JonLowder.com

Thriving on Less - Free eBook for Dealing with Tough Times

Leo Babauta has written a book titled The Power of Less and has also released a free companion ebook titled Thriving on Less. You can read about the ebook here and download the free version here.

I did a quick read of the 27-page ebook and it's chock full of common sense hints on simplifying your life and living frugally.  As you'd expect it's a teaser for the print book which the author recommends that you buy, but the ebook is of value in and of itself and is a good quick read for tips on simplifying your life.

Babauta also writes a blog at ZenHabits that you will probably enjoy if you like the book.  In these times I think we can all benefit from a little more simple living.

RIP, Gregory McDonald

When I was a teenager one of my favorite authors was Gregory McDonald who wrote the Fletch and Flynn series of books.  Most people know the Fletch movie but most don't know that it was based on McDonald's series of mystery novels.  That's too bad because the books were much better than the movie.  BTW, the movie probably would have been much better if it hadn't starred Chevy Chase.

The Mirical Worker

Available today, hot off the presses is my first e-book.  Actually it's more like an e-booklet.  Whatever, it's the compilation of the comments that I've gotten on a short piece I did on telepreacher Ernest Angley over two years ago.  I titled the book "The Mirical Worker" based on the spelling of "miracle" used in one of the earliest comments to the post.  Following is the introduction and a link to download the PDF file if you're interested.

Download The Mirical Worker.pdf

Introduction

On April 10, 2006 I posted a short item about televangelist Ernest Angley on my blog.  Little did I know that of the 1,440 posts on my blog (to date) that this would be consistently among the most popular.  I also had no way of knowing that the post would also draw the most interesting and strange comments I've received on any post. Since this post is buried in the archives of my blog and is generally found only by people who are actively searching Google for things about Angley I thought I'd re-produce the post and comments in a handy little booklet.

On the following pages you will find the text of my original post and the text of every comment that I've received on that post.  I have not edited or altered the comments in any way and simply copied and pasted them from the blog.  You'll notice that Angley's supporters have a tendency to misspell and over-use upper case text. In fact you'll note that the title of this booklet comes from one of the early commenters who misspelled “miracle”.  With patience I think you'll find yourself entertained as you scroll through them. 

For your information the original post can be found here:

http://www.jonlowder.com/2006/04/ernest_angley_s.html

I'll be updating this booklet as more comments come in.  Believe me, more will be coming.

Enjoy!

Smart Publishing

Cory Doctorow, he of BoingBoing among other ventures, has put Little Brother, his latest book online and once again shows some very smart publishing practices.

• The book can be downloaded for free under a Creative Commons license. Many people won't want to download and print a book themselves so lots will buy it anyway.  This is like the ultimate dust jacket sales pitch.
• He invites readers to convert the files to other formats and send them to him to host on his site.  So he basically gets his audience to participate in the publishing process and he gets other people to do the work of converting his work to various formats and then provide links to readers for those formats.
• He invites readers to re-mix his work. Lots of people enjoy putting their own spin on stories and Cory embraces and encourages this.  Again, he's engaging his audience and creating an interactive experience.  Even better he invites them to use multi-media to do it, so people can write their own stuff or create unique audio or video based on the story.
   

If you're looking for smart ways to succeed in publishing I highly recommend watching Cory and his ilk as they work their magic.  And keep in mind that important ingredients in his recipe are interactivity, multi-media, and user generated content.

Mrs. Tarmey at Bookmarks 2007

Danielle Tarmey was one of my daughter Erin's 5th grade teachers the year we moved to Lewisville and she was one of our son Justin's 5th grade teachers this last year.  She and her husband, Joseph Mills, co-authored A Guide to North Carolina Wineries and they will be appearing at the Bookmarks 2007 festival this Saturday (Sep. 8) at Historic Bethabara Park.  Unfortunately Justin will be out of town, but Erin's soccer game is in that neck of the woods on Saturday so we should get the chance to swing by and check out the festival and say hi to Mrs. Tarmey.

