Open Letter to Amazon
Dear Amazon,
As an avid reader and buyer of books, almost always from Amazon, I have been paying much of my limited attention to your Kindle e-reader. I find myself enthralled with the prospect of having many books right at my fingertips no matter my location. Your wireless capabilities and note-taking features are icing on the cake. I just have one really big problem. You’ve completely, utterly, and irrevocably screwed up the pricing model.
I just priced Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire and noticed that the hardcover edition shipped to me in two days is $10.50, while the Kindle edition is $8.40 and would be here within the minute. Am I to believe that printing, binding, and shipping a hardcover book only costs $2.10? Surely, the fixed costs of the hardcover edition are much higher than that. I understand that there are server costs, power costs, development costs, maintenance costs, and the like, but these are incremental costs when it comes down to an individual Kindle book. This makes me wonder what the algorithm is behind the Kindle pricing. Then, I realize it doesn’t matter.
I want a physical copy of the book. I’m just that sort of reader/collector that I need to have a tactile experience. However, if I were given the choice of paying the $10.50 for the hardcover version of Larsson’s novel and adding an additional $3.00 to receive a Kindle version immediately, I’d pay that extra $3.00 for every book I buy. Every single one. So, now, you’ve turned me into a profit center, where before, I’m not even going to contemplate the Kindle edition.
What about those folks who don’t want the printed version? Let them pay a little more. $8.40 seems high but something in the 30-40% of the current hardcover cost seems like a great compromise. That way, they pay a little less than the current price, but pay more than those of us from whom you’re making money on by way of the print editions.
This model has been working in the technology book space for quite some time. You can often buy a PDF of the book for something like 50% of the printed edition price. If you buy them together, you get a break on the digital and printed price points. The Pragmatic Bookshelf has built their entire business on this successful model.
So, please consider the “buy it in print and get a digital version” style of pricing for all of your Kindle editions. Please don’t bother me with whining about licensing. You’re the largest bookseller in the world. Why would you even listen to someone trying to talk to you about licensing? This new pricing model would instantly make me a Kindle buyer and devotee.
Sincerely,
Alex Ezell
Filed under: Books, Technology | 3 Comments
Tags: amazon, Books, kindle, pricing
The Coming Nostalgia
I’m bound for lots of the nostalgia in the coming weeks. It’s going to be an emotional flood of memories and old faces. Some of it will be bittersweet, some painful, and the lion’s share will hopefully be a great flashback.
Next weekend, I’ll be headed back to Athens to see the Grand Opening of the new Chateau of the Sigma Nu fraternity house. I was the last person to live in that house back in 1996. There has been no real fraternity house for 13 years. It will be amazing to see it come back to life. I’ll miss the old house a great deal. There are literally hundreds of stories to be told about the place. This new house, then, will need some time to develop it’s own aura. Hopefully, the guys won’t destroy the thing in the first year, but really, if I was there, I’d probably be throwing up in a toilet on night one. Because that’s what my college experience was about in the majority.
I’m going to take it back even further come the end of September. I’ll be traveling back to Rome, GA for my 15-year high school reunion at Darlington School. I can’t wait to see some old friends and meet their wives and children. I can’t wait for them to meet my son, too. It’s going to be odd because I was just working/teaching there only 3 years ago. Many of my colleagues, who were my teachers to begin with, will be there and its odd to connect with them on such different levels. As a student, they knew me in a certain way. As a colleague, they knew me in quite a different way. Of course, that goes for my impressions of and experiences with them as well.
All this will be happening as the fall descends around me. Fall always make me think back to times like the start of football season in Athens and the first days of high school, meeting all the new people and adjusting to new roommates and such. Clearly, I’ve already begun my mind trips back in time.
Filed under: General | Leave a Comment
Tags: athens, darlington school, high school reunion, nostalgia, reunion, uga
Cable News = Idiocy
I was just watching some video on CNN’s site and one of the reporters was talking about a guy being fired “without cause.” This reporter then goes on to say that “without cause is a fancy way of saying ‘for no dog-gone good reason’” which I guess is sort of true if I’m speaking to my 6 month-old son.
