Daily Reading (02 May 2015)

[nanila]

What have you been reading today? Everything counts, from a novel-length fic to the labels on your washing!

Comments

[nanila]

At weekends I don't usually get to read much besides stories to the toddler, and this was true today. If I'm awake enough I may dip into the new Economist when I have a bath later.

[weaverbird]

Have you ever nodded off in the bath and dunked what you were reading? *g*

[thamesynne]

I trust it wasn't a Kindle... :)

[nanila]

Yep. Thankfully only with magazines and not electronic devices.

[weaverbird]

Today it was mainly DW, LJ, and Twitter - although I did read a few news articles linked from my feed (US politics mostly).

[nanila]

I think this is going to be my day today, with the UK election looming...

[rmc28]

DW/LJ, and a skim of twitter and tumblr; the latter mostly fannish reviews of Avengers: Age of Ultron mostly sharing my irritations with it.

I have a shiny new tablet so I've been experimenting with reading ebooks and newspapers on it; I've read most of the FT for the first time in ages and the Economist is downloaded.

[nanila]

Ooer, what's your new tablet, if I may be so nosy? Are you liking it?

[rmc28]

I've been meaning to post to my own blog about it, because it has made me very happy for not much money :-)

It is a hudl2, cheap from Tesco, even cheaper if you have a bunch of clubcard vouchers (which I did). It runs the same version of Android as my phone, the huge win is comics, and Netflix/Amazon/iPlayer are much nicer to watch.

The killer feature for me is that it comes with multi-user settings, so I can set up accounts for the children and control which apps they can access. When I let them use it, they can watch iPlayer or play Angry Birds etc without me fretting that they will muck up my ebook collection or read that smutty fanfic I had open in Chrome. Charles is really pleased and says Angry Birds Epic in particular works better on the bigger screen.

It's not as comfy for reading text as my phone: I need both hands to hold it, or to rest it on something. Economist & FT look nicer on it, as do ebooks, and comics are amazing. I am buying digital comics from now on.

Typing is maybe less annoying than on the phone, but not by much. It's the same keyboard but the keys are bigger so I have fewer fat-finger moments.

[nanila]

Thanks for this, it's very helpful. You've definitely sold me on it. I didn't want to replace my Kindle because I've been boycotting Amazon for a couple of years now, and this sounds like a great alternative.

[thamesynne]

The usual sprinkling of Guardian stuff (unusually depressing today... the latest from Labour is just straight out of The Thick of It), a thread on miss_s_b's blog about the Guardian getting stuff wrong, a couple of articles in MagPi, and a guide to the Raspberry Pi's config.txt file. And some house listings for Scotland. Because I am absolutely determined to move to Scotland after the election.

[nanila]

THE EDSTONE OMG WHYYYYYY

Ahem. I'm simultaneously anxious for this election to be over already and terrified of the outcome. :/

[thamesynne]

me too. it's fucking with my sleep cycle now. which is badly messed up enough as it is on 26 hour days, without them suddenly becoming 30 hour days with no extra sleep.