There’s a great collection of NASA images available now on Flickr at the “NASA on The Commons’ photostream.”

I remember watching this on TV when I was in elementary school:

For Valentine’s Day, my wonderful wife purchased for me a Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader. I have to say, this is probably one of the two best technology purchases I’ve ever made. I love reading from this device!

Curiously, as a software developer, I’ve never been comfortable for reading for long periods of time from a computer screen, particularly when reading for pleasure. But the eInk display is so much more like paper that I’ve already read through an entire novel in the week or so since I got the e-reader.

A lot of people have asked why the Nook, vs. Amazon’s Kindle or other e-readers. (Or, for that matter, why not wait for the Apple iPad? But that is a topic for another day. Short reason? eInk.)

In a nutshell, what drew me to the Nook specifically were those features which distinguish it:

• Native support for PDF and ePub formats – Without any conversion, as the Kindle requires (or at least did initially), you can drag and drop any PDF or ePub (which means pretty much anything from Project Gutenberg – but more on sources of free and cheap books in a later post) directly into your Nook’s storage, which shows up on your PC as just another drive, like an SD card for your camera.
• The “Lending” feature – This feature has gotten some bad press, mainly due to the restrictions (you can only lend a book once per friend, and for a maximum of 14 days with no renewal) as well as the publishers’ reticence to allow it (they can turn it off for any title), but the plain and simple fact is this: B&N are the only big player doing something about making the eBook market friendlier and more like owning a hard copy book. (Now if they’d just figure out a way to do used eBooks that would be something…)
• In-Store features – Speaking of making it more like hard copy books, the in-store features of the Nook (which they really need to actually get around to activating) are pretty intriguing. In a nutshell, while you’re in any B&N and connected to their (free) Wifi, you can read the full text of any book they offer. Which you can do with the hard copies, so why not with your Nook? This is a stroke of genius – browse the stacks from the cafe or while watching your kids in the children’s area.
• The color touchscreen + Google Android OS – The combination of these two opens up wonderful possibilities for future developments….
• Expandable Memory – I’m a hoarder when it comes to books, and no doubt will be when it comes to eBooks as well. The Nook has an SD card slot which you can expand up to 16GB of memory.
• Replaceable Battery – The Kindle’s battery is, I believe, like the iPhone, not replaceable. This means a hefty price down the road to either replace the device or send back for factory battery replacement when it finally dies. With the Nook, on the other hand, you can already purchase a replacement battery should you so desire.

So… what’s wrong with the Nook? Well, a few things, still:

• Different features for B&N eBooks vs. “My Library” - The Nook separates the books you’ve purchased from B&N, from those you loaded yourself (PDF’s, ePubs, 3rd party eBooks, etc.). With B&N content you get coverflow view, searching by author or title, sorting by last read, etc. With your content, you get – none of those. You are limited to a view sorted by title or author (and BTW – the title sort doesn’t handle “a, an, the” properly). I could, in theory, load the hundreds of books I’ve downloaded from Project Gutenberg into my Nook. But that would mean having to scroll through the list to page 20 every time I wanted to read “Tarzan of the Apes.”
• Sluggish – The Nook is not the fastest thing in the world. After using an iPhone for a year+, the touchscreen is not as responsive as it should be. The eInk takes a second to turn pages, but that is actually tolerable.
• “Open” OS, but… – OK, so it uses Google’s Android OS. Give us custom apps!

I’m hopeful that in future updates (there have been 2 already since Nook’s debut), they will continue to enhance the device and address these shortcomings. I understand from previous reviews that the first releases of the Nook system were barely usable with regard to performance, but that newer updates have really gone far in addressing speed issues. as I said, the sluggishness is tolerable, but could still stand improvement. I’m also hopeful that they open it up to more apps, or even 3rd party development (The guys at nookDevs have already started down this path with hacking the Nook. I’ve tried their stuff, and it has possibility, but is not ready for prime time yet.)

In the coming days (weeks?), I’ll be posting more on the Nook and eBooks, including good sources for free and/or cheap content for the Nook, and a review of the classic novel Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Stay tuned…

John Owen, in the book I’m reading right now, says this:

The very title page of this book will demonstrate, without further explanation from me, the intention of the work I have undertaken.

Gee, can you really tell that much from the title page of a book?

Yes. Yes you can.

I picked up a Pandigital Digital Photo Frame at Bed Bath & Beyond this weekend. It’s pretty nice – an 8″ frame that has 1GB of internal memory, plus plays MP3s and AVIs.

The second best part of it was the cost – it will only be $34 after rebate. They’re $80, plus if you have one of those 20% off coupons that BB&B sends to everyone on the planet, your in-store cost is only $64. Then you get a $30 mail-in rebate form. Sweet!

The best part, though?

It sits on my desk at work and every time I look at it I am reminded how much I love my wife and kids, all day long. You can’t put a price tag on that. I recommend something like this for every husband and father out there.

Michael Patton has published a very funny glossary of 19 essential terms for beginning Christians.

18. Quiet time: This has no relation to “time out.” In fact, it could be just the opposite. All Christians are expected to have “quiet time.” It is at this time that you renew your relationship to God through prayer and Bible study. The longer the better. If you do this first thing in the morning, people will count you blessed.

For fun, I checked my logs for the most popular posts I’ve ever done. The one I suspected, based on reader response (neither of my regular readers ever comments), was actually #8 below.

Without further ado…

10. Free Audio Book: The Confessions of St. Augustine (sorry, the offer has since expired)

9. On Being Fed Up

8. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

7. New Baby Pics (Atticus, February 2007.)

6. SHAZAM! Or, Now, I Can Be President!

5. Pyromaniacs: Slice Capades

4. The Gospel in a Nutshell

3. Blue for Boys, Pink for Girls

2. Quotes from The Godly Man’s Picture

and

1. Blogging through Psalm 119

I’m now on Facebook, so feel free to “Friend” me.

And, be sure to add Kubecki.com to your Blog Network as well.

OK, it’s been WAY TOO LONG since I’ve posted regularly. Time to get back on track. But first… a big bunch o’ links.

• Tim Challies reviews Al Mohler’s new book on preaching
• CJ Mahaney interviews Mark Dever on preaching (also applicable to personal Bible study)
• Peter Mead explains the differences between preaching and lecturing
• A break from “preaching” links… this ad for Wario Land: Shake It! is really cool
• Great excerpt from Paul David Tripp on sin
• More from Peter Mead on preaching and application
• Sinclair Ferguson on training the tongue
• Irish Calvinist has the post every Calvinist should read
• Justin Taylor lists 6 questions to ask before confronting
• Tony Reinke posts an excerpt (sermon jam) from Piper on how to Make War!
• And lastly just for fun… The video for A-ha’s Take on Me.. the literal version

Neatorama posts a reference to the film 2010, which includes a scene featuring “SAL 9000,” a computer similar to “HAL 9000″ from the original 2001. In the film, made in 1984, SAL is asked to define the word “Phoenix” and responds, “There are 26 references in the standard encyclopedia.”

Well, our reference resources in 2008 far exceed those of the producers of the film. The Wikipedia entry for Phoenix currently lists 166 distinct references to choose from.