09:32 – A couple of weeks ago, Jerry Pournelle sent me a draft copy of his latest column. Because of health issues, it’s been two and half years since his last column, but he’s decided to get back into doing a regular monthly column.
I “met” Jerry more than 30 years ago, when I emailed him to point out a mistake or two in Lucifer’s Hammer, and we’ve been sporadically emailing and phoning each other ever since. During our recent exchange, I mentioned that I’d started to outline my first novel, a TEOTWAWKI reminiscent of Lucifer’s Hammer, but with the threat being an air-transmissible MDR tularemia. Jerry, knowing that I’d been following prepping issues since the late 70’s–back when Mel and Nancy Tappen were mutual friends of ours but Jerry and I didn’t know each other–encouraged me to do the novel. I’m sure he would have written a great foreward for me.
But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense to bag the novel and do a non-fiction title instead. It’s been a while since I wrote a narrative book (as opposed to a lab manual), so I decided to write The Ultimate Family Prepping Guide, which I’ll self-publish on Amazon.
I won’t need to do much research, because in a sense I’ve been researching this stuff for 35 years now. I can write it fluidly and authoritatively. I’ll still do some research and a lot of fact-checking, of course, because that’s the kind of writer I am. But when I sat down yesterday to start writing, things just flowed from the keyboard to the screen. It’ll still take months to finish because of all the other things I have to do, but it’ll get done quickly and be published next year.
I have one suggestion for your self published book. Get one or more of your readers to edit it for you. I’m not saying your writing is bad, because it is certainly better than mine. I’m saying that your unedited writing is better than much of the edited writing available for the Kindle. Having someone edit it would make it even better.
I’d volunteer, but I have almost no knowledge of topic, and proofreading for correct use of the English language is not my strong suit.
Indeed.
I’m unusual. Most writers are very defensive about being edited. I don’t mind a bit, and I appreciate all suggestions and comments. I have enough trust in my editors at O’Reilly/MAKE that I tell them that if they spot a mistake just to fix it without thinking they need my permission to make the change.
I’m sure I won’t have any problem getting readers to check what I’ve written, and I’m sure many of you guys would probably recognize some of the names of those readers.
This is excellent news! I’ve read several books on this topic that I didn’t think were very good. They don’t seem to consider what is sensible or practical for an average family who can’t move into the middle of nowhere and set up a retreat that would survive “anything.”
I’m much more interested in being prepared to a “good enough” standard, for the more likely/realistic scenarios. I’m willing to risk a pole shift that causes all the continents to flip over and the oceans to turn to lava, for example.
I’m a little disappointed there won’t be a SHTF novel though.
Yeah, everything I’ve seen pretty much sucks. That’s one of the main reasons I decided to do this. The amount of misinformation out there is incredible, some of which can get you killed.
There may be a novel at some point, but I think this is more important.
My 71 year old aunt sent this to me:
“COPPER COATED MICROCHIP IMPLANT ALLOWS ISIS TERRORISTS TO SPEAK TO ALLAH”
“The implant is specifically designed to be injected in the forehead. When properly installed, it will instantly allow the terrorist to speak to ALLAH. It comes in various sizes: Generally from .223 to .50 cal. The exact size of the implant will be selected by a well-trained and highly skilled technician,who will also make the injection. No Anesthetic is required. The implant is likely to be painless. Side effects, like headaches, nausea, aches or pains are extremely temporary. Some bleeding or swelling may occur at the injection site. In most cases, it’s not noticeable. Please enjoy the security provided for you by the Armed Forces of America.”
I second Mr. Greg’s (Lincoln’s) post; excellent news!
I also go back, in a sense, all those years ago to reading “Lucifer’s Hammer” and at least finding the aftermath scenes fairly plausible; also reading Jerry’s columns in Byte on the DEC Rainbow among other things; practically memorizing the late Mel Tappan’s books on survival and firearms topics; and, of course, assiduously studying our host’s book on Windows NT, variations of which, along with some VMS code, we have with us still.
Feel free to float some text my way anytime you like; be advised, however, I’m an English grammar/spelling Nazi. I also see typos and other peoples’ mistakes instantly but sometimes not my own. Typical.
I’m not interesting in being a prepared for the end of the world, but I am interested in being more prepared for not end of the world disasters. Like if we get snowed in and can’t make it to the grocery store for a week or two. Or if we have a cold snap and natural gas demand exceeds supply and we have to heat the house using the fireplace. Or if we have power problems in summer, having a way to get electricity short term so we don’t lose the contents of the fridge or freezer.
