Whatever happened to the shows of summer?

Actually, in the good/bad old days, there weren’t really “TV shows of summer”, were there? It was mostly rerun city. But more recently-ish (it is a trend over a decade long) networks have programs they play only in the summer season. And the specialty networks debut programs all year long.

These are three I’ve been particularly enjoying.

Amazing Race Canada

Modeled after the American one (which I also like), this is somewhat more “respectable” reality show—Emmy winning, and basically “just a race”, though with the producers definitely manipulating said race to produce drama, and obviously casting it with colourful people.

I appreciate the very multicultural nature of this year’s cast. And what a strong set of contenders! Except for the two sisters who were, indeed, eliminated the first show, everyone seems quite athletic and potentially capable of winning.

But I did come in with a bias toward Rex Harrington and his fiance Bob, because…. He’s Rex Harrington! Amazing dancer and great judge on So You Can Think Dance Canada.

They did well the first episode (and were so funny!), but in the second became mired in controversy: They gave up and took penalties on not one but two of the episode’s challenges. They only made it through because another contestant got injured and had to withdraw.

But surviving that round made they got to experience the surprising development of this year’s season: It’s no longer restricted to Canada! The teams were off to Hong Kong, with China up next.

I do hope Rex and Bob stick around for a while longer, but they certainly aren’t the smart bet to take it all. That would have to be the team made up of two members of Canada’s women’s gold medal hockey team, who have so far won every leg!

Fortunately, I also like them, as I basically like all the teams, really. I found that about Season 1 as well. That doesn’t tend to happen on the American one. Is likeability a Canadian trait? Bit early to say: Some of teams may get awful once the “killer fatigue” really sets in. TBD.

So You Think You Can Dance

The international travel budget shows that Amazing Race: Canada is a summer show on the rise. Now in its eleventh season, though, Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance is definitely on the decline, struggling for ratings.

They have fewer shows than ever this year, so the audition footage was seriously compressed, and we didn’t get to “know” too many contestants ahead of time. They get only the single 2-hour performance show per week, during which they try to squish in everything, including guest stars. It’s meant no video recaps, no Dance for Your Life for the dancers in the bottom three. And their pre-emption for some baseball game meant that this coming week, they have to eliminate four instead of two dancers. Brutal!

What remains, though, is the what I’ve always loved about this program: Seeing wonderful dance pieces in a great variety of styles, performed by very talented young people who only get better each week.

For example, this hip-hop number from the last week. Can you tell that Tanisha is actually a ballroom dancer? Didn’t think so!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjxhKiLmtTI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjxhKiLmtTI

Or how about this amazing group piece ( again kind of highlighting Tanisha) in the jazz / modern style:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAPJsbtqy_8

I’d really be sad if this show was cancelled.

Silicon Valley

This is a bit of a cheat to include here, as it is being rerun, currently. But it’s new to me, and its premiere was only in April, so…

This is a comedy about a group of five guys running a startup company in Silicon Valley, and it’s the funniest shows I’ve seen a long time. Jean, however, is not warming to it as much, so perhaps you need some understanding of / interest in tech culture to really appreciate the satire. (Wired explained how Mike Judge went about trying to make it as “based in reality” as possible, down to the math on the white board. )

Now, it is on HBO, but if you do have some understanding of / interest in tech culture, you’re going to have no trouble watching this show even if you don’t get that channel. But if you just want a preview, there a lot of clips on YouTube.

This scene, in which they implement the “scrum” method of organizing their development work, is an example of one in which I almost died laughing, while Jean was just confused. [Warning: Colorful language. It’s HBO!]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsJoLvRbri0

On sitting less

So back in June were another spat of articles, like this one at CNN.com, saying that sitting for many hours a day was bad for you. Even if you exercise.

It is somewhat amazing how non-helpful these articles are.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration recommends mixing noncomputer-related tasks into the workday…

The article says. As if that was actually possible in every job.

Like mine, for instance. What’s a break from my computer work? Well, meetings. The vast majority of which are, in fact, sit-down and not stand-up meetings. Also, I do like to sometimes be retro and work with pen and paper instead of monitor and keyboard. But you can’t write on paper while walking around, either. It pretty much also requires sitting at a desk.

