Walt at Random

Since I posted a grump about some stuff early on in David Kaplan’s The Silicon Boys, I should close it out with a few words now that I’ve finished the book.

Maybe one word would be enough.

Meh.

Read as semi-fiction, it’s OK. Read as insight into Silicon Valley as of 1999…I’m sorry, but even pre-crash (the dotcom crash), I just don’t buy that everybody was Just In It For the Money, that there “is no soul” anymore, that it’s all just big jets and wealthy venture capitalists.

Oh, I buy that these are the people Kaplan chooses to focus on–he’s best buds with the big VCs and has no apparent interest in anybody worth less than eight digits–but taking this view for reality is about as meaningful as his incessant focus on Woodside as the, I don’t know, heart of Silicon Valley.

One thing’s very clear: He may pretend to be hard on SV players…but he’s very much on their side. It’s amusing that Larry Ellison has “tense problems” with the truth. Various other escapades and sabotage are just, you know, boys being boys. But Bill Gates–he’s EVIL!  And Microsoft’s Mountain View facility is “near the dump.” (In other words, near Shoreline Park, a beautiful facility that was originally a garbage dump…and Microsoft’s just a little further away than, well, Google.)

Speaking of Google: The book is dated 1999. Of Google, there is not one word mentioned. Yahoo is the last big story, and it’s clearly the Biggest Thing that’s Ever Going to Hit Silicon Valley.

Well, why not? In 1999, Google’s founders weren’t obscenely wealthy…and thus of no real interest to Kaplan’s predetermined storyline.

I would push at stuff like his claim that Silicon Valley had an 80% divorce rate in the late 1990s (I can’t prove that’s false, but I’m 99% certain it’s nonsense), but what’s the point. This is semi-fiction, probably very strong on details of venture capitalism and selective stories of individual excess.

As a meaningful account of Silicon Valley? Meh. Maybe there’s a reason the 2000 edition has a different publisher (one I’ve never heard of) than the 1999 edition I read.

(And I promise: I’m not going to start doing book reviews.)

Feel free to ignore this post. I’m a little grumpy–partly because it started raining just as I was on my way to the Wednesday hike (and then stopped after it was too late), just as it did last Wednesday. Strange: I think I only missed a hike once during the proper rainy season because of weather–and here it happens twice in a row in late April, with most other days being beautiful. [These are real hikes--4 to 6 miles, significant vertical in most cases, with hiking sticks. My wife & I also do afternoon walks every day when it's feasible, but that's only 1.25 miles with a couple dozen feet vertical. Those are walks, not hikes.]

Anyhoo… a couple of grumps about language, not that they’ll do any good:

• The singular of media is medium. TV is a medium, it is not a media. I’m hoping this one isn’t lost just yet…
• Conversely, unless you’re talking about a psychic convention or a stack of clothes that are neither small nor large, the plural of medium is media, not “mediums.” I’ve seen “mediums” a few times too often lately; I autocorrect it in blogs that I’m citing for C&I, but it’s maddening. When you put TV, radio, magazines, newspapers, the web together, you’re talking about media, not mediums. [Gaah. Looking at Merriam-Webster, I see that advertising folks talk about "media" as singular and "medias" as plural. Gaah. I might buy "media" as a mass noun in certain cases--"the news media"--in which case you could reasonably use the singular. But medias? Really?]
• The verb that results in something being lost has the same number of os as the condition–it’s lose, not loose. This should not be difficult; I have yet to see anyone assume that “loost” is a correct spelling. I would love to say “loose is not a verb,” but that’s not true, although it’s a fairly quaint verb. On the other hand, when used intransitively, there’s no question: Loose is always a transitive verb. You can lose (“you lose” is a perfectly good sentence) but you can’t loose, you can only loose something.
• The word for a flashing of light produced by a discharge of atmospheric electricity does not have an e in it. The word is lightning. Yes, lightening (with an e) is a word–but it only applies if a color or burden or something becomes lighter/lessened.

Enough grumpiness for today. I don’t think I’m a stickler for grammar, and I know language changes and believe it should. (I regard “data” as a mass noun taking singular formation except when used in a scientific sense, for example, and I deliberately use “they” as a genderless singular third-person pronoun.) These ones don’t represent changing language, though, I don’t think–just sloppiness.

I won’t even start on less and fewer. I’d like to think there’s still hope for the distinction, but I’m not very confident.

The most recent report on large-daily-newspaper circulation (as usual, misleadingly assumed to be about newspaper circulation in general) is out–and the numbers are down again, although not as much as last year.

One paper that did have another double-digit percentage drop is the one we still take–the San Francisco Chronicle. And the Chronicle‘s version of the overall story notes an important local take–one that, according to some commentators, isn’t possible:

The Chronicle‘s circulation is down sharply–but its revenue situation is improving.

That’s because the paper’s ownership made a conscious decision to require that readers actually foot a significant part of the bill–around 40%, apparently–as opposed to the typical big-daily-newspaper model, where subscription revenue is perhaps 10% of total revenue. That model worked fine when ads were flowing in to such an extent that publishers were getting 30% profit margins (and yes, they were–not all that long ago). Given Craigslist’s effect on want ads and the economy’s effect on display ads, those days are gone and probably aren’t coming back.

The Chronicle had already shut down its printing plant, contracting with a new printer (who’s using much better presses, yielding better-quality print and a lot fewer creases). Unfortunately, it also had to scale back the newsroom; it still has some of the best writers in journalism, but a lot fewer of them.

So: Is it better to have 300,000 circulation (at $200/year or less per subscriber) and be losing a million bucks a week, or to have 240,000 circulation (at $400/year per subscriber) and be breakeven or mildly profitable?

If that 240,000 circulation holds reasonably steady or starts to increase (and the Chronicle says it’s starting to see net subscriber increases), it seems to me the question answers itself. Will it play out in the medium or long term? Hard to say.

If you clicked on the link or even moused over it, you know it was to SFGate; the Chronicle (and, years ago, the Examiner) started a robust web site many years ago (with its own name because it was serving two papers), with a fair amount of original content–heck, the SFGate-exclusive editorial cartoonist just won a Pulitzer. But there’s now clearly content in the print paper that doesn’t show up online for a couple of days; that’s deliberate, and the stories have a special logo to identify them. (If you’re intent on a digital paper, you can get the stories immediately–but not for free.)

If you’re one of those who already said “print newspapers are dead, and good riddance,” don’t even bother to comment. We’ve heard it before. Maybe you’re right; maybe you’re not. And I would note, as usual, that most newspapers in the U.S.–the smaller dailies and the thousands of weeklies–aren’t part of this story at all, and mostly are doing OK.

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Now that I think about it, I really should urge those of you who are interested in this stuff to read the current Cites & Insights, volume 10 issue 6, particularly the second essay (starting at p. 11), much of which is about print newspapers.

