Chilling out on a Saturday

It’s been a much calmer day today; we actually had a serious lie in, not getting up until nearly nine, eating a leisurely breakfast and then walking down into Poynton to shop. We explored the new Waitrose, which is very nice; not the largest ever, around the same size as the one in Wallingford, but with a decent range of stock.

Back at the boat, it was lunchtime already. We’ve idled the afternoon away, doing the occasional chore like refilling the water tank and finishing off the cabin shafts by wiping the Cuprinol dust off them, and Sheila has been working on a crochet order. I’m reading the Iain Banks on my Mac, using Kindle for Mac. It’s not as convenient as having it on the Sony Reader, but better than nothing. It doesn't seem to be available as an ebook in other formats.

{For geeks only: Kindle books, file extension .azw, are really in MobiPocket format, and in theory could be converted by Calibre, were it not that they have fancy DRM (Digital Rights Management) encoding. There are python scripts out there which could de-drm the file, but they need the serial number of the Kindle it's been downloaded to, which is used to generate the encryption key, and I’ve not been able to find what the Amazon site has used as the serial number for the Mac.

Also, of course, it is likely that removing the DRM is illegal, even for private use of a book you’ve bought. As I’ve said before, the book publishers are moronically making all the same mistakes as the music publishers did on the advent of MP3. It’s just a matter of time before they realise that all they are doing is encouraging the development of a black market in DRM-broken books, with the consequent loss of revenue.}

The book itself is classic Banks, convoluted, challenging and entertaining, and it cost less than a fiver, which is something.

Tomorrow, the ravening horde returns for another night, and Peter and Jan are coming over for tea in the afternoon, so I suspect it might be a tweet day, blogwise.