Kelson Reviews Stuff - Page 3

It’s a little weird to start your book dedicated to the small community that took you in when you were exiled with several chapters about how superstitious and distrustful of outsiders the people here are. But this is Victor Hugo, and he doesn’t take the easy way out. (He does insist that he’s talking only about the Guernesey of several decades before his time, not his neighbors.)

It’s an interesting read, though, and a tighter structure than Les Misérables (unless the 1877 translation I read is seriously abridged, which it doesn’t indicate). The first half of the book builds up to a storm at sea and a shipwreck, and the rest is mostly one really determined man’s attempt to salvage the steamship’s engine, alone, out on the rocks in the middle of the channel. It takes him months, using only a handful of tools he brought and what parts he could salvage from the wreck, even building a makeshift forge in a hollow in the rocks.

Other characters include the steamship owner and his daughter, a former partner who ran off with half the money, and the captain who replaced him (and ultimately wrecks the ship). The build-up to the wreck is a bit of a slog until you start putting together the pieces that are deliberately left unsaid or appear contradictory, so that by the time the wreck happens you have a pretty good idea of why it happens.

It’s mostly man vs. nature, but this being Hugo, there’s social commentary too. Trusting or distrusting people for the wrong reasons, religious intolerance and superstitions, the hazards of overconfidence, misplaced righteousness, paying attention to what’s actually going on rather than what you expect to be going on, and so forth.

One bit that stuck in my head was the ruined steamship owner repeatedly rejecting advice from an old clergyman on where he can invest his remaining funds for a large return: selling weapons to Russia, where the Czar wants to put down a Polish peasant rebellion, or investing in these new plantations spreading into Texas (worked by slaves of course). The old clergyman just doesn’t understand why the guy won’t take his advice, while his younger colleague, newly arrived to the island, tries to explain that he’s listening to his conscience.

Over and Under

I remembered the novel being mentioned on the Les Misérables Reading Companion a few years back, and grabbed a copy when Standard Ebooks released their version. Then I forgot about it like a discounted Steam game for a couple of years, until I got to the point in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea where the narrator admits he couldn’t even begin to describe what he saw, as it would need a poet like Victor Hugo to write something like Toilers of the Sea.

OK, sometimes I can take a hint!

Reading them back to back really brings out the difference in writing styles between Hugo and Verne. Verne wants to tell you what happened, maybe what the main character is thinking of (even if it’s a long list of fish), and what’s salient about the setting. Hugo wants to paint you a complete picture. Verne would write about a man clinging to a piece of wreckage floating in the middle of the ocean. Hugo would describe the expanse of the ocean, the color of the sky, how much cloud cover (and what kind of clouds), how strong the wind is, any birds or islands visible in the distance, are the waves slow and calm or choppy…then zoom in on the bit of wreckage…and only when the scene is fully painted zoom in on the figure clinging desperately to it.

I think Hugo spends more time describing how creepy an octopus can be before one seizes Gilliat than Verne spends on the whole battle between the Nautilus and the giant squid!

Even though marine science and geology have passed it by, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is still a gripping episodic adventure through a strange, hidden world of marvels.

Captain Nemo is compelling and mysterious as ever, if the passengers are rather broadly drawn (at least all three of them are distinct) and the crew is more or less faceless. (Aside from Nemo, the crew doesn’t speak to the passengers, so they’re never able to pick up the Nautilus’ private language.)

And Verne has really thought things through. Like, how did Nemo get something of this scale built without someone noticing? He farmed out different parts and systems to different factories scattered across the world. Ocean-based textiles, undersea mines, an isolated source of fuel that no surface-based ship will find.

Even the parts where he made up oceanography out of whole cloth, like the deeper outflow throgh Gibraltar (which as it turns out does exist, but not for the reasons Nemo suggests, which have since been found to be incorrect) or the open sea at the south pole (which doesn’t) – or Atlantis, for that matter, with the Canaries as the remnants of the sunken peaks – have at least some logic beyond the rule of cool.

I read an abridged version years ago, when I was in my early teens, and I’ve been meaning to read the whole thing ever since. I’m glad I finally got around to it! Though I suspect a lot of the abridgment had to do with the frequent (and lengthy) lists of fish.

Now I need to finally read The Mysterious Island…

Oh, one more thing: Verne name-checks Victor Hugo’s Toilers of the Sea, citing his poetic writing, which prompted me to pick that one up off the to-read pile. Reading them back to back really shows the stylistic differences between the two contemporaries.

Finding this Translation

The edition I read felt more modern than I expected. It turns out Frederick Paul Walter wrote his complete, unabridged translation in the 1990s and donated it to Project Gutenberg. From the license at the end of the book:

This particular work is one of the few individual works protected by copyright law in the United States and most of the remainder of the world, included in the Project Gutenberg collection with the permission of the copyright holder.

