Sometimes you need to get away from all the instant bad news. I believe that we, as a nation, are turning into a bunch of pussies because all we hear is a shipload of evilness. Day in and out you have earthquakes, airport scares, child abductions, murders, markets crashing, and on and on. Trouble is, you have no control over any of those things. And, quite frankly, shouldn’t even be worrying about them. You’re more likely to die from a fall in the tub than a terrorist.

I used to travel a bit back and forth between Chicago and Austin for work. After a stressful trip to Chicago (anger capital of the world, IMO), I’d sit at the back of the plane with my glass of wine and my book. It was a ritual I had to follow. Like a decompression chamber. Sloughing off the bad vibes of the North and re-acclimating myself to the laid back groove of Austin. (Austin is changing, even in the few years we’ve been here, but it’s still more copacetic than most places.)

The book of choice was “In the Mountains of Heaven”. It’s a travel book, and an inspiring one at that. It’s one of those books that makes you feel good about humanity. Things aren’t always rosy, but they are real, and you see that there are so many more good people than bad. It makes you think of other cultures. It makes you ponder about others lives. People whom you will never meet, but who love and feel in just the same way that you do.

So, if life is wearing you out, I suggest a glass of wine and a chapter from this book. You can find it remaindered or used, or can get a new copy at Amazon. It made my trips back to Austin a lot more enjoyable and meaningful.

In the Mountains of Heaven: True Tales of Adventure on Six Continents

My parents were nice enough to get me this book for Christmas:

It’s the “Complete Idiot’s Guide” to U.S. History and is written by an old co-worker and friend, Ken Hite.

It breaks U.S. history up into five parts, starting right before the Revolutionary War and goes to current time (the election of Obama). You can easily read through a section an evening and end up with an excellent overview of U.S. history in less than a week.

In 180 pages or so Ken was able to sum up over two hundred years of history, hitting the presidents and major events — many of which you probably never heard of. He also interweaves longer term themes, such as the treatment of African Americans — from slavery to a black president.

The text is only part of the package, as this is a Graphic work — AKA a “comic book”. Each event is illustrated by Shepherd Hendrix. The visuals help to make the enjoyable prose even more fun (and there is plenty of humor thrown in, to prevent things from getting too dry). The wonderful combination means that you can actually give a history book to a child and not hear them groan in agony. Heck, it means that you can give a history book to an adult who “doesn’t like history”.

There should be a copy in every school library. Not because it is the end-all-be-all of history books, but because it will teach people more about their past. And, if we are very lucky, it will get some people interested in history who may not have otherwise.

Highly recommended.

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to U.S. History, Graphic Illustrated

Update: Let me add that I learnt quite a lot, and I consider myself reasonably well read in history. I think that Ken should write a book just about 1919. I had forgotten — and didn’t know — how much happened in that year. If any history writers are looking for a U.S. history theme, I suggest 1919.

An old friend of ours is selling off a sizable portion of her very excellent Science Fiction collection. Take a look at her store:

Vintage Science Fiction

I can attest that she takes very good care of her books, and has collected a very impressive library.

If you are into Science Fiction, I highly recommend taking a look. These are the “best of” books, as she had already donated a slew of books to her local libraries. (She pretty much allowed the Fort Smith library to have a Science Fiction section.)

It looks like Google has put up a bunch of old magazines on the Google Books site. Probably the most interseting to me is the entire collection of Popular Science — that’s 138 years of the magazine! (Though, they were mostly just text until about 1917 when they started doing full-color covers.) Facinating stuff. Take a look.

Popular Science Archives On Google Books

Update: With all that’s on the web page, it’s a little hard to figure out how to read the magazine. First, click on the issue you want in the left-right scroll area in the middle of the screen. When the cover appears in the upper-left, click on the “Read this magazine” button. It should open the Google Book Search page with a full-sized view of the entire magazine. Just scroll up and down.

You can also click on the Contents link to bring you to the table of contents. There you can click on anything with a blue underline and it will take you right to that page. Pretty cool!

Be sure to check out page 218 of the January 1950 issue. You can learn how to build a Labor-Saving Kitchen Designed By Doctors. It has great lines like “How much work is it for your wife to prepare your breakfast?” Ha-ha! The answer, NONE, because I do all the cooking.

This has to be, without compare, the strangest package that I’ve ever received. As the USPS mailman said, “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

It’s a big picture because it’s a big Royal Mail mailbag! Four feet high and thirteen pounds of Great Britain Post! It even flew American Airlines (flight AA107) from Heathrow to JFK.

