!!TITLE AMB for the Apple II? !!DESC Facing the tecnhical limitations of the oldest PCs !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Lafayette, CO !!DATE 2025-03-22 !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ !!COPYRIGHT 2025 Nicholas Bernhard {{https://mateusz.viste.fr||Mateusz Viste}} developed an open e-book format called {{https://ambook.sourceforge.net/||AMB}}, or Ancient Machine Book. True to its name, it's made for very old computers. In fact, in comes bundled with the FreeDOS operating system, which I have installed onto a number of old laptops. AMB works well. It will render out a book for 80-column displays. It allows for hyperlinks, so one can have a table of contents and links to next or previous chapters. Last year, I even wrote a script to parse my Shanty markup language into the even simpler AMB markup language, so producing ebooks for AMB would be a snap. I was curious about going one step beyond: what if AMB could be ported onto a **really** old computer, like the Apple II? AMB is written in C, so the port would involve compiling the C source code into the Apple II's 6502 Assembly language. Fortunately, there is a compiler, {{https://cc65.github.io/||CC65}}, meant for doing just that. I reached out for some help on this, just to see if this was even doable. A very nice retired developer, who had written Z80 Assembly programs in the day, offered his advice to me. This very helpful gentleman told me it would not really work. You see, CC65 could absolutely compile AMB down to 6502 Assembly, that part wasn't the problem. The problem is that as a program, AMB requires at least 64K of RAM, which is the entire memory capacity of my Apple II+. A 64K RAM footprint is insanely, microscopically tiny by today's standards, but it would completely max out the Apple II+. (The Apple IIe, the top of the line, had a maximum of 128 K of RAM) Then there are some real limitations on storage. The Apple II's Disk II drive used 5 1/4 floppy disks, which could hold 140 kilobytes. 140K equals roughly {{https://www.themeasureofthings.com/results.php?comp=data&unit=kb&amt=140||sixty pages of text, not a very long book. (To be fair, I don't think anyone would *want* to read even sixty pages on an Apple II). Verdict: A fun idea, but not one I'll be pursuing seriously for now. I can imagine a very simple BASIC program where the text of a book is stored in an array, and you'd have controls to cycle through the pages. That's not too far from how text-based adventure games worked back then. You could call it PMB: Primeval Machine Book. For now, I'm working very hard on Version 5 of Nantucket E-Books. AMB will be a part of that, although my focus is on EPUB, physical books, and the best browser-based books you've ever seen. ***** !!TITLE A new blog platform in development !!DESC Blog with Shanty and the Smol Web, not Substack !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Lafayette, CO !!DATE 2025-02-25 !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ !!COPYRIGHT 2025 Nicholas Bernhard I write these blogs in my Shanty, the same markup language I use for books on this site. The text of these blogs is stored in a big text file, which then gets parsed into separate web pages. It is, in essence, a static site generator. I've also tried out syndication through RSS and Atom. There has been some interest on Mastodon in using this parser as the basis for a blog platform, or to have other people use it. Today, I would like to get started on that. Here's what I am proposing: This blog platform will be very much a "smol web" project. I read a blog post recently asking people to consider their website being run on a PSP, or another similarly-old device. How fast would it load? Forget no JS, would it still be useable with no CSS? The static-site generator is free/open-source software: licensed under GPL 3, and the documentation for the markup will use the GFDL. All images on the site would require alt text. No AI/LLM-generated posts. Why should I be bothered to read what you couldn't be bothered to write? Syndication support for blogs, including RSS, Atom, and JSON Feed. No user accounts. Writers can e-mail me their plain text files and images and I'll upload it for you. Barring that, we could find some kind of collaboration tool to share files. This will also be a free-culture project. No paywalls, and I would want you to license your posts under some kind of free-culture license. Calls for donations to Liberapay or similar crowdfunding platforms will be encouraged. Comments will be allowed, though this is opt-in. I'm still going with Bradley Taunt's idea of sending in comments by email. This is not a scalable solution, but it does allow for a slightly more personal connection when commenting. There will be no sane-washing. If you are unhappy with Substack's direction, consider this the opposite direction. At the same time, this will not be an "anything goes" platform, either. Lastly, I will say now that if this really took off, I would ask for some kind of monthly payment to cover operations costs. I think I would do this through Liberapay. For now, I'd like to try this out, and we'll beta-test it for free. If you are interested, please email me at njb@natucketebooks.com and tell me what you would like to blog about. ***** !!TITLE Prevent Your Em-Dashes From Wrapping !!DESC Fun with CSS !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Lafayette, CO !!DATE 2024-12-28 !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ !!COPYRIGHT 2024 Nicholas Bernhard In my e-books, I take care to use proper em dashes, like so: @em@. It's important for me to use proper em dashes rather than, say, one, two, or three hyphens. There is a problem, though, with em dashes on web pages: the HTML renderer will sometimes wrap them incorrectly. I think starting a line with an em dash doesn't look great, and it looks wrong to have a line consist of a single em dash. Consider this line from the Clark Ashton Smith poem *Recompense*: @@IMG :source ../../assets/emdash_1.png :alt Screenshot of a web page showing a line from the Clark Ashton Smith poem Recompense. The em dash at the end of the line has been wrapped to a new line. In some cases, this may be fine, but let's try to aim a little higher. The solution is to wrap the em dash and the word before it in a @lt@span@gt@ element, and then give the span the styling "white-space: nowrap;". Simple enough, but how can the creation of the span element be automated during the parsing process? I put the question to people on FOSStodon, and received {{https://fosstodon.org/@wizzwizz4/113732022616961058||this response from wizzwizz4}}: *c*string = string.replace(/(\s)(\S+—)/gi, "$1$2");*c* This is the result: @@IMG :source ../../assets/emdash_2.png :alt Screenshot of a web page showing a line from the Clark Ashton Smith poem Recompense. In this screenshot, the last word of the line, 'desire', and the em dash character have been wrapped together in a span element. 'Desire' and the em dash both appear together on the second line. Seems to be working well, or at least headed in the right direction. Than you, wizzwizz4! This may seem like a little thing, because it is. Still, it's a good example of Charles Colton's famous summary of Michelangelo's art: "Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle." ***** !!TITLE A New AI Story !!DESC An update on my story offers !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Lafayette, CO !!DATE 2024-12-19 !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ !!COPYRIGHT 2024 Nicholas Bernhard Back in March, I wrote a blog post about two story ideas I would pay for. One was a short story based on *Steamboat Willie*, the other was a short story about AI. I am pleased to say the AI short story challenge is over. I have received a superb submission from a writer who has been published here before. I asked for a story that would explore problems with AI *today*, not problems in the future. No robot uprisings was my firm rule. While their story is science-fiction, the problems brought up in this story are very much problems we are dealing with right now. Like a good William Gibson novel, it's modern trends pushed just the *teensiest* bit into the fantastic. That makes the story all the more scary. Earlier this year, I took a job that ended up becoming a nightmare gallery of workplace misery and humiliation. Kooky-brained rat bastards, the lot o'em. When I close my eyes I can see their *rodentia* sharp teeth glittering in the darkness. One of the very first red flags at this job was when my boss, about my age, with a newly-minted master's degree, told me they ran all their emails and other correspondence through ChatGPT. I was asked what I thought about that. I told them that when it came to my own emails, I was a *writer*, and I'd worked too hard on my writing to let a machine do it for me. This new short story about AI is like a railroad station map on the express train to Hell. It will be part of a new short story collection focused on the exciting new writers using Nantucket E-Books. I will be thrilled to share it with you all next year. ***** !!TITLE My Understanding of Media Mail !!DESC What can and cannot be shipped !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Silverthorne, CO !!DATE 2024-10-04 !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ !!COPYRIGHT 2024 Nicholas Bernhard The nice thing about selling books is that I can use Media Mail to ship my products. Media Mail is a service that lets customers mail certain items for cheap, notably books. It was created to encourage the mailing of educational materials. In addition to a lower cost, you get a tracking number for free. Which items can be shipped using Media Mail is a bit complicated, so I will try to elaborate upon the explanation given on {{https://about.usps.com/notices/not121/not121_tech.htm||this USPS web page}}. ##What Can Be Shipped Using Media Mail * Books (a minimum of eight pages) * Sound recordings, including CDs, audio cassettes, and vinyl records. * Video recordings such as DVDs. I would presume formats such as LaserDisc, Video CD, and SelectaVision would count, too. * Play scripts * Printed music books and sheet music * Manuscripts for books, periodicals, and music. * This is good for authors and editors to know: you can send manuscripts via Media Mail. * Film prints, 16mm or narrower * This comes from the days when educational movies would be shown in classrooms on physical film. * Printed materials for tests (education) * Printed educational reference charts The last one I will repeat verbatim: "Computer-readable media containing prerecorded information and guides or scripts prepared solely for use with such media." ##What Cannot Be Shipped Using Media Mail * Advertising * No catalogs, obviously, and no magazines that contain advertising. It is common for a book to include a preview chapter from an upcoming book, or for older books to include an order form on the last page. The latter two would usually qualify as "incidental announcements of other books", and should be fine. * Comic books, since they contain advertising for sea monkeys and the like. However, graphic novels or trade-paperback comic books, if they don't contain ads, are okay. * Video Games * Puzzles * Blank media (blank audio tape, blank CDs/DVDs) * Personal messages. Technically, mailing a book to a friend with a personal letter included would not be allowed. However, Media Mail does allow "a brief note that introduces the media." I would take that to mean that if your letter was short, and focused on the book you sent, that would be fine. Allowed personal messages would also include bills/invoices, and a booklet of errata. What is "errata", you may ask? Back in the day, if errors were discovered in a book, it was common to ship a small booklet with future copies detailing all errors found up to that point. This booklet was called the "errata". I have a manual for the Applesoft BASIC programming language that came with an errata booklet. ##Keep It Simple, You'll Be Fine Keep it simple, just stick to books, audiobooks, and DVDs, and you'll be fine. What have been your experiences with Media Mail? E-mail me a comment and I'll add it to this blog post. ***** !!TITLE Adding lists to Print-Shanty !!DESC Plus some bug-fixes, and better indentations !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Silverthorne, CO !!DATE 2024-09-23 !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ !!COPYRIGHT 2024 Nicholas Bernhard Updates to print-shanty.js for 2024-09-23: ##SUPPORT FOR LISTS IN PHYSICAL BOOKS I am adding support for Markdown-type lists to Shanty. If the first character of a line is an asterisk, and the second character is a space (" "), then the parser will treat that as an item in a list. At the moment, the syntax for nested lists is backwards. I put it in as an asterisk followed by more spaces to indent an item, when it should be spaces followed by an asterisk. The next update to Nantucket E-Books will include support for lists. This could also be used to include ragged-right paragraphs. Allowing spaces at the start of lines meant that lines weren't getting trimmed properly, which prevented the text from justifying in some areas. I believe I have fixed that bug. ##BETTER INDENTATIONS I made the mistake of allowing spaces to be used as indentations in the text. This does not work with proportionally-spaced fonts, since the the spaces themselves can vary in width. Instead, you need to set the x-position of for the start of the @lt@text@gt@ SVG element. This is already how indentations for new paragraphs worked, but I had not been consistent in implementing it that way. Another issue I've had is that bold text in the table of contents is ever-so-slightly misaligned from other items in the list. I've introduced an offset value that realigns the bold text. ***** !!TITLE Updates to Page Numbering Print-Shanty !!DESC Progress on a pernicious bug, and front-matter page numbering !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Silverthorne, CO !!DATE 2024-09-16 !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ !!COPYRIGHT 2024 Nicholas Bernhard One of my goals with print-shanty has been to include roman-numeral page numbers. This is the proper format for the "front matter" of a book, which includes forewords, prefaces, acknowledgements, introductions, and prologues. The advantage of doing it this way is that you can have the first chapter of your book start on page one, which looks cleaner. Tonight, I got it to work! ##Tricky Page-Numbering Page numbering is tricky, because there are a number of pages that can be added before getting into the actual text of the book. The actual chapters of the book are prepended with: a half-title page, a blank page, a full-title page, a copyright page, an optional dedication, and a table of contents. The table of contents may not fit on one page, so its length has to be calculated and added to the total number of pages. There are some other parts I should add, like acknowledgements and a frontispiece. ##My Process for Front-Matter, Roman-Numeral Page Numbers First, I hard-coded a table of Roman numerals for numbers up to 50. At a later point, I may write a script that writes out a roman numeral for any integer, but for now, the table will do. *Note: When I say 'table' I usually mean an array of JavaScript objects. I use these 'tables' for values that I'll be using a lot in a particular script and that I won't need to change.* Then, I added a new bit of syntax: **@at@at@pagenumstart**. This tells the script to number all the pages before and up to this page as the front matter, and all the pages afterward as the "body matter." To start the front matter at page one, you take the normal page number, and then subtract the number of pages that came before it. You then do this for all subsequent pages. Here's some examples from an upcoming paperback edition of *Ebony and Crystal*, a poetry collection by Clark Ashton Smith (public domain): @@IMG :source ../../assets/toc_roman_numerals.jpg :alt Table of contents for Ebony and Crystal by Clark Ashton Smith. The Preface, part of the front matter, is on page xiii, while the first poem, Arabesque, is on page 1. :center **Above: The table of contents** @@IMG :source ../../assets/preface_roman_numerals.jpg :alt The preface from Ebony and Crystal by Clark Ashton Smith, showing page number 'xiii' at the bottom. :center **Above: Preface from** ***Ebony and Crystal*** **on page xiii.** @@IMG :source ../../assets/arabesque_page_one.jpg :alt The poem Arabesque from Ebony and Crystal by Clark Ashton Smith, with page number '1' at bottom-center. :center **Above: The first poem in the book, page number '1'.** ##FIXING A BUG I have also worked on a long-term page-numbering bug. In the tables of contents for some books, the page numbers were off by one. I realized tonight that this was because some pages were not being counted. The table of contents always starts on the right side. If a table of contents is an odd number of pages, my script adds one more blank page, so that the next text content, like an introduction or the first chapter, will also be on a right page. That extra blank page was not being counted toward the page total. Glad that's over. ##HOW AM I LIKING THIS WEEK'S OTHER UPDATES? Over the weekend, I updated the script so that book projects are in their own separate folders. This is working well. Now that I can work on more than one project at once, I was able to compare projects in a way that I could not previously, which let me fix the page-numbering bug. ***** !!TITLE Updates on Print-Shanty !!DESC Plus a side-by-side comparison of fonts !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Silverthorne, CO !!DATE 2024-09-15 !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ !!COPYRIGHT 2024 Nicholas Bernhard In {{https://nantucketebooks.com/blog/2024/09/2024-09-07_updating_the_font_for_physical_books.html||my last post about print-shanty}}, I didn't provide a visual comparison of the two fonts. As a recap, I am designing a script that helps turn a {{https://nantucketebooks.com/shantydocs||Shanty-formatted text file}} into a physical book. The input is Shanty, the output is a collection of SVG pages that can be printed to PDF. I've been using Liberation Serif as the font for the physical books. Liberation Serif is the default font for Mozilla-based browsers I use, including Firefox on Debian, and "abrowser" on Trisquel. My script produces pages of a book as SVG files, which I then print to PDF using my browser. By mistake, I viewed a book while using Bitstream Charter as my browser's default font, rather than Liberation Serif. I already use Charter as the serif font for my e-books, and I thought it looked very nice for physical books. For one thing, the kerning is better, especially with apostrophes. Here is a comparison, using the introduction of my upcoming book *Letters From Santa, Volume I*: @@IMG :source ../../assets/charter.jpg :alt Output from my physical-book script, using Bitstream Charter as the font. :center **Above: {{../../assets/charter.jpg||Bitstream Charter}}** @@IMG :source ../../assets/liberation.jpg :alt Output from my physical-book script, using Liberation Serif as the font. :center **Above: {{../../assets/liberation.jpg||Liberation Serif}}** From what I can see, it's a clear improvement. ##Other Updates I made some other improvements to the print-shanty script this morning. I wanted a way to keep all the assets for different books, and all the output files, in separate folders, and the print-shanty file could sit one level above all these folders. That way, I wouldn't have to keep moving files around every time I change projects. There are two text files for each book: the Shanty file, and a "Publisher Object", which includes metadata like the publisher logo, ISBN, LCCN, and copyright and licensing info. Prior versions of print-shanty took the shanty file as an argument. There was also only one Publisher Object, which I would rewrite it for each project. Now, each project has one Shanty file *and* its own Publisher Object (a JSON file), and the script takes the *folder* name as the argument. It now looks like **node print_shanty.js letters_from_santa_vol-i/** The script uses **fs.readdir** to look for the one Shanty file and the one JSON file in the folder, and loads them up. These changes improve the workflow. I can move between projects much more easily now. ***** !!TITLE Houston Arcade & Pinball Expo 2024 !!DESC Quarter Up returns to the Expo this October !!AUTHOR AT Gonzalez !!LOCATION USA !!DATE 2024-09-14 !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ !!COPYRIGHT 2024 AT Gonzalez @@IMG :source ../../assets/hax_2024.jpg :alt Promotional poster for Houston Arcade Expo 2024 **{{https://www.houstonarcadeexpo.com/||Houston Arcade & Pinball Expo}}** returns to the Marriott Westchase in October 2024. Coordinated by Keith Christensen, Erich Stinson, Blake Dumesnil and the Houston Area Arcade Group (HAAG), Houston Arcade Expo brings casual gamers, hardcore gamers, hobbyists and industry professionals together with literally thousands of computer, video and arcade games to play during one ecstatic weekend. This years' Expo will once again have a heavy focus on the silver ball. Approximately 100 pinball games have been confirmed with several more expected. Recent products like *Labyrinth* (the first pinball game produced in the City of Houston), Jersey Jack's *The Godfather*, Chicago Coin Company's *Pulp Fiction*, *The Princess Bride* by Multimorphic and *John Wick* by Stern are planned to be there along with old favorites like *Last Action Hero*, *Black Knight 2000*, *Big Guns*, *Space Shuttle*, *Pinball Magic* and *Cactus Canyon*. The oldest game currently on the roster is *World Series* by Rockola. Organizations like Gandalf's Arcade, Space City Pinball League, Wormhole Pinball, Poison Girl and Einstein's Pub will be supplying pinball tables along with contributions from local hobbyists such as Brian Foytik and James King. There is a concentrated effort to bring several Stern Deadpool pinball tables in honor of the recent film *Deadpool & Wolverine* by Marvel Studios. In a corral headed by Brian from the Guru Guys and Anton Gale, dozens of modified game consoles from the 8, 16, 32, 64-bit eras and beyond will be there to enjoy. Fighting games, first-person shooters and sports games will be provided; multiplayer and single player games galore. Another enthusiast will bring two interlinked PlayStation 1 consoles for *Ridge Racer* LAN play. Retro World Series makes its way back to Houston to host its delightfully unique brand of tournaments with *Ms. Pac-Man*, *Super Smash Bros 64*, *Goldeneye* and *Pong* competitions. A convoy of retro computers dating as far back as the early 1980s will be there along with plenty of software programs to tinker with. Currently (about) 30 arcade video games from the distant past to nearest corner of memory lane are confirmed, with a few dozen more expected. A wonderful blend of mainstream hits and oddities such as *Missile Command*, *Alien vs. Predator*, *Street Fighter II: Champion Edition*, *Razing Storm*, *Dance Dance Revolution Supernova*, *Virtual-On* and *Mace: The Dark Age* will populate the ballroom floor. Several game industry professionals like Brian F. Colin (co-creator of *Rampage* and *Arch-Rivals*), Tim Kitzrow (voice of your favorite Midway sports games and Williams pinball tables) and the Barrels of Fun staff (*Labyrinth* pinball) are committed. Gaming author Brett Weiss will be there for a meet-and-greet. He will also be documenting the event. Live music is a regular fixture at the Arcade Expos. Radio Cult and Consortium of Genius return to the stage. Oscillation Communications will be creating live soundscapes with their synthesizers. Austin-based artist Le Destroy of *Cyberpunk 2077* fame will perform late Friday night (warning: explicit lyrics). @@IMG :source ../../assets/wang_chung.jpg :alt Photo of British New Wave band Wang Chung In a stunning turn of events British new wave band Wang Chung (Nick Feldman and Jack Hues) will be gracing the Expo with their presence. The duo be preforming on Friday night only at 9:30 PM local time. This is your chance to hear their hit songs like {{https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZttcArNs0g||**Everybody Have Fun Tonight**}} and {{https://youtu.be/BbwF_OYVcdo?si=RF8QInfZz0d4JA-t||**Let's Go**}}. The Expo starts Friday, October 11th at high noon and will last until Sunday, October 13th at 2PM. {{https://houstonarcadeexpo.ticketspice.com/houston-arcade-expo-2024||**VIP passes sold online**}} provide soft opening access for Thursday, October 10th. Prices are subject to change as we get closer to the Expo date. Houston Arcade Expo is a wonderfully unique live event were you can catch up with current arcade hits and mingle with people who have worked on great games from the past while those enjoying the classics in the same hall. This is a show no Space City gamer will want to miss! ***** !!TITLE Updating the Font for Physical Books !!DESC A review of the typesetting process for paperbacks !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Silverthorne, CO !!DATE 2024-09-07 !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ !!COPYRIGHT 2024 NJB I am preparing to publish a new physical book, and I thought I'd share the current workflow. The goal of my process is to use the same Shanty file to produce both e-books and physical editions. When I produced my novel *November in America* using Amazon's KDP platform, I was frustrated by the need to format my book in a word processor, and then format it again in their e-book program. The process is set up for making physical books measuring five inches wide, and eight inches tall, with hard-coded margins and line heights. I use a serif font for the headings and paragraphs. The paragraphs in the books are justified. **First,** I run the Shanty file through a program I call Lone Cypress. This program breaks each paragraph into lines of the required width, and then breaks the text down into pages. One of the important features of Lone Cypress is to set hyphenations for words. The program prompts me when a word exceeds the limit on line length. If a word needs hyphenation, I set the break point. The assigning of these break points is done manually. Lone Cypress knows, for the most part, to discount symbols associated with Shanty, like asterisks or words nested in at-signs. For syntax that represents certain characters, like two hyphens for an em-dash, it will deduct the space of the former, and add in the space of the latter. Lone Cypress uses a table for the widths of each character to calculate how many characters fit on a line. There are tables for regular text, italic, bold, and bold-italic. The output of Lone Cypress is a new copy of the Shanty text with line breaks added to paragraphs, split into pages. As it's currently set up, there are 30 lines for a regular page, and 24 lines for the start of a chapter. Lone Cypress has improved the quality of the books significantly. Before Lone Cypress, I reformatted the text by eyeballing it, setting line breaks based on total number of characters on a line. Since Lone Cypress measures the width of each character separately, which is what you want for a proportionally-spaced font, the result looks much, much better. Based on some tests I've run, I'm able to format a book that looks better, and do it up to three times faster. **Second,** the newly formatted text is then fed through a second program which I simply call Print Shanty. This program splits the new text into an array of pages. Each page is parsed into the SVG format. A table of contents is generated from chapter headings, and page numbers are added to each page, taking the length of the table of contents into account. Copyright, ISBN, LCCN, and licensing information are loaded in from a separate JSON file, and added to the book. The SVG pages are collated for printing, and laid out in an HTML file. This HTML file has a stylesheet designed for printing. Specifically, I wrote it to have as small a top margin as possible, which saves time when I later cut the book down to size. This HTML file is then rendered in my browser, where I save it as a PDF file. This PDF can then be shared and printed. For a 5x8 book, I cut half an inch off each long side, and a half-inch off the bottom of the short side. Because the pages are collated, all I have to do is cut the pages down the middle, fold them together, and the pages will be in correct order. Ideally, both programs would be combined, and there would be a way to save my place in Lone Cypress. That way, I wouldn't have to work on a whole book in one sitting. In the long-term, the program needs many updates. It would be nice to have it format text for multiple columns and different page widths. It's also important that the program support Roman-numeral page numbering, for book content like forewords and introductions. Lastly, there should be support for indexing. This would start with some additional markup for Shanty, something like @ind@. The program could then build an array of where @ind@ appears, the word or phrase associated with it, and the page number. ##Why Are We Doing This? It's fair to ask why I don't use a readily-available desktop publisher like Adobe InDesign or Microsoft Publisher. Within the free-software community, there's Scribus, which the Free Software Foundation uses to produce its semiannual bulletin. One reason is that I wanted it to be analogous to the experience with Arrowhead when making e-books. When you write in a markup language, you can focus more on the *writing*, and let the parser figure out how it will look. I still remember the experience of writing screenplays in the markup language Fountain. Instead of worrying about the complexities of the screenplay format, I could--write! That's the feeling I've tried to bring to writing books with Shanty: write, and then create your book with one push of a button, or one command in the terminal. That's the compass that guides this project. ##A Better Font? While working on the latest book, I had a pleasant surprise. Since I'm loading an HTML document full of SVG images, the text uses the default text of my browser. In my case, that's Liberation Serif. While it has some issues, I felt it was good for the books. Then, by accident, I forgot that I had set my default font to Bitstream Charter, the default serif font for Nantucket E-Books. The test book was rendered in Charter, and it looked great! Somehow, Charter looked better using the Liberation Sans width-tables I measured out than the actual Liberation Serif. I don't know how it works, but it works. These are going to be great-looking books. One of the best improvements is in the placing of apostrophes. Liberation Serif puts curly apostrophes too far to the right of the preceding character, while in Charter, it's comfortably close. **** This has been my update on the software that turns Shanty into physical books. I have been very excited about this work, and I look forward to sharing the book I've been working on. ***** !!TITLE Quarter Up's Summer 2024 Issue Is Out !!DESC Sonic Cafe, Classic Taito, and Texas Claw Machines !