Is this seriously what we call news reporting now? This guy has to translate the perfectly clear English phrase “without cause” into some infantile euphemism so that some fucking dipshit who’s been in his recliner for the last 6 hours can understand it. The Cheetos and Dr. Pepper that have cemented this sorry bastard in his Barcalounger will soon coalesce into a new lifeform that’s smarter than 90% of the people presenting the news on TV.
With the death of Walter Cronkite, it’s people like this reporter who are taking over and it means the Idiocracy is closer than it was days ago.
Filed under: TV | 2 Comments
Tags: cable news, cnn, news, walter cronkite
Switching from PHP to Python
The folks at Remarkable Wit were kind enough to invite me to talk at the Enterprise LAMP group here in Nashville tonight. I choose the somewhat thorny topic of moving our application from PHP to Python, specifically Django.
I tried to be as impartial as I could because I still like PHP and write it every day. It has paid my bills for nearly a decade, so I have nothing but love for it. However, I’m very excited about the future of my coding and our application now that we’ve switched to Python/Django. I really tried to be honest about mistakes we might have made and the rough spots that we’ve encountered while also pointing out some benefits we’ve realized.
The slides are up here: http://www.slideshare.net/aezell/switching-from-php-to-python
They’ll be a little confusing without my commentary, so if there are questions, please comment and I will try to address them.
Filed under: Programming, Python, Technology | 1 Comment
Tags: django, lamp, php, Python, switching
Feedcache with memcache
I use a lot of open source tools and code in my work. In the past, I have provided a few patches and/or bug reports to some projects. I’m not sure that I’ve ever actually built new features for existing projects. It’s sad but true.
That all changes today with this commit of my working code that adds memcache caching to Doug Hellman’s handy feedcache. Feedcache is a module that adds a persistent cache to the feedparser module. If you are parsing RSS feeds, it’s nice to your users and the feed publishers to cache the feed contents on your side.
Doug’s original work was built around modules like shove and/or shelve and it works great in that way. I wanted to have my cache stored in memcache instead. So, I forked the project into feedcache-memcache.
It’s a very simple addition, all things considered. The only trick is that most of Doug’s code expects to use a dictionary-like interface to the cache. Shelve and shove provide these, but memcache, while it does use set() and get() methods, doesn’t provide a true dictionary interface. As a side project, it would be cool to add true dictionary-like methods to the python-memcache module.
With the move to memcache from something like shelve, you will lose true persistence (at least with vanilla memcache). So, keep that in mind if you need true persistence.
The tests are coming. I’m not much of a testing guy, but I know that code in the public realm like this needs it.
Let me know what you think. I’m very happy to have finally done something that I feel I can give back to a community that has done much for me.
Feedcache-memcache is available on bitbucket. I’m predominantly a git user, so if there’s something hg-specific I can do to make the repo easier to use, please let me know.
My thanks to Doug not just for his code, but for some direction he provided as I worked through his code.
Filed under: Programming, Python | Leave a Comment
Tags: feedcache, memcache, open source, Python, rss
It’s old news, but, I just recently learned that Python has decided to use Mercurial as their DVCS of choice. Guido gives some of his reasoning here. Seems like they made a choice that fits well for them. It’s sort of obvious to me they would choose something written in Python (Mercurial) over something that’s not (git), all other things being equal.
That said, Mercurial and git differ fairly significantly in my mind. I’ve been using git for nearly a year now and I really like it. It’s made my job easier, faster, and better. I only started truly working with Mercurial a few days ago and I’m surprised that there is a bit of a learning curve.
I pretty much expected to just know how to use Mercurial because of my familiarity with git. The whole DVCS thing didn’t bother me, so just learn a few commands and things should be fine. However, I was thrown off track pretty quickly by a feature in Mercurial called the patch queue. I still don’t know exactly how to use it, but I don’t need it right now. I did learn that.
Citing no specific examples, it feels to me that Mercurial and git differ pretty significantly, but they are both quality version control systems that simply fit different people’s workflows and needs.
Filed under: Programming, Python | 2 Comments
Tags: dvcs, git, hg, mercurial, Python, rambling
Geek Social Tonight
The fine folks over at Firefly Logic are hosting another Geek Social at the Flying Saucer tonight at 6pm. I’ve not been to one yet, but my buddy Justin Bird says they’re awesome. So, come on down and get some geek in you.