Turd Man Likes Poop Culture

As long time readers of this blog probably remember I am the Turd Man of Alcatraz.  Luckily I haven't had to wrangle any floaters recently and our septic system has performed admirably since we had it sucked dry a while back.  My extensive experience dealing with my household's bowel remnants has engendered an affinity with folks who are all about the dookey, so I was intrigued when I was scanning my Boing Boing feed and saw this item about Poop Culture.

My heart be still: an entire book and a blog about poop and its accoutrements!  And I have to say that www.poopthebook.com is the greatest domain name I've come across.  It's descriptive, yet action oriented. As for the blog, check out these recent posts:

• How Toilet Water Can Live Again (if NYC Makes It Happen)
• The European Aversion to Poop Culture
• In Praise of Less Wallowing in Filth

and my favorite:

• Free Speech vs. Turd Terrorism: When is Poop Not Constitutionally Protected?

I might never get any work done.

Maybe the Most Creative Librarians in the World

If you were a librarian and wanted to get books to children located in remote, mountainous areas what would you do?  Well, if you're working at the University of Momboy in Venezuela you've already figured it out; you simply get yourself a couple of bibliomulas. From the BBC article:

Hot and slightly bothered after two hours, we reached Calembe, the first village on this path.

Anyone who was not out working the fields - tending the celery that is the main crop here - was waiting for our arrival. The 23 children at the little school were very excited.

"Bibilomu-u-u-u-las," they shouted as the bags of books were unstrapped. They dived in eagerly, keen to grab the best titles and within minutes were being read to by Christina and Juana, two of the project leaders.

"Spreading the joy of reading is our main aim," Christina Vieras told me.

And these folks aren't resting on their laurels.  They're already looking to go Internet age with their equine asses:

Somehow there is already a limited mobile phone signal here, so the organisers are taking advantage of that and equipping the mules with laptops and projectors.

The book mules are becoming cyber mules and cine mules.

"We want to install wireless modems under the banana plants so the villagers can use the internet," says Robert Ramirez, the co-ordinator of the university's Network of Enterprising Rural Schools.

"Imagine if people in the poor towns in the valley can e-mail saying how many tomatoes they'll need next week, or how much celery.

"The farmers can reply telling them how much they can produce. It's blending localisation and globalisation."

And here I thought the BookMobiles were cool. 

Machine Could Fundamentally Change Libraries and Bookstores

On Demand Books LLC is demonstrating a new machine, the Espresso Book Machine, that their press release describes thusly:

The EBM, now available for sale to libraries and retailers, can potentially allow readers anywhere to obtain within minutes, almost any book title in any language, whether or not the book is in print. The EBM’s proprietary software transmits a digital file to the book machine, which automatically prints, binds, and trims the reader’s selection within minutes as a single, library-quality, paperback book, indistinguishable from the factory-made title.

Unlike existing print on demand technology, EBM’s are fully integrated, automatic machines that require minimal human intervention. They do not require a factory setting and are small enough to fit in a retail store or small library room. While traditional factory based print on demand machines usually cost over $1,000,000 per unit, the EBM is priced to be affordable for retailers and libraries.

The direct-to-consumer model of the EBM eliminates shipping and warehousing costs for books (thereby also eliminating returns and pulping of unsold books) and allows simultaneous global availability of millions of new and backlist titles in all categories and languages. These savings permit potentially lower prices to consumers and libraries, and greater royalties and profits to authors and publishers. Also, titles will never have to go out of print again.

At first blush I thought it would be obvious how this would revolutionize a library's physical structure.  Much more room could be given over to reading areas, multimedia rooms, computer kiosks, etc. with less dedicated to stacks. But then I wondered, "Well, do you have the patrons return the printed book?"  If you do then you have to store it and that doesn't make sense.  So I guess the question really is "How much does each book cost to produce?"  If it's low enough you could probably get away with allowing each patron a limited number of printings per month or year.  Realistically the biggest change would be for small libraries that don't have space for large stacks in the first place.  If the machine is affordable they can greatly expand their offerings to patrons, especially in the realm of obscure titles and classics.  Even more likely is that these machines would be great for school libraries considering some of the crap teachers make students read!

