The most frequently asked question I’m seeing about Shivering Sands — from people that actually want to try one of these POD whatsits — is some variation of: What did you use (InDesign, Lulu templates, witchcraft) to build the book?

And, honestly, I’m not sure if that’s curiosity about my specific method, or if that’s asking for some sort of an endorsement for the best method.  But there’s just no real answer to that second question, beyond “whatever works!”

Because, look, Lulu’s uploader and templates are lovely.  I just happen to be allergic to them.  It’s nothing to do with Lulu, in particular– I’m just allergic to anything that’s easy. 

Because I’m crazy.  I’m the lord mayor of a little factory town called Crazyopolis. I see the words “one-click” or “get started in 5 minutes” or “ready-made” or, yes, “easy” — and I start screaming nonononono get it away get it AWAY!

Look.  Do you remember this?

 

The Radio Shack 150 in ONE Electronic Project Kit.  I had one of these.  This exact model, in fact.  And I don’t have any fucking idea what the other 149 projects were. No. Fucking. Clue.  Because about halfway through the first project, after taking a good long look at the whole-board schematic, I started trying to figure out what I could make it do… with no real interest in things like instructions or the laws of physics or if a bigger battery would make it catch on fire or if OSHA would approve my trying to incorporate it and my chemistry set and the dog into one mad experiment.

See? Crazy.

I’m just not the target demographic for templates.

My friend Lee Barnett (AKA Budgie), on the other hand, isn’t stricken with my particular brand of crazy.  He put together his book, The Fast Fiction Challenge, using the Lulu system from start to finish, and it turned out just lovely.  In fact, I’d recommend you buy a copy, just to see how well it turned out. (Actually, I’d recommend you buy a copy, anyway, because Lee’s an excellent writer.)  He’s written up a bit of a review on his experiences with the Lulu system, which I hope he’ll put somewhere public so I can link it in a bit.

Jamais Cascio put together his book, Hacking the Earth, using, I believe, OpenOffice.  Which is free like street furniture so, you know, it’s not like you need to go expensive to go more DIY. (Also a book you should buy, because Jamais is made ov geenius.  And also because I did the cover layout.)

Edit: Jamais kindly nudged me with a correction to the above.

Actually, I took blog posts, formatted them in Apple Pages, converted to Word to use the Lulu uploader, fiddled with the formatting in Word to make it match my Pages layout, discovered that the Lulu-Word tool bites (completely different pagination and words-per-page from what I had uploaded), discovered that the Lulu setup can’t read Apple PDF, and finally printed the doc from Pages directly to a Postscript file. That uploaded beautifully and came out exactly as formatted.

And Wil Wheaton went the sanest possible route with his Sunken Treasure and Memories of the Future, and just found someone crazy (Will Hindmarch) to do all the layout. (C’mon, it’s Wil — I shouldn’t have to tell you to buy his books, you should already have them.)

So, honestly, there is no Best Way to put together your POD book, other than the way that gets it done with the least headache and the most satisfaction. 

If you’re the sort that gets your bolts off fiddling with settings and typefaces and widows and orphans and justification and margins and all that — or you want to try and see how it suits you — then, yeah, do some googling for how-tos or just dive right into whatever desktop program you’ve got to hand.  (If you don’t have InDesign, don’t run out and buy InDesign — you can really honestly do almost everything you need for POD with OpenOffice or Word.  And the couple of things you can’t do, you’re likely not even going to notice unless you already own InDesign, anyway.)

If you’re the sort that’s more interested in the crafting of the work you’ve already done, and want to move straight to the part where you’re selling it, just use Lulu’s system, or beg, borrow, or steal a friend with the layout crazies to help you.

The Best way to get it done is to just get it done.  And trying to decide where to start… well that’s not getting it done.

it is the role of the artist to challenge society. no one who lives within the system and makes conventional choices is capable of expanding the box we find ourselves in. that?s why it?s called, ?thinking outside? of it, and to do so, you have to be aware of it first. I believe ?artists? are people born with the dubious skill of acute box-awareness. I say dubious because, if they are anything like me (and I suspect they are, or I am like them), once aware of the confines placed on our existence it becomes increasingly difficult to tolerate them.

there are a lot of assumptions made about what constitutes a successful life. there is, I think, a certain amount of gender-based difference as to the specific expectations on an individual, but the checklist as I understand it runs: stable job, house, car, children, and subsequently future generations. all as expensive as possible. these things equal security, and if yours is like mine, your family says they ?just want you to be happy,? but what they mean is, ?I just want you to be safe, secure, and never take risks with your future.?

the laughable thing, the thing that keeps me from settling happily into the box, surrounded by wood-chips and a little exercise wheel that keeps me running constantly, going nowhere, is an underlying inability to believe that the checklist is actually working out for anybody.

As of right now, my little brother is 21 years old.* I wish oodles of happy natal felicitations to the lad — who can be found right here online. May he have many, many more gleeful, productive years ahead! And even though the occasion veritably cries out for me to tell embarrassing stories about him as a wee nublet of a boy, I will do no such thing.

At this time.

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* He’s … um … rather significantly younger than me, yes.

My day was actually similar to:

G’night.

(I have no credits for the shot. Please add them in comments if you know.)