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Silverthorne, CO !!DATE 2024-08-16 !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ !!COPYRIGHT 2024 NJB @@IMG :source ../../../ebooks/quarterup/quarterup_2024_q2/assets/images/quarterup_2024-q2_cover.jpg :alt Cover for Issue #7 of Quarter Up, art by Loulou. A man plays at a pinball machine, and a woman plays a video arcade machine in a small room from an isometric perspective. The small room floats in front of a star field. The title 'Quarter Up' sits along the top of the room, and hanging from the bottom is the subtitle 'Volume III, Summer 2024'. I'm proud to release the seventh issue of Quarter Up. This is our Summer issue, and we've got some fantastic new articles. Before the articles, though, check out that awesome cover by **Loulou**. He's our first international artist, and I've been loving this art ever since I first saw it. Check out more of Loulou's art at {{https://pixelfed.art/Loulou||https://pixelfed.art/Loulou}}. **AT Gonzalez** reviews the Sonic Speed Cafe in Katy, Texas, a Sonic the Hedgehog-themed restaurant. Elsewhere in the Houston area, he covers two arcades dedicated to...the claw machine. Arcade historian **Leland Tursi** bring the history of Taito's *Wyvern F-0*, which may have one of the strangest graphics setups of any arcade game. We have a posthumous column of commentary by **Buffalo**, about the rules and regulations of pinball. In true Buffalo form, he ties it all back to Zen Bhuddism. Let us know what you like about this issue, leave a comment, or just email me at **njb@nantucketebooks.com**. Keep playing pinball! ***** !!TITLE Writing Prompts from the Clarion Writers Conference !!DESC Plus an update on the summer issue of Quarter Up! !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Silverthorne, CO !!DATE 2024-08-05 !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ !!COPYRIGHT 2024 NJB My other main web project is the {{https://www.ndhfilms.com/other/ellison/||Harlan Ellison directory}}. My goal is to catalog Ellison's many writings, in sf, crime, and essays. So far, with the help of fellow Ellison fan and Quarter Up contributor AT Gonzalez, we've cataloged over 400 works. We're still a long way from the 1,700 that Ellison frequently proclaimed. When reading *The Book of Ellison*, I came across the essay *School for Apprentice Sorcerors*. The essay is about the Clarion College Writer's Workshop in Science Fiction. Ellison was one of the instructors at the original 1968 workshop. Originally hosted at Clarion State College in Pennsylvania, it is now hosted at UCSD in California. What intrigued me most about the essay was a list of writing prompts Ellison shares at the end. If you're a writer, these make for a good set of mental workouts. Try turning one (or all!) of these into the first lines of a story. **1.** The unemployment line was long: one vampire, two werewolves, a ghoul, three witches and a succubus. **2.** Nora felt disgusted at having to eat the Catholic priest; she'd never really wanted anything to do with the church. **3.** Monroe's time machine was a real innovation: he activated it and promptly destroyed Monday, September 22nd, 1969. **4.** The Indian brave, Momashay, ignored the child's protests as he swung it by its ankles and smashed its head into a tree. **5.** When I am in the sun, I half close my eyes and look at my lashes. There are rainbows: that is the only beautiful thing to me. **6.** His shoe swiftly consumed his foot. **7.** They crucified Christ again today. I don't think he did anything this time, either. **8.** Once, upon a dime, a flea ran through a quick but impressive circus act. **9.** Body tense and sweating, Byron concentrated on marking off his answers; if he failed the written part of the masculinity exam, Laura would find herself another husband. **10.** Sam Untermeyer was a rotten kid; even his mother said so. **11.** Icarus passed overhead with sound and fire like all the wars of all time and struck the earth somewhere beyond Chicago. **12.** "My son, the Polish Army had one helluva time keeping up with combat on the semi-sweet Eastern Front." **13.** He stood grinning, with a penguin under each arm, as though a man with a glass tumor was a thing of the past. **14.** When Harold Plidner was four years old, he decided he wanted to be a cauliflower. **15.** Sylvia took off her clothes seductively, jumped into Harry's lap and began to wag her tail. **16.** One day the Pope forgot to take her Pill. **17.** The road to Cinnabar was lined exclusively with the burned-out shells of school buses. If these don't get your narrative gears running, nothing will. If you write a story from one of these prompts, leave a comment with a link to it! (directions for emailing comments below) ##UPDATE ON QUARTER UP The summer issue of Quarter Up comes out this Friday. Be sure to check out the page for our quarterly pinball/arcade newsletter at {{https://nantucketebooks.com/quarterup||nantucketebooks.com/quarterup}}. In the summer issue, you'll find a review of the Sonic Cafe in Houston, claw machines in Katy, Texas, Leland's history of *Wyvern F-0* by Taito, and a posthumous column from Buffalo. I'll update this post with a link when it's out. ***** !!TITLE In the market !!DESC Some short stories I'd like to buy !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2024-03-21 !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ !!COPYRIGHT 2024 NJB There's some short stories I'd like to publish. I'll pay you for them. ##STEAMBOAT WILLIE The 1928 Mickey Mouse cartoon *Steamboat Willie* is now in the public domain. I will pay for a short story that includes the *Steamboat Willie* version of Mickey Mouse. **Rules for this story:** the story must *not* be horror. **COMPENSATION**: I will pay $50 for the best submission. ##AI PROBLEMS I would like to publish a work of fiction about being caused by AI today. **Rules for this story:** No robot uprisings, no nuclear wars. This story has to be about the problems caused by LLMs or AI-generated imagery **today**. **COMPENSATION:** I will pay $25 for the best submission. ##RULES FOR ALL SUBMISSIONS I do not have to publish any stories that are submitted. If your work is selected for publication on Nantucket E-Books, it will be published using a free-culture license, such as CC BY-SA 4.0 or CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. **Age-Appropriateness:** Write for an audience that could read and appreciate *Frankenstein* by Mary Shelley. **Payment:** I can pay via PayPal, check, or money order. **Submissions:** I will accept submissions at njb@nantucketebooks.com. ****** !!TITLE List of titles on author pages !!DESC Progress on UI !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2024-03-12 !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ !!COPYRIGHT 2024 NJB I've made a number of updates to the site's catalog page: {{https://nantucketebooks.com/ebooks/||nantucketebooks.com/ebooks/}} I now have lists of featured e-books, most popular e-books, and a list of authors. The list of authors includes links to each author's page. These authors pages will now include a list of the author's titles, sorted by popularity. For example, {{https://nantucketebooks.com/sethpatterson||check out the page for author Seth Patterson}}. All of this is automatically generated by a Node.js script. The next step is to keep collecting author bios and cover photos. After that, I want to work on bringing back RSS and Atom feeds, and showing categories of e-books. ***** !!TITLE Featured e-books section now automatically generated !!DESC Progress on UI !!AUTHOR Nicholas Bernhard !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2024-03-02 !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ !!COPYRIGHT 2024 NJB My site's catalog generator will now automatically build a list of featured e-books, for both the catalog page and the main page. It will even show the featured e-books in a preferred order. Next steps: * Sort by popularity and category. * Show authors on the catalog page. * Bring back RSS for the catalog page, and add an Atom feed, too. * Searchability. ***** !!TITLE A new catalog layout !!DESC Progress on UI, and an announcement on publishing !!AUTHOR Nicholas Bernhard !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2024-03-02 !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ !!COPYRIGHT 2024 NJB The catalog page will look a bit different now: {{https://nantucketebooks.com/ebooks/||nantucketebooks.com/ebooks/}}. I had originally used a "tile" layout. On landscape displays, cards showing the cover and info on different books were shown in three different columns side-by-side. On a landscape display, this layout had a pleasing effect, but on portrait they looked too big and it got unwieldy. In particular, it was difficult to scroll through on any device. I'm hoping the new layout is at least a small improvement. This is an incremental process. I'm using a table element with some simple CSS 'grid' styling. I've used flex boxes on many projects, but grid seems to be a new trend and I thought I'd give it a shot. To save on space, I've found a way to use the detail/summary elements to hide longer descriptions of books. This is a nice way to save space, and requires no JavaScript. I've set the book covers to line up with the top of the rows, so they won't move around when the description box opens and closes. I was surprised to find that these new cards, including the detail/summary elements, work with the site's dark mode. The appearance on text-only browsers could be improved somewhat. Here's my next steps: * Categories. Rather than show every e-book on the site, I'd like to show the top five or so e-books in different categories: most popular, most recent, horror, science-fiction, short stories, novels, and so on. * Have the SSG build the main page. I'd like to have a template of the index.html file, which could be updated when new e-books get featured. * Searchability. A search function for the e-books is a long-term goal for me. ##AN ANNOUNCEMENT Many of the site's e-books come from the public domain, and are adapted (improved) from Project Gutenberg's e-books. From now on, I plan to focus my time on finding and working with new authors. I have no plans to add further public domain e-books on a regular basis. A while back, it occured to me that a browser extension could be built that applies a new, better stylesheet to Project Gutenberg titles. It could even run the interactive features of Nantucket E-Books, like note-taking, text-resizing, and dark mode. It would be more efficient, in the long run, to bring the great readability and interactivity of Nantucket E-Books to Project Gutenberg via an extension, than to adapt Gutenberg books to Nantucket E-Books individually. ***** !!TITLE An Interview With Author Sefton Eisenhart !!DESC Some words with the writer behind The Chaos of Heat !!AUTHOR Nicholas Bernhard !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2024-03-01 !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ !!COPYRIGHT 2024 NJB Today, I am publishing {{https://nantucketebooks.com/chaosofheat||*The Chaos of Heat*}}, a short story by Sefton Eisenhart. *The Chaos of Heat* is a crime story as unrelenting as the heat wave described in its vivid prose. It follows a man who, wracked by heroin addiction, finds himself at the front of a dangerous robbery spree. Will Vince survive long enough to get his next fix, or is he little more than shark bait, out of his depth? @@IMG :source ../../../ebooks/seftoneisenhart/chaosofheat/assets/images/chaosofheat.jpg :alt A detail from Sefton Eisenhart's painting Chaos of Heat, showing white shapes on a deep-red background. The author and title name are presented in large blue text in a sans-serif font, with 'A Crime Story' in a smaller font size near the bottom. You can read the story at {{https://nantucketebooks.com/chaosofheat||nantucketebooks.com/chaosofheat}}. *The Chaos of Heat* is Eisenhart's first work on Nantucket E-Books. What follows is my interview with the author of this pulse-pounding new story: **NICHOLAS BERNHARD** *When did you first become interested in writing?* **SEFTON EISENHART** I always had a habit for daydreaming. At some point I felt compelled to turn these daydreams into something tangible, to make something of the near-psychedelic inspiration that would come over me. Writing it down was just the easiest way to do it. **NJB** *What are some of your favorite books, and why are they your favorites?* **SE** Really great books are hard to come by, and for it to register as great the timing has to be right. It has to come into your life at a certain point to resonate in a way that creates an incredible experience. I try not to reread the books that moved me the most, because I can never to recapture the magic. *The Adventures of Augie March* by Saul Bellow was probably the most impactful book. **NJB** *In your book, the target of the robberies is Tide detergent. Some of our readers may not know how or why Tide is a valuable black-market commodity. Would you explain the allure of Tide?* **SE** First off, everybody needs laundry detergent, so there are a ton of prospective buyers. Second, it has a virtually infinite shelf life, so it can be stored for as long as necessary before being sold. Thirdly, Tide is the premier detergent, and the bright red/orange branding makes for an eye-catching item that’s easy to sell. **NJB** *How do you like to write? If you write on a computer, what software do you use? Is there a preferred place you like to write, or certain times of day?* **SE** I like to write in the morning, which is when my brain is firing right. I use a conventional word processor, nothing fancy. I need it to be very quiet. I wish I was not so sensitive to noise, but I really need a sonic bubble anytime I have to concentrate. I like to write at a desk and for it to feel official, like a job. Journaling gives me a more casual way to write wherever, whenever, without much of a process. **NJB** *Do you read a lot of crime fiction, and if so, what authors are you reading?* **SE** I really don’t stay in any single genre, but I have read more than my fair share of crime fiction. I read the book *Heat 2* by Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner, which is a prequel/sequel to what is, in my opinion, the best crime movie of all time. I just read *Gone Girl* for the first time this year and it pains me that I saw the movie years ago—I wish I could’ve experienced the twist without knowing ahead of time. I think that Carl Hiassen is the funniest author I’ve ever read and I always find myself laughing out loud while I’m reading. I also like the pulp kings like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, though I must admit I find those books to be a bit formulaic. That said, it’s a pretty great formula. While his books transcend any one genre, Cormac McCarthy is another incredible writer with such a fine-tuned style that you can’t help but find his books inspiring and his talent enviable. **NJB** *The descriptions of heat in this story are intense. Do you prefer a certain season or weather?* **SE** I am the kind of person that wants the weather to be perfect all the time based on my ever-changing preferences. That said, I want to be be able to ride a motorcycle comfortably. **NJB** *What author have you been most proud to meet personally, and what author would you like to meet, if you could?* **SE** I was in a class taught by Dr. Joan Mellon, who was an expert about the JFK assassination. I was honored to be in the room with her, honored to have her read my mediocre work, because her depth of knowledge on that event, which in my opinion was one of history’s greatest cultural turning points, was illuminating. And she was never too high and mighty to engage in debate. As far as an author I’d like to meet…I would love to meet Joan Didion, because she helped revolutionize non-fiction. The way she wrote about real events does a great job of giving reality its due. **NJB** *Do you workshop your writing? Do you have people who offer critiques and/or proofreading?* **SE** I ask everyone I know very sheepishly to read it. I hate proofreading, but it must be done. I usually miss a lot. **NJB** *An excerpt of* Chaos of Heat *was published in Pay Phone Calls, a small zine. Are you a zine reader/collector?* **SE** The publication of Zines is a dying art, as is the case with so much of the awesome analogue ways creative people honor what they love. I always read any self published magazines or comic books I come across. It brings me happiness to see people making those things because it is such an expression of passion. Marley Ward, who was kind enough to publish me in Pay Phone Calls, is an inspiration because he lives his art in a way that is true. **NJB** *The cover of* Chaos of Heat *shows a detail from one of your paintings. What's the name of the painting?* **SE** It has no name, but I suppose I will call it *Chaos of Heat*. I will email the couple who owns it and let them know. **NJB** *How long have you been painting?* **SE** I had a wonderful art teacher in high school who encouraged me to paint and I have never stopped. It allows me to be improvisational, it allows me to make it up as I go, which can be refreshing in comparison to the relatively precise craft of writing. Painting can also be a very precise craft, just not when I’m doing it. **NJB** *Any upcoming projects you'd like to share?* **SE** I’m just going to keep writing. Send your thoughts on *The Chaos of Heat* by emailing a comment. ***** !!TITLE The Pop Method !!DESC An eye-opening disaster !!AUTHOR Nicholas Bernhard !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2024-02-22 !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ !!COPYRIGHT 2024 NJB I had a true disaster yesterday. I spilled Coke all over my main laptop, and seem to have completely fried it. Here's the good news: I was able to pull out the SSD and load it into another laptop. The laptop was a ThinkPad T60, my daily driver for the past three years. I am very sorry to see it go. You may wonder why I use a laptop made in 2006 for work. There are many reasons why: First, the T60 has my favorite keyboard of any laptop I've used, writing with it was a true pleasure. Second, the T60 was sturdy and serviceable. When my ThinkPad fell off the coffee table a couple years back, I was more worried about the floor getting damaged. When my MacBook Pro fell off a table back in college, the aluminum body revealed itself to have the toughness of soft cheese. The third reason is that the T60 helped keep me disciplined. Unfortunately, the current tech mindset is to optimize hardware for software, and not the other way around. If a game runs slowly, the answer is not to program the game more efficiently; no, you are supposed to buy a more powerful computer. A C2D processor and 3.1 GB of RAM has led me to embrace GNU/Linux, alternative front-ends like Invidious, and simpler social media sites like Mastodon and Lemmy. The fourth reason was support for Libreboot. Libreboot is a free-software BIOS. Back in 2021, the T60 was one of a few laptops that supported Libreboot without any complicated external-flashing processes. This is not so today: Libreboot is supported by an ever-growing list of PCs, including some with i7 processors and 16 GB (!!!) of RAM. I suppose I have one more reason for choosing a T60: it was to prepare for moments like these. I have never been more grateful to have a cardboard box full of cheap ThinkPads and MacBooks running Libreboot. I can buy a replacement T60 on eBay for under $100. I am not out thousands of dollars, as I might be with a MacBook Pro or a Microsoft Surface. The obvious concern is my data. Yes, my SSD was fine, but what if that had fried, too? Yes, Nantucket E-Books is version-controlled, and backed up, but what about--everything else? This has been a wake-up call that I need some kind of backup system. I need something like Time Machine (or its GNU/Linux equivalent), or cloud "other people's computers" storage. For now, I'm grateful for my low-tech setup, which means this Coke catastrophe isn't the end of the world, hardware-wise. It *could* have been much worse, data-wise, so this is my opportunity to do better. ***** !!TITLE A Bunch of Hoopla !!DESC When you just want to read a book !!AUTHOR Nicholas Bernhard !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2024-02-08 !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ !!COPYRIGHT 2024 NJB I recently had a conversation with a patron, where I expressed disbelief that someone would use the name {{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Kafka||Kafka}} for a software platform. Similar disbelief followed when I shared my own problems using software called... Hoopla. I have been looking for a copy of *Strange Wine*, a short story collection by Harlan Ellison. The Anythink Library (the library district for Adams County, colorado) had an e-book available. I drove over to one in Thornton the other night, and got a library card. In order to check out this e-book, I would need to download an app called Hoopla onto my smartphone. I'm not big on smartphones, but I thought I would give it a try. I keep an old iPhone SE around for testing my platform's mobile UI, andI tried installing Hoopla in the App Store. The App Store asked for my Apple ID password, which I don't remember since I haven't downloaded any new apps in over a year. Finding this password would involve finding the password for my Apple ID email address, and then I would need to find the recovery email for that account. In my personal opinion, this is a lot to ask when someone just wants to read an e-book. I would contrast this experience with Nantucket E-Books, where everything is HTML, so sharing is as simple as sharing a link. Authors tell me they love how easy it is to share their work with readers, and I know for myself how much I enjoy this ease of sharing. I later set up Hoopla on a new iPhone with a new Apple ID. After logging in with my library card number and setting up a password (they want an email address, too) I was able to find *Strange Wine* and borrow it. There is an e-reader within the app. I later found Hoopla has a web platform, so I can use it in a browser. I must give credit to Hoopla: the web platform is appreciated. Not every company offers a website, too many direct you to 'use the app.' My overall experience with Hoopla was too many logins, too many passwords to remember, and too much nonfree software. I am not opposed to logins, I currently sell an e-book that requires payment and signing up. I will probably implement some kind of login system eventually. For now, I am proud to say that I'm the one site that won't bug you for an email and password. If you visit this site and want to {{https://nantucketebooks.com/ebooks||read a book}}, then it's that simple. ***** !!TITLE Updates for 2024-01-31 !!DESC Added an Atom feed, and moving to Liberapay !!AUTHOR Nicholas Bernhard !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2024-01-31 !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ !!COPYRIGHT 2024 NJB Atom is a web-syndication protocol, like RSS. If you like getting your blog posts in a feed-reader, and prefer Atom, you may subscribe with this URL: {{https://nantucketebooks.com/blog/atom.xml||nantucketebooks.com/atom.xml}}. Since this blog's static-site generator already produces an RSS file, having it produce an extra Atom file is not too much trouble. The biggest difference between RSS and Atom is that Atom makes you get specific about content types. Atom wants to know if the content is plain-text, HTML (requiring escaped angle brackets), or the super-strict XHTML. XHTML is not flexible, it wants the HTML tags nested just so. I've settled on HTML, since that's what I use to deliver the full content of my blog posts to via RSS. I do see the appeal of these readers. It's a simpler internet, certainly beats contending with algorithms on other sites one could mention. :center **Liberapay** I have set up a Liberapay for my personal writing: {{https://liberapay.com/ndhfilms/||liberapay.com/ndhfilms}}. I plan to transition over to Liberapay for all my crowdfunding within the next one to two months. :center **Leave a Comment** Do you use RSS or Atom? What about about a JSON feed? If so, email me a comment and I'll add it to this post. ****** !!TITLE Sitemap and Author Pages Introduced !!DESC Progress update on site improvements !!AUTHOR Nicholas Bernhard !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2024-01-21 !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ !!COPYRIGHT 2024 NJB I wanted to share some of this week's updates to the site: :center **Author Pages** The directories for authors now have their own index.html file. As an example, going to {{https://nantucketebooks.com/ebooks/SethPatterson/||nantucketebooks.com/ebooks/SethPatterson}} will bring up an actual web page, and not just the bare directory. Before now, only {{https://nantucketebooks.com/quarterup||Quarter Up}}, the site's pinball newsletter, had its own page. These author pages are quite sparse right now, the next step will be for these pages to include a photo or illustration of the artist, and a list of hyperlinks to all of that author's books on the platform. Another goal is to have RSS feeds for each author. These pages are built from a Shanty file with the Node.js script that builds the site's {{https://nantucketebooks.com/ebooks/index.html||catalog page}}. :center **Sitemap** I have added a proper XML sitemap to help make the site more readable to search engines. You can view the new sitemap {{https://nantucketebooks.com/sitemap.xml||here}}. I have written a script to build the sitemap. There are three groups of HTML files the script is looking for. The first group is the "big" files which are always going to be there, like the HTML files in the root directory. The second group is the index files for the ebooks and the aforementioned author pages. The third group is the HTML files for this blog. The second and third groups are always expanding, and are built using static-site generating scripts. In both cases, I have the sites provide me a list of the URLs they have generated, and I have my sitemap builder import those lists. :center **Small Changes to Nav** The navigation bar for the platform has been re-ordered. 'Catalog' is now the most important, after 'Home', followed by 'Order' and 'Write', with 'Blog' being the least-important. :center **One more thing: Script for building comic books** I have designed a small script that assembles comic-book pages for printing. It was written for a client to produce a physical edition of their webcomic. It is meant for printing onto tabloid paper (11@s"@ @multi@ 17@s"@), with a default height of 10.25@s"@, the standard for comic books. The necessary width for a particular comic can be specified in the script. The script produces an HTML file containing SVG elements, within which the pages are positioned. This file can then be saved to a PDF for printing. This is a very low-tech solution. Saving this particular comic-book to PDF crashed my ThinkPad T60 the first time, but it works fine if it's the only tab open on my browser. ****** !!TITLE ATG Expo in Waco, Texas !!DESC A guest blog post for Quarter Up readers !!AUTHOR AT Gonzalez !!LOCATION The Wild-n-Wooly West !!DATE 2024-01-09 !!LICENSE All Rights Reserved !!COPYRIGHT 2024 AT Gonzalez @@IMG :source ../../assets/atgexpo-min.png :alt Logo for ATG Expo, courtest of atgexpo.com. Used with permission. :title ATG Expo logo, courtesy of atgexpo.com. Used with permission. *This guest post comes from AT Gonzalez, author of* {{https://nantucketebooks.com/kengraham||An Interview With Ken Graham}}, * and a regular contributor to Quarter Up, the #1 title on Nantucket E-Books. If you're a fan of* {{https://nantucketebooks.com/quarterup||Quarter Up}}, *then please read about this pinball/arcade convention coming to Waco, Texas.* Are you in the Waco area and looking for some retro gaming fun for the whole family? On January 20th and 21st, the third-annual ATG Expo will be held at the Waco Convention Center. The convention was founded and operated by Retro World Series director Hal Hawkins. There will be cosplay, robotics competitions, retro gaming competitions, modern fighting games, tabletop gaming in the form of Pokemon TCG and Magic the Gathering, vendors and indie developers. Media guests include: voice actress Jeannie Elias (Super Mario Bros. Super Show, the Jumpstart computer games, As Told By Ginger), David Crane (founder of Activision and the creator of Pitfall), Dan Kitchen (an early employee of Activision), the Pesina brothers, and Paul Niemeyer (of Midway fame) and Houston personality G-to-the-Next-Level. It all starts at 10 a.m. on January 20th. The Vendor's Room will close at 7 p.m. on Saturday. After 7 p.m., the event will move to an after party at Putters (an arcade/sports bar in the Downtown Waco area) and will go on until 2 in the morning the next day. Sundays events will start at 10 a.m. on January 21st and conclude at 5 p.m. :center **ATG Expo**@brk@Waco Convention Center@brk@100 Washington Ave.@brk@Waco, TX 76701 :center **Putters**@brk@320 S 2nd St.@brk@Waco, TX 76701 :center Saturday, January 20th: 10 am - 7 pm@brk@After Party (at Putters): 7 pm - 2 am@brk@Sunday, January 21st: 10 am - 5 pm @@comm