I’ve mentioned our photovoltaic (“solar,” but for electricity–most solar installations in our neighborhood are water-heating systems) system before, installed last November. I’ve also mentioned that it’s easy to start obsessing about power usage and generation–particularly when SolarCity provides a web page I can check that shows generation by half-hour on a daily graph (along with some other information).

There are two, maybe three, kinds of milestones that come into play here:

1. Days on which the next integer of kiloWatt-hours (kWh)  generated is reached, as the days get longer and the sun gets more direct.
2. The first month in which PG&E’s “true-up” report shows a negative number–that is, the first month you actually feed net electricity back into the distribution system when totaled over an entire month.
3. Percentage milestones for overall usage–e.g., points at which we’ve generated 60% of all the electricity we’ve used, 65%, 70%…I don’t really track those (and it’s going to be damnably difficult to get from 70%, where I think we are now, to 75% and 80%).

We hit two milestones this week:

• Daily generation: After reaching 12 kWh on February 14, 13 kWh on February 22, 14 kWh on March 10 and 15 kWh on March 13 [there were a lot of cloudy/rainy/foggy days, so the small gap between 14 and 15 isn't too surprising], we reached 16 kWh on April 6…and, finally, reached 17 kWh on April 24. I’m guessing it will be 3 weeks before we reach 18 kWh; we really don’t know what the maximum daily output’s likely to be (presumably around June 20), but if we hit 20, I’ll be delighted. (We have a relatively small system–2.5 kW, with an inverter rated for 2.8 kW–because our power consumption isn’t very high anyway.)
• Net generation: For March 17-April 17, we generated more energy than we used. Not a lot more (42 kWh), but more. We’re expecting to see net generation for the next five or six months, unless our (new, super-efficient) AC gets a lot of use come summer.

And my wife is suggesting that, when our already-old clothes dryer finally needs replacement, we should run gas to the utility room (which should be easy–it’s about a 4′ extension) and replace it with a gas dryer. Which would probably make us negative on electricity throughout the year–at least on an annual basis–after we did that. (Natural gas is relatively cheap around here, and there’s a LOT of natural gas available, enough so that too much of it is still burned off as a waste product in oil production. And converting natural gas to heat is, I suspect, considerably more efficient than getting the heat from electricity generated in gas-fired plants…)

I must admit, I find myself reading some product reviews–particularly high-end stereo, which I read just for amusement–and thinking “I wonder what the power consumption, particularly standby consumption, is like?” I was astonished by one item where a company redesigned one amplifier slightly, one of these amps that’s supposed to be left on in standby all the time, reducing its standby consumption to one watt (the equivalent of three LED nightlights or one-third of a regular nightlight)…from, gasp, 360 watts.

360 watts. To do nothing at all. Our  household’s “idle usage” [clocks, pilot lights, appliances in standby, etc.] is between 40 and 80 watts. If that amplifier sits idle all the time, it uses 259 kWh a month–which is about two-thirds of our household’s entire electricity consumption. And when I read about the auditory wonders of Class-A amplification (which is incredibly inefficient and uses full power no matter how softly the music is playing), I’d really like to see the line-draw numbers. Not that it would matter to most high-end stereophiles.

[I was surprised and delighted when we picked up a cheap Sony DVD player a few weeks ago as an inexpensive way to make our partially-broken Denon music system work for a few more years, by using the Sony as a CD player feeding into the Denon's aux. input. The Sony brochure, touting the Energy Star seal, explicitly noted that the standby power consumption--that is, "off," but able to respond to the remote control--is less than 0.1 watt. There is, to be sure, no pilot light in that mode. This tells me that remote readiness doesn't have to involve significant parasitic power.]

Another clear, beautiful day. Wonder if we’ll pass 17 kWh again today?

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Update 4/26: No, we didn’t quite hit 17 kWh on Sunday…but close. More significantly, in noting our house’s “idle power,” I omitted what’s probably a significant chunk of that 40-80 watts…namely, the DSL modem, wifi router and secondary wifi router (used only for SolarCity’s monitoring).

The motto for this disc appears to be All Noir, All The Time—or at least most of it. Unfortunately, it combines two very strong movies with two movies where the chief redeeming value is that they’re barely over an hour each.

Detour, 1945, b&w. Edward G. Ulmer (dir.), Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake, Edmund MacDonald. 1:07.

What a strange little film. Mostly told as heavily-narrated flashbacks from a down-on-his-luck guy in a little Nevada roadside café. He begins as an incredibly talented pianist (with very long fingers) reduced to playing in a dive nightclub from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m.—but in love with the singer, and engaged as well. Except that she wises up and takes off for Hollywood. After a day or two (?), he decides to follow—hitchhiking across country. He gets picked up by a snappy dresser in a fancy convertible, who turns out to be trouble—and who turns up dead, in the rain, as the hitchhiker’s driving and stops to try to put the top up. (As he’s hitching, half of the drivers are on the right side of the car and in the left lane…but never mind.)

Things go downhill from there, as the hitchhiker decides he has to impersonate the dead guy…and manages to pick up a no-good dame who’d earlier been hitching with the guy. The rest of the story, such as it is, involves these two and it’s neither pretty nor very interesting.

All in all, this seems like an attempt at noir, but not a very good one—mostly just depressing. The print’s generally OK except for a minute or so of damage. IMDB says it was shot in six days; I believe it. After reading a few of the rave reviews at IMDB, I’ll just accept that different people view low-budget, overacted, downbeat, depressing flicks differently. Charitably, I’ll give it $0.75.

Too Late for Tears, 1949, b&w. Byron Haskin (dir.), Lizabeth Scott, Don DeFore, Dan Duryea, Arthur Kennedy, Kristine Miller. 1:39 [1:33]

Now this is noir—and a good, complex mystery. It begins with a couple (Scott and Kennedy) on their way to a party—but the wife wants to turn around because she doesn’t like the hostess. This wife always gets her way—in this case, by nearly crashing the car. As they turn around, though, another car comes alongside and the driver throws a valise into their car (a convertible, conveniently). They stop—and find that the valise is full of cash.

The straight-arrow husband wants to turn it in to the cops. The wife wants to keep it. That’s the start of a plot that eventually involves the blackmailer who was supposed to get the money (Duryea), the husband’s beautiful sister who lives across the hall (Miller), several murders along the way…and a mystery man (DeFore) who claims to be, but is not, someone who fought WWII in the same outfit as the husband. Who he really is…well, you’ll have to see the movie. Scott plays a classically amoral money-hungry cold-hearted bitch, on her second husband and not yet into the money. Duryea isn’t quite enough of a villain, which makes him more interesting. DeFore and Miller are both interesting characters (Kennedy, not so much).

