I really never though I’d see this happen, but The Complete Uncle really looks like it’s going to get published.
I’ve been waiting for this day for more than 30 years …
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Category Archives: books
Forward to Libraries: Toronto Public Library added
If you’re starting your research on Wikipedia, you’ll need to see what books are available on a subject for further study. Previously, you’d need to trawl the references manually, but John Mark Ockerbloom‘s Forward To Libraries (FTL) service makes that a whole lot easier. What FTL does is allow you to reach into nearly any library’s catalogue search from a subject link on Wikipedia.
John’s been getting some great press on this service, so I asked him to add Toronto Public Library to FTL. Here’s how it works:
- First, visit the FTL: Toronto Public Library page. This sets a cookie in your browser so it will remember to direct links to TPL.
- Now, let’s do some browsing … how about reading more about Nellie McClung, the Canadian feminist, author, social activist and politician:
- If you scroll down to the External links section, there’s a Library resources box:
- If you select the About Nellie McClung: Resources in your library link, you’ll be taken to the TPL search results for books about her:
- If you select the By Nellie McClung: Resources in your library link, you’ll see all the books written by Nellie in the Toronto Public Library:
Pretty neat, huh? Try other articles, like Pierre Trudeau, Arduino or the Canadian Shield.
It’s not actually that hard to add Library resources boxes to Wikipedia articles. There’s a tutorial in the Template:Library resources box page that shows you how. Researching the locator is the most difficult part, and that gets a lot easier the more you add.
UncleWiki
For the last few weeks, I’ve been working on UncleWiki, a wiki about the Uncle books, by J. P. Martin. It’s a very rough framework right now, but I’m adding content as I go. Please join in!
don’t overcomplicate your sloth party …
David Barnes’s new book What’s Weird? arrived today. It’s lovely.
David has an — unsurprisingly — unusual youtube channel and an etsy store. One of his prints hovers above my desk, and an original runs on my work desk.
OED in the house
Neato: TPL has the OED.
Augustus Carp: the e-book
I’ve converted Augustus Carp to epub: Augustus_Carp.epub.
The Real World of Scrawl
Man, this kind of vandalism really gets my goat:
You know it’s bad when a scribbler has to start using a different colour of highlighter just to make their point.
The most annoying one isn’t shown, though. In one chapter, Ursula uses the phrase “technology as a means of control“. The in(s)ane scribbler had overwritten “technology is a means of control“. Grar!
Updated: Augustus Carp, Esq: by Himself
I’ve updated the markup for Augustus Carp, Esq: by Himself, and now host a local copy. Apart from changing the TeX-style quotes to proper Unicode typographic one, the main change has been converting the images to SVG for added crispness.
You’ll like it. It’s all about piety gone wrong.
cheque bookmark
Found in a library book. Had it been a higher denomination or not so old, I would have found a way to return it.
she’s a star in The Star
Whee! Catherine‘s featured in the Toronto Star today: Burning through the branches – thestar.com.
Save Chambers Harrap in Edinburgh
Harry writes:
As you may have heard, the historic dictionary firm of Chambers in
Edinburgh is threatened with closure by the parent company Hachette
Livre.
They intend moving the English dictionaries to London and the
bilingual Harrap titles to Paris, involving not just the loss of 27
jobs in Edinburgh but the end of a publishing tradition going back
nearly two centuries. Chambers is a Scottish and British institution
dear to the hearts of word-lovers.
Yes, the advent of free resources on the internet has changed the
world of reference publishing, but it is far from clear whether all
options for the future of Chambers Harrap have been properly
considered in what appears to be a very drastic and possibly even
underhand move by Hachette. I feel strongly we shouldn’t just accept
this as inevitable. Hachette should be forced at the very least to
undertake a properly full and open review of the situation first, in
due consultation with the NUJ. If you wish to join with others in
urging them to think again, you may like to sign the online petition
at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/chambers-in-edinburgh/. It only
takes a few seconds.
More at http://sn.im/chambersharrap and http://harrycampbell.blogspot.com.
poem
The Mower
The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be carefulOf each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.
— Philip Larkin
an end to triangular, aching thumbs …
I could use a Thumbthing. I have been known to fall asleep reading in bed, with my thumb jammed in the spine of a book. Waking up hours later, my thumb is aching and decidedly tobleroneform …
(via)
indigo’s most overpriced yet
I saw the most obscene markup in indigo this evening: the Linux Format OpenOffice.org special edition was priced at a hefty $34.95. This costs £10 in the UK.
