08:49 – Amazon has a bunch of free mystery and thriller ebooks today and tomorrow, if you like that kind of thing. Kindle Review has some picks.
I’ve gone through all the lab sessions to figure out what exactly needs to be in the biology kits. There are 72 items. Well, 72 categories, I suppose. Half a dozen test tubes count as one item, for example. Now I need to generate purchase orders for the components we buy and run labels for and make up the stuff we package ourselves.
I’m also going to spend some time over the next few days running through the manuscript for Illustrated Guide to Home Forensics Experiments with an eye to rewriting it around a kit and adding some lab sessions that weren’t in the original manuscript. There were several lab sessions I left out of the manuscript because it would be too difficult or too expensive for readers to get the necessary materials, but I can solve that problem with a kit.
For example, there are special cross-section slides available that are metal with tiny holes in them. The idea is that you slide a thin metal wire through one of the holes and use it to pull a clump of fibers back through the hole. You then use a scalpel to trim the fibers flush with the top and bottom of the slide, allowing you to view a cross section of the fibers by transmitted light. The problem is, those slides cost a buck or two each, and are sold only in boxes of 100.
Similarly, there are several solutions needed that require only, say, 1 gram of a particular chemical to make up 25 mL of solution. That chemical may be readily available, but only in a 25 gram bottle that costs $25 plus shipping. Since many chemicals are needed, the costs can add up fast, and each reader would end up with lots of unused chemicals. But packaged in a kit, that solution may cost only two or three bucks, counting labor costs, bottle, and so on. That’s why designing the book around a kit opens up so many more possibilities.
There is a program I use to use called Parts and Vendors. It has basic inventory control, boms, PO’s. It to cost $100 back in the day. I think it would be perfect for what you are doing.
Andy
It’s not Virgil Fox, and the last few seconds reveal it to be an advertisement, but here is a bit of Bach produced the hard way that I found interesting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_CDLBTJD4M&feature=youtu.be
Roy, I love that. Seen it before, but any mention of Bach always catches my eye. Who is Virgil Fox and why is he mentioned? I’ve been away for the past few weekas in India.
Say, here’s one for our host and others:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7xJrEU2pss
Virgil Fox was a flamboyant classical organist, primarily Bach, who made a name for himself performing at places like the Filmore East, with a sort of light show behind him. (Performed, just to be clear, for the usual (stoned) Filmore audience.) My father always had the NY city classical station WQXR on, and he got interviewed one day about that. As a result we eventually went to one of his concerts (complete with light show) at (if memory serves) Hunter College in Manhattan. He used an electronic organ with an array of speakers that was huge – it could be as loud as anything else that ever played the Filmore.
At one time, I fancied myself quite the organist, and Virgil Fox and E. Power Biggs were of much inspiration.
Years ago I was still an Episcopalian, and our large-city church had/has an organ with around 7,000 pipes and a stone floor. During services and the Lenten organ recital series, you could feel the bass notes coming up from the floor and through the rest of you, and I heard some truly amazing performances there over the years. Nothing like it since, as the Catholic Church, here in New England anyway, doesn’t seem to care all that much about its music, which, at times, is horrible. See the book “Why Catholics Can’t Sing,” and the short answer to that is that the tunes are un-singable and mostly treacly pablum and dreck left over from the 60s through the 90s.
But don’t get me started…
My father, a Methodist, said the same thing about Presbyterians: they can’t sing. Looks like you need to abandon idolatry and become a Metho… 🙂