Product Review « it's dark in the dark

Now that they’re so cheap, I’m sure that a lot of you have been debating whether or not to get an Amazon Kindle. The Kindle WiFi is 137 clams and the Kindle 3G is only 189 clams. From reading reviews about Kindles in the past, I was bummed out about the Amazonian data rights management and how you couldn’t read some of the more open formats. Luckily, Amazon chose to support some more formats, and the world changed to accommodate the Kindle. I finally took the plunge when I found out that the entire collection of the Gutenberg Project can be read on a Kindle. Here are the first things you should do after you get your Kindle.

One: Get Yourself Some Public Domain Horror at the Gutenberg Project

That’s right. Just about anything older than 90 years is in the public domain. This is a staggering amount of literature, and even if you’re not really into old books, there will be something there for you. The collection at the Gutenberg Project is available for the Kindle via the MOBI format. Here are some suggestions for places and authors you should check out:

Check out the The Horror Bookshelf page. Authors included here are Ambrose Bierce, Algernon Blackwood, Robert W. Chambers, John Meade Falkner, Paul H. C. Féval, William Hope Hodgson, Henry James, M. R. James (the best ghost stories, period), Franz Kafka, Sheridan Le Fanu (Carmilla), H.P. Lovecraft, Arthur Machen, Charles Nodier, Elliott O’Donnell, Oliver Onions, Edgar Allan Poe, John William Polidori, Thomas Preskett Prest, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, George Sylvester Viereck.

Strangely, some great authors are missing from the above page. For example, Lafcadio Hearn (who translated Japanese Ghost Stories), Oscar Wilde (Picture of Dorian Gray and a lot of really amazing short stories), Mary Shelley (Frankenstein), H.G. Wells, H.C. Andersen (fairy tales), and The Brothers Grimm. This isn’t EXACTLY in the horror genre, but if you’ve never read the Sir Richard Francis Burton translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (a.k.a. Arabian Nights), then you should go get it. NOW!

Here is another Gutenberg Project page on the topic of Horror.

You can use the on-board browser on the Kindle to browse the Gutenberg Project, but it’s a lot easier to download these on your computer and then copy them over to the Kindle via your USB connection. Now that you’ve got some great free horror literature, it’s time to make sure that you’re reading it in style.

Two: Jailbreak Your Kindle

This isn’t a big deal in and of itself (although obviously one should be careful so as to not brick their device). Jailbreaking a Kindle is something you do so that you can apply the Screensaver and Font hacks. Maybe there will be more hacks coming later, but for now those are the exciting ones. If you’re a real geek, there is also a way that you can network your Kindle over the USB connection and then use ssh with it. I’m not interested in that here. Instead, here are the instructions for Jailbreaking. It basically involves loading some files onto the Kindle over your USB connection and then rebooting it.

Three: Change the Typefaces

Now comes the first reward for having a jailbroken Kindle. You can install about any typeface you want. Go here for Kindle Font hack instructions. They don’t do a great job of describing how you can put your fonts into the Kindle. What you do is select the fonts you want, copy them into a folder, and rename them using the same naming scheme of the fonts in hack folder that is now installed on the Kindle. Then you copy them into that folder, over-writing the fonts there, and reboot.

Obviously, I went for a font that I find much more readable and pleasing to the eye. My favorite reading font happens to be the HPLHS-Old Style font from the HP Lovecraft Historical Society’s Prop Font Collection. These fonts are really cool. Some of them are free for personal use, but I recommend buying the whole collection because then you get the Metro family. It’s super-cheap for some great fun fonts. The photo above shows HPLHS Old Style for the text and Metro Black for the bolded text. If you’re looking for an alternate nice reading font, check out the Fell family that Igino Marini has revived.

Four: Hack the Screen Saver

When the Kindle goes to sleep, it displays various pre-installed pictures. Mostly these are of famous authors. Most of them are also pretty boring. Me, I go more for the likes of the Other Mother, Elsa Lanchester, Myrna Loy, and old movie posters. Here are instructions for how to do the screen saver hack.

