Commentary – Page 5

Commentary: A Challenge – Make an AUDIO DRAMA of The Crystal Crypt by Philip K. Dick

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The Crystal Crypt - illustration from Planet Stories

Thou knowest what this world needeth. Aye, ye know tis of course more AUDIO DRAMA of the SCIENCE FICTION kind!

I have, here in my possession, a PUBLIC DOMAIN tale that would make for a fine dramatization.

I speake of yon tale, The Crystal Crypt, as penned by one Philip Kindred Dick

Planet Stories January 1954 Header
The Crystal Crypt - description from Planet Stories

Here be’st the original words and art as from the first publication |PDF| in a long forgotten tome (Planet Stories, January 1954).

Who’ll take up this noble quest?

Perhaps you Sir Texaweg of the Fractured Ocean? Are your noble squires across the pond in foggy Kiwi and the ancient land of Eng up to this great challenge?

What of you Suqire Jack of Halifax? ‘Tis been far too long since you took up thy rusty microphone. We sadden at thy silence.

Lord Greenhalgh of the Solar Goat, hast thou returned from Southernmost Kush? Dost though need a Maine challenge?

Surely Lady Hoverjules of the Emerald Keyboard can rise to this? I trust nary a lawsuit will be had when though hast such armor so proofed against missiles as by our blessed Gutenberg hast.

Surely one of the aforementioned gentlepersons, or perhaps another, in a high mountain vale, or in a low county coast, is up to this task

Be thee yet unknighted in the form AD, or well heel’d in it but from some shadowy land whereselse round this scepter’d orb – I ask you prithee, answer my call, for I needth me some dramatic aural Dick.

Suitable honorifics shall, of course, be bestowed to all nobels who take up this quest.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Commentary: Where do you listen to audiobooks and podcasts?

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Where do you listen to audiobooks and podcasts?

I listen to a lot of novel length audiobooks while walking.

Pitt River Dyke, British Columbia

I listen to audiobooks when walking to work, from work, or walking a dog.

Short stories are for folding laundry, cooking or loading and unloading a dishwasher.

Depending on the length of the trip I either listen to audiobooks or podcasts while driving. Short podcasts are no good for long drives. So for longer drives I listen to BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time, CBC Radio One’s Ideas, or WKZU’s Entitled Opinions.

There are a few podcasts I consistently like to hear only on weekday mornings, like TVO’s Search Engine, CBC’s Spark, and WNYC’s Freakonomics. They somehow just seem to set the right tone – and that tone just doesn’t work for me in the evenings.

Some podcasts, like The Memory Palace, Today In Canadian History, and Eli Glasner On Film are so short I reserve them almost exclusively for walking to or from a car.

At the gym, while pumping iron, I tend to listen to interview podcasts like TWiT’s Triangulation, or Boing Boing’s Gweek. On the stationary bike I watch G4’s Fresh Ink because that’s a video podcast.

I listen to audio drama almost exclusively in the evening. OTR Swag Cast, Radio Drama Revival, and Decoder Ring Theatre, are turned on in the minutes before I go to sleep.

I listen to a couple of shows, Forgotten Classics and Science News Update, almost exclusively while getting dressed or clipping fingernails and toenails. I also listen to podcasts while in the bathroom – and that’s where my big pet peeve with podcasts comes most to a head – too many are just too quiet.

While brushing my teeth and when showering you need a decent volume to overcome the white noise of running water. I can’t listen to New Books In Public Policy in the bathroom, it’s volume is just way too low.

Where do you listen? And what do you listen to there?

Posted by Jesse Willis

Commentary: MP3-CD Audiobooks (old and new)

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The video below is a quick exploration of the MP3-CD audiobook format. It’s my favourite format for physical audiobooks. The packaging is small, the files are ready to be used, and they are cheaper audiobooks than their regular CD equivalent. The only disadvantage to the MP3-CD format is they don’t play on all CD players, and the ones they do play on may limit the volume output.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Commentary: How (and why) I make ebooks out of paperbooks

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When you’ve got an old paperback book that’s coming apart at the spine, with pages falling out all over the place it’s time to consider making it immortal. In order to do that, in a reasonable period of time, you must kill the book. That’s the hardest part of the process. The actual transformation is pretty easy.

To do it I use a Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 which came with Adobe Acrobat Standard 9. Here are three videos I put together that show the process of turning a paperback into an ebook:

And here’s a PDF |SAMPLE| of the result.

Update:
John writes in to say:

I read your recent post about digitizing print books with interest. I wondered if you might be able to expand on your process a bit, as it seemed to me like a few steps were missing from your video.

Indeed, here are my answers to some specific questions:

How do you actually sever all the pages from the book?