As for bookstores the applications are pretty obvious.  This kind of machine would help them compete with Amazon because they could offer customers the ability to get almost any title for a reasonable price without having to wait for shipments. I'm also wondering if they could take DIY authors' manuscripts and output a finished book much like custom publishing shops do now?  If so they could have a nice niche market for all of us wannabe authors who don't have the patience to do it remotely and wait for a shipment from some company factory that takes six weeks to produce it.

I couldn't find pricing on the machine so it will be interesting to see if/how it works out.

Rule the Web

Mark Frauenfelder, he of BoingBoing, has written what I consider to be the most indispensable books I've purchased in a long time.  Rule the Web: How to Do Anything and Everything on the Internet -- Better, Faster, Easier is the book I've often dreamed of writing, a practical guide to all the useful stuff online.  I can hear you saying, "How useful can a book about the web be?  Won't it be out of date by the time you get it?"  I'd probably have agreed with you in the past, but having been an avid reader of BoingBoing for years I had confidence that this would be a worthwhile buy and upon skimming through it this week I can tell you it's a great resource.  A couple of points:

• Obviously the book will be dated in the not-too-distant future, but that just means I can look forward to updated editions. In the interim there's a companion website, ruletheweb.net, that provides updates, corrections, video, etc.  Awesome!
• Amazingly this book references Twitter which became all the rage with web geeks just a couple of months ago.  That just blows my mind.
• Chapters include:
  1. Creating and Sharing
  2. Searching and Browsing
  3. Shopping and Selling
  4. Health, Exercise and Sports
  5. Media and Entertainment
  6. Travel and Sightseeing
  7. Work, Organization and Productivity
  8. Communication
  9. Toolbox
  10. Protecting and Maintaining
  11. Tips from My Favorite Bloggers
• I love how within the chapters there are sub-categories and then within those Frauenfelder utilizes a Q&A format to address specific issues.  My favorite example so far is in the first chapter, Creating & Sharing, under the sub-category of "Photography and Video."  The question is "What's the best way to share and store my videos online?"  Frauenfelder doesn't like YouTube because of the poor video quality so he recommends signing up for a free blogging account at Vox.com and hosting your video there.   Each video can be up to 50 MB (compared to 10 MB for YouTube) which allows you to share much higher video quality.  FYI, Vox is a Six Apart product as is TypePad which is what I use for this blog so I'm kind of embarassed that I didn't already know this.  For video files greater than 50 MB he recommends Internet Archive, but he points out the catch that you can't copyright anything hosted there.  Fec and I were talking just last week about the lousy video hosting choices out there and then, "Voila!" I come across this great tip. 

I'm telling you, if you spend any amount of time online this is a GREAT resource.

Missionary Stew

About 20 years ago I came across an author named Ross Thomas.  I don't remember how I found him, but I've been a huge fan of his since I first read Missionary Stew (this link takes you to a book preview in Google) and I've recently been reminded how much I love his writing. I've been re-reading Stew since I found a copy at Edward McKay a couple of weeks back, and even though some of the political references are dated (it was written in the early 80s) the observations about the power class in the United States is as accurate now as it was then and the dialogue is as refreshing as I remembered.

What set Thomas apart from other mystery writers were his dialogue and character development.  Almost all writers in the mystery genre can be easily defined by their formula, to the point that after you've read one of their books you know what's going to happen and how it's going to happen by the end of the first chapter of the next book you read.  While Thomas also has a formula it is not nearly as predictable or dreary as most of the other myster writers' and even if you figure out the plot line the dialogue still makes it a fun ride.  Smart and witty best describe Thomas' work.

Thomas died in 1995 and unfortunately his last effort, Ah, Treachery! is not up to his usual standards.  It would have been nice if he could have gone out on top, but let's cut the guy some slack since his other dozen or so books are great reads.

To preview a bunch of them go here.