Aug 17 2008
I hope it will be called “Interrobang”
…
Unfortunately, I just googled this and found out there are already several bands with variants on this name. So I have to either destroy them all, or resign myself to joining a “a seven piece ska band from the South Shore in Massachusetts”. Perhaps I can sneakily replace their lead harmonica player…
This is what happens when I read up on Wikipedia about ideal typesetting for fun…
Aug 11 2008
While I love Project Gutenberg, I find its search methods and output (and download) incredibly frustrating. It’s a great resource for me here - free books! small size! But the absolute lack of a rational browsing method or collection-style download kils me. For example, I wrote a quick email to Melissa with a Cthulu reference, which led me to read about Cthulhu and Lovecraft in Wikipedia, then magically the Arabian Nights. The Arabian Nights is indeed in Project Gutenberg, but as individual 800k plain-text volumes - and when you search for “Arabian Nights” on their site you get something like this (a screenshot cuz you can’t even link to search results…):
…so apparently it’s multiple volumes…? Assuming “Arabian Nights Entertainments” is what you’re looking for? (Which, btw, it isn’t - half a screen down is apparently the more definitive 10-volume translation per wikipedia). Then you decide to download one of those volumes, and you get something like this:
…so, what’s the difference between all the versions? Why should I care? I just want to read the damn book…and then I definitely would of course prefer a courier serifed font. Bleh.
And I know keeping it completely plaintext makes lots of sense from a forward-compatibility standpoint, or file size, or something…but…having just read one of those free PDF-form Tor e-books - with full-color maps, page layout, and everything - I am hopelessly spoiled and saddened.
Perhaps, if I ever get a free moment, it would be fun to make a “real” e-book for the Arabian Nights - layout, illustrations/photos-of-dramatic-re-enactments, etc. I suspect from a copyright standpoint it’s ok - esp. if for only personal use - as the source material is freely available. After the traumatic Peace Corps Monoglia Cookbook 2008 layout experience, I’m ready for another masochistic go-round. And you can get one of those long-tail publishers like Blurb to print it all nice-like, I bet, too.
Sigh. When I’m free. Unless other people would like to assist in personally re-publishing an out-of-copyright book? Of any kind?
