Exhalation - Lightspeed Magazine. Published in Apr. Issue 4. 7) . Originally published in Eclipse 2, edited by Jonathan Strahan. Reprinted by permission of the author.

To me, one of the key elements that sets apart a professional eBook release from that of an amateur has always been the technical presentation of the book.

Cisco Nexus 2000 Series Hardware Installation Guide. Chapter Title. PDF - Complete Book (4.37 MB) PDF - This Chapter (49.0 KB).

This is not in fact the case, and I engrave these words to describe how I came to understand the true source of life and, as a corollary, the means by which life will one day end. For most of history, the proposition that we drew life from air was so obvious that there was no need to assert it. Every day we consume two lungs heavy with air; every day we remove the empty ones from our chest and replace them with full ones. If a person is careless and lets his air level run too low, he feels the heaviness of his limbs and the growing need for replenishment. It is exceedingly rare that a person is unable to get at least one replacement lung before his installed pair runs empty; on those unfortunate occasions where this has happened—when a person is trapped and unable to move, with no one nearby to assist him—he dies within seconds of his air running out. But in the normal course of life, our need for air is far from our thoughts, and indeed many would say that satisfying that need is the least important part of going to the filling stations. For the filling stations are the primary venue for social conversation, the places from which we draw emotional sustenance as well as physical.

We all keep spare sets of full lungs in our homes, but when one is alone, the act of opening one’s chest and replacing one’s lungs can seem little better than a chore. In the company of others, however, it becomes a communal activity, a shared pleasure. If one is exceedingly busy, or feeling unsociable, one might simply pick up a pair of full lungs, install them, and leave one’s emptied lungs on the other side of the room. If one has a few minutes to spare, it’s simple courtesy to connect the empty lungs to an air dispenser and refill them for the next person.

But by far the most common practice is to linger and enjoy the company of others, to discuss the news of the day with friends or acquaintances and, in passing, offer newly filled lungs to one’s interlocutor. While this perhaps does not constitute air sharing in the strictest sense, there is camaraderie derived from the awareness that all our air comes from the same source, for the dispensers are but the exposed terminals of pipes extending from the reservoir of air deep underground, the great lung of the world, the source of all our nourishment.

Many lungs are returned to the same filling station the next day, but just as many circulate to other stations when people visit neighboring districts; the lungs are all identical in appearance, smooth cylinders of aluminum, so one cannot tell whether a given lung has always stayed close to home or whether it has traveled long distances. And just as lungs are passed between persons and districts, so are news and gossip. In this way one can receive news from remote districts, even those at the very edge of the world, without needing to leave home, although I myself enjoy traveling. I have journeyed all the way to the edge of the world, and seen the solid chromium wall that extends from the ground up into the infinite sky. It was at one of the filling stations that I first heard the rumors that prompted my investigation and led to my eventual enlightenment. It began innocently enough, with a remark from our district’s public crier.

View topics about products & services from O'Reilly Media. Buy Kobo Aura ONE E-Reader - Black at Argos.co.uk, visit Argos.co.uk to shop online for Kindle and E-readers, iPad, tablets and E-readers, Technology. Looking for an ebook reader? We review the best ebook readers and provide the latest news and tips for getting the most out of your e book reader.

At noon of the first day of every year, it is traditional for the crier to recite a passage of verse, an ode composed long ago for this annual celebration, which takes exactly one hour to deliver. The crier mentioned that on his most recent performance, the turret clock struck the hour before he had finished, something that had never happened before. Another person remarked that this was a coincidence, because he had just returned from a nearby district where the public crier had complained of the same incongruity. No one gave the matter much thought beyond the simple acknowledgement that seemed warranted. It was only some days later, when there arrived word of a similar deviation between the crier and the clock of a third district, that the suggestion was made that these discrepancies might be evidence of a defect in the mechanism common to all the turret clocks, albeit a curious one to cause the clocks to run faster rather than slower.

Horologists investigated the turret clocks in question, but on inspection they could discern no imperfection. In fact, when compared against the timepieces normally employed for such calibration purposes, the turret clocks were all found to have resumed keeping perfect time.