So who can tell me what the Deathfall is? Has anyone in the class ever heard of that before? ... Yes, um, Bladeflake? Yes? ... Well, sure, that's one way to put it. It *is* a sort of "crazy blizzard", I suppose.

You see, when you are all grown up and you have done all the grown-up things you were meant to do in your life, and you begin to hear the icy groan in your limbs - the creak and crack that happens as your crystalline bones weaken with age - then you will gather your strength one last time, along with all the other Ice Lords of your age, to make the trek over the mountains, across the plain, all the way around the world to invade and besiege the fiery tropical realm of the Fire Princesses.

Yes, of course it's very hot there! Blistering! The Princesses live in eternal daylight, the sun forever above them, their homes built right into the thousands of sputtering, shaking volcanoes that smolder in the bright, scorching light. And the Princesses themselves run red-hot with the boiling fluid that runs through their veins.

Yes, Stormhammer. It does sound like a dangerous place and yes, in fact, it can kill you. It *will* kill you. It *does* kill you. The Deathfall is the last thing you do in your life: You invade their land and you slake your desire on any and every Princess you can. Their flesh will burn your eyes and splinter your skin but your icy seed can survive - and it will. You will leave it in as many of their boiling wombs as you can before your body can take no more, and you melt.

That's right. You will melt. All that is you will eventually fail to hold and you will break into pieces and vanish as steam off the body of your final conquest. That is how we Ice Lords die. And that is how we make new life.

Yes, babies. This is where babies come from. The seed's stony case will melt and fertilize and the Princesses will bear new children. Those who are girls will be, of course, Fire Princesses, to be raised under the bright and scorching sun. Those who are boys will be Ice Lords, to be raised here in the comforting embrace of night.

How? Well, of course the newborns cannot travel all the way back around the world on their own, and they cannot survive long among the volcanoes. So they must be brought to us. Each year, at the Birthspring, the oldest among the Princesses - the ones who have done all the grown-up things they were meant to do in their lives, who no longer feel the heat of their own blood, whose skins have begun to crack from the smoke - gather their strength one last time to trek across the plain and over the mountains, all the way around the world before the last of their life-spark expires... to bring us our sons.

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For consideration: ...it's like MARCH OF THE PENGUINS meets a Ralph Bakshi cartoon...

a visit to Doctor Beef?s Storm Troopin? set on flickr is always a worthwhile activity.

For those folks who are interested, here's the Slideshare version of the presentation I gave last week at the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute annual meeting. I was asked to talk about foresight thinking, as the event theme was "The Big One of 2056: What Went Right?" a look at a fictional 7.8 quake in the SF region that was handled as well as they could imagine possible.

My goal was to offer a bit of reassurance to the audience that there is some real utility to thinking about the future, and to spell out (in a cursory way) the kinds of big picture issues they should keep in mind while looking ahead forty-six years.

Inflection Points

View more presentations from Jamais Cascio.

By and large, it was a successful talk. The post-talk questions were engaged, with little push-back, and I'm told that the overall response from the audience was quite positive.

The talk was video recorded, and I'm told will eventually be available to the public. I'll link when that happens.

• Keynote: Bruce Sterling (us) on Atemporality | transmediale
  "If progress is to go beyond the banal indulgences that give rise to a never-ending array of car shell designs then we need to analyse our present time with regard to its aesthetics and its media. The second conference session is being introduced with Bruce Sterling's Keynote on Atemporality."
  (tags:video )

Jack Bauer saves the day... with AOL 3.0

unhappyhipsters brings me a special kind of joy.

unhappyhipsters:

At the art opening, he?d been convinced the blank canvas symbolized endless possibilities. Back at home, it was just one more reminder of his own desperation.

(Photo: Raimund Koch; Dwell, April 2009)

true story.

bigworldsmallvictories:

Sentimentality follows preservation.

A

Good morning! Fancy A Fierce Pancake for breakfast?

HOW MUCH IS THE FISH? HOW MUCH IS THE CHIPS?! (Lara! Thank you!)

Egads, how could I have forgotten about these freakwads? I once loved their one-and-only studio album, A Fierce Pancake with the same passion reserved for exceptional goofballs like Primus, Billy Nayer Show, Mr Bungle, Idiot Flesh, Violent Femmes, Fishbone, and Adam the the Ants. But it’s been a long, long time since I last listened…

Is it just me, or does Mick Lynch look uncannily like Siege (yanno, if Siege were crossed with Ed Grimley and a lemur)?

Formed in London in 1983, Stump were a legendary Anglo-Irish indie/experimental/rock group inspired by Captain Beefheart. The lineup was Kev Hopper on bass, Rob McKahey on drums, Chris Salmon on guitar, and Mick Lynch on vocals. They toured a lot in the mid 80s on a couple of brilliant, bizarre EPs, and their energetic live shows quickly earned them a cult following. Then they got signed to a major label, apparently squabbled constantly during the production of AFP and broke up soon afterward, a quarter of a million pounds in debt to their record company, and never to be heard from again.*

The entire album is cracked fucking genius. It’s also very difficult to track down anymore. Beg, borrow, steal a copy if you can.

Read the rest of Better Than Coffee: A Fierce Pancake

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Post tags: Better than coffee, Crackpot Visionary, Dance, Geekdom, Music, Punk, Silly-looking types