Entrecard. Good Afternoon

Entrecard

As you know, I am not satisfied with Entrecard. I want my account deleted. With this kind of policy, I am not sure that I will get my account deleted unless I am very pushy.

You cannot delete your own account, but you can request deletion. To do this, first ensure you are signed into the account you wish to delete. Now go to the Feedback form on the Dashboard and write a message saying that you would like to delete your account. We will reply to you and confirm that you really want to delete your account.

Deleted accounts will lose all of their credits, all ads will be cancelled, and your site will no longer be in our system. Please do not request account deletion unless you are absolutely certain that it's what you want to do.

Ah, now I did it. I cancelled all the advertisements on my Entrecard dashboard, then sent my remaining 405 credits to the Thin Red Line. Now my account should be zeroed out.

Good Afternoon

Once again, I spent most of my day looking up social science books for purchase. This includes investing and military books. I found a book which looked quite interesting. As you know if you read my blog regularly, I am very interested in green investing. I placed Green Investing on hold by Jack Ulrich. Thomas Friedman has a new book that looks quite interesting. I think it will be a bestseller Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Why We Need A Green Revolution and How it Will Renew America. I believe strongly in green investing.

I also spent some time weeding the social sciences section. The two activities tend to go together. Hopefully, when I am done the sections I am assigned will have a much better, easier to use collection.

This morning, I spent more time reading on the train. According to the book Groundswell, it gives an estimate of $283,000 is spent by a large company for a blog, and there is a $393,000 annual return for the money spent. This is according to the Fastlane blog. I really don't know if I believe this. There are a lot of very interesting statistics in this book.

Good Morning

Image of the Canadian Library of Parliament from 1877. The picture looks more like the outside of a gothic castle than a library to me.

Good Morning

Yesterday was a day for lawyers and accountants. A day which I wish would have magically and permanently disappeared. There is nothing like getting up to go to see a lawyer early in the morning, then going and spending an afternoon with an accountant to try and solve a financial fiasco. It is a blessing that day is over.

I read some more of Wikinomics which is turning out to be a very entertaining and informative book.

I also rejoined Technorati. My anger is now over against Technorati. I realized that I probably should not have gone on a favoriting binge. It is like the endless clicking on Entrecard which I still can't get to work in my browser at home. Technorati is basically a way to get more traffic on a blog and be recognized.

Afternoon Thoughts

I got a chance to go to the library this afternoon and return some books. I also got a chance to spend a little time on the library computers. It wasn't that exciting this afternoon.

Morning Thoughts, Afternoon Thoughts

A scene from the cartoon Superman The Mechanical Monsters. I don't know quite why I chose this image today.

Morning Thoughts

I have been having problems with Entrecard at home. I think my browser is not working correctly on my home computer so I can't login from home. I can login from other places. This makes it a bit difficult to use this service right now.

This morning, I went through the Demco catalog, the Gaylord catalog, and the Librarian's Yellowpages http://www.librariansyellowpages.com/ to look for furniture and some other items like book displays. We need a new globe, I am requesting the Pioneer Political Globe to replace our old globe which is long outdated. I'm also looking at some clear plastic wall shelving for papers and handouts in the Job Information Center. I am also requesting some clear plastic bookstands, both single tier and three tier stands for display materials.

I am probably going to do some more weeding this afternoon.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars movie premiered yesterday in Los Angeles, so we are going to buy some more of the Star Wars Clone Wars graphic novels. It should spawn various books as well. I hope they did a better job with this movie than they did with the last one.

I am reading Saturn's Children by Charles Stross. Think Barbarella meets James Bond in the far future where everyone is an android. It is fun, sexy, and very entertaining. There is some really interesting writing here. Charles Stross recently won the Hugo Award for Halting State. He is currently one of my favorite authors. This is a link to his online Journal http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/index.html. He has a computer science and pharmaceutical background so he uses a lot of hard science in his writing.