Well-acted, very well plotted (Roy Huggins wrote the screenplay, based on his own serial), reasonably well filmed. Unfortunately, the print’s missing a few minutes and is a bit choppy at times. That brings it down to $1.50.

Mystery Liner, 1934, b&w. William Nigh (dir.), Noah Beery, Lila Kane, Major Pope, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Ralph Lewis, Cornelius Keefe, Zeffie Tilbury, Boothe Howard, Howard Hickman. 1:02.

The basic plot is straightforward—but also ludicrous: Running ships by remote control, over radio linkages, from land—and testing the concept on an ocean liner, passengers and all. (Would you like a lesson on why remote-controlled oceangoing passenger vessels make no sense at all?) Oh, and one specific tube is the key to all this working. But the captain seems to have gone crazy (and is supposedly removed from the ship), although that’s not enough to keep the test from going forward. (The equipment could have been in Baron von Frankenstein’s lab—it’s that level of sparks, tubes, switches and other nonsense.) The means of communication between the ship and the remote control center, weirdly, is through panels that flash on and off and then show handwritten messages from the other source—since, you know, radio voice would be too advanced, but scanning from a panel is straightforward.

The real problem here is that the movie seems to be excerpted from a longer version—lots of scenes disappear partway in, there’s no sense of overall flow, some of the characters make no sense whatsoever. It’s an odd combination of slow-moving “action” and pieces-missing plot. It was also clearly shot on the cheap. The most I can give this unfortunate little flick is $0.75.

Scarlet Street, 1945, b&w. Fritz Lang (dir.), Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, Dan Duryea, Margaret Lindsay, Rosalind Ivan. 1:43 [1:41]

Edward G. Robinson’s always interesting when he’s playing something other than The Tough Guy. Here, he’s a bank cashier with 25 years on the job and five years in a loveless marriage to a harridan. His only pleasure is weekend painting—and he doesn’t understand perspective, but does interesting work. He meets a lovely young woman (Bennett) and is attracted to her; she, with the goading of her abusive boyfriend (Duryea) who appears to be several steps below ordinary sleaze, starts taking him for money that he really doesn’t have. Ah, but she and her boyfriend believe he’s an Important Artist, not a low-level bank employee, so of course he’s rolling in it…

One thing leads to another, including the boyfriend’s bizarre decision to try to make money from the unsigned paintings (which the cashier’s moved to the apartment he rented for the girl, largely because his wife threatens to throw out the paintings), which leads to the girl being identified as the artist. I won’t describe the rest of the plot; even by noir standards, it’s complex and downbeat…including the execution of someone where, well, he didn’t commit the murder, but it’s hard to be as outraged as we should be.

The print’s damaged at points (with a line running down it and two minutes missing) and once in a while the sound’s not great. But it’s well directed (by Fritz Lang), well photographed, well acted and the bleak outlook is appropriate. It’s a solid noir—I found it discouraging but definitely well done. $1.50.

…the less you trust? That’s probably not right, exactly.

I’ve probably posted about this before: The frequent case that, if you know a subject fairly well, you’ll find that articles and books about that subject are wrong, at least in some details. This isn’t a big surprise.

But when you hit something on page 25 of a 300+-page nonfiction book that’s a snide aside, and also happens to be absolutely wrong, it can either shake your confidence in the book as a whole or, better, alert you to treat it as, um, semi-non-fiction.

The book in question: The Silicon Boys by David A. Kaplan–published in 1999. I expected an amusing, interesting, perhaps revealing read about the doings in Silicon Valley just before the bust of the dotcom bubble. It became obvious very early on that Kaplan was intent on making the people of the mid-Peninsula look venal and foolish, that–at least early on–he’s more interested in money and excess than in creativity and worth. That’s OK; I can filter for that attitude.

But here’s a quote from page 25:

“But most start-ups incubate within the confines of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties in flatland towns like Palo Alto, Redwood City, Menlo Park, Cupertino, Milpitas, Sunnyvale, and Mountain View (a town that has neither), the high office rents notwithstanding.”

Take out that snide little parenthetical phrase–which, as far as I can see, serves no narrative purpose other than to put down Mountain View for pretentiousness–and I’d wonder a bit about “flatland towns” (most of the places named are cities with 60,000-100,000 population, and most of them have a fair amount of topographic variety) but go right on.

But “a town that has neither”? Did this jerk ever actually get out of his car in Mountain View and look either to the west or east? No, Mountain View doesn’t contain mountains itself–which the name doesn’t imply. The name implies that Mountain View has views of mountains. Which it does. On clear days, both east and west. On less clear days, only west.

Actually, within a three-page spread, I come across other nonsense. “The mountains”–hmm, on page 24 there are mountains bordering silicon valley, but on page 25 there aren’t–”are utterly inhospitable to development, filled with ravines, covered by poison oak, prone to burn, laced with earthquake faults, and susceptible to slides.” You could change that to “Most mountain land is protected against development” and it would be more correct and more meaningful, but less–what–damning? (Earthquake faults? Yep, the only earthquake faults around here are in the mountain ranges. Sure…) And he says San Francisco “constitutes a terminus to the north,” but in fact silicon valley ends considerably south of SF (I think most people would say Redwood City is about as far north as it goes). And on page 26, “If it weren’t for maddening round-the-clock traffic jams on the main drag, Highway 101″–well, sorry, but I was taking morning flights out of both SFO and SJC in those years, and “round-the-clock traffic jams” is just plain nonsense. At 5 a.m., you could breeze through either direction.

Oh, I’ll keep reading the book–but as semi-fiction. If he’s wrong on straightforward facts, why should I assume he’s right in his claims about the people in the valley?

Note: We no longer live in silicon valley. We now live in wine country, to our surprise…and radiation-lab territory, to be sure. Yes, we can see mountains from here too, in both directions.

I’m wondering about a possible way to make my peculiar writing and organizing talents in the library field worthwhile as an ongoing source of revenue. (“Monetizing the synthesis” sounds awful, so I didn’t say that.)

Pre-clarification

Before describing a possibility, I should clarify a couple of things:

1. Cites & Insights itself–the monthly+, PDF (and selective HTML) ejournal on the intersections of libraries, policy, technology and media, ISSN 1534-0937, 129 published issues, just over 3,000 pages and 2.4 million words–is not going to become a fee-based ejournal, a print journal, or something requiring authentication. That’s just not going to happen. Period.
2. I’m still hoping to find an ongoing sponsor for Cites & Insights. Depending on the terms (and amount) of sponsorship, that sponsor might have textual space or actual ads in C&I–or might not. I’d prefer a sponsor with whom conflict of interest could not arise as a possibility, that is, a sponsor that operates in an area I don’t write about. That’s why I’ve mentioned library automation vendors, book jobbers, consortia, bibliographic utilities and the like as possibilities; consultancies would also fit in that category.
3. While what follows is not even as polished as a rough proposal, and while all sorts of modifications to the vague idea are possible, I do not see founding a new ongoing print publication, for several reasons.

