News You Can Bruise

I've got some exciting new stuff for people who read NYCB but not my Twitter feed (which, if you consider the future, is the vast majority of everyone who reads NYCB). As I mentioned in the film roundup, I went to the Books in Browsers conference with my NYPL colleague James English. James gave an overview of the Library Simplified project we work on, and then I gave a talk I like to call (and did call) "Project Gutenberg Books are Real Books!".

Part of my work on Library Simplified is to integrate Project Gutenberg books into our ebook catalog. This sounds easy, and it is, so long as you're willing to treat Gutenberg books as second-class citizens that live in their own poorly-documented area. I'm trying to do something more like what Amazon did with its free Kindle books (BTW I recently discovered that they're selling the newer ones)—turn the Gutenberg texts into no-frills derivative editions that are nonetheless fully integrated into the storefront.

Second, there's a new Reef map, Reef #4: The Timeline, a cross-section of Minecraft history going from late 2010 to mid-2014. I think it's the most accessible of the Reef maps—it's small and it's obvious what's going on.

As is tradition, I introduced Reef #4 with a video, in which I compelled Lapis Lauri and Ron Smalec to race to the end of the Timeline for my own amusement (and theirs).

As you can tell I'm working on all kinds of stuff, notably something you will probably never see—the pitch document for Situation Normal. I really hate writing this stuff and it's a huge pain, but why write a book if you're not going to try to sell it?

On the inside cover page of my copy of The Warlock in Spite of Himself, which I bought in the bookstore across the street from the British Museum:

Christopher Stasheff worked in
educational television before he
became a writer of science fantasy.
He is an American.

Yesterday I went with Adam and Alexei to the Prelinger Archives, which were generally deemed awesome. I took lots of pictures (coming when I get back), which is good as I haven't found any pictures online that give a feel for the experience of finding all sorts of bizarre books and magazines. There are some that give you a feel for the library stacks, and now that I see the photos others have taken I think the world needs some close-ups of the bookshelves to convey the browsing experience.