Deals, deals, deals?

[ZodWallop]

This thread isn't for linking to deals, just wanted to see if I was the only one noticing more books on sale than usual due to the virus outbreak. I've noticed lots of price drops, at least in the little corner of the world I pay attention to: horror fiction.

Bentley Little who's books rarely go on sale at all currently has five books priced at $0.99 and Michaelbrent Collings, a prolific horror and suspense author has all or most of his books at $0.99.

Am I the only one that has picked up a lot of books on sale recently? Are my perceptions skewed by what I follow?

Now if only I didn't have to work from home nine hours a day, I'd have time to read all these deals.

Hmm... if I could edit the subject, I should have named the thread 'Books in the Time of Coronavirus' or something clever like that.

[Quoth]

Seen a few on Twitter, even free. So far nothing I'd want. But I have a big paper and virtual pile.
Thinking of giving up Twitter. Deleted FB ages ago.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Thinking of giving up Twitter. Deleted FB ages ago.

Society would be better off if more people did. I dumped Facebook last year. I have a Twitter account, but haven't used it in so long I don't remember my username or log in and have never installed Twitter on any of my phones.

[Quoth]

I've only installed useful things on my phone:
Firefox + Umatrix
non-DRM audiobook player
A better mp3 player.
A couple of ebook readers (removed Kindle).
A spirit level.
A better keyboard with no mic option
A better interface for the camera.
Jota to take notes in plain text format for laptop.
Viber purely so I could install it on Linux laptop. Owned by same people that own Kobo and unlike Skype works on everything. I mostly just use text. Possibly less invasive than Facetime/Whatsapp etc. Why use ANYTHING from Zukerberg's Facebook?
Absolutely no apps to duplicate websites on phone or tablet.

[maddz]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I've only installed useful things on my phone:

A spirit level.

Blinks...

[Quoth]

It uses the "mems" accelerometer thingy.
It's totally amazing how the tilt sensor in a phone/tablet and some ereaders works.

You can calibrate it with a flat perfectly level / horizontal surface. Even if the surface is wrong and a level is inaccurate, you can get the surface levelled. Then the error is constant as you rotate the level (a real bubble in a tube) or the mems.

It's OK to better than about 0.5 degree. Don't use it to level a building. There is a reason for very very long levels. Lasers draw long lines, but how do you know if really horizontal?

EDIT
There are different functional kinds
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microe...anical_systems
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microe...s#Applications

A full axis gyroscope is HUGE, though I believe first used in an aircraft in the 1930s. Mems Accelerometers work differently, though for inertial navigation they are simpler in space craft. Because the Earth is rotating, any mems or gyroscope used for inertial navigation is acting like a clock. So you need a clock to cancel that out. Except the Earth's rotation is complicated. The V2 rockets had inertial navigation powered by steam from hydrogen peroxide. A really big one could have navigated to Mars. Both Cruise Missiles and Drones use them as GPS can be jammed or spoofed.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Society would be better off if more people did. I dumped Facebook last year. I have a Twitter account, but haven't used it in so long I don't remember my username or log in and have never installed Twitter on any of my phones.

I gave up FB 2 years ago, Instagram a few months ago and have a Twitter account only for following my country's metereological service and national emergency management service for updates. It is very helpful for such things, a great source of real time updates when needed.

[Quoth]

Oh and I have a not brilliant sound meter and light meter on the phone too. Also an audio function generator and an audio spectrum analyser. Buy a phone with a 3.5mm jack.

All on the playstore. You do have to experiment to find ones written by engineers (no adverts or servers or spyware) and that work on your phone. Only some phones have the ambient light sensor.

Also a barcode scanner that simply displays the content and can optionally paste it to a Firefox tab or Jota text editor.

VLC and DosBox of course. These are sorts of things (apart from spirit level and light meter) I've had on laptops as free utilities for nearly 20 years. Well, I had to buy an actual barcode scanner, though I added a bought barcode recognition library to the VB program I wrote using Twain to capture documents for indexing in the Document Archival system I wrote in 2003/2004.

[Quoth]

Twitter will not work in a serious emergency situation. A battery radio with LW / MW / SW & VHF is better.
Though I have a backup broadband link on microwave. The BB & Mobile are very fragile. As is Digital Radio and Digital TV.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by maddz

Blinks...

I Blinked at the name.
There is no Liquid involved, unlike the original counter part (AKA Bubble Level").

[Quoth]

Yes, it only simulates liquid. Named Bubble Level Galaxy on Playstore.
Unless you had one of those Russian phones with eink. The eink has a tiny quantity of milky liquid with black balls. The only crazier HD display is the DLP projectors using a moving mirror for each pixel. You really want a 3 chip version DLP rather than the 1940s concept colour wheel! Yes before the shadowmask CRT (1951?) some demo TVs used sequential colour by a mono CRT and either a drum or wheel to colour the image.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

This thread isn't for linking to deals, just wanted to see if I was the only one noticing more books on sale than usual due to the virus outbreak. I've noticed lots of price drops, at least in the little corner of the world I pay attention to: horror fiction.

Bentley Little who's books rarely go on sale at all currently has five books priced at $0.99 and Michaelbrent Collings, a prolific horror and suspense author has all or most of his books at $0.99.

Am I the only one that has picked up a lot of books on sale recently? Are my perceptions skewed by what I follow?

Now if only I didn't have to work from home nine hours a day, I'd have time to read all these deals.

Hmm... if I could edit the subject, I should have named the thread 'Books in the Time of Coronavirus' or something clever like that.

How about Books on the Edge of Apocalypse, since that's how the media seems to be pushing it?

I haven't really seen a lot of deals in ebooks and audiobooks, or at least I don't see any more than normal. I have a bit of a backlog so I'm not actively engaged in trying to find new authors or books though. I've really gotten out of the habit of scanning the "just released" lists.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Twitter will not work in a serious emergency situation

I'm not sure how often Ireland has tsunami warnings, but here they're not uncommon, and Twitter is an excellent way for the emergency management service to update the status of the warnings - whether they're still active, if they've been withdrawn or modified, etc. MUCH more accessible to many more people than SW/VHF radio. Of course, we have a battery operated radio in our emergency preparedness kit

[Quoth]

I'd guess we'd only have a tsunami if that cliff in the Canaries collapsed, which might flood Boston and only affect parts of Ireland's west coast a little.

We do have storm warnings, can be up to 120 km on the west coast. They are well publicized on the radio (national and independent local), TV, newspapers and all the news websites as well as both Met Eireann and MetoEU. Yellow, Orange, Red alerts for all kinds of weather.



Not everyone uses twitter, I'd hope they broadcast on TV & Radio too.

[4691mls]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

I'm not sure how often Ireland has tsunami warnings, but here they're not uncommon, and Twitter is an excellent way for the emergency management service to update the status of the warnings - whether they're still active, if they've been withdrawn or modified, etc. MUCH more accessible to many more people than SW/VHF radio. Of course, we have a battery operated radio in our emergency preparedness kit

In the US we can get emergency warning notifications directly from the government on our phones. Once I was sitting in the waiting room at a doctor's office on a day when it was pouring rain. A flood warning went out and all the phones in the room had alarm tones going off at the same time.