Dang, Waco is just an hour and a half drive from me. Too bad I don't have a car. :)

Your friend,

benjaminhollon.com

***** !!TITLE Updates, 2024-01-07 !!DESC Full blog posts in RSS !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2024-01-07 !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ !!COPYRIGHT 2024 Nicholas Bernhard A few updates for tonight: * The site's main stylesheet ({{https://codeberg.org/Freedom-to-Write/readable.css||readable.css}} from Amin Hollon) has been updated to Version 1.1.0. * The logo in the site header (Otto the Nantucket Whale) is now a PNG image, instead of true ASCII art text. This will make the site look a tad cleaner on text-based browsers. The logo will be 100% consistent between pages, too. I chose an ASCII art logo for its "old-school" vibe. I try to keep the site very simple, because simple software projects can run faster, be maintained for less time and money, and are less likely to break for the customer. The whale's name is Otto, named for Otto Respighi, composer of *Pines of Rome*. Disney fans may remember the *Pines of Rome* sequence in *Fantasia 2000*, with its flying humpback whales. * The blog-parser has been updated. The title of the blog post will now appear in the web page's 'title' tag, and the post's description will appear in the page's meta-description tag. Quite a concept, I know. Also, the full text of a blog post can now be read within the RSS feed. I was surprised how easy it was to include the blog 'content' in RSS. First, I had to update the line-break elements to meet XML standards. Second, I had to replace all angle brackets and ampersands with the HTML character codes. Last, I had to cut off the HTML related to the comments section of the blog post. While I put a fair bit of time into a good-looking, mobile-responsive site, some people just want everything in their RSS feed. Well, there it is, I guess. This is part of my plan to see if this blog script can work for a larger blog platform. That's my work for tonight. Let me know what you think, send me a comment at **njb@nantucketebooks.com**. ***** !!TITLE Plans for 2024 !!DESC My goals for Nantucket E-Books !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2024-01-06 !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ !!COPYRIGHT 2024 Nicholas Bernhard :center **AN IMPROVED CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE** As we enter 2024, Nantucket E-Books offers a better e-book experience than ever. No other e-book offers the same experience as the one found on this platform. This year, the e-books became more user-friendly, and more accessible. They also became easier to update: with the help of software developer Amin Hollon, I can update the software for every book on this platform with a single command. The site has also had its first success, with the Quarter Up newsletter, by far the most popular titles here. Pinball and arcade fans love Quarter Up, and they love that it's on Nantucket E-Books. To build on that success, it's time to rethink the site. This is separate from improving the e-books; I'm talking about the reader experience on the site itself. How do readers get to the site and start looking for books? How do I explain to readers the benefits of Nantucket E-Books? How can I make it easier for customers to order paperback books? This is my first priority. Improvements to the e-books have been possible thanks to customer feedback and frank criticism. I want the site to be improved in the same way. Starting this month, I'll be pulling together people I trust to tell me what's not working with the site (and what *is* working, too). Here are my priorities: * How can I explain Nantucket E-Books to visitors in the most efficient way possible? * How can the site be structured to appeal to search engines? * How can I make it easier to search for e-books, or browse for them? :center **PAPERBACK BOOKS** My first goal for 2024 is to improve the quality of my paperback books. In 2023, I released three books in paperback format: *Small Things* by the late Allie Flint, *Tales of a Metal Fisherman* by Buffalo, and *The Woethief* by Seth Patterson. All three books use professional formatting, with indented paragraphs, crisp serif fonts, and heavy paper. These are books that I am proud to publish, and I am proud to have worked with Seth and Buffalo on their books. This year, I'm going to take the quality of these paperbacks to a new level. First, the current books use a comb binding. I like comb-bindings because they lay flat while reading. I know many of our customers like them too, judging by sales numbers. While comb-binding has its fans, it's time to move up to glue-binding. Why? Bookstores. Bookstores want traditionally-bound books, because then they can be stocked on shelves with the title along the spine. Moving to glue-bound books has taken a lot of planning and research, because I want a process that can scale reasonably, while also not looking like junk. If I can manufacture professional-grade, glue-bound paperback books, that opens up many more venues for selling them to readers. These books are going to be great to hold in your hands, and a joy to read. Second, I am developing a new stage in the typesetting process. Currently, there is a lot of manual labor required to turn a Shanty-markup file into a printed book. That's about to change. I am working on a script that will assist in the conversion process. It will not only allow me to produce printed books faster, but with better and more consistent end results. Something else to keep in mind: the process to make these books will involve **only** free software, licensed under the GPL Version 3, and will based around plain-text. I want you to be able to take the Shanty file used to make an e-book, and turn that into a great-looking paperback, with as little friction as possible. :center **MOVING OVER TO LIBERAPAY** At some point in 2024, I will be phasing out my Patreon account to fully focus on Liberapay. My reason for doing so is that Nantucket E-Books is a free-software project, and so I should be conducting my crowdfunding through free-software projects like Liberapay. This will not happen overnight, but I hope to complete the transition by summer. :center **NEW PO BOX** I shut down my PO Box in 2023, and I hope to set up a new one this year. The PO Box was helpful for receiving mail from authors, but it is also part of my goal to allow readers to order books anonymously. I plan to have a new PO Box set up by summer as well. :center **A SCIENCE FICTION ANTHOLOGY** Last year, one of my goals was to publish an anthology of public-domain science-fiction. I got too busy with other things, and so now that's a plan for 2025. Title undetermined. Why 2025? I have at least two novels from authors on the site planned for this year, and I expect those to take up most of my editing time. :center **BLOGGING WITH SHANTY** You may not know that this blog is written in my Shanty markup language. I write the blogs in one giant plain-text file, and I then have a static-site generator build pages for each blog post. It appears there is some interest in expanding this system into a larger blog platform that other writers could use. :center **I'D LIKE TO HEAR FROM YOU** Do you have some thoughts on Nantucket E-Books? If so, email me at **njb@nantucketebooks.com**. Your comments are always appreciated, and often make a big difference. *Wishing You a Happy New Year,*@brk@*NJB* ***** !!TITLE Version 4-1-1 released !!DESC Some UX improvements to Arrowhead !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2024-01-01 !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ !!COPYRIGHT 2024 Nicholas Bernhard I have made a small update to {{https://nantucketebooks.com/editor||Arrowhead}}, the graphical editor for Nantucket E-Books. The buttons on the interfact (RUN, HELP, DOWNLOAD, SAVE, *etc.*) are now proper button elements. This will improve accessibility and user-friendliness. The {{https://nantucketbooks.com/versions||versions page}} and {{https://nantucketebooks.com/softwarelicenses||software licenses page}} have been updated. ***** !!TITLE Nantucket E-Books: 2023 in Review !!DESC A post from Patreon about the year's accomplishments !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Lafayette, CO !!DATE 2024-01-01 !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ !!COPYRIGHT 2024 Nicholas Bernhard *NOTE: This post is a copy of a recent post to Patreon.* Dear Nantucket E-Books Patrons, I'd like to take a moment to review some accomplishments from 2023. These accomplishments could not have been made without your moral and financial support, so thank you. * This year marked the first commercial titles on the site: Small Things, The Poetry of Allie Flint, Tales of a Metal Fisherman by Buffalo, and The Woethief by Seth Patterson. Customers could pre-order the e-book and have their names listed as supporters, or could order a comb-bound paperback edition. Credit card payments were processed via Stripe. * Version 4.0 of the platform was released. This included new formatting for poetry, more readable HTML, an optimized stylesheet, and the ability to toggle between serif and sans-serif fonts. A new sans-serif font is used for the e-books: Atkinson-Hyperlegible. * PUBLIC EVENTS: The book-launch for Tales of a Metal Fisherman was held in Cope, Colorado in March, and I gave a live reading of An Affair at Grover Station at the actual Grover Depot Museum in August. * This was the first full year for Quarter Up, the platform's newsletter for pinball and retro arcade gaming. Quarter Up has proven very popular: five of the platform's top-six most-viewed books are Quarter Up issues. I worked with writers and authors all over the country, and readers and liking their work. * I wrote an analytics script for the site. This replaces the prior PHP hit counter and directly parses the server access log. This has allowed me to improve the site by re-directing dead links, tracking book performance over time, and finding which images and audio files need better compression. This script is being continuously improved. * The menu icons in the e-books were removed and replaced with text. * I found ways to improve the SVG files used for cover images, embedding the fonts for text as Base64 data. This makes the text for SVG covers appear consistent across browsers. * This year's Halloween livestream was the poem Alonzo the Brave and Fair Imogene, from the gothic novel The Monk. A productive year, I'd say. I will be following this post up with my plans for 2024. Happy New Year, NJB ***** !!TITLE Books I Read In 2023 !!DESC More progress on Harlan Ellison, and a few surprises. !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Lafayette, CO !!DATE 2023-12-31 !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Nicholas Bernhard This year, I read 40 books. You can find a list of them {{https://ndhfilms.com/mybooks||on my personal website}}. Best books: *Pop. 1280* by Jim Thompson was a cynical, brutal, and entertaining crime thriller. *The Night Walker* by Thomas Tessier is one hell of a horror novel, though I also recommend Clemence Houseman's *The Were-Wolf* for further lupine literature. *Sword of Destiny* by Andrzej Sapkowski introduced me to the world of The Witcher with a fantastic audiobook. Best memoirs: *Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass* from the eponymous abolitionist, and *I'm Glad My Mom Died* by Jennette McCurdy. *Tarzan of the Apes* is full-throttle adventure of the highest order. I finally read *The Lillies of the Field* and found it quite moving. Twenty years ago I attended middle-school in a former nun's convent that inspired the novel. Finally, Harlan Ellison's *Strange Wine* is the strongest book of his so far, there are no duds and the introductions are informative. Weird Tales: Robert Bloch's *This Crowded Earth* is an overpopulation sci-fi story that takes the express train to crazy-town. I was introduced to the bizarre world of Robert Silverburg with *The World Inside*, where overpopulation (again?) is accomodated by technology and social conditioning. To be honest both stories made me a tad queasy. There is a straight line from stories like these to the "Thanos did nothing wrong" mindset. I am as done with Malthusian mindsets as I am with stories about Superman turning evil (see *Injustice*, *The Boys*, *Invincible*, and *Eternals*). This was the second year of my project to catalog {{https://ndhfilms.com/other/ellison/index.php||the writings of Harlan Ellison}}. The Ellison books I read this year were: *Web of the City* and *Spider Kiss* (his two novels), *Memos From Purgatory* (memoir), *The Glass Teat* (essay collection), *Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor, Vol. I* (trade-paperback comic book), *Love Ain't Nothing But Sex Misspelled*, *Paingod and Other Delusions*, *The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World*, and *Strange Wine* (reminder are short-story collections). 2024 will be a good year for Ellison fans, with the publication of a new Best-Of Ellison collection, and the long-awaited *Last Dangerous Visions*. I finished Leigh Brackett's Eric John Stark trilogy, reading *Enchantress of Venus* and *Black Amazon of Mars*. These are good rough-and-tumble space fantasies that I will want to revisit someday. I have a copy of *Book of Skaith*, a series of Stark adventures Brackett wrote many years later, perhaps that will be a goal for 2024. *Uncle Tom's Cabin* was a good read, albeit too sentimental for my taste. I am often surprised by what moves me, or doesn't move me. The long sickness of little Eva in *Uncle Tom's Cabin* left me drumming my fingers; meanwhile, hearing Frederick Douglass describe his newfound freedom, and how he could now work for himself and save a little money, had me choked up. No year is complete without some of Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels. *Without Fail* was a DC political thriller that ends in the windswept plains of Wyoming. Reacher's confidant Frances Neagley (apparently pronounced "nee-lee") is there to help, Reacher and Neagley are one of my favorite friendships in fiction. *The Secret* was a Christmas gift, and is a set in the 1990s. I like seeing Reacher back in his military days. A new seson of the Amazon TV show premiered. After watching a couple episodes, I was even more impressed by Alan Richtson's acting and physical presence. I like Tom Cruise's Reacher movies, but Richtson has shown me that you really can eat your cake, and have it, too. My reading plan for 2024: more Ellison books! I'd like to go into 2025 with only the really big, thick Ellison treasuries. In 2024 I'll tackle *Stalking the Nightmare*, *Mind Fields*, *Procrustean Bed*, and his unproduced screenplay for *I, Robot*. And that's just for starters! Beyond Ellison, I'd like to clear out my backlog of books gifted to me. This is the year, THIS IS THE YEAR, FRIENDS, that I read all the books lent, sent, gifted, and loaned to me. On a personal note, this year was a personal best for reading. Stephen King said that if you want to write, you have to read. It may not be a coincidence that I managed to edge out of my writer's block this year, and write a fair bit. Hey, 2024 is a leap year, so we have even more time to read. Let's use it! **What were some of your favorite books in 2023? Leave a comment and let me know.** ***** !!TITLE My Experience of Publishing The Woethief on Nantucket E-Books !!DESC In this guest post, author Seth Patterson describes the benefits of Shanty and Nantucket E-Books !!AUTHOR Seth Patterson !!LOCATION The Caverns of Ildylia !!DATE 2023-12-23 !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Seth Patterson *This guest post comes from Seth Patterson, author of* {{https://nantucketebooks.com/woethief|| The Woethief}}. *Seth sent this in to share his experience with using Nantucket E-Books and my markup language, Shanty.* *Seth's latest work is a preview of* {{https://nantucketebooks.com/lightstone|| The Light Stone}}*, a comic book he is producing with Autumn Patterson. Check it out! @em@ NJB* @@IMG :source ../../../ebooks/SethPatterson/woethief/assets/images/Woethief-Cover.png :alt A book cover shows a statue of a woman with six bat-ears, enormous bat-wings, and spider-legs. The statue is built into a cave wall and integrated into an underground mountain. Below the statue, bat-like people fly. To their left, a spider-like person holds a club over his head to strike. Next to him, a spider-woman spins silk. Next to her, a human man reaches over a cliff edge to hold the hand of a fairy-like woman. At the bottom of the page, a human woman, with curly hair and scarred skin, holds up her hands in a questioning stance. I wrote *The Woethief* over several years. Over time, I used different editors and formats. Learning about Markdown changed my writing process because it allowed greater portability and the ability to work in the terminal. When I discovered Nantucket E-Books (I think it was through {{https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/building-an-ethical-e-book/||a LibrePlanet talk}}), it was great to see how similar the Shanty markup language is to Markdown. With minimal changes, I turned a Markdown document into Shanty and saw a preview of my e-book in Arrowhead. As someone trained in IT, I enjoy how Nantucket E-Books cuts through the clutter that other e-book publishing platforms suffer from. Using plain text allows me to focus on writing, not on remembering where formatting buttons are. With Arrowhead, I can preview my e-book in seconds instead of letting a website convert a Word document into an e-book and hoping it turns out. Nicholas gave perceptive feedback and helped me trim distractions from *The Woethief*. It is a better story because of his editing. Nicholas also deeply understands the needs of speculative fiction authors and free culture advocates. I recommend publishing with Nantucket E-Books for a smooth experience with great feedback on how to improve your storytelling. **** *Do you use Shanty or Nantucket E-Books for your work? Send a comment and I'll include it here. Thanks for reading.* ***** !!TITLE Many thanks to Quarter Up Readers !!DESC Issue #4 has been a success !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2023-11-14 !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ @@IMG :source ../../../ebooks/quarterup/quarterup_2023_q3/assets/images/quarterup_2023_q3_cover.jpg :alt In this cover image, a woman in Wild West clothing stands in a gunfighters pose, ready to draw a bag of coins against her opponent on the other end of a dusty street. Her opponent: a pinball machine. Title is Shootout at the Arcade Corral by Brad Albright, all rights reserved, used with permission. As of this week, {{https://nantucketebooks.com/quarterup-4||Issue #4 of Quarter Up}} is not only the most popular issue so far, but the platform's most popular e-book ever. It means a lot to myself, and the writers and artists for this newsletter, that this issue has been read and shared so much. Our writers are hard at work for the year's final issue, which will be published next month. To review past issues of Quarter Up, please visit {{https://nantucketebooks.com/quarterup||https://nantucketebooks.com/quarterup}}. ***** !!TITLE Version 4.1 of Nantucket E-Books Released !!DESC Updates to Shanty and Bug Fixes !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2023-11-05 !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ {{https://nantucketebooks.com/versions#version_4-1-0||Version 4.1 of Nantucket E-Books}} has been released. This update includes improvements to the Shanty markup language, several bug fixes, and improved styling. After a busy month that included publishing a novel, preparing a paperback edition, and publishing a new issue of Quarter Up, I decided I had time to work on an update to the platform. **Updates to Shanty and Gam.js:** I have added two common bits of shorthand: two dashes (**--**) will now create an em dash (**@em@**), and three asterisks will create a thematic break, as it does in Markdown. Four asterisks will still work. The biggest update to Shanty is support for looping MP4s as cover images. If you want to use an MP4 for a cover, enter *c*@@COVERVID [filename]*c* instead of *c*@@COVERIMG [filename]*c*. This will be a big help for those who want moving covers, since GIF files can often be excessively large. These updates have been added to the {{../../../shantydocs||Shanty markup manual}}. **Updates to Ahab:** The interactivity script for Nantucket E-Books will now add a label for the drop-down menu in the audiobook player. This is a small improvement for accessibility. **Performance improvements:** the script tag will now use the "defer" attribute, and the bundled fonts now include "font-display:swap". Both are recommended by performance-testing web applications such as Lighthouse. **Bug fixes:** *c*@@END*c* will now be styled properly, and alt text for flippable images should invert correctly. All updates to the platform may be reviewed at {{../../../versions||nantucketebooks.com/versions}}. ##IMPROVED UPDATES Today's biggest update is not found in the e-books, but in the platform itself. One of my goals has been a better way of updating the software in the e-books. When I fix a bug, or have a new interactive feature, how can I easily edit dozens of e-books at once? The Version 4 update was actually a prelude to this change. Beginning with Ver. 4, I stopped putting version numbers in the file names for Ahab and the stylesheet. This meant that I could swap out those files in an e-books folder, without needing to edit the HTML file to point to new scripts and stylesheets. With that in place, I just needed to find a script that would let me go through each e-book and swap out the files. I'm pleased to say I've found part of the solution. Amin Hollon, who runs the {{https://polymaths.social/||polymaths.social}} server in the Fediverse, wrote up a simple shell script that will run through the e-books folder on the site and copy over the necessary files. It was quite exciting to update four-dozen e-books with a single shell command. Many thanks to Amin, who is a talented guy all-around. The next problem to tackle will be updating the downloadable ZIP folders for e-books. To some extent, it may have to be accepted that the ZIP folders won't always be running the latest scripts and stylesheets. I plan to update ZIP folders on some kind of rotating schedule, maybe a few each day. ##Thank-You To My New Followers and Patrons Two days ago, I received a large number of new followers on Mastodon. I also received a very generous donation on Liberapay, and a new patron there as well. This means a lot to me, and I want to thank all of my new followers. I am excited to keep you updated on doing what I love: bringing people the best e-books on the planet. I would encourage you to support my work by {{https://liberapay.com/NantucketEbooks||becoming a patron on Liberapay}}. That's all for now, please e-mail me a comment using the tool below with your thoughts. ***** !!TITLE Recapping October: The Woethief and Quarter Up !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2023-11-02 !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ ##The Woethief Wows Readers @@IMG :source ../../../ebooks/SethPatterson/woethief/assets/images/Woethief-Cover.png :alt A book cover shows a statue of a woman with six bat-ears, enormous bat-wings, and spider-legs. The statue is built into a cave wall and integrated into an underground mountain. Below the statue, bat-like people fly. To their left, a spider-like person holds a club over his head to strike. Next to him, a spider-woman spins silk. Next to her, a human man reaches over a cliff edge to hold the hand of a fairy-like woman. At the bottom of the page, a human woman, with curly hair and scarred skin, holds up her hands in a questioning stance. October was a busy month for Nantucket E-Books. On October 20, I published a new novel: {{https://nantucketebooks.com/woethief||The Woethief}} by Seth Patterson. This novel, about a woman with two minds and the power to steal people's pain, is the best fantasy novel you'll read this year. *The Woethief* has some of the best world-building I've seen, combined with the ethical problems found in great sf. Customers were able to pre-order the e-book, and in return they had their name listed in the e-book as a supporter. This was the first title on Nantucket E-Books designed from the start to use the 'flippable image' feature, which means the illustrations will adapt to dark mode, and they look amazing. I'm pleased to say that *The Woethief* has had one of the most impressive debuts for a fiction title on Nantucket E-Books. In addition to the e-book, I published a comb-bound paperback edition. The first shipments of regular and autographed copies have been delivered. If you'd like to order your own copy of *The Woethief*, go to {{https://nantucketebooks.com/order}}. Producing the paperback edition of *The Woethief* led to several updates to my print parsing program. Readers are loving how these books look. ##Go Full-Tilt With Quarter Up @@IMG :source ../../../ebooks/quarterup/quarterup_2023_q3/assets/images/quarterup_2023_q3_cover.jpg :alt In this cover image, a woman in Wild West clothing stands in a gunfighters pose, ready to draw a bag of coins against her opponent on the other end of a dusty street. Her opponent: a pinball machine. Title is Shootout at the Arcade Corral by Brad Albright, all rights reserved, used with permission. On October 24, I published Issue #4 of Quarter Up, a newsletter about pinball and retro arcade gaming. This issue started off with an article from Leland Tursi about the game *Nibbler*. If you remember playing snake on an old cell phone back in the day, you owe something to *Nibbler*. Also in the issue, I interviewed CO Springs repairman Steve Mitchell of {{https://www.classicamusementsltd.com/||Classic Amusements}}, and AT Gonzalez promoted Houston Arcade Expo, which he'll be covering later this week. Finally, Buffalo shared memories of a trip to Denmark, where he discovered the universal appeal of pinball and blues music. The eye-catching cover of this fourth issue is *Shootout at the Arcade Corral* by Brad Albright, who will also be at the Houston Arcade Expo. This issue has already become our second-highest viewed issue ever. A big thanks is owed to the writers and artists of Issue #4, who not only contributed their work, but have helped promote the newsletter as well. Issue #5 will be coming out in December. ##Thank You I would like to thank our customers this month, who have financially supported this platform. This includes my patrons on Patreon and Liberapay. Every day I am lucky enough to work with some amazing writers to create the best e-books on the planet, and by buying books and being patrons, you help me to keep at it. Let'sget some more books out there! ***** !!TITLE An Interview With Illustrator Autumn Patterson !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2023-10-14 !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ @@IMG :source ../../../masterassets/images/campaigns/woethief/Woethief-Cover.png:alt A book cover shows a statue of a woman with six bat-ears, enormous bat-wings, and spider-legs. The statue is built into a cave wall and integrated into an underground mountain. Below the statue, bat-like people fly. To their left, a spider-like person holds a club over his head to strike. Next to him, a spider-woman spins silk. Next to her, a human man reaches over a cliff edge to hold the hand of a fairy-like woman. At the bottom of the page, a human woman, with curly hair and scarred skin, holds up her hands in a questioning stance. :center **{{https://nantucketebooks.com/order||Pre-order The Woethief by clicking here}}** Yesterday, {{https://nantucketebooks.com/blog/2023/10/2023-10-13_an_interview_with_author_seth_patterson.html||I interviewed author Seth Patterson}} about his upcoming novel *The Woethief*. Equally important to the book is its illustrator and cover designer Autumn Patterson. Autumn, who previously worked under the pen name DiosYubi, has illustrated the covers to many of Seth Patterson's short stories. She was also the artist for {{https://nantucketebooks.com/cocoon-comic||the comic-book adaptation of *Cocoon*}}, one of the most popular stories on this site. I interviewed Autumn about her work as an illustrator, her methods, and the collaborative process. I also asked her to select one illustration from *The Woethief* that she would like to discuss in detail. **NJB** *When did you first become interested in drawing?* **AUTUMN PATTERSON** Growing up, I was always interested in art. Around age 11 or 12 I decided I wanted art to be an artist. **NJB** *What tools do you use when illustrating?* **AP** I start with pencil sketching and then use a Wacom tablet to refine the lineart in Krita. I use Krita for most illustrations and to color comic pages. I use Inkscape for the covers or if I need something like the door in {{https://nantucketebooks.com/cocoon-comic||*Cocoon*}} to be a consistent, easy drop-in. **NJB** *Who are your artistic influences, and what draws you to them?* **AP** I take bits and pieces from everything as artistic influences. My biggest inspiration is {{https://www.webtoons.com/en/fantasy/raven-saga/list?title_no=2527||*Raven Saga*}} by Chihiro Howe. The half-Japanese, half-American style is simple and beautiful. **NJB** ***The Woethief*** *is the first title on Nantucket E-Books to be designed from the start to use the platform's @l'@flippable image@r'@ feature. If the reader enables dark mode, the black-on-white illustrations will become white-on-black, creating a seamless reading experience. Were there additional considerations when planning to use this feature?