1635 Master Lock.

by

Do any of you have an Audible account? how exactly does it work? I’m too lazy to look it up myself. XD m

I asked for a Kindle for Xmas because Ipads are too expensive and restrictive with their shitty “We don’t allow expandable memory” bullshit. They’re really nice, but too much about them is just straight up price gouging. My one is so old it can’t do anything anymore, but I also can’t afford the ridiculous pricing, nor can any of my family. The Kindle Fire HD is less than 100$, sometimes far less with their sales and stuff. Certainly not perfect, but a person can upgrade reasonably every few years. Also, they have the Viz Manga app so I can read my comics on there that I bought on my ipad which it has too little memory to hold.
It’s super Amazon branded and leashed to that company, obviously, which is a little annoying. At the same time it’s kind of nice to have my Amazon account integrated into it. I don’t want it for games, I want it for when I want to do stuff when my surface is too bulky to be a reasonable option. Essentially what my ipad was for. Saldy plants versus zombies is not available for the kindle, which is the only tablet game worth playing, Not that the point of the thing is games, I just really like PVZ.
Anyway, I want to do audiobooks because I’m never going to sit down and read when I could be working. I’ve never been able to convince myself it’s worth the expense though. So sell me on it if you can.

I really love my apple products, but apple clearly doesn’t like its users. I’ve never been able to get their tech support to help me, I’ve always had to solve problems on my own. The price gouging on memory is unconscionable. I don’t like the way save files are handled for games. At the same time, my IPhone is the only cell phone I’ve ever actually liked. I can hear people on it, the texting works, email works, social media, my website… It’s a great phone, but a stilted multimedia device. Boiling down to the damn lack of memory, which is really what pissed me off enough to give up on the ipad.

A friend of mine who loves Star Wars saw Rogue One and was so disappointed. It’s funny how much he dislikes the new stuff to me because he loves the old stuff so much but clearly feels betrayed by the new things on some level. Not LOL funny, more like, ironically funny in a sad way. The evolution of his fandom is something I watched from the outside so it’s sad seeing it get more and more tarnished as we get older.
I’ve finally come to the conclusion that the star wars movies in the Disney era are going to always be something you only enjoy as long as you turn the critical part of your brain off, which our culture no longer encourages. Once you enjoy something the entire internet pours all the logic over you that ruins mindless fun.

I haven’t even seen the movie and I already know everything stupid about it. Hopefully I’ve trained myself enough to enjoy it that first time then slowly I can grow to hate it as time passes. XD

36 Comments

That is a truly predatory smile of hers.

After her comment of “rewarding” him in the other comic – and hoping that she could call him “master” in this one – it makes me really hope they have the “exclusive or not” discussion and soon, or else Jo’s heart is going get broken eventually.

It may get broken regardless.

I’m getting the feeling that Jess is already thinking it’s a poly relationship, with Brooksie previously talking about loving various people so much (albeit not being in that kind of relationship with any of them) to her. But I bet you’re right, that they need to talk about it directly before differing assumptions drive a stake between them.

Unfortunately, I liked Rogue One. It’s a well-done story that does an adequate job of showing us how the Death Star plans could have gotten into Leia’s hands. The first third had a little bit too much fan service/easter eggs/nods to other movies for my taste (made it feel like a fan-made movie at that point), but after we got that out of the way, it settled down to a good old-fashioned “plucky band of misfits vs. the Empire” story. All-in-all, it will be a welcome addition to my video library (do you think it will come out on Laserdisc?)

I think i’ll like it too, but will feel a little dumb for liking it after a while like with force awakens. At this point I’m just glad clone wars and rebels are so good so I always have them to enjoy.

My one disappointment with Rogue One?
Even though they had several opportunities, the sound department never used a “Wilhelm Scream.”

Actually, I’m pretty sure I caught at least one “Wilhelm Scream” from one of the storm troopers in the city fight on Jedha. During one of the first explosions.

Actually, I’m pretty sure I caught at least one “Wilhelm Scream” from one of the storm troopers in the city fight on Jedha. During one of the first explosions.

I was kind of impressed with how well it meshed with “ANew Hope! It did explain quite well the rather glaring issues I had with that Episode.