Basically, if I’m not working at a computer, attending a meeting, or writing on paper, I’m not doing my job.

So 2 or 3 years ago now, I implemented the only solution I could see other than changing careers: I bought equipment to raise both my monitors and my keyboard off my desk, so I can work at the computer, standing up.

It was completely weird at first, but I’m used to it now, as is everyone I work with—none of whom have followed my lead, mind you. I did get a lot of queries about in the first few months. But my company won’t pay for it unless you have a doctor’s note that you need it, and I’m not sure doctors write those based on CNN articles stating that sitting 6+ hours a day reduces your life span by 20%.

And it wasn’t cheap. I needed three pieces of equipment, all of which I acquired from http://www.ergocanada.com: An LCD arm to hold two monitors (yes, I get two 21″ monitors at work), an arm extender to make the monitors high enough, and another arm to raise the keyboard tray. All together, that cost around $750—more than people typically want to spend on equipment for their work desks.

(Also, though, I think a lot of people really enjoy sitting down.)

So, I was no trendsetter.

But once I had invested in sufficient pairs of comfy (yet cute) shoes to avoid foot pain, I did find some health benefits that I didn’t have to wait decades for: reduced hip pain, reduced lower back pain, and a slight loosening of my clothes, which might be due to the fact that you burn more calories standing than sitting.

Woman at stand-up desk — Completely impractical shoes for working at a stand-up desk. Also, I think her monitor is too low.

In fact, I liked it enough that I decided to go for the same with the home computer. Well, not exactly the same. I wasn’t about to spend another $750. But my husband found this Visidec dual-monitor arm for more like $120. Like my one at work, this monitor arm was also too short on its own, but he was handy enough to just mount it in a solid piece of wood sitting on my desk, raising the monitors to standing height.

For the keyboard and mouse? Raised via a cardboard box, with a board on it that allows the mouse to slide easily. Hey, it’s home. Doesn’t have to look “professional”.

Another advantage my fancy work monitor arm has—besides looking good—is that it is extremely easy to lower and raise (as is the keyboard tray). So I can, in fact, still sit down to work at the computer, which I do for a bit each day. (I aim for 6.5 hours standing of the 8-hour work day.)

The home Visidec is possible to lower and raise, but not nearly as easily. It takes two people. So instead I intend to just leave that one in the standing position. I have replaced my desk chair with a bar stool, so I can sit on that should I weary of standing.

So, guess I’m OK now, til they come out with the unhelpful articles about the health hazards of standing for too long each day…

It’s not television. It’s HBO. (Unfortunately, it’s also Rogers.)

Calling Rogers support is a bit of a crapshoot. You sometimes get a very informed, very helpful employee. Other times… Not so much.

When I last called to make changes to my Rogers services, I hit it lucky. The support person clearly and carefully walked me through the options, helped me pick the right one, and explained exactly what it would mean for my bill. Not only that, but he gave me another number to call, saying I should insist on at least a 20% reduction in my bill. “You’ve been with Rogers a long time,” he said. “And we haven’t done much for you lately.”

And for the past couple years, I have indeed been getting a 20% reduction on my cable and Internet bill. But that discount just expired, making for some serious cable bill sticker shock. Time to reconsider what I’m subscribing to.

The list of cable package prices on the Rogers website shows a big difference between basic cable and the other tiers. And fact is that most of what I watch is on the big networks, not the specialty channels. If I get a real craving for Chopped Canada, it is available to stream from the Food Network website.

And at the whole other end of the Rogers cable package spectrum, at prices so absurdly high that I’d never considered subscribing, is package of all specialty channels + the movie networks.

But poking around revealed that you could get just the movie networks added to your TV line up. That is, you can get the various flavors of HBO Canada and TMN, without all the channels in between (those past 28). It’s not especially cheap, but did appear to be cheaper than what I was paying to add all those specialty channels I barely watched. Also on offer: a 50% discount on that package for the first four months.

I decided to go for it.

Unfortunately, I did not get quite the same quality of phone support this time out. Quite honestly, I now have no idea what this is going to mean for my bill. For one thing, based on past experience, the prices on the website seem to be only an approximation of the actual prices charged. (I have no idea why.) I’m still not sure whether activation or deactivation fees come into. Apparently an extra outlet fee applies to people who have only basic cable but more than one TV (even they get the movie networks, too). And I had to tell the Rogers person that I should qualify for a 50% discount for the first four months, which wasn’t really comforting.

