This is Really Living

[Pulpmeister]

During a storm the other evening there was a power cut around 7:30 pm, so I dossed down in my bed, pulled out my Kindle, and read until the power came back on.

Also, it made a useful torch for moving around; very dim light, but much better than total darkness.

It's full of books, too.

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by Pulpmeister

Also, it made a useful torch for moving around; very dim light, but much better than total darkness.

Quite often when I head downstairs in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, I don't bother with the lights, I just grab my eReader and use it as a torch, especially as I want to avoid stepping on the cat, who just loves resting on the stairs..

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[ekbell]

Nice to know my husband isn't the only person to use his ereader as a flashlight.

[barryem]

Originally Posted by sjfan

What if I'm reading in EBCDIC‽‽

Do you carry your IBM mainframe around with you so you can read? I bet you look funny on the bus. And where do you find power in the park? Or do you have a portable, battery powered mainframe?

Actually I haven't worked on or even seen a mainframe in decades so as far as I know maybe you can carry them in your pocket these days.

Barry

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by barryem

Do you carry your IBM mainframe around with you so you can read? I bet you look funny on the bus. And where do you find power in the park? Or do you have a portable, battery powered mainframe?

Actually I haven't worked on or even seen a mainframe in decades so as far as I know maybe you can carry them in your pocket these days.

Barry

I have an EBCDIC to ASCII conversion program on my laptop (handles 5 variants as far as I remember). It was originally used to handle converting files for a company that had EBCDIC files on 8" SD floppies for use on their new CP/M machines with 5.25" hard sectored floppies (Northstar for the antiques fan). The original code came from a CP/M users group floppy and it's a program that I like to rewrite every once in a while for new processors and operating systems.

[disconnected]

Much as I love ebooks, I’d not still be buying many if not for Calibre and the plugins maintained by the anonymous unpaid apprentices. They’re more amazing to me than anything else in the ebook world.

[TheSmitty]

Originally Posted by disconnected

Much as I love ebooks, I’d not still be buying many if not for Calibre and the plugins maintained by the anonymous unpaid apprentices. They’re more amazing to me than anything else in the ebook world.

Agreed, love ebooks and have since Palm days. But without the ability to back up and be able to read what I buy on whatever I want I would not be buying them. I would buy books at used book stores which was what I did back in the day and still do on occasion.