C&I Executive Edition?

Here’s my thinking:

• Cites & Insights is great for what it is–the best in the field (it’s the only one in the field, as far as I know).
• What seems to work best in Cites & Insights is the relatively long essay that includes a variety of perspectives on a given topic, combining my ideas and synthesis with lots of other folks’ commentaries. Increasingly, “relatively long” means 5,000 to 15,000 words or longer, with a handful of shorter features and occasionally “On” perspectives running 2,000 to 5,000 words.
• Lots of people who might benefit from what I do–let’s call them “executives,” but in fact they include leaders, managers, and a great many others–just don’t have or won’t take the time to read those long essays. After all, a typical library magazine column is 700-800 words; a typical article is rarely more than 2,000 words; there’s only one blog with posts averaging more than 2,000 words each, and even that one (do I need to name it?) comes in at under 3,000 words per post.
• So maybe I should offer something that serves people with either little time to spend on this kind of reading, or short attention spans, or both.
• And maybe people would pay for that something–or a company (or whatever) would be interested in underwriting it.

Here’s what I have in mind, right at the moment, noting again that this is very tentative

• Length: Two pages if printed out from single-column HTML original. Call it 1,000 words, more or less.
• Frequency: Say 24 or 26 issues per year–roughly fortnightly, with time off for good behavior vacations.
• Content: 12-14 issues would consist of extreme summaries of Cites & Insights issues, boiling each essay down to a few hundred words (and, of course, linking to the originals). The other issues would be some combination of “best of the liblogs” summaries (with links to original posts) and very brief versions of the kind of essay I was doing for my former place of work, on specific topics leaders should be aware of.
• Distribution & Funding: To be worked out. RSS distribution seems like one good possibility, with an email backup for executives who find RSS too newfangled. Presumably, either of these could be controlled if this was funded by its readers, or open if it was underwritten by a sponsor.

I think this might be interesting and worthwhile for the field. I know that I won’t consider doing it unless the economics make sense–if anything will survive as a retiree’s hobby (and that’s still very much an “if”), it will be C&I and the blog, not something new that specifically requires concise writing. This might be something where someone else should handle the distribution issues, or it might not. (I’m not sure I’m ready to get into the paid-subscription business: That has a variety of odd accounting and tax consequences.)

Reactions? Refinements? Potential partners? If this happened at all, I don’t see it happening before 2011, but that means this is the time to consider the possibilities. Feel free to comment here, or send me email. You know the routine: username waltcrawford, domain gmail dot com.

One of the great steps forward for fair use and first-sale rights came last year, when iTunes finally stopped selling DRM-encased tracks and started selling DRM-free MP3 (or its direct, DRM-free, AAC equivalent).

“DRM-free MP3″ is redundant, right? The MP3 format doesn’t allow for DRM, right?

Right…at least not now, at least not directly.

A Digression

DRM gets a bad rap. Actual Digital Rights Management can–or could–be valuable, in situations (which pretty much every library is familiar with) where access to digital resources is based on the user’s rights. Most of the time, in practice, those rights are understood indirectly: If you have access to a campus network for an appropriate definition of “access,” for example, you’re assumed to have rights to the databases the library licenses–and similarly for public libraries, if you’re either standing at a library computer or you can demonstrate (over the internet) that you’re a library patron. But the rights management could be more complex; you could have a digital signature that identified all the ways you might have rights to use various digital resources.

But most of the time, when we talk about DRM–especially as it relates to copyright–we’re talking about what I call Digital Restrictions Management: Basically, reducing or eliminating your fair use and first sale rights in digital resources that you think you’ve purchased.

The funny thing about that kind of DRM is that it has never done much to stop The Bad Guys, those who are out to pirate copyright material. They either have other methods to get access to non-DRM resources or they break the DRM. DRM mostly damages the innocent, people who want to device-shift or maybe use legitimate excerpts from something. So it’s hard not to cheer the move away from DRM in music…noting that audio CDs never had DRM. (Yes, there were silver discs with DRM; no, they weren’t legitimate Audio CDs. The Red Book, the key license for all audio CDs, does not allow for DRM.)

End of digression.

“At least not directly?”

Yep. Read this story in TechCrunch.

Seems that the tracks you buy from iTunes–or from LaLa or Walmart–have personal information embedded in the MP3. The post shows an example.

Who cares? Well, read the quoted section.

If you’re really paranoid, consider the possibilities: Could iTunes scan your library and delete any files that don’t have the right username?

Seems unlikely, but…

Maybe no more unlikely than, say, Amazon deleting an ebook from your Kindle…

Updated 4/23/10, to remove idiot error in post title. Odd that nobody called me on that!

Cites & Insights 10:6, May 2010, is now available at http://citesandinsights.info/civ10i6.pdf

The 32-page issue, PDF as usual, consists of two essays, each available separately in HTML form (click on the essay title):

Making it Work – Generations (pp. 1-11)

Lots of commentary about generation generalizations (gengen) and lots of commentary full of gengen–plus some discussions of cases where age, technology and culture really may interact.

Old Media/New Media (pp. 11-32)

Yes, it’s been almost two years; no, I didn’t give up on this theme. This roundup comes in three parts: Media in general (and specific media other than books, magazines and newspapers); magazines and periodicals (which are overlapping, not concentric, circles); and newspapers.

This issue is sponsored by the Library Society of the World, a sponsorship that will continue through June or July…after which, I’m very much looking for sponsorship.

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Regular readers of Walt at Random may have noticed that I reviewed the final disc in the five-disc Spaghetti Westerns set. So why isn’t there an Offtopic Perspective in this issue? Because I wanted two “real” perspectives and didn’t want a 40-page issue…look for it in a later issue.

I’m not about to start doing book reviews here on a regular basis–especially because I’m back to reading a book a week (most weeks), but they’re a somewhat random lot and mostly not all that recent. (“Somewhat random”: I usually borrow one mainstream fiction book that looks interesting, one book that alternates between mystery and science fiction–that is, either a mystery or a science fiction book–and one nonfiction book that looks interesting.)

However…

I know of John Scalzi. I’ve been reading his blog, Whatever, for a while now (it’s been around for a long time, but I only discovered it in 2006). I know he’s a science fiction writer.

But I’m so far behind on novel-length science fiction that I’ll never catch up. I read the “big three” science fiction magazines (in scare quotes because none of them has enough circulation any more to be considered big in any traditional sense), usually 2-3 months behind. That means I’m aware of many, maybe most, recent short-fiction writers–but less aware of those who focus on novels.

