C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 157
February 5, 2011
February 3, 2011
moving any file into your Kindle or other device
People have asked if Seeking North can be gotten onto a Kindle.
Just treat your Kindle or other device as a flash drive: first download a file (swipe it to your notepad), then convert it via your word processor to pdf, then use the USB cord to transfer the pdf, as I understand it, to your Kindle…but if you have any trouble, ask Jane: she does it routinely. Certain readers, like the Nook, have their own protocols for this, and anyone knowing the Nook routine, please comment.
Any HTML file can be converted to .prc, which Kindle also reads; (it's the same as .mobi.) EPub is the format for the Nook and many European devices.
To do your own conversions, you need three programs resident on your computer: any wordprocessor; Calibre; and Mobipocket Creator: I have links to them in the left sidebar. The last two are shareware. They'd like a little donation, but don't demand it.
With Mobipocket Creator, you can convert any html file to .prc.
With Calibre you can convert any .prc (or any of a dozen formats) to any OTHER of a dozen formats. The native and preferred format of Calibre is ePub, but its converter reads any format commonly used in the industry, and converts it to any other in the list. There's a mild learning curve, but basically, if your conversion produces an artifact you don't like, get into the 'other' screens of Calibre and set a few toggles to prevent those happening. Notorious is the appearance of a few odd symbols in some of the less common formats. Setting the 'ascii' toggle in the set-up for the conversion, as I dimly remember, takes care of that. Ask: somebody, including us, has probably run into the problem.
If you have a really stubborn file, using your word processor to take it into html can help clean it up.
February 2, 2011
planets all over the place…kepler goes hunting.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2045835,00.html?hpt=T2
The 'new' wrinkle in the search for exoplanets is that, far from pooh-poohing supergiant planets as 'no likely life', discoveries in our own solar system, including our own planet, have them adding the footnote: of course life could exist on the moon of a superplanet.
The discovery of extremophiles at volcanic vents, in geysers, even living within rocks in the most extreme deserts, and deep within the earth, makes it likely that microbial life outweighs all larger life on this planet by considerable and that even our deep rocks are alive, meaning no matter what has happened to this planet, life has tended to re-emerge with a vengeance.
Could life exist elsewhere? Do woodchucks chuck wood?
February 1, 2011
bane of our lives—16″ of 3″ cast iron drain pipe…
jutting sideways mid-corner from its origin and passing the sink drain on the new sink. This would be solvable, except the garbage disposal on the other side of the sink has a connector headed for the same drain.
Now imagine: drain A needs a p-trap, one of those little half-u bends that traps nastiness and prevents odor from the drain reaching the kitchen; and drains should always be as direct, short, and efficient as possible. They also have to be higher than the exit drain.
The drain from the new disposal, which we did get mounted, goes sideways and contests for the same drain. We cannot have it go 'up' to meet the drain. The best we can figure is to T both drains above a p-trap that goes to a pipe that goes to a drain. It is all, thank goodness, PVC, until you get to the iron pipe. I'd go with hose, because I don't want any right-angle bends to catch stuff. But Jane says go with pipe: she doesn't trust hoses. So I'm going to go in there and try to sketch the situation to take to the hardware store. We won't have water in that sink until we can hook up the drains.
It's gravity at its finest. Roman style plumbing. You just have to design the most efficient route to get both lines to the drain.
January 31, 2011
Six pm and the cabinet tops are in: they were in by noon, starting from 8:30 am—but…
…6 pm and Jane's in there under the sink battling the extra piece of board the installer put in to make the top meet the backsplash—it's in the way of tightening the grippers on the installation rails of the new sink. Jane is working upside down under the sink with a splitting headache and won't let me touch it because she knows I'm blind as a bat at close range in the dark. On the other hand, the bat is used to working by touch. I don't know if I could help, but I wish I could.
January 29, 2011
Heavy work this weekend: literally
I got the finished text of Intruder ready to send to my agent, who will transmit it to DAW.
I have already transmitted the galleys of Betrayer.
We….are getting a new kitchen countertop. Ours had lost its finish, and is white, which means Jane has scrubbed every time a coffee cup drips—bigtime. It stains. It stains when you look at it. Hours spent on this damned countertop.
So—we tried to figure what's the most urgent repair, besides the plastic-sheeting huge 5×5 hole in the bathroom shower wall, which we were supposed to fix this winter!…and it's the kitchen counter. We found some in-stock imitation granite (labrador granite is the pattern) at Lowe's, and we can save 300.00 by taking out the old countertop ourselves. This is going to entail lifting out a cast iron double sink and decoupling the garbage disposal and the dishwasher.
We're starting today, and by Sunday will no sink and no dishwasher—bathtub water only. Monday the guy comes to put in the new countertop: cutting the hole for the sink is our sticking-point, or we could REALLY save on this operation. The countertop is not that pricey. We'll let you know how many fingers we have left after getting the sink out. OSG is coming over to help us lift it.
Meanwhile it's also tax time: year end stuff for us, just another month for the corporation, except that the corporate reports are on the calendar, not the fiscal year (the arbitrarily chosen year-end for a corporation); so I have to turn in the calendar year stuff, such as the employee and wage stuff.
Which means I also have to fight my way to the desk. And that means doing an office cleanout so I can get to stuff!
Jane is doing triage on the kitchen cabinets—and meanwhile found out we have a massive mold/leak problem in the mudroom, read: back kitchen steps and short tiled area. It's never just one job—it's got a way of becoming, now, a massive find-the-leak-and-fixit on a room of the house! I think it's the door—another thing we're not comfortable DIY-ing, because it's like—if we have to call an installer, we have no back door for a week while they set up to fix it. So…we'll probably have to pay installer costs on that, too.
At least we will save an hour a day that it now WON'T take to clean up after meals, thanks to shedding that detestable white countertop. I have set my sights also on that white kitchen floor, but we can live with that. Next up: I fear it's going to need to be the mudroom, not the bathroom. And I bought some Formby's stuff that will let me refinish the doors and fronts of the kitchen cabinets, so it will look much better in there! I have to wait on warm weather for that, to get ventilation.
January 25, 2011
And still more checking…
Rather than manage the whole heavy manuscript of Intruder, with spilling pages and markup, this time Jane loaded it onto the Kindle, the same way we just did the galleys. She read it, installed notes, and now I'm reading it on the Kindle, and diving aside to the manuscript to make my own changes.
Did you know you can read a Kindle in the bathtub? Ask Jane!
January 21, 2011
Betelgeuse may be imploding.
It's showing loss of mass. It could flare up to give us a display. No danger to Earth: it's quite far from us. But, hey, talk about life imitating art—see the geologic history of the Seeking North scenario.
Seeking North is rolling: you'll need to visit several sites to keep up.
1. this one. I just updated the geology…or why if it weren't for bad luck, this world would have no luck at all, and it's all pretty ordinary stuff that does happen.
2. Jane's: she explains what it's like to start out in a Shared World.
3. Lynn's. Ask her questions. She's the originator of this world.
4. Seeking North itself. All the links are over on the left sidebar of this page, easy in, with links to the next place.
We're having a little fun with this. We hope you will.
