Ford Prefect Warwickshire 1963

Ford Prefect, Warwickshire 1963

A weekly image from my archive. Click on the image to make it larger.

I really like this photo. This is a Ford Prefect 107E and the first car my parents bought after they got married. They tell me they were traveling back from Leamington, where I was born, to Manchester to see the parents. I must be in the back seat. You can just about see my Mother on the other side of the open door. My father is still convinced that Ford's never start first time in the cold and it must come from this time because he tells me he used to put a heater under the bonnet to warm the engine up before he tried to start it. Why he came up with this is anyone's guess but the funny thing is one day he left the heater on too long and it burned a perfectly round segment of paint off the top side of the bonnet. He said it looked like some type of decal or logo had been removed from the hood. I suspect he stopped doing that but it didn't stop him complaining that Ford's don't start in the cold.

SpringerLink adds Semantic Search: Cross search eBooks, Journals and Reference.

Announced by Springer from their press release:

Upgraded Springer site connects eBooks and journals through semantic linking and provides digital content previews

Springer has relaunched its online platform SpringerLink ( www.SpringerLink.com ), which hosts nearly five million documents, including eBooks, journals and reference works. The redesigned site has a new and fresh concept that includes semantic linking and connects related content across eBooks and journals.

SpringerLink now also contains a PDF Preview feature that provides all readers with a free look inside eBook chapters to be certain that the content matches their information needs. Subscribers not only have access to an instant overview of the entire eBook, they can also scroll and browse within different chapters of the book and can immediately download the desired content.

The redesigned site includes newly-integrated software that presents links to related content within journal articles and eBook chapters. When users perform a search, the technology analyzes each search result and compares its digital fingerprint to all other documents. This determines which documents are most similar to that article or chapter, ensuring that readers discover content that best meets their research needs.

Additional updates to the new SpringerLink include access to nearly five million contributions organized in a revised subject hierarchy. Enhanced browsing features and improved search functionality with the ability to search by citation makes the new SpringerLink even more useful for researchers. Online journals, eBooks and eReference works have also been integrated onto a single, consistent user experience. Together with an enhanced user-friendly guided navigation, students and scientists can easily retrieve results for their work.

“Following an extensive usability study, we identified navigation, design, and the provision of appropriate context as our users’ most important needs, and this, of course, guided the development of the new SpringerLink platform,” said Brian Bishop, Vice President Platform Development at Springer. “Delivering content online provides so many opportunities to add value, and this latest release moves us forward from simple search and delivery to discovery and enhanced reading experience.”

Today SpringerLink (www.SpringerLink.com) provides electronic access to more than 2,250 scientific and specialist journals, nearly 40,000 eBooks, more than 1,100 book series and about 170 reference works. The publications cover topics from 12 subject collections such as mathematics, computer science, medicine, engineering, economics, law, humanities and social sciences. It also makes available 20,000 searchable online protocols in life sciences and biomedicine.

Frankfurt Seminar: Marketing your books in the digital marketplace

Livres Canada Books is hosting a seminar on Tuesday Oct 5th and here is their description of the event:

Find out what publishers in Canada and other markets are doing to sell and promote books in an increasingly digital marketplace. Join Livres Canada Books on the afternoon of Tuesday October 5, 2010 at the Frankfurt Book Fair for an International Digital Rights Symposium. The symposium allows Canadian and international publishers to work together to develop partnerships, encourage rights sales and build strategic alliances. Publishers from several countires can learn from each other, explore similarities and discuss differences in market condiditons.

Livres Canada Books will host panelists from around the world, including John Oakes of Or Books (USA), Eoin Purcell of Green Lamp Media (Ireland) and Ronald Schild of libreka! (Germany). Register now and don’t miss these speakers and more from experts in digital publishing at our International Digital Rights Symposium. The symposium will take place from 1:00pm until 5:00pm, at which time a cocktail reception will be held for approximately 1 hour. The reception will provide an opportunity for attendees to network with colleagues and competitors from around the globe, and to collaborate on digital book sales and rights management.

Register now to ensure your spot at this highly anticipated event.

Note: Tickets are an eligible expense under the Canada Book Fund export supplement.
In addition, participating publishers who are eligible for a 2010-2011 FRMAP contribution
are entitled to one extra day of per diem.

Understanding Net Neutrality

From CCC's on going series beyond the book:

Wondering whether you should care about “net neutrality” or are you even just a little bit puzzled about exactly what is “net neutrality”?

Chris Kenneally went to Marc Strohlein, Chief Agility Officer for publishing analyst firm Outsell, for a straight take on what may be the sleeper issue of the year for publishing and media companies.

Link to the podcast.

