briandarvell

I can imagine reading them in original Russian would add another level to the experience.

Interestingly enough, I devoured Infinite Jest and loved the entire novel. Gravity's Rainbow was simply too confusing to me and I think I would have done better had I used a reading guide to support me through the novel.

Very interesting! I as well really enjoyed AK, but I also extremely enjoyed The Brothers Karamazov, even more than Anna Karenina. It's probably my favorite Russian classic! I too gave up on War and Peace however about 200-300 pages into the story.

I find timing plays a big part of my enjoyment of tougher classic novels. If I'm extremely busy or don't have time to dedicate to reading in decent chunks (an hour or more per day) then I find it hard to maintain motivation to read dense novels.

I somehow got through Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow but don't recommend anyone do that, I was just too stubborn to let it get the better of me :)

I was a huge Ultima VII fan and played the game for hundreds of hours. I remember getting Ultima VIII and playing it for an hour or two and never playing it again. But until reading this article I didn't understand why Ultima VIII didn't capture my interest like VII did.

Could you elaborate a bit more on why low-fee index funds are sticking it to Wall Street?

I've been fortunate to fly Emirates A380 numerous times. The most impressive flying experience I've ever had, both from Emirates customer service as well as the A380 experience.

My trouble is that my two daughters (10 and 8) go to a school where iPads are used for a significant part of their school work, even when they're at school. They don't get paper assignments or worksheets anymore, it's all assigned over a program called Schoology and they're expected to work and submit it all through the iPad. Then when they come home after school, their homework is also done on the iPad. Then once they're done all their homework and have already spent countless hours that day on tablets doing their work, they want downtime to relax and play and often games on the iPad is a big part of that.

I agree as a parent we have a big role to play in being very aware of practicing what we preach. Obviously that goes with more than just screen time. I've caught myself many times saying that my child cannot go on tablets right now, meanwhile I grab my phone to check emails or read the news...

I don't know what the perfect answer is but I think moderation is needed much more. Especially considering the active effort to make games/apps as addictive to us as possible. I wish the school would adapt a screen-free learning day system where, maybe a couple days each week, all work is done without the need for iPads.

You sir are doing God's work. Actually get things done instead of making fake work under the pretense of being busy - more people could do well by following this principle.

If that's the case that's fine, but then my question is why are these computers networked to any extranet source? It seems a natural conflict: you cannot update the system due to it being so important that it always works, yet we need to attach it to an outside network which allows risk of infection. In my opinion, if the computer HAS to be connected to a network that is accessible from outside, then it MUST be allowed to be updated with latest antivirus/protection updates.

I do something a little different but only because it's simpler and doesn't really require any specific programs to use. I dump all my journals, diary entries, notes, thoughts, trivia and miscellaneous things I would like to remember into a giant text file. Then a few times a week or whenever I feel like it I ask the web to give me a random # (numbergenerator.org) and that's the line I go to in the text file and read from there. Sometimes I also just browse around the file at random and read away as well. I don't have any statistics on my retention rate of course but generally I think it helps me recall things better and amongst my family and friends people occasionally comment on my good memory and it could be this method is a part of the reason for that. I think in principle the concept is very similar to the spaced repetition method, perhaps just a bit more unstructured.

Cool idea. Basically it really offers nothing new except they have changed the way the game is played. You don't need to force yourself to begin, they're taking that first step for you.

I have tried both PB and Freemind and I still have trouble grasping the use.

I say Procrastination-forming because in my experience with these kind of tools you end up spending more time formatting and aesthetic-izing your stuff than actually doing notetaking. Look at the demo video on the main homepage and one thing they emphasize is on putting small icons beside the bubbles and having neat background colors.

I say Pseudo-notetaking becuase this tool is actually more geared towards structure than creation. Your video for instance doesn't show anything related to my idea of notetaking. Notetaking means you are writing down quotations or details upon ideas that you're listening or reading about because you wish to remember them or study later. Notetaking, in my mind, is not limited to linking Ayn Rand as an author and 1902 as a birth year. There's no depth to anything.

In the end if you say it works for you then go for it. But I'm just saying that if it's really notetaking you're interested in then I really don't think this is the program to use.

I don't see what's so great about such a program other than it's a "shinier" version of the basic folder layout in any modern OS. I mean, you can do all the same stuff using files and folders from your C:\ and add shortcuts between them if you need to and it can be made instantly searchable and indexed without being locked into one program file. I'll admit you cannot easily make things look as nice and colorful as PB seems to do but if you're really that interested about learning and keeping notes, this just seems to be another of the countless procrastination-forming pseudo-notetaking programs which already exist. Furthermore, the amount of time it would take for me to reform my current notes and files into this program would be a huge kill to other things which I could already be doing. I'm curious to hear responses to this.

I second Calibre. I supposedly works for Mac too. I use it for Windows and on my Sony PRS-600. Calibre offers lots of ready-to-use web subscriptions which gathers articles from other websites like an RSS Reader.

I'm just waiting for my Sony PRS-600 to arrive. I hope it allows me to get rid of a bunch of my fiction books too.