Beauty in the Details.

by Louis Bertrand Shalako

c2010

All Rights Reserved


The beauty lies in the details, but by focusing in on one thing, we might miss out on another. Having taken a little time to study what I did, and then how other people do things, I now have a basis for comparison.

My e-books seem to be formatted pretty well by the standards of the day and bearing in mind the diversity of devices they are expected to operate in. That seems fine, and as I read more e-books, I will probably find better ways to do things. This is true in any industry, and as far as 'newbies' go, I'm not exactly hopeless. Also, as an author, my primary focus is on the writing, not the typesetting or book design.

I care about the story and who reads it. That is what I tend to focus on in terms of skills development and even simply 'reading for the job.'

In that sense, I think I did a pretty good job, even to get into Smashwords, for example. They call it 'the meatgrinder' for a reason, ladies and gentlemen.

I can crack open any number of paperbacks and see that my work varies from the norm. For one, mass-market paperbacks are expensive enough to produce. It is also my assertion that ten percent of all production is wasted. Again, this holds true in any industry.

They need to save paper, and even ink. They need to save time. It's a competitve business. They might in one case have three blank lines at the end of a chapter, and then the start of a new chapter. This might be on the left-hand page. It doesn't bother me, and I had to make a few compromises in my own project. For one thing, on Lulu, a 411-page book is the max in the 4X7" size. There was simply no way to add more blank pages or end matter. It is true that a little compression of the text, by laying it out exactly like a mass-market book might have saved a few pages.

In that sense, my layout is a 'mistake.' However, on a POD platform such as Lulu, there is no possibility (at least for my own purposes,) of 'ten percent waste production.'

The key to any system of setting type is readability. It has to be smooth, neat and unobtrusive. For another editor to look at the work, I suspect with my layout this is not the case, but of course it is the end user, the reader that I actually care about.

Conformity has not been my strong suit in the past. An editor once put red ink all over my page.

He said, 'Don't mix up two persons' dialogue in the same sentence,' and as far as I know he's still right.

'Don't mix up two people's thoughts in the same sentence,' he wrote.

By focusing on the one thing, I missed the other. And now, you know the rest of the story.

Donut Vs. Doughnut.

Today, I jumped in the car and went up the road. I found myself turning into the local drive-through doughnut* shop. That’s fine as far as it goes, but I was actually going to the grocery store.

My dad just gave up his driver’s license. Normally he would have gone to the grocery store.

Was I driving on ‘automatic?’

Was it ‘muscle memory,’ so beloved of fable and song?

Was my mind ‘elsewhere?’

What happened…was I even conscious? Was I ‘sleep-driving?'

***

Norbert Wiener (1894-1964) was an American mathematician and the founder of cybernetics.

During WW II, Wiener attempted to produce a mathematical and electronic system for communicating vital information in such areas as radar and anti-aircraft gun control.

He became interested in automatic computing and feedback theory.

Wiener founded the study of cybernetics. Cybernetics deals with the automatic control of machinery by computers, ‘robotics,’ but also the study of the human brain and nervous system.

The two systems are analogous in the interrelationship of communication and control systems. The difference is organic. It is a matter of degree and complexity of design and function.

He wrote ‘Cybernetics,’ (1948,) and ‘The Human Use of Human Beings,’ (1950.)

In philosophy and psychology, ‘will’ is considered to be a capacity to choose among alternative courses of action.

This is held to be true particularly when the action is directed toward a specific goal or is governed by definite ideals and principles of conduct. This is in contrast to behaviour which stems from instinct, impulse, reflex or habit, none of which involves a conscious decision-making process.

What is artificial ‘intelligence?’ Is it the ability to choose between two or more courses of action, none of which lead directly to clearly defined or decisive outcomes?

For the sake of modernity, let us accept John Dewey’s notion that will is not a faculty of the mind that we are born with; neither is it acquired through heredity.

He saw it as a product of experience, evolving gradually in the mind and personality of the individual. Otherwise we are stuck with ancient philosophers, or metaphysics, neither of which are very satisfactory in the age we live in.

