rest of the site follows suit. It appears that they’ve used good ol’ babelfish for their translation into English instead of a professional. Not that that’s a bad thing, it’s an appealing quirk that I find quite amusing.

FaceYourManga lets you create your own manga style avatar which you can then purchase for what I think comes out to be less than $3US. Right now the only size I see is 15cm x 15cm that you print yourself, but it makes it sound like there will be other sizes available. You can also view avatars created by others on the site and there is a voting system that currently seems to serve absolutely no function. I gave myself 5 stars 3 times on the same avatar, there were no fireworks. Maybe once the “Community” and “MyFace” portions of the site are running voting will have some significance. It’s still fun for now though.

It’s also amusing that a cat is the only mask, the males should at least get a dog mask. I mean, come on. It’s very Holly Golightly though, don’t you think:

And why do only males get the thumbs up? I don’t know, but they sure seem to like using it, just check the gallery.

If you make one, show it to me! Either upload it online somewhere and post the link in the comments or you can email it to me (AvantReeseATgmailDOTcom) and I’ll upload it for you.