Well it’s been a pretty hectic week, starting with my good friend [boB’s] birthday celebrations up in Nottingham. Despite my last minute concerns that my ‘pipe and slippers’ present may not go down too well, the old man seemed very happy with them :)

There was also a midweek visit to [West Quay] to get myself some new pre-ordered slippers (after being very jealous of the ones I got boB) as it seems [Marks and Spencer] have done away with shoe sizes, deciding instead that every will now have size 9 feet only.

Finally I did some experimenting with eBooks, which you can now borrow from [Hampshire libraries]. Sadly though, the books use [Adobe Digital Editions] DRM protection so that you can only read the book for 2 weeks.

This DRM system is not compatible with the [Amazon Kindle]. So in order to actually read the book I had to remove the DRM, which can be easily achieved using [a few scripts], so that the un-encrypted PDF can be transferred to the Kindle and read. This seems a little stupid, though I see the benefit of only being able to read it for two weeks, but seriously eReader makers, sort this out!

Now, I was doing this online, via the library catalogue. So perhaps there is a slightly different system actually in the library. Perhaps one where you take in your eReader device, the unencrypted PDF is transferred to it, and then you have 2 weeks to read it, or renew it, before you need to bring back the device for them to delete the book.

Anyways, I’ll be bringing my Kindle to work on Monday so show it to some of the soon-to-be retirees what it’s like :)

And just as a final though, some friends and I were having a chat in our tea room about what internet memes will be like in 15 years or so, and how we’re going to have some real problems explaining [lol cats] to our kids…

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

DAD: oh man this is funny
CHILD: What? It’s just a sleepy cat you idiot
DAD: {cries}

:)