Helene

MacHeist gives away free software gifts for free on christmas day. Today it’s 1password, doseido, iConquer, SantaSnaps, Enigmo and Synergy. Run and download.

Scott Adams published in 2005 a book named God’s debris that can be downloaded. Some of you may recognize the authors name – Scott Adams is the creator of Dilbert and he also have a blog that I subscribe to. The blog is regularly updated and he has interesting takes, though he is very interested in how economists would think (he has a very rational take on things) and his visions about the future is… well, enough to make me question his sanity sometimes.
Synopsis

Imagine that you meet a very old man who—you eventually realize—knows literally everything. Imagine that he explains for you the great mysteries of life—quantum physics, evolution, God, gravity, light, psychic phenomenon, and probability—in a way so simple, so novel, and so compelling that it all fits together and makes perfect sense. What does it feel like to suddenly understand everything? God’s Debris isn’t the final answer to the Big Questions. But it might be the most compelling vision of reality you will ever read. The thought experiment is this: Try to figure out what’s wrong with the old man’s explanation of reality.

Brandon Sanderson (and Robin Hobb) is one of my favorite authors. He writes science fiction and fantasy books. Recently tor.com published the first story he wrote, Firstborn, and it’s freely available as download or online reading (you might have to log in to be allowed to download). Tor.com releases drm-free ebooks regularly, so I would recommend getting an account there and start discovering new authors.

He has also made his book, Warbreaker, available for free on his website. It’s a good book. It’s the first book I read by him and afterwards I have swallowed everything he writes.

Tor.com’s statement:

Brandon Sanderson is well-known as the author of Elantris (2005), the novel Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians (2007), and the three-part Mistborn series consisting of Mistborn (2006), The Well of Ascension (2007), and The Hero of Ages (2008). And he’s an object of enormous public curiosity as the writer who was recruited by Robert Jordan’s wife-and-editor Harriet McDougal to finish the epic Wheel of Time series after Jordan’s untimely death in 2007. (A Memory of Light, by Jordan and Sanderson, will appear in 2009.)

Now Tor.com is pleased to present the original novelette “Firstborn,” a tale of war and sibling rivalry that happens to also be Brandon Sanderson’s first published work of out-and-out science fiction. Illustrated by Hugo-winning artist Donato Giancola, “Firstborn” is SF like it used to be. Enjoy

One of my favorite norwegian musicians is Biosphere and he makes ambient electronic music. When reading about Biosphere one always come across the word arctic – which is how his music is described. Probably because he lives up north in Norway where it’s a beautiful nature and one can see northern lights on a good day. He has made many albums. I haven’t heard them all (actually – I have only listened to his earlier work), but I love the Patashnik album.

On his homepage one can download several mp3’s for free. Among the freebies I like are “Som Evige Stjerner” (translation: like eternal stars), “Bevegende rytmer” (translation: Moving rythms) and “Kill by inches theme”. I like the ones with more of a rythm in them, but his music is perfect to lay still in bed and just listen. It can be a meditative experience. Try it.

His albums can be purchased from ITunes or may be you just want to read about him on wikipedia.

I sometimes have to convert between ebook formats, and that is a common scenario for ebook readers who often experience that ebooks are available as free pdf downloads. The trouble is that the pdf’s usually aren’t displayed nicely on ebook devices, but displays nicely on computer screens. Another issue is that a specific ebook might be available in formats that are not supported by the ebook device that one currently use. So what to do?

I have several options I use (that only works for DRM free ebooks):

• Calibre can convert most formats to epub, mobipocket, lit or lrf. It’s freeware and available for windows, macosx and linux. The user interface for converting an ebook to another format is easy, though have only epub or lrf options. Calibre has terminal/console commands to do the same work (which gives more options): any2epub, any2lit and any2lrf

  

• Windows only: For converting from pdf/html etc. to mobipocket (prc/mobi) I use Mobipocket creator (freeware). It does a good job in converting to mobi books, the downside is that it’s only available for windows. I’m a Mac and Linux user, so this is a hassle for me. Fortunatly I have an old laptop with XP on, so I somehow make it work (anybody wants to donate a windows vista license to me?)

• For converting from prc/mobi/html/text/epub to prc/mobi/html/text/epub one can use Stanza (also freeware), and it’s available for windows, mac and iphone.Personally this haven’t worked out so well for me. When reading converted ebooks to prc using stanza, then my iRex iLiad displays the ebook, but there is no paragrahs and chapters. It’s a continues flow of text that is tiresome to read.When converting an ebook to epub, my iRex iLiad isn’t able to read them at all, it only crashes even though I have FBReader installed on it.

A great resource to get started is MobileReads EBook Conversion Software and Freeware page.

If you have any suggestions and experiences, I would love to hear about it.