Free Ebook *Talk*, Not Listings

OK, i did it—switched the URL to FreeEbookTalk.blogspot.com (from FreeEbookListings.blogspot.com) and changed the title & description, etc.

"Listings" sounds less legitimate than "Talk" to my ears.  :-D

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yesterday i faced a probably-common problem—i had some ebook files (.MOBI in this case) of books i wanted to read, and i put them on my Kindle; but when i went to pull them up, it denied me access.  damned!  (and they had worked fine on my computer's Kindle reader!)

the solution?  i used Calibre and converted the troublesome .MOBI files into .AZW3 files, and then loaded those files onto the Kindle.  did they work on my Kindle then?  they sure did!  SUCCESS!!!

why did it work?  my Kindle is an older one, and the .AZW3 file format is a newer one; so i figured my old Kindle might be less able to recognize a (perhaps subtle) problem with a new format.

who knows if that's really why it worked; but it doesn't really matter, as long as it *did* work!

Ebook Adventures, Instead of Listings

OK, so maybe this is becoming more of a blog than a "Listings" site; so be it.

Heh, had to laugh:  got an odd email from Amazon that i would have to send them verification of my Canadian citizenship to continue getting books from their Canadian site.  (I had only borrowed one book from that site, through Lendle, and i'd switched my address to Canada to do so.)  But i had already switched my address back to the U.S. — their internal data coördination obviosly leaves something to be desired — so i switched my country-setting (somewhere within the Kindle settings) back.

And have been having more fun converting another Amazon Topaz ( .TPZ ) book to a .AZW3 (and perhaps to a .MOBI if i feel like it).  The TOC (Table of Contents) conversion has a little trouble; but Calibre allows a final tweaking of the TOC before the .AZW3 file is written, and i was able to add Glossary, Bibliography, & Index to the TOC.

By the way, keep an eye out for Russian sites (like http://fitzgerald.narod.ru/zelda/waltz.html ) — there are some nice texts stored online!

Move To Canada — Temporarily!!!

Recently, a Lendle user lent me a copy of The Illustrated Complete Works of H. P. Lovecraft; but when i went to download it from Amazon, the site told me i was not allowed to—due to copyright restrictions, or some such crap—because i lived in the United States.  What nonsense!

Maybe if i lived in Canada (where Lendle is based), i could download it OK.  So i pulled up Google maps and found a good place to stay:  Les Suites Hotel, 130 Besserer Street, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 9M9, Canada (complete with a telephone number, 613-232-2000).

So i took a virtual trip to Ottawa, changed my address at Amazon, and Voila! i successfully downloaded the book moments later.  A little while later, i decided to end my Canada jaunt and changed my address back to the United States.  A short trip to far away!

(At first i was going to use the Ottawa address of an evil ex- of mine; but i couldn't remember it exactly, and an ad popped up on the map page for Les Suites Hotel just down the road—perfect!  And i extend my thanks to them for the brief stay.)

Solving problems can be fun!