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Stewart Brand’s Summary of Chris Anderson’s Talk on “The Makers’ Revolution”

We’re now entering the third industrial revolution, Anderson said.  The first one, which began with the spinning jenny in 1776, doubled the human life span and set population soaring.  From the demographic perspective, “it’s as if nothing happened before the Industrial Revolution.”

   The next revolution was digital.  Formerly industrial processes like printing were democratized with desktop publishing.  The “cognitive surplus” of formely passive consumers was released into an endless variety of personal creativity.  Then distribution was democratized by the Web, which is “scale agnostic and credentials agnostic.”  Anyone can potentially reach 7 billion people.

   The third revolution is digital manufacturing, which combines the gains of the first two revolutions.  Factory robots, which anyone can hire, have become general purpose and extremely fast.  They allow “lights-out manufacturing,” that goes all night and all weekend.

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The Day After Lots of Rain

Blogging is perfect for me, what with my compulsion to blab about everything I encounter in my world. It takes maybe a year for me (with substantial help) to get each book together, but here I can get things out daily. Actually I’m a frustrated newspaperman. I love the immediacy of newspapers, but  could never take the pressure; nor could I write well and quickly enough to work for a grownup daily paper. I don’t tweet these days, and just can’t join the FaceBook conglomerate. Blogging’s enough. Finding the time to do it, along with getting books out in today’s turbulent publishing seas, is a challenge.

Winter Solstice I felt something Friday, like a wakeup call. To get it a lot more together and quit moping because of an injured shoulder. I have so many friends with debilitating body parts, that I’m like a wimp. One body part goes wrong and I get depressed. OK, days are getting longer. I actually felt the first wave of Spring the other day, the new grass growing as the hills turn green, the call of a red-wing blackbird (lodged in my all-time memory from teenage years prowling my dad’s rice farm in Colusa (Calif.). Come on, April!

(Above pic, Amanita Muscaria, bursting out of pine needles everywhere right now…

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Our 3 New EBooks

About a year ago, we gave up on finding a person or agency that could render any of our graphic-rich books into ebooks. So Rick Gordon, our Director of Production, decided to create Shelter ebooks in-house.

Marathon: You Can Do It!, by Jeff Galloway, was the first one. It works on an iPad (and iPhone), as well as the Kindle, and it was a beautiful job; it went on to qualify for a QED (Quality/Excellence/Design) certification from Digital Book World. This certification is given to ebooks that pass a rigid test of quality, functionality, and compatibility. It was also a finalist for a Publishing Innovation Award in non-fiction. See review of it here.

Ebook available here.

Tiny Homes, the 2nd one, was more of a challenge; it contains 1,300 color photos. In May 2012, Rick completed the job, and the (fixed layout) ebook version of Tiny Homes is now available for the iPad (not Kindle). I don’t know of a single ebook of this complexity that compares to this one. It maintains virtually the exactly look and feel of the print version. It even looks good on an iPhone.

Ebook available here.

Stretching Now Rick has completed the e-version of our best-seller (over 3 million copies), Stretching, by Bob Anderson. This one, the biggest technical challenge so far, has lots of interactivity, and some unique and very useful features for navigating through the book and saving personal information.

We had over 20 responses to an earlier post for beta testers and tests are now under way. We’ll make an announcement once we deem it ready to go.

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Early Morning Day After

Got up at 6, just as dawn was breaking. Wish I could say I do this often, but I don’t. When I do I get 3 times as much done, everything is so quiet, exquisite, as the day unfolds.

  As I write this, right now on BBKing’s Bluesville, “I’m Tore Down” by Freddie King. “I’m tore down, I’m almost level with the ground.” Next: “Temptation” by Kelly Hunt. Shit, what great music!

 Change in the weather last night. Feels good. Been unseasonably warm. Fog now in, storm coming. Rain, rain (+ neg ions), come our way…

   I gotta say, the election was a huge relief to me. For the future of Supreme Court, for just one thing. In fact I’m pretty fucking overjoyed to think that the Koch brothers and Carl Rove and the Tea Party and Fox and the Money Guys and Trump/Limbaugh/other mean-spirited, controlling people couldn’t buy (and lie their way to) the election. This just happened in America and it reminds me that there are things that I love about this country.

Now on radio, Buddy Guy with “I’ve Got Dreams to Remember,” done live in the Sirius blues studio. Great vocal harmonies.

Tiny Homes On the Move: Water & Wheels We’re in full gear. I’m corresponding with dozens of contributors. Material is coming in daily. Much from the UK — lot of nomads there. I’ve got about 50 pages roughed out. The book has come to life, as our books do once underway. Mojo workin.

   It changes from day to day. About 25% so far are “Water” (houseboats,sailboats, tugboat); 75% “Wheels” (house busses, house trucks, RVs, trailers, vardo, vans). I sort of schizophrenically juggle this blog, all the necessary pub biz necessities, and working on the book (and getting out to the beach). Both Lew and Evan are starting to work on the book. Lew on various vehicular homes, Evan on snowboarder Mike Basich’s truck/camper and 39′ sailboat, and some bike guys.

