Taking away a few novels to read over the summer break is about to change is a big way, as Amazon.com, the Web’s largest online bookstore, rolls out its recently released electronic book reader.
It’s a standalone book reader using electronic paper to store up to 200 books at a time. All of the material gets downloaded without the need for a PC or Mac and without an Internet connection.
What’s amazing is that you can download books without using your home network or finding a wireless hot spot – in the US, Amazon has agreements with all the major phone carriers to allow Kindle users to download books from thin air and browse Wikipedia – and Amazon picks up the browsing bill!
To put the icing on the cake:
- Amazon backs up your library so if you lose or break your Kindle you can easily recover your books through Amazon.
- The rechargeable battery lasts for days so you don’t get stuck on a long trip with a dead battery.
- The Kindle holds over 200 books and can expand its storage capacity with standard SD memory cards.
- You can buy books, newspapers and magazines as well as read blogs, with most Best-Sellers costing only $9.99 and many major magazines for $2.99 or less.
Some people have as much holiday spirit as they do poor taste, and the latter is on full display at Ugly Christmas Lights, showing houses in which the residents display their enthusiasm for the holidays with the garish, the ugly, the weird, from the disturbing Santa in a Box to the gruesome Snowman on a Stick.
This site must be seen to be believed. If you have neighbours with bad xmas lights, take a snap and send in your photo.
- I like the JESUS sign that is so poorly lit, probably with missing lights or blown bulbs, that it reads JF5II5
- Love in the daylight shows an illuminated reindeer piece that obviously has the reindeer with head up then head down during the night, but by day, it looks like two deer performing the sort of act that David Attenborough makes documentaries about.
- Shepherd Down is another amusing shot, where it looks like one of the shepherds in the nativity scene got stuck into the Christmas spirit a little early.
Christmas Cookies
The ultimate Christmas cookie website has over 525 recipes for cookies, Cakes, bars, slices, sweets, and pies. Browse the collection of scrumptious Christmas cookie recipes both modern and traditional or view cookie recipes by country of origin. There’s a large searchable archive of cookie recipes you won’t find anywhere else.
Some interesting categories include:
- Icings, frostings and glazings – to make things even more sickly sweet and garishly bright than they need to be
- No bake cookies
- Low Carb cookies
- Tarts and Tassies (what is a Tassie?)
- Treats for animals
In the icing category, there is a recipe for Lime Icing which sounds intriguing. Basically it is lime peel in icing sugar mix. But one reviewer said they would not make it again because it looked and tasted disgusting.
Wow, the Ho Ho Snowballs look great in the no-bake category. They are crammed full of white chocolate chips, heavy cream, bourbon, slithered almonds, and sweetened, flaked coconut. You basically melt the chocolate chips, stir in the cream and almonds, chill for an hour in a dish, then cut into squares, roll them into balls and roll them in coconut.
The low carb peanut butter cookies look okay although i can’t see where the low carb comes from – the ingredients include sugar-free chunky peanut butter, heavy cream, and pecans. Hmmm.
The recipe for Easy Dog Biscuits looks after pooch.
Dog Match
Looking for a dog this Christmas? Dog Match helps you decide which SMALL dog breed might be best for you. Mind you, I think the best small dog breed is NO breed at all. They are a pesky nuisance just consuming food and destroying neighbourhood amenity through constant yapping. However, if you are fixed on this course, this site might help.