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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 8 of 8. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by alexandra_k on August 23, 2013, at 18:42:54
at the start of the year i decided to go paperless. thought i'd type notes instead of handwriting them. thought i'd follow the ppt. on my computer screen instead of the print out. thought i'd be okay with electronic copies of required texts.
i quit the course before i quit my experiment... but... i'm not entirely persuaded. i get that it is better for the planet etc etc. also a lot cheaper for me since i pay for my own printing these days and textbooks can get heavy etc etc. but i still do need to print out my writing sometimes. and i get something from laying it all out sequentially on the floor in front of me and... doing what people used to do with the scissors for cut and paste.
i know people have talked about the smell of books. and about the feel of turning the page. but i think there might be something more to it. something that makes it less effective study-wise.
when a lecturer closely follows a textbook the textbook becomes... a bit of an extension of myself. i've spent so much time with it, reading it, rereading it, summarizing it, turning the pages. i can often just open it to the bit i want because i know how far through it is... what thickness. i know where it is on the page. i start to develop a 3-d representation of it.
i think... you can do this with e-books. but that it is harder. because it is (yet another!) level of abstraction. keeping track of page numbers instead of feeling the weight of the book and the thickness of the pages. getting a sense of the layout when most readers / computer screens are not able to give a nice full page a4 / letter size view (seriously - what the f*ck is up with that???). there is no left page and then right page there is just page after page after page after page (though i guess some wide-screen viewers let you). perhaps that is part of the problem - different viewers altering it which means you don't get enough consistency to develop a proper representation of it... then resetting the freaking zoom level every time i turn the page... i just...
there is something kinesthetic about my reading, i guess. anyone else?
do people use e-readers / view books etc with a pdf reader? any reccommendations?
i think i would get a kindle-like device if it could:
a - display a whole page of a standard size textbook at a readable level of zoom (Hey! why not make one the size of a standard texbook!)
b - display color. well enough for reading colored graphs / anatomy plates
c - if the screen was matt so it could be viewable in sunny conditionswe aren't there yet, though - are we?
Posted by alexandra_k on August 23, 2013, at 18:57:30
In reply to print vs e reading, posted by alexandra_k on August 23, 2013, at 18:42:54
some things are worth the learning curve.
i think it was during my honors year (about 10 years ago) that one of my lecturers walked in on me doing the two-finger walz (i was pretty quick at it, actually) and said that if i wanted an academic career then i best learn to touch type because most of my life was going to be spent in front of the computer screen.
i did a typing course for my first year of high school so knew where my fingers were supposed to go (for letters and basic punctuation) so it really was just a matter of doing it that way and sucking up being slower for a while.
so i did.
and it took maybe two months.
and then i was faster at touch typing. and eventually i found myself looking at my fingers less and now i can type at a slow talking speed transcribing from textbooks or whatever.
i wonder if going paperless is a bit like that. i used to need to print my work really very regularly indeed. i do it less frequently now. it is still an important part of the process, but need (lack of a printer) has resulted in my developing a better sense of how things are looking with the online document.
i think nasty things are happening to computers as computer people try and take measures to protect copyright. i was hoping that with the purchase of my new mac i could put the new OS etc on my old mac... but turns out i couldn't because i didn't get the OS disks. I don't like that. what if i NEED the OS disks? i guess my registering (which i had to do to get things working properly) provides a record so the mac store people will do that for me or something... i guess that is how that is supposed to go.
you can read a lot of books via online library access... but they are truly horrible to read online. the viewer only shows you a tiny amount of words. why does WOrd have so much white space... screens get bigger but programs take up even more space than they ever used before with clutter and sh*t you will never use. sh*t sh*t sh*t why is everythign full with sh*t? is it giving jobs to people who have nothing better to do? but there is so much wrong with the world why is there junk work when there is so much not junk work needing to be done?
this e-thing scares me.
how much money should one have to pay to be able to access academic journals / books.
anyone can walk in and view the print collections...
i do in fact worry that *poof* it will all collapse one day. not just the loss of thesis...
all of it...
so intangible... does it truly exist? everything... everything important of value my whole life... a whisper. not quite graspable. i feel like it is just outside of my mental reach most of the time.
i guess that is why i like weightlifting. brings be back down to earth.
and the feel of a textbook. solid. reassuring. carry that around for a while and your relationship to it is differet. precisely because it is awkward. heavy. it weighs on your mind to be sure. and that is the point.