Inside? A box of Folio books that I ordered. Normally they ship out of somewhere in the US. But, for some reason, these came from jolly old England in a giant sack.

Man, now what can I do with a giant mail sack???

Here’s a random selection of things we’ve been into recently. If the dog days of summer are keeping you inside, perhaps you’ll consider one of more of these.

Persepolis : This is a graphic novel, turned into an animated movie.  We saw the movie. It’s a great coming-of-age story for adults. The twist? It’s set in Iran during the Islamic “revolution”. This should be required viewing for anyone wanting to understand more about history of the area. Don’t let the animation get you thinking this is a kids movie, it’s not at all, and is wonderfully done.

From Hell : Books like this make you sad that more people don’t read graphic novels. This is a huge and complicated book, focused on the Jack The Ripper mystery. While it’s fiction, it’s based on extensive research (there are forty-two pages of end notes) which lends to real authenticity. Think comics are for kids? Read From Hell.

60’s Spies : For something a little lighter, might I suggest any number of 1960’s era spy programs. A classic, in glorious black & white, is Danger Man (aka Secret Agent) starring Patrick McGoohan. After watching the series, watch the semi-surreal The Prisoner. (The one series does flow into the other, as I’ve found.) Looking for something more Bond-ish? Then go for The Saint, starring (future Bond) Roger Moore. Did you know that Moore was the first choice for Bond, but was under contract for The Saint? He does a better job in this series than the movies. Good fun. For some more humor, look to I Spy starring Robert Culp and Bill Cosby (not Jello Bill, but early, young, Cosby).

Rootabaga Stories : This one is for the kids. A series of stories by Carl Sandburg, originally written for his daughters. Try and hunt down “More Rootabaga Stories” which is a wonderfully illustrated edition. And, if you are looking for keepsake editions of The Fairy series collected by Andrew Lang, be sure to pick up the Folio editions. They are not inexpensive, but will last for 500 years. The series of books collects just about every childrens fable you can think of. If you don’t want to spend the money on the Folio editions, you can find them in trade paper, I believe.

We used to subscribe to a lot of magazines. A couple on cooking, a smattering of science, history, weekly news, work-related, and on and on. Recently, I’ve been taking a hard look at what we subscribe to, and what we get out of them.

I love magazines, because they are usually topical and current. More of the here and now. Things which can be digested quickly and then passed on. The trouble was, I was getting into overload, and finding that many were just sitting unread. A lot of what used to be useful (like news) aren’t so much, with the advent of endless Internet news sources. (That’s a whole ‘nother story.)

Anyhow, old standbys like Smithsonian and National Geographic and Scientific American have been cast aside. Either the information wasn’t useful, or the magazine had gone down the toilet (SciAm, IMO). Other stuff, like The Sun, I grew tired of. Too much crying and never-ending sameness. After you’ve read you 30th near-death-suicide-drunk-prison-child-abuse story, you’ve read them all.

Though, I haven’t given up on magazines. I’ve just gotten more picky. I’ve got the cheap throw-away stuff, like Wired and The Week, which I still subscribe to. And, some stuff, like Mother Jones, got very close to becoming a castoff, but redeemed themselves with real investigative journalism (and I use the term journalism in the genuine way, not the fluff that CNN and company have become). Magazines like Reason came back on-line, as my libertarian spirit returned.

Recently, I ran into a new magazine that seemed interesting. It’s called Cabinet and caught my eye because a recent issue was on Magic (legerdemain, not ghosts and witches). Like Mother Jones, it is run as a non-profit. Unlike Mother Jones, the focus is Art and Culture.

Cabinet is one of those magazines you flip through and feel good about. It’s like opening a Folio edition of a book. It just feels good. Thick paper, interesting photos, well laid-out, little surprise inserts, and so on. The kind of magazine that ends up on the bookshelf, not the trash can. Is it possible to like a magazine on feel alone?

I’ve yet to go through the back issues I recently received, so I can’t tell for sure if the content matches the first impression. However, after flipping though a couple, I’m sure I’m in for a real treat.

Handmade Electronic Music

I start out first with a recent purchase, a book called Handmade Electronic Music. This is a really nice introduction to making your own musical gadgets. The author starts out with the basics, get’s into circuit ‘bending’ (modifying existing electronic gizmos), and then moves toward more complex work using CMOS chips.