In Scalzi’s case, it’s a little different: He writes short fiction, but he doesn’t submit his work to the big three, apparently, because they won’t accept electronic submissions. (He’s written about this, and the whole thing is somewhat hilarious. Let’s just say that the big three don’t exactly pay so well that they can dictate terms–and, this year, they don’t even dominate the major award nominations.)

So I’ve been aware of his voice as a nonfiction writer, but not really as a fiction writer.

The third book I picked up last time I was at Livermore Public was Scalzi’s The Android’s Dream.

I will definitely be reading more Scalzi, and assume that most of the novels will be more serious than this one. (If they’re funnier, I’m in trouble–I was laughing out loud fairly frequently, something I rarely do when reading a book.)

I won’t even attempt to summarize the book, or tout its merits. You might or might not find it to your liking. If you love Scalzi’s serious military SF…well, this book does involve military issues, and it is science fiction, but serious? Not so much.

I pick up two lessons here, actually, and they’re both for me:

• Sometimes a good blog can lead to good books. I don’t know that I would have picked this up if I hadn’t been reading Whatever.
• I don’t read Amazon reviews until after I’ve read the book–just as I don’t read IMDB reviews until after I’ve seen the movie. This book renews my conviction that, for me at least, this is the right course of action. (Not because it got generally negative reviews; the reverse is true, actually.)

I’m pretty nearly certain that this book isn’t the start of a series. That’s probably a good thing. While humorous science fiction/fantasy series can work (see Discworld), they can also turn into rote exercises fairly quickly. My sense is that Scalzi isn’t interested in churning it out or being pigeonholed–also a good thing.

…you wouldn’t be willing to see printed in the New York Times.

Isn’t that the old saying? The warning about blogs, lists, email, whatever–that once you’ve put it out there, “out there” can have mysterious dimensions now and, possibly, “forever”?

Is there some reason this warning shouldn’t apply to (ahem) public tweets?

I wouldn’t think so. Although I’m not currently a Twitter user, you don’t have to be registered to read the terms of service–which say, quite clearly, that any public tweets are, you know, public–and may not only be shared with anybody, but may be distributed by Twitter to third parties.

Such as the Library of Congress.

Sure, the announcement (oh, go look it up, if you don’t already know) took me a bit by surprise. And I had a vaguely grumpy reaction, namely, isn’t it interesting that what I’d think of as the most ephemeral of “gray literature”–tweets–now seem more likely to be digitally preserved than more substantial gray literature such as blogs?

Which isn’t saying a thing negative about the LoC/Twitter announcement. Saying “gee, wouldn’t B be nice?” doesn’t invalidate A.

I’m more than a little surprised to see people saying this is somehow an invasion of privacy or of their rights. I don’t see that it’s either.

And anyone who knows me at all knows that this isn’t a “who cares about privacy?” response. Ask me about the advisability of making it easy for library patrons to allow or encourage the library to retain their circulation records: I’m dead against that, because I don’t believe librarians understand the dangers well enough to make them clear to patrons–and that may stem from being at the Doe Library when it was visited by the FBI as part of their ’70s library project. I believe in confidentiality and privacy (and don’t, for a minute, buy the “oh, well, it’s compromised in 25 different ways, so who cares about the rest?” line that comes out as “You have no privacy. Get over it.”).

But, um, non-private feeds on Twitter? Searchable through several tools, available on Google and Bing, copied hither and yon? With a six-month embargo before LoC gets them? Somehow, I can’t get exercised about this being a Major Invasion of User Privacy–or even a minor one.

Could this be a generational thing? Did Emom’s Warning (the title and opening of this post) somehow disappear along the way? Do Twitterers somehow believe that, you know, nobody can really read what they’re writing–or that, at worst, it disappears after a few minutes?

[No, I'm not going to use some idiot line like "Does tweeting make you dumber?" I know too many intelligent, thoughtful, deep people who use Twitter to believe that nonsense. Of course, so far I haven't seen any of those particular people getting into a frenzy about the implications of this LoC twarchive, or whatever you want to call it.]

</rant>

This may be an odd voyage, because I’m not much of a horror-movie fan, and probably won’t even watch movies with contemporary gore or torture approaches. I would not have purchased this set, but Mill Creek sent it to me for free—and my loyal readers voted that I should watch it before the other (purchased) sets. Since the 50 movies include all 20 from the Alfred Hitchcock set (most of them not horror movies by any plausible definition), that means watching no more than 30 others—so we’ll see how it goes.

Jamaica Inn.

[Previously reviewed: $1.50]

The Demon, 1979, color. Percival Rubens (dir.), Jennifer Holmes, Cameron Mitchell, Craig Gardner, Zoli Marki. 1:34.

The sleeve description is almost entirely wrong. The deranged killer doesn’t kill a family and abduct the daughter: He does such a sloppy job of killing the mother that the father is able to free her unharmed. The town may be terrified, but in fact we see nothing of town attitudes. The psychic (a former Marine) is the parents’ only hope; the town isn’t involved. This is, I guess, set in South Africa—it was filmed there.

Maybe the blurb-writer got confused because this flick is an incoherent mess. There are essentially two slightly-overlapping plots, both featuring “the demon”—a brutally strong guy who never talks, wears a face mask and gloves with claws when out on the prowl, and who seems to favor killing people by suffocating them with plastic bags (except that, in his first attempt here, he doesn’t bother to tighten the rope at the base of the bag around the mother’s neck) and carrying off young women, who wind up dead. The first plot features a guy (Cameron Mitchell) with the “gift of ESP,” who chews the scenery fiercely, hands out random clues and mostly gets the father killed—and himself, when he comes back to apologize to the mother and she shoots him on the spot. That does include the one good bit of dialogue in the entire movie.

The second plot involves two young women, sisters or cousins, who both work in a preschool and seem to spend a lot of time nude from the waist up (and, for one of them, entirely nude—for reasons that might have moved the plot forward but not in any way I could discern). The “demon” is stalking one of them and winds up killing the other one and her newfound lover…and gets killed in a climax that’s even stupider than the rest of the flick. (I’d describe it, but you’d think the film was a comedy, which it isn’t.)

What did I conclude? South African front doors have great locks but no peepholes, and the inhabitants gladly open the door for any knocks. Oh, and once the doors are locked, they can’t be opened from the inside. Apparently a bunch of shots of a shore with waves breaking over rocks are supposed to mean something, but I could never figure out what. Apparently young South African women of the era (they’re white, and one is apparently a visiting American) do their hair and makeup while half-dressed (and, if attempting to climb out the roof through those readily-removable tiles to escape, drop their robes as a matter of course—I dunno, maybe being mostly nude saves weight?). Otherwise…well, the print and digitization are lousy, with soft focus and night scenes that turn into vast arrays of gray. I’m being very generous in giving this one $0.50.

