Audible Alternatives?

I am very tempted to cough up some dough and sign up with Audible.com. The thing that holds me back is I feel that it seems wasteful to spend money on something that will not be enjoyed over and over. There are songs that I listened to over and over yet not get tired, but movies and books are only used once. At least with movies they sometimes get loaned to friends. With digital audiobooks, I may have to loan the player as well, or burn the book onto CD and convert the CD back to MP3 format... too much work and the reading experience won't be the same.

There are some Audible alternatives out there. Note that I include a question mark in the title of this blog post. I admit that the experience of using these "alternatives" is certainly not exactly the same as using a paid service like Audible. You get to have someone read to you, alright, but the process of getting the content to your device, plus other steps, won't be the same.

For me, the most obvious alternative is the public library. One great thing about living and working in New York City is convenient access to its public libraries. I live near a branch of the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) and work near one in the New York Public Library (NYPL) system. Both library systems offer at least audiobooks as sets of CDs. I think the BPL even offers audiocassettes audiobooks. My audiobook experience did start out with the Queens Public Library, with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, Without Remorse by Tom Clancy, and some others. Yes, many times I fell asleep while listening to the audiotapes and had to painfully rewind the tapes back to some recognizable place, but I did finish a few books, for free.

If dealing with physical media like audiotapes and CDs is too cumbersome for you, the library systems can also let you borrow digital content. It seems only public domain materials can be used readily on both Macs and PeeCees. More current materials requires installing additional software like OverDrive. Last time I gave OverDrive a try, it was with using movies from the NYPL. I had to use Windoze emulator to be able to use the material on my Mac. There was much troubles, not worth the hassle. OverDrive does have Mac software now. I'll give it another chance and see how convenient it is.

Perhaps getting a library card is too much of a hassle to you. Or you don't live or work near a public library. If you don't mind being limited to classic books only, LibriVox.org is the place for you. LV's books are already in the public domain, i.e. their copyrights have expired. LV makes use of volunteers to do the reading in order to be able to provide the service free of charge. You don't have to register with LV in order to get audiobooks from them. Unlike Audible, where the books are broken down into one or two big files, LV's offerings come in many small chapters. You can listen to them right in the web browser, although for me I prefer to open them in iTunes for later syncing to the iPod. I do have to make sure the files are marked as audiobooks and that playback positions are remembered. It takes a little, just a very small little, extra work when dealing with LV. I already downloaded Chapters 1 through 5 of Book 1 of The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Should you like LV's service so much and want to volunteer then you would need to open a free account with them.

Lastly, I cannot help but think back to the time a long time ago when I accidentally came across a reading of the book Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam on the radio. I think it was some time after 1985, when I started college, because I do remember that I listened to the reading in the afternoon on a weekday. During high school I wouldn't be home at that time of the day during that time of the week. I managed to remember the station and listened to it a few times but now of course I have no other recollection of the station. My guess is that it was some NPR station, maybe even WNYC. I wonder if the program is still around. Anyone with more info please post a comment.

Do You Read Me?

With the announcement of the iPad, the world now has yet another e-reader. Maybe not just another e-reader, but still an e-reader nonetheless. Still, for me, as long as I live near a public library, I don't see myself getting into the e-reading business. For me, books are somewhat like movies in that you read a book once then it spends the rest of its life on the shelf, taking space and collecting dust. At least with movies you may pull them off the shelf to fast forward to a particular scene to settle a bet. Well, in this Internet Age, that may not even be necessary. From my point of view, books are best read as borrowed items from the public library. I don't read the latest and greatest books anyway so I can renew over and over if needed. I know, the booksellers of the world won't be sending me any huge checks any time soon.

By the same logic, much as I enjoy the convenience of Audible.com, I don't see myself signing up with it any time soon. It does not help that the typical e-book costs around $20. Audible does have a few monthly plans, with one that come out to about $15 per book or per month, but it still seems wasteful to spend that much money for something that would be enjoyed for a few hours or a few days. I do have plenty of free podcasts to keep me company during the daily commute and other times. During a good week, when I remember to keep the iPod touch properly charged every morning, I would sail through Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, This Week In Tech, This American Life, and perhaps even a Mac-centric podcast. Still, having taken advantage of Audible's free A Confederacy of Dunces, I felt the allure of digital audiobooks. In the past, listening to audiobooks meant occasionally flipping tapes or rewinding them. With today's digital versions, there is nothing to flip and rewinding is relatively easy. There is no risk of rewinding too much and having fast forward to make up. Having the books sync'd effortlessly to iTunes gives me peace of mind, that should the iPod gets lost, I still have a copy on the computer.

Audible wisely sponsors many podcasts so I'm constantly reminded of their great service. Who knows, someday I may get tired of the free podcasts and may spring for the convenience of Audible.

Cheap Shot at the Pad

Five Boro Bike Tour

I have decided to sign up for the Five Boro Bike Tour (FBBT) this year. The event will take place on Sunday, May 2 and registration will be accepted 10 A.M. February 1. Blasted, I thought it would be 12 midnight so that, as a nighthawk, I can easily stay up another hour and be the first few to sign up as the new day rolls in. According to Bike New York's web site, it is a popular event and the 30,000+ spots get filled up quickly. I will just have to take my chance...

