Tonight, Mighty Ape won the award for Best Games-Related Site – an award that Gameplanet should have won –  and lost out to The Warehouse in the Best Online Shopping Site and Best New Launch, Relaunch or Innovation categories.

Now, not winning an award isn’t that big of a deal. I’ve already mentioned that the NetGuide Awards is a popularity contest rather than a recognition of true achievement. What is irritating is that The Warehouse is, by some margin, the worst finalist in our nominated categories.

This year NetGuide decided for reasons unimaginable to tell its voters who to vote for via a drop-down menu for each category. The list for Best Online Shopping Site included 1-day.co.nz, mightyape.co.nz and thewarehouse.co.nz. Now, tell me – if you’re Joe Average voter who doesn’t really shop online, who are you going to choose?

Disappointed.

Since my recent post regarding on the physical vs. electronic dilemma, I’ve been experimenting a little more with electronic purchases. I bought Torchlight, a fantastic Diablo-like RPG, direct from Runic, its developer. I bought several albums on iTunes that I’d been curious about for some time but not curious enough to need on CD.  And, more relevantly to this post, I bought some books from the Kindle Store.

My Nexus One phone and Windows PC aren’t exactly ideal reading devices, but I have found myself more willing to detach from the physical book than expected. With Kindle’s 6″ e-ink screen I suspect it will be very comfortable – and, indeed, bookish – reading fiction and story-based non-fiction.

It’s on that basis that I’ve decided to order a Kindle. I have an almost-overflowing shelf of books in my library – many that I really wouldn’t miss if they were in e-book format – and there’s a lot of books I’d like to read but haven’t purchased previously because I worry about clutter. Kindle solves these problems.

In case you’re considering making this decision for yourself, please consider these points first:

• The titles available to Asia Pacific are slightly limited. You should browse around the Kindle Store to ensure there are a large number of titles you are interested in.
• There’s a good possibility that there will be a quality tablet computer that doubles as an e-ink (or similar) e-reader in the next year or so.
• If you don’t care about eyestrain and want an e-reader now, buy an iPad instead.
• If you currently buy books from Mighty Ape, you’ve already made the right choice.

Technically and legally, I should probably be either throwing them in the trash; or selling them, deleting all my existing digital versions, and re-buying the tracks on iTunes.

One of those options sounds wasteful, and the other sounds like a waste of time.

Is it really so bad if I donate CDs I no longer want to keep to the Salvation Army or similar? Or is sticking to the letter of the copyright law worth more karma points than helping a worthy cause?

The problem is, I can see myself falling into a trap of consumerism. As time goes by, I’m going to need more bookshelves. Then I’m going to need a bigger study. Eventually I’m going to need a bigger house. And, when the times comes to move, it’s much more work with all these extra boxes of books!

Production of these books isn’t exactly environmentally friendly either, with raw materials, printing and world wide distribution all adding up to a pretty large carbon footprint. Furthermore, the selection of titles is quite limited in New Zealand. Mighty Ape lists over five million books, but over 95% of those are not sourced locally. This means the distribution chain for most books is even less efficient than it could be. With no dedicated distributor, we need to import relatively small quantities of books multiple times per week to fill customer orders in a timely manner. Multiply the number of shipments by trucks, planes and courier vans. Oil business continues to boom.

By switching to an e-reader for the majority of my reading, I would solve these problems of house clutter and excessively lining Big Oil’s pockets. I would get books faster and, often, cheaper. Taking more than one book when travelling would become effortless.

But I’m still reluctant to do it.

To me, an extensive library of books is an awe-inspiring thing. I can happily spend hours browsing a large book store without looking for anything in particular. Flipping through a database of titles on a computer, iPad, Kindle, or even a cell phone, just doesn’t seem as entralling.

Physical books are sociable; you don’t mind people being able to see what you’re reading because it may lead to a shared interest. Hell, there’s even a vanity element in that reading a real book gives people you don’t know the impression that you’re doing something intellectual instead of mindlessly staring at yet another computer screen.

I’m scared I’ll lose this stubborn emotional attachment to physical books if I switch to an e-reader. The logical part of my brain thinks I’m crazy.

Much of this same logic applies to music and video games (and soon, movies?), as well. I have dozens upon dozens of console and PC games on disc, but only a few downloaded purchases. I have hundreds of CDs, but less than a handful of albums* bought with iTunes. The CDs are in boxes, and never looked at, but I continue to buy them. Shit!- I bought one today.

OK, so maybe I can drop the physical music infatuation. Maybe, once NZ Internet allows it and premium titles become downloadable, I can switch to virtual game purchases.

But books? I’m still not convinced.

Wait – perhaps I can argue that charging an e-reader’s battery contributes directly to global warming?

* I have never bought a “single” online, believing albums are meant to remain just that. That’s another topic.

See also: More Mighty Ape HQ photos.

Mighty Ape offices

Mighty Ape warehouse

Mighty Ape warehouse, vertigo edition

More photos to come once we’re a bit more settled!