Murder in the Red Barn (orig. Maria Marten, or The Murder in the Red Barn), 1935, b&w. Milton Rosmer (dir.), Tod Salughter, Sophie Stewart, D.J. Williams, Eric Portman, Clare Greet. 1:10 [0:58]

After the lead characters are introduced as part of a stage play, we get a melodrama of sorts. Handsome Gypsy Carlos is in love with farmer’s daughter Maria—but she plays up to the wealthy Squire Corder. When she sneaks out of the house to see him, he Has His Way With Her, leading—well, where does this always lead? Meanwhile, Corder has gambled away large sums that he does not have, but knows of a way to get through marriage to a spinster.

When Maria’s father discovers her condition, he does what you’d expect in a melodrama (never darken my door again!), she goes to Corder for help…and we get the title of the flick. Although Corder does his best to frame Carlos, things unravel.

Overacted, to be sure (Tod Slaughter as Corder chews the scenery with gusto), and primitive—but not bad in its own way. Based on a true story, supposedly. Still, as presented here, it’s barely a B picture. I’ll give it $0.75.

The Ape Man, 1943, b&w. William Beaudine (dir.), Bela Lugosi, Louise Currie, Wallace Ford, Henry Hall, Minerva Urecal. 1:04.

Bela Lugosi stars as Dr. Brewster, reported missing but actually turned into a half-gorilla through his own experiments. He concludes that the only way to reverse the process is with human spinal fluid—but that can only be obtained by killing people. Oh, and he has an ape or gorilla sidekick who’s helping him kill people when Brewster isn’t beating up on the animal. That’s the horror part of it. Otherwise, it’s an odd combination of bad comedy (there’s a strange little guy that keeps pushing people toward the story—and I won’t give away the one sad little surprise in this movie by saying what his deal is), reporter byplay and—well, it’s just not a very good picture. Badly acted, done on the cheap, just plain poor.

Add to that frequently-distorted soundtrack making dialogue difficult to understand and just enough missing frames to be annoying, and it’s hard to give this more than $0.75.

…it helps to know what you’re talking about.

I know, I know, that’s so old fashioned, I’m such a Luddite…

I just finished reading Candyfreak by Steve Almond. Nonfiction, a fast read, amusing, sometimes a little outrageous, mostly having to do with this admitted candyfreak’s tour of a few of the remaining independent candy factories that make regional candy bars (now that most big-name candy bars have been swallowed up by Hershey, Mars or Nestle).

And I hit a passage on p. 135, where he’s noting that one of these small companies survives by devoting most production days to candy bars and other items sold under other companies’ names. At which point, Almond lets go with this:

…it bears mentioning that this product is but one in a tsunami of pseudo-candy bars, variously called PowerBars, Granola bars, Energy Bars, Clif Bars, Breakfast Bars, Snack Bars, Wellness Bars, and so on, all of which contain roughly the same sugar and fat as an actual candy bar–with perhaps a dash of protein sawdust thrown in–but only half the guilt, and stand as a monument both to shameless marketing and the American capacity for self-delusion…

That’s only a part of the lengthy sentence, but it includes the part that struck me.

To wit, I thought to myself, “bushwah.” (Not the term I used, but the “bu” and the “sh” are right.)

So, apparently unlike Almond, I did a little research–very little, since it doesn’t take much. I happened to have Clif Bars, Zone Bars, Nature Valley Granola Bars, Odwalla Bars, and Quaker True Delights on hand, and it didn’t take long to look up a selection of Hershey and Mars and Nestle bars online. (Mars and Nestle make it varying difficult to get to nutritional information, so most of what I got is from Hershey.)

Candybar calories, fat and sugar

Here are a selection of calories, fat, and sugar content for candy bars (typically the regular-size bar):

• Almond Joy: 220 calories, 13g fat, 20g sugar
• Hershey: 210 calories, 13g fat, 24g sugar
• 5th Avenue: 260 calories, 12g fat, 29g sugar
• KitKat: 210 calories, 11g fat, 22g sugar
• Mounds: 230 calories, 13g fat, 21g sugar
• Mr. Goodbar: 250 calories, 17g fat, 23g sugar
• Payday: 240 calories, 13g fat, 21g sugar
• Reese’s: 210 calories, 13g fat, 21g sugar
• Snickers: 280 calories, 14g fat, 30g sugar (apparently the best-selling candy bar, and notably the one with the most calories, most sugar and, other than Mr. Goodbar, most fat)
• Butterfinger: 270 calories, 11g fat, 29g sugar

“Roughly the same”?

• Clif (Oatmeal Raisin Walnut; others are similar): 240 calories, 5g fat, 20g sugar.
• Zone Fruitified: 200 calories, 6g fat, 15g sugar
• Nature Valley Apple Crisp Granola: 160 calories, 6g fat, 11g sugar
• Odwalla Berries GoMega: 210 calories, 6g fat, 16g sugar
• Quaker TrueDelights: 140 calories, 3.5g fat, 10g sugar (or, another variety, 4.5g fat, 8g sugar)

Notice something here? None of these bars has even half the fat of a Snickers or Almond Joy, and none has significantly more than half the fat of the lowest-fat of this group.

As for sugar–well, yes, the Clif bar has as much or about as much sugar as Almond Joy or Mounds or a couple of others. (But that sugar doesn’t come from high-fructose corn syrup, and there’s roughly one-third the fat.)

Sure, Trader Joe’s 72% Cacao Dark Chocolate Bar has 280 calories and 19g fat (but only 13g sugar)–but nobody would mistake it for anything but a high-fat candy bar!

Self-delusion? Maybe Almond is protesting too much… Nothing wrong with a good candy bar now and then, but the better energy bars and food bars really are different products.

Fair warning: This post is about cruising, as in on the ocean. It has nothing to do with exclusivity, ethnicity, or anything else related to social issues.

High-end cruising is expensive. That’s sort of a given. By “high-end” I mean primarily luxury cruises (Crystal, Regent Seven Seas/RSSC, Seabourn, Silverseas and some tiny little lines…plus luxury-priced exploration lines)–with an oddball, Oceania Cruises, as a semi-luxury line.

Note: “Premium” is one step below “Luxury” in the cruise world–i.e., Luxury cruise lines are the equivalent of 5-star and 6-star hotels, while Premium cruise lines are the equivalent of 4-star hotels. Holland America is the most clearcut Premium line, with Celebrity and, to some people, Princess as others. Notably, most Holland America (HAL) ships are medium-size, in the 1,300-1,900 passenger range, while luxury ships always carry fewer passengers–400 to 800, sometimes up to 1,000–and most contemporary ships carry well over 2,000 passengers. Of those discussed below, the Crystal Symphony carries 900+ passengers, the Seven Seas Navigator 490, Oceania’s ships 680, and HAL ships for these cruises around 1,400. The Symphony and Navigator have much more space per passenger than the others. Noted briefly, the Seabourn Odyssey carries 440 passengers, the Silver Shadow 382.