Nothing here is rocket science, so don’t expect to walk away being able to make a full synth. However, it does cover introductory to moderate level skills, and gets into some nice projects for the guitar heros out there. If you are a musician and wants to learn how those distortion pedals work, this is a good starting point.

Unlike a lot of electronics books out there, this one is very readable. The author covers components just enough, and doesn’t swamp you with extended explanations of how the chips work (there are other books to do that). In the end, you end up making fun sounding stuff really quickly.

In addition, I am pleased to report that this book was well edited. I’ve yet to find a typo in the text or schematics. Even better, this author uses commonly available, inexpensive, non-retired parts, and also includes Radio Shack and Jameco part numbers. Very handy, especially for people who don’t want to get into electronics “whole hog”. Most of the projects can be made with about $20 in parts (tops).

CMOS Cookbook

Once you have played around with Handmade Electronic Music for a while you’ll want to more about the nitty-gritty behind the CMOS chips used in many of those projects. The classic CMOS Cookbook is a good place to start.

This book, originally written in the late seventies, and reviewed/revised in the late nineties, is a great intro to CMOS logic chips. Basically, CMOS chips are logic devices. Feed a signal in, they do some work, and out is your result. Inverters are a basic example of a logic gate (send in a 1, get 0 in the output). There are also things like decade counters (used for the “KITT Car” scanning light effect, among other things), and dividers (put in one frequency, get base 2 divisions of that frequency on different output pins).

The beauty of CMOS is that is still comes in a basic DIP package (those larger “chip” sizes which are easier for experimenters to use), they have a wide voltage range (about 5V to 15V), and require very little power to run (versus TTL logic chips). Plus, they are a long-used technology (since the early 70’s) so there’s a lot of info out there. As an added bonus, they are dirt cheap. In single units most are in the 25 cent range (if you purchase from a larger supplier, like Allied). This means you can destroy a few without going broke.

The CMOS Cookbook is a great introduction to CMOS, and also a solid introduction to logic circuits. There are lists of the most common chips, and what they do. There are sample projects of all sorts. And there are excellent descriptions of the different logic states, and how you can use them.

The author, Don Lancanster, has written more books and articles than I can count, and offers a lot of very useful real-world advice. In addition, since the book was written thirty (!!!) years ago, you don’t get a lot of heavy (and complicated) microcontroller/microprocessor stuff. I love the microcontroller stuff, but I think it’s best for beginners to understand, at least a little, how the most basic logic chips work. Heck, you can make your own computer, with RAM and ROM, with the CMOS line.

If you are working with CMOS, which is pretty popular in the analog/digital synth circuit, then the CMOS Cookbook is well worth your time.

Don also has a TTL Cookbook, which I also own. However, since I don’t do much TTL, and it’s more of a pain to work with, I’d advise sticking with CMOS. Most of the TTL logic chips have been re-created with CMOS anyway, so why bother with TTL? (I know, there are reasons. But for most homebrew people, CMOS is the way to go. It’s newer, too! LOL).

Evil Genius Books

The TAB company (an old tech publisher) has recently been putting out a whole line of “Evil Genius” books. We own two of them, one on microcontrollers (PICs), and this one (Spy Gadgets).

These books are really a mixed bag for me. On one hand, they are easy to read, pretty chatty in style, and have some interesting projects. On the other hand, I’m concerned about their editing. I can’t speak for the entire series, but the “Spy Gadgets” book is filled with errors. Now, there’s nothing earth-shattering, but there’s enough to make a beginner’s life a lot harder. For example: mislabeled parts, text not matching schematics, illogical schematic flows, and glossing over of some critical components.

If you are a beginner picking up electronics, be sure to have an experienced person look over your shoulder. If you don’t have someone to help, check their forums for updates, and check the data sheets on the key components (at least the pinouts and common ratings for off-board components).

Again, I really like these books for the ideas, but I don’t think they are “tight” enough to provide a solid introduction to electronics. Maybe that’s not their goal, but they should at least be as accurate as possible.
With this I have a couple of words of advice for electronics books writers:

• Use common parts. If you can’t get it from 3 major vendors, don’t use it.
• Include options and cross references. Beginners don’t know that a 74C114 can be replaced by a CD40106.
• Proofread. Proofread. Proofread. Proofread.
• Follow industry standard schematic conventions. I like big bold schematics, but I don’t like non-standard parts symbols.
• Where possible, have your schematics flow top-bottom, left-right. (At least for Western readers.) A big annoyance with the Spy book was that some schematics went logical left-right, while others went right-left. Very confusing!
• Include complete parts lists. This makes it so much easier for people to order everything at once, and save on shipping. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to pay $8 to ship a 25 cent part. (This is one of the reasons I try and keep a tight inventory, and triple-check before ordering parts. Better to buy a little too much than to sit for a week waiting on something to come in.)

