The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter 22nd October 2003
eBooks Readable By Both Humans and Computers For Since 1971
Part 2
In this week's Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter:
1) Editorial
2) News
Distributed Proofreaders Update
3) Notes and Queries, Reviews and Features
4) Mailing list information
Editorial
Hello,
Are we on a sabbatical this week after all that euphoria*? Of course
not! In fact, after last Wednesday, things appear to have gone
completely crackers around here. There are people building websites
(you can hear the hammering from here), press kits being handed out at
DP and that shop idea hasn't gone away - still need a designer
though. Don't go away, in fact, I seem to remember a set of
instructions on a box of fireworks when I was younger. 'Light blue
touch paper, and retire'. No chance of retiring, but I'm sure someone
just got their matches out.
* Please note the educational value of Project Gutenberg. In the last
year I have learnt to spell Egyptology and euphoria!
Happy reading,
Alice
send email to the newsletter editor at: news@pglaf.org
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2) News and Comment
North Dakota & New Mexico
We are again looking for people to exist in these states. Just to
remind you this is to help with PG's registered status in all fifty
states. As PG has to register separately in all 50 states we are
required to have a registered person with a real address. Now you
don't have to physically 'do' anything except give your name and
address just in case one of those people who ticks boxes for a living
happens to call, if they do, you can just refer them on the Anne or
Greg and that's it. If you think you can help, or you know someone who
can please contact me and I will pass you over to Anne.
We ran this last week, but no response, so here it is again. (Careful
now, I could just run this article on it's own over and over!)
----------------
DP/PG Shop
We are looking for a designer for logos etc. that we can put on things
to sell via the DP/PG shop. Please mail me at the newsletter
address. news@pglaf.org. Thank you
-------------------
Other news items this week
Time to celebrate our newest Project Gutenberg mirror site in Shiraz,
Iran. Thanks to eRamISP.
You can find them at ftp://dlib.eramisp.com/gut/ and the mirror has
been added to the Search section on the website
-----------------------------
Newsletter website
Finally, an update. You can get up to date news and information plus
some of our older articles at the newsletter website.
------------------------------
Lessons in ebooks
Occasionally, I get mails asking how to go about downloading texts
from Project Gutenberg. Thanks to a new set of lessons from Candida
Martinelli, all mystery is now lifted.
Candida has put together six lessons to explain just about everything
you might need to know to get started with finding a text,
downloading, use and management, they are well worth a look. You can
find the lessons at:
http://home.wanadoo.nl/cecilia.mccabe/instructions.htm
-------------------
Distributed Proofreaders Update
In the column for 1st of the month, I closed with the words: 'Enjoy
October!' If I could change just one thing about that column, it would
be minor spelling alteration. What I should have said was, 'Enjoy
Rocktober!'
Yes...that would about sum up the energy and forward motion of this
month. The force and momentum of which was already gaining
acceleration by mid September has increased with every passing week.
This abundant success is not limited to the most prominent activity at
DP--proofing pages--the prosperity shines forth in every sector of
development and production. The pages proofed are the most obvious
indication of activity, and as such their numbers are nothing short of
astounding. No month is DP's history has seen such sustained levels of
proofing output.
As of this writing on Wednesday afternoon, the monthly objective of
130,200 pages has been surpassed by 1,500 already. By the end of
today, the impressive proofing of January 2003 will have also been
outdone, leaving only November 2002 in the path of October becoming
the most productive month since DP was created. This too, will soon
change. It would seem certain now that sometime this weekend the
'Great November of 2002,' which transformed DP forever, will be set
into a new perspective by the dynamic prosperity of this new era. If
you like great celebrations, then make your way over to the site this
weekend.
