So the board itself is an Endeavour Live, bought for a good discount, thank the sales and a small defect for a good reduction, the defect in the board is pretty minor really, when they printed the art work it went through the laminator before the printing, how they managed this I’m not sure but there’s a batch of boards with teh art work printed on the surface instead of under it. Basically all that’s wrong with the board is the design will scratch off over time and with use, leaving me with a more or less plain black board, no complaints there and for the price I’ve got a new board for what my old one should have cost if it wasn’t half price

So riding the board last week on its factory wax only, it slid over the snow very easily, and I’m sure I could turn it on a 5p, it also felt lighter if not slightly more flexible than my old, I’m assured by the sales guy that it will flex more as I use it and it loosens up a little. Its really just a shame that I’m such an unfit wuss and my little weedy legs couldn’t cope with the slope time, I must go more often to get used to it again and maybe actually make a proper effort on this getting fit thing.

On the subject of getting fit, the plan is to join the gym and go swimming 3 times a week using the fact we’ve paid for it as motivation to go, and I think I’ll try to Wii Fit a little more to gently build up my legs and all the stretches that should only be helpful to my wrists too. There its on the internet so it has to be true.

Last thing to mention I have now finished Dracula and I’m sure I’d seen the film based on the book, I honestly can’t remember it that well but I seem to remember some warrior losing his wife and making some unholy deal to become the first vampire, then at the end is destroyed as you’d expect but Mina his victim turns vampire at the end, but I might be mixing up my movies a bit and it might be and I might have completely made up that ending, I have seen a lot of them. What to read next?

The cover’s a cover, its leather and fits the kindle, not really much to say about it really, I got mine because it’ll protect the screen if I take it anywhere. You can also get different colours and a version with a light for those that want to read in the dark.

Back to the Kindle, I’ve already said its just the right size for me, the screen as you can see in the picture takes up most of the device with a keyboard at the bottom, which is used for taking notes, shopping and any other use for text entry.
The screen displays 16 colours or more accurately 16 shades of grey, the text is clear and the images it shows are surprisingly good quality. The screen has quite a slow refresh so I wont be watching any movies on it, apparently page turns are 60% quieter than the previous generations, but it seems silent to me apart from maybe the click of the next page button, its not exactly loud but that’s all that makes a noise.

Reading books on the Kindle is much like reading a real paper book, if the book was in a frame and you pressed a button to change the page, but other than that its the same. You select your book from your library on the home page then sit and read, there being no back light isn’t a problem, if you could read a paper book you can read a kindle book, obviously if it gets to dark to read you can always turn a light on, like you would have had to do with a normal book.

The battery life, I can’t really comment on as its not ran out yet, and I’m on my 4th book, but I’d say its lasting roughly what its advertised as. –EDIT– The battery ran out last night, so its lasted just over 2 weeks, but that’s half way through my 4th book, with some web browsing as well.

The Kindle comes with a few extras its not just a book reader, it also comes with a web browser that’s pretty good, good enough for facebook, twitter or a tv guide. It works pretty well so its a nice extra, useful if you need a quick search but a browser on a PC/laptop would be more use if they’re available. I did say when I fist looked at it that I wouldn’t use the web browser much, but I have used it quite a bit instead of using my phone or powering up my laptop.
There’s also an MP3 player built in that I’ve not tried, and it is able to read your books to you again I’ve not tried this as I’m not really interested in the feature.

Improvements that would be nice to see. A faster screen refresh so animations on the web browser work better,  a full colour screen would be nice and maybe making the screen full size making it a touch screen and removing the keyboard. Obviously I wont get them even if it was in the next release, maybe if it was a couple of generations down, but by then I might be switching to one of the many tablets that are being released, or just sticking with this one as it does all I need and does it perfectly fine.

If you like to read replacing the paper books with a book reader, Kindle or some other reader, seems to me like a good idea, the device takes up less space than a book collection and can hold loads of books, and with a library manager you can store even more on your computer and just transfer them when you want to read them.

I like my Kindle and I probably wouldn’t read some of the classics that are available for free if it wasn’t for getting one as it either involves borrowing from a library or buying a printed copy to read comfortably, rather than on my pc or laptop. There’s loads of free books available and many of the none free are available for less than the printed version.