But, dude. There sure is a lot of fantastic programming on those movie networks. In high definition, and commercial free.

Options on TMN

And I don’t even mean the Hollywood movies, though they do have a great selection of those. It’s the series, right? All the ones everyone torrents?

I’m too late for Game of Thrones. It’s in season 4; not jumping in on that now. I’ve read that Girls isn’t quite as good anymore. And I’ve kind of given up on True Blood (which I’d seen on DVD).

But I’m just in time to start with Silicon Valley, a very funny new show about a tech start-up company. Veep is just restarting Season 3, and it doesn’t appear to be necessary to have seen the earlier seasons to enjoy this one. It is a bit confusing jumping into Masters of Sex—a series about Masters and Johnson—mid-season, but enjoyable nonetheless. Then there’s new one called The Leftovers starting soon, that looks really interesting.

And with Real Time with Bill Maher and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver added to my viewing of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on CTV, my American political satire cup truly runneth over.

Then there’s the specials and documentaries (like the upcoming David Bowie: Five Years), the original movies (like The Normal Heart, replaying the first week of July)…

And all of this is also available on demand (~~though not at high def, for some reason?~~) [Edit: On demand is available at high definition; you just have to pick the right channel.] And everything plays many times “live”. So you don’t really have to worry about missing an episode or special, or arrange your schedule around the TV, or even remember to set the PVR (though I still do, because I’m just in that habit).

So I sure hope I can afford to keep this.

Les tablettes et le Tep

We both acquired new tablets not long before this vacation. I had been managing with a 10″ Motorola Xoom. (A what? Exactly!) The Xoom wasn’t a success in the marketplace, but it still served my needs just fine for many years. It was starting to seem rather slow, however, and had recently become a bit flaky, randomly losing connection to the wireless and needing a reboot.

Compared with my first tablet purchase, I didn’t give the new one that much thought or research. I was basically figuring I would stick with Android. And I was thinking it might be nice to have a slightly bigger screen.

So when Jean pointed out that the Samsung tablet demo I was playing with at Staples actually was bigger than a 10″ tablet, I thought maybe the time had come!

I did do a little research at that point. Apart from some snarky commentary about who on earth would want a tablet that big (me!!!), and pointing out that it did cost more than most tablets (more than some laptops, in fact), it was well reviewed. A bonus payment at work made the price more palatable, so after a bit more experimenting with the demo model, I made the purchase.

And I’ve been happy with it so far. It is much faster, the screen quality is much higher, and it’s actually lighter than the old one. The bigger screen means I no longer have to zoom magazines to read them and it’s also great for the digital sheet music. (The tablet display is about the same size as office paper.) I had to get used some Samsung-isms that still trip me up on occasion, but mostly it’s still Android and familiar. And to my surprise I didn’t have to reinstall any apps; based on Google account, it just set all that up for me, and rather quickly as well. (I just had to sign into everything again.)

This was all making Jean, who’d been managing with a Blackberry playbook, a little bit jealous. But the same device wouldn’t do for him. He wanted something that would allow him to upload and process photos while on vacation, requiring a bit more juice than you get with an Android tablet.

So he bought what was essentially a Windows 8 laptop, but in tablet form. His screen is even bigger than mine. (And he paid more money for his device than I did.) But it’s still a lot lighter and has better battery life than a laptop would.

Setup wasn’t quite so easy for him as for me, either, but it wasn’t that bad. Once he got past the typical feeling of loss and alienation that all new Windows 8 users experience (Where are my programs? What are these useless tiles for? How do I shut this thing down?), he was pretty happy with his purchase as well.

So we were kind of disappointed to find out that the free wireless at our France hotel was available only in the lobby, not in our rooms. Not good enough! [Yes, it’s a bit sad.]

Fortunately, I had come across a solution for that: Portable, rentable, wifi hotspots, courtesy Tep Wireless. I had read some good reviews of this service, so decided to sign up for it.

For $7 a day (10-20% discounts coupons rather easy to come by), you get 150 MB of internet access. They ship the device to you a couple days before you leave (yes, there is an extra shipping charge). It’s a very small device with a charger, set to work with the network of the particular country you’re travelling to.