Older versions of the file didn’t clarify that it wasn’t legally in the public domain, and Standard Ebooks produced a nicely-formatted book from it somewhere along the line. That’s the version I downloaded and eventually read. The Project Gutenberg edition now contains a copyright notice, and Standard Ebooks has taken down their edition. They haven’t replaced it with another translation, stating that “the only public domain translations of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas are ones widely considered to be slapdash.”

I’ve been using LibreOffice, specifically the Writer and Calc parts of it, for years. It does everything I need a word processor or spreadsheet to do, and it doesn’t get in my way with nagware, or making sure I have enough licenses for all the family’s computers, or trying to monetize my data or convince me to move files to a cloud service.

There are probably a few Word and Excel features they don’t support, but none that I’ve noticed for a long time.

Back in the days before LibreOffice split off from OpenOffice, there were more problems with opening Microsoft file formats. I used to make sure we had at least one Microsoft Office installation on a Windows partition, just in case. That hasn’t been necessary for years.

I used to sometimes write in AbiWord and use Gnumeric for spreadsheets on Linux. They’re both faster and lighter than LibreOffice, but that’s also less important than it used to be, except on older or low-spec devices.

The only real trouble I’ve had recently is getting it to switch properly into dark mode on Linux. I can get it to show a dark document in a light window, or a light document in a dark window, or a light document in a light window, but I can’t reliably get it to show a dark document in a dark window. I’m not a total dark-mode fanatic, but I do prefer it in low-light situations.

LibreOffice also has presentation, database, and vector drawing applications. I’ve never had to use them for my home or hobbyist projects, though, so I can’t really say how Impress, Draw and Base compare to PowerPoint, Visio and Access.

If you include its predecessors OpenOffice and Star Office, I’ve been using it regularly for decades on Linux, years on Windows, and occasionally on macOS.

Most Linux distros include LibreOffice in their package repositories, or you can use the Snap, Flatpak (on Flathub) or AppImage. You can get it on the Microsoft and Apple app stores for a small charge. Free installers are available on their website for Windows, macOS and Linux.

Mobile

The core office suite doesn’t have a mobile version (unless you count the viewer for Android, which you can’t use for editing), but Collabora Office is built on LibreOffice. Their mobile app will open files on your phone, or on any storage service registered on your phone. If you have Nextcloud or Dropbox installed, it can seamlessly open, edit and save those files. Spreadsheets are a bit janky on my phone, but then it’s an older phone.

Online/Offline and Collaboration

The best part is: it still runs on my computer, even when offline. With a cloud-based app you have to trust that Google or Microsoft won’t be using your docs to train AI or something. With an app that runs directly on your machine, you know.

The downside is that it only runs directly on my computer. Which does make it hard to do online collaboration. But formats are compatible enough these days that you can usually open a file in something that does handle collaborative features when you need them.

There are a couple of online suites built on LibreOffice:

• Collabora Online is mainly aimed at businesses, but you can self-host their developer edition (a.k.a. CODE) of the web app for free.
• Nextcloud Office combines Collabora with Nextcloud, which makes it a lot easier to install if you already have Nextcloud. I’ve been experimenting with it a bit, and it works, but I may need to throw more memory at my self-hosted server for it to run well.

Neither works as easily as Google Docs when it comes to multiple authors, comments, and sharing permissions, unfortunately.

Google Workspace includes a fast, cloud-based office suite. It runs in most web browsers, the collaboration features are dead simple, and the mobile apps are decent. It auto-saves as you go and keeps a record of changes, so you can easily go back to an older version. Docs, Sheets and Slides are far less complete than Word, Excel or PowerPoint (or their LibreOffice counterparts), but they’re sufficient for most purposes. It’s the only online office suite I’ve used that allows you to share a document with comment-only permissions, which is kind of surprising.

Unfortunately it only runs in the cloud. (Even if you use the offline extension for Chrome, it’s still syncing to Google Drive when you go online.) And I don’t trust Google’s services any more than Microsoft’s these days. Back in the day I trusted that they wouldn’t use my writing for targeted advertising. Now I wouldn’t be surprised if they trained their LLMs on it even if they claimed otherwise, and it’s not at all clear in their privacy policy

I used it a lot during the 2010s, but I’ve switched back to using regular files and my own cloud sync when needed. Mostly plain text, Markdown and LibreOffice, except when I really need live sharing features.

I’ve been happy with the Boox Poke3 as my main eReader for almost five years, but it’s been showing its age. It was time to replace it with a newer, faster model. Preferably with physical page-turning buttons, possibly with color.

Boox specializes in Android-based e-ink tablets ranging from pocket size to full sketchpad. I like the idea of the phone-sized device, and I really like the idea of the convertible e-ink tablet/laptop, but I don’t need either of those as much as I could use a new paperback-sized multi-source eBook reader.

