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books, annex, backups

On E-Books

The Kindle Paperwhite has been my primary medium for consuming books since the beginning of 2014. E Ink is a great display technology that I wish was more wide spread, but beyond the fact that the Kindle (and I assume other e-readers) makes for a pleasant reading experience, the real value in electronic books is storage.

At its peak my physical collection was somewhere north of 200 books. As I mentioned years ago I took inspiration from Gary Snyder’s character in The Dharma Bums and stored my books in milk crates, which stack like a bookcase for normal use and kept the collection pre-boxed for moving. But that many books still take up space, and are still annoying to move. And in some regards they are fragile – redundant data storage is expensive in meatspace.

My digital library currently sits at 572 books and 13 gigabytes (the size skyrocketed after I began to archive a few comics). I could not justify that many physical books in my life. I still have a collection of dead trees, but I’m down to 3 milk crates. I store my digital library in git-annex, allowing me to redundantly replicate my collection across the globe, as well as keep copies in cold storage. I also burn yearly optical backups of the library to M-DISC. The library is managed with Calibre.

When I first bought the Kindle it required internet access to associate with my Amazon account. Ever since then, it has been in airplane mode. I spun up a temporary wireless network for the setup that I then deleted after the process was complete, ensuring that even if Amazon’s airplane mode was untrustworthy, the device would not be able to phone home. The advantages of giving the Kindle internet access seem minute, and are far outweighed by the disadvantage of having to trust Amazon.

If I purchase a book from Amazon, I select the “Download & Transfer via USB” option. This results in a crippled AZW file. I am under the radical delusion that I should own what I purchase, so I import that file into Calibre using the DeDRM_tools plugin. This strips any DRM, making the book ready to be consumed and archived. Books are transferred between my computer and the Kindle via USB, which Calibre makes simple.

When I acquire books through other channels, my preferred format is always EPUB: an open format that is simply a zip archive of HTML files. Calibre’s built-in conversion tools are quite good, giving me confidence that any e-book format I import into the library will be readable at any point in the future, but my preference is to store data in formats that are open, accessible, and understandable. The closer one gets to well-formatted plain text, the closer one gets to god.

While the Kindle excels at the linear reading of novels, I’ve also come to appreciate digital copies of reference books and technical manuals. Often the first reading of these types of books involves lots of flipping back and forth, which is easier in the dead tree variant, but after that first reading the searchability of the digital copy is far more useful for reference. The physical size of these types of books also makes them even more difficult to carry and store than other books, all but guaranteeing you won’t have access to them when you need to reference them. Digital books solve that problem.

I’m confident in my ability to securely store digital data. Whenever I import a book into my library, I know that I now have permanent access to that knowledge for the rest of my life, regardless of environmental disaster, the whims of publishing houses, or the size of my living quarters.

books, quote

Thrilling Developments in the Art of Folding

I few months ago I read Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. It’s not the sort of book that usually finds its way into my library, but it had been recommended periodically by a handful of different people over a year or two. I found the book to be disappointing. Many of the pages struck me as fluff – clutter, you might say, which is ironic given its subject. Edited down to a pamphlet of a dozen pages, or perhaps a short series of blog posts, it could be enjoyable, but there isn’t enough content for a book.

The one thing I did take away from the book is folding. Kondo recommends folding things such that they stand on edge in the drawer rather then being stacked on top of each other. This way all the contents of the drawer are visible at once, instead of only the things on the top of a stack.

The goal should be to organize the contents so that you can see where every item is at a glance, just as you can see the spines of the books on your bookshelves. The key is to store things standing up rather than laid flat… The number of folds should be adjusted so that the folded clothing when standing on edge fits the height of the drawer. This is the basic principle that will ultimately allow your clothes to be stacked on edge, side by side, so that when you pull open your drawer you can see the edge of every item inside.

