What's A Kindle?


I was at a mall about a month ago when I saw an electronics store and I thought of buying a Kindle book light.  I entered the store and approached a saleslady and asked for one.
What’s a Kindle, she asked, with a blank stare.
I must have looked sufficiently puzzled at her “lack of familiarity” with said device, because she turned towards the other saleslady and repeated the question to her.
She didn’t know what a Kindle was, either.
A Kindle is an e-book reading device from Amazon that uses e-ink technology, I might have said, but I didn’t.
I wasn’t particularly interested in informing them of various gadgets that stores such as theirs might have an interest in.
I turned around and left the store, disgusted.
Amazon introduced the first Kindle in 2007; its latest incarnation, the Kindle 3, was released last year. Kindle is a bestseller for Amazon, and is the most popular e-book reader out there. No mass market appeal for Kindle in this part of the world, though; but it has a solid and growing market--mainly book lovers who are also comfortable with the latest tech gadgets. In other words, geeks--the masters of the universe.

I got a Kindle 3 several months ago. Personally, I think this is the greatest invention since indoor plumbing. 
I love how it looks, and its portability. It has a 4gb memory, which means I can carry around an entire bookshelf—nay, a veritable library!—in my hands.

 Plus, the e-ink technology is as soothing to the eyes as the sight of Scarlett Johansson kicking bad guys’ asses in Iron Man 2.

My only beef was, you can’t read on it without external light.
Now some people might find that strange (e-book reader you can’t use without external light), but that is the price for the Kindle e-ink technology; it has no backlight.
E-ink simulates ink printed on paper, so that means less strain to the eyes compared to a back-lighted e-book reader. Plus, e-ink consumes less power, the Kindle can go for a month on a single charge (with wi-fi off). Yes, that's right--a month.
The ink-on-paper simulation is so effective, I sometimes reach for the upper right corner of the Kindle to turn the page. I thought I was holding an actual book.
Like the actual book, you need an external light source to read, especially at night lying on your bed.
So I looked for a Kindle book light.
I tried a few stores, but the Kindle book lights I saw cost about a thousand Philippine pesos, and I refuse to pay for a teeny tiny book light that costs around 13% of the Kindle itself. The Scrooge in me balks at the idea.
There are Kindle book covers that has a built-in book light, but that cover’s price is almost half of a brand-new Kindle.  Besides, I already have a leatherette Kindle cover.
A fortnight ago, I finally got a book light that I think is priced just about right, i.e., dirt cheap.
I got one following a lead after I posted on an online forum a query on where I could get a Kindle book light that “would not cost an arm and an effing leg.”  I was desperate.
Somebody answered that book lights can be had at Ace Hardware, so I went to a hardware store (it was a different hardware store; the nearest Ace Hardware is too far from where I live).
I got a plastic job that promptly falls apart at the slightest pressure.
Also, it has the singular power of causing every person who sees it attached to my Kindle to giggle helplessly.  
The book light is powered by three AAA batteries.


My toes curl in embarrassment just looking at it.
I half-expected my Kindle to ask me to take it to my leader. Looks like a creepy and dorky alien insect, doesn’t it.
I’ve given up using this light; I just leave that damn device lying around in my room.
I once woke up in the middle of the night to see its light shining. Remarkably, it has learned to turn itself on!
There are now many choices when it comes to Kindle book lights, I am relieved to find out.
With luck, I might get an unridiculous -looking one.

Comments

Post a Comment

So, what do you think? Post it here:

Popular posts from this blog

The Square Cube Law and How It Killed Giants

Image
We are so used to the idea of giants that we take it for granted that they exist, or must have existed at one point in our history.  You know, those very large and very tall human-like creatures, carrying a humongous club, and being very nasty. Like this: And if you are a typical, god-fearing Catholic Pinoy, you would swear that not only are they true, you even saw one beside that big-ass, scary-looking tree not far from your home, one night when you were going home after an evening of binge-drinking with your buddies. And the bastard’s smoking a cigar as long and as big as your leg! Or you know someone who saw one of those cigar-smoking monsters. This creature is called a kapre —a cigar-smoking giant wearing a loincloth. Or maybe a tikbalang —a half-man, half-horse creature about as tall as a kapre. Unlike a centaur, however, a tikbalang is a giant with the torso and arms of a man, and the head and legs of a horse.  Scary creatures, these—and, if I may add
Read more

Where Did Money Come From, Anyway?

Image
It is difficult to imagine the world today without money, or the concept of money. But surely, the first civilizations did not start out using money, right?             Long ago, people did not use money to buy things. They also did not use money to pay the person who repaired their roof, or built their tables, chairs and other furniture. What they did was to exchange the things they had for the things that they needed. If they had a lot of rice, they might want to exchange some of it for fish, so they would find somebody who has a lot of fish, and see if that person wants to trade some of it for rice. Or maybe a person who was very good at repairing roofs or making chairs and tables would get paid with bananas, or whatever fruit was in season. This type of doing business is called barter .              As you can imagine, barter trade has some serious flaws. For example, what if the person who had just repaired your roof wanted, say, flip flops? And you only had bananas? Mor
Read more

Dog of War

Image
Besides ruling the largest land empire the world has ever seen, Genghis Khan apparently is also the ancestor of 0.5 percent of the world’s male population. That’s around 16 million living, breathing great, great, great (and so on) grandkids of the Scourge of God himself. While the Phoenician Empire was built through commerce , Genghis Khan’s empire was built through warfare, with the result that he killed off a good portion of Asia’s population during his bloody conquests.   To be fair though, he also helped repopulate the world . How’d he manage it, though--how did he build an empire that, at its apex, occupied 16% of the world’s total land area? For one thing, he had an efficient, disciplined, well-organized army. For another, he had history’s greatest generals leading that army. One of them was Subutai, widely considered as the military mastermind behind the Mongol Empire. One of Genghis Khan’s legendary “Dogs of War” (there were four) Subutai is arguably the grea
Read more

Can We Be Good For Nothing?

Image
So, in this season of hope, peace and good will, Catholic League president Bill Donahue has launched a campaign—“Adopt An Atheist,” is what it’s called. Behold : Here’s what our campaign entails. We are asking everyone to contact the American Atheist affiliate in his area, letting them know of your interest in “adopting” one of them. All it takes is an e-mail. Let them know of your sincere interest in working with them to uncover their inner self. They may be resistant at first, but eventually they may come to understand that they were Christian all along. If we hurry, these closeted Christians can celebrate Christmas like the rest of us. As an added bonus, they will no longer be looked upon as people who “believe in nothing, stand for nothing and are good for nothing.”   What he is doing is just perpetrating the bigotry that religious nuts like him have towards people who happen to not share his set of beliefs.  Religion could be dangerous, as it is; combine it with ig
Read more