First Impressions

The Go 7 Color is slightly larger than the Poke3 (which is roughly the size of a Kindle Paperwhite or Kobo Clara), and does indeed have physical page-flip buttons! (Judging by photos, it’s comparable to the Kobo Libra or Sage.)

The screen is the size of the old device, edges included, and of course this one adds a wider edge for the buttons. I can’t fit it in my jacket pocket anymore, but it’s still light enough to hold directly above me while reading in bed.

It’s also a lot faster than the previous device, and it can run apps like Wallabag and Bookshop.org that the Poke3 struggled with.

Its touchscreen handles gestures and taps well. I no longer feel like I need to press hard on the screen to get it to react. It’s still not fast enough for typing comfortably (and besides, it’s too small for “real” typing and too big for two-thumbs phone typing), but it’s good enough for search terms, passwords etc. I suspect it would be decent for sketching or note-taking with a stylus. And it’s responsive enough that I don’t really need the physical buttons most of the time.

The battery seems to run out a little faster than the Poke3, but it still lasts a lot longer than most phones and tablets. Especially if you keep it set to power off completely when it’s not being used. I’ve only had to charge it a couple of times in the month I’ve been using it.

Display

The black ink is still sharp for letters and line art, and the size isn’t bad for black-and-white manga.

Colors are very pastel, lower resolution than the black ink, and noticably dithered. You wouldn’t want to use it for photos or even color comics unless it was all you had available, but it’s good for diagrams, and helps immensely with displaying websites legibly.

The e-ink is easily visible in bright sunlight, and an adjustable front light takes care of indoor and dimmer lighting.

The built-in apps are well optimized for the display. General apps, not so much, but the fact that it’s color (and faster) makes this a lot less of a problem than on the older model.

You can still customize the style, input and refresh modes on a per-app basis. I’ve found that it helps to enable high-contrast mode on all the eBook readers apps, but haven’t had to change too much otherwise.

Some third-party apps still have trouble with button color schemes that end up being a totally illegible solid black or solid white. Setting the app to use outlined text usually makes it possible to read these buttons, and usually doesn’t affect the normal text in the app.

I still wouldn’t use it for games or video, though! Refresh and input are both way too slow for that.

Speaking of media, the Go 7 also has a speaker. It’s not a very good speaker, so I’d rather not use it for music, but it’ll do for audiobooks and podcasts. Or you can just pair it with bluetooth headphones.

Reader Apps

Like the Poke 3, the Go 7 ships with Neo Reader, which handles every DRM-free book I’ve thrown at it.

In addition to side-loading books over USB-C, there’s a cloud service, Onyx, that I still haven’t used after five years with the older reader!

Of course what sets Boox’s devices apart is that you can install any third-party eBook reader that supports Android. Google Play is included, and I had no problem installing F-Droid alongside it.

Kobo, Kindle, Bookshop, eBooks.com, B&N Nook, Hoopla and Libby all work well so far. Bookshop and recent versions of Kobo have been struggling on the Poke3, and I have a lot of stuff still to read in my Kobo library, so having that work reliably again is a relief. (I mean, we still have the Clara, but it’s nice to have everything on one device.)

Hoopla still has the additional quirk where you need to customize it using the Boox dot to “Stay active in the background.” (The usual Android app setting doesn’t do it in this case.)

Page-Flipping Buttons

The buttons work out-of-the-box with Neo Reader and some other apps. For the rest, the major eBook apps all have the option to flip pages with the volume buttons (which these map to), but you need to configure the apps one by one.

And yes, the buttons adjust when you rotate the screen. So whether you hold it left-handed or right-handed, they’ll still jump down/forward and up/back.

I haven’t found a way to reverse them, though, which seems like it might be helpful depending on how you grip the tablet.

Other Apps

Boox devices ship with Neo Browser, a fairly simple Chromium web browser. It runs a lot better than it did on the older device. Plus, you know, color. I suspect I’ll be using it more often than I used to, though I want to avoid getting too distracted. (I am not putting any social media apps on here!)

I’ve also been using:

KeePass2Android for password management, synced over Nextcloud. The only problem so far is that I had to use the outlined-text trick to make some of the buttons visible.

Nextcloud News as a feed reader, also synced over Nextcloud. It was a bit slow on the Poke3, so I didn’t use it much on there, but runs well on the Go 7.

Wallabag is a read-it-later app for articles, synced over its own service. This is another one that the old tablet could barely handle, but that runs smoothly now.

Bottom Line

I liked the Poke3 a lot, and I considered getting the Go 6, which appears to be the current equivalent. But I’m glad I paid the extra for this model. It’s such a drastic upgrade.

Even if it doesn’t fit in my pocket anymore.