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    Back from out of town, Goblet Of Fire, 7th Son

    By Derek | August 1, 2007

    7th Son Book 1 DescentTook the family out of town on Monday. We drove to a small town called Winnie, where we stayed the night.

    In the morning, Jill and Austin dropped me off at my client’s and then checked out of the hotel and drove down to Galveston. They didn’t spend much time on the beach, but had a little bit of fun before they had to come pick me up.

    We drove back that night, and didn’t get home until almost 1am.

    The drive was pretty good, though. We’re currently listening to the fourth Harry Potter Audiobook, The Goblet Of Fire. Austin is especially enjoying the audiobooks. He really enjoys listening to all of the “extra” stuff that they didn’t show in the movie.

    In fact, we took him to go see the fifth movie, Order Of The Phoenix, and he commented on how it was “alright” but he couldn’t wait to listen to the book, so he could find out all the extra stuff! I hope someday he’ll want to read the books himself. It’s amazing how far he’s come in such a short time — after all, last year at this time he couldn’t read very well, and would refuse.
    Personally, I’m listening to a different audiobook, when I drive by myself. It’s called 7th Son, and it’s what’s called a PodioBook. It’s an audiobook that’s distributed via podcast. You ought to check it out, but be aware that it’s an “adult” novel… it has language and themes that are for adults, like many novels. Here’s the premise:

    It chronicles the story of seven strangers who have been brought together after the recent assassination of the U.S. president. These men quickly discover they all appear to be the same man … with identical childhood memories.

    Unwitting participants in a human cloning experiment, these “John Michael Smiths” have been assembled to catch the man who murdered the president. Their target? The man they were cloned from; the original John Michael Smith, code-named John Alpha.

    Anyways, it’s really good. I turned the first book, Descent, into an iPod compatible audiobook, to make listening (and bookmarking) easier, using a program called Audiobook Builder.

    ABB is a really cool program, but if you decide to use it here’s a warning… apparently, iPods have a problem with audiobooks longer than about 2 1/2 hours. So if you create one, split it into multiple parts. For instance, Harry Potter 4 turns out to be eight 2 1/2 hour parts, and one 58 minute part.

    It’s great having chaptered parts, because you can skip backwards or forwards in the story if you need to. Also, with mostly evenly-spaced parts, you don’t have to worry about having too much or not enough of the book on your iPod at any one time. As you finish each part, you can simply uncheck it in iTunes and check the next part, and then re-sync your iPod (or iPhone, as the case may be!)

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    Topics: Family, Me, Technology | No Comments »

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