Bob, will your book be useful to people like like me or just to those who are preparing for the end of the world?
A great thing about self publishing is updating. I get emails from Amazon when a (e)book is updated. Dr. Bob is constantly revising based on the latest from the scientific community.
Count me in for a purchase when done.
Yes, the book will cover “small” emergencies. Like the guy who drowned in a pond that averaged four inches deep, I’m always aware that a “small” emergency can kill me just as dead as a big one.
I am with Dave B. I WILL be leaving Tiny Town at some point, but will be moving to a bigger small town with better food and culture. Extra-ordinary preparation for events that killed the dinosaurs are not going to save me, and I find it very, very unlikely that society will somehow resort to barbarism, when even the barbarian invasion of Rome did not turn them into barbarous clones of the invaders.
What does interest me is the fact that surviving just short-term without the supply chain operating to full capacity is no longer a consideration for anybody. My grandmother (next door at the time) had canned goods from her garden that could take both our families through many months, and my dad stored a butchered cow purchased yearly, for both families in the chest freezer downstairs.
We had occasional interruptions of electricity back when I was in grade school, that lasted for more than a week, but that really was not unusual back in that day, and there were still farms around us with no electricity at all, as the REMC’s had not yet wired all rural areas.
The guy who services my boiler is 30’ish. When I tell him that back in the day, heating plants could run with no electricity, he has never seen that in his work. Generators, yes — but try and run a generator constantly for 2 or 3 weeks, and feeding it and caring for it will not be a piece of cake. All of them (even the commercial units we will buy for the radio project transmitter) are really intended for short periods of use, not exceeding a few days.
The hot water heating system we had in our Minnesota house could function forever, as it generated its own electricity for the thermostat from the pilot light and used no outside power at all. That kind of ingenuity incorporated into daily life, is just plain gone.
For those that are interested in Dr. Pournelle’s latest Chaos Manor Reviews column, wander over to http://www.chaosmanorreviews.com .
And his (mostly) daily column on world issues and more, head to http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/ .
…Rick….
RBT, I do copy-editing semi-pro. ref http://steve-furlong.com/editing but ignore the bit about rates.
As for sales of your prepping book, I’d buy one for Kindle for myself, then figure out what to do for various kin. My mother and brother would want epub, but I could buy extra copies and convert if you don’t offer that natively. My dad’s kind of a dinosaur and would want paper, and I’d be perfectly willing to pony up the bucks for that.
I’m debating exactly what to do. I don’t know enough about the technical details of self-pubbing on the Kindle, for example how well a PDF (as opposed to a .PRC, .MOBI, or .AZW/3) file works. I do want to publish in PDF format, if only because this type of book generally works better on a large color screen versus a small mono one.
In any event, I will publish it without copy protection. I figure enough people will pay $3 for it to make it worth my while and publishing it as freely copyable will allow those who can’t afford it to have the information. As to freeloaders, I never worry about them.
I’ll probably talk to O’Reilly/MAKE to see if they’re interested in doing the print-only version. If not, I can do that through Amazon as well.
Actually, I may price it at $3.99 rather than $2.99. Joe Konrath prices most of his stuff at $3.99 now, and says it has no impact on unit-sales volume.
And I just got email from someone who asked if I’d price it at $9.99 or if it’d cost a lot more. As I told him, nuts to $9.99. I’m not a stupid NY publisher. I’d rather sell 100,000 copies at $3 or $4 each than 5,000 copies at $9.99, let alone 50 copies at $99.99.
I’d buy both paper, Kindle and pdf copies and spread them around like black flies at a Vermont spring picnic.
Meetings all this week at work on new sw and apps proposals, for the lousy email situation and their fulfillment/warehouse/shipping operations. Boring me rigid already. Right after the one today, the boss comes barreling in again with his little list of more chit for us to do, evidently feeling we don’t have enuff on our plates. Now it’s the GeoVision surveillance camera system, running on a Windows 7 “server.” Jerky motion footage, missing footage, etc; they’re hot about it all of a sudden ’cause a couple of bogus product defects went out recently. And he wanted us to provide a new machine for a transferring mangler; told him AGAIN we have NO spares anymore, nor licenses. And he wants us at his group’s daily 8:30 “stand-ups” where we do a variation of that Agile/Scrum thang and yak for a minute about what we did yesterday, what we’re doing today, what obstacles we have, and what we’re doing tomorrow. Eventually I’ll tell him that the half-hour cuts into all that drastically. And I’ll keep bringing up that we have no spare machines or licenses for new users and transfers. Or just the usual run of the mill boxes that fail.