Most of the time this can be done just with your hands, at least with paperbacks and old magazines. The only tools I’ve ever needed to use are flathead screwdriver, to pry up staples found in some mags from the 1960s and 1970s, and scissors which I’ve used to trim out glued edges. If you’re doing a hardcover with sewn binding you’d probably be able to do it with just an X-Acto knife.

When you run the pages through the scanner, does it scan both sides of the page simultaneously? Or do you have to scan them all twice?

The Fujitsu ScanSnap is not only superfast, it’s also supersmart, it scans both sides at the same time (technically the term is “duplex”).

If so, how do you collate them so the pages are all in the right order?

The bundled software, called ScanSnap Manager, allows you to customize the named output files. I usually have them just come out as 001, 002, 003, etc..

How long does it take you to digitize a single book?

Lets see I’ve just scanned the February 1976 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction which has 128 pages (64 leaves). In the scanning itself I set a stopwatch. It took 1 minute 30 seconds to scan the entire mag. The software took another 45 seconds of processing. And I spent about 30 seconds correcting orientation on a few pages. So under three minutes for 128 pages

Have you tried this on hardcovers as well, or just paperbacks?

I don’t think I’ve done more than a couple of hardcovers, they were really easy though as they were essentially unbound already.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Commentary: What use is public radio in a time of podcasts?

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Of what use is public radio in a time of podcasts?

That is, other than providing the funding for programmes that can be podcast – is there any use for radio medium specifically?

I suggest there is.

BBC - Transmissions To Schools (1927 and 1928)

Beyond giving local news and weather, there’s a traditional use which could be used again. Consider these two 1920s BBC publications, pamphlets in the “BBC Transmissions To Schools” series:

Boys And Girls Of The Middle Ages by Rhoda Power with illustrations by Elinor Lambert |PDF|
Broadcasts on Mondays from September 26 – December 12, 1927 at 2:30pm

Boys And Girls Of Other Days by Rhoda Power with illustrations by Elinor Lambert and others |PDF|
Broadcasts on Mondays from January 16 – March 26, 1928 at 2:30pm

BBC, CBC and ABC Radio National do a tremendous job at providing excellence in public adult programming with an educational bent, but in terms of children it seems to fall very short

The above documents show how public radio broadcasting can help with education of elementary school children. I’d love to see some education programming of this sort, aimed at children, turning up on CBC radio, with PDF downloads and podcast feeds as a compliment to national broadcasts.

For more information on the use of radio in schools, BroadcastForSchools.co.uk

Posted by Jesse Willis

Commentary: So what did yule all receive for Xmas?

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Did you get what you want for Xmas? I did. I always seem to. This year the theme seemed to be coffee. I got enough to last me until next July! Huzzah!

But the real gift, as always, was that I got to spend some time with my family. On Xmas eve we play a great game called “The Game” – the object of “The Game” is to steal specially wrapped Christmas presents from your relatives and other party attendees – it is especially fun to steal presents from children. There are a few rules, and lots of fake drama, and bogus strategy all designed for fun and it’s basically wall to wall laughter for about 75 minutes. The gifts are generally pretty junky, like dollar store toys or tools – one of them this year was a miniature bale of hay, another was a light in the shape of a fried egg. I love it.

At these parties I get to see lots of uncles and aunts, cousins and other relations all of pleasant disposition. Actually the whole thing is about as close to a Hobbit gathering as you’ve ever seen in real life (though most of us are taller and wear shoes). It’s more that there’s always plenty of food and thoughtful gifts – genuine merriment and respect. It’s rather lovely. But there are always surprises too. Like the one from last Christmas, or the year before. One of my distant relatives, down from northern British Columbia, told me he had happened upon my podcast through the Anne Is A Man blog and that he had been listening to it. That gave me a good laugh! It was one of the best gifts I received. I guess it shouldn’t be too surprising, most of my relatives seem to be readers.

This year the most relevant gift wasn’t actually for me, but it gave me another good laugh.

See one of my cousins, an avid reader, received a new paperback copy of WWW: Wake by Robert J. Sawyer. It was a Christmas present from her aunt and uncle (who happen to be my aunt and uncle too).

Penguin paperback of Wake by Robert J. Sawyer

I happened to be sitting beside her as the gifts were being dispersed and unwrapped. So, when I saw that she’d received it, and that the book was in the new tall paperback format I asked if I might have a look inside (I’d only heard the audiobook). I opened the front cover only to see this:

Seth Wilson blurb In Wake

That’s from Seth Wilson’s review!

That was a good laugh too!

So what did yule all receive for Xmas?

Posted by Jesse Willis