Those who know me know that I shy away from reading fiction. It’s not that I don’t enjoy a good novel and the like, but that I’ve only so much time, so want to focus on reading “meatier” things. (This is a big unfair, I know, as a good piece of fiction can illuminate more than any non-fiction can.) And so I read tomes on the history of civilizations, cookbooks that weigh as much as a large roast, and so forth.

Recently, I’ve been reading a book called The Denial Of Death by Ernest Becker. Nothing like some light reading before bed. I’m still rolling through it, so I can’t offer any great insights. However, I wanted to bring up a couple of points which I’ve encountered so far.

One of which is a mystery I’ve been working through for a while: Why is it that people are so in love with disaster? The disaster can take any shape, from a horrible day at work to a terrorist attack. We almost take pleasure in bad things happening, to the point of inventing problems where there aren’t any. Here Becker offers an interesting comment:

Early men who were the most afraid were those who were most realistic about their situation in nature, and they passed on to their offspring a realism that had a high survival value.

So, being scared shitless about your environment makes you pay attention. Paying attention is good, when the animals around you would like nothing better than to eat you. However, being on the lookout for the hungry lion doesn’t do modern man much good. Becker continues:

The result was the emergence of man as we know him: a hyperanxious animal who constantly invents reasons for anxiety even where there are none.

That line really triggered an “a-ha” moment for me. Our anxiety is based on millions of years of evolution, and taken out of a deadly environment, we have to focus that anxiety on something. Often it’s focused on all the petty things around us. Scared of our own shadow, as it were.

On the next page, Becker offers a wonderful insight for all the tired parents out there:

The child lives in a situation of utter dependence; and when his needs are met it must seem to him that he has magical powers, real omnipotence. If he experiences pain, hunger, or discomfort, all he has to do is to scream and he is relieved and lulled by gentle, loving sounds. He is a magican and a telepath who has only to mumble and to imagine and the world turns to his desires.

Isn’t that a wonderful paragraph? It clearly identifies the whys behind a child’s thought process. As a non-parent, I can’t tell you if it helps, but it does seem to offer a sound explaination as to why children are so darn fussy and perplexed, especially from ages 0 to 5.

Following the footsteps of Freud and Otto Rank, Becker covers the usual suspects. Sections on penis envy and the like can be found. However, Becker loves to add his own wry commentary:

With anal play the child is already being a philospher of the human condition.

Sentences like that make books worth reading.

Evelyn likes taking photos. With the advent of digital cameras she ends up taking many, many photos. The problem is that she now has tens of thousands of them, most of which are locked up on a computer somewhere. Besides the sheer quantities of photos involved, we have another problem: distribution. Many of the people we want to share with simply don’t have a computer and/or access to the Internet.

So what do you do? Well, you go back to a tried-and-true technology: books.

With the growth of print-on-demand services, almost anyone can publish their own books, very inexpensively. I’m not talking about those crappy spiral bound books, but real full-color glossy photo books. If you are interested in producing your own photo books, take a look at services such as Blurb. You can produce beautiful 11×13 120-page books for about $70 each. This may seem like a lot, but you will have an art-quality book that you can stuff 500 or so photos into. (This is their largest book, they have plenty of stuff in smaller formats, running in the $20 range.)

Blurb uses some layout software, which you install on your PC. It comes with a bunch of templates, mainly focused on producing “memories” type books. You can do some really cool stuff. Think: Your own cookbooks, with full color photos. Wedding/Baptism/whatever memory books. Photo-only books. And so on. Evelyn is currently working on a yearbook, where she puts photos and stories together, all of which covers her adventures of the past year(s).

If you are interested in a more traditional (text only) publisher, take a look at Lulu. They produce 6×9 softcover books (from a PDF) for about $8 a book. Pretty darn cheap. (They do color also, but Blurb is cheaper for photo-type books.)

So, get yourself in print, and don’t worry about losing your favorite photos.