* **AP** To make it easy, I did lineart with some shading, so it could be flippable. **NJB** *You have previously illustrated under the pen name DiosYubi. Where did that name come from?* **AP** When I made an account with Deviant Art, I first tried a username that said, "God Grace" in Japanese, to mean "God's grace". I wanted to be reminded that I draw for God's glory and not my own. That name was already taken, so was the Spanish equivalent. So I did a mashup of both languages. "Dios" means God in Spanish and "Yubi" means Grace in Japanese. I was trying to learn both languages at the time. **NJB** *What does the collaborative process look like for you and Seth? Are you drawing during the writing process, or do you wait until the text is finished before starting the illustrations?* **AP** It looks different for every story. *The Woethief*'s outline was done before Seth and I met. Cocoon was kind of the same story, drawing after at least the story outline. With one of his stories, *Fountain of Strength*, I am drawing the comic before he has even written it. I draw characters for Seth so he can describe them better. He generally is the one telling me of thoughts or dreams and has me draw them so he can see them. **NJB** *You are the artist behind* {{https://nantucketebooks.com/cocoon-comic||*the comic-book adaptation of* ***Cocoon***}}, *one of the platform's most popular titles. Can we expect more comic books from you and Seth in the future?* **AP** Yes, I am making the mock-up of *The Woethief* comic. I am on the blue sketch phase of the *Fountain of Strength* comic; I am on page 22 out of 64. It will be book one of Crystal's series, *The Wishgranter*. There are three other comics about Crystal in different phases of development. **NJB** *Are there any webcomics you are reading right now? Are you reading anything right now? If so, what, and why?* **AP** On WEBTOON, I really enjoy {{https://www.webtoons.com/en/canvas/africa/list?title_no=523719||*Africa*}} and {{https://www.webtoons.com/en/fantasy/raven-saga/list?title_no=2527||*Raven Saga*}}. *Africa* is impressive because it is done in colored pencils. I love learning and studying different media. *Raven Saga* and {{https://www.peppercarrot.com/||*Pepper & Carrot*}} are my go-to inspirations. I am reading *The Birthing Tree* by William D. Burt, it is the seventh book in *The King of the Trees* series. Seth grew up on the series and loved it. I am partly reading it to catch up on Seth's childhood, but I also think it is super fun. **NJB** *For this interview, I asked Autumn Patterson to select one illustration from* ***The Woethief*** *to talk about. She selected this illustration from the first chapter.* @@IMG :source ../../../masterassets/images/campaigns/woethief/WoethiefBook1.png :flip :alt Illustration from first chapter of the Seth Patterson novel The Woethief, illustrated by Autumn Patterson. A young woman holds a baton as she falls backward. Her curly hair escapes her hood. A man, with bat-ears, spider-legs, and a loose tunic, swings a club at the woman. :title Illustration by Autumn Patterson for the first chapter of The Woethief. Enabling dark mode in your browser or operating system will display this image as white-on-dark. **AP** I love how the first illustration turned out. Even thought it is digital, it looks just like a pen sketch, which I am happy about. I drew it before *The Woethief* was finished and it was a recreation of an old drawing where I first designed Ankor. I was proud of how much better it looked this time. The illustration is of the opening fight. I had fun capturing the movement of WoeNyl staggering away from Ankor's angry swing before stealing his anger. I drew WoeNyl trying to hide under her hood, with her hair popping out. The hood is also floppy to show that it was made for a different race. Lastly, Ankor has metal shoulder pieces to show his social status. Because metal is rare, only rich and/or royal people wear it. :center ***The Woethief*** **will be published on October 20, 2023. To pre-order the e-book or a comb-bound paperback edition, {{https://nantucketebooks.com/order||click here}}** ***** !!TITLE An Interview With Author Seth Patterson !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2023-10-13 !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ @@IMG :source ../../../masterassets/images/campaigns/woethief/Woethief-Cover.png:alt A book cover shows a statue of a woman with six bat-ears, enormous bat-wings, and spider-legs. The statue is built into a cave wall and integrated into an underground mountain. Below the statue, bat-like people fly. To their left, a spider-like person holds a club over his head to strike. Next to him, a spider-woman spins silk. Next to her, a human man reaches over a cliff edge to hold the hand of a fairy-like woman. At the bottom of the page, a human woman, with curly hair and scarred skin, holds up her hands in a questioning stance. :center **{{https://nantucketebooks.com/order||Pre-order The Woethief by clicking here}}** On Friday, October 20, Nantucket E-Books will be publishing *The Woethief* by Seth Patterson. I have published four short stories and one comic-book by Patterson, under the pen name Riley Duffield. This is Patterson's first novel on the site. The book follows WoeNyl, a woman split between two minds with the power to steal people's pain and shame. WoeNyl lives in the underground world of Ildylia, an outcast human amongst bats, spiders, and silkwings. An unexpected victory in the gladiatorial arena thrusts WoeNyl into a deadly conspiracy, which may hold the key to her mysterious past. This blog post contains my interview with Seth Patterson. Later this weekend, I will publish an interview with Autumn Patterson, who illustrated the novel and designed the cover. I will update this post with a link to the interview with Autumn Patterson when it's ready. EDIT: {{https://nantucketebooks.com/blog/2023/10/2023-10-14_an_interview_with_illustrator_autumn_patterson.html||Read my interview with Autumn Patterson by clicking here.}} **NJB** *When did you first get interested in writing?* **SETH PATTERSON** I first enjoyed writing during an Excellence in Writing class at my homeschool co-op. When I was a teenager, I completed the One Year Adventure Novel curriculum. Ever since, I have been writing stories. **NJB** *You have previously been published under the pen name Riley Duffield. What prompted you to drop that nom-de-plume?* **SP** I switched to my real name, to improve discoverability for my friends and family. They were confused about who "Riley" was. I also want to be accountable to my friends, family, and church for what I write. **NJB** *What are some of your favorite books, and what draws you to those books?* **SP** My favorite books are *The King of the Trees* series by William D. Burt, *The People of Sparks* by Jeanne DuPrau, the *Men of Grit* series by John J. Horn (I've only read the first three books), the *Tom Corbett, Space Cadet* series by Carey Rockwell, and *The Defiant Agents* by Andre Norton. I love these books because they ask interesting ethical questions, focus on correct portrayal of technical details, and/or explore worlds in imaginative ways. **NJB** ***The Woethief*** *is incredibly imaginative: empathic powers, telepathic insects, a talking dress, bat-creatures who see with their ears. What have been some of your influences in creating these characters?* **SP** The empathic powers is based on my grandmother, mother, and sister. In real life, they are as empathetic as people can be without having superpowers. The telepathic insects are based on my desire to subvert the "only good bug is a dead bug" trope in science fiction. They may also be influenced by the insect queen, who used telepathy to appear like Ender's sister in the movie version of *Ender's Game*. I think the talking dress was driven by story needs, not inspired by anything particular. I don't remember if there was an inspiration for bat-people's echolocation. I mainly wanted to create a fantasy world that wasn't a copy of *The Lord of the Rings*. **NJB** *What author have you been most proud to meet personally, and what author would you like to meet, if you could?* **SP** Todd Friel: I grew up listening to his radio show and audio content, so it was fun to meet him at his studio. I would love to meet William D. Burt, my favorite fantasy author. **NJB** *Your novel takes place in Ildylia, a world of lightless underground caverns. What were some of the challenges of writing in a setting where few characters can see?* **SP** I needed to remember that color is meaningless to most people in the world. I also needed to decide on a light-source for my human characters, since Ildylians have no need of lamps or torches. I needed to imagine details about architecture and writing, since anything that is not engraved or raised is invisible to Ildylians. It gave me an opportunity to think about fun details like Ildylians not knowing if they are dressing in clashing colors. I needed to change common expressions and words to match a lightless world. For example, "Onlookers" became "onhearers". **NJB** *In* ***The Woethief,*** *the main character has the power to steal people's pain and shame. When I read the story, it's ambiguous whether or not this ultimately helps or hurts the people she meets. On top of that, who takes WoeNyl's pain and shame away? It's an excellent moral question. What were some of your inspirations to explore WoeNyl's predicament?* **SP** The main inspirations were *The Giver* by Lois Lowry and *The Last Sin Eater* movie. Both stories address the question of how societies deal with shame and pain. A radio dramatization of *Brave New World* and *Scaled and Icy* by Twenty One Pilots were also influences. The Judeo-Christian idea of a scapegoat (an innocent substitute that takes away guilt) was also an influence. Many stories have messianic figures, who are inherently flawed. I created WoeNyl to explore the idea of a broken savior who needs a savior. **NJB** *One character in* ***The Woethief*** *is Crystal Comfort, who readers may remember from* ***{{https://nantucketebooks.com/cocoon||Cocoon}}*** and ***{{https://nantucketebooks.com/cocoon-comic||its comic adaptation}}***, *one of the most popular titles on the site. How is Crystal different in this story, and can readers expect to find any other characters from your previous stories?* **SP** In *The Woethief*, Crystal is unborn and just starting to learn how to use her powers. She has not yet become a silkwing or gained her ability to grant wishes. Crystal is also featured in {{https://nantucketebooks.com/last-bridge||*The Last Bridge*}} and {{https://nantucketebooks.com/true-loves-kiss||*True Love's Kiss*}}. WoeNyl is mentioned in {{https://nantucketebooks.com/operation-firestorm||*Operation Firestorm*}} under the name, "Captain Twilight". I plan to weave my stories into one canon. **NJB** *Are you reading anything right now, if so what, and why?* I just finished listening to an {{https://librivox.org/the-year-when-stardust-fell-by-raymond-fisher-jones-2/||audiobook of *The Year When Stardust Fell*}} by Raymond Fisher Jones. I am listening to an {{https://librivox.org/little-women-dramatic-reading-by-louisa-may-alcott/||audiobook of *Little Women*}} by Louisa May Alcott. I have heard or watched adaptations, but I want to experience the original story. **NJB** *You have described* ***The Woethief*** *as science-fantasy. What does that mean to you?* **SP** I called *The Woethief* "hard science-fantasy" mainly to set up the series for more science fiction elements later on. {{https://nantucketebooks.com/operation-firestorm||*Operation Firestorm*}} is more straightforward military science-fantasy. Even though I write fantasy, I try to keep it fairly realistic. For example, I try to make shapeshifting dependent on conservation of mass. I also approach ethical questions in my stories like science fiction authors do. Science fiction asks questions about whether something is ethical just because it is possible. Most fantasy that I have read avoids hard ethical questions and just assumes that it is ethical to use something because it exists. For example, in *The Woethief*, WoeNyl uses superpowers to remove people's painful memories. Science fiction might use drugs or memory-probes to do the same thing, but I am asking the same basic question. **NJB** *In* ***True Love's Kiss,*** *the reader starts off thinking the story is told from a third-person omniscient POV, but by the end the narrator is revealed to be a character in the story. In* ***The Woethief,*** *the titular character has two minds: the defiant Nyla and the compassionate Woethief. Do you enjoy playing with perspectives?* **SP** I like playing with perspectives. I think it is a byproduct of growing up on radio dramas. As a medium, radio dramas tend to play with perspective and narration. Shows like *Adventures in Odyssey* or *The Pond* break the fourth wall and have narrators dialog with characters. WoeNyl having two personalities was not originally planned. While I was writing, she just started talking with two minds. It was a useful way to portray her inner conflict. **NJB** ***The Woethief*** *will be part of a series. What are your plans for Ildylia and beyond? Do you have a name for this cycle of stories?* **SP** My overall story canon is called, "WoeNylVal Universe." In future stories, I plan to introduce a third personality named Valora. In Ildylia, I have fragments of an idea for what will happen to Gemma after the events of *The Woethief*. I have first drafts for three more stories in the series. *Shard Mistress* will explore what happens to WoeNyl, Denrick, Theila, and Crystal after *The Woethief*. *New Home* will explore the difficulties of raising Crystal Comfort. *Reconciler* will show how Crystal as an adult, who finds love and wants to heal wounds caused in *Shard Mistress*. I have outlines or draft fragments for dozens of stories. Many of them will be about WoeNylVal wandering between worlds trying to reunite with her family and other pieces of herself. **NJB** ***The Woethief*** *is a free-culture project, using a Creative Commons license. When did you get interested in the free-culture movement?* **SP** I think I was introduced to GNU/Linux and free software in college. I wanted to learn about computing history, so I read books about the phreaker and hacker movements. Caring about free software naturally led to caring about free-culture and similar social movements. **NJB** *What are the benefits to an author publishing their work under a free-culture license like CC?* **SP** Readers or remixers can use my works without needing my permission, so I don't need to spend my time working out licensing deals. Since my works are copylefted, if someone makes an improvement to one of my works, I can use that improvement under the same licensing terms. Most of the benefits are for readers and remixers. I indirectly benefit by contributing to an ecosystem of collaborative art. **NJB** *Readers can find you on the Fediverse: {{https://writing.exchange/@NylaWoethief||https://writing.exchange/@NylaWoethief}}. Who are some other authors on the Fediverse that you recommend?* **SP** My favorite accounts to follow aren't on Writing.Exchange, but with federation, that doesn't matter. * @ami*angelwings@urusai.social asks interesting questions about storytelling that lead to good discussions. * @libreture@mastodon.social is great for keeping up on what is happening in the indie e-book world. * {{https://communitywiki.org/trunk||Trunk}} is a good place to find Mastodon accounts sorted by topic. * I often search the "fantasy" hashtag to find writing-related toots. :center ***The Woethief*** **will be published on October 20, 2023. To pre-order the e-book or a comb-bound paperback edition, {{https://nantucketebooks.com/order||click here}}** ***** !!TITLE Introducing the Year's Best Fantasy Novel !!AUTHOR NJB !!DESC A New Novel From Seth Patterson !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2023-10-01 !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ My goal with Nantucket E-Books is to make the best e-books on the planet, e-books that authors be proud to share with their readers. On my end, I've also sought out authors that I'd be proud to share on this platform. It's providing authors with great e-book tools, and providing readers with great authors. Today, I am thrilled to announce a new novel coming to Nantucket E-Books on **October 20, 2023**. It's called *The Woethief*, and it's the best fantasy novel you'll read this year. This is your opportunity to support a great up-and-coming author-illustrator team. @@IMG :source ../../../masterassets/images/campaigns/woethief/Woethief-Cover.png :alt Nyla Woethief has two minds, and an unborn child to protect. She longs to be free from her mistress, Gemma, who forces her to steal people's bad memories. If she wins the next two duels, she will become Princess. Will that be enough to free her from Gemma and her treacherous ex-husband? Does an insectoid girl who haunts her dreams offer hope, or danger? You can find ordering information by {{https://nantucketebooks.com/order||clicking here}}. *The Woethief* is a brand-new story from Seth Patterson. Seth has been a regular author with Nantucket E-Books under the pen name Riley Duffield, with short stories like {{https://nantucketebooks.com/true-loves-kiss||*True Love's Kiss*}}, which was a launch title for Version 2 of the platform last year. When I read *True Love's Kiss*, I knew it was the kind of writing I wanted for my e-books: challenging, captivating, and bursting with creativity. I told Seth Patterson I would be eager to read any long-form work he wrote in the fututre. Seth did not disappoint. With *The Woethief*, Seth Patterson has outdone himself. *The Woethief* is superb fantasy that asks a very interesting question: If people could have their pain and shame taken away, would that make people better@em@or worse? *The Woethief* is about WoeNyl, a human outcast in an underground world of bats and spiders. Forced into crime and dueling to survive, WoeNyl is split into two minds: the fierce and defiant Nyla, and the compassionate Woethief. Her tempest of competing minds guards a powerful ability: Woethief can steal people's pain. With one touch, someone's fear, anger, shame, and trauma move into WoeNyl's body. A raging attacker becomes placid, giving WoeNyl the upper hand, a man haunted by years of abuse is able to know love. For her immense power, WoeNyl is feared and hated by all Ildylians. After an unexpected victory in a gladiator's duel, WoeNyl finds her powers exploited by a vengeful enemy. Forced to flee to the very fringes of Ildylia, she meets Denrick and Theila, a bizarre couple who may hold the key to WoeNyl's mysterious past. ##ILLUSTRATIONS *The Woethief* features cover art and illustrations by Autumn Patterson. These fantastic illustrations are a vital part of the reading experience. @@IMG :source ../../../masterassets/images/campaigns/woethief/WoethiefBook16.png :flip :alt A young, human woman holds up an eye-sized orb of twilight while she stares at it. She has curly hair and a silk dress. :title Illustration from Seth Patterson's novel The Woethief, illustrated by Autumn Patterson. If you enable dark mode, this image will 'flip'! Autumn Patterson's illustrations were specially-made to take advantage of the "flippable image" feature in Nantucket E-Books. If Dark Mode is enabled in the e-book, or is set in the reader's browser/OS, the black-on-white images will invert to white-on-black, making them feel like they're truly part of the e-book, rather than an addition to them. *The Woethief* is the first illustrated e-book designed from the outset to take advantage of this innovative feature only found in Nantucket E-Books. **Plus, we didn't forget the alt text!** ##AVAILABILITY *The Woethief* will be available for free on nantucketebooks.com under a Creative Commons BY-SA license. If you would like to support Seth Patterson's work, place your order by {{https://nantucketebooks.com/order||clicking here}}. You can pre-order the e-book for **$1.99** and have your name listed as a supporter. We are also selling comb-bound paperback copies for $8.99 ($9.99 autographed), plus $4.99 shipping. ##NEXT UPDATES Next week, I'll be posting a written interview with Seth and Autumn Patterson. Seth's a terrific author, and I'm looking forward to getting readers of Nantucket E-Books better-acquainted with him. Don't forget to {{https://nantucketebooks.com/order||get your copy ordered}}, and email a comment (see field at bottom of page). ##OTHER E-BOOKS BY SETH PATTERSON {{https://nantucketebooks.com/ebooks/RileyDuffield/true-loves-kiss||True Love's Kiss}} {{https://nantucketebooks.com/ebooks/RileyDuffield/cocoon_comic||Cocoon (Comic)}} {{https://nantucketebooks.com/ebooks/RileyDuffield/cocoon||Cocoon (Short Story)}} {{https://nantucketebooks.com/ebooks/RileyDuffield/last-bridge||The Last Bridge}} {{https://nantucketebooks.com/ebooks/RileyDuffield||Operation Firestorm}} :center {{https://nantucketebooks.com/blog/RSS.xml||*Subscribe to this blog's RSS feed by clicking here*}}. ***** !!TITLE No PO Box Now !!AUTHOR NJB !!DESC I'll open a new PO Box soon !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2023-09-28 !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ I'm closing my PO Box in Henderson, Colorado, and not opening a new one right away. I will be moving in the next few months, and will open a new PO Box once that has concluded. A PO Box is an important part of Nantucket E-Books, since it's used to mail out paperback copies and correspond with authors. I also plan to use a PO Box to accept payments via money-order, part of my goal for allowing anonymous payments of e-books. I will make an update as soon as I get a new PO Box set up. ***** !!TITLE Working With SVGs, and New Books !!AUTHOR NJB !!DESC SVG: Powerful, Perhaps Too Much So !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2023-09-27 !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ #TROUBLE WITH SVGs Nantucket E-Books are meant for the browser, and they'll work on smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktops. They also use reader-respecting free software. This makes the SVG format great for images in my e-books: they will scale to any device's resolution, and it's as open a format as you can find online. Their small file size is a further advantage. I have been creating many of the book covers on this platform in SVG. There is one problem with SVGs, though, and that's text. SVGs are just a list of elements for the browser to draw: mostly lines, circles, rectangles, and text. When it comes to text, the browser will display text using its default fonts. For example, if you write for the SVG file to display a serif font, it will do so with the browser's default serif font. The problem is that different default fonts come in different sizes, and what fit in one image might appear oversized elsewhere. @@IMG :source ../../../masterassets/images/mcteague_cover_old.svg :alt Prior vector-art cover for McTeague by Frank Norris. In some browsers, the subtitle A Story of San Francisco will appear too big. :center **ABOVE: Prior vector-art cover for McTeague. In some browsers, the subtitle A Story of San Francisco will appear too big.** Readers of this site have pointed this out to me. For example, the cover for McTeague had text that rendered too big in some browsers. There are a few solutions, each of which result in specifying which font the browser will load, giving readers a consistent experience. Before I discuss these solutions, I should explain my workflow. I don't use a vector-editing program like Inkscape or Adobde Illustrator to create my images, instead I write them in Vim. While Vim is not known as an image-editor, I try to keep my covers simple, simple enough to open in a text editor and understand what's going on. I use Vim for almost all of my writing (writing in Vim right now), so using it to create images is working for now. For bitmap editing, I use GIMP. The first solution for consistent cross-browser text in an SVG is to directly link to a font's files, using a format called WOFF2. This is the easiest solution, but would require including the font files used in the SVG with the e-books assets. I'm not opposed to this idea, but I'm not going to pursue it yet. The second solution is to convert the text to "paths", which means specifying every last little arc, dip and curve of each character. This would work, and I believe it's what some vector-editing programs like Inkscape would do. I'm not going with this one because I worry it would make the files hard to debug. Any change to the text would require converting to paths again. The third solution is to embed the font file inside the SVG, by converting the WOFF2 file to Base64. If you're unfamiliar with Base64, it's a file in the form of a long string of letters and numbers. For example, since email is text-based, any time you send an image as an attachement in an email, it gets converted to Base64 before being sent out. I use Base64 in some areas of my e-books already, namely the favicon and Apple Touch Icons. When it comes to saving on a couple GET requests to the server, embedding tiny images as Base64 strings makes sense. A WOFF2 file is a little bigger, around 50 to 60 kilobytes. This makes for a *long* string in an SVG file, but if I keep it up at the top it doesn't get in the way, and I can still debug the file. Also, this means that any additional fonts are another 50K-60K, so two fonts would create an SVG as large as a small, compressed JPG file. At that point, it's not saving bandwidth. That said, this disadvantage applies to the other two solutions. Another disadvantage that's worth considering when using Base64: this bypasses the wants of customers who might have disabled image-loading or custom fonts in their browser. I'm going with the WOFF2-to-Base64 approach, since it offers the more consistent reading experience, while still easy to debug, and it saves on GET requests. It would be nice if browsers loaded text in a more uniform way, but apparently that didn't get settled in the Browser Wars. Until then, if you're going to use SVG images in your website, play it safe, and embed the fonts directly into the SVG file. @@IMG :source ../../../masterassets/images/mcteague_cover.svg :alt Current vector-art cover for McTeague by Frank Norris. This file uses embedded fonts, so the text should be consistent across browsers. :center **ABOVE: Current vector-art cover for McTeague. This file uses embedded fonts, so the text should render more consistently across different browsers.** #NEW BOOKS @@IMG :source ../../../ebooks/pd/littleprincess/assets/images/littleprincess_cover.jpg :alt A young girl with black hair and wearing a black dress sits in a deep blue background, looking up to the sky, filled with white puffy clouds and golden silhouetted birds. The girl holds a porcelain doll. The title A Little Princess is at the top, and the author's name, Frances Hodgson Burnett, is at the bottom. @@IMG :source ../../../ebooks/pd/goodsoldier/assets/images/goodsoldier_cover.svg :alt Vector-art recreation of the title page for The Good Solder by Ford Maddox Ford. The text reads: “The Good Soldier, A Tale of Passion by Ford Maddox Hueffer, author of The Fifth Queen, etc. ‘Beati Immaculati’ London: John Lane, The Bodley Head. New York: John Lane Company MCMXV.” All text is centered in the Liberation Serif font. Vector-art recreation by Nicholas Bernhard, public domain. Two new e-books to share: the children's novel {{https://nantucketebooks.com/littleprincess||A Little Princess}}, and the brilliant domestic drama {{https://nantucketebooks.com/goodsoldier||The Good Soldier}}. *A Little Princess* includes several full-color illustrations, and a built-in Librivox audiobook from the one-and-only Elizabeth Klett. #LEAVE A COMMENT What's been your experience with SVGs? Leave a comment and share, it always provokes a good discussion. ***** !!TITLE New Books, and a Big Announcement Coming !!AUTHOR NJB !!DESC Four new e-books, and a new novel from Riley Duffield next month !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2023-09-20 !