Merciel

I like to spend time between classes at the pond at the university; it’s more peaceful than the cafeteria and less stuffy than the library. Few students bother me there, and the few who do keep their distance. The ducks who beg for bread can be a nuisance, but they compensate with their beauty. My biggest grievance is with the sun.

I don’t mind it, but my iPad mini does: I can only see the screen at the brightest setting, but the glare hurts my eyes even then. I could suffice with paper, but all my books reside in apps, and I hate to write on actual paper anyway. That reason, a $25 Barnes & Noble gift card, and a trip to Disneyland I had hoped to make encouraged me to purchase a Nook Simple Touch Reader yesterday.

It took some time to set up. Syncing with my Barnes & Noble account gave me no trouble, but turning it into a full-fledged Android tablet took me an entire evening: First I had to purchase a Micro SD card–Thankfully, OfficeMax had one on sale for $7–, then I had to root it, then I had to backtrack to correct my careless mistakes, then I had to find a text editor to install, and then I had to tailor it to my satisfaction and remove all the unnecessary Google junk that would kill the battery and violate my privacy. After that, I wanted to add my own images to use for the screensaver. At last, I was ready to actually use it!

Reading on the iPad did not bother me except when outdoors, but the E Ink display makes text look so much better that I will use this as my main reading device. Typing on the text editor surprised me too; though nowhere near as good as typing on the iPad mini, it has proven responsive enough to keep up with my thumbs. I can correct the typos later. I can’t do much else with it. Technically, I can play Angry Birds on the device, but realistically, all I can do on it is read and write. That’s all I really want to do when I’m at the pond anyway. I want to read, write, and feel artistic. When I want to dick around on the Internet, I’ll return to civilization.