Ladybird Meanderings

Ninja – Christmas present for my 5 year old son.

jesscorbett — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 21:00:46 +0000

Felt sleeve for smartphone

jesscorbett — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 04:54:14 +0000

Made a protective sleeve for my Nokia N9 (which I won in a Facebook competition about 6 weeks ago, using this woven e-reader pattern as inspiration: The Long Thread.

Sunny new house.

jesscorbett — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 04:37:07 +0000

ebooks and eReaders

jesscorbett — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 05:25:58 +0000

Back in June this year I treated myself to a Sony eReader. Although an avid reader normally, the last few years bringing up two young children have resulted in me being simply too tired and busy to do much reading.

Having made my choice, I set about finding out what ebooks I could find.
The Sony came with it’s own library application, allowing me to add first to the library, then to download to the ereader itself. I quickly discovered that Sony’s own ebook store would not allow me to buy books, because they weren’t licensed for sale in New Zealand. This proved to be a recurring and frustrating fact. More on that later.

New Zealand ebook retailers

In New Zealand, there are only two online ebook retailers:
Whitcoulls and meBooks. Whitcoulls have added ebooks to their existing books, but meBooks is purely ebooks.

Turning my search to free ebooks, I found that the best site was Project Gutenberg.

I also found an excellent piece of free software called Calibre. Calibre can work as an elibrary, but better still, it allows you to choose and schedule regular downloads from many international newspapers, magazines, and journals. For instance, I currently download (in the morning before leaving home) articles from the Smithsonian, National Geographic, New York Magazine, as well as just the local news from Stuff and New Zealand Herald. There are only two New Zealand news sources listed, but dozens and dozens of others from around the world, grouped by language.

I am also using Instapaper to save articles I find online for later reading – and Instapaper allows you to download the articles in epub format, or for Kindle. Instapaper combined with great articles from Arts and Letters Daily results in good reading, without actually having to buy any ebooks. Articles with pictures and diagrams don’t always download completely – but the text is all there.

to be continued

New office view – close up

jesscorbett — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 21:33:52 +0000

Environmental toothbrush pack

jesscorbett — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 20:20:17 +0000

wooden toothbrushes…fully compostable

Weeding tackled while it is fine…

jesscorbett — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 04:13:15 +0000

And discovered another avocado seedling! Need to find a big pot to rescue it for future planting somewhere else.

#eqnz #chch

jesscorbett — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 07:26:58 +0000

It could have been us.
It should have been us.
It still could be us.
Rubble, and dust.

Ohakune Station

jesscorbett — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 17:20:26 +0000

Waiting for coffee

Queuing for a boarding pass

jesscorbett — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 17:20:22 +0000

#Overlander