…in the middle of our street:

http://360.io/Ak5fQF

360 degrees!

Because I know you care:
…where Earl wants to go. Earl posted up his top destination so I thought I would pop off a few of my own.

To date, I have ticked off a few of my majors like:
France, Spain, NYC, Port Hardy and the Inside Passage, Nfld, Ottawa and of course Yellow knife. Here are a bunch of the remaining in some sort of screwed-up Bruce order:

1) Yukon/Alaska: I want to see the last great wilderness in NA
2) Churchill, Manitoba: Polar bears, nuff said
3) Yosemite: Big, big rocks
4) Trans Atlantic cruise (or sail)
5) Washington DC: Smithsonian anyone?
6) London and environs: British Museum, British Library, etc., you get the idea
7) Rome: Old things
8) Athens: Older things
9) Egypt: Oldest things
10) Moscow or St Petersberg: Eastern European things
11) Peru: Machu Pichu
12) More Europe: Cathedrals and culture
13) Southeast Asia, but only if I have guide cause I am a chicken
14) India (see 13)
15) Sailing the Caribbean in my own boat

Well it was a ‘moderate’ success and Leslie and Carmen finally have their cracked wheat bread…

From a bare street to floatng houses in 6 minutes…

Incredible video

Never, ever underestimate the power of water.

An incredibly awkward way to go about a straight forward process… but at least they arrived at the right conclusion…

Editing Woes

The very first edition of this book was rife with errors. Only a few technical errors, but plenty of spelling, grammar, and formatting issues. Isn’t that what the editing process is for? It sure is. We didn’t skip that part either, it’s just that we didn’t take it seriously enough. We relied on friends, family, and ourselves to read through the book, catch errors, and provide notes. We are hugely grateful for their help, because without it, that first edition would have been much worse.

After the release, emails started coming in pointing out problems. These emails were responded to as promptly and nicely as possible. People that take the time to report problems are excellent customers and responding to their emails with the utmost respect will hopefully keep them that way. Thanks to all of the editing help we received from many generous people, the next update produced a much higher quality, more accurate book.

At first, we tried responding to errata emails as they rolled in – checking and fixing errors sort of on the spot. With everything else going on, we soon decided to automate and simplify the errata process as much as possible. Our errata system is now threefold: 1) setup an official Errata & Changelog page to help streamline communique, 2) tag incoming errata email as such, and 3) check & fix all errata at the same time, during book updates. This system helps to save time by keeping things streamlined, efficient, and thorough.

After putting up the Errata submission page, we encouraged people to use it. Later, when the print book came out, we gave folks that did the most work in finding errors free copies.

With each update, the accuracy of the book continues to improve. At first, we were inundated with editing woes, but I think we reacted well to the the situation and ended up with a solid book that continues to evolve. Looking back, we probably should have been more thorough with the initial editing process.

Takeaway: Pay for a real editor.

Altogether, an interesting bit about the pros and cons of self publishing… http://digwp.com/2011/03/what-we-learned-publishing-digging-into-wordpress/

Real French toast tonight with a primativo and company. Why am I blogging? Well others need to visit and I’m a geek. Anyway, wordpress has another app update available and it is supposed to limit the crashing.

An image:

I still don’t get the insert metaphor. Now to try something else…

The new building is proceeding apace. We might even be in in March. The second picture shows my office window from the retail floor…

Dennis Johnson was an arrogant man, an ass even. He treated his assistant like a menial, he saved his attention for the powerful and influential in the room, he practically raised writers from infancy, he made money at publishing poetry and he generally electrified any space he occupied.

Dennis is dead at 58. (http://www.bookcentre.ca/news/dennis_johnson_19522011)

I admired him greatly. He built a press that was incomparable in it’s milieu, he championed the industry and he was very, very successful in an arena that chewed up and spat out presses annually. How do you eulogized a man like this? How do you celebrate his magnificence?

I’m going to raise a glass.

To Dennis… I’ll grab some cash at the ATM for you and meet you at the bar.

The Christmas Kat is smug in her new domain!

SWEETUMS!

For more on this visit his site…