Unlike the precision of the tides, you will never know which way the wind will blow. The tides come in and go out on a very precise schedule. They have charts made for high and low tides in areas where that is important. The winds of the day can make the tide higher or lower, but it will not cause the tides to cease.

Life is very much like the tides, it flows in an almost predictable pattern. We are born, we live and the we die. The length and form of our lives depends on other influences. Inland the tides are never noticed, but they can be measure with the right equipment. On some ocean fronts you will see the tides marked on the beaches. In other places you see the marks of the tides on cliff walls. Much the same with our lives. We can sometimes see the tides and other times they are barely noticeable.

It is that way until something changes. Winds blow in, the coast line changes and the tides come in with quick fury. The winds change, and in our life things change.

We never know which way the wind will blow but we must prepare for the tides.

A cold wind blew tonight, and I was not prepared….

You knew my unspoken words. You knew the way my mind worked. You knew things before I knew them myself. You knew my heart, and I miss yours.

Title — Tarzan of the Apes
Author — Edgar Rice Burroughs
Year 1914
Digitized by Google Books from a 1914 copy Epub format

I have read this book before, but I decided to load it on my book reader and read it again.

This is not your Movie or TV Tarzan. The information about wild life (apes in particular) is a bit dated, but you should not let that keep you from reading any of Burroughs’ Tarzan stories. Tarzan of the Apes is the first in a long series of Tarzan novels written by Burroughs.

In this story, the apes that raised Tarzan are not Gorillas. Burroughs created a new smarter species to have a smarter animal to raise a human infant. This allowed Tarzan to ‘speak’ with the apes in the book. A good plot enhancement to allow the readers to have an early view of Tarzan’s young life in the wild. The apes themselves are seen as caring individuals (at least the female that took Tarzan to raise) and bloodthirsty savage beasts (almost all of the male apes). Tarzan was one of the bloodthirsty savages until he chanced upon meeting ‘white’ humans.

While reading this book, I had a feeling that it was written as a serialized novel. I seem to recall that a number of stories of this type were published in sections by numerous magazines of the time. I did a search on this and found out that this story was publish in full by the magazine it was submitted too. It may have been written as a serial novel, but it didn’t turn out that way. Just an interesting tidbit of information with this story.

I sat down to read this story knowing all of the above, I just pushed that aside and read this as I would any action/adventure tale. Except for Tarzan, the characters all seemed a bit flat. They were all secondary to story line. They were there to give Tarzan something to do. During the reading, I found that I didn’t really care what happened to them.

However, the background and setting of 1914 Africa came alive in the story. This was Tarzan’s supporting character. The descriptions of the ‘Jungle’ and its animal inhabitants kept the story flowing. This background gave the character of Tarzan some depth and meaning. While I didn’t care about the other characters, I did find myself interested in the way Tarzan felt about them. They were secondary, but his reactions were primary. I don’t recall too many stories that have me thinking in that fashion. I’m going to have to read more authors from the same time period to see if this is common in the era.

As far as the Ebook version, I did notice a few problems with the OCR conversion. It seemed to have problems with accented and capital letters. I’m not sure why that is, but there were a couple places it was an annoyance. I don’t remember this from the project Gutenburg book I read last year, but that was just a scan to PDF and not a digital reading/recognition of the words themselves.

I think that I would give this 3 out of 5 stars. Good book to read, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to hunt it down.

Well not quite yet, but maybe a new category if I keep reading at the rate I have been. Since this is an Ebook review, there will be some things about the books that you will only get from the ebooks I’ve been reading. Almost all of the books have been copied from original text and had OCR software run on them. I’ve notice in a few places the character recognition software just wasn’t up to the task. I will have to note where I got the copy, how it was translated to digital text and the edition year it was copied from.

I’m thinking this will be a lot of fun for me, but my readers may be a bit bored by my reading selection. Oh well, you get what you pay for. I’m reading free books, and you are reading a free blog.