Afternoon Thoughts

I have been weeding the business management collection, the 600s. It is a slow tedious process where it is better to be careful than anything else. The collection is packed with older books, some of them are quite interesting. There are books by Robert Half, Peter Drucker, Jack Welch and many prominent business writers.

Another book came in for me to read, Reaper's Gale, A Tale of the Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson. I really like the character Karsa Orlong in this series. He is one of my favorite swords and sorcery heros.

Morning Thoughts

Morning Thoughts

I have not been doing anything too exciting this morning. I took a few minutes to look at Amazon and Barnes and Noble online for business management book titles. I read some more of The Future of the Internet.

I read a little bit of the documentation for Opera. I also looked at Entrecard for a little bit. It has been a slow but steady morning. I even took a short walk around the neighborhood and bought a cup of coffee from the local deli. The coffee woke me up quite nicely.

Because everything is pretty quiet today, I went through and made sure all my links in my sidebar are still working. It is good to do this occassionally. Websites and blogs have a tendency to evaporate unexplicably. No dead links here if possible.

I also checked my Sitemeter to see where my web traffic was coming from. Most of it is coming from Google Blogsearch and Entrecard. There is a smattering of hits from Twitter, Yahoo, and Fuelmyblog, as well as a few individual websites.

I am doing housecleaning for the blog. If you want to, feel free to make any suggestions you think might help to improve this blog.

Morning Thoughts

A bust of Homer in the British Museum in London.

Morning Thoughts

Good morning. I had my morning coffee, so I am not feeling too bad. I watched a little bit of the 7th Voyage of Sinbad. It is much better than Harryhausen's other films. I rather like the Valley of the Cyclops. The animation for the cyclops is quite interesting. I like the way it uses a tree to smash several of Sinbad's companions.

There is a lot in this movie so far which is quite interesting. Sinbad often creates his own problems when he hires criminals who would be facing the gallows to voyage with him to the Vally of the Cyclops.

The special effects, even if they are old are quite interesting. The miniature princess that is three inches tall is entertaining, so is the scene of the four armed snake woman.

The way the story is told reminds me a little bit of the Odyssey. It is an old fashioned adventure story with gold, magic, and monsters. I will write more about it as I watch some more of the film.

I took a break from the movie and am reading a bit more of Acacia: The War With the Mein. The story is interesting, it seems to draw from African myth and legend, as well as North African history. The scenes with pirates remind me a bit of the pirates of the Barbary coasts from North Africa. The setting is a bit different than your usual fantasy setting. It seems to mix a bit of African history with Roman history.

I also like some of the themes in the novel so far. For a while, the Acacians ruled the known world through a combination of a drug called the mist and various forms of slavery including child slavery. Now they are being attacked by the Mein who consider the Acacians unjust and dishonorable.

I finished reading the novel this afternoon. It has a rather interesting and surprising ending. I will write up a review later this week.

Entrecard is still having some problems. Apparently Amazon S3 which provides remote memory storage and other applications to Entrecard is having some problems with their cloud computing system. Cloud computing is a form of distributed computing.

Amazon S3 rents applications and memory to other companies through the internet. In other words you can rent chunks of memory, internet bandwidth, and complex computer programs by the hour at reasonable rates.

Unfortunately when Entrecard added Sezwho and Diggit, it looks like the new applications disrupted the cloud computing system on Amazon S3. It is rather interesting to follow.

It is a bit annoying. It means that I will be getting less blog traffic through Entrecard. Hopefully, Entrecard and Amazon S3 will fix this soon. Still, it is rather fascinating to follow the process. I am learning something about how social networking systems can have problems.

I am trying to understand this stuff in terms of Occam's Razor, otherwise it would be completely over my head. "All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best."

While I was at the laundromat during the evening folding clothes, I was watching television. I have a television but it doesn't work properly, you have to subscribe to cable to get any channels so I don't watch it at home. The television I have at home has a built in VCR and DVD player which is easy to use. I watch movies on my television but not any television shows.

