DIGITAL VS ANALOG:

Birthday parties are fun events. Conor had a Clone Wars Party. It looked a bit like a Star Wars convention around here today. Lots of family and friends, plenty of Star Wars theme music, light sabers and costumes.

I am taking advantage of the down time to catch-up the old fashioned analog way. I picked up a copy of the special election issue of The Atlantic and have been really enjoying the articles. Most of my newspaper reading and magazine reading is now done in a digital version.

Zino offers a great variety of digital magazines that arrive in your email box each month. The reader is really good as well. It beats the majority of PDF viewers, is versatile and intuitive. I like the illusion of flipping pages. You can even annotate the pages and you can do full-text searches.

Last week my the local Telegram delivery girl came by and asked me if I wanted a two week free subscription to the paper. I subscribe to a couple of papers on-line like the Telegram, The Western Star and a couple of weeklies. We said yes because she had to attempt to bring on at least three new subscribers. Well what a mess of extra clutter papers are. After two weeks of a daily paper, I hope to never hold one again!

The digital era suits me fine but I am not so sure digital magazines are up to speed for everyone. Reading onscreen is not the same as reading a print magazine. You have to learn to navigate and that may put you off at first.

I have the complete National Geographic on DVD. They are scans and the reader is not nearly as good as some that I use. Than there is the Telegram's smart reader which is really fantastic. It has a search engine, lets you cut out articles and it provides an archive search for past editions (not sure how far it goes back)

I still have not gotten into reading novels and books in a digital format. I like the smell and feel of a book and the glow of reading lamp.