Before & After & Inbetween

Today, I refused buying a book I truly wish to read because it isn't available in ebook format. It's the first time, I consequently stopped further overloading my bursting shelves.

I am willing and able to deal with all - except the content-crippling forms (!) - of current DRM (Amazon, Adobe *BLECH*, watermarks...) in order to get to read a book I want.

I obtained books from Smashwords (sadly their paying system no longer plays with my credit card institute), Amazon.de, Thalia.de,... even Google Books (albeit mostly collecting their freebies, as I do with Google music and video ;-) ) without batting an eyelash, but paper-only these days means hauling 800 pages of dead weight on to my daily commute *or* only reading on weekends instead of writing, both "features" tend to result in the book not being read at all ( = wasted money), in addition to having to find shelf space for it.

So, Martin Schemm's book got relocated from my "check for reading" list to "hardware only / not worth it". For a bookoholic like me, that's a sad event!

Just thought about the Google Now feature in my Nexus tab. According to Google, it uses my location, calendar, and search history (among other things) to predict the information I might need next and display it without me having to ask for it first.
Nice idea. However, I won't activate it. It's way too dangerous in my case! My location history is empty (I disabled it), my calendar is filled with when to water my plants (mostly), and my search history is story related...

I don't want Google Now to display the flight schedule between Tokyo and Okinawa (I'm nowhere near there), the traffic situation in Ueno - Tokyo, and the "101 ways to entertain your cherry tree" while calling the police to my doorstep because said cherry tree is so well fed. ;)