marcicat | Entries tagged with nook'd

I read (most of) the B-titled fics on my nook on Sunday.

Still a favorite:
Blast Boxers, by Allothi

(Inception AU: “Eames is a supervillain, and Arthur is the reporter he always kidnaps.”)

I also discovered a nook mystery. After finishing the A’s, I thought to myself, ‘hey, don’t I have Advantage saved on here?’ Searching for it specifically, by name, it pulls up perfectly. I can see it, I can open it, no problem. But it doesn’t appear in the ‘my downloads’ folder with everything else. So — where is it?

(Note: I have long suspected that I’m losing things *somewhere* on the nook. I’m just not sure whether it’s a quirk of the device itself, or a direct result of me not having a clue what I’m doing around technology.)

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

When I depart for my lovely work-cation, I will of course be bringing along my nook. Reading is one of my favorite ways to pass time on an airplane, because it tends to keep me calm and help me forget about the fact that I’m, you know, on an airplane. (Seriously, I never used to have trouble flying. Now? Mm, not so great at it.)

I will confess there are no actual books on my nook. Just lots and lots of fanfic. (Thank you, AO3, for making that so easy!) But I would love to have some new stories to look forward to for the journey. Here’s the kicker: I’m flying Southwest, so I’ll probably have a person on either side of me, and one of them will be a coworker. I really, really would prefer not to be reading any explicit violence or sex while someone is potentially reading over my shoulder.

So — any suggestions for good fics with a mild rating?

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

Last night I opened a story on my nook, and I got a message I’ve never seen before. It said (paraphrasing because it was way too late last night to bother getting up and copying it down): HEADS UP, YOU’RE ON PAGE 1! BUT ON ANOTHER NOOK DEVICE, YOU’RE ON PAGE 54! MAKE UP YOUR MIND ALREADY!

And it asked whether I wanted to stay where I was, or synch to the other page. Obviously, I said stay, because THERE IS NO OTHER DEVICE! No other nooks in the house! (Unless it’s been consorting with my sister’s kindle, which seems possible but highly unlikely.)

So — quirky glitch, or evidence that devices will soon be able to synch across realities?

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

Out of the blue, my nook decided to deny the existence of all my downloaded files this afternoon. Zero files; no files here. Obvs, first thing I did was panic and freak out.

Then I had a vague memory of all of this happening before. And lo! I found my post about the last time this happened. Skipped google this time, went right to plugging the nook into the computer.

Since there is no rational reason for looking at the files on a computer to make them show up on another device, I tried to follow my former actions as closely as possible, not knowing for sure which of them did the trick. I did pay special attention to step 6: Hold up nook so it can see computer screen. Tell it, “They’re right there! There! See!”

Current report: Seems to have been successful, though it wonked out some of my shelves — the files are still on the nook, but they’re not showing up as sorted. (Not nearly as big a problem as losing all 659 stories!)

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

One last thought about my work-cation — specifically, flying with a nook tablet. On the flight out, I forgot all the security rules. I sent my backpack through the scanner thing without taking out the nook, my quart-sized bag full of less than 3 oz. bottles, anything. I remembered to take my watch off. That’s about it. (Note: this did not lead to any additional bag searches, which I find hilarious after starandrea’s post about setting off the scanners.

That’s totally not the point of the post, though. Because one of the things that really differentiates the nook tablet from the kindle is that it doesn’t have the looks-like-paper screen. This has occasionally been something I regret (like the one time I tried to read it outside). But on a plane, the seats are super close together. And I spent part of the flight reading the Sky Mall catalog over my coworker’s shoulder, so I know it’s easily done. And I have a lot of not-exactly-G-rated fics on my nook.

Clearly this is all leading to me reading Asymptote (by tahariel) on the plane (which was great, but *totally* not the fic I thought it was when I picked it), with my former boss on one side and a total stranger on the other. And I’m thinking, ‘Well, this is suddenly awkward. But wait! It’s not a looks-like-paper screen! They probably can’t read it AT ALL from their angles!’

I’m telling you, it was a relief. Thanks, nook tablet!

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

I usually have some kind of list going for weekend ‘stuff to get done.’ This weekend I also had the joke goal of finally getting past freakin’ level 11 in pinball. (Truly, the pinball deluxe brix arcade game is some quality time-eating entertainment.)

Well, I would like to report total success. I passed 11, then the spiral (vaguely familiar, like maybe I’d gotten there once before?), and then all the way to the rainbow-y level (18-ish, maybe?) before stalling out. Darn you two final blue bricks!