This week I finished 3 ebooks, so I have a choice as to which title to review. Decisions, decisions. Life sometimes complicates these things. 😉

I like a lot of movies. I have a lot of movies. So all is well with the world in that respect. I have been on a classic movie kick recently. Ok, more than just recently. Last year, just before Christmas, I borrowed the movie Nosferatu from a friend. Wonderful silent ‘Vampire’ movie. I think that movie still holds its own against some of the newer movies. After that I just had to watch all of the classic Horror movies I own. Dracula, The Wolf Man, The Mummy and The Invisible Man were jut like I remembered them. I would love to have those movies on some ‘newer’ media. I have them on tape, and never felt the need (until now) to get them on DVD or Blu-Ray. Good Movies.

Just this past weekend and tonight I watched another couple of movies that just don’t get old for me. I watched Casablanca with my youngest over the weekend. She may or may not comment on it. I really enjoyed it. It has been a few years since I last saw it. I just finished watching The Maltese Falcon this evening. Another movie I haven’t seen in years, but the story still works today.

Finally there is one other movie I’ve been thinking about watching. It is a bit strange that I don’t have it in my collection of movies. Another Bogart film that I saw many times from 1984 to 2003. And we were not watching it for Bogart. My lovely bride loved the acting of Katharine Hepburn, we watched a number of her movies more than once. I just don’t understand why we never purchased any. After looking through all of the movie I own, I don’t recall any movies with her in my collection. I may have to do something about that. Anyway, I really want to see The African Queen in the near future. I heard is was just released to DVD.

The point of all of this? Not much really. I just like to watch some of these old classics over again from time to time.

I’m involved with another theatrical production, as I’ve stated earlier. I’ve only been to a few rehearsals, and I’m tired of it. I don’t think it is the show, or the actors in the show. I have a good time when I am there, but before I get there and after I leave I experience a feeling numbness. I’m just tired of the whole thing. I really wish I would have stayed on my theater break. I don’t want to study lines, learn blocking or any of the other things needed for this show. I have other things I feel like doing instead.

I wonder how long this feeling will last. I need to learn how to say no. I need to focus on projects I am really interested in and ignore the ones that I have just a passing interest in.

Oh well, the show must go on, and I will soldier through.

My youngest and I spent part of the weekend cataloging the movies in the house. What do we have on DVD, VHS and Blu-Ray? Not too many on blu-ray yet, but I’m sure in the coming months there will be more movies I want to own.

I was thinking of this, because I never can remember if I own a specific movie or not. I have a number of VHS that I did by DVD replacements for. I’m wondering if there will be any that I ‘NEED’ the Blu-Ray replacement for the DVD. I can’t see that yet, but I do like the quality of the Blu-Ray. I guess I enough of an audio-video geek that I can tell the difference, even in cartoons.

Anyway after counting the movies, I have 400+ movies in my collection. This collection started when the kids were small, so in some cases the movies are 25+ years old. I’m surprised those old VHS tapes still play. And with all of those movies, I have seen all of them at least 1 time. Most of them at least twice. Over 3/4 of those movies I’ve seen 3 times. And there are others that I lost count of the number of times I’ve seen them. Now of those movies, the rest of the family also so a lot of them numerous times.

Interesting fact, if the movie was ‘full’ price, I know I’ve seen it more than 3 times. That only makes sense with the cost of a movie and the cost of a rental. If I know I’m only going to watch a movie once or twice, I like to rent them. If they were bargain basement movies ($5.00 dollars or less), I may only watch them once, but usually at least twice, it depends on my mood.

So at an average of 2 hours per movie (give or take), it would take at least 80 days (watching 8 hours of movies per day) to make it through my collection. So back to books… Around the movies in 80 days??? Should I make a wager to see if I can watch all of them? Nah, there would be no time for books!

Third post on this, are you tired of it yet?

Well, I now have hundreds of books at my disposal on my new Nook E-Book reader. From Neverland to Wonderland and on the way to OZ. I have books set in the orient, on the moon and in oceans. Books from Baum, Barrie, Doyle, Carroll and Kipling. Lesser known authors for most like Rhomer, Simak and others. So at my fingertips I have reading for weeks or maybe months. Yes I read a lot.

Here are the things I like best about my new e-reader.