Previous IT guy told me they would let that slide until it got to the point that they’d have to send him out to Staples to buy a machine himself. Cheap pricks who treat IT as some kinda afterthought until chit blows up or falls apart; been there and done that for many years now. They don’t get it that it’s a necessary daily tool that helps to keep the revenue piastres flowing into their coffers, for their country club memberships and classic Murkan muscle cah restorations; Happy Motoring!
If you’re looking for suggestions for your prepping book, you might want to do some research on the shelf life of chlorine bleach. On a comment to your October 23, 2012, you said “As to water purification, keep a few gallons of chlorine bleach on hand. The cheapest generic stuff you can find. Stored unopened, it keeps a long time.”
I don’t know what you mean by “a long time,” but according to Clorox, which might for obvious reasons be biased, bleach loses its potency over a period measured in months, even unopened. Here are some links:
https://www.clorox.com/dr-laundry/shelf-life-of-clorox-bleach/
http://chemistry.about.com/b/2014/01/31/chlorine-bleach-shelf-life.htm
@RBT: between PDF and MOBI – I believe Kindle users will prefer mobi. At least that’s my clear preference, after years of reading on a Kindle daily. With pdf, the Kindle shrinks the font so it can fit the whole row without wrapping, and this often leads to unreadable tiny letters. I had to buy a $400 Kindle DX to be able to read PDFs comfortably. Also, on a Kindle the last line of a page in the PDF is shown up again as the first line of the next page – quite annoying.
if you release a mobi without DRM, users who want PDF can use a freeware program called calibre to convert it. They can also convert to epub, if they have a Kobo or other reader that doesn’t understand mobi. In Canada for example public libraries support epub but not mobi, which makes those devices more popular than they would otherwise be.
Looking forward to reading your book 🙂
@Anon4432
By “long time”, I meant a year or more. That’s assuming you store it unopened in the original bottle. If you transfer it to a well-sealed glass bottle, it will remain reasonably active for two to three years or more. Some years ago, I tested a bleach sample that had been stored in a brown glass bottle with a phenolic-cone cap for four years in a cool, dark place. The bleach was originally nominally 5.25% NaOCl, and actually about 5.6% NaOCl. After four years, it still assayed at about 4.9%, which is within tolerance.
I still don’t understand why, after at least 25 years, we still use a file format that can only mimic a printed page (pdf.) I know that it is often better than other formats, but there should be a standard that renders well on a screen, including user-chosen typeface, font size, and reflow to fit different viewing dimensions.
I realize all this already exists, but it is not widely used. If anything, there are now more special, not-so-compatible formats. Does anybody care?
@George
Yes, PDFs are problematic on Kindles, and even on pads. Not least of the problems is the very high cost of large files, and Amazon restrictions on individual image sizes. An all-text book generally fits within 1 MB, but a well-illustrated book with lots of hi-res images can easily occupy hundreds of MB. Amazon has an archaic download surcharge that it applies to all ebook downloads, even those that go via Internet instead of by cell data. At $0.15/MB or part thereof, that really cuts into royalties.
For example, a typical text ebook priced at $2.99 earns the 70% royalty rate, which translates to an author royalty of about $2.04 per copy after Amazon’s 30% cut and a data charge. An ebook that was 100MB incurs a data transfer surcharge of $15, which Amazon deducts from the sale price before calculating the royalty due. So, for a book priced at $3, I’d have to pay the $15 data transfer surcharge, leaving the basis for calculating royalties at -$12 per copy.
So, what I’ll probably do is make the Kindle version of the book without any illustrations except perhaps for line-art graphics, and sell the full illustrated PDF from the website.
PDF sucks on the Kindle. It’s inherent in the format; there’s no way to reflow text. Even if you made your PDFs specifically for the Kindle’s screen size, it still wouldn’t work well for people using the Kindle app on their cell phones, where the screen is even smaller, nor for the vision-impaired, who need large text. People using larger screens (the jumbo Kindles, or computers) would also find it suboptimal.
By the way, my last few comments have been in the nature of disagreeing about ‘prepper’ sorts of matters, but I still can’t think of anyone I’d rather read a ‘prepper’ book by.
I use SmashWords for self-publishing to electronic formats besides .mobi.