The thing is, UK prices are quoted tax-inclusive. The ten quid you see is the ten quid you pay. Not so in Canada. In the most boneheaded move ever, our prices don’t include tax, so that $34.95 really costs you $39.84 (in Ontario, at least).
According to Google, £10 is $20.53. Indigo’s markup is almost 100%
M-W Visual Dictionary Online
M-W’s Visual Dictionary Online is rather good. F’rinstance: ENERGY :: WIND ENERGY.
Update: whoa, I just looked at this on IE, and it’s an absolute ad-beast. It has been a while since I surfed with ads enabled.
take it or leave it
I got Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael from the library on a friend’s recommendation. I tried, but I don’t feel the love for the psychic gorilla.
It’s not that the wise protagonist is a psychic gorilla. I can get past that. It’s just that the conclusions are so pat. I wonder how many readers come away with the romantic notion that they’re the only Leaver in a Taker society? (they’re wrong, of course; I’m the only one to which this applies …)
I also didn’t get the “Takers need prophets” deal. if you decide to follow the ideas in the book, what is Ishmael but a prophet? A not-for-prophet?
Writers like Jared Diamond (though flawed) and Julian Cope (though fried; but at least can play mellotron) wrote it better. Ain’t but the one way, as the Drude sang.
What I did like about the library copy that I borrowed was that it had clearly made an impression on a previous reader. Crabbed on every page in tiny, infra-neat madperson handwriting was a seemingly endless thesis about something. What, I can’t tell; the diligent guardians of the Toronto Public Library erased almost every word, so I couldn’t tell if a worldview had been shattered or affirmed. Maybe it was the wisdom of the ages. Who can tell?
most 70s book cover ever
Floaty-haired woman motif? Check
Happy couple riding a horse? Check
Elaborate, possibly ill-advised, used of perspective? Check
Fashions suggesting high polyester content? Check
Friends, I give you Mel Bay‘s Fun With The Dulcimer:
Lady Goosepelt Rides Again!
In case anyone wants them, the 600 dpi page images of What a Life! are stored in this PDF: what_a_life.pdf (16MB). If you merely wish to browse, all the images from the book are here.
I got a bit carried away with doing this. Instead of just smacking together all the 360 dpi TIFFs I scanned seven years ago, I had to scan a new set at a higher resolution, then crop them, then fix the page numbers, add chapter marks, and make the table of contents a set of live links.
I’ve got out of the way of thinking in PostScript, so I spent some time looking for tools that would do things graphically. Bah! These things’d cost a fortune, so armed only with netpbm, libtiff, ghostscript, the pdfmark reference, Aquamacs, awk to add content based on the DSC, and gimp to work out the link zones on the contents page, I made it all go. Even I’m impressed.
One thing that didn’t impress me, though:
I used to edit multi-gigabyte files with emacs on Suns. They never used to complain like this. They just loaded (admittedly fairly slowly) and let me do my thing. Real emacs don’t give warning messages.
doesn’t rule my web
Lots of people are drooling over the book Rule the Web. I’m not, particularly. It’s good in parts, but reminds me so much of those mid-late 1990s “Best Web Directory Ever” tomes that are currently propping up shelves in bargain bookstore, and propping up houses built on landfills in Arizona.
My biggest complaint is its US-centric approach. Pretty much everything related to buying, selling or finding people or things mentioned in the book only applies to the USA.
As is the way when web meets paper, some things are out of date already. It happens, but it’s a shame when the book’s pretty new in the shops.
I did find a couple of things I genuinely didn’t know about, but might find useful:
- Combine PDFs, for slicing and dicing PDFs under OS X. (I could do this with pdftk, but Combine PDFs is purty).
- The Freesound Project is a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds. When I next need a comic boing, I’ll know where to look.
It also gave links to OnyX and HandBrake, both of which I already use. But that’s about it. I’d have been peeved if I bought the book (yay, Toronto Public Library!), as this is more of a basic manual than a compendium of coolness.
Gutenberg Canada
Project Gutenberg Canada / Projet Gutenberg Canada opened its doors a couple of days ago. It’s gone through several organisers since I first heard of its imminent launch in 2002, but I’m glad it got going.