Anyways, I was watching the news on television at the laundromat when I saw a rather interesting advertisement. Apparently T. Boone Pickens the oil billionaire has an energy plan which he is advertising on television. I went to the site and it was very straightforward. Invest in wind power, solar power, and natural gas. Straightforward, easy, something which we can definitely do. I liked it enough that I looked at the website. He says some things which are quite correct. Oil peaked in 2005 and we are sending too much money to foreign powers. Here is the link: http://www.pickensplan.com/theplan/

Morning Weekend Thoughts

This is a path in the grounds of Down House. Darwin regularly walked along this path for exercise of body and mind. He called it his "Thinking Path". Ted Grant took the photograph and released it into the public domain.

Morning Weekend Thoughts



I am at the library sitting here at one of the computers. I am fifty minutes into my alotted hour. While I was looking around on the internet, I got a blocked site. I must have been looking at something quite spicy. I am really not sure why I was blocked. I wasn't even aware they had filtering software on my local libraries computers.


I visited a number of social networking sites. Entrecard is very slow today. I should not be obsessive about these things. Apparently, they partnered with a company called http://www.sezwho.com/ , a company that has comment management software for blogs. I am not sure if it is working right now. It did not work out too well. Now Entrecard is quite slow.

Sezwho was not properly prepared for a large volume of blogs to manage. For Sezwho to index a single blog for comments takes about two to three hours. Imagine if they suddenly have thousands of blogs to index.

I also returned my book, The Other Wind today. I dropped it in the book slot. Not very exciting.

Today seems like it is just starting and it is almost noon. I had my morning coffee already, so I am awake.

Sometimes you want to do nothing. I certainly am in one of those moods. I feel pretty relaxed. Right now, I am the only one sitting at the computers in the library. It is quiet and peaceful. I will be walking down the hill soon to go back home. I still haven't looked around for things to read.

I didn't find anything to read at the library this morning. There is a heat advisory outside until after six o'clock so it is a bit hot outside.


I did however, have a chance to read Iron Man by Peter David. It was a nice lite read with all the trappings of what should go into a superhero novel. I haven't seen the movie so I don't know if it is an exact match. Still it was fun to read this afternoon. It took me about two hours to read. It is the kind of book which you can read in a single afternoon.

I also watched part of another Ray Harryhausen film, 20 Million Miles to Earth. It was about a creature from Venus that grows into a giant creature from Venus which terrorizes the Sicilian countryside. At least, the monster had the good taste to go after a coliseum. The movie was light entertainment. It was basically a giant bipedal lizard.

Unfortunately, I could not watch all of it because the DVD was scratched. It is hard to know if the DVD works sometimes. People who return the DVDs often don't tell us that they are damaged. We have a machine downstairs at the library which is supposed to fix most scratches on DVDs. I will bring the movie in to get it fixed.

I am preparing to watch these slightly cheesy films for the grand finale of Harryhausen films, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad tomorrow. There are supposed to be several animatronic fight sequences between Sinbad and various monsters.

If you are wondering if I did anything constructive today, I did go shopping for groceries this afternoon. I know it has very little to do with books.

Morning Thoughts, Thumbnail, Social Networks

This is the new thumbnail I am using for websites like Technorati, Blogcatalog, and Fuelmyblog.

I started reading John Ghazvinian, Untapped, The Scramble for Africa's Oil. I found the listing fo this book when I was looking at the blog, The Thin Red Line. I am past the first fifty pages already, so I will definitely finish reading this book and review it.

I even sent an email to him requesting he put up a Youtube video. There are a lot of authors who use Youtube to promote their books.

