Bookshelves and the new colour Kindle
A friend reacted to my bookshelves: "I thought you were pro-Kindle!" I responded, "My relationship with books is not monogamous."
Hello and happy Sunday!
It’s been a busy week, and by busy, I don’t mean productive. It started well on Monday, with the rearranging of my bookshelves, which was the biggest success of this week. I can’t get enough of looking at them and the books that now have breathing space on them. It all fell apart after Tuesday and the US election results, but we won’t get into that.
I had brief moments in my student life when I had some fixation or other on various aspects of books, but I quickly got over them, like having them arranged on the shelves based on size or height, year of publication, and genre. Should they be lined up to the shelf lip or pushed back to the wall?
I didn’t use to scribble on them, didn’t bend their pages, didn’t break the spine.
I am happy to report that I am no longer a purist; I am no longer that person. But I respect those who are and understand the struggle. This is why I am prepared for friends and family to look at how I’ve arranged the books on shelves and go, “But why don’t you…?” and then mention some other mechanism of differentiating books on shelves.
When I was a student, there was a specialisation in my uni called, in Romanian, biblioteconomie. The translation would be Library and information science, but at the time, I thought they were preparing to become librarians. I used to think it must be awesome to learn how to categorise and store books on shelves in a library, but did it warrant four years of study? I was too embarrassed to ever ask anyone what it was they did study.
As I arranged my books on the shelves, I was reminded of all the possible permutations I could muster. There is no correct answer, but at the end of the day, I need to be able to find a book on the shelf when I need it. That has been my struggle ever since I surpassed a few dozen books.
A word to the wise: never, ever, under any circumstances, organise your books by colour unless you plan on never taking them off the shelves and Instagram the hell out of them!
The shelves existed before I rearranged them; what changed was that we bought a few extensions and moved some of them around to build the solid wall of books you see in the photo. The hero of this endeavour is my ever-patient husband with his furniture-building talent, who sacrificed his entire weekend to build the extensions and wire the lights in. I am being honest with myself: the lights make all the difference!
Now, what I need is a reading chair!
The first colour Kindle is finally here
It’s the news I’ve been waiting for for so many years! It’s not that I read a lot of manga or graphic novels to warrant it. I can’t explain it, but I’ve always loved a beautiful colourful book cover and used labels and colour-coded them to mean specific things.
See my copy of The Stand for illustration:
The new colour Kindle displays 4,000 colours.
Specifically:
The display uses a colour filter co-developed by Amazon and E Ink that allows for 4,000 colour capabilities at the pixel level.
The colour resolution is 150 ppi (pixels per inch), while the black-and-white resolution is 300 ppi.
Compared to what phone LED screen displays can do nowadays, it may seem very modest. Modern iPhones can display millions of colours, typically around 16.7 million. So, it ain’t much, but I think it’s honest work…
Here is a comprehensive review that compares the most successful and beloved Kindle to date with the new model:
My favourite feature must be the multiple-coloured highlights!
The Controversy
The Kindle Colorsoft was released on Halloween and was available for preorder for weeks before that. As reviews started to emerge, there was significant concern about some models displaying a yellow tint on the lower part of the screen. What looked initially like an isolated incident started to spread, and a few days after the official release, it looked like the faulty devices were more the norm than exceptions.
Amazon has told us that "appropriate adjustments" have been made to solve the issue, and that anyone who finds the yellowing a problem on their Colorsoft device can get in touch with Amazon support for a replacement or a refund.
Techradar.com
The reviews on the device started to pile up quickly, and the overall score was 2.5 stars for the first couple of days. Customers were offered refunds and replacements, but it soon became obvious they’re overwhelmed, and soon the replacement offers started to die down.
Amazon has previously acknowledged a yellowing screen issue with a "small number" of Kindle Colorsoft devices, and told us a fix is in the works – and now we have a bit more information about what might have gone wrong.
Well-known industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has weighed in on the issue to say the problem has been traced to Amazon switching to a different OCA (optically clear adhesive) from the one used in the best Kindles with a monochrome display.
(…) Based on what Kuo has said, it would seem that Amazon has solved the problem by tweaking the software on the Kindle Colorsoft, rather than changing anything to do with the hardware – so any models sold from now on should be fine.
My Kindle Colorsoft order is still waiting to be dispatched, and I am nervous about what I might get. Stay tuned for an update!;
