If you're new here, hello. If you're not new here... I'm sorry. Anyway, for those new here, my blog gets its name from one of my favorite H.P. Lovecraft stories, In the Walls of Eryx. It's not an especially well-liked story by Lovecraft fans, partly for being one of his few full-blooded sci-fi stories (broadly speaking, he was a horror writer), but also for its own premise creating a plot hole big enough for a spaceship to barrel through while twirling a cane. Without getting into a full synopsis of the story, it's about a guy trapped in an invisible maze. He makes several good attempts at trying to map his way through, but the maze is in a muddy swamp, making footprints impossible to follow as they get filled in almost immediately. He even tries using the mud to mark the walls of the maze only for it to slide down and leave the surface completely immaculate.
If you've already spotted the plot hole, give yourself 3 points. If you're having a little trouble, don't feel bad; I didn't spot it until someone pointed it out to me, long after I'd written fan fiction for it. Here's a hint, at one point our hero tries digging under the walls to no avail. So, the wall goes down into the mud. Isn't it going to leave an impression? It's invisible, not incorporeal. At any point, our hero can literally see the entirety of the maze's outline in the mud.
Ironically, making the floor mud instead of something solid like stone was probably meant to cover up a potential plot hole of our protagonist being able to properly mark his path on the floor. The mud, however, only really kicks a can down the road. That said, this doesn't seem to spoil anyone's fun. It certainly doesn't spoil mine.
The story is told in a first-person narrative, the events being recorded on what is called a Decay-Proof Record Scroll.
Said scroll is never described in any great detail beyond it being metallic and also "revolving" implying it might be cylindrical. It is called a "scroll" after all. On that note, isn't the idea of Amazon calling an electronic book a "kindle" a little weird? Granted, they don't mean "kindle" in the literal sense of starting a fire, more in the sense of inspiring awe and wonder. Nonetheless, I can't help but think of an episode of Red Dwarf wherein the leads contemplate the ethics of burning books in order to keep warm while marooned on a frozen celestial body.
I've had my Mobiscribes for about two weeks now, and my impression of them remains positive. As of this writing, I have two of the black and white models, one to keep at home, the other for work (brought home on the weekends to charge, if necessary), and I actually have a third one on the way. It's the color model, and I'm curious to see how it looks. I should point out that the reason I've gone on this little shopping spree is that the tablets are steeply discounted on the Mobiscribe website for the holiday season. Even at their full prices, they're still the most affordable e-note option compared to the ReMarkable or the anything from Onyx Boox.
Much like In the Walls of Eryx, the Mobiscribe isn't a particularly well-liked e-note offering, with tech blog Good E Reader calling the color version the worst eReader of 2023. To be completely fair to them, they are exceptionally thorough in their reviews and, as much of a cliche as it sounds, truly have their finger on the pulse of the electronic paper space. Onyx Boox's offerings in particular are no slouches when it comes to specifications and performance. They're essentially Android tablets that just so happen to have an electronic paper display instead of LCD or OLED. Of course, just because you can run YouTube on it, doesn't make it watchable. The refresh rate of an e-paper display is glacially slow compared to the 60 or 120 hertz of an iPad screen. As for the Mobiscribe, while its specs are definitely not on the level of an Onyx Boox, they don't need to be.
When it comes to e-paper devices, the guiding philosophy behind them is digital minimalism. They're not as full-featured as an iPad, but that's the whole point. All you're supposed to do on an Amazon Kindle is read books. Even the ability to stream audiobooks through them is practically an afterthought. I can run Android apps on my Mobiscribe, but the results have been borderline laughable. Even something low key like Google Keep (a sticky note app) is unusable beyond reading the notes I've already posted there. Of course, why would I need Google Keep when the Mobiscribe has a note taking experience baked in that's optimized for the hardware? Sure, having my notes immediately available in the Google ecosystem is great, but is it always necessary? Even getting Google's Play Store up and running on the Mobiscribe is an obstacle course. It even comes pre-loaded with an instructional PDF on how to do it, complete with a "cheat code" for speeding it up. The best way I can describe the process is: when you think you've messed up, that means you did it right.
It's certainly been refreshing, and made me realize how absolutely spoiled I am on Apple and even Amazon products that simply work right out of the box with little to no input on my part.
No comments:
Post a Comment