Hello, John Ghazvinian,
I am reading your book Untapped The Scramble For Africa's Oil. I was hoping there was a Youtube video of you talking about the book, about two minutes would be fine. It is a short way to promote your book. There are actually a lot of interviews of authors on Youtube. I know it sounds like an odd idea, but it makes it easier for me to review a book on my website. I am blogging anonymously, well sort of anonymously.

Regards,

Book Calendar
http://www.bookcalendar.blogspot.com/

I am beginning to think that in the not too distant future every author, editor, and publisher will have to have a social media kit for the web. It will consist of an image representing the author in multiple sizes, 125 pixel by 125 pixel, 50 pixel by 50 pixel, and 400 pixel by 400 pixel. I think most authors have this. This image will be used to post on sites like Technorati

In addition to this the author or editor will be expected to create either a short talk of about two minutes on the book they are editing or writing, or a brief reading which they did at a store or other venue. Usually, this will be posted as a video on Youtube. It can't be can too long because then the author would be giving away too much. It would be nice if every recent book I read had a short video clip about it.

One of the things I did tonight is go on Technorati and add some blogs to my favorites. Many of these blogs were already in my blogroll on the side of the page. I Technorati favorited Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 Blog and The OUP (Oxford University Press) Blog. Now I have both of these blogs linked in more than one place. This creates a kind of network of shared places.

I have done this with some other blogs, I have The Thin Red Line as one of my Entrecard favorites, in my Blogroll, and as a "friend" in Blogcatalog. I think this has helped turn some blogs that share social networking sites into regular readers. There is a web of linkages between the different social network sites where you begin to recognize and read blogs which belong to more than one social networking site.

Some blogs purposefully join you in belonging to more than one social networking community because they like the content of your blog. While I was using Entrecard, the Inkweaver Review asked me to do a link exchange with their site. I did this and now we share use of Entrecard and links between our sites. I hope this helps to build regular readers.

Morning Thoughts, Gods Debris

I am still on jury duty which is turning out to be an odd experience. I ran out of books from the libray where I work to read. I went back to my local library and picked up a copy of Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain! by Scott Adams. So far it has been quite amusing. It consists of short one or two page diary entries from the authors life. Scott Adams writes Dilbert.

There is not a whole lot which has been happening with the blog for the moment. While I was looking through the entrecard listings, I noticed the Avon Romance Blog http://www.avonromanceblog.blogspot.com/. This is the only major book publisher on Entrecard. I have noticed that Avon is often willing to try new and innovative ideas. When I was at Book Expo America in 2007, they had just introduced a new line of Nascar romances which seemed a little different.

I will write some more when I get back.

Alright, I got back early from jury duty. It was exhausting even though it was short today. I have read a little more of the Scott Adam's book. While I was reading through it, I came across a book which Scott Adam's is giving away on the internet, God's Debris. This is a link to the free ebook. http://www.andrewsmcmeel.com/godsdebris/ I am not even sure what it is about. All I know is that it is free and people like free things.

Apparently Scott Adams says this book has been downloaded over 200,000 times for free. I am not sure what that means in terms of free publicity and advertising for his works, but it probably means a lot more people will be reading his books which are already very popular.

I am about two thirds through the book Stick To Drawing Comics Monkey Brain!, but I am tired so I will take a nap for a bit.

Morning Thoughts. Afternoon Thoughts. Evening Though.

Right now, I am drinking a cup of tea with lemon and honey, it is 9:30 a.m.

I tried to pay my Comic Book Legal Defense Fund membership, I will have to call them, their online payment system didn't work. Oh well. I started reading one of Nancy Pearl's selections from Book Lust, The Professor and the Madman, A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester. So far it has been enjoyable to read.

I have another book to consider reading Possession by A.S. Byatt.

I haven't checked to see which books have come in through interlibrary loan. The interlibrary loan books come in big plastic tubs which are practically indestructible. These are far more practical than cardboard boxes which usually end up breaking and costing more money in the long run. I usually check in the early afternoon when they are finishing checking in the interlibrary loans for the day.

