Australian Kindle owners

Amazon is trying to get Australians to switch to amazon.com.au but apparently if you do this you lose access to the ebooks you purchased from amazon.com. Here's log of (part of) the conversation I had with one of their support people:

Me: Lately amazon.com keeps telling me I can switch to amazon.com.au for ebook purchases. Is there any benefit to doing that other than seeing prices in AUD? It seems like a hassle to be using the .com.au site for some things and the .com site for others, especially when AUD and USD are so close in value anyway.

Regie(CSA): The reason why the system keeps telling you to transfer your account to Amazon.au it is because you're country settings is from Australia, correct?

Me: I am in Australia, that is correct.

Regie(CSA): That's is the reason, Mathew.

However, you can ignore the email about the migrating, Mathew.

Me: It's not an email, it;s a message that keeps appearing at the top of the page when I view items at amazon.com

And my question is, is there any benefit to switching, other than seeing prices in AUD, or is that the only thing that would change?

Regie(CSA): No, Mathew.

Regie(CSA): If you switch to Amazon.au, all your books that was purchased from Amazon.com will not be available to view or read unless you switch back to Amazon.com.

...

Me: Why would anyone want to switch their account if it will remove access to the books they already purchased? This is insane.

Regie(CSA): I do apologize, Mathew.

We don't have the information/

...

Me: OK, so is there some way I can make sure my account doesn't ever get switched to the au site? Because I don't want to lose access to my books.

Regie(CSA): No need to worry, as long as you will not accept the migration.

Me: So there is no way for me to just say "no, I don't want to switch" and have that be the end of it? It's just going to keep asking me forever?

Regie(CSA): Yes, Mathew.

I can't imagine what the hell they're thinking with this decision.

Logan Farm vegetables are shit

I bought this pack of frozen vegetables from the IGA near my house. Sorry, "Premium Vegetable Mix".

It looks pretty nice. Obviously I don't expect it to look exactly like the picture on the pack. For one thing, the actual product will be frozen. But you'd think that the picture would give a pretty good idea of the contents of the pack - that's kind of the point.

Here's what's actually in the pack.

It's not quite the same. There's just something about that distribution that seems off. Maybe it's the fact that there are about three beans in the entire pack. I was also expecting more carrot in comparison to the amount of peas and corn.

Don't buy Logan Farm vegetables.

French toasted cheese sandwich

Take two eggs. Break them into a bowl. Use a fork or something to whisk them up a bit so the yolk is mixed with the albumen.

Take two slices of bread and dunk them in the egg. Make sure to get both sides of both slices completely covered and do your best to soak up all the egg. Depending on the size of the eggs and slices of bread there may be a little bit left over.

Melt some butter in a frying pan. Put the slices of bread in the frying pan and tip the remaining egg on top of them.

While the bread is frying, slice some cheese and salami.

Once the bread is cooked to your satisfaction on one side, turn it over and put the sliced cheese and salami on top of one slice.

Once the other side of the bread is done, flip the second slice onto the first. The cheese should now be nicely melted. If not, leave it a little longer.

Once the eggy-bread is cooked and the cheese is melted, eat the sandwich.

I Am Mine

Have you heard the song I Am Mine? If not, don't worry, you're not missing much and it's just this one line I'd like to draw your attention to.

North is to South what the clock is to time

What? No it isn't. North is the opposite to south. A clock is an instrument for measuring time. Those are not equivalent relationships at all. North is to a compass as time is to a clock, maybe. North is to south as the future is to the past.

This line stands out to me every time I hear this song and it's the only line I actually know, because it's a pretty forgettable song, but that line is so dumb that you can't help but notice it. Maybe that's the idea. That line is deliberately wrong just so you'll notice the song exists. If so, well played Pearl Jam.

But actually I think Pearl Jam are just idiots.

Windows 8

Since my main operating system is Linux Mint and I only use Windows to play games, I hadn't actually bothered upgrading from Windows XP until now. But Saints Row IV is going to require DirectX 10 and so I needed a new operating system. And you know what? It's OK.

