Remarkable how you can write underwater and with the sound of fans loud enough to homogenize your brain.
OTOH, the koi all came out today, the house temp reached 74 degrees, hence finally necessitating the ac, because we cannot function or sleep at 75 and we daren’t open the windows while the hemlocks and cedars are fornicating in the breeze.
The koi have all waked, we have done a head count and all are there. I circled the pool with black pepper to discourage raccoons, and the water temperature has reached 54, what with the rise in daytime temperatures and the heat of the pump and actual sunlight. So we should feed the koi for the first time real-soon-now, if not tomorrow, when their little exothermic fishy guts have plenty of time to digest the food before the cooldown at night.
Jane has battled demons and gargoyles trying to get Chernevog to display properly in the Adobe E-pub reader, and finally thinks she has done it. We are very close. It’s amazing: these companies keep ‘upgrading’—meaning screwing things up immeasurably with NO regard to those of us actively trying to do this for real, and no upgrade notes, no help, no advisement, and increasingly hostile mutterings from the gurus of the internet who accuse certain companies of trying to de-rail e-books—and not the publishers, either. I mean, just give us some breadcrumbs in the wilderness, some trail that tells us where to look for the latest idiot change in these programs….But we think we’ve got it.
Bailing the Rowboat Dept. — Every now and then lately when I visit WWAS, a Recent Comments link will take me to what’s presumably the right blog post, but the comment isn’t there. This is not consistent, either. I don’t know if it’s linking to the wrong blog entry or some other oddity. I’m presuming the visitor’s comments are indeed in there somewhere.
Next time I see an example, I’ll give the text or link so you can troubleshoot. If only it were that easy, to shoot the offending code, or throw it in the cargo hold until it cries uncle, or threaten to throw it out the airlock. (Golly, makes me sound so fierce and fearsome, wanton and piratey. But my conscience would have real trouble with most of those options, at least in 99% of offensive pplz.) (That, and I’m a Browncoat, so I know the tense scene in Firefly, between Capt. Mal and Jayne.)
CODE: What are you going to put in the commit message?
BLUE CAT SHIP: About what?
CODE: About why you deleted me.
BLUE CAT SHIP: I hadn’t thought that far ahead.
CODE: Make something up; don’t say I was buggy.
LOL!
BCS: OK, Code, should I say you were furry?
CODE: Hey, you got a problem with furries?
BCS: Well, no, why would I?
CODE: OK, then. Just don’t say I was buggy.
KNNN: oh-eh-oh-eh-ah-ii-uu….
T’CA: Matrix[7][7] “You got something against bugs?”
BCS: Er…no…not, um, particularly…uh…neon fluorescent is OK too….
T’CA: “OK, then. But I’m still mad ’cause this is grossly out of character, not being in an any-which-way parseable seven-column matrix.”
BCS: My bad.
CODE: Hey, remember me?
BCS: Who?
KNNN: “My-y-y-y ge-ge-generation….”
Heheheh, thanks, jcsalomon!
When I visited Jane’s blog just now, saw a ref to Chernevog in the latest post, and grumbling about the blasted ebook conversion process, I had to smile, because this means the ebooks are that much closer to getting here.
As I replied to Jane, I’m trying to learn ebook formats, along with updating my web and print/graphics skills.
YES, I can wholeheartedly agree. Finding help on problems using the techie stuff or the artist and writing programs has started turning into a real bugaboo. (Buggabear?) (Hmm, now I wonder at the history and lore behind those, if there’s a “critter” in folklore that goes with them.)
I have abandoned Microsoft Office. Too pricey and too much of a pain to use. I had been using OpenOffice.org but disliked some of its features too (search/replace and track changes especially, which are vital, deal breakers). I’m now trying “LibreOffice” and will be giving Corel’s WordPerfect Office a go besides.
Adobe’s Creative Suite, the industry leader (and practically only choice, since they bought and killed Macromedia) has likewise gone into the stratosphere on cost. So I’ve been hunting up alternative programs. I’m trying Inkscape while wrestling with an old version of Illustrator.
