The Price of Everything

One of the things that used to drive me crazy was finding, or figuring out, believable prices for stuff. If you're a scifi/fantasy author, gamer, or game designer, you can probably sympathize. Historical price lists are hard to find, and when you do find one, its either based in the wrong historical period or culture, or it just doesn't have the item. […]

The EPUB Connundrum

For readers and publishers both, the EPUB format has everything one could want in a 21st century digital publication — except for one thing: Uniformity of presentation as described by the IDPF Standard. This post looks at some of the more common failings to be found in the EPUB reader ecosystem, and proposes changes that the IDPF could make to the EPUB Standard that would help it live up to its goal of being "the industry standard" for digital publications.

Whether Or Not To Weather

Today, we live in air conditioned houses or flats in concrete jungles, and travel in air conditioned cars and buses and planes. Natural disasters not withstanding, weather is usually little more than a minor irritation or point of idle conversation. It didn’t use to be that way. When it was cold, it was hard to keep warm. When it was hot, there were few ways to cool down. To travel, you had to be out in the weather. Weather was a fact of life – for everybody!