I have been checking on my advertising. Adsense made me $1.55 in the last couple days. There may be real hope for Google adsense. I have 3 cents coming to me from Project Wonderful so I am on my way to my can of selter water. Amazon has stalled for a bit so that is alright.

I checked my various member sites and looked at a few new sites to add to my fuelmyblog widget, as well as my friends section in blogcatalog. I also noticed that entrecard has a favorites section for blogs. I'll add some favorites to my page to generate some goodwill.

Tomorrow, I am going to the New York City Publishers Reception at the Kitano Hotel for the Information Industry Summit. It should be fairly interesting. I am going on library time, so I will have to describe it to my supervisors and spend at least a little bit of time talking about things relative to libraries. I might write a short one page description as well.

I am debating about what I should wear. I'll probably wear slacks and a black turtleneck sweater. Something casual.

The morning has started off well for me. I'll write more as I think of new things.

I took a look through the Bookaholic blogring and looked at two blogs which I like a lot, http://teareads.blogspot.com/ , a very genteel seeming book blog, and http://kimbooktu.wordpress.com/ a blog with a nice directory of book sites, and commentary on book related technologies like bookmarks, playaways, and ebook readers.

It has reached afternoon. I had a brief lunch. My holds have come in. The book Oil by Upton Sinclair has come in. It is the basis for the academy award winning film There Will be Blood. Someone asked me to read it earlier. I also have Sunshine by Robin McKinley, a Mythopoeic award winning book, and a book which a patron was taking out, Creating A World Without Poverty Social Business and the Future of Capitalism by Muhammad Yunus. Muhammad Yunus is the founder of Grameen Bank and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. This book should be both important and interesting.

I called in this evening. I am a standby juror tomorrow. I get to sit until they maybe call me and read. I will bring a few books to sit in the waiting room. I have to bring a pen. I wonder why.

Advanced Reading Copies.

An Advanced Reading Copy is a stage between the manuscript which the author wrote, and the final publication. It is used to check the quality of the final work before it is published.

Usually an advanced reading copy will be trade paperback in size and have a glossy finished paper cover. In bookstores and libraries they are usually sent with a letter asking about any suggestions for final revision of the book. In big libraries with central branches, they usually have several bookshelves of advanced readers copies. Most of the time they say Advanced Readers Copy not for resale on them. Libraries cannot add them to their collections because of the notice.

Librarians will look over the Advanced Readers Copies to see how many of the book they will buy for a whole library system. Brooklyn Public Library, Queens Public Library, and New York Public Library all have central collection development departments as do most very large city library systems.

Independent booksellers often ignore advanced readers copies, they are busy selling books and often don't have time to read for pleasure. They often have an unread pile of them behind the counter. Sometime, they give them to their assistant to read. Or if the ARC is by a really famous author, they will stick it in a closet somewhere, because it might be worth something to someone some day.

ARCs of famous authors like Steven King are valuable. They are not supposed to sell it because of the notice. This is sometimes ignored. Usually to be considerate, most booksellers wait several years after the book is released until the item is collectible, have the item signed then sell it.

Often after meetings, the librarians will take a few minutes and pick up some of the advanced reading copies to read. They are meant to be distributed to get a first impression of a book before it is published. The more professionals in the book trade who read it and give an impression back to them the happier the publisher is.

If the librarian or bookseller is considerate and the review sheet is still in the ARC, they will send back a review of the Advanced Readers Copy to the publisher with comments like, the sword fight on page 53 read like a fight with a fencing blade not a broadsword, or I didn't like the poem on page 56 it didn't match the tone of the story, or you spelled cope verde wrong three times, it is cape verde. These will most likely be some of the final revisions before publication.

If the author liked the review, they may even send a signed copy of the book to you. This is rare, but it has happened to me once with a short review. They will also ask the bookseller to tell them how many copies of the book he or she might want to buy in the future.

