Toolemera Blog

Martin's Half Circle Of The Mechanical Arts

Thomas Martin wrote The tome of The Mechanical Arts back in 1813. Unfortunately for Thomas, shortly thereafter Peter Nicholson came out with his Mechanic's Companion, a volume of smaller dimensions, fewer pages and most of all, bearing the name of a more well known author.

Still and all, at the time of it's publishing, The Circle Of The Mechanical Arts met with much praise and approbration by the learned community of learned folks, or at least of those folks who wanted to appear to each other as being learned. Some things never change.

I've been prepping my copy for publication. In doing so, I found that a few of the plates were nigh on impossible to reproduce by any means. Not many, just two. Being the resourceful type of bloke that I am, I ordered a copy from Kirtas Books. Kirtas Books is the sales arm of Kirtas, the people who make the machinery that powers Google Books and many university driven book digitization projects.

Before you raise your arms high and shout: "Woa, there! Those Google Books are messy!", I have to set the story right and say that it's not the equipment, it's the operators. Most are paid minimum wage, barely trained, unsupervised and the outgoing product is, as we all know, not exactly checked for quality.

Back to the copy I ordered. I wanted to see if another copy of the book would produce a decent image. Unfortunately, Kirtas had to refund my order price as they were unable to digitize the book. Rats. Mice and other furry critters. So Google Books could pull a copy but Kirtas couldn't.

I could always go ahead and publish with the two plates as blank pages with a note on each page stating: "Don't Stop Here! Keep Reading!" or something to that effect. Or add the two nearly illegible plates with notes of abject apology. It's these decisions that keep publisher committees up late at night. Luckily for me, I am a committee of one. We'll be discussing this vexing issue late into the Leap Night in pursuit of a reasonable answer.

Happy Leap Year, Gary

Verrry Fishy

Sometime in the not verrry distant future there will be an expansion into fish, agriculture, cookery and suchlike at the main website. The material is there in my files. I simply haven't had time to get to it.

This entire process of sorting and filing is helpful in realizing just how much of a hoard... sorry, student of history I have been and continue to be. Plus, at times I tire of the endless debates on left handed versus right handed dovetail saws and why the nib was made His Nibs.

There Will Be Fishing. That's for certain. I have a fair amount of fishing ephemera and continue to add to that personal library. Much of it is Garcia Mitchell. In fact, almost all of it is although other names trickle in here and there. Then there are the rods and reels. I have a weakness for Conolon and Narmco rods, in particular the Gold series rods.

What, you don't know of what I write? You will. As certainly as Great A'Tuin slowly traverses the heavens, so will Garcia information slowly find it's way to my website and blog. Much of it is from the 1950-1960 era, which, for fishing tackle, is down right vintage. No fly fishing, sorry. I'm a spinning guy. Maybe some spin casting and once in a bit some bait casting but on a whole, spinning tackle. I'll leave the fly stuff for the gentry.

Agriculture is a weak point of mine. Strangely enough, there was not much farming going on in Jamaica, New York City during my formative years. I did spend some summers on various farms which does help but on a whole, it's a subject I'll be reaching out to others for advice on.

Cookery is something I can relate to. In past employment, I've been a short order cook, hash slinger, call it what you will and for decades an avocational cook specializing in whatever I like to eat that is fast and easy to make. And of course, old books about cookery so I have a few nice ones on the shelves.

Camp Cookery is a favorite topic but as for old books, is a tough title to track down. For some odd reason, these books tend to be handled roughly, have numerous recipes pasted all over them and have fallen into such disrepair that the only solution is to wring the cooking oil out of them and make paper mache from the ramains. But, I persevere in their pursuit.

Now, I'm hungry. For fish.

Till next, Gary

Adobe Digital Editions and Calibre

At either end of the spectrum are Adobe Digital Editions and Calibre. One is all powerful and of course, and Adobe product. The other is freeware, powerful, sort of an all purpose Swiss Army Knife digital doc reader/converter that's encased in a plain looking presentation but really, who cares?

Adobe Digital Editions, ADE for short, is humumgously powerful even if it is limited in scope. It's a free download as is Adobe Reader. ADE is an eReader that loves Android based stuff, does not like iPad or Kindle but loves Nook. It will run on most any computer based system, including Mac even though it still doesn't like the iPad. The interface is slick although some features take a little time to suss out. I use it as my default laptop and monitor pdf and eBook reader. But... both said laptop and computer have much memory and processing power. I suspect that a system running on spare parts might groan a bit under the weight of ADE at times.

Calibre is freeware although you should feel free to donate and support the development effort, not that I'm trying to make you feel GUILTY or anything. It's been around quite awhile, is stable and powerful if less glitzy than some other big money packages out there. Calibre will convert all sorts of files to all sorts of eBook formats, includes an eBook reader, will run on all sorts of devices and that's about all I can say about Calibre because I really don't know much more about it and it would be wrong of me to say anything else not knowing what I am talking about.

Till next, Gary

And then there is the Internet Archive

Internet Archive BookReader

Till next, Gary

How Do You Read Your PDF Files?

cPanel is a powerful set of site monitoring tools included in my web hosting package by Jim Esten. Unfortunately, cPanel is not capable of discerning what happens once the site visitor has left the site.

I can find out what browser people are using but I can't find out what browser addons are in place or what services are selected.

Thus, this question: How do you view your PDF files? The PDF files in Toolemera are not your average text doc to PDF. There generally isn't any OCR or other hidden text carry over from an original Word or other text document. These files begin life as a bunch of TIFF files, are converted via Acrobat Pro into an appropriately sized PDF and go through life as a PDF consisting of a bunch of images of fixed original dimensions, resolution and color mode.

Which brings us to today's class snap quiz: How do you view the PDF files from this website which I have added as a VIZU poll for yours and my convenience on the sidebar to your right --->

All collected data will be subjected to rigorous statistical analysis by yours truly. If you object to electronic polls, please feel free to leave comments or emails concerning this ground breaking study.

Till next, Gary

PS: Migrainey night means thick head. Whatever online format is selected, there will always be a downloadable version too.