Toolemera Blog

Spiffying It Down

And on the other hand, some things have got to go. The Hand Tool Makers website is no more. The planned sub-domain for Authors is now un-planned along with what was going to be Tool Makers, which would have morphed from Hand Tool Makers.

Time and energy dictate the conservation of energy, or so someone postulated or something.

I've removed those sites and site elements which largely became search targets rather than reader visit points, bringing the focus once again back to books and ephemera. There has also been a rise in informational requests regarding print on demand publishing from various non-profits and individuals. When time permits, I enjoy the creative process of helping to get a publishing project off the ground, particularly when it's for a good cause.

During the course of cleaning up, throwing out and generally sorting out untold (why are things 'untold'? If they were untold, the moment they're told, they're told so how can they be untold? Sometimes I don't get the English language) stuff, I realized I have more pieces of paper and books left over than I thought I had. I'm still working at it. It's a bit sobering too.

I can see a trip to Nashua next spring with boxes of tools to sell in the rear parking lot once again. Tools I don't remember buying.

Till next, if I don't find myself buried in cardboard, Gary

Spiffying It Up

I signed up for the Typepad Design Consultation Service to get some help in fixing up a few design elements of this blog, notably the banner and perhaps some content elements. The goal: bring the websites and the blog into some sort of sync with each other.

Poor Typepad Design. They like to get their hands into a blog and really go to town. You can see some of their Portfolio examples here. Not exactly my cuppa sleepy time tea. My CSS and HTML/XML skills are so rusty even a vinegar bath wouldn't help, so it's off to get some assistance from the people I pay a yearly hosting fee to.

In the meantime, more trimming the excess luggage on the websites and the blog, more preparation for adding lots of new stuff and more throwing out lots of bags of things I wonder where they came from in the first place.

Do you realize how fast USB cords reproduce in the dark?

Till next, Gary

Blog, Interrupted

True, I stole the title from a movie which stole the title from a book.

As a direct result of a large number of offline comments, I've elected to ditch, remove, delete, throw out, evaporate and otherwise begone with a number of blog posts which relate to Chris Schwarz, Lost Art Press and some aspects of Popular Woodworking. Anything book review related stays.

Why? S'truth, there's about an even match of naysayers, moderates and supporters. Sort of like the national elections this year. There are also a fair number of offline emails from people asking for background information or to double check their own particular stories.

Not wanting to become some sort of clearing house for all this tsuris, I've elected to do what I so rarely do, edit my blog. It's back to early trades, early crafts, early industries, books, ephemera, tools, etc.

Till next, Gary

Nicholson's Student Instructor

I've shelved my mafioso vendetta hat and put on my book guy hat to talk a bit about Peter Nicholson's Student Instructor. It's a short book of his that was a highly popular title for the student of architecture during the late 18th through the early 19th centuries.

In the book trade, it's considered to be a fairly common title of his largely because it does turn up quite regularly. The problem is that those copies that do turn up quite regularly are usually a mess. This was one well used book. I see them in all states of rebinding, dis-binding, lacking covers, busted hinges, missing pages and plates, foxed, torn pages, notations, etc.

This book is sort of like Introduction To Architecture 101. I finally have a copy that I can pull a decent set of images from. It's ex-library, as many of these are. I must have four copies by now of which two are ex-lib.

The problem with reproducing a book such as this is the fine detail of the engravings. Digital printers such as those used in Print On Demand print from the center out to the edge. Halftone images as well as fine line engravings will often produce all sorts of unusual patterns that didn't exist in the original and that's a problem.

I have a theory to test out with this edition of Nicholson, along with Martin's Circle Of The Mechanical Arts. Typically, when an engraved plate is imaged by scanner or camera, it's done at 300 dpi or 400 dpi, with descreening to correct for halftone problems. The image is taken at the orignal physical dimensions.

Then, when it comes time to print, the image is adjusted slightly or grossly in physical dimensions to fit the needs of the book size. Even starting with TIFF images, things happen in that Photoshop/Desktop Publishing/Adobe Acrobat/Distiller/Digital Printer that mess up the final result.

I intend to leave the physical dimensions exactly, precisely, absolutely as they are in the original. Nicholson will be done in gray scale, much as was done with Moxon, at 300 dpi and kept at it's full dimensions. There is no modern book size that matches, so the margins will be adjusted to accommodate the original. For Circle, which clocks in at 8.5x11 to begin with, more care will be needed to ensure the plates are not altered.

Preliminary tests say this will work. The catch is that engravings have those little lines running at all different angles with curves and circles and all sorts of bothersome details that printers don't like. 18th Century meets 21st Century.

Till next, Gary

Just one of those spam days

My LinkedIn account, which I never use, is now history. For whatever reason, it's been spammed to an incredible extent. Goodbye, LinkedIn.

The Typepad Comments Connect Beta feature, formerly enabled, is now disabled due to constant problems with the Preview feature, with lost comments and with a generally annoying set of supposedly advanced stuff that didn't do what it was supposed to do. Back to basic Comments which also means Spam. I'll see what I can do about spam until Typepad gets it's new Threaded feature installed. I think Captcha may be the only way to control spam for the immediate future.

More Google and Internet Archive Book scammers abound. Good Reads, Nabu Press, Pranava Books and Kessinger are still the big guys. There are others that seem to come and go but these four remain. I have a strong suspicion that someone has been selling the code through some Usenet channel or elsewhere instead of setting up shop on their own.

In the end, it's the universities who signed up for the programs who get the short end of the stick. Most thought there would be a nice income stream of reprints coming from the partnership. Not happening, is it? True, some people do buy books via the Google Books channel but from what I hear via the Books Underground Reprint People (BURP), customers don't come back for more once the quality of the first book bought is sussed out.

Facebook continues to be a source of more unknown people than I can imagine. I check in once in a bit or two just to see if there are messages but that's about it. There are books to read after all. Google+ may be awright, but finessing it may take more time than I feel like putting into it. Time will tell. Or, the ongoing investigations into Google's moves to dominate the internet may cause some changes in the future. Twitter makes me sneeze uncontrollably.

Next up, create a Bento 4 template for keeping track of ephemera and books. I wish there was a way to link LibraryThing with an external DB but so far, I haven't found anyone who has done so in a manner a DB simpleton such as I can understand. Nearly all of my books are pre-ISBN, requiring a bunch of hand entry and thus, time consuming. Woe.

Till next, Gary