On the January 3rd the opportunity to acquire on of those ad sponsored $79 Kindles that Amazon is pushing hard in America suddenly appeared. Thinking of getting the nice and not at all expensive New Year’s present for myself I have paid $125 (yeah, international shipping is nasty) and got one on the next day.

Before that I was usually reading the paper books or ebooks on my iPhone in either Kindle app or in Apple’s native iBooks. The latter wasn’t particularly good experience. The 3.5” screen of the iPhone is just a way too small for the comfortable reading anything beyond the news, emails and twits.

I wouldn’t say that the getting the Kindle has changed my whole life or turned me into an avid reader (mostly because I actually was one before that and remained one after), but the Kindle has undoubtedly made my reading experiences much more pleasant. Also, I found myself reading if not more than more often. What I mean is that now I can squeeze more time for it. If I’m getting stuck somewhere waiting for someone or something to happen I am getting my Kindle out of the bag and putting that unexpected free time to work.

Reading myself to sleep is also possible now. The Kindle’s eInk screen is white and contrast enough to be easily visible being lit by the diffused light from the solitary nightstand lamp, and the iPhone could rest where it always have been—on the charger—to be sure that its battery won’t die before the alarm clock will go off.

I saw this splendid idea on the Reddit someday and I was so fascinated and excited by it that I decided to save the toilet paper carton rolls’ bases right away. Half year later (or more like four months later, I don’t remember it well, and, after all, this is a kind of a TMI) I had enough carton rolls to do the trick.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find the spare box with the inner height equal or slightly greater than the roll’s height, so I went on simply taping them together. It doesn’t look that great and accurate like in the original author’s pictures, but it works exactly as it was intended.

In any case, I am pretty impressed by the quality of this watch—the second hand is landing exactly on the seconds marks on the dial and the bezel isn’t that much stiff as on my Orient Black Mako, which is now occupying the Citizen’s watch box.

It comes with the pretty soft and comfortable rubber diver’s strap but, apparently, I’m not a big fan of the rubber straps—I prefer steel bracelets. And I found the best bracelet for this little Citizen. A week ago the small package from Australia with the Watchadoo solid steel engineer-style bracelet inside has arrived.

Watchadoo bracelet fitted my Citizen BN0000 perfectly. Together they have formed the perfect combo I’m wearing everywhere and even do not bother to take off before going to sleep. The bracelet has turned out to be significantly heavier than the watch itself and I think this is the thing that makes the watch to rest on my wrist as still as it was screwed down into it.

Vrykuls are funny. They scream “I need your heart!” so fiercely and so out of the blue that it makes this one piece of their battle cries sounds almost peaceful, as a part of their daily routine.

Like if the seven feet tall ripped guy with excessive facial hair and the outfit of a heavy metal band singer came into the grocery store to pick up some ingredients for the home made sausages. So he picked up whole intestines to stuff and the red meat, liver and spices for the sausage content, and already got in line to check all these things out but suddenly remembered his Vrykul girlfriend—a seven feet tall, badly combed valkyrie with the anger management issues and some prominent facial hair on her upper lip—ordered him to buy a heart for the sausages.

Damn dead caw's heart, he totally forget about it! Passing by the right aisle, he got the liver and red meat, but paid no attention to the heart lying on the same shelf of the freezer. “I need your heart!”—screams the Vrykul guy and rushes into the backside of the store where the freezers with the meat and liver are.

So I’m learning to use cmd+C & cmd+V instead of their Windows/Linux counterparts now, getting used to the absence of the Delete button, and searching Google for the tips and tricks new to me. The only disappointment I have encountered yet was that my Abobe Photoshop Elements license doesn’t work with the Mac version. However, it turned out that the bundled iPhoto suite is good enough to give me some time to decide whether should I spend $79.99 on a Mac version of Adobe PSE9 or should I look for a cheaper option.

However, this is Adobe’s fault. On the Apple’s part everything is awesome. Awesome like having SSH client and Python translator right out of the box, awesome like the lightning fast GUI, awesome like uncluttered desk, and a lot of other awesomenesses yet to be explored.

There are several pear trees growing right in front of my new apartments’ windows. During the cold winter nights their branches were hosting the flocks of magpies or crows (I can’t really tell them apart). With the Spring all the birds were gone, found the better trees to build their nests on, I guess. But now the pear trees are all covered with white blossoms, from the lowest branches to the tops. I can see nothing from my window but the sea of tender green and milk white.