The one program I’ve been really *happy* with is CoffeeCup’s HTML Editor. CoffeeCup’s prices and support are very, very good. They’re friendly to their customers. They have an active forum. I’d recommend them highly.
I have not yet tried Scribus, which is supposed to be a page-layout/desktop-publishing alternative.
With a lot on my plate, ebook formats have been low on the list, but I’ve got to learn them so I can put them on my shingle.
Keeping up with all this is maddening. Most maddening has been trying to find a replacement for Macromedia Freehand which I can (a) use without too much aggravation, and (b) afford within reason.
Ah, the joys of the information age rocketing towards C and transit into jumpspace….
— But thrilled to see that Chernevog et al are nearing the gate. —
I hate Adobe in particular. Every time they issue an update they put an icon for their reader on my desktop – now who on Earth needs or wants that?
I was going past their HQ in San Jose several years ago and was very tempted to get off the tram and throw a brick through their window :-/
We use Word Perfect (Corel)—and they have some problems, especially with Jane’s new fast machine—for one routine involving importing graphics, she has to go into Config and in effect disable hyperthreading to eliminate competition for CPU resources: apparently the process is a real resource hog. Then it’s back into Config to reenable hyperthreading so regular programs can use it. That’s a level of futzing most users don’t know how to do, so they’ll just report general bugginess.
And Adobe…OMG. Ran across an article in which several high end programmers are wondering if Adobe is trying to so mess up the e-book market that it’ll fail…or if it’s possibly got any other motive (like maybe trying to make everybody use Adobe.)
There are two real determined companies in this market—Adobe is one, doing anything it can to force the user to use them; and the other is Amazon, who bought up the .mobi software and would love, I’m sure, to have .prc disappear (it is .mobi)—so there’s nobody updating the mobicreator site: it will stop with Win 7 capability, so if you rely on it, as many e-book folk do, you have to keep at least one basic machine on Win 7 to run it…be warned. You may need at least one older machine in house. Amazon, I am quite sure, would like to shrink, rather than expand the functionality of the Kindle reader, to have a very streamlined, keyless machine with no key-input capability, only a frame, and ultimately ONLY able to read what Amazon provides…they really have to worry about the Feds investigating them as a monopoly, one suspects, which is the only thing keeping them, Google, or any of the other mega-companies from trying to snatch up everything in sight. The reason these companies have very, very convolute ‘contact us’ avenues is real simple: the CEOs employ research companies to give them statistical answers that fit their already-conceived models and keep them employed. They don’t give a damn about what the users think. There are so many layers of corporate decision between them and the average user the opinion of any user is completely unintelligible to them in terms of their job within the company.
I recently updated my Kindle for iPad app, only to discover that, in their wisdom, they’d decided I didn’t want my archived items on my device — of course I wanted it in the Cloud. Me, who doesn’t have entirely stable access to the net. I sent a complaint via their feedback button, and did get a response from an actual human in about 18 hrs, with all sorts of instructions about how to get everything back (which I’d already done — one thing you can say about using these guys is that they make it VERY easy to use their product), and a little note at the very end that, sorry, archiving items on the iPad just isn’t an option anymore. I’m pretty annoyed. Now I have all 75 items on my main screen, and I have to hunt for the things I haven’t read yet. That’ll teach me to read the reviews before I do a blanket updating of my apps.
I use Adobe too. I feel so ashamed. I got my software from buycheapsoftware (dot) com, for a $700 discount, if that makes a difference in anyone’s budget. I think I got a UK version — it has ‘colours.’ Haven’t been able to make myself learn Flash yet, since Apple has decided to make war on it, and I don’t have enough room in my brain to learn software which might already be obsolete.