We set it up in our hotel room, and it was very easy. It has a password on the back that you sign into the wireless with, and supports up to five devices (we had three, with my cell phone).

It was an excellent connection. Fast, reliable, and presumably more secure than open wifi network. I would also take the Tep with me when I brought my cell phone, and that way we could, anywhere, check email or Google maps (or Twitter!) without using data (no roaming charges!). The Tep had about five hours of battery life, which proved enough for us.

And, the 150 MB per day (which carries forward if you don’t use it all), was sufficient until almost the last of vacation, when Jean’s photo uploading brought us to the limit. They told us that by email, we were able to add more data at a reasonable fee to get us through the last couple days, and all was good.

We were sad to see the Tep go by vacation end. They had included a return envelope with the device, and we bought sufficient French postage to mail it back to them.

Of course, we noted that we get highly offended when hotels ask us to pay for wifi access, yet here we were all delighted about a gizmo that cost us 50 some dollars plus shipping for one week of Internet.

But hey. If it appeals to you, and you can afford it, we would definitely recommend Tep portable wifi. Good device, good customer service. (And definitely cheaper than foreign roaming charges.)

RIP Collage Video

I’m so old that my first exercise video was not even audio-visual: It was sound-only. An LP.

And it was ridiculous. Of course, the instructor (you may have heard of her—Jane Fonda?) tried to clearly explain what moves to do, but that just didn’t always work. What some of the moves were meant to be remain a mystery to me to this day. (But no, I don’t still have the album…)

So the advent of exercise classes on VHS home tapes were a clear improvement. Not all the moves were easy to do, but at least you could always tell what they were.

And as is true in general, the exercise DVDs were an improvement over those. No more rewinding and fast-forwarding. More content could be put on each disk. Easier to pick and choose to do partial or combination workouts.

I love working out to videos. Nothing’s more convenient, you never have to worry about the weather, and unless you’re buying a crazy number of them, it’s way cheaper than a gym memberships. You get something of the illusion of working out with someone else, and even that illusion is more motivating than working out on your own. And the variety available—aerobics, strength, flexibility, or a combination of all. Short, long, or in between. Dancey or athletic. Easy-going, intermediate, or tough.

Whatever your mood today: There’s a home workout for that.

And so it really pains me to see Collage Video go out of business. They sold nothing but fitness videos (along with a few fitness accessories). And they did it better than anyone else.

They broke down each video by all the factors that home fitness die-hards care about: instructor, length, level, workout type, body part focus. They included video samples so you could assess whether a new instructor or style seemed appealing. They had fantastic forums and review comments. They rated the videos themselves, highlighting some as favorites.

But ultimately, they could not battle the price pressure from the likes of Amazon, nor the general decline in the DVD format.

So when I decided I could use some more workouts with a lower-body focus, I did what I always do: I picked up the latest Collage Video catalog and picked out about five that I thought would do.

Only now I cannot order them from the Collage Video website.

Amazon? It had exactly one of them in stock. OK, so I probably didn’t need all five, but I wanted at least one more. I went a-huntin’, and finally located a site that offered one of them as a download. I can burn that to DVD or play it from the computer (which is connected to my TV), so that’s fine. Only, I needed this rubber band thingie for that workout. Collage would have sent it to me with the DVD. With the download… Not so much. So more research for that, resulting in a trip to Walmart to purchase that.

Walmart!

I’m not sure this is progress. I know streaming is the thing now, but the best option there seems to be Gaiam TV, at $10 (US) a month. Not a crazy price, but then, I don’t think I was spending $120+ yearly on exercise videos before…

Feeling angsty? Need some power?

iTunes Genius playlist feature, whereby iTunes create a playlist for you based on a particular song, often isn’t nearly as smart as its name would lead you to believe. Sometimes the results are simply odd, and the songs don’t seem to go together at all. Often they are obvious in a boring way, such as combining a Lowest of the Low song with music by other Canadian band, as though Canadian-ness rather than lyrical intelligence, passionate delivery, and great melody were the key features of their sound.

But I thought this particular one, built around Tracy Bonham’s “Mother Mother”, was pretty good. The songs did seem to work together, and yet I doubt I would have thought of combining them myself.