Posted by alexandra_k on August 23, 2013, at 19:06:47
In reply to Re: print vs e reading, posted by alexandra_k on August 23, 2013, at 18:57:30
i think it is kinesthetic. the loss of kinesthetic modality.
the difference between anatomy from computer 3-d simulation where you can rotate the object and / or rotate your view around the object...
vs..
actually having the model of the skeleton (or whatever) in front of you. being able to do creepy things like loop the thumb over the pelvic bowl so the hand hangs aloofly inside the pelvic bowl. or reach it up inside the rib cage or whatever..
the 3-d perspective on both print or computer screen is getting better... as resolution gets higher, i guess. but... i'm sure i heard somewhere that aspects of how we represent 3-d in art (to do with shadow or something) are actually fairly arbitrary. weren't discovered until some historical period (how i barely scraped through art history at high school i'll never know). but it just... is harder. especially irregular shapes. developing a 3-d mental representation of the scapula. or some of the odd bones of the skull... i don't see how you can do it without being able to pick them up and hold them and feel the textures and move them around.
but is this my personal deficit? like how i lack a number sense (perhaps). or... is this a skill that we can develop? either me personally or people generally (e.g., i wonder if kids are better at it)
maybe.... orienteering irl vs computer (e.g., finding the good guns from different spawn points in halo)...
hm.
Posted by Partlycloudy on August 23, 2013, at 19:51:24
In reply to Re: print vs e reading, posted by alexandra_k on August 23, 2013, at 19:06:47
My brother is a book collector and reseller, and he's been sucked in the ebook thing. I have one, but I have an utterly stupid rule that I'll only download books in the public domain, for available otherwise for free.
My Kindle is second generation, and has just cr*pp*d out. Won't hold a charge anymore. I downloaded the app for my iPad, but oddly (no, stupidly, my word for the day), I can only select titles from Amazon to download to my iPad from my laptop. Ridiculous.
I don't think I am at a point where I can happily give up a book. I do all my important writing longhand. You can tell the mood I'm in by the size of the writing, whether it's legible, and even if I use a crap pen or not. I am not one to change up my font size, style, or color of my computer typing, and I find it difficult to read. Frankly, I tend to not read emails that are wacked out like that.
And I am terribly attached to my small collection of author signed books. I can't see that changing.
Posted by alexandra_k on August 23, 2013, at 20:48:04
In reply to Re: print vs e reading, posted by Partlycloudy on August 23, 2013, at 19:51:24
> I have an utterly stupid rule that I'll only download books in the public domain, for available otherwise for free.
I don't think it is a stupid rule. I used to have that rule for myself. And most of my friends have that rule, too. I have broken it rather a lot this year and last year. Textbooks. Then music. Then TV / Movies. I do feel badly about it. Like how I used to feel badly about smoking, but continued to do it anyway.
I tell myself that they aren't losing out on any money from me - because I simply don't have any money at present. I used to spend around $1,000 per year on textbooks... (We can borrow that amount each year on our student loans). Other students would buy cars or stereos or... And I'd buy textbooks. I've spent hundreds of dollars shipping my books around different countries / different parts of the country with me. When I quit the course here I momentarily considered moving to the South Island. So I... Donated all my books to the Students Union. It was a bit rude... Libraries don't want books anymore... Many of them are available online... I couldn't bear to throw them out, though. I still can't believe that I did that. Thousands and thousands of dollars worth of books... All my worldly goods aside from my computer... But there it is.
Anyway... PDF's of textbooks for free. When I'm not a student here so can't take books out of the library. Can't even get interloans delivered here. But it was a slippery slope from there to music to tv series to movies to be sure... I'm not proud.
> And I am terribly attached to my small collection of author signed books. I can't see that changing.Yeah. I can see that.
Do you know of Richard Scary? I had a lot of his books as a kid. I can't imagine them translating to devices...
Posted by Partlycloudy on August 24, 2013, at 7:16:06
In reply to Re: print vs e reading, posted by alexandra_k on August 23, 2013, at 20:48:04
Richard Scary was great! I'm slowly collecting my favourite children's books. I was big on E. Nesbitt's fairy tales, and my "Five children and It" paperback has been disintegrating for years. I watched the video the BBC did years ago and could not wrap my head around Eddie Izzard playing It.
Posted by Phillipa on August 24, 2013, at 10:35:30
In reply to Re: print vs e reading » alexandra_k, posted by Partlycloudy on August 24, 2013, at 7:16:06
I absolutely love my Nook e reader and recently purchased a Kindle also. I absolutely adore not needing glasses to read the books with the adjustable font sizes. Both has the e ink and both the lighting on full back and one a little less crisp. Books take up space and the nook and kindle are not anywhere but inside this small devise. I buy my books there. Many I will never read. But instead of wasting money on something petty it's books. And so handly to use the computer to view all the books and read a short version first. Honestly I love them. Also on facebook am a member of quite a few book clubs. Great discussions on different authors, books, and reading devises. Many many are now getting Ipads and adding both an app for kindle and one for Nook. I only want mine for reading. Greg has the Nook tablet so gets internet access also wifi here at home and he can read any nook book I have downloaded. So two for the buck. Phillipa
Posted by Dinah on August 25, 2013, at 13:36:06
In reply to print vs e reading, posted by alexandra_k on August 23, 2013, at 18:42:54
I still tend to prefer paper books for nonfiction, and textbooks I'd assume. I prefer ebooks for fiction. Ebooks are so much easier to read, but not as easy to flip back and forth as needed.
Or I suppose they might be in some ways, but there's nothing like keeping a finger in a book to flip back and refer.
This is the end of the thread.
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