Pros: Wide range of supported formats for sale. Tie-ins with lots of big ebook sites, such as the Apple store. Decent royalty rate with no gotchas, and quarterly payment like clockwork.
Cons: They take only Word documents (produced by OO/LO is fine) or epub, and the epub verifier is very picky; the files produced by several conversion tools won’t pass. .doc files with lots of images can have trouble with the verifier because of mysterious rejections, which often change from upload attempt to upload attempt; this lets the book be sold on the SmashWords site but not on the affiliate sites. (My martial arts book, with hundreds of smallish PNGs passed the verifier and 90% of its sales are from the affiliates, but none of my piano books, with maybe a dozen large images, passed despite multiple tweaks and upload attempts. No rhyme or reason that I can find.) Seems to be a small operation, so things like FAQs are seldom if ever updated.
A year or two ago, when I looked into it, SmashWords was the best of the non-Amazon choices for me. It’s possible there are better choices now; haven’t looked into it since.
Good comments on formatting. Too bad no solution yet.
I forgot to mention that I will buy your book no matter what I need to read it. Great subject.
I know a little about survival, but would welcome more useful info. I know a lot about soldering, but still read a few pretty basic articles in the hope I will learn more.
As regards size, PDFs don’t have to be larger than other formats are. Well, maybe a fraction larger as the result of specifying the exact position of each word on the page, but still, on the whole, text is small; what really kills you are images. When PDF files are huge, that’s commonly because they are scanned documents where each page is just one big image. That’s not the sort of PDF you’d be publishing.
@JimB: The Web was supposed to do/be exactly that: provide flexible content that could reformat itself on the fly according to the user’s needs. 20 years ago, I taught web developers how to do exactly that. Unfortunately, it took only a few years for the marketing types – used to the print world – to decide that they wanted to control the precise layout. That’s where big business put it’s bucks, so that’s what 99% of the content has become.
At least with eBooks, there is still a choice. With most books having few illustrations, there is little or no need to control the layout. For those that do have illustrations, it’s PDF precisely to allow precise control over the text and illustration positioning. If you wanted to allow reflowing, you could always publish the book in HTML – basically as an old-fashioned web-page – to allow reflowing. No one does this, though.
PDFs can be small – as Norman says, it all depends on the images. It’s essential to reduce the resolution of the images to the likely resolution of the end-device. Most PDF export functions will do this for you automatically, if you pick the right options. Lots of illustrations will still lead to a huge file.
Brad, well put. I also remember one of HP’s papers about rendering text and graphics on their HP-UX workstations that may have predated HTML. Their solution might not be very useful today, but at least they were trying to address the problem.
Also agree that it is the fault of those who control this. Some of the worst sites are controlled by the trad publishers.
Finally, I remember when Adobe’s pdf was chosen as the “standard.” IIRC, it was ranked fourth of seven. Hmmm.
PDFs were never intended for the benefit of the end-users. They were always for, and only for, the benefit of the lawyers of the originators. The major point that cruels it for the users – the inflexibility of format – is exactly the strength for the publishers. The publishers want something whose format and wording can’t be changed. They don’t trust their customers not to alter the fine-print, not to change the author’s and publisher’s names or details, not to create a (changed) copy to use in a lawsuit to defraud the originators, unless the original copy CAN’T be changed. That’s why PDFs will always be used to some extent, no matter how inconvenient they are.
Don — just out of curiosity, did you ever get broadband?
Don, you are again correct. I would like to see a history of the back-room deals that must have been made to get pdf widely accepted, especially since there were other competing formats. I don’t remember anything about them, and a brief search didn’t turn up much; such is the power of Adobe.
I have wondered for years how different things might have been if there had been widely accepted and better ways to view text and pictures on a screen. I embraced the paperless office from its earliest days, and it seems to be one hope that is always just around the corner. As you said, it is not a technological limitation any more, but rather one of custom.
I deal with some legal documents, and often have to print, sign, scan, and send them back electronically. There have been various solutions to this over the years, and today even the legal community will accept some of them.
Interestingly, Linux in particular seems oblivious to this need. Mint 14 KDE used Okular, a good pdf viewer, but it couldn’t handle the signature, or even annotation function in a useful way. That distro actually had Adobe Reader in its repos, and it worked pretty well. Kinda bent my nose to use it, and you shoulda seen some of the review comments. My screen is still cooling!
Now on to Mint 17 KDE, and Adobe Reader is absent from its repos. Okular still serves as a good reader, but still doesn’t handle my more advanced functions. I guess I will have to find a way to get the Adobe Reader back, when I get time. I really don’t need to do this very often, so it is low on my priority list.