Tiny Homes at San Francisco Green Festival this Weekend We’ll have a booth, be selling Tiny Homes (plus other building books) for 20 bucks, giving away the mini (2″x 2-1/2′) books. Lew, Evan and me. It’s at a great venue, the SF Concourse Exhibition Center, which is like a big steel and timber barn. Sat-Sun, November 10-11, details here.

Stretching, the eBook Rick Gordon is putting the finishing touches on the iPad version of Bob and Jean Anderson’s book Stretching (which has sold over 3 million copies and is in 23 languages). When Rick started putting together our 1st eBooks, none of us realized that he was going to do such a masterful job. Jeff Galloway’s Marathon is head and shoulders (in design and ease-of-use) above any other running eBook in Apple’s library. Then he did Tiny Homes and it’s spectacular — even on an iPhone. The electronic Stretching looks really good. It’ll work on an iPad, also on an iPhone (dial up “Airplane Stretches” during your flight, or “Hotel Stretches” when you travel…).

Green Smoothies We just got a Blendtec super-powered (3 hp) blender. I’m making drinks with fresh fruit and greens (parsley, kale, spinach, dandelion roots, or carrot tops). A lot of times I get going in the office and skip lunch and this is a great solution. Interesting comparison between a juicer and a blender. With the latter, you get all the fiber. When I realized that, it was, like, duh…Not just carrot juice, but the whole carrot.

   Yesterday I made pancakes by adding 1 cup of oat groats, eggs, buttermilk, and baking powder (+ a little baking soda) —  blending, and voila — batter. This is a wonderful tool (better late than never). I got it with two books by the Boutenkos which are exceedingly relevant in explaining the principles and providing recipes. Here it is on Amazon.

Elegant Mini Reading Glasses You can put these on your keychain; I keep a pair in my fanny pack. They fold up tiny. For whenever I don’t have my backpack (with regular reading glasses). Discovered here on CoolTools (my favorite blog in the world). NOT available from Amazon; let’s hear it for the manufacturers!

As I sign off, it’s Slim Harpo doing “I Got Love If You Want It.”

 

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This and That on a Tuesday Morning

Lightweight tent: Nemo Obi Elite 1P, reviewed by Kevin Kelly on Cool Tools, this is an ultra-light, elegantly designed, one-person tent. I think it’s a breakthrough design.

Lightweight rain gear: 02 Hooded Rain jacket. Another item I discovered as a result of a recent backpack trip (with outdated gear), also on Cool Tools (here). V. light, waterproof, highly compressible, cheap. I got pants as well.

Sanuk Sidewalk Surfers – “Vagabond” They don’t look like much, but these are the most comfortable shoes I’ve ever had. A few months ago my son Will and I were visiting old surfing friend Richard Novak and longboard maestro Wingnut at Rich’s office in Santa Cruz, and all four of us had on the same shoes.

iPhone 5: OMG! Just incredible. Seri alone (which people seem to bitch about): I can say “nearest gas station,” or “nearest pizza,” and lo and behold, there are lists in order of proximity. Camera functions are fabulous: clear videos, panoramic mode. Haven’t even begun to explore possibilities, which seem endless. I want to get more up to speed on a smart phone, because that’s the way the (young) world is going, and important for me to understand as a communicator. Also thinking about shooting photos on phone and blogging on the spot. I’ll be such a modern guy.

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Get Direct Line to Real Human on Phone Calls

From CoolTools today:

“Get Human is a website that helps you get through to a real person when you are stuck in an automated phone tree and can’t find a way out. For Fortune 500 and many other companies, they tell you the phone number to call or the words to say to get a human (agent, representative, etc). One important feature is that the site also has a notification if the number they had listed is no longer working ( when the companies push back). Finally, they offer instructions on how to get a call back, and when email is a better choice.

Something this simple has saved my sanity many times. I’ve used it for several years, and rely on it. It’s wonderful.

— Judy Baxter

https://gethuman.com/

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Tiny Homes Now an eBook!

Rick Gordon has produced an in-house state-of-the-art, fixed-layout EPUB version of Tiny Homes, which accurately replicates the design and content of the print version. It is extensively hyperlinked, with zoomable images and text. I have not seen any ebook this complex (1300 photos) in all of the Apple world. We are thrilled with it.

It can be read on an iPad or iPhone that has iOS 5 (or higher) installed and a current version of the iBooks app (available for free from the App Store, if not already installed). Note: This is not a PDF nor an app.

It’s available in the Apple iBookstore at https://shltr.net/tinyhomes-ibooks. You can download free sample pages (38 selected pages) to check it out. It is $13.99. If you get the eBook, you can get the print book for a 40% discount.

Recipient of the 2012 Nautilus Silver Award in the category of Green Living.

Dan Wright, Technical Manager for CircularFLO (the software Rick used) in an email to Rick titled “Your masterpiece…,” wrote: “(This) is the most impressive Fixed Layout EPUB I have ever seen.”

We’d appreciate you spreading the word about this if you can. Blog it or Tweet it or Facebook it. It’s really good. I guar-an-tee it.

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