First Harvest

C picked and cooked our first non-herb harvest from the garden tonight: string beans. We've been harvesting basil, rosemary and thyme for a while now.

Up next, hopefully, are the tomatoes and peppers.

Kindle DX

C got me the perfect birthday present this year -- something I wanted but would never have bought for myself -- a Kindle DX.

I've been extremely ambivalent about digital book readers in the past because I think they're insanely overpriced, I love the feel and smell of books, and except for some rare cases, always buy my books used. After using the Kindle for the past couple weeks though... I'm a believer.

The basic act of reading itself on the Kindle is fine. The text is clear, and being able to change the font size is surprisingly useful. The big advantages of the Kindle over a normal book (apart from the size and weight) for me are:

• the built-in dictionary (just hover over a word and the definition pops up),
• being able to search through the book (especially on long books with a lot of characters),
• and being able to surf the web while reading (I've mainly been using it to look stuff up on wikipedia).

I'm looking forward to try it out the next time I travel. It'll be comforting to know that I'll never run out of reading material. Maybe now I'll have a reason to buy a travel guide instead of just borrowing it from the library (assuming more guide book companies start making them available in digital format).

Speaking of which, I still haven't bought any books yet and I'm doubtful that I'll ever buy anything with DRM associated with it (which rules out books from Amazon). The only exception to this that I can imagine, as mentioned above, are travel books. Multi-country trips with all the books on the Kindle? Now that would be super-convenient.