I myself found the question somewhat intriguing, but I was too focused on my own studies to devote much thought to other matters. I was and am a student of anatomy, and to provide context for my subsequent actions, I now offer a brief account of my relationship with the field. Death is uncommon, fortunately, because we are durable and fatal mishaps are rare, but it makes difficult the study of anatomy, especially since many of the accidents serious enough to cause death leave the deceased’s remains too damaged for study. If lungs are ruptured when full, the explosive force can tear a body asunder, ripping the titanium as easily as if it were tin. In the past, anatomists focused their attention on the limbs, which were the most likely to survive intact. During the very first anatomy lecture I attended a century ago, the lecturer showed us a severed arm, the casing removed to reveal the dense column of rods and pistons within.

I can vividly recall the way, after he had connected its arterial hoses to a wall- mounted lung he kept in the laboratory, he was able to manipulate the actuating rods that protruded from the arm’s ragged base, and in response the hand would open and close fitfully. In the intervening years, our field has advanced to the point where anatomists are able to repair damaged limbs and, on occasion, attach a severed limb.

At the same time we have become capable of studying the physiology of the living; I have given a version of that first lecture I saw, during which I opened the casing of my own arm and directed my students’ attention to the rods that contracted and extended when I wiggled my fingers. Despite these advances, the field of anatomy still had a great unsolved mystery at its core: the question of memory. While we knew a little about the structure of the brain, its physiology is notoriously hard to study because of the brain’s extreme delicacy. It is typically the case in fatal accidents that, when the skull is breached, the brain erupts in a cloud of gold, leaving little besides shredded filament and leaf from which nothing useful can be discerned. For decades the prevailing theory of memory was that all of a person’s experiences were engraved on sheets of gold foil; it was these sheets, torn apart by the force of the blast, that were the source of the tiny flakes found after accidents. Anatomists would collect the bits of gold leaf—so thin that light passes greenly through them—and spend years trying to reconstruct the original sheets, with the hope of eventually deciphering the symbols in which the deceased’s recent experiences were inscribed.

I did not subscribe to this theory, known as the inscription hypothesis, for the simple reason that if all our experiences are in fact recorded, why is it that our memories are incomplete? Advocates of the inscription hypothesis offered an explanation for forgetfulness—suggesting that over time the foil sheets become misaligned from the stylus which reads the memories, until the oldest sheets shift out of contact with it altogether—but I never found it convincing. The appeal of the theory was easy for me to appreciate, though; I too had devoted many an hour to examining flakes of gold through a microscope, and can imagine how gratifying it would be to turn the fine adjustment knob and see legible symbols come into focus.

The Top 5 Best e. Reader apps for Android Tablets.

It is no secret that Tablet computers have been rising in popularity and so has peoples desire to use them for reading books. There are many ebook reading apps out there for Android, but where do you start? We brought out our new LG G- Slate tablet to review some of the Top Apps available in various Android Markets. This article is apart of our spotlight series on Google Android for larger screen tablet devices.

If you are a comic book reader you might like our recent article on the Top 5 Comic Book Readers for Android Tablets. Many people are only familiar with the official Google Android Market, but some devices are not able to access it. There are lots of alternatives to the official market and we give you the full scoop with The Top 5 Google Android Markets. So without further adieu here is our list of the top 5 best Android e.

Book Reading Apps for Tablets. FBREADERFBREADER continues to be one of the most popular e- reading programs for the Android operating system and performs well for larger screen tablets. It reads a wide array of e- book formats such as e.

Pub, fb. 2, plucker, Non- DRM’d version of Mobipocket and others. You can also read directly from tar,zip,gzip and bzip. It can use external True. Type fonts (on devices with Android 1. Includes hyphenation patterns for 1. Lets look at the reading experience on the app itself, no matter what book type you open all text is rendered on a old type paper background called Sepia. There are options under the setting menu that let you add different gradient backgrounds such as Wood, Leather and Solid Color.

I like the gimick but I am used to reading on a pure white background and the program gives you the ability to change the background of your book to any color you want. Not only can you change the background but you also have the ability to change the color of text, hyperlinks and more. If you are like me and like control over your fonts, line spacing, alignments and margins you will like this program. There are many options to change all of these features but they are done in the advanced menu, which might prove tedious.