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ :center *This blog post is taken from a recent Patreon update* I'm excited to share *four* new ebooks now available on the platform, and share a big announcement. @@IMG :source ../../../ebooks/pd/redbadge/assets/images/redbadge_cover.svg :alt Cover for the Nantucket E-Books edition of The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, a vector-art adaptation of the cover to the first edition. Cover design by Nicholas Bernhard, public domain. The first is {{https://nantucketebooks.com/redbadge||The Red Badge of Courage}} by Stephen Crane. If you are not familiar with it, this is a short novel about a boy who runs off to fight in the American Civil War. Crane had been a journalist before writing fiction, and the realism he pours into this novel is powerful. I am thrilled to include a Librivox audiobook with this edition, narrated by Purple Heart veteran Mike Vendetti from Canon City, Colorado. I can honestly say it is one of the best audiobooks I have heard in my life. I implore you to listen to this one. @@IMG :source ../../../ebooks/pd/windinthewillows/assets/images/windinthewillows_cover.jpg :alt Cover for The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, showing a stylized illustration of trees on the far shore of a river in a golden sunset, with hanging willow branches in the foreground. The second is {{https://nantucketebooks.com/windinthewillows||The Wind in the Willows}} by Kenneth Grahame. This was a favorite of mine when I was a boy, and I loved reading it again a few years ago. Grahame created one of the great modern fantasy stories. Pink Floyd's debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, comes from Chapter Seven of this novel. I have included a delightful Librivox audiobook, narrated by Adrian Praetzellis. Rat, Mole, Badger, and the irrepressible Toad are characters that you never forget, and Praetzellis does them justice with his voices. Both *Red Badge of Courage* and *Wind in the Willows* were included in The Guardian's list of the 100 best English-language novels. You can expect to find many more from the list on the platform in the coming months. @@IMG :source ../../../ebooks/doctorow/downandout/assets/images/downandout_cover.svg :alt Cover for the Nantucket E-Books edition of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow, showing the author name and title in a monospace font against a midnight-blue background, in a Swiss-style design. The next book is {{https://nantucketebooks.com/downandout||Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom}} by Cory Doctorow. This was one of the first novels to be published with a Creative Commons license: readers could download and share the book for free, so long as they didn't sell it, and gave proper credit. The novel is set in a distant future where poverty and hunger have been eliminated, and humanity has achieved immortality. Currency has been replaced with a kind of social-credit: wealth is measured in popularity. The novel focuses on a group of people who live in Disney World, which has been turned into a residential community. It's like no cyberpunk novel I've ever read. I have uploaded it as part of my goal to bring great science-fiction to the platform, and for its significance to the free-culture movement. Lastly, I have uploaded Doctorow's essay {{https://nantucketebooks.com/doctorowebooks||Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books}}, as a kind of companion piece to Down and Out. It's based on a talk Doctorow gave at an O'Reilly Media conference in 2004, about the value of e-books. I found his words quite prescient, I've been saying some of the same things about e-books this whole time. You can find these new titles and more at {{https://nantucketebooks.com/ebooks||nantucketebooks.com/ebooks}} Now, my announcement: readers might be familiar with Riley Duffield, his short stories have been a regular feature on the platform. {{https://nantucketebooks.com/ebooks/RileyDuffield/true-loves-kiss/||True Love's Kiss}}, one of his stories, was a launch title for Version 2 of my software. He is a terrific writer, the kind of writer that makes me aim high when developing the platform. Now, Riley Duffield has outdone himself. Next month, Nantucket E-Books will be publishing a *new novel* from Riley Duffield. I think it's the best fantasy novel you'll read this year. It's got it all: a fantasy world like you've never seen before, captivating characters, and what's so cool is that it's actually *about* something. Next week, you can expect an update where I'll go into detail about Riley Duffield's new novel: the title, the story, and the release date. We're even selling paperback copies! In the meantime, some of Duffield's stories on the platform include {{https://nantucketebooks.com/ebooks/RileyDuffield/operation-firestorm/||Operation Firestorm}}, {{https://nantucketebooks.com/ebooks/RileyDuffield/last-bridge/||The Last Bridge}}, {{https://nantucketebooks.com/ebooks/RileyDuffield/cocoon/||Cocoon}}, and {{https://nantucketebooks.com/ebooks/RileyDuffield/true-loves-kiss||True Love's Kiss}}. **Please e-mail me a comment about what books you are enjoying and/or looking forward to.** Talk to you again real soon! ***** !!TITLE New Catalog Generator, and Reuploading Anthem !!AUTHOR NJB !!DESC A substantial improvement for the platform !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2023-09-10 !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Please check out the new and improved {{../../../ebooks/||catalog page}} for Nantucket E-Books. This is an update that I've been looking forward to: a better way of generating the online catalog. The catalog page displays all the titles available on Nantucket E-Books, with cover art, descriptions, age-appropriateness, and whether or not an audiobook is included. Originally, the catalog was built by pulling metadata from the HTML files for each e-book. However, parsing HTML is difficult, so for a while I was updating the catalog file manually. Obviously, neither solution was ideal. What I wanted to do was build the catalog by parsing the Shanty files for each e-book. In the Shanty files, all the metadata is nicely labeled and organized at the start of the file. If I could bundle the Shanty file with each e-book, generating the catalog would be a snap. Getting to that point, though, was another matter. For the sake of consistency, I had to update all the e-books on the site, 35 in total, to the latest version, 4.0.1. In many cases, new Shanty files had to be prepared to bundle with the e-books. Now that it's done, I am happy with the results. Adding new books to the site is as easy as a single command in the terminal. My next goal has two parts: make it easier to update the HTML file for individual books, and to make it easier to update the software and stylesheets for all e-books. @@IMG :source ../../../ebooks/pd/anthem/assets/images/anthem_cover.svg :alt Vector-art recreation of the cover to the first edition, with the words ANTHEM, a novel by AYN RAND, author of WE THE LIVING, on a sepia-colored background. I have also re-uploaded {{https://nantucketebooks.com/anthem||Anthem}}, the classic dystopian novel. I put together this vector-art recreation of the first-edition cover, the SVG file is less than one kilobyte. ***** !!TITLE The Affair at Grover Station !!AUTHOR NJB !!DESC Nantucket E-Books on the high plains !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2023-08-27 !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ @@IMG :source ../../assets/groverportrait.jpg :alt Photograph of Nicholas Bernhard in a green lumberjack shirt and sunglasses standing in front of the Grover Depot Museum, a red two-story wooden building with "Grover" stenciled in white lettering about halfway up. Photo by Nicholas Bernhard, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. On Saturday, August 26, I spoke at the Grover Depot Museum in Grover, Colorado. Grover is a small town in the Pawnee National Grasslands of northeast Colorado. I was invited by the Pawnee Historical Society to give a live reading of the Willa Cather short story *The Affair at Grover Station*. You can read the short story for free on this platform at {{https://nantucketebooks.com/groverstation||nantucketebooks.com/groverstation}}, featuring a built-in audiobook from Librivox. The story is narrated by "Terrapin" Rogers, a railroad employee investigating the disappearance of his friend Lawrence O'Toole, the station agent in Grover. A strange event gives him the critical clue in solving the mystery. *Grover Station* has all the hallmarks of Cather story: the pioneer towns of the Great Plains, rich descriptions of the landscape, and an examination of the characters place, or lack of place, within that landscape. @@IMG :source ../../../ebooks/pd/groverstation/assets/images/groverstation_cover.svg :alt Cover for the Nantucket E-Books Edition of The Affair at Grover Station by Willa Cather. The Swiss-Style art shows a stylized vector-art depiction of the train depot in Grover, Colorado, in white lines on a red background. The author's name is at the top, and the title is at the bottom. Cover by Nicholas Bernhard, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. I had a lot of fun reading this classic ghost story next to the actual setting of the story. The volunteers from the Pawnee Historical Society were wonderful, giving me a tour of the depot beforehand. A tent was set up to shield the audience from the sun, and lemonade was provided. I sold copies of my work and Buffalo's {{https://nantucketebooks.com/metalfisherman-sample||Tales of a Metal Fisherman}}, proceeds went to the Pawnee Historical Society. Grover is a fun town. It is one of the most remote towns in Colorado, 22 miles to the nearest highway; it is also home to the smallest rodeo on the professional circuit, held each Father's Day. I had a blast coming up to do the reading, and hope to do it again. @@IMG :source ../../assets/roadtogrover.jpg :alt Photograph of a road to Grover, Colorado. This road is Weld County Road 89. Photo by by Nicholas Bernhard, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. ***** !!TITLE Bitmap-editing GIFs !!AUTHOR NJB !!DESC How the cover for Quarter Up Issue 3 was made !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2023-08-02 !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ @@IMG :source ../../../ebooks/quarterup/quarterup_2023_q2/assets/images/quarterup_2023-q2_cover.gif :alt Cover for the third issue of Quarter Up, published by Nantucket E-Books. The cover shows a looping animation of a stylized video arcade at nght, art by Jeremy Mendiola. Yesterday, the {{../../../ebooks/quarterup/quarterup_2023_q2||third issue of Quarter Up}} was published on Nantucket E-Books. One of the exciting possibilities for e-books is moving images, and this new issue featured an animated GIF by Jeremy Mendiola ({{https://reddit.com/u/artofmeh||artofmeh}} on Reddit). As I was getting ready to publish the issue, I learned a lot about adding text to a GIF, and I wanted to share what I had learned. Editing a GIF in a bitmap editor like GIMP is challenging, since each frame is a separate layer. The original artwork had a 1:1 aspect ratio, which was a little too wide, I try to use a 8:5 aspect ratio for covers. Cropping and scaling would need to be applied to each indivudal layer. While I try to only use free software, in this instance I caved and use the resize tool on {{https://ezgif.com||ezgif.com}} to get the correct aspect ratio. (If there's a way to do this in GIMP, leave a comment). I learned that the text layers will get added as frames of the animation, which caused a 'blip' as they vanished and reappeared for a couple frames. To add text to a GIF, the text layers need to be merged down into the background layer. Lastly, I wanted to add a linear gradient to the text. {{https://www.bettertechtips.com/gimp-tutorials/create-gradient-text-gimp/||This tutorial on bettertechtips.com}} was instructive, the site may be read with JavaScript disabled. That's what I learned editing this cover for publication, hopefully it can help someone else. ***** !!TITLE Is This The End of Symbols !!AUTHOR NJB !!DESC Stuck Inside of Mobile With the PC Blues Again !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2023-07-10 !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ There was an old edition of the newspaper comic *Luann* showing the dad packing away the Christmas lights for the year. He proudly tells the family something like this: "This box is labeled 'AG' for 'Above Garage', and this one is labeled 'WLOFL' for 'White Lights on Front Lawn'", and so on. Can you guess what happens next Christmas? Of course you can! Good ol' Dad has no idea what "AG" or "WLOFL" mean. His clever plan made things even more confusing. I fear I have found myself in a similar predicament. From the very conception of Nantucket E-Books, I had planned to use icons for the interactive features. The first one was a light bulb, which would activate dark mode. It grew from that first feature to a suite of interactive features, each having their own icons. A couple years ago, the icons were designed for consistency. The icons are built with SVG, and in most cases were designed on graph paper. I have never used Inkscape or Adobe Illustrator to design these icons, they were manually typed, line by line, into a text editor. There was just one problem with my beautiful menu icons: nobody had the faintest idea what they represented. It recently came up in beta-testing that the meanings of the menu icons were a total mystery to readers. In hindsight, this was a problem from the start. The politeness of some beta-testers has wasted many hours of development time. Here I was so pleased with myself: the little home icon means a link back to the home page, and the plus and minus symbols will make the text bigger and smaller! Tonight I learned the plus and minus symbols were particularly confusing. I can at least console myself by knowning I'm not the only designer who has confused people with their symbols. Did you know the four symbols on the PlayStation controller had very specific meanings? According to the original designer, the triangle represents viewpoint, as in a person's head or an arrow. The square represents a menu, as in a piece of paper, and the X and O represent yes and no. Well, live and learn. I could complain about the masses not understanding my brilliant little icons, but that's not the point. The point is making a really great e-book that people can pick up and enjoy right away. With that goal in mind, I am planning to replace the menu icons with regular old text. It's looking quite nice across devices, which was a surprise, and the closed menu is going to be more discreet than ever. **You have to put the customer expeirence first.** What do you think? Try to find better icons, or move forward with text in the menus? Oh, and let me head off a couple suggestions: having both would add a new level of complexity to the e-books. Some suggested using cookies to track first-time users, who could be shown instructions, versus returning users who don't need instructions. Do you feel the web does not have enough cookies already? Also, if my e-books are so complicated they need instructions, then I'm in *real* trouble. ***** !!TITLE Reading !!AUTHOR NJB !!DESC Some ideas on how to read more !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2023-07-03 !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ In a recent Mastodon thread, I mentioned that I maintain a web page with {{https://www.ndhfilms.com/other/mybooks||a list of books I've read}}. I started the web page because I had heard that Art Garfunkel had done the same thing. These days, many people publish such lists through an account on Goodreads, but in true web developer fashion, I decided to build my own page. The current page on my site is a simple HTML list, using Benjamin Hollon's {{https://codeberg.org/Freedom-to-Write/readable.css||readable.css}} stylesheet. When I posted about the page last week, I got a reply asking how I managed to read so many books. It was an interesting question, since I feel like I don't read as much as I should. I try to take Stephen King's admonition to heart: if you want to write, you have to read. Looking back through my list, I typically read around thirty books a year. So far this year, I have read eighteen books. My most recent books are the Robert Silverburg dystopian novel *The World Inside*, and *The Brixen Witch*, a retelling of the Pied Piper myth by Stacy DeKeyser. This doesn't include the manuscripts of books published on this website, from superb authors like Buffalo, Riley Duffiend, and AT Gonzalez. Much of my reading in the past couple years has been the works of Harlan Ellison. Ellison was one of the great writers of his generation, but he is sadly becoming forgotten. I am creating {{https://www.ndhfilms.com/other/ellison||a directory of Ellison's writing}} so that his work can be preserved online. I suppose this adds a little motivation to my reading. Fundamentally, if you want to read, you need to make time to read. That means reading with as much free time as you can snatch away. I try to have a book with me in my car or my briefcase. When you're waiting in line at the bank or the bagel shop, that's reading time. It might only be a few pages here and there, but over the course of a year, it adds up. I remember being stuck on a plane waiting to take off from Philadelphia, with only one working runway for takeoffs and landings. There was a line of planes ten deep waiting for takeoff. I could have doom-scrolled Twitter on the crummy plane wifi for eight hours, but instead I happened to have some books with me. I finished three books on that flight: a Jack Reacher adventure by Lee Child, *Hannibal* by Thomas Harris, and *The Mignight Library* by Matt Haig. Admittedly that is extreme, but the point is that I took advantage of an opportunity. If you want to read more, I suggest audiobooks. Audiobooks are one of the easiest ways to improve your quality of life. Instead of commuting to work, and listening to the endless slog of podcasts, or the same twenty songs on the radio over and over, you could be reading. When you are brushing your teeth, you're reading. I have recently enjoyed *The Witcher* books by Andrez Sapkowski. The stories are very entertaining, and the narrator does all kinds of fun voices for the characters. Where to find audiobooks? I recommend Librivox, a website that publishes public-domain, free-culture audiobooks recorded by volunteers. There is a continuum of quality on Librivox, from the unlistenable to the professional-grade, so you may have to do a little bit of work to find an edition that is right for you. Some outstanding Librivox audiobooks include *Little Women*, *The Count of Monte Cristo*, *Candide*, *Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass*, *McTeague*, *The Monk: A Romance*, *The Wind in the Wilows*, and for the bold, *Moby Dick*. Elizabeth Klett is one of the site's best narrators, I loved her work on the aforementioned *Little Women*, where she narrates and voices Jo March. She has also recorded several Jane Austen novels, and *The Turn of the Screw*. There is also a Librivox app for iOS, at least, though this is not affiliated with Librivox. There are ads, but if you have downloaded the audiobook to your phone, these ads can be disabled by putting your phone into airplane mode. I'll conclude by saying that if you want to read more, just try this: start carrying a book with you when you go places. If you find some time when you're waiting for someone or just idling, read a few pages. If you're in the car, listen to an audiobook. Another trick is to read one hour before falling asleep. Especially if it's a bound book, it will take more effort to read than to view a phone screen, and will help you fall asleep faster. I would not personally consider myself a fast reader, but I do try to commit to reading when I can. I find that books can still transport me to places far and wide, just as much as they did when I traveled to the library with my mom as a kid. It is a special internal experience, and one whose adoption has become vital for the future of our society. ***** !!TITLE Long-Term Vision !!AUTHOR NJB !!DESC Comparing "X Corp" to the NeXT Acquisition !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2023-04-30 !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ The continuing downturn at Twitter has me thinking about Steve Jobs' return to Apple back in 1997. I should say up front that I would not describe Jobs as a personal hero (I would more likely give that title to Steve Wozniak), but I think Jobs had some leadership qualities that are sorely lacking at Twitter, or "X Corp" as it now called. After being forced out of Apple, Jobs spent over a decade building a new company called NeXT Computer. While NeXT was never a major player in the PC market, the company had a working operating system and a long-term vision for that operating system. Meanwhile, Apple had a lot of ideas for the future of the Mac platform, but nothing practical on the way. The successors to System 7, the infamous "Pink" and "Blue", were stalling, and Windows 95 showed that Microsft had caught up to Apple in building graphical interfaces. The leadership at Apple decided their next OS would come from outside the company (they even considered Windows NT!), and eventually chose to purchase NeXT. Jobs' public apperances after returning to Apple are still worth watching today. In a concise and logical manner, he explains the work on the NeXT operating system, the benefits of NeXT, and his long-term plan for how NeXT will help Apple get back on track. Jobs talks about some areas where Apple was struggling, but also the great strengths Apple had to offer, such as its high brand-recognition, and its dominance in the educational market. Watching these presentations from 1997, you see someone articulating why their product is the right fit for the future of Apple, and how they are going to bring Apple back to financial health. Even if you are not a fan of Apple, or Steve Jobs, I think you can appreciate his talent for presentation. A quarter-century later, I watch these videos, and I think to myself, "Yeah, I could buy into his idea." I have included links below to some of these presentations and talks. I will make particular note of the MacWorld video, where Jobs asks the audience to reject the idea that "for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose." To the contrary, says, Jobs, "For Apple to win, Apple has to do really, really well." I try to keep this philosophy close to the heart of Nantucket E-Books. I've gotten to know quite a few people who run e-book platforms of their own, and share some of my philosophies like browser-based e-books, and the rejection of DRM. Nantucket E-Books will succeed in this field by doing really well, by providing the best experience for writers and readers alike. {{https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=QhhFQ-3w5tE||Steve Jobs returns to Apple}} {{https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=IOs6hnTI4lw||Steve Jobs at MacWorld 1997}} {{https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=qyd0tP0SK6o||Steve Jobs at WWDC 1997}} ***** !!TITLE Issue 02 of Quarter Up, and Updates To Paragraphs On Mobile !!AUTHOR NJB !!DESC Some ideas on how to get more readable text on phones !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2023-04-16 !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ The next issue of Quarter Up was published this week. {{https://nantucketebooks.com/quarterup_2023_q1||You may read it by clicking here}}. Quarter Up is an online newsletter about pinball and retro arcade games, published on Nantucket E-Books@tm@. This latest issue has coverage of Houston Arcade Expo 2022, a review of a panel with Brian Colin, a guide to arcade sticks, and a piece from Buffalo, whose book *Tales of a Metal Fisherman* may be ordered by {{https://nantucketebooks.com/metalfisherman-order||clicking here}}. While promoting this issue, I got some feedback that the justified text did not look good on mobile. I agree. Justified text is part of bringing culture into the e-book experience, but it falls apart as the paragraph width narrows. This is not just a problem on smartphones, it's been a problem with justified text even back to the 1880's when newspapers were typeset on Linotype machines. Thanks to the stylesheet overhaul I introduced in Version 2 of the platform, it was easy to make a quick fix to the newsletter by changing body paragraphs from justified to left-align. Already people think the mobile reading experience is improved. I see two long-term solutions. The first would be to add another media query that uses left-align for smaller screens, and justified text for tablets and desktops/laptops. The second solution is to start building a table of words to take advantage of word-break elements, which lets browsers break up and hyphenate words if they are going to exceed the width of the paragraph. Looping through the table, if a word match is found, it could replace the word with its appropriately-hyphenated counterpart. Another suggestion was to make the default text smaller, reducing the amount of scrolling required. I will consider this as well. Send me your comments (see below), I look forward to further feedback. ***** !!TITLE Using An Old Laptop !!AUTHOR NJB !!DESC Luke Smith is right, you can get away with a really old computer !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2023-04-07 !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ This article from Luke Smith still rings true for me: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/only-use-old-computers/ I agree with Luke Smith that people don't need the latest and greatest computers. I have been using my ThinkPad T60 for my day-to-day work for two years now, a laptop that, as of 2023, is seventeen years old. It's all the computer I need, for the most part. Now, when I say that my T60 is all I need, I guess I should describe what I need, because it might not be what you need. I don't play video games that much anymore, I don't do much HD video editing, and the software I write doesn't require heavy computation. I don't use Facebook, TikTok, or Instagram. Based on Smith's criteria, I am the ideal user of an old computer. My work largely involves editing text files: editing my client's work, and writing software for Nantucket E-Books. Sometimes I have to do basic image editing in GIMP. For entertainment, I watch videos (really enjoying *Babylon 5* right now). For that kind of work, a ThinkPad T60, with an SSD, a 2.33 GHz CPU, 3 GB of RAM, really is sufficient. My operating system on the T60 is Trisquel GNU/Linux. I find Trisquel very easy to use, certainly as easy as Mac OS. The T60 doesn't quite have the juice for video calls or live-streaming, but I don't need that functionality every day. When I need to take a video call or stream to YouTube, I have an HP ProBook 450 G1 at home running Debian. The ProBook has 16 GB of RAM, which, after using the T60, feels like riding in the Space Shuttle. It did take some work to get to this point. It was vital to learn Vim for text editing, and it took some time to find my way around GIMP after years of using Photoshop. With my T60, I get an inexpensive ($120) laptop that is very easy to repair and maintain. One time it fell off the coffee table and it still worked fine. Meanwhile, my MacBook Pro in college fell off a table, and I discovered the aluminum body had the toughness of soft cheese. If my T60 were to ever get seriously damaged, I would not be out thousands of dollars. While I agree with Luke Smith's blog post, I have always felt like I needed to add my own caveat before I endorsed it: what works for me may not work the same for everyone else. I would add one more thing that Smith said in a video that was very insightful, about the benefits of laptops over smartphones. With a smartphone, you can be a consumer, but you can't really be a creator (this is specifically in the context of developing software). With a laptop, you can be a consumer, *and* a creator. My advice: get out there and create. ***** !!TITLE Yet Another Odd Technical Problem !!AUTHOR NJB !!DESC I don't want to hear about time zones ever again !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2023-03-13 !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Here in the United States, Daylight Savings Time has returned. I was up late working on the site when my laptop's clock updated, and I checked to see if my new phone's clock had changed as well. It had not. As I reported in {{https://nantucketebooks.com/blog/2023/02/2023-02-28_a_very_odd_technical_problem.html||a previous blog post}}, I had to ditch my minimalist, no-Google phone due to software problems, and buy a cheap flip phone from the AT&T store. I thought the incorrect time was odd, because usually the phone updates for DST automatically. I checked on it after I woke up later that morning, and my phone was still an hour behind. I checked the phone's settings. Sure enough, it was set to auto-sync, so it should have been picking up the correct time from the servers. It was here I discovered the problem: when in auto-sync, my phone had set the time zone to Mountain, which is correct, **but it had set the city to Phoenix**. You see, Phoenix is on Mountain Time, but Arizona doesn't use Daylight Savings Time. Worse still, there was no way to change the city when in auto-sync mode. I would have to change the phone to manual time-set mode to a Mountain Time city other than Phoenix. This whole affair served as a prelude to my troubles figuring out the correct time for my RSS feed. When I tried setting the dates for the RSS <pubDate> attribute, it always returned a day of the week one day ahead of what it should have been. The problem was that the server is using Universal Time, measured from Greenwich, England, while I date my blog posts from my local time, seven hours behind GMT. There was a very helpful blog post about setting your dates in JavaScript to use your local time zone, but the links to it in my browser's history tab have all been replaced with a link to an ad for a sports-betting app. Basically, if you want to make your date string use local time, use this formay: yyyy-mm-ddT00:00, and make sure there's no "Z" at the end. I'm tired, and I'm very, very done with time zones and DST. @@comm

