How to Publish a Book in 10 Easy Steps

Posted on February 17, 2012 by RubeRad

Step 1: Wait for Gutenberg to invent the printing press, which kicks off centuries of progress in printing technology, culminating in fast, cheap laser printers.

Step 2: Wait for Donald Knuth to write LaTeX and METAFONT, which allows digital typesetting to be beautiful.

Step 3: Wait for the internet to be invented, allowing easy transfer of information, and the establishment of internet print-on-demand services like lulu.com.

Step 4: Have a friend publish a fantastic book using Lulu, so you can see a little from the outside how it works, and ask for advice.

Step 5: Have another friend with a complete book all typed up, ready to be published (her father’s memoir).

Step 6: Dump the Word docs to plain text; write perl to insert LaTeX formatting codes for chapters, blockquotes, leading verse for each chapter, etc.

Step 7: Follow advice for creating a Lulu-ready PDF (page sizes, embedded fonts, etc.).

Step 8: Upload the PDF to Lulu — boom, now it’s for sale!

Step 9: Use latex2html to generate a HTML version of the book; use Calibre to convert HTML into both .mobi (Kindle) and .epub (all other) e-book formats.

Step 10: Create a WordPress blog to advertise the book and disseminate e-books.

Filed under: Books, Education, Geek, Handy | 9 Comments »

#1 is #1!

Posted on March 17, 2011 by RubeRad

High drama at Pinewood Derby last night!

First off, in the Turkey finals, we had to have a race-off between two cadets who had always won (slowest) in each of their heats, except heats in which they were together, which they split 1-1. So we put those two down the middle two tracks, and one car was clearly slower (Turkier). Then we swapped lanes, and the other car was clearly slower (not all lanes of our track drive the same) — BUT, so much slower that this time he didn’t make it to the finish line, thus making that run a DQ and deciding the winner.

Even better though were the speed finals. We winnowed down from our sweet-16 directly to a final-4. There was a clear points-leader (1st place in all his sweet-16 heats), and a tie for 2nd (including our #1), and a 4th. The final-4 consisted of four heats, rotating the cadets through the four lanes of our track (note lane differences above!), and here’s the heat-by-heat:

Heat 1, points-leader first, #1 second.

Heat 2, points-leader first, #1 second. It looks like the points-totals from earlier rounds are bearing out, and #1 is headed for a 2nd place trophy, until…

Heat 3, #1 first, points-leader second!

Coming into the final heat, if points-leader gets first again, he wins. If points-leader gets second again, it’s a 2-way race-off. But what actually happened was:

Heat 4, points-leader derails for fourth! #1 gets first and snatches the trophy!

(#1’s victory was not much tarnished by his decisive loss in the exhibition race-off between fastest cadet car and fastest counselor car)

#2 made a pretty fast car too, he was just out of the finals, tied for 5th in the sweet-16. We’re hoping for a trophy in the all-council derby, where he will be competing only against 1st/2nd graders. That’s coming up Sat Mar 26, 12-4, hosted at our church. If you’re in San Diego, come on out, have lunch at our snack bar, and enjoy the races — it’ll be a blast!

(I’ll post pictures of our awesome cars after the 26th…)

Filed under: Education, Family Life, Geek, Handy, Woodworking | 2 Comments »

A Man…

Posted on July 31, 2006 by RubeRad

A man should be able to tell when he just has a dead battery, and not have his car towed to the dealership to get bent over for $200 for a $60 battery.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Handy, House | 6 Comments »

Bunk Beds

Posted on April 1, 2006 by RubeRad

It's been over a month since I finished the frame, and probably two weeks since we bought the mattress, but only now am I getting around to posting pictures. Continue reading →

Filed under: Handy, Woodworking | 10 Comments »

Calvinist Castle

Posted on March 1, 2006 by RubeRad

Here are some pictures of a "Calvinist Castle" I built: Continue reading →

Filed under: Handy, Woodworking | 4 Comments »

Back in Action

Posted on February 27, 2006 by RubeRad

Hello adoring fan-base, I’m back in action! I was in Denver visiting my Great Aunt (and oh yeah, Continue reading →

Filed under: Family Life, Handy, Woodworking | 3 Comments »

A Bad House Day

Posted on January 28, 2006 by RubeRad

Whatever happened to the late-90’s expression that swept the nation: “I’m having a bad hair day”?  It seems to have dropped out of our national lexicon (reader challenge: what other recent faddish expressions have fallen by the wayside?).  Anyways, we had a bad house day. Continue reading →

Filed under: Handy, House | 2 Comments »

Tile guys

Posted on January 23, 2006 by RubeRad

So I’m working up a giant post on Infant Baptism (which I’m sure will settle the question once and for all).  Hopefully it will be ready for release soon, because it’s going to be a very busy week, with tile being installed in our house (from the front door to the hallway, including the kitchen, dining, bathroom, and under the bar: about 300sq ft), and me going on travel (two days of flying for one day of meetings, plus I will get to meet The Forester’s baby!  If I don’t get it done on time, it will have to wait for next week, I’m sure.  Maybe I’ll publish my draft in whatever state it’s in before I travel, so I can come back home to plenty of flames!

Filed under: Handy, House | 5 Comments »

Handy

Posted on January 20, 2006 by RubeRad

Last night I fixed the sticking front door that has been gradually getting worse ever since we bought our house. It was so easy, I thought I’d share because others probably have the same problem.  Continue reading →

Filed under: Handy, House, Woodworking | 2 Comments »

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