On an unrelated note, I’m officially done with wildlife. In the past two days, I’ve found a snake in my house, tripped over a pig, cleaned up dog piss, stepped in horse shit, been peed on by a turtle, and nearly run over a turkey. Whichever one of you environmental nerds is complaining about sprawl in Williamson County can kiss my ass. The only thing sprawling where I live is the damn bobcat I see laying on the round bales every morning.
Filed under: Technology | Leave a Comment
Tags: Geek social, wildlife
It’s the Saw Doctors, Silly
My knowledge of Irish music is a little deeper than “hey, U2 is from Ireland, right?” but even so, I’m not sure where The Saw Doctors stand in the pantheon of Irish music. That said, if they aren’t heroes in their own land, there’s a little secret I’d like to let you Irish folks in on. The Saw Doctors are simply amazing.
Any time I play The Saw Doctors for people who have never heard it, regardless of their musical tastes, they ask me who it is. There’s something undeniable about the combination of solid pop-rock songcraft and lyrics that can be both personal and universal at the same time.
Maybe it’s that timeless Celtic ring in the melodies and instrumentation that everyone the world over responds to, or maybe it’s simply the fun that’s evident even in the studio recordings. The music seems to want to make you take notice. It’s not a challenge, or a puzzle, or an aggression. It’s a welcome, an invitation to sit for a while and simply enjoy yourself.
They play almost no shows in the US, except for an occasional festival show in Hyannis, MA and one in NYC. So, if you’re ever anywhere near a Saw Doctors show in the UK, please go and tell me how it is. I wish I could make the trip to see them.
Filed under: Music | Leave a Comment
Tags: irish music, saw doctors
My son’s shit smells bad. Not just adult shit bad, like after a night of Pabst and Papa John’s, but bad like Death’s rotten breath is being expelled out of this 16 pound bundle of love.
Somehow the work of the Fates have made it so that I have changed the last 5 or 6 dirty diapers. I’m certain my wife plans it this way. I’m beginning to wonder if the aquamarine stink glue that I find in his diaper isn’t some sort of ectoplasmic discharge from beyond the mortal veil.
I have a pretty strong stomach, but this stuff makes me have to turn my head and take deep breaths over my shoulder. It’s a clinging, thick sort of smell that seems to climb on board and just remind you it’s there every few minutes, even after you’ve left the room. Imagine duct taping a tub of chicken livers that have been sitting in the sun for three days right under your nose. It’s not quite that bad, but it doesn’t make it any better knowing that.
I’ve heard stories about how bad baby shit is and I thought, “Could it be much worse than what I might have run into living in a fraternity house?” The answer is an emphatic yes, if for no other reason than I have no choice but to face down that dung demon and demolish it with a healthy handful of baby wipes. It probably makes it worse that he laughs and smiles through pretty much the entire process of hazardous waste disposal.
He is the cherub of crap, the pontiff of poop, a veritable scion of shit. I couldn’t love him any more all the same.
Filed under: Parenting | 1 Comment
Tags: baby, crap, poop, shit
Ain’t No Sunshine
I’ve just started reading Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow and it’s a dense piece of work. I’m intrigued by the style and I’m well aware that Pynchon is considered by many to be an American master, but the book hasn’t really grabbed me yet. The density and veracity of every sensation in the book tends to overwhelm me. I find my reading to be very slow and I’m poring over every word like poetry.
I feel somewhat the same way about Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano which I’ve only gotten halfway through. Lowry’s early twentieth century Mexico is more intriguing to me than the England of World War II. Yet, Pynchon’s characters seem to be of their place, whereas Lowry’s are decadent and intentional outsiders. Lowry’s Mexico is a playground and a gutter where his characters stumble through their self-destruction. I’m hopeful that Pynchon’s characters have a less fatalistic view of the world despite the ever-present danger of the buzz bomb and the V2 rocket in their lives.
After having conquered Peter Mathiessen’s epic Shadow Country (perhaps, the best American novel, ever), I feel like I may bounce between both of these novels and see how they play off of each other. I might just restart the Under the Volcano and read them somewhat side by side. Something about it makes me think they’d work well together.
Those of you looking for jokes and rants will just need to wait until another day. I can only drop gold so often. I have to refuel with some culture now and again.
Filed under: Books | Leave a Comment
Tags: Gravity's rainbow, lowry, mathiessen, pynchon, shadow country, under the volcano
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