Having hinted at an earlier advanced civilisation in some of his Shannara books this series is set some time after the events in his The Word and Void series, but before the Shannara series linking the two together.

The story follows a couple of nights of the word and a group of street kids, they nights are still struggling with their fights against demons and the kids are just trying to live in a world where the demons have wiped out most of humanity, and those few that survive are either in hiding, in small sanctuaries or slaves to the demons. Its not a very nice world and it looks like the demons are winning.

I did enjoy this book and it the series promises to explain how our world became the world used in the shannara serieses.

It wasn’t quite what I expected,  There are 4 gods ruling over an isolated island, and they are being threatened by the beast that lives in the wasteland in the middle. As their people are mostly peaceful and a bit primitive they have to enlist help from outside.

This book covers an introduction to the gods and focuses on the just one, her quarter of the island and the battle there.

I found this quite an amusing book and a fun read, but at times things were just a little silly, the ending of the war was predictable as you’d expect but how it happened wasn’t really something I would have expected.

All in all I enjoyed the book and bought the next ones in the series

The story follows 3 people, a seriously fat TV chef with anger management issues, an average weight womanising PR guy, and an anorexic girl who goes to amazing lengths to hide her problem.

The story itself is split into sections, where the meals that are eaten are listed, its then further split into chapters (as most books are), each chapter follows a different characters life, which is fine.

I found the stories of the chef and the girl most entertaining the PR guy got just didn’t seem to get into as funny situations to me, and seemed to get bogged down in science a couple of times.

I’m not sure this is as good as his other books but its still pretty good and worth a read.

The first chapter is the kind of intro you’d expect in CSI, someone dies but you don’t know what killed him, the next chapter introduces the characters with a short bit of history, then its pretty much straight into the action and once it starts it pretty much doesn’t stop till the last page. Scarecrow and Mother cool as always with some new Marines, fighting against a fearless enemy that just happen to outnumber them about 70 to 1.

The book follows Reilly’s usual style, overwhelming odds and keeps you on the edge of your seat. Its a gripping read, just a shame its so short, but it ends how you’d expect, and leaves you wanting to read his next book.

“Article 13199 of the Pan-European Constitution:
‘No person shall be prejudiced from employment in any capacity, at any level, by reason of age, race, creed, or incompitence.’”

Its now illegal to discriminate against anyone in anyway, so people totally unsuitable for a job are not only given the job but given promotions where people that actaulyl are good are overlooked because to promote them would be disciminating against the others. You also cant be fired for being bad at your job.

In this book we meet blind night club bouncers, octogenarian male bunny girls and airline pilots with vertigo.

Theres a killer on the loose and its up to Detective Harry Salt to find him, Salt has a problem: he’s actaully good at his job. And if he can work his way through hte mess of contaminated evidence, ineptly fild crime reports and witnesses with long term memory disorders, he might just find the killer.

This is a pretty good book, funny and intersting, we can only hope our world doesn’t get to be like the future world described in the book

So anyway about the book, the main character is Eddie, Eddie’s one of those guys that plays it safe all his life, never acheives things and is infact the most unlucky person alive. The story starts Edie’s in a free hotel room, hes desparate for money to pay off a massive debt to “people like that” or he expects the rest of his life will consist of a short rerun of his life to date.

His luck turns (or so he thinks) and he ends up on a spaceship rocketing away from earth. After some time in what is essentially suspended animation he awakes after centuries to find the ship is crewed by idiots and he’s their only hope, oh and his body seems to be wired up wrong.

Put simply this is a funny story, its full of the kind of humour that made Red Dwarf what it was, if you liked Red Dwarf or the Red dwarf stories or any thing else by Rob Grant you’ll like this book. I recomend it to anyone that like a good laugh and an interesting story.

The science bits gets a bit complicated as a lot of its psychological rather than physical. Still its a good book again the stories worthy of the discworld title and the science is written in a way that entertains and teaches at the same time.

The book is both educational(ish) and entertaining as you’d expect from a discworld book. The authors switch between a discworld story where they’re performing an experiment with magic, to a description of the real world version of what happened.

In theory you can skip all the real world stuff and just read the story but you’d be missing out on some interesting bits with some humor thrown in too.
So far a good book, worth reading for just the story or the science, put together its a suprisingly good combination.