Making the pictures for the screen saver is pretty easy. You need to resize and/or crop the photos to 600 x 800 pixels. To make pictures look nice on the Kindle screen, they really need to be high contrast. So it’s usually best to make the picture black and white and then adjust the contrast a lot. A LOT. Here are some I made to get you started: Frankenstein movie poster, Black Cat movie poster, Bride of Frankenstein Elsa Lanchester, Les Vampires Irma Vep, Myrna Loy, Nosferatu, Other Mother, and what I call “teeth chan.”

More Information

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that there is a good alternate set of Kindle hacking instructions, here. If you have a new Kindle (Kindle 3) and want to change the fonts without hacking, there are instructions to do that here.

That’s it for my introduction to the Amazon Kindle for fans of Terror and the Supernatural. There’s always more coming out. I’ll update this as I find more.

Recently I was pining over my poor broken heart. As many of you know, I’ve got an incurable crush for the Other Mother in the movie Coraline. I found out that they’re selling these 3 inch Coraline dolls by NECA “Reel Toys”.

On the box it says they’re “figurines.” It also has some writing in creepy font:

From Henry Selick, visionary director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and based on Neil Gaiman’s international best selling book, Coraline, is a spectacularly original stop-motion animated adventure that will speak to audiences of all ages with it’s fantastically fun, magnificantly spooky, and ultimately triumphant story.

That sounds good. I like the sound of “Magnificently Spooky” and “Ultimately Triumphant.” It sounds like someone I know very well. Maybe too well. The box says these toys are not for kids under 3 years of age and recommended for 13 and above. On the back there is also a picture of that brat Coraline looking scared. Which is pretty cool. I got the set with the Other Mother, naturally. In the same box is a Coraline doll with the star sweater, the Cat, and one of the ghost girls. I’m presuming this one is the Sweet Ghost Girl because the other one is called the Tall Ghost Girl and this one is short. I actually like the Tall Ghost Girl better because she’s frozen in a look of horror, whereas the Sweet Ghost Girl looks like she wants a kiss.

There are two other Coraline NECA Doll box sets. One of these comes with PVC dolls of Wybie, the Cat, Tall Ghost Girl, and Coraline in jeans with her little rag doll in raincoat. The other set has a Coraline doll in her yellow raincoat and boots, Mr. Bobinsky in full circus regalia, and the Ghost Boy.

The Coraline NECA toys are small. Actually, I guess they’re about on scale with most action figures even though most of these toys are only three inches, because most of them are children (or animals). They are definitely not posable, and are fragile-looking, especially the tail on the Cat and the arms and legs of the Sweet Ghost Girl. The paint jobs are good. There are little blots of paint in places where they probably shouldn’t be, but the overall effect is nice. I think they’re pretty cool. They look way better in person than they do in the advertising photos.

The Cat, Coraline in star sweater, and Sweet Ghost Girl NECA Toys. Here are photos of the real star of the show – the Other Mother doll.

Here she is looking really horrifying. She is so hot!

Here she’s showing her more pensive, haunted side.

One last photo – the Coraline group with my Monsters Inc. Child Detection Agency Agent toy and a couple others I had monster servants of mine secure from the Giant Robot store in Los Angeles several years ago.

Although I really like the other toys, I’ve decided to do something revolutionary and share. This week I’m going to do a give-away (announced in another post) to give away the Coraline doll, Sweet Ghost Girl doll, and the Cat. Later note: The Coraline NECA Figurine Giveaway is up!

Creepy Factor: 4 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 2 out of 5 (dolls just aren’t very suspenseful.)
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 5 out of 5 (ALL of that from the Other Mother.)
Funny and/or Strange Factor: 3 out of 5

Final result: I’m not the best person to be grading toys and dolls, but I think these are pretty cool. Check out my Other Mother page for my Coraline Doll. Also, here is information about the Coraline DVDs which are coming out soon, and the 3D glasses for them.

NECA Coraline 3 Inch PVC Figure 3-Pack Star Sweater Coraline by NECA

Get it on Amazon

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