Advanced Readers Copies are also handed out at the big book conventions. If you go to Book Expo America, each booth will have copies of their latest forthcoming to be published book in Advanced Readers Edition format. They hand out hundreds of them to generate buzz from the attendees. There are stacks piled up on the floor, on tables, in book racks, and on display stands for people to look at and handle. There are more than most people can even look at in passing. You could take home a hundred pounds of them and still barely scratch the surface.

If you go to author events or readings at a convention like Book Expo America, they will often have the latest ARC of their book at a reading or presentation. You are supposed to take one so you can read the book and tell your friends how great it was.

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The logo in this blog is my new logo for Entrecard which I designed. I hope it looks decent. I had to replace my hit counter last night because it broke.

Here are some more thoughts about entrecard has a very large number of users. However, they don't have a very wide readership. For example, currently in the category of books, there are only 3 members, in the category of writing there are about 14 members, and the category of art there are 12 members, and in the category of education there are 8 members. This is not a whole lot of membership for the arts. While I get a lot of traffic from there, I don't get enough repeat traffic. It would be nice if more artistic people "like you maybe" joined the network.

Sometimes widgets and counters stop working because the code on blogspot gets changed, or the producer of the widget has problems with their server. This is the first time this has happened to me. I am thinking of redesigning the banner at the top of the page. I think it needs to have a little more lightness to it.

Sometimes I sound like a pitch man, but that is what I am doing selling myself and my blog to you.

Review-- The Elements of Style Illustrated, Entrecard

The Elements of Style Illustrated by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White, Illustrated by Maira Kalman, Penguin, New York c2005. This is a truly wonderful book which makes an old classic even better.

I have seen a lot of blogs with heavy marketing and advertising prose. This book is about how to write, clear, concise, stylish prose. It was originally written in 1911 by William Strunk, Jr. an english professor who wanted to create a to the point book on how to write clearly. The book is considered a classic. Most writers claim to have read it. It is one of those books you are supposed to have read at least once.

His student, E.B. White took up the revision of the book in the second edition. This is the third edition. E.B. White is best known for writing the American children's classic Charlotte's web. He was also an essayist for the New Yorker. E.B. White further expanded the original book to include information on style. He wrote on how to design prose, form it into paragraphs, make the speaker identifiable in dialogue, and included sections on words to avoid like like, thrust, thus and other overused english.

The different between this book and other style books is that it is enjoyable to read. The examples used are entertaining. For example, the author writes "Be obscure clearly! Be wild in tongue in a way we can understand." He also exhorts people to first develop clarity, before deciding to use more flowery words. He uses many recognized people as part of his examples, Robert Frost, Walt Whitman, E.M. Forster, William Faulkner, and others. It is a truly literary work.

The Maira Kalman illustrations add to the quality of the work. They are mostly light and airy watercolors. The watercolors are of captions from the text. An example is, "Well Susan this is a fine mess you are in." Above this caption is a watercolor of a basset hound.

This book has helped many people improve the quality of their writing, making it more clear, precise and understandable. I am glad I had the chance to read the latest edition.

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I have been trying various methods to increase traffic to my website. So far Entrecard, a form of business logo exchange has gotten me the most results. I have doubled daily my traffic since trying this network. It is also fairly entertaining to use. You get to look at a lot of different blogs in many categories. It is kind of interesting seeing your logo on someone elses blog site.

The othe service that is working is Blogcatalog. It has essentially helped build a network of daily readers for my blog which I wouldn't have had if I didn't try their service out. I have joined several blog groups inside their network relevant to what I am writing about, science fiction, the environment, reading, and writing.

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I got rid of the Widgetbucks graphic novel and book items and replaced them with a Powell's Bookstore affiliate search button. I thought this would make the site more consistent and look better. Widgetbucks was also not working very well. I also got rid of the fish tank and shrank down the blog catalog banner from 10 viewers to 5. I think it looks better.