Tomorrow C and I take off on a tedious journey to the midwest- my youngest brother is receiving his masters degree and we are going back to see him walk (or stand or sit) and to spend some time with my family. It’s not going to be a long trip, but it should be just enough time.

I’ve decided to take these things aside from the essentials:

• My Kindle
• A 5 weight fly rod
• My iPod.

You’ll probably notice that I don’t plan on taking a laptop- I’m sure that we’ll take the Mac which C and I will share – I doubt that I’ll really need to use it as between the kindle and the iPod everything I usually require – connectivity-wise – will be available.. besides, it’s the midwest, not Central Africa. There are computers there.

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Last week I received my birthday gift, an Amazon Kindle2. My family had all gone in to give me enough to cover about 2/3rds of the cost so I ordered it. The first decision (prior to ordering) was if I wanted to get a Kindle DX or if I wanted the Kindle 2. I decided on getting the kindle 2 – while the form factor of the DX would be good for a textbook I didn’t think it would work well for my casual reading.

I received it on Friday – the box for the sleeve which I ordered for it was larger than the kindle itself. After charging the kindle for the recommended time, I powered it on and went shopping for a book. My first kindle reading was  Use of Weapons by Ian M. Banks. I was able to lose myself in the text just as if it were a paper book- by that measure alone the Kindle meets Amazon’s stated goals. The ability to change font size as my eyes get fatigued is probably the single best thing about the ebooks in general and the kindle specifically. It’s sleekness makes it a bit difficult for my large hands to hold sometimes, but resting it on the sleeve that I use as a case takes care of that problem admirably.

The experimental features- particularly browsing the web aren’t perfect, however being able to hit Wikipedia from anywhere with cell coverage does move this closer to The Hitchhikers Guide. (I do think that Douglas Adam’s description of THHTG’s editorial practices as being the model for Wikipedia.)

All in all, it’s a great tool for me.

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This past Saturday was my 32nd birthday. I can’t say that I really did anything spectacular- we went out for lunch and generally I just lazed around. My family all chipped in and gave me gift cards / cash towards an Amazon Kindle, which should arrive by Friday of this week- I’m really anticipating being able to have much of my library in my hand as well as the reduced pricing for the books… it might actually save me money. I didn’t order the Kindle DX- I thought seriously about it, but the form factor is not quite in line with my requirements- also with it being a new product, I would prefer to wait for a while and see how the technical book publishers respond. 

I’ve been reading The Classical World by Robin Lane Fox. It’s a nice general overview of Classical history from Homeric Greece to Hadrian’s Rome. It’s the first book in my classical history reading list. Once I’ve worked through this one, I’ll delve into more depth with texts on various topics. A friend of mine asked if I was on a real History kick lately- I wouldn’t say that this is a new thing, but last year was a good year for new scholarship in the field and my booklist is pretty deep.

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