- I'm missing a place that can hold things I'd like to share that do not necessarily fit in ongoing discussions or warrant a thread of their own.
- My participation in the new Plotkin MMG offers an occasion to experiment with ways of contributing to the public forum from that angle and of upholding the commitment to avoid darknetting ERE. I feel some more personal material could be shared here in addition and dialog to other related places such as the Plotkin MMG, Ecology MMG and Bill Plotkin Discusion threads.
- I can still stay silent for some period if I need the pause/disconnect
- I'm entering a prolonged period of wandering into the unknown, and while I don't want to anticipate the directions and forms this will take, I acknowledge it marks an ending and a beginning, which is cause for symbolic celebration. I still have no new "story" to share, but one may emerge organically as life unfolds and various threads are followed.
For the curious or those wishing a refresher, old one's here.
ERE
So far, ERE has helped radically simplify my life and unlock possibilities not envisioned before, discover great resources (books and otherwise), gravitate towards a more integrated (and eventually complex/rich) lifestyle, take on a more wholistic/systems-theory-informed perspective, and direct my energy towards what makes me feel alive and better aligns with my drive(s) and values. It's been also helping expose myself to different, thought-provoking perspectives and inspiring living examples, and I'm continuously grateful for that.
ALONE AGAIN
I'm alone again, having ended a beautiful long-term relationship, not for lack of mutual love and caring, but to respond to an inner "call", which didn't make matters more easy or less painful, although I've been doing my best to support this transition for everyone involved. It's been a good occasion of further cultivating the North facet of the Self (the Nurturing Generative Adult [Plotkin - Wild Mind]) we're currently exploring with the MMG, and acting from a place of mature broad(er) vision, compassion, loving-kindness and fierce support, both to myself and the other, while also remaining emotionally available.
And now for something else I'd like to share:
AN ODE TO AUDIO READING/LISTENING
For me, audiobooks (and audio content in general) have been a game changer. What surprised me a few years ago was how more vividly than expected I was able to recollect the content read that way. Initial doubts were soon dispelled. In my experience, audio reading holds quite well in comparison to visual reading, although it feels quite different (for instance, listening is often tied to a memory of place). I'd put it almost on par with visual reading, although the often suboptimal listening conditions somewhat impact the quality of the result. But this is also a strength: you simply have a lot more opportunities to read something when your eyes are not glued on a screen. And you can always rewind, adjust playback speed or simply choose something less demanding in a given circumstance. Or combine both worlds. If your goal is immersion in the wilderness, and being mindfully present, you'd better put these earphones away, but there are situations where you can be quite aware of surroundings or perform a non-demanding action while listening. Running is the prime example for me, where I can still check my breath, technique and aware vision while listening. You can also relax and enjoy listening without combining it with other activities. At any rate, the result is that I end up reading more without necessarily adding screen time.
NO AUDIOBOOK? NO PROBLEM (@VOICE ALOUD READER)
Well produced fiction audiobooks (or even theater plays, or podcasts) can be a joy to listen to. However, most of what I'm reading nowdays falls under the non-fiction label. And here, there's often no audio version readily available.
For those in a similar situation, I'd like to share a book listening solution that works well for me. Well enough.
The app I use is called @Voice Aloud Reader and it's free, with just some ad footer (which you can remove with something like Blokada or pay for the Premium version). To my knowledge, its for Android phones only. There are probably similar apps for iOS though.
Official page: https://www.hyperionics.com/atvoice/
This app is very feature-rich. For instance, you can:
- Read and listen to (playlists of) web pages (or articles from Pocket) and various local files, including text, PDF (with text extraction or OCR), DOC, DOCX, RTF, OpenOffice documents, HTML files, and of course eBooks in the EPUB/MOBI/FB2 formats.
- Record spoken articles as sound files in WAV (uncompressed) or OGG (compressed) formats.
- Access dictionaries, translations, Wikipedia, and web search with a long-press on any word or phrase.
- Adjust speech generator volume, pitch, and speech rate as well as other options to your preference.
- Use Android local Text-to-speech voices, or if you want - cloud voices from Google (WaveNet), Amazon (Polly TTS) or Microsoft (Azure TTS). Note that the cloud voices are paid services by Google, Amazon or Microsoft, respectively, although each of them offers some free usage monthly.
Here are some personal recs:
- I highly recommend you give Microsoft (Azure TTS) voices a go. There are many voices options, and some actually pretty good, the best of the lot in my view. In-app instructions are provided for obtaining an API key. So far, I've never hit the free monthly usage limit, so it is basically free even if you may need to enter billing details.
- Cloud voices require an Internet connection, and the local Google voices are not so good/tend to get on my nerves. There are ways to install locally older IVONA TTS Engine voices (such as Kendra [US], Amy [UK] or Celine [FR] that are now part of Amazon Polly TTS. I've found download links on a Reddit thread. With that, you can still have a decent audio voice quality when offline. Alternatively, you can buy and use offiline voices.
- For PDF Text Import, you can use HTML, with or without images instead of Plain text, and when needed, touch the PDF icon to follow along the "PDF" version instead of the onscreen text.
- The app is actually a pretty good scroll-down text reader, when you need to alternate voice with visual reading, or combine both.
For visual reading, however, my favorite has to be KOReader. It's available for Kindle, Kobo, PocketBook, Android and desktop Linux.
I use it both on my phone and on the laptop, and I had it on my Kobo as well before it broke.
Be sure to check the user guide, as the interface can be a bit confusing at first. Many options and possibilities, including exporting highlights to markdown, etc.
This app is the best I know for rendering PDFs. By setting the orientation to landscape, and "manually" (like explicitly) selecting Page crop > Auto, you can read most PDFs even on a smartphone screen (which can be handy in at least some situations).
CALIBRE FOR EBOOK MANAGEMENT
Calibre is a great desktop app for managing/searching your ebook/PDF collection and editing book metadata, including tags. If you don't use it and have a sizeable document collection, maybe you should!
WHAT ABOUT DRM?
All these apps don't support DRM, though, so the elephant in the room question is: What about ebooks with DRM?
Well, you can use them for DRM-free content and also for "liberated" ebooks.
To my knowledge, removing DRM for personal use isn't illegal, although (it can be a hassle and) doing so in order to distribute copyrighted material usually or most certainly is.
Depending on the ebook vendor, there may be working solutions, including some external Calibre plugin(s).