[To people viewing this in email: There are a couple videos in linked in this post. They may be visible only in the browser, not in the email message.]

I call it “Empowered angst”. Partner acting like a crazy person? Propose to her! (Anything, Anything) Being teased cause you don’t drink, you don’t smoke? Own it! (Goody Two Shoes) Being cheated on (Bring Me Some Water)? Let them know what they’re missing! (Like the Way I Do).

Song	Artist
Mother Mother	Tracy Bonham
Blood Makes Noise	Suzanne Vega
What I Am	Edie Brickell & New Bohemians
Dear God	Sarah McLachlan featuring XTC
Fall Down	Toad the Wet Sprocket
Anything, Anything	Dramarama
Wild Horses	The Sundays
Fuck And Run	Liz Phair
New	No Doubt
Sweet Jane	Cowboy Junkies
Voices Carry (Single Mix)	‘Til Tuesday
Pretty In Pink	The Psychedelic Furs
Goody Two Shoes	Adam Ant
Crush With Eyeliner	R.E.M.
Crazy Baby	Joan Osborne
Bring Me Some Water	Melissa Etheridge
I’m Afraid Of Americans (V1)	David Bowie
The Emperor’s New Clothes	Sinéad O’Connor
Middle Of The Road	The Pretenders
Follow You Down	Gin Blossoms
Temptation Waits	Garbage
Excuse Me Mr.	No Doubt
Like the Way I Do	Melissa Etheridge
Possession	Sarah McLachlan
Bang And Blame	R.E.M.

Hey, remember this video? Aimee Mann being stifled by her jerk of a boyfriend?

They made me tweet the promo, but I actually do like Unroll.me

Are you one of those “zero inbox” people?

Or someone wise enough to have some “junk” email address that you reserve for corresponding with corporations and organizations, keeping your “real” email account in a pristine state for communicating with actual friends and family?

Or someone who quickly and ruthlessly unsubscribes or trashes any unsolicited email that you receive from corporations and organizations?

If so, then this post is not for you.

But if you’re somewhat daunted by the amount of email you’re receiving; noting that even as you unsubscribe from three mail lists, ten more seem to pop up; even finding yourself setting aside time each weekend to try to plow through the mountain of unread email that has accumulated during the week… You might be interested in Unroll.me.

It’s a free service. If you sign up and allow access to your email account, it will scan through and list all the “digest” emails—all those mass mailings you get. You can then go through the list and, for each, decide whether to:

Unsubscribe
Keep in Inbox
Add to RollUp

And what is a RollUp? Well, that is a single email message you receive daily, tidily compiling in one spot all those “digest” emails that you are actually interested in, but no longer want clogging up your inbox as individual mail messages.

As new digests arrive, Unroll.Me will continue to detect them and give you the option to categorize those, also. And you can always go in and manually tweak things.

The unsubscribing option has a limit of five: Once you reach that, you have to agree to promote Unroll.me somehow to do more unsubscribing. I went with tweeting, as I have few Twitter followers anyway, so I figured that would annoy least people. The other options are a Facebook post or sending an email to five friends (making you something of an email spammer yourself, of course).

Other than that, I haven’t found too many catches with it. No idea how they plan to make money from this, but the RollUps are not cluttered with ads.

And yes, it’s helping. Maybe not quite as much as I’d like, due to some digest emails being sent from varieties of email addresses (I’m talking to you, Liberals) and possibly a need to move a few more items from Inbox to RollUp. But yes, my Inbox is already a somewhat calmer place.

I use it with Gmail, but it apparently works with many other email clients as well. In Gmail, “under the hood”, it’s using an Unroll.me label, marking roll-up email as read when it arrives, and having it skip your inbox. So if you ever want to see or delete the original emails, you can just pop up into that Unroll.me folder.

Living life online

A poll that got some play last week said that Canadian smart phone owners spend about 86% of their free time looking at a screen.

I’m sure my numbers are ranging up around there as well. And that sounds terrible, as though I’m frittering my life away as a couch potato, playing violent games, reading Facebook posts, and watching mindless television.

When really, for me, I believe it’s not so much a change of activity as just a change of medium. I used to read books, magazines, and newspaper exclusively on paper. Now, more and more, I read them on screens. But regardless, it’s still a good activity for my brain.