The big goals of the move are to allow us to hold a lot more stock so we can provide fast service on a wider range of stuff; to (of course) increase our orders-per-day shipping capacity; and to generally make the business a more professional and integrated environment for everyone involved.

The new location has over five times the warehouse space and over three times the office space of our old building, and for the first time we’re actually rivalling our suppliers for physical presence. It definitely feels much more “officey” (board room, anyone?) and it’s going to be a great environment for Mighty Ape to continue to grow.

The warehouse is a real hive of activity with people everywhere picking and packing orders, receiving stock, tidying the resulting mess etc… so it’s really nice to have so much more space for everyone to work in. Having the vertical space (and forklift) to store rarely-used stuff up high with ease is very cool, too, as is receiving palette-loads of goods with ease (Beatles Rock Band got our forklift off to a flying start).

It hasn’t all gone smooth, though. Two days into the move and we’re still shipping orders via a combination of iPhone 3G tethering and remote order processing. TelstraClear doesn’t seem to have the same definition of “urgent” as we do.

The Malazan Book of the Fallen

This is a truly epic fantasy series from Steven Erikson; I’ve been reading it for months and I’m only on the third book! Seriously seriously brilliant stuff though.

• Book 1: Gardens of the Moon
• Book 2: Deadhouse Gates
• Book 3: Memories of Ice

I’ve got another five books to go after those, and two more releasing in the future. (On that note, I’m still waiting for George R.R. Martin to finish Dance with Dragons…)

Fight Night Round 4 ~ Xbox 360

A worthy purchase but not without problems, Fight Night 4 is a lot of fun for the most part but becomes a little frustrating due to the too-challenging training mini-games which eventually result in your undefeated boxer being worse on-paper than your opponents. It’s still possible to win at this point, but you have to fight conservatively since it’s too difficult to knock the other guy out.

Born to Run ~ Chris McDougall

This is a really interesting read even if you’re not into running, although you will appreciate it more if you are. The majority of the story revolves around the Tarahumara, a near-forgotten Mexican tribe who, despite their isolation, live in a way that makes them world-class endurance runners.

Tales of Vesperia ~ Xbox 360

Felt like playing an RPG so picked this up recently, along with Eternal Sonata (which I haven’t played yet). I’m only a few hours into Vesperia, so it’s really still in RPG-introduction mode, but it seems decent enough so far.

Various cycling & running books

I’ve been doing a lot of cycling and running this year so have actively taken even more of an interest in learning about things like technique, physiology and nutrition than ever before. Here’s some of the better books I’ve been referring to:

• The Runner’s Body presented by Runner’s World
• The Cyclist’s Training Bible by Joe Friel
• The Triathlete’s Training Bible by Joe Friel
• The Lance Armstrong Performance Program by Chris Carmichael & Lance Armstrong

Stocks are crashing, so you turn on the television to catch the latest market news. But instead of CNBC or CNN, imagine that you can tune into the Benjamin Graham Financial Network. On BGFN, the audio doesn’t capture that famous sour clang of the market’s closing bell; the video doesn’t home in on brokers scurrying across the floor of the stock exchange like angry rodents. Nor does BGFN run any footage of investors gasping on frozen sidewalks as red arrows whiz overhead on electronic stock tickers.

Instead, the image that fills your TV screen is the facade of the New York Stock Exchange, festooned with a huge banner reading: “SALE! 50% OFF!” As intro music, Bachman-Turner Overdrive can be heard blaring a few bars of their old barnburner, “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet.” Then the anchorman announces brightly, “Stocks became more attractive yet again today, as the Dow dropped another 2.5% on heavy volume – the fourth day in a row that stocks have gotten cheaper. Tech investors fared even better, as leading companies like Microsoft lost nearly 5% on the day, making them even more affordable. That comes on top of the good news of the past year, in which stocks have already lost 50%, putting them at bargain levels not seen in years. And some prominent analysts are optimistic that prices may drop still further in the weeks and months to come.”

The newscast cuts over to market strategist Ignatz Anderson of the Wall Street firm of Ketchum & Skinner, who says, “My forecast is for stocks to lose another 15% by June. I’m cautiously optimistic that if everything goes well, stocks could lose 25%, maybe more.”

“Let’s hope Ignatz Anderson is right,” the anchor says cheerily. “Falling stock prices would be fabulous news for any investor with a very long horizon. And now over to Wally Wood for our exclusive AccuWeather forecast.”

Taken from The Intelligent Investor revised edition, by Benjamin Graham with added commentary by Jason Zweig.

Chris and I got talking about Twitter a couple of weeks ago for some reason or another and I decided I’d register to see if I would use it.

I gained a new appreciation quite quickly once I realised that Twitter is, more or less, an abbreviated blog.

For someone that doesn’t have a desire to dedicate too much time to writing, Twitter is a great compliment to this blog. I can post summarised random thoughts (hoping that they are interesting) that I would never usually bother to write about in full because the effort required by me exceeds the reward to the reader.

So, follow me on Twitter – you’ll find that I’m alive after all.