I was super excited to find a kindle app for my macbook. It was free, and meant I could buy & download books and read them from my computer. This is a good thing for those of us who don't want/can't afford an actual kindle or ipad, or, y'know, new books. My fear with buying books- novels, particularly - is that I won't like them. I can buy a used book from amazon for .99c, but shipping it here costs $12.50. For each book. So if I get a book that I don't like... or if I get 3 books I don't like... then I'm stuck with 3 books, and down $36 just on shipping. So, there's no amazon.com.au yet. There's an Australian site which professes to do 'cheap books', but they don't do 2nd hand books the way amazon does. There's also a UK site which does free international shipping, but then you're paying in pounds and it seems to work out the same as if I'd just bought it from the Australian one. Or Amazon.
So I saw an education book that I wanted, and then thought; well, if it's no good then I've just paid $25 (12.50 for the book, 2nd hand, $12.50 for shipping) for a book to be flown across the world and I don't like it.
But then I found this app!
And I said to Nic:
"Nic!!! I'm going to go on a spending rampage with this. I can buy like, a billion books. And then I can just read them all, on my computer! A RAMPAGE I TELLS YOU!"
And I started looking at lists. Top 100 lists of the books people have been buying. Free, pre-releases. Popular books. Books made into movies.
And for every one of those popular books, a little green message would appear in the right hand side of the screen:
"This title is not available for customers in
Australia"
WHY MAKE IT GREEN WHEN YOU'RE TELLING ME I CAN'T HAVE IT?!
Idiots.
Free books, like the "Metaphysical elements of ethics", or "The Complete English Tradesmen (1898 ed.)" I can download without issue.
So, that's wonderful.
I suppose, on the bright side, it means I won't be able to go on a spending rampage. As Nic so tactfully put it last night when I said:
"I'm going to spend all my money on books, love!!!!"
"What money?"
Well, that shut me up, didn't it now?
Innnnn other news, I was messing around yesterday with wordpress and decided that their layouts aren't changeable enough unless you use CSS which I fail at, so no, I will suffer blogger's annoying lack of reply button a while longer, but in the meantime I kind of made a header. At the moment it has a different blog name on it. The blog name I could change this blog's name too. Once again I'm struck by the fact that we are no longer 'looking to april' as our potential wedding-month, and so the old name doesn't really fit.
Here, tell me what you think, or if you have any better/bigger/more awesome ideas. Particularly name ideas.
Click on 'im to make 'im big, yo.
If you like it, I'll do an overhaul.
Maybe I will anyway. Just cos I like overhauls.
How about:
... wow, this one was going to sound really dirty... "Kittens who lick puppies" (teehee.)
Although I don't want my blog name to be all about the animals, even though they are awesome.
Help?
Mission for today: Making team shirts for Nic & I to enter fun-runs and adventure races in. Last night as we packed up to go to bed at 10, I told him we were Undergraduates from Lametown University, or LTU. Then I started thinking about those athletics department shirts from Universities. Then I started thinking about how I could make my own LTU shirt with some highly randomized slogan on the back (We had: "As furious as a honeybadger in heat" as we broke down in overtired giggles last night. Maybe we need something a little more 'us'). So.. That's today.
Oh. And some Uni work in there too.
Maybe.
I actually really like Looking to April, even if it has lost its meaning along the way. It just sounds good.
ReplyDeleteAnd I really hear you on the shipping frustrations! Being next to the US means I'm always teased by their massive selections and cheap prices, but most don't ship to canada, or charge a crazy price for it.
Ok, well, maybe I'll keep looking to april, and change the header and colours around a bit. Maybe this one can be my Summer-by-the-Sea theme, and then I can have a winter-and-mountains theme. Or something. Which will be completely opposite for how most people are going to be experiencing the world, but anyway!
ReplyDeleteI can't believe they stooge you over too! It's like: I could drive 3 hours and be in the US and getting your selections and prices, and yet you're ripping me off!?
Well, that might almost be more terrible than them ripping us off. At least here, a book would have to fly 12 hours to get to my house. There's no excuse for them charging crazy prices to Vancouver. Maybe to like... Prince George. But that's another story. ;)
(On another note, waaaaay up north in BC there's a place called "Boring Ranch" and it made me giggle)