And, I used to write letters with pen and paper. Now I communicate via some kind of screen, mostly. Which is a relief to my recipients, as my handwriting is terrible. (And sometimes, I will still print the results on paper and mail them out, just to be retro.) Nevertheless, I’m still keeping up social ties.

What about exercise? It’s not new that I do that in front of screens. First with VHS, now with DVDs, and I imagine I’ll move on to streaming options in the future, but regardless, I’m a long-time fan of following along with video workouts. And my collection of music DVDs are a big help in getting through treadmill and free weight workouts. Inside or out, with screens or nature, it’s still good for the body.

Thanks to digital sheet music, I even use screens when making music. I now have this Bluetooth foot pedal so I can change pages without lifting hand from keyboard. It’s very cool.

[And the article has “listening to radio” as a non-digital activity. Who in the world ever just sits and listens to the radio, without also doing something else at the same time—driving, cooking, brushing your teeth, paying your bills? And aren’t most radio stations accessible online? To list “listening to radio” as an activity in itself is just peculiar.]

But all that defensiveness aside… I do believe it’s good to get out into the real world and interact with it directly, sans screens. And, I’ll admit, I sometimes I suspect my balance there is off.

A real symptom of this is my, frankly, incredibly low usage of my smart phone. Per the poll, average smart phone usage is 1.5 hours a day. Here I am way below average, at maybe 3 minutes per day?

Because basically, most of what I can do on a phone I can also do on a tablet or computer. And given a choice, I’d rather use those, because the screens are bigger. The phone’s advantage is great portability + not requiring an Internet connection. So it’s fantastic when you’re out and about; often it’s the the only option there.

I’m having to conclude I’m just not “out and about” that much.

(On the plus side, my cell phone bill is only $30 a month, including data! For those not from Canada: That’s pretty good.)

Nevertheless, I did recently upgrade my cell phone. The old one had the world’s tiniest amount of storage, and that was making it incredibly difficult to update the few phone apps I do consider critical: Evernote, Twitter, Swiftkey, Gmail, GPS. Weary of its constant “Out of space” warnings, I paid it off the old and am now the proud owner of an unlocked, 16 GB, Google Nexus 4.

I am stunned at the speed of this thing, I must say; couldn’t believe how fast everything downs (on the same wifi connection as before). It also has a nice, sharp screen and the very latest version of the Android OS. My older Android tablet seems rather stodgy by comparison.

So given that nice design, I’d actually like to use it more, but that just isn’t going to happen unless I actually get out, away from home and office, more often. Ironic?

Rogers’ Next Issue e-magazine interface is pretty nice (dammit)

Rogers recently launched Next Issue, yet another e-magazine option. The big difference between it and the ones I already use, Zinio and Google Play, is that you pay a monthly fee, and then you can download and read as many of their magazines as you want. That fee is $10 month for access to monthly magazines, $15 to also access weeklies.

Obviously that’s $120 to $180 a year (though yes, you can cancel at any time). As I already subscribe to a number of magazines individually, either on paper or digital, I thought it might be worthwhile if those were included.

Alas, it currently includes only one of my current subscriptions: Wired. So no Walrus, Maisonneuve, Pacific Standard, Bitch (Feminist response to popular culture), Nutrition Action Newsletter, or This Magazine. (The full list of what they do offer is here.) But despite already concluding it wouldn’t be worth the money, I decided to try their free two-month trial (one-month trial if you’re not a Rogers customer).

So I have to grant this: It’s a really nicely designed app. Once you download it and sign in (you can use your Rogers online account, if you have one), you get a list of the all the magazines they carry. You then tap on the ones you think you’ll be most interested in reading. (You can, of course, always change your list.) On future logins, just those magazines appear for selection, initially.

Next issue interface

You then tap on any of those to get a view of available current and past issues (seems to be up to a year’s worth, or so). You “long-press” any issues you want to read and they downloaded, as indicated by a pin icon. In the same way, you can unpin when you’re done.

It’s all very easy—you get text guidance through this process—and admittedly more fun, as you don’t have the checkout process at as the end, as you would with individual purchases in Zinio or the Google Play store.