Benjamin

I’m very, very done with time zones and DST.

Ha, now try living internationally and/or having relatives on a different continent from you. ;)

Unfortunately, this stuff has to be dealt with somehow, and timezones are, though I'm reluctant to admit it, the best solution I can think of. I've considered the possibility of just having the whole world use the same time (since time is, after all, very arbitrary) but while that would simplify some things it would complicate others.

Daylight Savings, though, is atrocious and stupid.

***** !!TITLE RSS available for this blog, and new comments sections !!AUTHOR NJB !!DESC Building a better blog bit by bit !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2023-03-13 !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ I have updated this blog to support RSS. You can add the feed to your RSS reader here: {{https://nantucketebooks.com/blog/RSS.xml||nantucketebooks.com/blog/RSS.xml}}. Aside from getting the correct dates to output, adding RSS was pretty simple. Most of the work had already been done using the functions I'd built to create the blog's table of contents. It was then just a matter of outputting that information into XML. I have also made an improvement to the blog's comments section. Before, the comments used the "checkbox hack", {{https://css-tricks.com/the-checkbox-hack/||as related by Chris Coyier}}, which lets the visibility of an element by toggled using only CSS, and no client-side JavaScript. Unfortunately, the styling that makes the checkbox hack work was conflicting with the {{https://readable-css.freedomtowrite.org/||readable.css}} stylesheet that I use for the site now. Benjamin Hollon, the developer of readable.css, suggested I use the "details/summary" elements instead. I had never heard of details/summary, and it is pretty neat. The <details> element is, in effect, the checkbox hack using only HTML. This gives my site an even simpler, low-tech (no-tech?) comments section If you use RSS, e-mail me a comment on how this blog's feed looks to you. @@comm

Benjamin I’ve always said that RSS should be easier to figure out for a blog than actually displaying the content to the users (and it is!): all you've got to do is put the content in a machine-readable format. If you wanted, you could even actually store your content in the RSS format itself and then generate the website from that.

***** !!TITLE An Interview With Author Buffalo !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2023-03-10 !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ On Saturday, March 18@th@, Nantucket E-Books will be publishing its first commercial work of fiction. It's some of the most fun I've had reading a book in a long, long time, and I'm proud to be involved in its publication. The book is *Tales of a Metal Fisherman*, by Colorado author Buffalo. The book follows the adventures of a hard-living repo man as he hunts his prey: Cougars, Broncos, Cobras, Bugs, and Barracudas. Deadbeat drivers beware: fall behind on your payments, and the Captain will get you, *and* yer fish! Buffalo runs the store Buffalo's Last Stand in Cope, Colorado, with an impressive collection of bison memorabilia, and an eye-popping selection of books from the all-time greats in horror and science fiction. I emailed some questions to Buffalo so he could introduce himself. Our interview is printed below: **NJB** *When did you first get interested in writing?* **BUFFALO** I was read to at an early age, and thus became interested in communicating with the written word. **NJB** *What are some of your favorite books, and why are they your favorites?* **BUFFALO** Too many to list, but an attempt: Speculative fiction: Ellison. Science fiction: H.G. Wells. Novels and storytellers: Bloch, Steinbeck, Faulkner, London, Clavell, Gorey. Frivolous: Gorey, Bloch. Legends, history, humor – most everything. **NJB** *When did you move to Cope, and what made you decide to move there?* **BUFFALO** I moved here in 2019 – looking at Scottsbluff on Craigslist and saw this offered. Stayed at cousin’s in Colorado Springs, came out to Cope to see the offering and the wall of the building said to me, “Here I am.” **NJB** *What kinds of books do you sell at Buffalo's Last Stand?* **BUFFALO** Arcane, eclectic, outre, esoteric, rare, signed, unheard-of. Used, but well worth it to bibliophiles. **NJB** *What author have you been most proud to meet personally, and what author would you like to meet, if you could?* **BUFFALO** I've met and had books signed by C. Wilson, Ellison; wished to have met Bloch and Clavell. **NJB** *You've mentioned that the Captain in* ***Metal Fisherman*** *is based on a repo man you knew personally. How did you come to know them, and what inspired you to turn those experiences into this book?* **BUFFALO** I met Squirrel (repo man) in ’71. If I had known was under 18 at the time I probably would not have associated with him. He started repoing in the @r'@80’s and stopped because of an injury (off-work) in the 2000’s. **NJB** *Car repossession is not exactly a popular profession, but in your book, it's the drivers of the cars who come across as slick and underhanded. Were you hoping readers would come away with a fresh understanding of repo men?* **BUFFALO** I hope they come away with a smile or a chuckle. They are lies. **NJB** *Buffalo's Last Stand is the only book store I've ever been to that had a substantial number of Harlan Ellison books. Your collection inspired me to start the {{https://ndhfilms.com/other/ellison||Ellison Directory}}, an indexed list of his stories, with plot summaries. What do you enjoy about Ellison?* **BUFFALO** Ellison had an inner anger that he turned into “speculative fiction” and humor. **NJB** ***Tales of a Metal Fisherman*** *was influenced by Robert Bloch's Lefty Feep stories: fast-paced adventure with lots of wordplay and quick thinking. Where did you first encounter Lefty Feep?* **BUFFALO** Bloch wrote the classic *Psycho*, and I was off to the races finding Bloch written works. **NJB** *You also write about pinball, and own a pinball machine. Tell me a little bit about the pinball machine at Buffalo's Last Stand.* **BUFFALO** It keeps the nostalgia alive, and lets the unexperienced learn/try it. **NJB** *Your store is located along US 36, which runs from Colorado to Ohio. You get visitors from all over the country, and I was wondering if you could describe some of the more interesting people to have come through your door.* **BUFFALO** That is another story to be written. :center **Order your copy of Tales of a Metal Fisherman at {{https://nantucketebooks.com/metalfisherman-order||nantucketebooks.com/metalfisherman-order}}** @@comm @benjaminhollon This is a test comment.
@@comm :author OP Thank you for suggesting I use the <details>/<summary> elements for my comments section. I was previously using the "checkbox hack", which lets elements be toggled without any JavaScript, but detail/summary is simpler still. ***** !!TITLE A Very Odd Technical Problem !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2023-02-28 !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Back in September, I decided to try a minimalist phone, something just for calls and text messages. I went with the Punkt MP02, because unlike the flip phones at the AT&T store, it was completely de-Googled. No apps, no Google, no camera, just calls, texts, and some alarm settings. The MP02 is easy to use for wi-fi tethering, something I need at work. Like a lot of things in life, it worked well, until it didn't. The software on the MP02 has some troublesome quirks, but yesterday it became unusable: calls would drop after two seconds, and no-one could hear me. I couldn't receive calls, either. I went to the AT&T store to see if there was something wrong with my plan or SIM card. No luck, it was a problem with my phone's hardware, software, or both. With my head hung low, I bought the cheapest AT&T flip phone at the store. That's when the real problems began. I called my parents in the parking lot, and my mom told me they had tried calling me a couple times, but a "strange man" had answered. The man didn't respond to them when asked questions. The idea that my phone number was mixed up with a "stranger", *strange* in the truest sense, was upsetting, but I figured having a new, working phone would help. The next day, I had my phone off for a while, and when I turned it on to call my parents, they said the same strange man who sounded "mentally challenged" had answered when they'd tried to call me. Now I was worried. Somehow my lines were crossed with some guy. My bosses sometimes call my personal cell, I can't have them talking to some weirdo. After work, I drove to the AT&T store and explained my problem. The best answer they could offer was that some glitch had occured, and that it would resolve itself once I had my new phone for a while. I called my friends and asked them to call me, to see if it happened again. FrogBomb, a longtime patron of Nantucket E-Books, called me, but said my voicemail message was weird. He said it "sounded like Meatwad." If this had been the movies, it would have been one of those shots where the background raced away from me. "It can't be..." I thought. I went into Macys and asked to use their phone, dialing my number. I let it go to voicemail, and heard something I hadn't thought about in twenty years. There used to be a TV show called *Aqua Teen Hunger Force*. Each episode was only fifteen minutes long, and it was about fast-food items that solved crimes. Actually, they didn't even solve crimes, they stop being detectives in the first season. It was one of the longest-running shows on Cartoon Network, and I'm a big fan. I was such a big fan that I mailed some of my fan art to Cartoon Network in Atlanta, and they put it on the Season Four DVD. Sharing your love of *ATHF* is tough, though, because when you try to explain the show to people, they don't believe you. The show sounds insane, because it is. When I was a kid, I owned the first few seasons on DVD. The Season 3 DVD of *Aqua Teen Hunger Force* had these audio recordings you could put on your answering machine, like one of the characters would say "Hey, I can't come to the phone right now..." One of these gag messages was from the character Meatwad, who is literally a naive, slow-witted ball of ground meat. You can listen to the original messages by clicking {{https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=Uk7mtkwVEi4||here}}. Well, twenty years ago, a teen in Lafayette, Colorado thought it would be hilarious to use one of those messages, and put it on his phone. What he quickly realized was that *Aqua Teens* is a very niche fandom, and people who heard the message were more likely to be confused than amused. He deleted the gag message and forgot about it. **Twenty years later, that audio recording from Aqua Teen Hunger Force somehow became my default voicemail message again.** I went back to the AT&T store and learned how to change my voicemail message back to a generic playback of my phone number. It boggles my mind that this audio recording was stored on an AT&T server for the past twenty years. I'm left with an even more ominous question: What else from our lives is out there that we don't even know about? @@comm

Kris: What an odd occurrence, and that they would have even still kept that.

Makes me realize that I havent heard my own voicemail recording in probably a decade or more, an interesting thought.

@@comm :author

OP: Yes, your voicemail greeting is something you rarely think about.

