Category: Burningbird

Categories
Burningbird

New page New Start

My web sites are undergoing a redesign, including this new page, which will eventually feature a lot more than what you see at the moment.

Until everything is up and running, you can access current material at the following focused sub-sites:

If you’re currently subscribed to any of my feeds, you don’t need to do a thing. I am redirecting the feed locations, which should cause your feed readers to update to the new location.

Categories
Burningbird

Under construction

I couldn’t resist the title. Just be glad I refrained from using one of the old animated “Under Construction” GIFs.

Since I’m no longer on the hook for anything related to HTML5 and RDFa, I can return to my books. Books, plural, as I hope to be starting a new book within the “traditional” publishing track, soon.

I doubt I’ll have much to say over the next few months. Just a heads up that the site may look odd or not work at times, as I try out some new stuff. No worries, it hasn’t been taken over by aliens.

Categories
Writing

Whiteness

I don’t know if I’m the only one seeing a white page on the site, but since the upgrade to 6.11 in Drupal, I’ve had problems accessing all my sites. The problem could also be my hosting, and I’m currently exploring the possibility of moving. However, the problem has become much, much worse with the 6.11 upgrade. If you’ve had problems accessing the site, let me know.

I now have seven Drupal installations, though two are “stealth”. One I’m using to write my new book. I stripped away all styling and then designed a Drupal theme that supports ePub. I’ll be adding a second theme that supports Mobi/Amazon, and possibly a third that supports a PDF book. One of the advantages of being comfortable with XHTML is that you can take your mad XHTML markup skillz to the eBook world with only a little effort. Once I’ve published the book, and know the themes are working 100% I’ll upload them to the Drupal theme site, for people who want to use Drupal to write eBooks.

I will say that self-publishing is a different world now. There are so many resources. One wall I hit, though, was getting an ISBN. I could swear these were free at one time, but now, ISBNs in the US have been “contracted out” from the government to a privately owned monopoly.

You don’t need an ISBN for an eBook, though some sellers prefer ones. But if you’re going hard copy as well as eBook, which I am, you’ll have to have one. You can also “borrow” an ISBN from some distribution companies, but they don’t recommend this approach, because you’re then stuck with them as publisher. You can also buy a single ISBN, but it’s a lot cheaper just to buy a block of ten, and then if you need a new ISBN for another edition, or a new book, you have it.

It’s just that having to buy an ISBN wasn’t a cost I was expecting. Again, these are free throughout the world. Only in America do we contract what should be universally accessible to monopolies. How else to explain our cable systems?

Regardless of the unexpected expenses, there’s something very rich, and satisfying, about having some control in all aspects of my book. O’Reilly is a good publisher, and the company has been generous with me, but I’ve always felt out of the loop with my books. For instance, I didn’t know my books were going to be published to the Kindle until after the fact. I didn’t know they were all being released as DRM free ebooks on the Kindle until after the fact. I’m happy about the books being offered DRM free, but I sure would have appreciated a quick note before hand.

(Not to mention having some say in the cover, formatting, and subtitles…)

No, the success or failure of a self-published book is really dependent on the author. This is both scary, and wonderful.

Categories
Copyright Writing

My DRM-free self

O’Reilly now has DRM free versions of some of its book available for the Kindle. Among the books are my own Painting the Web, Learning JavaScript, second edition, Practical RDF, and Adding Ajax.

O’Reilly has been offering DRM free versions of the books at the O’Reilly site, but it’s only been lately that authors have been able to provide DRM free books at Amazon. Why is this important? Because all you have to do is change the book’s extension to .mobi to read the book on your Sony or other MobiPocket capable eBook reader. In other words: Some Amazon store books can be read on other eBook readers other than the Kindle, iPhone, and iTouch.

Teleread and MobileRead have started a campaign to make these DRM free books more easy to find. If a book is DRM free, just tag it “drmfree” at the Amazon site. It tickled me to be the first to tag my own books.

My books being offered DRM free doesn’t change how I feel about copyright. I still believe in the importance of copyrights. My books are still copyrighted, at least until the publishers and I decide the time is ripe to release them into the public domain. I am dependent on the royalties I make from my books, and I lose money through piracy of my books. But I have never believed in DRM, which only hurts the legitimate owners.

I’m currently working on my first self-publishing book, which I’ll be releasing as a Kindle, as well as in other formats. Regardless of how I distribute the book, not one version of the book will have DRM.

Categories
Just Shelley

Beauty is in the eye

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Boing Boing re-published a photo found on Flickr of a hairless male chimp at the Mysore Zoo in India.

hairless chimp

Chances are this chimp suffered from the same hereditary disease that Cinder, the chimp who recently died at the St. Louis zoo, did: alopecia universalis. The condition is rare among chimps, so I’m not surprised that people aren’t aware of what the chimp was suffering from. I was surprised, though at the reaction of the Boing Boing author, a person who is supposedly a science writer.

I am so sorry.

I ran across this image while searching for something to illustrate that last post and just can’t not share it.

Again. My apologies. Rest assured, I’m going to have nightmares tonight, too. We’re all in this together.

I would have expected some discomfort from some folk. After all, Cinder was once featured at Ugly Overload. But I also would have expected a science writer to be more fascinated by the chimp’s physiology, then repelled. Or to note his similarity to humans, as PZ Myers noted. I didn’t expect someone with a scientific background to go, “Ewww. Ugggi!”

I was also a little surprised to read Short, Sharp Science’s take on the photo: that the chimp is suffering from chimpsploitation.

But unless the poor animal is naturally bald, it seems that he is suffering from stress-related hair loss. From the expression on his face (and it is obviously a male) he doesn’t looks like he’s the most well-adjusted of animals. It’s sure to spark more arguments about the welfare of animals in captivity.

It’s true that hairless chimps are rare, but a single search of “hairless chimp” in Google returns thousands of references to our Cinder, and other hairless chimps. We need to be careful about reading our biases into interpretation of photos, particularly so if we call ourselves “scientists”.

For instance, as to the charge of chimpsloitation of this hairless chimp, The Mysore Zoo in India is one of the oldest in the world, and the most popular in India. It did have problems a few years back, when a new Zoo administration eliminated corrupt practices, and several employees exacted revenge by poisoning several animals. In addition, the training of some of its personnel can be deficient, the result of which cost the life of a tigress and another female elephant. However, it is not a “bad” zoo, if we think of bad zoos as those miserable roadside attractions that occur all too frequently in the US. The Mysore Zoo just reflects the multi-cultural environment that makes up today’s India.

I am glad to have seen these stories, as I’ve been trying to track other hairless chimps. I wish, though, that people would see beyond the “difference” of these hairless chimps—to admire their musculature, and accept our common heritage. And to answer another frequently posted question about hairless chimps: chimps are born with pale skin that tans to a darker shade as they are exposed to the sun.