This made sense to me. Unfortunately, the combination of having a walk-in closet in my apartment and not owning much in the way of furniture means I don’t actually fold many of my clothes. Most things end up being hanged (a Kondo no-no). I fold some less-seasonally appropriate clothing for storage in Transport Cubes (another Kondo no-no) and I fold larger things like sheets and towels for storage in underbed boxes, but neither of those really lend themselves to this method of folding.

One of the few pieces of furniture I do find useful enough to own is a filing cabinet. I keep socks in the large bottom drawer and underwear in the middle drawer. The top drawer holds an assortment of bandannas, hand wraps, and some seasonally appropriate head and neck wear. After reading the book, I dumped out all the socks and underwear and folded them to Kondo’s specifications.

It is definitely an improvement. Previously I rolled socks together, which is not very efficient in terms of volume (and disrespectful to the sock, according to Kondo). The drawer was overfilling. A pair or two would frequently fall behind the back of the drawer, where I would forget about it until I happened to notice that the drawer was no longer closing all the way.

Folded this way, everything fits. Immediately upon opening the drawer I can take stock. As with all clothing categories, I have different types of socks and different types of underwear, each more or less appropriate for different applications. A quick glance in the drawer lets me know what I have available, and when it may be time to address the laundry pile.

Thrilling.

books, micro

Currently reading Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald.

The novel tells the story of dynasties struggling for power on the moon, which has been settled and turned into a mining colony. It has been described as “Game of Thrones in space”. While I have not read Game of Thrones, that seems like a roundabout way of saying that it is like another series that deals with the struggles of feudal families mining resources in space. Luna is much like Dune – even up to including a female religious order interested in long term breeding programs and social experiment (funded by The Long Now, of course). Fans of classic science fiction will likely feel at home in its pages. I look forward to the sequel.

books, micro, conflict

Currently reading The New Spymasters by Stephen Grey.

The book begins with an overview of espionage immediately before, during, and shortly after the Cold War, before moving on to the role played by Western intelligence agencies in the current millenium. Grey contrasts the earlier focus on human intelligence with the growing dependency on signals intelligence and assassination programs, and makes a compelling case for the need to return to a balanced approach with a focus on traditional spy running.

The dichotomy is reminiscent between that of the longer-term, unconventional warfare practiced by US Special Forces and the direct action focus of other Special Operations Forces as discussed by Tony Schwalm.

books, micro

Currently reading Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa.

The book presents a fictionalized portrait of the life of Miyamoto Musashi. It is an epic novel, exploring the development of many of the concepts and themes which Musashi codified at the end of his life in The Book of Five Rings.

Musashi Miyamoto with two Bokken

books, micro

Currently reading The Black Banners by Ali Soufan.

In his decade at the FBI, Soufan developed an expertise in al-Qadea, investigating the Kenyan embassy bombing, Jordan millennium pole, attack on the USS Cole, and the September 11th attacks. The book is a history of al-Qaeda, beginning with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, as well as a memoir of the author’s experience investigating the organization. It is a well-written, intriguing read that offers a different insight into familiar stories. I was inspired to read it after subscribing to the The Soufan Group‘s daily IntelBriefs and have not been disappointed.

books

A Tradecraft Primer

The CIA’s A Tradecraft Primer is a brief introduction to critical thinking and structured analysis. Its techniques are not limited to intelligence, but instead are applicable to any field where the bias of preconceived notions may cause harm. Its short length makes it a worthwhile read – I read it in a little over an hour while waiting for a plane – particularly as an adjunct to publications like Red Team Journal.

A Tradecraft Primer

micro, books

Currently reading A Song Called Youth by John Shirley

Shirley’s cyberpunk magnum opus tells the story of a private security company attempting to use the distraction of a third world war to impose fascism across the United States and Europe, and the guerrillas who resist them. Although first published in the 1980s, the omnibus edition was refreshed by the author for publication in 2012, which gives it the feel of taking place 20 minutes into the future.