Monday, August 22, 2011

[Geek] Dolling Up My Amazon Kindle

It took some time--about a couple of years in the making--for me to finally give in to the paperless technology of an E-book reader. I've always been a lover of paperbacks and would frequent bookstores and book bargain bins in ze days of mah youth (was that so long ago? :P I still do now, though, but not as much). Also, I'm one of those weirdos who get high on that new book smell. Ah yes. Anyway, when my sister and her husband once again offered to get me an Amazon Kindle for a joint birthday-Christmas present, it was an offer I can no longer refuse. :o

I may review the Kindle on one of my future posts, but now, I just would like to talk about how I sort of customized an otherwise very plain-looking E-book reader cover case, plus with some lovely tidbits in the Kindle itself. So you see, the Kindle with the leather case on looks like this:


Looks so corporate...

And yea, I'm also one of those geeks who name their gadgets. So upon beholding the plain black visage of my new Kindle (I got it last March), I decided to name it "Svenny." Why? He's (yes, it's a "he" now) named after "Sven" from the original Voltron series--the black pilot who flies the Blue Lion. ANYWAY. Ahem ahem.

Svenny dahlin', you're spiffy and all, but for a girl like me, you look... a little TOO spiffy. Maybe my dad would like your clean plainness, but not me. Awww... So what do I do?

I gave Svenny some gems. Ohohoho~

Missing a few jewels but nothing I can't fix ^^;


It's quite minimalist, but I didn't want to turn Svenny into a disco ball. O_O

I've also just recently learned that one can customize the screensavers. :D The Kindle has some "built-in" screensavers in it, once it's fresh from being purchased from Amazon. They were pretty cool at first, but the novelty soon wore off, and I wanted more than just these images to grace my Kindle screen every time I turn my Kindle off from reading:

                                   


After a while, they'll start looking pretty freaky. O_o And then, fellow geek Rocky, one of the few among my friends who own a Kindle, revealed to me the um... way of allowing images of your choice into the Kindle to make awesome screensavers. This procedure may hold the throats of the overly conscientious, but as the linked article mentioned, Amazon sort of gave the public the permission for screensaver customization.

Afterwards, I went screensaver-making trigger-happy. Here are some of the screensavers I made (very simple to do, as long as you gather chosen photos/artwork and make sure it's for personal use only):

Angel Warrior

Claudia from Interview With A Vampire


Eowyn from LOTR


Fingolfin and Morgoth, Tolkien artwork by John Howe


Dragon with Butterfly Wings


ThunderCats logo--BUT OF COURSE! ^_^



Galadriel



The only downside is that the images should be converted to black and white or "grayscaled," since the latest Kindle so far isn't colored yet, but I heard they're releasing a colored one soon.

This is how a customized screensaver would look like in the Kindle:




Note that these artwork aren't mine, and that I've pilfered borrowed these from the Interwebz, so credit goes to their respective artists. I LOVE FANTASY ARTWORK. I will work on my skillz. :)

Do you any of you guys and girls have a Kindle? Loved it lately? Customized it lately? ^_^



Lurve,

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