If you should be occupied for the next few days, don't worry that you
will miss outcompletely. The celebrations are already beginning today
with the early passage ofthe monthly goal, and the are set to continue
right through to the end of the month. Actually...the real party will
only begin in the final hours of the month as DP holds it's Grand
Halloween Ball. Preparations are well underway, with several
revellers already in full costume. Content providers have been
crawling through dark cellars and dusty attics to locate spooky ghost
tales and tomes of lore to proof all through the 31st...and the Master
of Ceremonies, Dr. Gutenstein is already cooking up weird and wondrous
trials of fortune for all of us. An interesting end indeed is
promised to this magical, ever-surprising month.
October was also 'Post Processing Month.' The goal was to see 300
books out of Post Processing and into the Verification stage. As of
yesterday, 245 have been completed. That's 5 more books then were
ever posted to PG in a single month. Can we see 350 by November. It
looks likely to be even higher.
It all seems so very appropriate to the month in which Project Gutenberg
reached it's 10,000th edition. With a magnificent salute to past
accomplishments, the crew of DP looks forward to a grand and expansive
future. It's a new frontier after the 10K landmark, and with a great
shout we are running forward into it with arms wide.
Next week, we will review this historic month, and outline in detail the
most promising developments of the months ahead.
For now...
Thierry Alberto
-------------------
Radio Gutenberg Update
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from your favourite book, or piece of literature please mail us here
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Improved Service
In a bid to make the newsletter more helpful to readers who may be
using screen reading software. We are able to offer the booklisting in
a different format to make your life a little easier. An example of
the changed listing is given below. If you would like either a daily
or weekly version of this list please email news@pglaf.org, and state
which version you require.
{Note to the unwary: this is an example.}
34 NEW ETEXTS FROM PROJECT GUTENBERG US
A Complete Grammar of Esperanto, by Ivy Kellerman Mar 2005[esperxxx.xxx]7787
The Female Gamester, by Gorges Edmond Howard Apr 2005[fmgstxxx.xxx]7840
[Subtitle: A Tragedy]
A Primary Reader, by E. Louise Smythe Apr 2005[preadxxx.xxx]7841
[Also posted: illustrated HTML, zipped only - pread10h.zip]
The Rise of Iskander, by Benjamin Disraeli Apr 2005[?riskxxx.xxx]7842
[7-bit version with non-accented characters in 7risk10.txt and 7risk10.zip]
[8-bit version with accented characters in 8risk10.txt and 8risk10.zip]
[rtf version with accented characters in 8risk10r.rtf and 8risk10r.zip]
[rtf version has numbered paragraphs; txt version has no paragraph numbers]
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3) Notes and Queries, Reviews and Features
What's Cooking? Part 2
The cooking of one hundred years ago and more does not always appeal
to the modern palate. Sometimes the instructions alone are enough to
put one off; those who are accustomed to buy cut-up meat at the
grocery and transfer it to the pan without ever touching it might not
be attracted by the sometimes endless descriptions of the parts of the
cow, lamb, etc., the various cuts of meat, and the proper color of
flesh and fat. Or, how about this recipe:
Mock-Turtle Soup:
This soup should be prepared the day before it is to be served up. One
calf's head, well cleaned and washed. Lay the head in the bottom of a
large pot. One onion; six cloves; ten allspice; one bunch parsley; one
carrot; salt to taste; cover with four quarts of water. Boil three
hours, or until the flesh will slip easily from the bones; take out
the head; chop the meat and tongue very fine; set aside the brains;
remove the soup from the fire; strain carefully and set away until the
next day. An hour before dinner take off all fat and set on as much of
the stock to warm as you need. When it boils drop in a few squares of
the meat you have reserved, as well as the force balls. To prepare
these, rub the yolk of three hard boiled eggs to a paste in a wooden
bowl, adding gradually the brains to moisten them;[...] --From
_Favorite Recipes_ (whose favorite, we wonder...)
And here is a classic breakfast dish which Mother Used to Make:
Take stale brown bread, no matter how dry, and boil until it is soft
like pudding
Serve hot.