I just noticed something about Joss Whedon

You know Joss Whedon, right? The guy responsible for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, etc. You've probably seen TV shows or movies he's worked on or created. But have you actually seen the guy himself?

Yahoo! Cares

I got an email recently telling me that Flickr has new features or something. As far as I was aware I had never used Flickr and didn't give two shits about its new features, so I went to the site to try to delete my account and unsubscribe. This proved more trouble than expected.

Facebook's new Scrabble

Recently, the Scrabble game available on the Facebook changed to a new version. I'm not sure why but I assume they think this one will be more profitable somehow. That doesn't bother me, I have no problem with them making money when they're providing me with a free game. What does bother me though is that the new Scrabble is shit.

"Indie" games suck

There, I said it. We've all been thinking it, but people just keep telling us that these games like Braid or Dear Esther are these wonderful stories told through a unique medium or whatever the fuck they go on about, but it's a load of shit.

Buried Hope

My first thought on finishing this book was "Where's the rest?" It doesn't really seem to actually finish, it's more like the author just stopped writing at that point and gave up.

What is there is pretty good, but I can't really say much about it, because basically all you're left with at the end is questions. Maybe it's supposed to be part one of a serialised story, but the Amazon page says nothing about that, so I'm judging it as a stand-alone story.

If a part two appears I'll almost certainly read that, but until it does I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. Read Wool Omnibus instead.

Hercule Poirot's Christmas (Hercule Poirot, #20)

Another great Poirot book, this one with a nice locked-room mystery with a clever solution.

Appointment with Death (Hercule Poirot, #19)

One of the better Poirot stories. All the pieces fall together nicely, but without anything being too obvious.

Kafka on the Shore

Odd. Easy reading and I liked bits of it, but I'm not really sure what the point was, and I found it dragged a bit in places, particularly when I was more interested in what was going on with Mr Nakata and Hoshino and instead it gave me Kafka being introspective in the forest. The incest stuff also seemed pretty unnecessary.

It wasn't hard to read and it was entertaining in places, but I don't know that I really got anything much out of it, or what I was even supposed to get.

Primordia

Primordia is a point-and-click adventure game set in the distant future, in a world in which no humans remain and the Earth is inhabited only by robots. You play as Horatio Nullbuilt and his assistant/son Crispin Horatiobuilt.

Dumb Witness (Hercule Poirot, #17)

Pretty standard Poirot mystery. Captain Hastings narrates. Not one of my favourites, but not bad.

Critical Failures

Pretty enjoyable, but felt a bit unfinished. Like, there should have been about half as much again, because the ending seemed too abrupt. Maybe it's just leaving room for a sequel or something, but my first thought on finishing was "OK, then what happens?"

The framing problem of the story was essentially resolved for the moment, and the immediate danger had passed, but it kind of leaves a lot just hanging there.

Love and Other Near-Death Experiences

Not as good as Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About or Instructions For Living Someone Else's Life but better than A Certain Chemistry. Very much in the same style as all those though.

The first two thirds of it were really good, but rather like his other books it tends to lose it a bit towards the end. There was a point where I thought it had completely come off the rails but it pulled itself back together. Several of the characters feel very familiar, particularly the protagonist, but I like those characters so that's not such a bad thing.

I liked it, but it's not his best work.

Loath Letters

Dark, bleak stories that confound your expectations in ways that are sometimes funny and sometimes terrible. The stories are very short and you could easily get through the whole thing in one sitting, but you probably shouldn't, because the more you read the more it gets to you. Quite unpleasant at times, but well worth reading. Sort of similar to Bible Camp Bloodbath, but quite distinct from it as well. The author begins the book by saying "this is not an autobiography in any way, shape or form and so your prayers aren't necessary" and you can certainly see why she needed to say that.

The Stolen Throne (Dragon Age, #1)

Pretty generic.

Jraphics Interchange Format

Why are gifs still a thing? If I want to watch a full-screen video with sound on YouTube, i just click it and it starts playing. No buffering, no loading time, no pauses or skipping, it just goes. If we can do that, why the fuck do I still have to wait so long for a low-res, silent animation?