The neon red Tokyo is, as far as I can see, totally sold out for the several years by now, but the navy blue New York City could be found without any hassle in the various outlets around the internet (mostly, in the US, of course). I was lucky enough to get one pair in one of the most common sizes for as low as $42 and I bet I am the only person in this city who own this design.

Of course, MX1000 is one awesome mouse. It was undoubtedly the best one in the 2005 — 2007. But the MX620 (and its left-handed twin-brother MX610) was the most ergonomically perfect product of that times. Its simple yet carefully designed streamlined body fit the palm of hand (at least average sized one) like a glove.

There are a number of high-end mice manufacturers on the market nowadays. Only one of them—Razer—is focusing on the gaming mice, the rest are much less specific and make a lot of nice general purpose mice including such pretty interesting ergonomic solutions like Microsoft Natural Mouse. But none of them, in my strong and strictly personal opinion, can compete with the Logitech MX620 and its successors.

Obviously, the Logitech model MX620 is no longer in production, but it has enough time to become one of the Logitech’s most popular model and brought life to a number of different models like MX400—a wired and priced down variation. MX400 was lacking MX620′s steel wheel and some additional buttons but inherited its perfectly ergonomic form.

In 2010 MX series mice lost X is their names and, in the same time with a dozen of different new models Logitech M500 laser mouse was introduced.

And just like five years ago this launch was dimmed down by another one. This time it was perfect lower high-end Marathon M705 mouse. Its little more “shapier” muscular body looks like it’s a crossbreed of MX620 and MX1000.

The middle range mouse Logitech M500 won’t promise you three years of battery life like Marathon M705 but only because it’s wired and doesn’t need any batteries at all. On the other hand, it’s two times cheaper than the Marathon.

Ergonomically, M500 is a well known MX620, just more shiny, even more well-built, and significantly lighter since the lack of heavy batteries. All the great MX620′s features are here: the steel wheel with the hyper-fast scrolling (switchable) and the full (in mid range terms) set of buttons, as well as precision laser sensor.

Logitech M500 is a perfect replacement for the old wired MX400. However, if you’re looking for a MX620 replacement and think that a hundred bucks for the Marathon is too damn much, try M500. If you aren’t moving around with your laptop a lot or even if your main computer setup is a desktop, you will get used to the cordedness of M500 pretty quick.

There is no other mouse on the market you can buy for less than $40 that is partially as good as Logitech M500. All other options (and most of them are from Logitech again) are at least twice more expensive.

Being just a little bit more pricy than America’s numero uno — Timex — Invicta occupies much more prestigious niche as a “manly Movado”.

Invicta are pretty large watches, some models could be called huge. Even ladies’ models are quite bulky and feel heavy for the first time. However, it’s really easy to get used to a 150-200 grams watch on your wrist. After wearing it for a couple of days you hardly notice it.

Half of Invicta models are bigger and heavier than world’s most monstrous Casio G-Shock and other well known big watches brands like Luminoux and Hamilton. And half of this half is listed in the Invicta Signature Collection – the anthology of Invicta’s most authentic, most original, most expressive watches.

Invicta Corduva Skeleton model No. 7136 is among the biggest wristwatches in the Invicta‘s Signature Collection. It measures 52mm in diameter not counting a crown covered with even balkier screw-in cap attached to the watch case with a sturdy steel lever. Case thickness of 16mm isn’t something extraordinary for a 200m/660ft divers but it looks really thick on the wrist.

Yellow gold ion-plated case looks brushed in contrast to polished gold plating of the movement which is visible through the windows in the dial and the back cover but it doesn’t hurt the overall impression of quality.

The caliber you can see in all its glory through the skeleton dial is a neatly decorated good old Miyota — simple and reliable automatic movement. Invicta 7136 timepiece I’ve played with was gaining about 20 seconds a day which is ok for a sub-$1000 automatic watch.

The band is multi-layered — half canvas, half leather. It feels sturdy, quite comfortable and easy to clean. However, if you will need to change it after awhile you will have to look a spare one on eBay, simply because it’s not that easy to find a 26mm wide watch band in the next door clock shop.

The luminescent coating on the hands and hour markers is bright and keep glowing for at least six hours. The good thing is a tiny bit of lume on the second hand which looks gorgeous.

What’s not so good about Invicta Corduva Skeleton 7136? The hands — they are way to short for the such big watch. The minute hand should be approximately 3mm longer. The short hand could be bigger too.