But this post isn’t about my affairs with my former employer. Instead it is a review of the Amazon Kindle device, and how I feel it is going to consume an incalculable amount of my waking time.

Getting Books

As I write this, I currently have three-hundred thirty-two books on my Kindle. Some of those come from PDFs on my computer: programming articles and theses I’ve yet to consume. But the bulk of them have come from Project Gutenberg, which offers tens of thousands of books for free (legally in the United States) in a variety of formats, including the native Kindle format. The Kindle comes with a micro USB cable you can use to plug between your Kindle and your computer; so after downloading those books it’s just a matter of copy-paste to put them on my electronic reader for future enjoyment.

Don’t have your Kindle plugged into your computer? No sweat. Each Kindle is assigned a personal email address, and by simply emailing documents to that address, in the form of attachments, Amazon will propagate those documents to your device provided you have a wireless or 3G connection.

(Note: If anyone would like to send me anything, simply email me at Ren at lifesnotsimple dot com and I will add you to the white-list of people that can send shit to my Kindle.)

The Kindle accepts a variety of document formats. So far I have only put native format files, PDFs, and plain text files on there. But you can also put it Microsoft Word Documents, MP3s, and a host of other shit. Probably even HTML documents too, as the Kindle has modified version of Webkit running on it.

Getting documents onto the Kindle has thus far proved to be no challenge. I have yet to buy a book online, through the immediately accessible Kindle store. But I’m confident their process is a seamless one—which probably makes it easy to spend money.

Readability

The font, contrast, and orientation options provided by Kindle make it a snap to read documents of all different origins and designs. Oh—my version of the 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Dark Sun Campaign Setting doesn’t look great on the normal settings? A little bit of orientation change and text zoom fixed that right up. (Wait—why am I reading that book anyways?) It impresses me what few hoops you have to jump through to create readable setups for documents. In fact, the very necessity to do such a thing has been a rare issue in my admittedly limited experience.

The same issues of readability arise when I am reading various Go books, which are often in PDF. By default, the Kindle will try to fit the document to screen. In many cases the text is a little too small. But you can zoom in the viewport and then use the ‘five-way direction pad’ (or whatever they call it) to move around the page with ease. Even when I have to introduce this extra step into my reading process, the Kindle as a device succeeds in staying out of my way, allowing me to focus on the content I am reading without having to exert effort towards the manual operation of the electronic magic that rests before me.

Organization

You can create arbitrary categories on your Kindle and then assign books to one or more of those categories. The categories are represented as in the JSON format (JavaScript Object Notation), which was a small disappointment. I was hoping the categories were represented as simple folders on the file-system, so that I could organize my books by plugging the Kindle into the computer and then dragging books into the appropriate sub-folder. Instead, all of the organization must be done through the Kindle interface itself. It is not that time-consuming, especially once you have made the categories you’re going to be using. But it would be a little more friendly to be able to handle such organization outside the context of the Kindle’s native interface. It is a great interface for reading, but for doing a lot of rapid navigation—as is necessary for organizing—it is not as efficient as you would like.

On the plus side, you only have to organize things once. And don’t make the mistake I did of copying over hundreds of books and then organizing them in bulk. Organize as you go.

Overall

The Kindle is an awesome device and I’ve fallen in love with it after only a few days. I can set it right in front of my piano to read sheet music, or next to my goban to study classic Go games, or sit outside enjoying a classic like One-Thousand and One Nights. I absolutely, completely recommend it to anyone who loves reading.

#1: “Eastern”/”Western” culture

The problem: The earth is round. This is a very eurasia-centric phrasing. For example, from an American perspective, Asia is to the west and Europe is to the east.
Should be replaced with: “American”, “Asian”, “European”, etc culture. Also, “Oriental” and “Occidental”. We already have these words. This shouldn’t be too hard.

#2: “Next gen” Gaming

The problem: This phrase is not time-proof. No one is going to be using this adjective to describe the current generation of consoles in the future. It became invalidated on November 22, 2005 when the Xbox 360 came out, though it was already old months before then and continued to be used for years.
Should be replaced with: “Seventh Generation”. If that’s not edgy/short enough, how about “Sevgen”?

#3: “Alternative” Rock

The problem: Alternative to what? Every genre is an “alternative” to other genres.
Should be replaced with: “Self-referential, long-titled, fan-dismissing rock”. I dunno, a music geek needs to revisit this one.

#4: “Dynamic” programming

The problem: This almost sounds like it describes programs that modify themselves on the fly. And therein lies the problem; this is not what it describes at all. What “dynamic programming” actually describes is writing code that breaks up problems into sub problems. Rather common. Rather… unremarkable. From Wikipedia: “The word dynamic was chosen by Bellman because it sounded impressive, not because it described how the method worked.”
Should be replaced with: Programming. Really, this is so common an occurrence in programming that it should just be called programming. Okay, okay, how about subproblem programming. The trick is to distinguish this type of programming from other types of divide & conquer programming that are much slower.

#5: “Postmodern”

The problem: Not timeless. Also, this is probably my least favorite word of all time.
Should be replaced with: Too good to need external validation (ie: bad)

#6: “Post-postmodern”

The problem: This is an actual word. See what happens when we use a phrase relative to local time to describe something frozen in time? When “post-blah” becomes outdated, we just keep tacking “post” onto the beginning of it.
Should be replaced with: Screw it, I’m done.

*No, I don’t mean misnomer. A misnomer is something that isn’t what it sounds like, like how guinea pigs are not pigs. A malnomer (which is a term I have made up, but which apparently has 47 google hits when searching for +malnomer, but is not on wikipedia) is a term so poorly formed that it has no semantic tie to the entity it is purported to mean that it would not have to any of the entity’s set neighbors. For example, any entity that is a member of the set of ‘cultural regions’ can be called either ‘eastern’ or ‘western’ from a certain perspective; it is just as logical to call Asia “Western” culture and Europe “Eastern” culture from an American-centric perspective, for example. That malnomers mean what they do is a matter of arbitrary etymology and not rational labelling.

Wikipedia would love this term.

I want to warn anyone trying to make it big with their own IP in this industry. Value yourself, your team, and your IP a lot. More than the person you’re negotiating with does. $18,000 might sound like a lot, but I made over three times that a year in an entry level programming position when I first started in this industry. If you are willing to hold off on your dream, you can work for a few years and be smart with your savings and have more money saved up, plus 100% ownership over your company and future profits. And if your dream is too important to you to wait a few years to incubate, then it is too important to ruin over a poor negotiation. Be very careful to understand what you will be expected to give up when signing any contract with an investor — do they get any creative control over your project? What are the exact numeric percentages of “modest equity stake” and “share of the money generated by the game or app”? In case it sounds like I’m really tearing into Joystick Labs, I want to say that the $18,000 funding they are offering is insubstantial compared to the value of having a good mentor with industry experience, and looking at some of the big names in their roster of mentors makes me feel optimistic. I’m just saying that you should be prepared to say “no” to any negotiation you aren’t comfortable with.

One more thing, while we’re on the topic: I would recommend checking out Tim Carter’s Core Talent Games, another funding initiative that seeks to promote talent (the actual people making the games) over companies (which usually reward businessmen disproportionately well compared to the actual people making the games). It should not come as a surprise that as a game developer in this industry, I find Tim’s ideals a direction we should desperately seek to take.