The ride is 40+ miles, which I think I can handle. The trip to Brooklyn Bridge, over the Bridge, then back home, that I did last weekend totaled about 24 miles. I suppose another 16 miles or so won't hurt. I don't recall being very tired, especially in the legs, after the Bridge trek, so the FBBT should not be a big deal.

I look forward to taking part in a traffic jam and enjoying it. My past two encounters with the FBBT were not pleasant at all. The first one, even if I am not that sure if it was the FBBT, was when I got stuck on the BQE around Flushing Avenue. I was near an entrance ramp and saw people backing off it, slowly, to get out of the jam. Some MTA van did the same so I thought it would be safe to imitate. No such luck, at the ramp entrance, a few NYPD patrol cars were waiting to direct us all to pull over to help them fill their quota for the day. Some Hasidic Jews on the sidewalk were trying to tell us not to come down, but I think by the time we saw them it was too late. Sure it was wrong to go backward into an On ramp, but when a whole bunch of people were already doing it, and the highway is packed with cars, I think the proper thing for the NYPD to do would be to be there to direct traffic to safely get out of the jam. Instead, they decided to shoot the fish in the barrel. What they did was akin to going to a disaster site to ticket damaged cars at the site. While they were at it, perhaps they could go onto the highway and ticket all the idle cars for having idle engine for more than x minutes. It disgusts me when the government treat its citizens as cash cows.

My second encounter with the FBBT was not as bad, but again it involved a traffic jam. It was Mother's Day and I was with a group of cars trying to get into Fort Hamilton to celebrate the occasion with a picnic. Big mistake! I knew that the NYC Marathon begins in Staten Island so that in the afternoon the Brooklyn side of the Verrazano Bridge would be back to normal. What I didn't know was that the FBBT ends in Staten Island, with the thousands of riders using the Verrazano to get there. It took me about two hours to finally get to the picnic.

I worried that this year's FBBT would coincide with Mother's Day, but luckily it will be a week before the event. Have bike, have good health, still can afford the $60 registration fee, I have no reason not to participate in the event!

Whirlwind Wednesday

It turned out today is a big day. Around noon EST we will find out what magical gadget Apple will offer to the world. I personally do not care for a tablet because I believe I use my eyes too much already. I listen to podcasts and such, so a tablet won't do what I can already do with an iPod.

Around dinner time, President Obama will deliver his first State of the Union. Politics as it is, he probably will say that our nation is strong but there are challenges ahead. What bombshells can he possibly drop?

Last but not least, and closer to my heart, is the meeting, perhaps at Newtown High School itself, at which the school will be considered for closing. Supposedly students there are not doing well enough on standardized test or there are too many dropping out. I doubt closing the school will accomplish anything, but I heard these kinds of things before. If you are an alum of Newtown High School in Elmhurst, Queens, NY, and do not want the school closed, sign the petition here:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/save-newtown-petition-now

Law-Abiding Cyclists?

Yesterday I made the trip from home to the Brooklyn Bridge, AND back. It was not the first time I rode to the Bridge, but it was a first to get there and back both by cycling. The trip took over four hours but it was not because I was a slacker. Along the Belt Parkway waterfront it was nice and free of traffic but beyond that I had to slow down to watch out for traffic. Even when part of the trip was along Second Avenue, which was quiet for a weekend day. Once I crossed the Gowanus Canal, it was all slow-going. Some streets still had bike lanes but the streets were narrower, too. Some street had no room at all for a bike and a car to share the road and I had to hurry up to get through it. Somewhere along the line I even had to ride on the sidewalk. That's the case with New York City. It is simply not possible to obey the law 100% of the time. You are on a bike lane then all of a sudden it ends and you are faced with a narrow street or a busy one with lots of traffic. You either ride on the sidewalk, go against traffic, or bite the bullet and go with the flow.

On the way back, I faced a similar scenario at the intersection of Third Avenue and Prospect Avenue. I could risk going with the car through the narrow passage below the Prospect Expressway, or go the wrong way on Third Avenue, on the sidewalk.

I hope whoever planning the roads for NYC take cyclists into considerations. On that note, it seems Bike New York is a good organization to promote cycling. I will start getting involved with it through its Bike New York Tour, a 42-mile trek through the five boroughs of New York City, then follow up later with other activities.

Facebook Death

I recently found out a Facebook friend of mine died. I used to play Wordscraper with him. It was probably Scrabulous, which was the forerunner of Wordscraper before the Agarwalla brothers got sued by Hasbro. Not that it really matters to this story.

One reason I remember "Mr. B" well is that most Wordscraper players, in my own experience, are Canadian women. He was one of the few non-Canadian male players. Together we wasted some time playing the word games, chatted from time to time about the game at hand or other topics that happened to come up. I now recall that he had a pizzeria business and had an iBook. The last remark he made was when I played the word REBAR. He joked that he did not know that I was in the construction business.

Oddly enough, for some reason I thought he unfriended me, since he no longer appeared on my friends list. Maybe I forgot what his last name was and could not find him in my friends list. No harm, I myself unfriended people from time to time, whether for lack of activity or some offending status update by the person. Recently I decided to visit his profile and saw that someone had written "Rest in peace" on his Wall. Probably someone who knew him outside of Facebook. That explained the lack of activity. I think I started some games with him only to delete them because he would not play his turn. Re-visiting his profile, I found a few keywords that allowed me to Google for more info about him. It turned out he passed away a little more than a year ago. Time flies and Life is fragile. Rest in peace, indeed, Mr. B, though I hardly knew you.