How is there not a better format for embedding looping animations? Why has no one invented that?

Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate

Interesting subject matter, but not well-written. Chapters tend to start interesting and then just slowly grind down until suddenly it's time to start the next chapter.

Violets Are Violet

Roses and violets come in many colours
Including red and blue
A fact well known to many
Now also known to you

Catch-22

It's like a George Orwell book but played for laughs. I don't get it.

Transition (Iain M. Banks)

Odd and a little hard to follow at times, but I liked the characters. I didn't find the resolution very satisfying though.

Bossypants

Pretty funny.

The Player of Games (Culture, #2)

Not one of my favourite Culture novels, but still pretty enjoyable. I didn't much care for any of the characters, but the central concept and story were good.

The Journey Down

Today I played a relatively new adventure game called The Journey Down. I bought it based mostly on the screenshots, because it looks pretty amazing, and as far as visuals, dialogue, voice acting and music goes, it's absolutely brilliant. So it's just a pity it's not much good as a game.

I Guess That's Why They Call it the Blues

Elton John has no idea what words mean. I've listend to this song many times and I still have no idea why they call it the blues. Or what Mr John thinks "it" is that they call "the blues".

Murder in Mesopotamia (Hercule Poirot #14)

Everything occurs in a single location with a good cast of diverse suspects gathered together, and there's a classic locked room mystery and a satisfyingly surprising ending that fits all the facts neatly. I prefer the ones with no narrator, the third-person perspective, because then their personality doesn't stand between you and the story, which I feel is particularly important in a mystery, but other than that it was pretty great.

The A.B.C. Murders (Hercule Poirot, #13)

I feel that this was one of the weakest of the Poirot stories. There doesn't really seem to be much for him to do at all until nearly the end, the whole thing being very much devoid of substance. The problem with serial killers is that they don't know their victims, so you don't get the group of suspects with their various motives and secrets to analyse. In this case there isn't even much in the way of a trail of clues, so Poirot spends a lot of the book just sitting around. Waiting for the police to do the legwork, waiting for the killer to strike again and provide more clues. The case is really not suited to his methods at all, although he does of course figure it out in the end.

Speaking of the end, I found it fairly unsatisfying. The twist worked in a technical sense, but I didn't care about it at all. I guess I was just never really invested in the story or the characters, so when it turned out differently than expected it lacked impact. It could have worked much better, I feel, if Poirot had investigate each of the killings in his usual style, despite their being committed by a single person. It would have tied the ending together better and given more meat to the story.

Saints Row 4

The first trailer for Saints Row Four just came out the other day, so I discussed it with some friends.

The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

I don't understand the point of this book. It seems like the "twist" is going to be really obvious for most of it, but then at the end it just goes completely off the rails and makes no sense at all. Weird.

Phone cords

You know how you go into someone else's house or office or whatever, and for whatever reason they have a landline phone, and it's got one of those coily cables for the handset (which are great, by the way, a fantastic design). But somehow, through some horrible misuse, they've tangled it. Maybe it's just a single twist halfway along the cable, maybe it's wrapped around itself and twisted, or maybe they've just fucked it up completely.

A Battle For the Ages

My opponent was fast and cunning, and all through the evening he goaded me ceaselessly. Twice I got up to confront him, only to find him vanished, nowhere to be found. I let him escape for the time being.

This Book Is Full of Spiders (John Dies at the End, #2)

If you read John Dies at the End (or watched the film) and liked it, read this one as well. Once again David and John blunder around like idiots and end up saving the world by accident. It's creepy and funny and brilliant.

Veins

I normally like Drew's stuff (Toothpaste for Dinner, Married to the Sea, Superpoop, The Worst Things For Sale), but I don't even know what's supposed to be likeable about this. Is it meant to be funny? Are we supposed to be laughing at MR? That just seems cruel. Is it not supposed to be funny? I don't know, I didn't get it at all.

