Just in Case You Missed It…

Jane (tech­ni­cal guru) wrote out the tuto­r­ial for installing Python and Pycrypto to your Mac or PC or both (you can have it your way). I am a new Mac user (pur­chased an iMac) and have already printed out the instruc­tions to give it a go on my next day off because I have a feel­ing that it will be an all day event. I had issues with cre­at­ing my own cloud of ebooks but even­tu­ally got that one going. To truly own, I mean _own_ your ebooks with­out wor­ry­ing about the loss of your invest­ment, you have to crack the DRM. Sim­ple. As. That.

Ellora’s Cave Goes Audio.…Yes, you read that right. Read­ers now have the choice to lis­ten to those super hawt erotic love scenes in the form of an audio­book from Ellora’s Cave. Won­der how that will come across? Blergh. Sorry but audio­books were never my thing even for reg­u­lar fic­tion. Have fun with that as you have a whoop­ing three titles to choose from (at the time of this writing).

Author Inter­view: Karen Harper, dis­cussing her newest novel, Down River, at the Inter­na­tional Thriller Writ­ers blog. I’ve always wanted to read Harper and have one or two books of hers in my stash. Must make effort to read her this year. If any­one has recs, please share.

Manga Read­ers like myself, appre­ci­ate lists. Here is the Manga Critic’s Ten Great Global Manga, focus­ing on Amer­i­can artists or OEL (wiki) (Orig­i­nal Eng­lish Language-manga).

Among cer­tain parts of manga fan­dom, global manga (or OEL manga) is viewed as the comic-book equiv­a­lent of New Coke: the pack­ag­ing might be sim­i­lar, but the taste is dif­fer­ent and, as these fans would have it, not as good as the original.

Will give some of those titles a look when I’m in the library next time.

On a more seri­ous note, I saw a pic­ture (warn­ing, warn­ing) of Roger Ebert on the cover of Esquire mag­a­zine and froze. I knew he had can­cer and that he had sev­eral surg­eries that I think he said weren’t always suc­cess­ful that left him unable to talk, eat or drink. I grew up watch­ing Roger Ebert and the late Gene Siskel on TV and enjoyed their com­men­tary on films and on each other. After see­ing the Esquire pic­ture of what Ebert looks like today, I was in total shock. I read the arti­cle and even­tu­ally that made me feel bet­ter know­ing that he has Chaz (his wife and pro­tec­tor) beside him to lift up his spirits.