About Flash: Web developers seem to agree with Apple and want to go to HTML5 and alternatives to Flash. Reasons? Flash is a closed, proprietary format. It requires Adobe’s software to edit. It has difficulties with accessibility for people with special needs (sight, hearing, mobility (motor, neuromuscular) needs). Flash will still be around a long while, but it may be replaced in the free market by other, open, formats and software.
Kindle on the PC doesn’t (yet) have the Cloud versus local going on, but I would bet that’s coming. On the one hand, I want all my ebooks right on my reader, be it my desktop, laptop, iPad, or dedicated ereader (Kindle, Nook, Sony, etc.). On the other hand, I can see needing the storage space on my iPad, for example. Similarly, for good or ill, Viz Media’s and Dark Horse Comic’s apps for iPad set aside a certain amount of space (rather small) and complain when that’s filled, so that you have to archive something, meaning it’s no longer local to your device. Yes, that’s a problem if your web access is limited. What would make it all moot is if they’d include space for an SD card or USB flash/key/gumstick drive, so people could store as much as they like, *and* have it conveniently portable within the tablet/ereader. But none of them are doing that…so they can control the users, and purportedly to make a simpler, easier to use product.
I wouldn’t be surprised if something shakes loose about Amazon, because it seems Apple and several publishers have now been sued by the US gov. See my next reply post.
http://xfinity.comcast.net/articles/news-national/20120411/US.Electronic.Books.Antitrust.Lawsuit/?cid=hero_media
Partial Quote:
US sues Apple, publishers over electronic books
36 minutes ago
NEW YORK — The U.S. government filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple Inc. and book publishers Wednesday, saying the publishers conspired with Apple to raise retail electronic-book prices to limit competition.
The government also filed papers in U.S. District Court in Manhattan saying it had reached a settlement with publishers Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster. It will proceed with its lawsuit against Apple and other publishers, including Holtzbrinck Publishers, doing business as Macmillan, and The Penguin Publishing Co. Ltd., doing business as Penguin Group.
HOw nice—Ireland exempts writers and artists from income tax, to encourage creativity. The US not only taxes writers—they tax the same books in warehouse every year, year after year, forcing publishers to shorten print runs to bare bones and to store nothing, keeping it all in trucks in transit, as gas/distribution prices are rising, driving some publishers out of business and nearly bankrupting others, and now instead of suing the guys that are the problem in the rising e-book industry, they sue the publishers for not offering bargain-basement e-books—which effectively is going to ding the writers and the publishers one more time. What are they thinking?
On the subject of tax the UK has its foibles where books are concerned. The old paper based ones are free of sales tax. e-Books are subject to tax at 20%. The govt. is blaming an EU ruling but curiously that hasn’t stopped other EU member states from reducing it.
http://www.thebookseller.com/news/pa-calls-abolition-20-vat-e-books.html
The cloud issues are one reason I bought my Nook Tablet. Storage on the device and expansion space on micro SD cards. Photos will be reduced to what I call Facebook size.
I’ve been thinking or a while that conversions would be a good side job for those with the time. Not me. Althhough it would be good to research.
Typing on the Nook is too slow……
A better summary than the article I’d cited:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-apple-ebooks-justice-department-20120411,0,4390712.story
Basically, the LA Times editorial points out that both Apple and Amazon are not entirely innocent in trying to control the ebook market. The editorial points out the problems with both. The editorial favors the need for the suit, but points out the pluses and minuses surrounding the overall issue.
i know nothing about e readers or programming and am therefore unhelpful. i just wanted to say, yay koi fish!
I’ve been having some fun lately with converting Word files to .mobi — I have to save the Word file as a .pdf file and then run it through Calibre. It’s been such fun sorting out formatting issues and learning all the ins and outs of Calibre. . . . The kittehs have slunk off to the bedroom (1) and living room (2)because mommie is making blue air again. . . .
Off topic, CJ, do you leave your Orecks running all the time? I just have the one, and just got it about a month ago — it’s in my bedroom and I’ve been leaving it on all the time– It’s made a real difference.