***** !!TITLE Small Things, and a Big Thing !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2023-02-11 !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ The first commercial publication from Nantucket E-Books will be released this weekend. It's called *Small Things: The Poetry of Allie Flint*, and it collects the works of Allie Flint, poet laureate of Lafayette, Colorado. Customers have been able to place orders to have their name listed in the e-book as a customer, and order comb-bound paperback copies with their name in it. The e-book will be published on this site, for free, tomorrow, February 12@th@, and I will start delivering physical copies. I have been experimenting with building physical copies of books from Shanty@tm@ markup files since last year. I won't go into all of it, but the software I have developed makes it fairly easy to convert any e-book on the site into a comb-bound paperback. Here's some of the copies going out tomorrow: @@IMG :source ../../assets/allieflintstack.jpg :alt Photo of a stack of comb-bound paperback copies of Small Things, The Poetry of Allie Flint, the first commercial physical release for Nantucket E-Books. I have learned a lot from this campaign, and I hope to share some of what I learned in a future blog post. Interested in ordering a physical copy? You can still do so by clicking {{../../../masterassets/campaigns/allieflint/allieflint-order.php||here}}. ***** !!TITLE Winnie-the-Pooh Back Up for Beta-Testing !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2023-01-18 !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ I have re-uploaded Winnie-the-Pooh to this site as part of beta-testing for Version 3.0 of the software. You can read *Winnie the Pooh* {{https://nantucketebooks.com/ebooks/pd/winnie-the-pooh||here}}. There are two features I'd like to highlight: First, all 115 images in *Winnie-the-Pooh* have alt text. In my year on Mastodon, I have learned that alt text on images is not only a nice thing to have, but a vitual necessity for many. I have tried to include alt text whenever I post images to Mastodon or Twitter, though my record is far from perfect. It's easy to add alt text to images in Nantucket E-Books: the three kinds of images: cover images (@@COVERMG), illustrations (@@ILLO), and "plain" images (@@IMG), all support an ":alt" attribute, which will add an "alt" attribute to the element in the rendered HTML. Second, E.H. Shepard's illustrations for *Winnie-the-Pooh* are all monochrome, for the most part, and I have tried to take advantage of that. I have edited all the images to use transparent backgrounds. In normal mode, that means the images really meld into the seashell backgrunds of the e-books. In dark mode, the images invert, giving readers white drawings on an off-dark background. With Nantucket E-Books@tm@, PNG images can be integrated into the e-books on a deep level, they really feel like they are part of the e-book. What do you think? If you're a proponent of alt text, I would like to know how I can write better alt text. If you have criticisms, this beta-testing period is the ideal time for me to take my licks. Send your comments to **njb@nantucketebooks.com**, and I'll include them on this page. ***** !!TITLE Excellent Blog Post on Creeping Missions !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2023-01-11 !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Brad Taunt's a guy I met on Mastodon. I really like his work on web design minimailism: {{https://bt.ht/notice/||his version of the CSS checkbox hack}}, {{https://bt.ht/gallery/||a simpler CraigsList gallery}}, or {{https://bt.ht/1kb/||fitting a website in just one kilobyte}}. Taunt is one of a few people who motivated me to build the static-site generator I use for this site's blog. His {{https://bt.ht/one-thing/||latest blog post (2023-01-09)}} is one I heartily agree with. He describes having to replace his Keurig coffee-maker twice in five months. A case of planned obsolescence? No, says Taunt, the problem was the Keurig was designed to do too much. His Keurig combines the pod method with a percolator, and what was intended to provide more choice and less footprint on the kitchen counter instead offers more points of failure. I very much agree. Each new feature added to software means more complexity, more bugs, more work to maintain. When I'm working on Nantucket E-Books, I try to put as much work into taking unnecessary features out, as putting new features in. A simpler e-book, and simpler software to build the e-books, means it can be maintained for less time and money, and will break less often for the reader. I don't see the push for a simple e-book as conflicting with my goal to make the best e-books on the planet: the best e-book should be simple, while providing superlative reading experience. I would encourage anyone starting out in software development to build an application that does one thing, but does it very well. You'll make things a whole lot easier, not just for yourself, but your customers as well. ***** !!TITLE EPUB Is Good For Readers, and Browser-Based E-Books Are Even Better !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Louisville, CO !!DATE 2023-01-09 !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ I woke up this morning to a new video from Shane Lochlann Black. If you don't know Black, he writes fantasy and space-adventure fiction at {{https://shane.lochlann.black/||shane.lochlann.black}}, and has his own platform for selling e-books. Here a link to his video: {{https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txPB54xDsYM&pp=wgIGCgQQAhgB||Why EPUB Electronic Books Are Good For Readers}} If I could summarize Black's points, e-books are much cheaper than physical books, and do not suffer from the same problems of scale as physical books. He mentions that an e-book selling for $1.00 can be as profitable as an $18.00 paperback, once printing, shipping, storage, and marketing are added in. Readers benefit, in Black's words, from "reduced risk", when the cost of a book goes down, the potential benefits of buying a book outweigh the potential risks. I agree with Black: when writers pass on the benefits of e-books to their readers, readers win. I would go further than Black, and say that browser-based e-books, like the ones on {{https://nantucketebooks.com||nantucketebooks.com}}, are even better for readers than the EPUB books he mentions. A browser-based e-book does not require and special apps or devices, such as the Kindle, to read. Browser-based books are even easier to share than EPUBs: I have authors on my site who have told me that sharing their e-books with readers was as simple as putting a link up on social media, and they love that. My hat's off to Shane Lochlann Black, for sharing what's great about e-books. Check out his work at {{https://shane.lochlann.black||shane.lochlann.black}}, and check out my site's e-books for free at {{https://nantucketebooks.com/ebooks||nantucketebooks.com/ebooks}}. ***** !!TITLE Classic Science Fiction Hard to Find !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Lafayette, CO !!DATE 2023-01-01 !!COPYRIGHT 2023 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Last year, I marathoned *Harlan Ellison's Watching*, a commentary series that ran on the Sci-Fi channel in the 1990's (an easy feat, the whole show takes about two hours to watch). In {{https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=6YU0jzpUhv4||Episode Two of the show}}, Ellison lists several science-fiction authors that he thinks readers should be familiar with, before anyone talks to him about the genre. The authors were: Charles Beaumont, Walter M. Miller, Cordwainer Smith, Murray Leinster, Henry Kuttner, Richard Matheson, C.M. Kornbluth, Leigh Brackett, Stanley G. Weinbaum, Jack Finney, and Avram Davidson. Today is New Year's Day, and I drove into Boulder with family to visit the Barnes & Noble bookstore. I wanted to see how many of Ellison's recommendations were on the shelves, and the answer was... one. There were no Ellison books on the shelves of Barnes & Noble, not even his anthology *Dangerous Visions*, considered one of the best short story collections in SF. The only author from Ellison's list I could find was Richard Matheson, who had three or so titles in the Horror section. For classic science fiction, there was a healthy supply of Asimov, Bradbury, and Frank Herbert. Still, if you want to dig just a little bit deeper than the fundamentals, you'd be out of luck at Barnes & Noble. Still, if you looked hard enough on the shelves, you could find some points of encouragement. One of Ellison's proteges, Octavia Butler, is very well-represented in the science-ficton section, as is Connie Wills, who Ellison considered one of the finest writers of her generation. I found *Dhalgren*, a novel by Samuel "Chip" Delany, who co-wrote the short story *The Power of the Nail* with Ellison, and the posthumous novel *Uranus* by Ellison's contemporary Ben Bova. Robert Bloch was in the Horror section, of course, with a lone copy of *Psycho*. I should emphasize that Barnes & Noble does not exist to preserve human knowledge and promote cultural literacy, rather, it exists to make a profit. It's in the business of selling books that are going to, well, sell. If someone wants to dig deep into the history of a genre, America's largest (and pretty much only) national bookstore chain will not help too much, they will need to do their digging at the small independent and/or used bookstores around the country. In the Boulder area, this will include The Read Queen and Noble Treasures and the Lafayette Flea Market in Lafayette, Barbed Wire Books and the Book Emporium in Longmont, Blue Owl Books in Nederland, and MacDonald Bookshop in Estes Park. I also believe Nantucket E-Books has a role to play in getting the works of forgotten authors out to the public. E-Books do not have the same economies-of-scale that physical book publishing has, and Nantucket E-Books are easier to share, with a little bit more culture in their presentation, than other free-culture e-books one could name. In 2023, you can expect more short story collections from genre authors. We can expect the works of the authors Ellison found so essential getting a new lease on life, and then some! ***** !!TITLE Books I Read In 2022 !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Lafayette, CO !!DATE 2022-12-31 !!COPYRIGHT 2022 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Inspired by Art Garfunkel, I have been keeping a record of the books I read each year. 2023 will mark five years of this project, which may be found at {{https://www.ndhfilms.com/mybooks||ndhfilms.com/mybooks}}. The big reading effort for 2022 has been going through the works of Harlan Ellison. Despite winning multiple awards in the science fiction, fantasy, and mystery genres, and writing over 1,200 short stories, it's very hard to find Ellison books at bookstores. That changed last year when I met Buffalo, a supremely talented writer (see his work in {{https://nantucketebooks.com/ebooks/quarterup/quarterup_2022_q3/#Meditation%2C_Zen%2C_and_the_Art_of_Pinball||Issue 01 of Quarter Up!, our new pinball newsletter}} who lives about 125 miles east of Denver. He runs a fascinating store called Buffalo's Last Stand, and his bookstore in the back had an extensive Harlan Ellison collection. I bought as much as I could afford, and began working my way through it in May of this year. I've read through eight Ellison books in 2022: one novella (*Run for the Stars*), one collection of quotes, and six short story collections. It adds up to over 120 stories, which I have started cataloging in {{https://www.ndhfilms.com/other/ellison||a directory on my personal site}}. I've even gotten some help from author AT Gonzalez in writing synopses of stories (thanks, AT!). If you would like to contribute to my Ellison directory, please email nicholas@ndhfilms.com. Some other highlights for the year are *McTeague*, Frank Norris' epic story of greed and jealousy in 1900's San Francisco, and *The Monk*, a gothic novel about the most saintly monk in all of Spain, and his long, torturous descent into sin. I became acquainted with the work of Jack Finney through his time travel novel *Time and Again*, and his short story collection *The Third Level*, which Stephen King thought was better SF than *The Twilight Zone*. *Pigeons From Hell* was an outstanding horror story from Conan creator Robert E. Howard, reading it was a highlight of a hellish summer RV trip. I read *The Wasp Factory*, the gruesome debut novel of Iain Banks. I didn't think too much of it, though I lay the blame for that on me, and not Banks: I took the story seriously, when the spectacular violence was apparently tongue-in-cheek. *Somerset Holmes* was a fun graphic novel, and *Thinner* was an exciting story from Stephen King. I enjoy King's "Bachman Books", with their streamlined narratives and a focus on the horrors of the material world. A smattering of Lee and Andrew Child's Jack Reacher novels, my gold standard for literary entertainment, filled out the rest of the year. Have any thoughts on my year in books? Send a comment to **njb@nantucketebooks.com**. ***** !!TITLE A Christmas Carol is Back on Nantucket E-Books !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2022-12-16 !!COPYRIGHT 2022 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ @@IMG :source ../../assets/christmascarol_frontispiece.jpg *NOTE: This is a repost of information from a recent Patreon update.* To beta-test Version 3 of the software I'm pleased to announce that A Christmas Carol is back on Nantucket E-Books. This version makes use of the new audiobook player I mentioned in the last post. This time, when I say built-in audiobooks, I mean *built-in*. Readers can listen to the audiobook while reading the text, and the client-side audiobook player makes the e-books more accessible for readers on text-only browsers. The e-book for this edition of A Christmas Carol is the wonderful dramatic reading from Librivox, narrated by the great Elizabeth Klett. One treat of this audiobook is hearing "MB", who played Laurie in the Librivox audiobook for Little Women, as Scrooge's joyous nephew Fred. If that won't get you to try out the audiobook player for this beta version, nothing will! Please reply back here with your criticisms and other comments, or email njb@nantucketebooks.com The thing that has helped the most in improving Nantucket E-Books has been honest criticism. The best feedback I ever got was asking one of my patrons if a menu design I was working on was ****, and they told me, "Yes, it looks like ****." This one comment saved me from taking a wrong path that would have taking a long time to backtrack on. I will aim to upload more beta tests soon, but let's start off with this one. ***** !!TITLE Please Welcome Author Erin Bern !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2022-06-03 !!COPYRIGHT 2022 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ @@IMG :source ../../assets/abyss-station_cover.png I'd like to welcome a new author to the website, Erin Bern. She recently submitted the intro to a story called {{../../../ebooks/erinbern/abyss-station||Abyss Station}}. Here's the description: *"Welcome to Abyss Station. Please watch your step and enjoy your stay. Beyond the horizon, your journey to infinity awaits. We are not responsible for any human spaghettification which occurs."* Please check out her atmospheric introduction. "A journey to infinity awaits..." and spaghettification aside, it's a journey I look forward to taking. Erin Bern's website is {{https://erinbern.com/||erinbern.com}}. Also, be sure to check out her site's {{https://erinbern.com/about/||About Page}} for links to some fun recipes and other info. Follow her on Mastodon at **@erinbern@mstdn.social**. *Abyss Station* is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommerical-ShareAlike license. I'm glad to see more free-culture authors using the site. If you want to leave a comment for this blog post, or you want to have your work published with Nantucket E-Books, please email me at **njb@nantucketebooks.com**. ***** !!TITLE Welcome, New Mastodon Followers !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2022-05-16 !!COPYRIGHT 2022 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ @@IMG :source ../../assets/otto.png :alt Otto the Nantucket Whale A kind shout-out from FediFollows has netted me a bunch of new followers on Mastodon. I thought it was a good opportunity to introduce myself. My name is Nicholas, and I'm the developer of Nantucket E-Books. My goal is to make it easier for authors to create and share the best e-books on the planet. Want to help the project? The best way to help is to become an author on the platform. There's no hosting fee during this trial phase. If you're interested, email me at **njb@nantucketebooks.com** Otherwise, you can really help out by becoming a Patron at {{https://www.patreon.com/nantucketebooks||Patreon.com/nantucketebooks}}. What makes Nantucket E-Books so good? Here's a few reasons: - They are meant to be read in the browser, no special apps or devices needed. - They're easy to share and to self-host. - They look good on phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops. - Built-in audiobooks! - These e-books are 100% **DRM-free**. - The interactive parts, like dark mode, note-taking, text-resizing, and favoriting, are all powered by free (as in freedom) software. - They are written using my Shanty@tm@ markup language, which makes files easy to share and store, and lets authors focus on writing. Check out this {{../../../ebooks/njb/nantucket||this demo}}, plus this fantastic short story called {{../../../ebooks/RileyDuffield/true-loves-kiss||True Love's Kiss}} by Riley Duffield. Please send me a comment (see instructions below). And again, welcome! ***** !!TITLE Version 2 Released !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2022-05-05 !!COPYRIGHT 2022 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ @@IMG :source ../../assets/otto.png :alt Otto the Nantucket Whale Version 2 of Nantucket E-Books was released today. A big thank-you to my supporters on Patreon, and the authors and readers who helped with beta testing, offered suggestions, and helped make this release possible. The big changes in Version 2 include: a new file structure, making it easier to share e-books and read them offline, a complete rewrite of the stylesheet, improved dark mode and note management, and the ability for authors to choose a serif font for their e-books. To read through more of the changes, and to check out the actual files, head over to the {{./versions||Versions page}}. I gave a livestream presentation on YouTube, which you can watch {{https://youtu.be/xYsgSdvwAts||here}}. {{https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=xYsgSdvwAts||Here's an Invidious link}}, if you want to avoid YouTube's proprietary JavaScript. Thanks to everyone who showed up for the livestream, and for asking some questions in the Q&A section. @@IMG :source ../../../ebooks/RileyDuffield/true-loves-kiss/assets/images/TrueLovesKiss-Cover.jpg :alt Cover of the short story True Love's Kiss by Riley Duffield At the end of the livestream, I introduced an excellent new short story from Riley Duffield called {{../../../ebooks/RileyDuffield/true-loves-kiss||True Love's Kiss}}. It's an imaginative fantasy short story. On Mastodon after the stream, Duffield wrote that he was inspired by the premise, "What if there were a good orc?" I think he explores that question well. Have questions about Version 2, or other thoughts? Send me a comment and I'll post it below. //!!TITLE The Free-Software Life, Part 1: Twitter and Rainbowstream //!!AUTHOR NJB //!!LOCATION Broomfield, CO //!!DATE 2022-04-10 //!!COPYRIGHT 2022 Nantucket E-Books LLC //!!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ //This is the first in a series about my attempts to use more free software in my life, and less proprietary software. //Some parts of this transition have been easy, and some have been god-awful. I'll start of by talking about one of the tougher transitions: Twitter. //Why use Twitter at all? Objectively, I don't need to. There are other social media networks that run on free software, such as Mastodon. I've started using Mastodon more, and I like its smaller, decentralized feel. I also like chatting on IRC. Mastodon and IRC feel a lot better for having conversations and meeting like-minded people. //I plan to use Mastodon and IRC more than Twitter, but I cannot give up Twitter entirely. I use Twitter because it lets me keep in touch with friends and colleagues. Some of the authors and illustrators using Nantucket E-Books@tm@ are on Twitter, so it allows me to keep in touch with them. //I also use Twitter for the same reason the Free Software Foundation does: it lets me communicate the importance of Free Software to people who are unaware of it. //This sets up the challenge: can I use Twitter without using nonfree software? It turns out the answer is 'yes', and there's a few options available. //#READING TWEETS //First, if you want to *read* tweets, you can use {{https://nitter.net/}}. With Nitter, you just type in a username, and you can see that account's tweets, and replies to their tweets. It's a pretty simple user interface. If you're using older hardware, like my ThinkPad T60, you'll find Nitter is a faster, no-bull experience. Nitter does not require any JavaScript to use. //#WRITING TWEETS //What about writing? This is a bit more complicated. //{{https://www.networkworld.com/article/2345916/updating-twitter-with-curl-and-wget.html||Back in Twitter's early days, circa 2008}}, you could actually send tweets with nothing more than cURL or Wget. The cURL request would look something like this: //*c*curl -u userame:password -d status="Text to be tweeted out" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml*c* //A tweet using Wget would look like this: //*c*wget --keep-session-cookies --http-user=emailaddress --http-password=password --post-data="status=Text to be tweeted out" http://twitter.com:80/statuses/update.xml*c* //Twitter didn't like people doing this. Heaven forbid the advertisers be deprived of one dime! These days, if you want to send a tweet, you have three options: //1) Apply to become a developer to access Twitter's API, and figure it out yourself. You could, in theory, send a tweet via cURL or Wget if you have an API key, or you could build your own client. //2) Use a third-party client that's already figured it out. //3) Use an official, proprietary Twitter client. //I chose option two. The most popular third-party Twitter client is {{https://github.com/orakaro/rainbowstream||Rainbowstream}}, which lets users send tweets from the command line. It also shows you a 'stream' of tweets from the people you follow. The stream is color-coded, which helps with readability. Rainbowstream is written in Python, and uses the MIT License. //The Free Software Foundation uses {{https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/new-changes-to-twitter-make-it-even-worse-for-free-software-users||a combination of Nitter and Rainbowstream to manage its Twitter account}}. //I'll mention one other command-line Twitter client called {{https://github.com/oysttyer/oysttyer||Oysttyer}} (note the 'TTY' in the middle), which is written in Perl. Oysttyer is pretty simple to set up and use after cloning from GitHub. One downside to Oysttyer is its monochrome display, making the timeline harder to read. Oysttyer also uses a strange license called the Floodgap Free Software License, which almost reads like a parody of the GPL. I will discuss the FFSL at a later time. //So, Rainbowstream it is, then. //#INSTALLING AND RUNNING RAINBOWSTREAM //Rainbowstream is pretty easy to set up... in most cases. It was not an easy setup for me. //Remember, Rainbowstream is written in Python, and installed using the 'pip' package manager. Rainbowstream's developer further recommends running Rainbowstream in a virtual environment, aka Python's 'virtualenv'. //Here's how you would normally install Rainbowstream: //1) Run *c*virtualenv -p /usr/bin/python3 venv*c* This creates the virtual environment for Rainbowstream. //2) Run *c*source venv/bin/activate*c* This turns on the virtual environment. //3) Run *c*pip install rainbowstream*c* //To actually use Rainbowstream, run *c*source venv/bin/activate*c*, and then run *c*rainbowstream*c*. ***** !!TITLE My LibrePlanet 2022 Talk !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2022-03-23 !!COPYRIGHT 2022 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ @@IMG :source ../../assets/ebooktalk.png :alt Screenshot of my livestream presentation at LibrePlanet 2022 On March 19@th@, I gave a livestream presentation at LibrePlanet 2022, about ethical e-books. I gave an overview of Nantucket E-Books, the philosophical basis for freedom-respecting e-books, and what was involved in creating ethical e-books. You can watch it on {{https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/building-an-ethical-e-book/||LibrePlanet's MediaGoblin page}}. I was most happy that the talk prompted a lot of discussion in the LibrePlanet IRC channel. I've already connected with quite a few people over on Mastodon who have taken an interest in Nantucket E-Books, and have already helped improve this blog. Please e-mail me your comments, I look forward to sharing more of my progress with you all. ***** !!TITLE Quick Update to Blog Commenting !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2022-03-23 !!COPYRIGHT 2022 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ I've updated the site's commenting system a little bit. I'm trying out comments by email, which I will manually curate. This is a low-tech and fairly secure solution, though I understand it won't scale. Originally, I included a "mailto" link which would generate an email with the URL of the blog in the subject line. The problem with 'mailto' is that it opens the visitor's default e-mail client, and most people use a web client like Gmail. I've changed it to just keep the URL in an 'input' element which people can copy and paste into an e-mail subject line. ***** !!TITLE Version 2 Announcement, and a New Blog !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2022-03-23 !!DESC A safer, faster blogging experience !!COPYRIGHT 2022 Nantucket E-Books LLC !!LICENSE CC-BY-SA 4.0 :link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Some big changes have been happening at Nantucket E-Books@tm@. First, I had an amazing time talking at LibrePlanet 2022, about the importance of ethical e-books. I met some interesting people, who I have now followed on {{https://fosstodon.org||Fosstodon}}. Oh yeah, that's right, I signed up for Mastodon, the free software social media network. I'm enjoying it quite a bit. #VERSION 2: COMING MAY 5@th@ My biggest announcement right now is that Version 2 will be released on **Thursday, May 5@th@, at 7 PM Mountain**. At that time, I'll be giving a livestream presentation on Version 2 over on my {{https://www.youtube.com/ndhfilms/live||YouTube channel}}. I've been hard at work on Version 2 since last autumn, and I'm already working with beta-testers on e-books. Version 2 is a major improvement to Nantucket E-Books. Readers will find a better reading experience than ever, and it will be even easier for authors to create, share, and host their own e-books. #A NEW BLOG My second announcement is about the complete overhaul of this blog. Since its creation, this blog has been written in the Shanty markup language, the same language used to write e-books on this site, as well as my presentations. Initially, the Shanty file was rendered into HTML using a client-side script. It worked quite well, and was even compatible with {{https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/||GNU LibreJS}}, a browser extension that checks for a free software license before running JavaScript. The parser for the blog was quite limited, and I wanted to take it to the next level. I set out to make a blog that kept the simplicity of writing in Shanty, while being easier to read. I was really interested in a static blog: no JavaScript required at all. On top of that, I wanted separate pages for each post, no more loading it onto one clunky page. This blog post shows you my work so far. I've written this blog in Shanty in a plain-text file, and then a Node script parses it into the necessary HTML files. Now, there's a nice main page for the blog listing all the posts, and each post has its own static page. You can even comment on blog posts now! I was inspired by {{https://tdarb.org/blog/poormans-comment-system.html||Bradley Taunt's blog post about using e-mail for commenting}}. Send your comment to me as an email, and I'll add it to this page. Thanks for getting me to step up my game, Bradley! This blog incorporates some features from the forthcoming Version 2 of the e-book software. There's support for better typography, including curly quotes, "like this", curly apostrophes (ain't they great), actual ellipses... and@em@gasp@em@ em dashes! All of these features will give e-books on this site a clean sheen, and can be easily added in Shanty. Anyway, that's all I have for now. Check back to this blog for more updates, and beta-tests of Version 2 e-books. @@comm

Algot: I hope your static post plan works for you.

I'm eager to see how version two comes out.

For what it's worth, the link to the email comment post gets embedded within your own blog post address.

Expected link: https://tdarb.org/blog/poormans-comment-system.html

Actual link: https://nantucketebooks.com/blog/2022/03/%E2%80%9Chttps://tdarb.org/blog/poormans-comment-system.html%E2%80%9D

Of course, that second active link leads to a 404 error.

@@comm :author NJB (OP) Hi Algot, thanks for letting me know. The problem was that I was adding in an extra set of double-quotes when building the links. It seems browswers, when faced with that link, will put the URL for the current page in front of the link. Maybe the broswer is trying to make it work as a relative link within the current page? @@comm

Kris: Hey - the comment link relies on having your default mail client setup, which if you are using browser based (like Gmail) it just takes you to a setup menu.