It is very easy to download books onto the machine. It would be easier to get them directly from Barnes & Noble, but I can load all of the books I have from Project Gutenburg and feedbooks through the USB port. I like having a wide selection to look at.

It is easy to read the screen in all types of light. I can adjust the font larger if I forget my reading glasses. It does need light to read, just like a book, so it doesn’t get as tiring as a computer screen.

It is easy to mark my place or get back to the exact location I finished reading. The automatic bookmark will keep my current spot in the book I’m reading. You can leave the book, open another and come back to the exact spot you were reading.

I have an unlimited storage capacity. OK, it is limited by my bank account. I can only buy so many memory cards. I haven’t put books on all the ones I have yet!!!

I can have a new book anytime of day, from almost any place. More good news for me.

It is easy to carry the reader around. It is about the size of a paperback book, and about the same weight. I don’t have to lug my laptop around for the books stored in it.

I got to try it out before buying it. The biggest selling e-book reader is a bit harder to try out, unless you know somebody with one.

I can share my books with other Nook owners or people with a (free) Nook reader on their computer. You can loan books for 14 days.

The service from B&N has been great. I really can’t say enough about that. That service made the purchase for me. I will go there again (yeah, I know I was going there before the service.) Guess what guys, I will actually talk about that experience. They are getting free advertising from me.

Now for the down side..

Hey, it is expensive. I could have purchased a lot of books for the price of this machine. Not that I have the shelf space for them, but it is a lot of books

I am not a big fan of the entry screen for note taking or any typing. My fingers are almost too fat to get the keys correctly. It doesn’t look like it will work with a stylus either. Some of the other screens to move around the books are almost too small. If you have larger than average fingers, I would suggest book reader with real keys.

It is a little slow to turn pages. And when it comes to speed, if you have a lot of books on your reader, it takes a bit to load them in.

I’m not 100% certain, but it doesn’t look like you have a good way to organize your books. I would like to break them up by classification. Science Fiction, Mystery, Children’s Classics, History, ect. If I find a way to do that easily, I will let you know.

That about does it. Two thumbs way up for this book reader.

We color the eggs, hide the eggs, find the eggs and then eat dinner. The children in our family are growing up now, and the next generation of egg finders are in a place too far. How long will we be able to keep the tradition. We will see.

The dinner was far from traditional. There was ham, but that was in a soup. The meal was wonderful and the company of family was greatly desired.

Another time to cherish and remember everything we hold dear in our lives. Something that is needed at all times of the year.

No matter what your faith, this time of year hold the promise of new beginnings. A time to remember what was and what can be. A time to look in your own heart and think of everything life can be, not just what it was.

Happy Easter.

Ok, my initial reactions to my new book Nook. I like it a lot, as long as I am using it with books downloaded in the proper format. This would be the standard format for readers. PDF files of some of the older books that are straight scanned don’t work too well. I haven’t found a way to enlarge pictures, so some of the text is not readable. I was wishing for a magnifier function.

I now have over 100 different books loaded on the machine and I get to pick my way through to see which ones I will keep. It will play mp3 music files, and since I can actually save my plays in that format, I could use this in place of my recorder. I could set it up to read a script and play the audio at the same time.

More to come as I find out more about it…

I was looking at getting an e-book reader for some time. I’ve been loading old classics on to my computer and reading them from the screen. There were a couple of problems with this. The first was that if I wanted to take the book with me, it meant that I had to have the book on the laptop and the laptop with me. The second was that the laptop was not conducive to late night reading in bed. I would just do other things on the laptop. Can’t do that with a book.

So, I picked up a Barnes & Noble Nook reader. It had some advantages over the other readers that I really liked, so I decided to get one.

I will give a full review after I’ve had time to go over the ins and outs of the device. I will say that I am very happy with the service. I happened to get a bad device. It just would not turn on after I turned it off. The people at Barnes & Noble were wonderful in 1) trying to find out what was wrong with the device and 2) making sure I left the store with a working device today. I’m certain that the problem with my machine was a fluke, but it was handled in a very professional and friendly manner. My hat is off the the Barnes and Noble crew.

I have my first book loaded on the machine, So, I’m now going to settle back and read a chapter or two.