As unexciting as this sounds, it might be preferable to Brain Cakes:
When the head is cloven, take out the brains and clear them of
strings, beat them up with the yelks[*] of two eggs, some crumbs of
bread, pepper, salt, fine parsley, a spoonful of cream, and a spoonful
of flour; when they are well mixed, drop them with a spoon into a
frying-pan with a little hot butter, and fry them of a light-brown
color. [* This book, _Domestic Cookery_, uses "yelks" instead of
"yolks" throughout.]
Cookbooks making their way through Distributed Proofreaders have been
the source of a number of contributions to the famous General Forum
thread, "Most amusing (or astonishing) text you've come across."
Besides marveling over brains and stale brown bread, DPers post the
amusing errors introduced by OCR software (and which it is DP's
mission to correct), for example:
[...] you may make a sauce by flavouring your melted butler with a
glass of port wine, and an anchovy boned and minced.
Or:
[...] have your pot boiling, scald the hag, flour it, and put in the
pudding,--it will boil in two hours. Eat with sugar and cream,
molasses, or any kind of pudding sauce.
Instructions are lacking, however, on how to make the butler and the
hag stand still for such treatment.
On the other hand, there are quite a number of recipes in these ebooks
that sound perfectly delicious, for instance:
A TRIFLE.
A quart of cream.
A quarter of a pound of loaf sugar, powdered.
Half a pint of white wine and Half a gill of brandy mixed.
Eight maccaroons, or more if you choose.
Four small sponge-cakes or Naples biscuit.
Two ounces of blanched sweet almonds, pounded in a mortar.
One ounce of blanched bitter almonds or peach-kernels.
The juice and grated peel of two lemons.
A nutmeg, grated.
A glass of noyau.
A pint of rich baked custard, made of the yolks of eggs.
[...] a little rose-water
--From _Seventy-Five Receipts_, by Miss Leslie
Obviously trifles were rather more interesting in the olden
days.... Although I'm not sure what a gill is, or Naples biscuit, or
noyau, but I'm willing to do some research so that I can concoct this
monstrously rich dessert.
Here I will leave you to your own investigations into PG's collection
of cookery books. For a full listing, please see part 1 of this
article which appeared in last week's newsletter. Bon appetit!
Tonya Allen
-------------------
Notes from Posted
Fat weeks and skinny weeks... This week was definitely fat in
'Posted', probably thanks to euphoria about our 10,000th book. Wow -
everyday it was getting more and more interesting: Eloquent mail of
M.Hart about formats of future PG collection distribution, stories
in Slashdot*, next target plank, something about audio books - I still
am not sure about what actually happened over there - but it seems
that there is now a program that converts audio books to acceptable in
visual impaired community and it will be opened for trial on Slashdot
(the mystical line "this slashdotter diary is baseline #1." is
probably the key one...), and that the goal is to have all books in
multiple format- texts or audio.
Knowledge and Technology! Indeed all computers are coming now with
DVD and moreover, all companies finally came to agreement that they
are recognizing the formats of each other, even RAM is now supported
by many of DVD-writers and most of the readers. What a peaceful
solution in the world of competition! However, the world can not
refrain from changes. Double-side, double layer DVD is already
definitely not enough (it is only about 16 Gb as far as I remember...)
and big sharks are heading long time towards new horizons - IBMs
punched card (back to root so to speak...) based on nanotechnology
will be in the market in 3 years time. The new punchcard will be able
to store more than 25 million pages of information on the surface the
size of a postage stamp. They still do not know which products they
will make based on it, but this is only matter of time. Panasonic has
already selling the video cameras that do not require tape- the
information is written directly to the chip that can be played on any
computer. So one can easily extrapolate and see the small punch card
that will include whole set of audio/texts/images of free e-library
together with the corresponding movies (what is the copyright time for
movies ?) that can be inserted to the handheld with expandable
screen...