Foxit Reader, and lately maybe others, on Windows is very good, and can handle this OK. Wish it were on Linux.
Regarding securing pdfs from user changes, I understand that. I have also found that it can be trivially easy to overcome this limitation. True, it is often impossible to alter a file and have it still pass a hash, but that is not always needed. Reminds me of those silly warnings at the bottom of lawyers’ unencrypted emails warning unintended recipients to delete them. I feel so much safer!
What got me about those legal notices is that if they sent you something in error — THEIR error — they claimed you were obligated to both inform them of THEIR mistake, delete the file in question, and inform them that you deleted it.
I would really like to see them enforce that and make me do it.
Regarding electronic publication of a ‘preppers’ book….ebooks are very convenient. But what if you need to reference the book and the power dies and your e-reader runs out of juice? (I always think of the guy in Luifers’ Hammer that gathered all of the hard-bound copies on his way out of town. Of course, it didn’t turn out well for him, but….)
It would seem that a printed copy might be a wiser choice in that situation. Of course, you can use Lulu/etc to get a hard-bound copy. Or a hand-charger for your e-reader.
Oh, it’ll be available printed as well. And it will cover using calibre to strip DRM from ebooks, solar charging, etc. etc.
After one too many hassles with Adobe Reader locking up, or not loading, or whatever, I went to Foxit Reader and so fah it works great in Windows 8. I’ve been able to read .pdf files in various Linux distros, including RHEL off and on over the years but not for editing or siggies or more esoteric functions, yet another area where Linux developers have not shown much interest.
Chuck W says 30 September 2014 at 11:42
Don — just out of curiosity, did you ever get broadband?
Yes, thanks. I had a post in here somewhere that referred to it in passing.
I got Federal-subsidised (connecting – not the ongoing costs) National Broadband Network radio 4G – works really well, with the aid of a blacklist HOSTS file. Of course, not too long after that, I had to move out of the black spot and into town, where ADSL is available. However, I’ll keep quiet and keep the mobile one.
Jim B says 30 September 2014 at 03:08
Reminds me of those silly warnings at the bottom of lawyers’ unencrypted emails warning unintended recipients to delete them. I feel so much safer!
Chuck W says on 30 September 2014 at 16:24
What got me about those legal notices is that if they sent you something in error — THEIR error — they claimed you were obligated to both inform them of THEIR mistake, delete the file in question, and inform them that you deleted it.
I am not the only Don Armstrong around, but the other who currently creates trouble for me (a lawyer down in Hobart) came along after me, and decided to keep his email address as close to his name as possible. That means it is the same as mine, but without a full-stop (period). Stupid man! You should SEE some of the email I get. I’ve given up, and set anything addressed to him on auto-delete.
Been using Foxit Reader for many years. It is especially good on old slower systems, where it is lots faster than Adobe Reader. Also easy to keep updated, and may be less susceptible to malware. The only part I dislike is it uses Adobe’s unusual menu and shortcut keys, but I suppose that is intended to help folks transition.
There is a paid version, but I have never needed it. There is at least one other competitor, but I have been too satisfied with Foxit to bother.
I got screwed by Foxit. I was an early supporter and paid for “lifetime” upgrades. English is not their native language, and when the day came that I could no longer upgrade, a call to them produced the information that they meant lifetime on v3.xxx or something, and I would have to pay all over again for the v4.xxx. At the time, in order to save fill-in forms (I was using those for the IRS at the time), you had to use their paid version.
What’s more, their upgrades were direct downloads to the software, so I did not have the previous version, which was paid for and unlocked, nor would they send a copy to me.
I said f**k them and have used various things from SourceForge ever since. Felt really screwed over by them, as if you check the archives here, I championed their software from their beginnings. Got shot down for that. I am never going back to them.
One of the publishing programs like Ink or Scribus (forget which) allowed me to save filled-in forms for free, and I used that for years. I hate Adobe, but admit to using their reader since the Foxit episode.
I’m very excited to hear about the book. Already looking forward to reading it. Thanks, Bob, for all the effort you’ve put into teaching people over the years.
Thanks. I just love to write.
Hey Bob, we may need your new book here in The Great State of Texas next week if this Ebola stuff starts spreading like wild fire. I was in Jerry’s World in Arlington last Saturday with 80,000 new friends. Hopefully nobody there was exposed and sharing with the rest of us.