Quick Kindle DX Pic

Here's a quick pic of the Kindle DX displaying the letters page from Kobold Quarterly #8. Of course the pic was taken with my iPhone under bad lighting, but the formatting is perfect and size of the print is doable, but many would probably prefer to rotate it to a landscape display for larger print.

Kindle DX - First Impressions

Wow. I'm actually holding the Kindle DX. It is significantly larger then the kindle but about 1 1/2 inches shorter and 2 1/2 inches narrower then the Castles & Crusades leatherette Players Handbook. It's about as thick as the C&C Players Handbook without the case. With the standard black leather kindle case it is a bit thicker then the C&C Players Handbook but not by much.

First thing I did after plugging it into my PC to charge was to copy over the Labyrinth Lord and OSRIC PDFs. Both look very clear and very readable although the print is relatively small. However, if you turn the Kindle DX in a horizontal orientation, the DX recognizes the change and the PDF displays in landscape, making the print even more readable (it does split the page into top and bottom tho.)

I'm not sure how portable the DX is over all... as in will I use it to go to work with me on a daily basis or will it be used mostly for an at home, in the yard or on vacation method to read PDFs in their native format.

Overall, I am VERY impressed and VERY happy with my purchase.

We have delivery!

The package arrived at 1258. First impressions of the Amazon Kindle DX after I get home and have a chance to play with it.


-- Post From My iPhone

Kindle DX Countdown - shipping today

Amazon still indicated a June 11th delivery date, but I have yet to receive notification that it shipped. Hopefully I'll be posting first impressions tomorrow nite.

edit: just was notified it shipped, delivery date is 6/11. woot!

Free Sci-Fi and Fantasy Ebooks

I wanted to post this before I forgot. Baen Publishing has released a large number of ebooks from their library for free.

Baen.com/library/

I'll add this to the links when I get a chance. Enjoy the free reads (except bri, he needs to pay). Heh.

-- Post From My iPhone

Who is Tenkar?

Tenkar is my alternate identity, my game face if you will. In the D&D campaign I ran during college he was the party's main henchman - a kick ass dwarven fighter with attitude and an abundence of party loyalty.

Flash forward to the early years of Everquest and he becomes a dwarven paladin. Stubby little legs pumping away on my computer screen after one too many corpse runs.

These days he is a dwarven cleric in a weekly Castles & Crusades game I play in. He has a tendency to fight on the front lines as often as the fighters in the party. He swings a pretty nasty mace. He just hit 3rd level before the game's summer break took effect.

So who is Tenkar? He's a dwarf that kicks Ass! You've been warned ;)


-- Post From My iPhone

A Plethora of PDFs

I truly have a plethora of PDFs. If I printed all of them out, not only would I kill multiple printers I'd probably get fined for being a fire hazard. I have them on my hard drive, my back up external drive, a portable external drive, on flash drives, on SD cards, on my Sony 505 e-book reader, my Nokia 810 internet device, my iPhone... I'm sure I'm missing a thing or two on that list.

What does all that mean? It means I can rarely find the PDF I want when I want it.

Why? Because 9 out of 10 publishers of PDFs don't give it a descriptive title (something that Windows from XP on handles very well). Nope, instead of calling the file "Killer Dungeon for 3e ver a" they use "kd010" if you are lucky. Many times it seems its just a random selection of letters and numbers that leave you scratching your head as you open multiple PDFs in the hopes of finding the one that you've been hankering to read for the last 2 nites.

I know, I should be downloading in an orderly fashion to sorted folders just for that reason. It is not in human nature to do so... the vast majority of us dump our downloaded documents in the "Document Folder" and then curse our inability to navigate the sea of seemingly randomly named files.

I think I'll need to spend some time on my vacation sorting this mess out.

Then again, I'm the same guy who has hardly sorted out his bookmarks in Firefox. That's my own mess tho'. The PDF mess is not mine alone.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Kindle DX Countdown - 2 days to shipping

The plan is to have some pics and a review up by mid day Saturday, tho I might have first impressions posted Thursday evening.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Dice - Why do we find them so much fun?

Seriously, why do we? As gamers they are a tool to determine success or failure. You really only need one set. So why do I have hundreds of dice of all shapes, sizes, colors and makings? Heck, I haven't played a face to face game of D&D, or any other RPG in over a decade, yet every year or so I buy more dice? Why?

All the major VTTs have random number generators. Fantasy Grounds wrapped theirs in a nifty visual virtual dice rolling feature. Maybe that is part of the key to their success. Heck, last year when WotC was showing off their pre-alpha of their 3d VTT they borrowed their dice pic from Fantasy Grounds.

There you have it, I have more dice then I can ever use (and I'm not currently using) and the dice I do use regularly are virtual dice in Fantasy Grounds. Heck, I even have a couple of dice apps on my iPhone.

Guess I'm some form of a "dice" addict. ;)