Audible is a subscription service. You pay $15 a month, which gives you 1 “credit” you can use that credit to buy a book. Does the book normally cost $50? Doesn’t matter, you can get it for one credit.

You can also buy books at their normal or sale price. They have lots of sales, so you can get decent books for only 5 bucks. Just make sure you don’t waste a credit one book that’s on sale.

Oh, and if you’re reading a book on the Kindle app that has “Whispersync” that means that if you listen to some of the audiobook (bought separately) in he car, then want to read more at home, the book remembers where you left off on the audio side, and goes to that page in the book. Next time you get in the car, the audiobook picks up on the last page you read.

There’s also a $20 dollar service which gets you two credits and you can buy them in packa of 3 for $38 I believe after you’ve used them. You don’t need to have a subscription though. It uses your existing amazon account and if you want you can just pay the price for any audiobooks you want. Depending on how often you plan to get them/listen depends which way is cheaper. Personally, I have the $20 and often buy extra credits. It also keeps track of where you are in a boom across multiple devices

Audible – if you have an Amazon account, you’re already signed up. If you sign up properly, you’ll get a free book right off (two if you use one of those “special offers” that are everywhere), reduced rates on others, and a recurrent charge on your account that pays for a book a month.

The catch is that the DRM is a nightmare. I signed up to listen in the car, but you can only do that if you either have a very specific model or burn a CD, and you can only burn a CD if you’re on Windows or Mac. I wound up cancelling my subscription before my first charge, and listening to my free books while writing, which was too distracting to really be worth it.

Some devices now have text-to-speech that’s usable. Not as good as having an actual human reading the text, but I don’t find it horrible to listen to or hard to understand. If you can get the plain-text of a book, you can listen to it.

Rogue One… (no spoilers ahead, just Tropes in General Terms, and several complaints)…

Lots and lots of action. So much action that there’s really not much room for plot, and certainly no room for character development. As a Star Wars movie, it was a great Transformers movie.

At the start, there were way too many names and circumstances mentioned – I found it distracting and hard to keep track of, and I didn’t see that most of them mattered to the story.

Near the end, someone was trying to Accomplish a Very Important Thing, and there was one Peril after another delaying the Thing being Accomplished, to the point that I – in the middle of the movie – thought, “Oh, so that’s what the screenwriters are doing! Did they really need to add another one? I wonder how many more there will be?”

And there were quite a few acts of stupidity. At one moment, a Major Character does something Massively Destructive (of his own side’s resources!) while attempting to thwart their enemy (and that doesn’t even succeed in thwarting them!); a few moments later, the same Character reacts to a helpless enemy with such (completely unnecessary) finesse and delicacy that the enemy succeeds in a Major Accomplishment, which would have been prevented by acting much more destructively.

Typo: “fairwell” and “fair” should probably be “farewell” and “fare”.

Lotta good audible tips. Just don’t forget to find your free book promo. They are everywhere. I believe rooster teeth and all their affiliates still plug them every podcast.

The Brandond Sanderson Podcast usually has a free one too, I think it’s writing excuses. They’ll usually spotlight a book.

Audible is a decent service. I’ve gotten several free books, and paid for several more. The voice acting is usually top notch, though I will admit there’s at least one actor I’d avoid if he wasn’t contracted for one of my favorite series. (sigh) I find the regular prices of the books steep, but if there’s one I really want, and it’s not on sale. I activate my account for one month, get the credit, get the book, then cancel. All no hassle.

The audible app allows you to access your library across many devices. and they synch between each device so you don’t have to search for where you left off.

I have an Audible account and I absolutely love it.

It’s based on your Amazon account. It does use DRM, but it’s pretty easy to authorize and deauthorize devices through your Amazon account. I currently have mine set up on three tablets and four smart phones with no permissions issues.

You can download the books to your phone, or stream them. I always download when I’m home with wifi, then listen to the downloaded titles on the road. I use my phone speaker to listen, as I am not an audiophile and vocal quality isn’t a major issue to my ears.

You can subscribe, or not subscribe, at your discretion. I have a $22.95/month subscription, which gets me two new books per month. Your purchases never expire. I have been getting new books for the past six years, so I have quite a collection now.