Good thing when you customize your settings they are applied to any future books you open as well. Page turn speed is quick and effective and you have the ability to read both in landscape and portrait mode. By default the orientation is locked but you can unlock it quickly enough in the settings menu. The one thing I did not like about the entire page turning experience was the weird line that would trail every- time you turn a page. It would not be just a simple refresh but the page turn takes a little bit longer then rival programs. When you turn a page this trailing line follows you across the page when you gesture and swipe. It becomes annoying after awhile.

Rating: 7/1. 0Aldiko Book Reader. Aldiko continues to lead the current generation of Android Reading Apps for Tablets and does not disappoint on many levels.

It reads fewer ebook types then rival applications but does the job effectively with EPUB and PDF books. You can even import books you have purchased from other stores which is very solid.

When you load Aldiko up you are greeted by a library few that gives you a very i. Books book shelf where all of the books are stored. You can import books via an SD Card or browse your devices memory.

Since I have a Honeycomb tablet without the SD Card it was very easy to select books and begin reading right away or import them into my Aldiko Library Book Shelf. Install Lawn Irrigation System Video here. When you are reading an ebook you have a few options right off the bat to customize your experience. You can switch to day and night mode which puts white text on a black screen or the main settings button. You can adjust options such as locking your orientation, setting up  your brightness or adjusting your font/margins.

Most e- reading applications have extensive settings menu but Aldiko nails it right by having a more minimal interface for doing advanced options. Aldiko has its own store portal which is a gateway to find out the latest New York Times Bestsellers and many other open source books. They also have links to other bookstores such as Smashwords, Books on Board and O’Reilly e. Books. There is quite a bit of selection here and its refreshing to have an app give you many different alternatives, rather then just its official partner.

I found the entire Aldiko experience for tablets to be spot on. There is no annoying stuttering when you flip pages on ebooks. Whether you are reading in landscape or portrait mode it is quite excellent. Aldiko continues to be updated and this is the app to beat for Android Tablets. Rating 9. 5/1. 0Moon+ Reader. Moon+ Reader for Android is another application with a lush book shelf interface that greets you when you load up the application. There is also a handy automatic drive scanning utility that will look at your SD card and main memory and import books into the shelf.

I liked the fact it scanned both and  imported everything without any prompts, complete with cover art. This handy ebook reading program reads a wide array of book types such as txt, html, epub, umd, fb. OPDS. When you are reading a book you are prompted to choose from 1. They have the generic day and night theme, but also different points of the day and even outdoors themes. It would have been better to use the ambient light sensors in tablets to automatically select the best theme for your environment. By default when you turn pages there is an annonying page turn animation that emulates turning a page in a real book.

This is much akin to the Apple i. Books or the Google Books functionality that lets you drag and peak by swiping the screen. This would not be so bad if it was quick, but even on my T- Mobile G- Slate which is a top of the line tablet, it lagged. Luckily there was a way to shut it off under one of the more extensive options. Speaking of options, this program is brimming with them! It seriously allows you to tailor your experience with TONS of settings and configurations.

Your settings are bunched into a few main menus such as Visual Options, Control Options, Misc, Themes,  and More Operations. Under these various menus gives you more flexibility and control over your ebook experience.

You can adjust font size,  and chose between over 5. There are countless more but this program is the most advanced we have reviewed in terms of pure variety of options. In the end I really liked this program and it seems many other people do to.

You can think of it as a more advanced version of Aldiko minus the store interface. Rating 8/1. 0Cool Reader. The Cool Reader application for Google Android allows you a wide variety of book formats that it can read. Currently the program has the ability to read fb.

This program is very bare bones and basic, lacking the GUI that most of its rivals enjoy. It does not really have any kind of shelf or main interface and it is designed only to read books. The Cool Reader app like others in its class does not have a clean white background by default to read books. It has a a gradient old book type background that I did not like right after the bat.

It is easily fixed by going into the options menu and changing the texture to a solid color. For example you can easily take notes and look words up in the dictionary. You can also change your font type, size and many other options to change the size of your text within a book. You can read books both in landscape and potrait mode although it does hang for a good 3. This program loses points on having 0 interface and is not appealing to new users. Advanced users may like the flexible control they have with fonts, hyperlinks, notes, dictionary and many other features.

Rating: 7/1. 0Mantano Reader. This application does not read many formats at all, mainly PDF and EPUB. Good thing most books on the internet are in these two formats, it does involve you converting books manually if they aren’t.