Daily Thoughts 11/27/2009

This picture was taken from Les mémoires de Saint-Simon (Memoirs of Saint-Simon), anthology gathered by Le Goffic & Tellier, Paris 1862. Publishers Mark. From oldbookillustrations.com

Daily Thoughts 11/27/2009

An article, What it Will Mean When The Ebook Comes First. http://www.idealog.com/blog/what-it-will-mean-when-the-ebook-comes-first

This is an inevitability. The way I see it is that you will be able to get the book or other media from a digital kiosk to download onto a device in a variety of formats. If you want a hardcopy, you pay a little extra for the paper and printing. The book will print in two minutes as a trade paperback. If you want it in hardcover, you may have to go into a larger store where there will be a few browsable items and a bigger machine which will make a hardcover in four minutes. This is practically here. It will take a while for it to go into place.

I am glad that the malware on my computer is gone. I think Computer Associates cleaned it out while I was sleeping using a remote login. When I got up in the morning, it was gone and my security suite was updated.

Housing Works Used Book Cafe in Manhattan, New York is having a 30% off sale. It is one of my favorite bookstores. The proceeds go to help homeless people with AIDS stay off the streets. They have a very nice selection of books.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/27/arts/27bspare.html?_r=2

I never did get out to go to any of the Black Friday sales. I did get a chance to finish watching Cowboy Bebop the shows. The collection was six dvd discs. I really like the opening music. It is worth it just listening to the opening. I am going to watch the movie as well. I guess I have become a fan.

I also had a chance to start reading the first few chapters of The Elements of Expression by Arthur Plotnik. I rather like his explantions of descriptive versus prescriptive grammar and english. I like to think of prescriptive english as what you need to know in order to write clearly and with accuracy, and descriptive english as how to choose the right variation of grammar to express yourself. I know it is not the real definition of descriptive english or prescriptive english, but it is how I think of it.

While I was looking around the web, I found an interesting startup called Fast Pencil, it appears to be a self publishing service which includes templates and workflows for creating a variety of different kinds of books. http://www.fastpencil.com/