You get “credits” based on your level of subscription. Each credit = one book, regardless of book list price. You can also purchase books individually. I usually only use my credits for books that cost $20 or more, that way I get $40 worth of books for my $23 subscription. I sometimes shell out extra for books under $10. The Wheel of Time series, for example, is something like $40+ per book. I used credits for those. The Purloined Poodle, a recent Kevin Hearne short story, is $1.99. I didn’t use a credit for that and just bought it separately.

I have used Audible on Android devices only, so I can’t speak for its Apple-friendliness. I’ve used it on Samsung phones, Amazon tablets, and a Google Pixel.

Audiobooks are stupid expensive, which is why I borrow mine from the library. Most public libraries these days have purchased audiobooks that they can lend out to patrons if the patrons install the proper free app on their device. For example, my local public library uses the Overdrive platform; all I had to do was download the Overdrive app, find my public library system, set up an count with my email address and punch in my library card number to get thousands of free ebooks and audiobooks. They’re mine for two weeks at a time and if I recall correctly, even if I don’t finish one in the allotted time it remembers where I left off so I can pick it back up when I check it out again. And if your local public library is too small to do audiobooks, try your state library or capital/major city public library system. I live in NY and even though I don’t live in NYC, the NY Public Library will let anyone in the state borrow their electronic stuff.

There’s also the * * free * * thing that most U.S. libraries can do, which is- the inter-library loan system /inter-library loaning.

In I.L.L., you can ask your library to search in the libraries in its system, and in State and Federal libraries, for- a paper book, or audio book, or dvd, etc., and then your library can ask another library to lend you the audiobook, or other item, that you want to listen to.

Using the I.L.L. is usually free with your membership, at your local library.

Maybe other countries do interlibrary loaning, too.

I also use my library to get audio books and play them through Overdrive. My library is part of a state-wide online lending system. I love it because I can be anywhere and download a book. They have both ebooks and audio books available, so I can pick which I want based on the situation.

As far as Audibly goes, I haven’t ever used the service, but I know people that have and I’ve never heard a complaint (that didn’t boil down to the price, anyway… because as other people have mentioned, that price point can be brutal…. Especially up here in Canada where you basically want to slap an extra 25% onto those prices due to our dollar being relatively worthless.) so that’s a thing, *but* something to look into that I use for “Normal Use Your Eyes to Read like Nature Intended so that I don’t feel like someone is reading to me and I fall asleep” is the website BookBub. It’s free, you don’t enter anything aside from basic informations (name, email, birthdate) and basically what it does is scours the websites/apps where you say you buy eBooks (such as Kobo, Kindle, iBooks, etc) and looks for anything that is on sale for more than 90% off/free, so as an example I’ve purchased box sets of books that normally would have been priced at $49 for $2-3 instead. You can then either visit the site daily or list off your preferences of what kind of books you want and have them email you a list (as long as you don’t mind getting daily emails from them).

On the perspective of Apple devices and non expandable memory, there are devices that let you side step that now. You would need to have an apple device that has the smaller faster lightning port for charging/data sync but they now have flash drives and MicroSD/SD adapters for that port that you use an app to transfer information back and forth to. It’s a little clunky on a day to day basis, but it’s an option now.

The greatest asset Apple has is it’s plug and play. You want a phone that works well out of the box, the iPhone does that quite well.

For my money, I love the Google Nexus series. It does everything I want, but it has downsides.
-You need some basic technical knowledge to make android usable.
-No SD Card support, you’re stuck with internal memory.

Everyone’s got an opinion on what phone is best. But for all the phones I’ve bought, a Nexus 4 I got off eBay for $20 and that I put a custom android OS has lasted me the longest, and I will probably keep it until I break it.

The thing I hate about Apple is how zealously they control their products. It would be a pinch for people to add in apps and tools that people would use, but Apple prevents this.

Apple – use what we give you and be grateful.
Android – here is everything you need, some assembly required.
Windows Phone – hah, I can’t believe you bought me… idiot.