Not sure there is a way around that easily beyond copy/paste (what I did) or form submission but then you lose the traceability of email.

@@comm :author NJB (OP) Yes, that will be a problem. I'll look to replace it with a text field that contains the URL, that way people can just copy that and paste it into the subject line. UPDATE: See the blog post after this one for my fix. ***** !!TITLE Nantucket E-Books@tm@ Recognized by the Free Software Foundation !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2021-07-08 !!DESC Good news from Nantucket E-Books@tm@! @@IMG :source ../../assets/nantucketondbd.png :title Nantucket E-Books@tm@ listed on the FSF's guide to DRM-free ebooks. Nantucket E-Books@tm@ is now listed in the Free Software Foundation's guide to {{https://www.defectivebydesign.org/guide/ebooks||DRM-free e-books}}. This is an exciting development for me. When I set out to make the best e-books on the planet, I knew that meant creating an e-book that respects the reader's freedom. As an author, I want to make it easy for readers to share my work, not punish them for wanting to share it. My e-books can be read in any modern web browser, and you can even download them for offline reading. In addition, I am releasing a small update to the platform today, Version 1.5.1. You may read about it, as always, on the {{./versions||versions page}}. This update includes syntax for including code examples (great for documentation), and improved functionality of generated links in some browsers (esp. GNU IceCat). I will be hosting a livestream about these updates tonight at 6 PM Mountain Time, which you may watch at {{https://youtube.com/ndhfilms/live||youtube.com/ndhfilms/live}}. I will update this post with a link to a recording of the stream once it's finished. ***** !!TITLE Two 20@th@ Century Classics Added !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2021-06-24 Two new public-domain books have been added to the site: {{./ebooks/pd/anthem.html||Anthem}} by Ayn Rand, and {{./ebooks/pd/Tarzan_of_the_Apes.html||Tarzan of the Apes}} by Edgar Rice Burroughs. @@IMG :source ../../assets/anthem_cover_vector.svg Anthem was first published in 1938. It tells the story of Equality 7-2521, a man living in a future where independent thought is a crime. Society has reverted back to pre-industrial technology, and any innovation is stifled in the name of social unity. Anthem is a powerful defense of individualism, and has a brevity and clarity that Rand's later novels lack. It's also worth reading as an early example of dystopian fiction, which inspired the Rush rock opera 2112. @@IMG :source ../../assets/tarzanoftheapes_cover.jpg Tarzan of the Apes is the first of two dozen novels written by Edgar Rice Burroughs about the King of the Apes. Tarzan is one of the most enduring characters in 20th-century literature, inspiring adaptations in film, radio, and television for over 100 years. The novel has colonial themes that might be challenging for modern-day audiences, and it's well-worth reading for that reason alone. It's also worth reading as one of the archetypal adventure stories of its time, with a rousing narrative that retains its power over 100 years later. These e-books of public domain works are supported by my patrons on Patreon. If you would like to support the creation of future e-books, and the further development of this platform, please visit {{https://www.patreon.com/nantucketebooks||patreon.com/nantucketebooks}}. ***** !!TITLE PO Box and FAQ Updates !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Broomfield, CO !!DATE 2021-06-20 You can now reach Nantucket E-Books@tm@ by mail! Our new address is PO Box 596, Broomfield, Colorado, 80038. If a writer so chooses, they can submit an e-book to the site via physical media. Currently, there is no hosting fee for writers using this site. Once the trial period ends, there will be multiple ways to pay. My hope is that one available payment method will be money-order, which will allow writers to pay anonymously. Customers, in general, should have the option of paying in a way that does not subject them to tracking and other forms of data-collection. Some other sites, such as Liberapay, offer customers the option of paying via money-order, and I look forward to giving it a try. The PO Box is now listed on most pages of the site, usually at the bottom of the page, and in the CONTACT section of the FAQ page and the Shanty markup manual. Speaking of the FAQ page, it's been updated. Now that the Arrowhead text editor has replaced the old e-book generator, the FAQ page has been updated with the basics of using Arrowhead to turn your text into a Nantucket E-Book. I have also added information on how to register for the site. ***** !!TITLE Version 1.5 and Free Software !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Lafayette, CO !!DATE 2021-04-22 @@IMG :source ../../assets/otto.PNG Version 1.5 of the Nantucket E-Books@tm@ software has been released. It includes multitudinous bug fixes and cosmetic improvements, and some features have been removed. Among the new features are a home button in the menu for easier navigation, new tutorials in the Arrowhead text editor, and syntax for highlighting, underlining, and crossing-out text. I am also pleased to say that Nantucket E-Books@tm@ is now a free software project. All client-side JavaScript on nantucketebooks.com has been released under the GPL Version 3, while the {{./shantydocs||Shanty markup language manual}} and the {{./faq||FAQ page}} have been released under the GNU Free Documentation License. One of my goals with Nantucket E-Books@tm@ was to make an e-book that respected the reader's freedom. I accomplished part of that goal by creating e-books that were DRM-free, and saved reader information to the reader's device, instead of a server. To make Nantucket E-Books@tm@ a fully free-software project, I consulted the Free Software Foundation's guide to releasing JavaScript under a Free Software license. All pages on the site that run JavaScript, including all e-books, have a link to a new Software Licenses page, which provides a link to each script's license, and a link to each script's source code. This makes the website compliant with GNU LibreJS, a Mozilla browser plugin that tries to prevent non-free JavaScript from running. You may review the changes in 1.5 on the Nantucket E-Books@tm@ {{./versions||Versions}} page. ***** !!TITLE The Great Gatsby, and Version 1.3 !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Lafayette, CO !!DATE 2021-02-26 @@IMG :source ../../assets/greatgatsbycover.jpg :title The classic cover of The Great Gatsby As you may have heard, The Great Gatsby is now in the Public Domain. One of my goals for 2021 was bring this classic novel to Nantucket E-Books@tm@. You can read F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic {{./ebooks/pd/Great_Gatsby,_The.html||here}}. As I was adapting the text this week, I thought it would be fun to also create e-books of all the books mentioned within The Great Gatsby. I think this will be very useful for readers and educators, as it provides a glimpse into the literary world of Fitzgerald's Jazz Age. The other e-books I created were Clarence Mulford's western {{./ebooks/pd/Hopalong_Cassidy.html||Hopalong Cassidy}}, the Great War romance {{./ebooks/pd/Simon_Called_Peter.html||Simon Called Peter}}, and the travelogue {{./ebooks/pd/Stoddard's_Lectures,_Volume_I.html||Stoddard Lectures Volume I}}. In the course of making these books, I began wanting some new features, and found some new bugs, so Version 1.3 was developed. The biggest new features are markup for drop caps (the big letter at the start of fancy books), and something I call 'flippable images.' It's hard to explain 'flippable images' in words, but it's a way to make certain images feel embedded within the e-book, thanks to the wonders of PNG transparency layers. Flippable images are ideal for images of handwriting, or monochrome drawings such as sketches. When set up properly, they will also respond to dark mode. You can read more about how to use flippable images in the {{./shantydocs#flippableImages||Shanty manual}}. @@IMG :source ../../assets/flippableImageFinished.gif :title A 'flippable image' at work! You can read more about what's in Version 1.3 on the {{./versions||versions page}}. This was the first update where I tried to implement an actual 'system', and I think it helped. I will produce a livestream covering the updates in 1.3 this coming week. Lastly, I wanted to share this cover I made for Simon Called Peter. I'm a big fan of SVG files. SVGs look sharp at any size, so you can get a high-quality image out of a tiny, tiny file. The image below is only a kilobyte. I use SVG for all the menu icons in Nantucket E-Books@tm@, and I hope to use this platform to realize some of the incredible potential that SVGs have to offer. @@IMG :source ../../assets/simoncalledpetercover.svg :title The SVG cover for Simon Called Peter. ***** !!TITLE Version 1.2: Updates to Manuals and Offline Reader !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Lafayette, CO !!DATE 2021-02-20 @@IMG :source ../../assets/audioButtonControlExplanation-lines.JPG :title Diagram of audiobook controls, from the updated FAQ page. I have made updates to the site in support of Version 1.2 of the Nantucket E-Books@tm@ software: First, the Offline Reader has been updated, with support for Version 1.2 e-books. {{./nantucket-e-books-offline.zip||You may download it here.}} As with the main site, the Offline Reader is backwards-compatible with older e-books. One of the most exciting new features in 1.2 is keyboard-based controls for the audiobook player. These controls are outlined in a {{./faq#usingTheAudiobookPlayer||new guide on the FAQ page}}, explaining every detail of using the Nantucket E-Books@tm@ audiobook player. Lastly, the {{./shantydocs||Shanty markup manual}} has been updated to reflect the changes in Version 1.2. This includes the ability to {{./shantydocs#indentingPoetry||indent lines of poem stanzas}}. You can always check what's been updated in Shanty by reading the {{./shantydocs#updateLog||update log}} at the end of the manual. The {{./versions||versions page}} has been updated to make a clearer distinction between versions of the Nantucket E-Books@tm@ software. I have also included a link to the latest version's livestream announcement. I will make a future blog post about the keyboard controls for audiobooks. ***** !!TITLE Version 1.2 Has Been Released !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Lafayette, CO !!DATE 2021-02-19 @@IMG :source ../../assets/whale.PNG Yesterday, I premiered Version 1.2 of Nantucket E-Books@tm@ during a {{https://youtu.be/32jHafX-_ng||a livestream presentation}}. Major new features include keyboard-based playback controls for audiobooks, line indentation for poetry, and audio-detection for image orientation. You can read more about these updates on the Nantucket E-Books@tm@ {{./versions||versions page}}. I am also proud to announce that Nantucket E-Books@tm@ has received its first patron. Thank you for your support, Tom. You can review the updated Shanty syntax in the {{./shantydocs||Shanty manual}}, and information on the new audio playback controls on the {{./faq||FAQ Page}}. Thanks to everyone who watched the livestream. ***** !!TITLE Version 1.2 Releasing This Thursday !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Lafayette, CO !!DATE 2021-02-16 @@IMG :source ../../assetswhale.PNG Version 1.2 of Nantucket E-Books@tm@ will be released on Thursday, February 18th. Every part of the core software is receiving an update. The updates include improved performance, increased freedom for writers and readers using the platform, and new markup syntax for poetry. I'll be discussing the updates during a livestream that day, at 6 PM Mountain Time. You can watch the livestream at {{https://www.youtube.com/ndhfilms/live||YouTube.com/NDHFilms/live}}. In addition to the updates, I'll be talking about how I used the Shanty markup language to update my personal website, {{https://www.ndhfilms.com||NDHFilms.com}}. Shanty is a very powerful markup language, and it allows me to automate a lot of the routine tasks involved in updating a site. Lastly, I'll be making a major announcement on the future of Nantucket E-Books@tm@ that you won't want to miss. I will end the livestream with a Q&A session. You can ask questions in the YouTube live chat, or on my {{https://www.twitter.com/ndhfilms||Twitter page}}. ***** !!TITLE New Look !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Lafayette, CO !!DATE 2021-01-15 I've redesigned the main page of nantucketebooks.com. The "About" section is now at the top of the page, and has been rewritten to provide more information. The rewrite conveys the benefits of Nantucket E-Books@tm@ to both writers and readers, with examples and demo images. The rest of the site will be edited over the weekend. I would appreciate your feedback on the new main page. You can reach me on Twitter ({{https://www.twitter.com/nantucketebooks||@nantucketebooks}}), or at njb[at]nantucketebooks[dot][com]. ***** !!TITLE Version 1.1 Premieres Today !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Lafayette, CO !!DATE 2020-12-29 @@IMG :source ../../assets/candide_cover.png :title Cover of the Nantucket E-Book for Candide. Version 1.1 of Nantucket E-Books@tm@ is released today. Among the updates are autoplay for audiobooks, support for multiple footnotes in one paragraph, and new markup for audiobook credits. You can review all the new features of 1.1 on the {{./versions||versions page}}. You can see all these features at work in the newest e-book on the site: {{./ebooks/pd/Candide.html||Candide, by Voltaire}}. Candide is one of my favorite books, and I am very excited to share it with you. This e-book features a terrific public-domain audiobook, narrated by Ted Delorm. Thanks to the autoplay feature, listening to the audiobook is a smooth, seamless experience. The e-book also features extensive footnotes to help understand Voltaire's historical references. The markup for audiobook credits will be especially important for future audiobooks. Authors like The Human Trust are creating audiobooks with high production value, as seen in their cyberpunk novel {{./ebooks/humantrust/Curtains_Are_Blue,_Chapter_One,_The.html||The Curtains Are Blue}}, with multiple voice actors. It's important that their work be recognized, and the new syntax makes it easy to do so. New books are being added to the site on a regular basis. I'd like to thank the writers who are using Nantucket E-Books@tm@, and I hope you have a happy new year! ***** !!TITLE A Gift For The Christmas Season !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Lafayette, CO !!DATE 2020-12-22 @@IMG :source ../../assets/frontispiece.png :title Cratchit and Tiny Tim, in the Nantucket E-Book of A Christmas Carol. When I began creating Nantucket E-Books@tm@, I hoped it could make public-domain literature available to people using the best e-books on the planet. With Christmas upon us, I'm proud to present a Nantucket E-Book edition of the Charles Dickens classic {{./ebooks/pd/Christmas_Carol,_A.html||A Christmas Carol}}. It will be one of the site's Featured e-books until January 6th. A Christmas Carol is the first e-book in a new mission for this site, adapting public-domain books into Nantucket E-Books@tm@. Now, these books can be enjoyed on any device, with all the interactive features that make Nantucket E-Books@tm@ so unique. In addition, this edition of A Christmas Carol includes the excellent LibriVox audio drama, narrated by Elizabeth Klett. Meanwhile, the text is adapted from a Project Gutenberg e-book, featuring illustrations by George Williams. With this new Nantucket E-Books@tm@ initiative, I hope to combine the fine work of Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders, the very best audiobooks from Librivox, and the incredible power of Nantucket E-Books@tm@. It is rather fitting that this project start with a book about new beginnings, and rekindling our hope for the future. If you are interested in supporting this project, please visit {{https://www.patreon.com/nantucketebooks||the Nantucket E-Books@tm@ Patreon page}}. Thank you all, and have a Merry Christmas! ***** !!TITLE Get To Listening !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Lafayette, CO !!DATE 2020-12-19 @@IMG :source ../../assets/curtainscard.png :title Search results and favorited e-books will now show if they have an audiobook. The main page of the site has gotten some nice updates. Search results for e-books will now be labeled if they contain a built-in audiobook. If an audiobook is included, the search result will show a cassette tape icon at the bottom (see image above). This also applies to e-books in the Featured E-Books section, and to any e-books in your favorites section. So, be sure to check out some Nantucket E-Books@tm@ with audiobooks, like the Human Trust's new cyberpunk serial {{./ebooks/humantrust/Curtains_Are_Blue,_Chapter_One,_The.html||The Curtains Are Blue}}, or my own horror short story {{./ebooks/njb/Trash_Man,_The.html||The Trash Man}}. With Nantucket E-Books@tm@, you can listen and read in one place. ***** !!TITLE Please Welcome The Human Trust !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Lafayette, CO !!DATE 2020-12-13 @@IMG :source ../../assets/curtainscover-ls.jpg :title Cover image for The Curtains Are Blue, by The Human Trust A new writer's collective has joined the Nantucket E-Books@tm@ movement. They're called {{https://twitter.com/EncountersOf||The Human Trust}}, and they will be publishing their work on nantucketebooks.com in a serialized format. Their first work is The Curtains Are Blue, a cyberpunk novella set in the fifth millenium. It follows the career of schoolteacher Lydia Ashford, as she uses technology to fight for order in her chaotic classrooms. The Curtains Are Blue takes advantage of Nantucket's built-in audiobooks. The Human Trust has produced an outstanding audiobook for the novella, which includes a cast of voice actors, original music, and sound effects. They have set a high standard for the quality of audiobooks on nantucketebooks.com. Check out the {{./ebooks/humantrust/Curtains_Are_Blue,_Chapter_One,_The.html||first chapter}} of The Curtains Are Blue, which is currently featured on the front page of this site. Check back for new chapters in the coming year. I am very interested to find out how Ms. Ashford handles these hellraisers in her classroom. ***** !!TITLE Introducing Gypsy, by David W. Stoner !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Lafayette, CO !!DATE 2020-12-10 @@IMG :source ../../assets/gypsy-ls.jpg :title Cover image for Gypsy, by David Stoner Today, I am proud to announce a new short story on Nantucketebooks.com, {{./ebooks/davidwstoner/Gypsy.html||Gypsy}} by David W. Stoner. It can be found in the Featured e-books section of the site. Stoner is one of the first trial-phase authors for Nantucket E-Books@tm@. Stoner's works include the novel The Dance and Light and Shadow, and the short story collection The Dream. He is an outstanding author, and I am proud to present his short story, Gypsy. Here's a quick description: Gypsy is a story about magic and the mystery of time and space. Too often we are taught that time and space exist as physical concepts, when in fact, they do not exist, not in any real sense. We have been led to believe that these concepts hold meaning for us to give us a false sense of security. As Nietzsche said, 'When you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back at you.' Please enjoy Gypsy (link in the first paragraph), and check out more of Stoner's work at {{https://www.davidwstoner.net||davidwstoner.net}}. If you are interested in using Nantucket E-Books@tm@ for your writing, contact me at njb[at]nantucketebooks[dot][com], and please support {{https://www.patreon.com/nantucketebooks||Nantucket E-Books@tm@ on Patreon}}. ***** !!TITLE The Freedom To Write Anywhere !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Lafayette, CO !!DATE 2020-12-07 Yesterday, I got a very cool {{https://twitter.com/nantucketebooks/status/1335679712140652546?s=20||like on Twitter}} from {{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_August||screenwriter John August}}. August is also the creator of Highland, a MacOS text editor for screenplays and novels. In a retweet of his work on Highland 2, I pointed out how you could also write novels in Highland 2 using the {{./shantydocs||Shanty markup language}}. Every writer has their own preferred way of writing. The idea with Shanty is that it's completely independent of any particular writing application. You can write in Word, Pages, Notepad, or... Highland. Right now I'm writing this update in Shanty, with the GNU Nano text editor on the Nantucket E-Book server. This update is stored as a text file, which will get rendered into HTML by your browser. **UPDATE 2021-06-23: The information in the next paragraph is out of date. Nantucket E-Books@tm@ are now created using the {{./editor||Arrowhead text editor}}.*** When you write in the Shanty markup language, all you have to do is copy all your text, paste it into the text box in this site's {{./editor||Write section}}, and click the button marked "GENERATE MY NANTUCKET E-BOOK." However you like to write, Shanty makes it easy to create and deliver the best e-books on the planet to your readers. ***** !!TITLE Create E-Books Offline !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Lafayette, CO !!DATE 2020-12-05 As of today, you don't need to go to this site to create a Nantucket E-Book. Gam.js, the program used to turn Shanty-formatted text into a Nantucket E-Book comes included in the offline reader. One of the great things about Nantucket E-Books@tm@ is that you can create them with the push of a button. No special apps are required. One design goals for Nantucket E-Books@tm@ was that readers should be able to read them offline. Even if the site is down, readers can still enjoy their e-books. Now, that same benefit extends to writers. You can still generate your e-books on nantucketebooks.com, but now you don't have to. If you're experiencing an internet outage, or nantucketebooks.com is down for some reason, as long as you have the offline reader downloaded, you can still create an e-book file, as test it locally. Gam.js will be formally integrated into the offline reader in the next update, I'm using an inline event listener to make it work for now. You can download the latest offline reader ZIP folder by going to the {{./index.html#offlineSection||offline section}} of this site. ***** !!TITLE Now Presenting The FAQ Page !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Lafayette, CO !!DATE 2020-12-04 I have added {{./faq||an FAQ page}} to the site. In addition to the usual Frequently Asked Questions, the page will also feature step-by-step guides to read and writing Nantucket E-Books@tm@. The page will make its debut with three guides: setting up the offline reader, getting started with the Shanty markup language, and how to turn your Shanty-formatted text into a Nantucket E-Book. Why not video tutorials? One problem with video tutorials is that they can't be updated, while an HTML web page is easy to update. Also, I envision using my YouTube livestreams as a way to offer instructions on Nantucket E-Books@tm@ and Shanty. I did this in {{https://youtu.be/SJH8DboRaHQ||my last livestream}}. If you have questions about Nantucket E-Books@tm@, check out the FAQ page, and feel free to e-mail me at njb[at]nantucketebooks[the Warner sister]com. Who's the Warner sister? Just ask Tress MacNeille. ***** !!TITLE Versioning Now Available !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Lafayette, CO !!DATE 2020-11-20 My mission is to make it easy for writers to create and deliver the best e-books on the planet. That means making it easy to update the software behind Nantucket E-Books@tm@, but not in a way that will cause compatibility issues. To that end, Nantucket E-Book software will now have version numbers. If you're a writer and/or reader, all this means it that it will be easier for me to make Nantucket E-Books@tm@ even better. There's a now a better process for turning your feedback and bug reports into new updates. Since I'm a big fan of Moby Dick, all versions will be nicknamed after the crew of Captain Ahab's ship, starting with Ishmael. If you'd like to learn more, check out {{./versions||the new versions page}}. If you are interested in helping with the development of Nantucket E-Books@tm@, just e-mail me at njb[at]nantucketebooks[dot][com]. ***** !!TITLE Welcome to Nantucket E-Books@tm@ !!AUTHOR NJB !!LOCATION Lafayette, CO !!DATE 2020-11-09 @@IMG :source ../../assets/whale.PNG :title Otto the Whale, the Nantucket E-Books@tm@ mascot Last week, the Nantucket E-Book platform was launched with {{https://youtu.be/FFTE85myF3g||this livestream presentation}}. You can find all official news about Nantucket E-Books@tm@ in this News section. The most-recent news update will be featured on the site's main page, and all recent news updates will be listed at nantucketebooks.com/news. By the way, all these news updates are written in the Shanty, the markup language I created for writing Nantucket E-Books@tm@. I write the news updates in a plain-text file, and the site's client-side scripting formats it into HTML. This makes adding news updates a snap. @@IMG :source ../../assets/nantuckettwitterhandle.PNG :title Nantucket E-Books@tm@ on Twitter at @nantucketebooks Don't forget to follow me on Twitter at {{https://twitter.com/nantucketebooks||@nantucketebooks}}. Twitter will be the main social media presence for Nantucket E-Books@tm@, I have no plans for a Facebook account. If you have questions about Nantucket E-Books@tm@ or would like to write on the platform, please contact me at NJB[at]nantucketebooks[dot][com].