Also the electronic paper is not at all given up. In 2001 Technology
Review wrote "Gutenberg's printing press needed paper to make a
revolution. The clunky e-book needs e-paper. And it's on the way." It
is still on its way, however it looks more promising now when finally
the healthy competition came to the market. Now, according to
Scientific American the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory are going head
by head towards the first commercial release. "Both firms base their
core technologies on tiny, electrically charged beads, with the
imaging capability controlled electronically. And they are not only
racing each other to commercialize their efforts but are also
anticipating competition from the organic light-emitting diodes that
are beginning to emerge from laboratories." The people in the journal
are hoping that the release of 2010 will be printed on the e-paper
already.
Future targets, long-term goals and all-out technology attempts- the
common base for them is an explicit belief that the world or perhaps
it is more correct to say, our part of it will go on in the same
direction as the last 200 years. It is kind of like trying to dig deep
with a kids toy-scoop, but I feel kind of concerned from time to
time, probably since I am from a part of the world where the worries
about how to publish the free electronic library look as real as
worries about how to build nice summer-house on the moon when the
earth-moon shuttles will be available,... some annoying features but
in general inevitable.
The educated PhD in Saudi Arabia wrote an article where he
scientifically proved that women can not drive a car. It is not about
the fact that millions and millions have never touched the keyboard
and there is still very little chance they will do it in the near
future. This is about a different world format. So different, that you
can not even get close to grasp it. When I was young and extremely
moneyless, I worked on the archeological sites side by side with many
others and with local Arabs as well. We drank real Bedouins coffee
(strong and sweet with a lot of cardamom in it) together and spoke
about the world's problems. And they told me and other "whites" very
calmly "Sure we are drinking coffee now and it is nice. But one day my
son will come to the street and will kill you and I will not say a
word to him. There is no place in this world for both of us". There
was nothing hostile in his tone, just merely an ascertaining of the
facts.
What reformatting program should be applied that his grand-grandson
will order a small piece of hardware (whatever it will be in the
future... a tiny Universal E-Book or a chip that youll plug in your
head!) with the title - "Anniversary PG edition - Celebrate the 1M
free book with us!" and cry over the suffering of young Hamlet or
enjoy the sophistication of Carrolls dialogs? I like the ways of our
civilization (as strange as they are sometimes) and prefer to believe
that we can defend it not with the weapons in our hands, but by calm
and quiet expansion through education, education and education, in
which process the books and media are certainly one of the key
players... after good teachers, of course.
So I honestly wish to Project Gutenberg the next target of 6 digits,
long life and relationships of friendship and cooperation with other
projects that hopefully will make this world better. According to my
understanding of this word of course. The sky is the only limit, and
the ultimate goal is little bio-electronic information storage device
with whole set of past, present and future literature in all possible
formats, automatically updated with every new book released in the
world and small sign of PG will float around its virtual upper right
corner. I hope that there will be somebody to read it on this small
planet, which looks so cute from the skies.
Gali Sirkis
* For those readers who are not familiar with the web's cool places
(if any?), Slashdot is the site where everybody can write/read/
comment the news that s/he think are interesting about technology,
science and related areas of the human world. The motto is 'News for
nerds. Stuff that matters', the stories are moderated and user
comments are sometimes very interesting.
ibm :
http://www.computerworld.com/databasetopics/data/story/0,10801,71913,00.html
electronic paper:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,58765,00.html
or
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0004C2D2-B938-1CD6-B4A8809EC588EEDF
-------------------
Quiz
Preparations for next week's quiz.
Costume - this is absolutely essential, entrants not dressed in
black and orange and wearing a mask will not be admitted.
Food - You may bring your own, see article above for appropriate
recipes.
Drink - Yes please, make mine a double!
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Credits
Thanks this time go to Brett and George for the numbers and
booklists. Tonya, Thierry, Gali, the Gutenberg Press Gang, Steve
Herber, Dan Beaver, Greg, Michael, Ben, and Larry Wall. Entertainment
for the workers provided by BBC 6Music. Never mind John, maybe next
year. :-(
pgweekly_2003_10_22_part_2.txt
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