As for actual reading, that’s pretty nice, too. How nice depends on the publisher. For example:

Entertainment Weekly—not available on Zinio or Play—was the best. They scale each page to fit nicely on a 10-inch tablet; no zooming required. When there is more content than can practically fit, you get little scroll up and down icons on the page you can use to see more. They also have links to videos with star interviews and fun things like that.
Cooking Light takes a similar “no-zoom, just scroll” approach to presenting pages, with little arrows making it clear that’s what you need to do. They also have easy links to their website with more recipes and food information.
Maclean’s is pretty basic, just presenting the pages at actual size, so you have to scroll down to the bottom if you want.
Rolling Stone still requires zooming, and doesn’t seem to include any neat interactive stuff.

For navigating through, the app offers a bar at the bottom, and if you click it correctly, you get a interactive mini-view of all the pages of the magazine that you can “flip” through for the one you want. That’s also kind of fun. (Though purely in practical terms, Zinio’s tile view of pages and popup table of contents might actually be easier to select from.)

Next Issue also use on up to five devices, and is supported on Android, iOs, and Windows 8. That’s less useful for my husband, who has a Blackberry tablet and a Windows 7 PC. So we’re not able to practically share an account in this household, until some upgrading happens.

Would also note that Rogers has now removed the magazines it publishes—such as Maclean’s, Chatelaine, and MoneySense—from Zinio (though they still seem to be in Google Play Store, at this point). That’s a bummer because that also removes them from the library version of Zinio, which made them free!

Even with those omissions, Zinio still has the bigger selection of magazines, with some libraries (like mine) making many of them free. It’s also the only one with a bookmark and share feature, both of which can be pretty handy. And it works on Blackberry, and has a desktop version (which I rarely use, but Jean does).

But just on the fun factor, gotta say Next Issue wins. Just not sure it’s worth $120+ more to Rogers from me, just yet.

Another post I found on this, comparing Zinio, Next Issue, and Apple’s Newstand.

Books of vacation (in three formats)

With vacation comes time to read…

We went through David Sedaris’ Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls in audiobook form, read by the author himself. David Sedaris may be the only author for whom I will tend to wait until I have time to listen to the audio version, rather than just read. Since they are all personal essays, something is added by hearing the stories through his distinct voice.

If you’ve enjoyed past books by David Sedaris, I don’t see why you wouldn’t like this one, too. If you haven’t read him before, you might want to start with an earlier one. Not that they’re chronological essays of his life, exactly, but still.

And if you don’t want to do the audio thing, the books do work fine in print as well.

The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism by Naoki Higashida was the last book club book, which I finished up at the start of vacation. I got the ebook for this one.

We all felt this book wasn’t quite all it was cracked up to be: a major revelation, fascinating, mesmerizing. Not that it was terrible, by any means, but… Well, it probably is different if read by someone who has a child with severe autism. For the rest of the us, it’s kind of interesting, but not earth shattering. Quite short, though, so don’t hesitate to read it if you’re curious.

The other audiobook we listened to, Jonathan Tropper’s One Last Thing Before I Go, was recommended by the owner of Wordsworth Books as the best book of the summer. We definitely enjoyed it. It’s the story of a musician, a drummer, who had one big hit song with his band and then had been on a downward spiral ever since. When he’s diagnosed with a fatal-if-untreated illness, he’s not so sure he has much to live for, anyway. His family doesn’t take so kindly to his response.

The novel deals with serious issues, but often in a humorous way. Some parts were laugh-out-loud funny. The story was engaging, and not entirely predictable. Partway through, we both tried to guess how it would go. Neither of us were exactly right. It was resolved satisfactorily, yet somewhat open-endedly.

I had read any Jonathan Tropper books before this. I would try them again.

Finally, in good old-fashioned paper, I read the fascinating The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. This is the true story of the woman whose cancer cells were taken and cultured, and found to have the remarkable ability to reproduce endlessly: they are “immortal” cells. These “HeLa” cells proved very important to medicine and biology, but the woman herself and her family knew nothing of this for many years. In this book, Rebecca Skloot tells how she become interested in Henrietta as a person, and gradually came to know the members of the Lacks family (who are still with us). The cross-section of personal and medical history is just fascinating. It may not sound like the kind of book that’s hard to put down, but it really is.

Amazing Race Canada

So You Think You Can Dance

Silicon Valley

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