Edison’s Lab and Phonograph Prototype

We went to Greenfield Village on Friday September 28th and I specifically wanted to revisit Edison’s Menlo Park lab. A lot of structures in Greenfield Village were carefully moved from their original sites and re-erected by Henry Ford’s staff. This is partially true with Menlo Park. Edison built his lab in 1876 and it served as the vanguard of industrial research labs. Ten years later it was completely abandoned. When Ford wanted to move the lab to Dearborn, he and Edison went to Menlo Park to find the buildings in ruins. Here’s a picture of the partially abandoned lab taken in 1880.

 

Ford had his staff recreate the lab from original material salvaged from the site. The rest of the lab was reconstructed and completed using photographs and drawings as de facto blueprints. Here’s what Edison’s lab looks like now:

 

 

Here’s an early Edison phonograph:

 

 

I used this exact prototype in the first chapter of Thomas Edison: RESURRECTOR. Note the delicate tin foil recording material on the right. The foil was wrapped around the recording cylinder and acoustic energy excited a diaphragm that held and vibrated a recording stylus in its center. The vibrating stylus etched the tin foil. When played back the etchings excited the diaphragm and reproduced the recorded sound.  I’m still amazed that this all-mechanical device worked as well as it did.

 

Hey, Check These Out!

Ran across this on the Web. Never heard of them before, but I guess they still make them in Sweden and Finland.

 

 

 

This is kind of a cool 60’s retro ad.

 

If I’m ever over there I’ll buy a pack but I’m still glad I quit smoking many years ago!

 

 

Communique From Detroit

A storm swept through Detroit this morning, bringing with it a storm of new violence.

A worker jumped off of his fork truck this morning at the Chrysler Jefferson North Assembly Plant and stabbed another worker in the face and neck, killing him. He then drove to Belle Isle and shot himself. I heard the police siren from my office.

Details here: http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/story/19593495/chrysler-employee-kills-co-worker-self-at-detroit-factory

A 14 year old boy was fatally shot running away from a gas station robbery. Details here: http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2012/09/20/3-wanted-for-questioning-in-detroit-teens-death/

To top it off, a Google Street View camera car cruises through a neighborhood and the crew have a shotgun pointed at them. Illegal? Nope- not in Detroit. Details here: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120920/METRO01/209200458/Google-Street-View-captures-man-Detroit-pointing-gun?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

Just another day in this dangerous city…

Lame Mainstream, Hot Indies

Just read an article entitled “Worst Weekend Box Office in Years..”  Here’s the link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/09/worst-weekend-box-office_n_1868916.html

So what’s out there now? The Words (a writer steals another person’s work- Dullsville) and The Cold Light of Day (a family is kidnapped and secret agents are looking for a briefcase- Clicheville).

Contrast that to the independent films now showing or will very soon.

First, there’s David Cronenberg’s new film Cosmopolis, an adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel. Here’s the link to the movie website: http://cosmopolis-movie.com/

Coming September 14th

Detropia is coming soon. Detroit is on the brink of dissolving as a city. Detropia documents the rise, demise, and potential abandonment of Detroit. The story is universal to all decaying cities in America. Here’s the link: http://www.detropiathefilm.com

Coming September 21st.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film The Master looks, well, masterful. Philip Seymour Hoffman gets better and better with age, not to mention Joaquin Phoenix. Here’s the link: http://www.themasterfilm.com/

Finally, top that off with September 21st and 22nd midnight showings of Iron Sky. Here’s the link:  http://www.ironsky.net/

There are awesome movies out there, you just have to know where to look- not at a mainstream theater.

Iron Sky comes to Royal Oak

Just saw that Iron Sky is coming to our local art-house theatre, the Main in Royal Oak. It will show at midnight Friday and Saturday, September 21 and 22. I’ve followed this film since mid-production and am really curious to see how it turned out. Here’s a link to the Iron Sky Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/ironskythemovie

Here’s a link to the Main Theatre:

http://www.landmarktheatres.com/Market/Detroit/MainArtTheatre.htm

 

 

 

My CreateSpace Experience Part 5

In this final post regarding CreateSpace we’ll look at completing, proofing, pricing and distributing your book. After clearing the interior reviewer and successfully uploading a cover, it’s time to order and review proof copies of your book. Once you are satisfied that your manuscript looks good and is error free, it’s an easy click to order proof copies.

You are provided with two proof options- a free downloadable PDF of your manuscript as it will appear in your book and the opportunity to order one or more physical copies. I recommend ordering some physical copies and giving a few of them to trusted proofreaders. Even after porting the manuscript to the 5×8 CreateSpace template and carefully checking the text with the interior reviewer I still found errors in The System – A Detroit Story – which was published as an eBook and on the market for months. It was profoundly embarrassing.

In few days a box will be on your porch with your proof copies. It’s exciting to unpack the box and hold a physical copy in your hands, feeling its weight and flipping through the pages. Even though I’m first and foremost an eBook author, I’ll admit it seems “more real” holding a physical book.

I believe the only way to catch all errors in a manuscript is to read every page out loud. Errors pop up like prairie dogs. Why? I have a theory. When you read without articulating you are not seeing the words, but the images created by the words along with other sensory stimuli induced by words. It’s semantic and has meaning. When you read aloud you are merely parroting the printed words and are not sensory or image focused. It’s purely lexical. This method works for me. That being said, proofing is a painful, boring and time eating process for you and your proofreaders. Thank, reward, and do something nice for your proofreaders. It’s as boring for them as it is for you and they will catch errors that you will not.

