eyespod.net

Well, I happen to own two Sony Readers … somewhat presciently, I suppose.  The first one died immediately after a return flight from Chicago to San Jose — I have yet to get around to shipping this to Sony (oh, the warranty is expired after 90 days — $79 repair bill.)

Now #2 is out; or rather, almost out - the display has gone (cracked?) with lines and artifacts in the bottom corner.  I suspect this has just passed its 90 days as well …

Not terribly encouraging.

Just posted this title today — my second that is based on non-previously published sources, where I have done the scanning/proofing myself. Meanwhile, Goethe’s Theory of Color still sits on the back burner, around 80% complete I suppose — the source scan is not particularly good.

The Art of Worldly Wisdom is a perfect example of the kind of thing I enjoy producing — I came across it 15 years ago or so and thought it a nice counterpoise to the “Art of War” type of stuff that was particularly popular in the get-ahead in business. I noticed subsequently that Shamballa, among others, picked up on it (they also publish a slightly more politically correct version of the Jacobs translation.)

I had hoped to be somewhat more productive this week when I am taking some time off from work; I find the “original” creations more fulfilling than the Quick and Dirty conversions from existing sources such as Project Gutenberg texts — although this can take some work too and is equally of value.

I’m keen to hit 20 titles soon — I’m traveling to Europe early January and want to get some more titles set before I leave. I’m also wanting to publish the current lot in Kindle format, although that is less exciting — it is all simply building with a little nip and tuck here and there. Will of course be curious to see how I fare marketing directly through Amazon, as well as through my site.

Well, finally something to write about — I’m in the process of launching http://www.bltcpress.com, an online ebook store for “LRF” formatted books for the Sony PRS 500 and 505 reader.

I bought the reader last July and was thrilled with the experience — I’ve been dreaming of something like this for the last 20 years, during which time I’ve had various types of involvement with “ebook” technologies, probably most notably during my years at Apple when I managed the developer tools product marketing group and either directly sponsored or was closely involved with a number of on-line documentation projects, including Apple’s DocViewer, which was used by Apple for a year or two for all of its end user publications right around the time that Acrobat was launched.

Despite having an up-close seat on technologies like PDF, I’ve been singularly unimpressed with the experience of reading literature for pleasure on a computer. It just doesn’t fly. Conversely, the e-ink experience is one of the best “virtual” experiences I’ve had. Anyway, this initial posting is the obligatory cross-link to my site; I’m sure I’ll have more to say about the site and my experience (I’m creating public domain content specifically formatted for the Sony LRF file format, which turns a scroll of text into a readable format) and selling them for $1.90 each.  It’s mostly a “follow your bliss” exercise that allows me to express both my technical and my publishing sides (I worked for five years in book publishing back in the last seventies / early eighties).

And I’m sure I’ll have things to say about what Sony and Amazon are doing right, or not …

This is actually an mp3 of the Yes song “roundabout,” I’m just trying to see if I can make this work …

The location is: here.

Well the only interest, (not unsurprisingly) this blog of sorts has received has been from spammers.  Today I fairly painlessly installed a nice patch for the WordPress system that hosts this blog to block IP addresses (includes lots of other clever anti-spam mechanims).

 Meanwhile, on a personal diary note, I’m getting ready to leave this Sunday for the Bahamas for a week.  Maybe I’ll post some pictures when I get back …

Well it’s been about six months or so since my last post.

I have revitalized the steinergurdjieff site, although off to a very slow ramp — I now require that members validate before posting, and well, the uptake is *slow*.

I am focussed on trying to put all of my “stuff on the web” energy up there, but maybe this will prove interesting/useful …

Welcome to eyespod.net, where I am free to record and journal my opinions and musings.

I’ve been fairly offline in terms of web content creation for the past year, during which time my life has undergone somewhat of a revolution - I married six months ago to an incredible woman; a year ago the startup where I worked was acquired by a much bigger company and I’ve been on a whirlwind with work; and meanwhile, I’ve been juggling homes in Santa Cruz (where my kids live) and Sacramento (where my wife and her kids live).

My steinergurdjieff.net web site has been the victim of both neglect on my part, defacement by php-nuke hackers, and a fairly inept recovery job on my part.  I am (extremely) slowly moving to reconstitute it, but need to re-vision it as it wasn’t working in its current form.  One problem was that the steiner-gurdjieff vector, at least as I had positioned it to myself, was too constraining for the kind of flowing interest in things spiritual and psychological that I have.  The Steiner/Gurdjieff interesection is a huge area of interest, but it by no means embraces everything.

 I had toyed with the idea of simply expanding-redefining steinergurdjieff.net to a more “my blogish thing about whatever with Steiner and Gurdjieff as an anchor point” but that seemed to not quite do justice to the Steiner/Gurdjieff nexus itself.  Although I can image a “Steiner-Gurdjieff Institute” or whatever that is open to a broad range of human development modalities but takes it keynote from those two.

Even more of an issue was the discovery on my part that apparently creating a bbs around such an esoteric topic requires continuous care and feeding on my part.

 Enough on that, this forum gives my unbridled license to write about whatever I want to write about.  And I would like to be writing, without having to worry however about a particular editorial theme.

 Stay tuned, I guess!

 dme