Ploofle

After hand-formatting the first 50 pages or so of the Project Gutenberg version of “1001 Nights” I came across this neat project called Gutenmark that takes the plaintext and converts it into either html or LaTex-formatted documents for easier reading.  I’m downloading LaTex now to edit said document, as that’s more more print-style layout and then I can export to PDF where I can read it happily.  He has an awesome reformatting of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland where he reformatted and re-inserted the original (public domain) illustrations (other texts he’s reformatted are here).

Here’s the comparison, with the top being the modified version in Sumatra PDF and the bottom being being the plaintext viewed in Firefox (click it to enlarge):

I was talking (complaining) to Bonnie about this – and about the essence of the Gutenberg project, which seems to be preservation of the written product with ultimate forward compatibility, hence plaintext.  However, the text alone isn’t the true product – the layout, the formatting, the illustrations is the true product that should be preserved.  You lose so much context and enjoyment if you can even get yourself through a plaintext version of the book.  Layouts are designed for humans, while I think the plaintext was designed for machines. Accessibility, at least in public health-land, can be described as “the right services for the right people at the right time.”  I think that perhaps for Project Gutenberg, accessibility’s right time is the future and right people are computers.  I mean, it’s cool that they started this in the late 70′s with hand-transcribing texts(!) on mainframes, but the average person isn’t going to really enjoy these materials – they’ll check out Google Books and book scans, which I beef about further down…

That being said, as this is for humans to read, why doesn’t Project Gutenberg also create a nicely-formatted PDF version for download?  They already support a more readable format for pocketpc-like devices, and they’ve sort of started this by having html versions, but in a pdf reader, where you can set it up to view facing pages like a real book, only a PDF will really do.  It could be a final step in their review project they do with Distributed Proofreaders.  Plus, it’s a great opportunity to overshadow the book-scanning projects of Google Books and what-not.  The book scans aren’t “clean” for individual reading (both in font crispness and general page quality), though I think they have their place in a very purist preservation sense.  These newly digitized and proofed copies give you an electronic basis for producing a pdf, and are much easier on the eyes – that’s why, I suppose, when I get a e-book copy from a publisher it’s not a scanned copy of the printed book!  Plus adding in the original (if publicly available) illustrations would give some new life to these older books and increase readership.  And the Gutenmark program usage is truly painless – it took about 10 seconds to do the 1001 nights first volume, which is about 600 pages A5.

The goal to me is this intermediate point on the continuum of fully digital (plaintext) and fully analog (book scans): human readbility and appeal.  Throw in “now” and you have my take on what the accessibility should be.  We want these books read, right?

Tags: books, e-books, rants

Goodreads’ to-reads have expanded greatly due to NYTime’s publishing a list of top books (to them at least). The review sound interesting, so maybe someday I’ll get to em, as most of my to-reads aren’t available in the Peace Corps’ library.

to those who have turkeys and cranberries, oh how I wish I was with you. I’ll be going to two celebrations – one was a sort of office party, which happened yesterday (Thursday for me) and one tomorrow, which is PCV-based. Yesterday’s “bird day” (as they call Thanksgiving in the office due to previous year’s handprint turkey construction paper project) involved a sort of potluck. Stacey organized it but about 3 of us brought potluck spirit and food and the other dozen or so combined money to buy lots of meat and rice and veggies. Thus, we had meat and rice hooshor (empanada-like), carrot salad, pizza, pigs in blankets, boiled horse, boiled veggies, candy, and rice soup with horse meat. Guess which dishes the foreigners brought?

There was a bit of tippling as per any Mongolian celebration but mostly I sat at my desk after lunch feeling immensely sleepy. I collected the bones to take back to Daisy, the dog I’m dogsitting, so that hopefully she won’t eat my linoleum/wood molding/plumbing/door insulation/her poop (which is our past history).

Before tomorrow’s meal preview, I’m going to talk about the past week’s…I got to eat horse meat chili – which was amazing (chili packet from home, you know), zatarain’s red beans and rice from a box (drool), and an apple tart (homemade and “test” pie leftover from last night’s apple pie prep for Saturday). As a result I’m feeling pretty happy – sometimes I feel like I eat random food here to satisfy a craving that well, won’t be satisfied with local food – and that craving’s not around now. I guess this is our version of holiday food here…

Other random bits – it’s much warmer today than it’s been for the past few weeks – I’d say maybe upper 40s – but also it’s become incredibly windy overnight. Every so often I look up over the edge of my computer screen and see clouds of dust blowing across and obscuring buildings. I can also see nearby white ger roofs and stove flaps rippling vigorously. I’m working on coding the qual. data from a project here to improve analysis and it’s slow going – lots of answers given in the free response, and many free response questions. Bleh.

Ok, the big event: thanksgiving 2008. We’re making the following:
Chickens
Stuffing
Mashed Potatoes
Pumpkin soup
Green bean casserole
Corn casserole
Gravy
Pumpkin pie
Apple pie
Kahlua
various items I don’t recall

I’m in charge of Kahlua, pumpkin pie, and corn casserole, and the Kahlua’s done, the pumpkin’s pulped, and the casserole is pending. We’re making everything with maybe 4 burners and 2 overgrown toaster ovens so it should be interesting. By the way making pumpkin puree sucks with said toaster oven and a vodka-cum-kahlua bottle used as a smasher. The chickens will be bought today and likely killed tonight, as we’re not sure where we could store two live chickens overnight…I helped Jen with making pie crust and I’m pleased at the outcome – I think I’m better at crusts than biscuits or bread, as the pigs in blankets turned out a little crispy rather than fluffy. I can’t seem to make rolled and cut biscuits to “work”. Jen says she can make good biscuits though so I’m going to watch her closely tomorrow to see what I’m doing wrong. Maybe we’ll even have White Russians (with UHT milk). I’m totally looking forward to this food, but definitely missing sausage for the stuffing and pecans. Eh, well, Bonnie says we can have another holiday dinner when I get there! I definitely miss having dinner with friends and getting up at 6am to start and all…but maybe if people are around when I cook the dinner they can eat it too – a turkey for two is a tad excessive

Tags: bad biscuits, books, food, horse meat, pie

A wonderfully geeky post on The Onion’s AV club came my way: Flight from fantasy: Jordan, Eddings, Martin, me, and some other geeks. Good comments on it from readers, too, though I would’ve wished for a reference to Stephen King’s “Dark Tower” series. And the comments mention Robin Hobb. Also a gratuitous Star Wars vs. Star Trek comment to inflame those types. I may use this blog posting as a source for new reads…never have read “Perdido Street Station” though I believe Melissa owns it.

If only there was a sci-fi/fantasy warehouse out here in Khovd…

Tags: books