2-for-1 fares?

Lately, there’s been a rash of 2-for-1 pricing in the Luxury field. Nearly every Regent Seven Seas (RSSC) cruise in their brochures is advertised as 2-for-1. Ditto Oceania. Ditto Crystal. Silversea seems to be advertising a lot of 55%-off fares.

But what does 2-for-1 “off brochure fares” mean when the 2-for-1 fares are part of the brochure?

Since we haven’t kept brochures from past years (for Crystal and RSSC; we’ve never cruised on Silversea or Seabourn), I can’t prove this–but to me, the “brochure fares” (RSSC’s in particular) are a lot higher than they used to be. Maybe almost twice as high–or, at least, the discounted fares seem substantially higher than before. And 2-for-1 and 55%-off fares can be called “capacity controlled,” so the line can nick you for a much higher fare if you book late or otherwise screw up. But the prices sound like great bargains, don’t they?

I think of this sort of thing as “Ma..err, certain nameless department store pricing”–setting a very high “list” price then offering a Big Percentage Discount…which may still be higher than the manufacturer’s suggested list price, although that’s not a factor where cruising is concerned.

Maybe not so much. We took two RSSC cruises in the past. We look at the new brochures, at the 2-for-1 prices, and think we may never do so again, even if our income wasn’t down.

But that’s only part of the story.

All-inclusive and partially-inclusive: At what cost?

With mainstream cruise lines, you have (or should have) a pretty good sense that the quoted fare is just the beginning. That–plus a possible “port and security charge” that appears elsewhere on the invoice or fare statement–covers your room, meals in the primary restaurant(s) or Lido/buffet restaurant, usually room service, most shipboard entertainment, books (and possibly DVDs) from the library and that’s about it.

Extras? Drinks except at mealtimes (although many ships now have 24-hour complimentary coffee & tea service); alcoholic drinks, period (although you may get a free drink at the Captain’s Reception); shore excursions; gratuities–and these really aren’t functionally optional, since that’s the only real money most of the hard-working hotel staff makes; laundry & dry cleaning; internet (if you must); casino expenses and shop expenses; and, to be sure, air fare to and from the ship.

It can add up. If you drink a lot (or have high-end tastes) or if you go through a lot of sodas, if you go on fancy shore excursions, it can add up fast. On the mass-market cruise ships, where fares are sometimes under $100/day, it’s not at all unusual for the “everything else” total to be much larger than the cruise fare.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

• Every luxury line includes all nonalcoholic drinks as part of the fare.
• Every luxury line includes meals at all restaurants as part of the fare, where most premium and mainline cruises have surcharges for the best restaurants. (Every Crystal and RSSC ship, at least, has at least four or five dining venues; ditto Oceania.)
• Until recently, RSSC included wine with dinner and a stocked minifridge (beer, wine, soda). Now, RSSC includes all alcoholic drinks on board, period, except for high-end wines (the regular RSSC wines have been pretty good). Silversea and Seabourn, I believe, both went to all-drinks-included fares some time ago.
• Currently, Crystal, RSSC, and Oceania are all including coach air fare from “gateway cities” (most major cities) as part of their fares (business-class air for some categories of cabins on some ships).
• Most luxury lines–Crystal excepted–now include gratuities in the fare.
• RSSC’s taking it a little further: Most ordinary shore excursions–the ones typically costing up to around $150–are now included in the fare, although the kind of special shore excursions that luxury lines specialize in are still extra (sometimes thousands of dollars extra). I believe Seabourn and Silversea also include some or all ordinary shore excursions.

So RSSC cruises must be better values, right? After all, everything’s included!

Not so fast.

Let’s look at very similar cruises on six different cruise lines–all of the luxury lines, Oceania, and Holland America. The cruise is Auckland to Sydney or vice-versa, typically with stops in Melbourne, Hobart, Dunedin, Christchurch, and one or two other places in New Zealand.

Australia/New Zealand cruises are typically on the expensive side, but these are all roughly the same itinerary, making them reasonably comparable.

• A 12-night cruise on the Crystal Symphony, air included and with a $2,000-per-couple shipboard spending credit to be used for drinks, shore excursions, gratuities, whatever, will cost $17,200 for two people in a veranda suite. Figure $15,200 (not including the spending credit) as a comparable veranda-suite fare. [Call it $1,266 per day for two people.]
• A 15-night cruise on RSSC’s Seven Seas Navigator, all-inclusive, will cost $27,000 for two people in the lowest-category cabin (they’re all veranda suites). [Call it $1,800 per day for two people.]

There’s a head-on comparison. Is $566/day a fair differential for gratuities, drinks and shore excursions? Well, gratuities are typically $19/night for two people, maybe $21. My guess is that you’d spend about $250/day-$300/day for shore excursions for two people–but not every day, since these cruises include some days at sea. (The RSSC cruise has seven stops excluding start and end; Crystal has five.) That leaves $250-$300/day for drinks. That’s a lot of drinking! (Excellent wine on the Symphony is $5-$6/glass: The prices just aren’t outrageous.

In practice, I’d guess $2,000/couple would just about cover shipboard expenses for a 12-night cruise: $228-$250 gratuities, say $360 for drinks ($30/day), leaving almost $1,400 for shore excursions ($280 per port). So, realistically, unless you’re a big drinker or go on two shore excursions a day, the full Crystal fare at $17,200/12 days ($1,433/day) is considerably cheaper than the full RSSC fare–and I know of almost nobody who would claim that RSSC outshines Crystal significantly, certainly not to the tune of nearly $400/day.

Consider some of the other options, looking at verandah suites for comparability:

• Seabourn: 14 night cruise, $20,300/couple–but while that includes alcohol and gratuities, it does not include airfare; figure at least $23,000 with air, or $1643/night. (May include some shore excursions.)
• Silversea: 15 night cruise, $20,700/couple–not including air, and Silversea quotes $4,000 as a coach air price. That does include alcohol and gratuities; figure $24,700 total, or $1647/night.

Is it purely coincidental that Seabourn and Silversea have nearly identical prices? Could be. Maybe not.

• Oceania: 16 night cruise, $16,000/couple for a veranda suite–includes air, but nothing else, so it’s really comparable to the $15,200 price for Crystal. At $1,000/night per couple, it’s less expensive, to be sure.
• Holland America: 14 night cruise, $8,000/couple for a veranda suite, plus around $3,000 for air. Figure $11,000 for a comparable price, or $786/night.

From experiences on Crystal, RSSC, and Holland America, and what I know of the others, I’d say that RSSC is a little overpriced–and the rest are all “fairly” priced given the ship qualities and number of passengers.