Despite having a new high score of over 27 million points (arcade games are awesome), the game only rates my skill as “you show promise.” While this is a distinct step up from “novice” and “amateur,” it makes me curious as to exactly *how many levels* this game has. (???)

[PS: Have received no more spam comments regarding Maryland bail bonds. Feel like I've violated the rules of fight club.]

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

But I totally panicked anyway. I had this little announcement thing pop up this week about my nook being updated. Okay, whatever, it’s not like I can stop it. But I was going to sort some files today and I was all, “Wait — this looks different!” In that horrible sinking way where “different” means, “Why is the My Downloads folder empty, instead of overflowing with files of awesome?”

Things were still listed in their “shelves,” but every time I tried to open one, I got a message saying “Sorry, that content can no longer be viewed.”

(I THINK OMINOUS MUSIC MAY HAVE BEEN PLAYING AT THIS POINT.)

So I went to google and typed in WHY HAS MY NOOK DELETED ALL MY DOWNLOADS? Somewhat reassuringly, this did not pop up as a frequently searched string of words. According to the tech support questions that were being asked, it looked like it would be worth it to connect the nook to my computer and see what was what.

This is what I did:

1. Awkwardly plug connector cord into computer and nook. Nothing happens.

2. Unplug cord from nook and plug back in. Remember that you’re not supposed to do that.

3. Turn nook off. Nook turns itself back on, magically connected to computer.

4. Search through folders; open My Downloads. Look with huge relief upon all my beautiful files.

5. Select all files. Copy to folder on desktop. Also copy to folder on SD card chip thing in nook.

6. Hold up nook so it can see computer screen. Tell it, “They’re right there! There! See!”

7. Eject nook and SD card chip thing from computer, cross fingers.

8. Successfully locate intact and open-able files on nook!

9. Shake fist at nook software updaters. (But only where nook can’t see.)

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

1. Souvenir of the day: a 2012 lobster boat racing calendar, along with the quote “With some duct tape and a few beers, it’s amazing what can seem like a good idea.” (Truer words…)

2. My roommate and I have officially named this the year of crazy cat people. Because honestly, we work together, and if we don’t want to talk about work, there aren’t a heck of a lot of safe alternative topics. So we talk about our cats. A lot, actually.

3. I attended my first baseball game today, which was interesting. When I am back on a computer where I can open up bunches of tabs, I’ll link some fun baseball fics (very common in Live Free or Die Hard fanfic that I have bookmarked).

4. On a less social note, I did skip out on the “gelato and beer” trip out on the town this evening. Yikes. It’s not that these aren’t lovely people, it’s more that there must be a finite number of coworker-appropriate stories we can tell, and once we hit the limit, it’s all gonna be downhill from there.

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

I posted before about what I’m calling “classics project” on my to-do list — basically, trying to get some of my favorite fics onto my nook, for easier access to their awesomeness. It’s a lot slower going than I’d hoped it would be.

I’ve been using a combination of Instapaper, GrabMyBooks, and Calibre, with somewhat hit or miss results.

-AO3 is my favorite — handy “download as epub” button is handy!

-Instapaper is great for stuff you want to bundle together (for instance, The Fourth Wall series, by entanglednow. It even gives you a table of contents kind of thing at the start, which actually works for jumping to specific stories.

-GrabMyBooks is fast (despite my unreasonable dislike of Firefox) and does well with lj single files, though I’m having trouble with *both* Instapaper and GrabMyBooks when it comes to getting the nook to acknowledge the file name once it’s somewhere other than the “my downloads” folder.

-I’ve mostly been using Calibre for stuff that’s saved on my external hard drive — ancient stuff, by internet standards. It does relatively well with them, though it’s clearly designed for taking more time and care with files than my haphazard ‘can you convert all of these, um, 500 or so files into epubs? that’d be great, thanks’

-I have to shake my fist at googledocs. Seriously, that program does not play well with others. I haven’t tried downloading stuff as a PDF and dumping that onto the nook, but that’s probably next.

-In conclusion: AO3 rocks. If you are an author, please consider my humble request that you upload older work there. I’ve felt really weird about uploading old stuff, because, well, it’s old, and I’ve written better stuff (hopefully!) since, and it’s going to pop up at the top of the search in a painfully obvious way… But no matter! It would still be awesome to be able to get these fantastic classic fics SO EASILY. And everyone has different stuff that they consider classic, right?

-PS: I would love it if AO3 came out with a posting option that let you pre-date things. Or a “this is old; please don’t bother putting it up on the ‘most recent’ search page, just storing it here so it won’t get dusty, thanks!”

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.