Let them quest for God or the soul, the meaning of life if they will. We will attempt to find ‘artificial intelligence.’

If you blog on Google, or post on Facebook for a while, you will note that the ads that magically appear actually appear pretty relevant after a time. This is not a machine ‘learning’ in the classic sense. What happens is that little ‘crawler bots’ run up and down every line of text and note key words. Those words are collated in terms of subject, frequency, and association with other words. Then, if you are blogging about child care, diaper and fomula ads appear on your blog, even if you have never actually used the word ‘diaper,’ or ‘formula.’

It would seem that our machine can compare imputs, and choose between a number of courses of action, and it requires no real ‘will’ of its own. And if a machine did something unexpected, we would merely consider it a glitch or malfunction. We would inquire no further—the machine is merely broken.

Or is it? Is it really broken? Maybe it was just trying to tell us something.

But ‘will’ is a human attribute.

My will directed me to the grocery store…habit took me to the doughnut shop.

Somehow my brain, being elsewhere, still managed to drive the car safely, (or maybe even a little too fast,) and it eventually took over and got me to the destination.

‘No harm done,’ and it made me think, which is not always a good thing, but I like it.

Maybe I am being held in thrall by Tim Horton’s. Everyone says they put something in that coffee to make you go back.

Public opinion has a certain wisdom of its own, and the stuff in there is caffeine.

Nicotine is the most powerfully addictive drug I have ever had, and without coffee and smokes, I would be miserable.

In that sense the 'stick and carrot' are involved in behavioural training...right?

*Editor’s Note: For our U.S. readers, that’s ‘donut.’

Patience is a Virtue.

by Louis Bertrand Shalako

c2010

All Rights Reserved


After practically giving up on getting my books into Google Books shortly before Christmas, I screwed up some guts and tried again. And again, the uploads kept failing. What I was getting was 'file name error' in the reports, time and time again.

Here is how you get into Google Books: make a nice clean pdf, with cover images, etc.

Now name your file: 012345678901.pdf

What this means is that you take your ISBN and remove the hyphens. Remove your name and your title. Essentially, the machine didn't care if my book was 'The Case of the Curious Killers, by Louis Bertrand Shalako.' When I uploaded it as, 978986687129.pdf the machine ate it right up.

***

So now I have a fairly well-formatted POD file, in Open Office, of my book 'Core Values.'

I just did this a week or two ago...but I cannot figure out how to get page numbers on opposite sides. I have them all nice and sequential. They seem to start on the right page...what the heck? It has to be some small thing...why go nuts over it?

Is it really important for me to jam out another POD tonight? Is it absolutely vital to spew out another three paperbacks by the end of the month?

What is all this for? Is it going to get me cut off of ODSP and nothing more? Changing one's life might er; take a little time. Bleep! I'm simply in no position to handle it right now...yikes!

Problem solv-ed, as Clouseau would say. Patience is a virtue, and a little perspective doesn't hurt either.

***

By clicking on account settings in 'Lulu,' I noticed that I can send an automatic e-mail thanking customers for their purchase. What an amazing feature! Awesome. What I need now is one of those product coupons.

Now, on Amazon, I have noticed that my books have no write-up in terms of a blurb.

There must be some way...right? Why can't I see that? There are times when I am not writing a thing and I still manage to keep busy. I need to dispose of about a hundred bogus and spurious versions, inevitably spawned during the learning process.

***

Sorry, I keep updating things. But if you check your e-mail settings, you may see something in there that says 'options.' This is where you go to make a 'signature' for your custom e-mails. I simply haven't found the time, right? But you could stick a product coupon-code into your thank-you note. Give them a break on the next purchase, you know the theory. People think signature means as in pen and ink. The way to do this is still a mystery, but I have been tempted to sign a full-size sheet of paper with a big magic marker. Then simply scan it and save it as a .doc. After that I kind of get lost, but it should be possible, er; somehow. Save it as an 'object,' or something.

Oh, yeah. Photoshop failed to install. I should have turned off antivirus, but oh, well. No one man can know everything.

But you have to admit, I'm getting pretty good. Not bad for an old bald-headed guy.