Death in the Clouds (Hercule Poirot, #12)

Not one of the better Poirot books. A little annoying how long it takes him to start investigating some pretty obvious leads, and the solution suffers for that, because it makes it feel a lot less clever than some of the other ones, but still enjoyable.

One Deadly Sister

This is a terrible book.

The Patchwork Girl of Oz (Oz, #7)

One of the better Oz books, some good characters and some interesting stuff happens, although as usual the problem is solved without any real input by the protagonist, but that's just how these book are.

The Count of Monte Cristo

This book is really good. About a third of the way through it jumps ahead a bit and you feel like you're supposed to recognise some old characters with new names, and I thought I was going to have to go look some stuff up to keep up, but just keep reading because it all comes together really well.

My only real complaint is that I would quite like to know a bit more about what happened to some of the characters, specifically Baron Danglars, Eugénie Danglars, Louise d'Armilly and Albert de Morcerf after the book ends, but that's OK.

My favourite character though is Château-Renaud, just because he keeps showing up all the time and never does anything. He's always there just so some of the more involved characters have an extra person to speak to, but he doesn't influence the plot at all and nothing happens to him, he just carries on unaffected the whole time. He's great.

Home: A Uniquely Horrible Adventure in Tedium

Home is sort of a game in that you have to press keys to make things happen on the screen, but there's really no challenge or much interactivity to it. It basically seems to bill itself as a game because if it were a short film it would be way too obvious how shitty the story is. Spoiler alert from this point on.

Chronicle

Chronicle is a movie about three teenagers who discover a mysterious thing that gives them the power of telekinesis. They soon discover that they can do some pretty impressive stuff with it, including flying and moving very heavy things.

Monkeyballz

So I was just reading the Twitters today, when this caught my eye.

Ride a cloud? I only know of one person who rides a cloud, and it's not this Goku character. Hold on, I've got to check this...

The Little Sister (Philip Marlowe, #5)

This one takes a little longer to get going than some of the others in the series, and isn't as funny, but the mystery and the noir elements are very strong and everything ties together very neatly in the end (in fact, almost too neatly). A very satisfying read though.

Farewell, My Lovely

I enjoyed this one much more than The Big Sleep. It seemed less chaotic and the solution made more sense and better accounted for all the things that happened.

How to Make Tea

A lot of people like to tell you there are a whole let of very specific rules for how you should make, serve and drink tea, and they are all idiots. Tea is not difficult. It's not complicated.

The Secret World Chronicle

This is sort of like two books in one. It starts as a series of vignettes about super heroes fighting space nazis, which is awesome, then about two thirds of the way through it flashes back thirty years to a completely unrelated story about witches and vampires, then near the end it returns to the present and is about super heroes and nazis again. Both stories are good, but they don't seem to belong in the same book.

There's also a weird inconsistency where one of the super-hero characters' name changes after the witches and vampires section with no explanation. It seems intentional but the lack of explanation is puzzling. This is the first book of a series though, so maybe it gets explained later.

If you like super-heroes you should read this book. If you're not into the supernatural stuff, you could skip the bit about witches and vampires without missing anything important, although I enjoyed that bit too.

750 Things I Wish They'd Told Me about America

The things that are unique about a country are never the things you expect. Those things tend to be pretty similar everywhere, we just like to think they're special. It's the weirdest things that turn out to be different. This book talks about some (750) of the things that are weird about America, and it is fascinating.

The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft

I only read about a third of the book, but Lovecraft's stories all seem to be pretty samey. Knowledge brings fear, progress is bad, indescribable horror, protagonist goes mad or manages to escape before they learn the terrible truth that drove someone else mad. Also, all the stories have this weird quality where they seem like they should be set about 100 years earlier than they are. It seems anachronistic when a car or a telephone appears even though it actually isn't.

The Big Sleep and Other Novels

The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye are both great, but Farewell, My Lovely is the best by far. I haven't yet read The Simple Art of Murder, Playback, Poodle Springs or The Pencil, but of the ones I have read it's by far the best, and would make this book worthwhile on its own; The other two are just icing on the cake, really.