But that’s a little misleading as well. Those are all “minimum” prices–but for RSSC, it’s literally the cheapest cabin on board. With Crystal, you can get down to $13,600 (including the $2,000 shipboard credit) for a suite that doesn’t have a verandah; for Oceania, you can get down to $12,000/couple for an ocean-view cabin with no verandah; for Holland America, you can go a long ways down if you don’t need a suite or a verandah. (Silversea and Seabourn also have non-verandah suite categories, saving a little money.)

Conclusions?

You pays your money, you makes your choices–but “all-inclusive” and “2-for-1″ can be somewhat misleading. RSSC, Seabourn and Silversea most decidedly aren’t appealing to the “drunk all the time” crowd; they can lay out a lot less money for a constant stream of Bud or margaritas on a mainstream ship. Eliminating by-the-drink and wine charges simplifies shipboard life in some ways; it’s not at all clear that it saves you money.

As it happens, I know exactly how much we spent for extras on a wonderful 14-night up-and-back Alaska cruise two years ago, this one on Holland America. The cruise itself was $4,913 (for a good cabin that didn’t have a verandah) for the two of us. Air was $800 for two (this was SFO-Vancouver, admittedly a lot cheaper than flying to Auckland and back from Sydney, or vice versa). Everything else–shore excursions, drinks, laundry, gratuities–totaled almost exactly $1,500. In other words, the total was roughly $7,200–or $515/day. More significantly, the “inclusives”–good but not great wine, all the shore excursions we wanted, air, gratuities, and even $90 worth of internet time–totaled $2,300 for 14 days, and only $1,500 of that was for on-board expenses.

That may be a bit misleading. It was our fifth Alaska cruise, so we skipped some pricey shore excursions–but we did quite a few, actually.  Given that, we look at all-inclusive with a slightly jaundiced view. Well, that, and our experience back when RSSC only included wine with dinner: People drank more than they realized because the glasses were constantly refilled. There’s some virtue to knowing each time you have another glass of wine or beer or whatever.

I’ve done several books through Lulu, most of them highlighted at the bottom of this page.

I’ve always been happy with the resulting book quality–the printing has been excellent, the covers have been great, the binding has been acceptable. (Lulu’s not responsible for the content itself: It’s a services agency, not a publisher.)

Until now.

My wife, the smart one in the household (also the actual librarian) has been working on a family history for some time–some years, that is. She brings her reference-librarian skills and writing skills to the task, and has done a great job of combining stories from various family members, additional stories through research, and solidly verified facts into a narrative–enhanced with lots of family pictures. The story grew too large for one book, so it’s now in two volumes (one for each side of the family), in each case with more than half the book made up of family group sheets (yes, she’s an Ancestry.com subscriber).

We assumed we’d use Lulu to produce the books, not anticipating any outside sales (except from members of the extended families who she doesn’t already know). We ordered test versions last fall, finding that there were some issues with how Word & Acrobat handled photos (which we could, by and large, fix–which now means the PDFs are 51MB and 150MB respectively!). The books were fine in all other respects–but my wife used them to do another pass of page-by-page, line-by-line copy editing and correction.

We did new versions a few weeks ago, this time ordering six copies of the smaller book (my wife’s aunt needed five copies and needed them now) and another test copy of the larger one. The copies arrived with some problems–the paper quality seemed lower than before (no longer bright white), the print quality was a little worse (possibly a side-effect of the paper)…but most of all, after sitting out for a few hours, flat on their backs, the books were warped–with a couple of areas curved up more than a quarter-inch from flat, and the front cover “wavy” in general. I’d never seen this before. (Both books are 8.5×11″; one’s about 240 pages, the other about 440 pages. The 240-page books were warped more than the 440-page one.)

I sent in order problem reports on both orders. After automated responses requesting them, we also sent in digital photos documenting the warping. After a while–four business days–Lulu service did respond, and said they’d replace the copies.

Which they did–this time using expedited shipping (at Lulu’s cost). The replacement copies arrived yesterday. And, well…here’s the message I sent to Lulu service. (Turns out Lulu regards these trouble incidents as closed, so I’ll have to send the message in new incidents.)

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[Service rep's name here:]

There’s good news and bad news here.

Good news: Your expedited delivery reached us yesterday–both shipments.

Further good news: The print quality is better, at least on the larger volume, and maybe on the smaller one.

Bad news: The warping is as bad, or nearly as bad, as on the previous order. There’s slight warping as soon as we tear the shrinkwrap–and within five hours sitting flat on a shelf, the books are significantly warped.

I don’t believe there’s any point in sending new copies of the books. It’s hard to believe that four separate shipments, presumably processed at four different times, all coincidentally have the same problem–unless there’s a more general problem in either manufacture or handling.

I believe Lulu needs to look into how 8.5×11 paperbacks are being handled (since, so far, that seems to be the trouble spot). Somehow, these books are coming out in a condition that causes them to take on permanent warping when received.

Note that this was *not* the case a few months ago, when we ordered the trial copies of these two books (my wife’s done a lot of copy editing since then), or when I’ve purchased copies of my own 8.5×11 books (although those books, after standing upright for some months, do develop cover warping).

We’ll have to look at these after a few days and determine whether we can go forward with opening the books for general sale, or whether we have to find another route (e.g., CreateSpace). Since my wife’s put in several years writing, researching, gathering materials and refining these books, she is–needless to say–disappointed.

I do encourage you to raise an appropriate flag within Lulu. Something is wrong with the production or handling. It needs to be fixed.

Sincerely,
Walt Crawford

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At this point, while I still generally like what Lulu does, I’m more than a little uneasy, particularly when it comes to “big” books (that is, 8.5×11 size–so far, I haven’t heard of problems with 6×9, but that size isn’t feasible given the number of photos in these books).

The one hopeful thing: The first books do seem to be flattening out just a bit, after a couple weeks. They’re still far from flat, however.

Note: If you purchase C&I books (there’s still the 10% April sale, and I see that one book has actually been purchased this month), inspect them carefully. If you find production problems, ask for replacements–and if they’re warped, they may improve over time. I don’t think the same problem will arise with 6×9 books, but I can’t be sure…

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Final update (I think), April 13, 2010: It’s now clear that Lulu support is taking this issue seriously; they’re being informative and noting explicit steps to track down the source of the problem (part of which may have been a bad shipment of paper). They’re also doing their best to make amends.

I’ll stick with previous advice:

• Lulu is a great way to get specialized/short-run/no-run books done. (In the case of my wife’s two books, the only way to get the books done with no up-front costs, I believe–CreateSpace doesn’t do 8.5×11, and even 8×10 tops out at a lower pagecount than the larger of the two books.)
• When you get a shipment from Lulu, inspect the book(s) carefully. If there are problems, let them know right away–and if the problems are visible, you might as well just attach a digital photo of the problem.
• They will respond. It may take a few days, but they will respond, and I believe they’ll do their best to resolve the situation.