Hello Jackie! Long time reader, first time poster. Like the comic. That being said, I do have an Audible account. Luckily, I keep it separate from my Amazon account as I don’t like linking things. As for a Kindle, Ipod, Ipad, Icad, Ibad, etc. any Apple product or any computer forced to run on anything after Windows XP. Sorry, I’m not going to try to sell you on any of it. I don’t know you, but, I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that you probably wouldn’t appreciate me attempting to convince you to spend your money on flat-out garbage! I know this sounds tedious, but I’m an old audiophile. I actually download my audible files from the web onto my newer laptop, which runs windows 8.1 (kinda like a three-legged dog trying to run a marathon, I know) and, using a cord with male end stereo 1/8″ jacks on both ends, I link it to my old reliable and trusty laptop, which I’ve had since 2005, which runs Windows XP service pack one, and run it through Audio Cleaning Lab 2004, start the book and let it go. It takes a long time, but, I let it run while I’m out of the house or out of town, and, when I come back, all it takes is a quick production job (editing, setting track markers, audio cleaning wizard, or I might tweak the knobs, myself), which usually takes less than 20 minutes and I have the book ready for burning onto cd’s or a flash drive (depending on if I leave the sound files in Wav or MP3 format) and I can listen to it anywhere on just about any stereo or computer.

As for the new Star Wars movie. I finally got a chance to see it, last weekend. I actually liked it alot better than the last movie (It wasn’t as disneyfied and I didn’t have to hear language like “Mumbo-Jumbo” or “Did you see that? That just happened”, which, to my mind, is a greater crime to the Star Wars Franchise than Jar-Jar!). Sure, they will never be as good as the original three movies, but, remember just how groundbreaking those three movies were for their time. I did find the movie enjoyable with a few characters that I would have liked to see developed further, given the opportunity. That being said, if I may, I’d like to take the opportunity to make an observation before I sign off, but, I did find almost as amusing as the movie the fact that, now, when I go to a new Star Wars movie, I try to make it a point to look around and see who else is in the theater, and, it seems that, more likely than not, I am one of the few people there, if not the only one, who has seen every Star Wars movie, from the very first one in 1977 in the theater and in it’s initial run. It’s great to see that new generations of moviegoers can still enjoy the series.

Well, I’ve rambled on, long enough. Thank you for producing a fun comic and for sticking with it all these years. It’s a great read.

Happy New Years!

Did you know ‘mambo’ and ‘jambo’ are swahili words? Once while out in the bush in Kenya I was politely asked by a curious native what mzungu (whitey) means when he says ‘mumbo-jumbo’. Well, that was a bit embarrassing.

I like to move my files around freely and be able to read them without being connected or being restricted to something I’ve got the Kindle software on, so I used the Calibre ebook software and a plugin for it that let me remove the DRM from Kindle books. You can then convert the Kindle books to some other format if you like.

I have to do a lot of driving for work so Audible has been a godsend for me. My brother and dad also now use it after I’ve raved about it(and given them access to my books). Although I would comment having a story read to me can send me quite drowsy, which is inconvenient when driving.

I really enjoy this story and have had the distinct pleasure to gush over this amazing tale over the past two days. I loved the colour shift when Thomas felt something worth feeling again. I truly find Brooksie genuinely adorable, the relationships (platonic and otherwise) real and that you have crafted an amazing world in this comic and intend to continue to read for as long as you keep making this. Its has help lighten up a deary point of inactivity in my life. My thanks to you.

You just want a tablet device that can give you access to the viz app, Audible, and PvZ? Go for the Galaxy Tab E. I got an open box one at BestBuy for $80. Regular is $100. Post-holiday may be more.

Little bigger than the Fire 8″, with a better quality screen. Not leashed to Amazon. Expandable memory. Basically a big-ass Galaxy phone without the phone part.

I hated tablets because of the price-tag but I love this thing. I throw it in my work bag to use Rosetta stone on breaks. Only needs to charge once a week if you’re not watching videos.

No opinion on Audible since my ADHD renders audiobooks ineffective.

Telepath on 2017/01/03 @ 1:10 amReply

Did you know ‘mambo’ and ‘jambo’ are swahili words? Once while out in the bush in Kenya I was politely asked by a curious native what mzungu (whitey) means when he says ‘mumbo-jumbo’. Well, that was a bit embarrassing.

Telepath, That’s really cool! I never knew that. Thank you for filling me in on that.

Hope New Years was good for you!

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