After you approve your proof the next step is to set pricing and distribution. CreateSpace calculates the estimated cost of your book when you provide the  book size, ink and paper type along with a page length. This is the price that you the author will pay (along with shipping) for production copies.

Pricing depends on where you distribute your books. I chose the U.S., the U.K. (pricing in pounds) and E.U. countries (pricing in Euros) since my eBooks sell relatively well abroad. This will bring up a form where you set your price. You can experiment with different prices and dollar to pound and Euro conversion takes place automatically, along with royalty calculations. I try selling my books as low as reasonably possible since my eBooks are priced at $2.99. It looks fishy to a reader to see a book priced at three dollars for the eBook and fifteen dollars for the paperback. Be careful making this decision. If you sell a lot of eBooks in the U.K. and Europe then give it a shot. All three of my books are available in paperback in all of the markets. If they don’t sell well overseas, I’ll pull them out and drop the U.S. price. That’s one of the beauties of self publishing- pricing is flexible and you make the decisions and can react fast to your markets.

If you already have your eBook on Amazon, your paperback will automatically be linked to your Kindle book page. CreateSpace offers an expanded distribution service which I have not used. If anyone reading this has experience with that, please post a reply or link to a post here.

Overall, my experience with CreateSpace was absolutely positive, and I wouldn’t think of going anywhere else to produce paperbacks. The only roadblocks were the template error and my ignorance and inexperience. Now, I can port an eBook and get it into the paperback market in a matter of days. So will you once you get the hang of it.

Another Earth Movie Review

Synopsis

A brilliant young woman, Rhoda Williams, bound for MIT driving drunk after a party hits and kills a composer’s wife and young son while looking through the moon roof of her SUV at a newly discovered duplicate Earth. Instead of attending MIT she goes to prison for four years, then becomes a janitor upon release.

Meanwhile there’s a contest, the prize being a seat on a space shuttle bound for the new Earth. Rhoda begins cleaning the husband and father of the woman and child she killed and slowly builds a relationship with him (without telling him what she’s responsible for). Rhoda wins the contest after writing a 500 word essay and has a seat reserved on the shuttle.

That’s all I want to say otherwise the story would be given away. It’s worth watching.

Director

Mike Cahill

Screenplay

Mike Cahill and Brit Marling

Standout Actors

Brit Marling

Best Bit Part

The blind (and later deaf) janitor.

This is an intelligent film and I was really impressed with the writing, acting and cinematography- artsy shots on a low budget without pretense or self-indulgence. I hope to see more from Mike and Brit, individually and collectively.

Grade

A

My CreateSpace Experience Part 4

So I carefully ported the text for The System into the 5×8 inch CreateSpace template, converted it to a PDF then uploaded it. CreateSpace checks the file for formatting errors, called “issues”. Mine came back with several dozen. It turned out that the margin value for the gutter was incorrect. A gutter is the white space where the pages are bound to the book. The value supplied by the 5×8 CreateSpace template was .14 inches, and the the CreateSpace scanning tool stated that the gutter needed to be at least .75 inches. I changed the gutter value in the template margin settings to .75 inches, recreated the PDF and uploaded it. It sailed through the format scanner and I’ll tell you, it felt good to see the scanner message “no issues found”.

My next two books, Reckoning in Escobara and Thomas Edison: RESURRECTOR blew through the process with no errors. The moral of this story is don’t trust the template.

Cover Art

After your manuscript is properly loaded and error free, the next step is to upload your cover art. All book content is important, but having a professional cover and great teaser  text or log lines on the back is what attracts readers. CreateSpace offers free cover templates, and if you’re desperate or flat broke you could use these, but I don’t recommend it. Use a professional cover artist. I do, and I would never think of producing a cover myself because I don’t have the talent. What would you rather do? Start working on a new book or waste time producing an inferior cover? For me, the choice is easy.

Lindsay Breen creates all of my covers for eBooks and paperbacks. Sometimes I’ll supply a photograph and Lindsay takes it from there. Lindsay is reasonable, timely, easy to work with and does a great job. Here are the covers Lindsay has produced for me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SITE Z is an eBook work in progress, so there’s no spine or back cover.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you would like Lindsay’s contact info, reply to this post and I’ll email it to you.

I downloaded a CreateSpace cover template just to see what it looked like, and I couldn’t make much sense of it. There are three components to a cover, the front, the spine, and the back. The spine width is calculated by the number of pages of your manuscript, the type of ink and paper you use, multiplied by a conversion factor.

Also, you will need a bar code containing the ISBN for the back cover. This usually is attached as a PDF or jpeg when you order an ISBN for your book. Check into this before you order an ISBN. I’m not sure if CreateSpace supplies bar codes with their ISBNs or not. Please post a comment if anyone knows for sure either way.

If you already have eBook versions of your books, keep the covers and teaser text the same, since if you sell on Amazon the eBook and paperback will be linked on the same page. It’s confusing to readers, seeing different covers for the same book.

Once your cover is uploaded it’s time to go through the proofing process. More on this in the next post.