MediaWeek (Vol 3, No 34): Jack London, Philosophy Books & Selling. (And Twitter Highlights)

Jack London covered by The Independent:

But perhaps the greatest act of historical castration is of Jack London. This man was the most-read revolutionary socialist in American history, agitating for violent overthrow of the government and the assassination of political leaders – and he is remembered now for writing a cute story about a dog. It's as if the Black Panthers were remembered, a century from now, for adding a pink tint to their Afros. If Jack London is chased forever from our historical memory by the dog he invented, then we will lose one of the most intriguing, bizarre figures in American history, at once inspiring and repulsive. In his 40 years of life, he was a "bastard" child of a slum-dwelling suicidal spiritualist, a child labourer, a pirate, a tramp, a revolutionary socialist, a racist pining for genocide, a gold-digger, a war correspondent, a millionaire, a suicidal depressive, and for a time the most popular writer in America. In Wolf: the Lives of Jack London, his latest biographer, James L Haley, calls London "the most misunderstood figure in the American literary canon"– but that might be because he is ultimately impossible to understand. ... Even as The Call of the Wild became one of the best-selling books in American history, newspaper editorials were calling for London to be jailed or deported for his socialist speeches. By the age of 40, he was broken. He was taking morphine to stop the pain from his booze-burned kidneys and liver. As he lay killing himself with whiskey, London grew increasingly despondent that the United States was failing to become the socialist republic he prophesised. "I grow, sometimes, almost to hate the mass, to sneer at dreams of reform," he wrote to a friend. He resigned from the Socialist Party, saying it had become too moderate and reformist and should be pushing for direct action – but he took none himself. Cut off from his great redeeming cause, he was dead within a year. His manservant found his almost-dead body, accompanied by a note calculating how much morphine it would take to kill him. Flora Chaney's bullet had hit, 40 years behind schedule.

Issh... The Independent on the rage in philosophy as subject matter:

What is gaining traction in the books market, however, is the opposite of the academic. It is the philosophy of the everyday. Warburton writes a column on the subject for Prospect magazine. In Practical Tortoise Raising, one essay begins with the quandary of how to choose which beans to buy in a supermarket. And it is applied philosophy that is the driving force behind the Philosophy for Everyone series. The volume on cycling, for example, features an essay on the implications of performance-enhancing drugs and a phenomenological appreciation of a bicycle ride by a philosopher who is also a keen amateur mountain cyclist. Another contributor, who almost qualified for the Olympics cycling team when younger, writes about the virtue of performance, of pushing one's body to the limit, and what an "honest" victory or defeat means. (Einstein claimed that the theory of relativity occurred to him while he was on two wheels: one begins to suspect that the existence of so many cycling thinkers may be no accident.) Such is its range that Cycling (Wiley-Blackwell, £11.99) is a book which could live as easily on the sport shelves as the philosophy or cultural studies shelves. How one markets philosophy is key to attracting readers. Avital believes that there are two strategies for getting it into the popular market. One he calls the "straight-ball" approach, which has been taken with Gary Cox, the author of How to Be an Existentialist. The subject of his new book, How to Be a Philosopher, is obvious from its title. Inside, he reads like a jovial college professor trying to enthuse first-year students, with reflections on Red Dwarf nudging up against David Hume. That is a direct sell. "We want someone to buy that because they want to be the smartest person in the room," says Avital. "There is a vanity aspect to the purchase. You want to be seen reading a philosophy book on the Tube."

From the twitter this week (@personanondata) Vintage TV signs Getty Images deal Guardian New Arts of Book Building: Challenges for Authors, Editors and Producers Book Business From my friend Gene Schwartz CengageBrain.com Enhances Website, Introduces Innovative Applications (Press Release) Expanding b2consumer models - interesting. (RRW) etextbooks - Never Mind iPad and eReaders, PCs Still Dominant - NYT Tech Weekly podcast: In the BBC archive Guardian A look at how the BBC is digitizing their archive. OCLC Adds New Info Features to the WorldCat.org Homepage; Test Out Genre Finder from OCLC Research OCLC New Study: $3 Billion in Sub Revenue From Interactive Periodicals by 2014 (Report)

Repost: Roger and Me

Originally posted April 30th, 2008. Speaks for itself.


I have no direct connection with Roger Clemens but I did admire him. In the mid-1980's I lived in Boston and it coincided with the time when he came up to the big leagues. When I finished my shift at the Museum of Fine Arts (the work was brutal), I generally walked home around the Public Gardens (making sure to stay out of them so as not to get mugged - that came later). During those summer evenings in 1984, through the heavy moist air, I could hear the crowd at Fenway moan and roar over the roof tops of Backbay Boston as I walked several blocks away. You could tell the night Roger was pitching; it was just electric and I don't consider myself a baseball fan but in Boston there was huge civic pride over the Red Socks and this pitching marvel.

Well things change. Ultimately they were happy to see him go and now his biography is basically writing itself in chapters delivered to the newspapers every few weeks. Some publisher is going to get the deal but not, I hope, without a set of conditions that has him coming clean about every thing. But that is unlikely to happen until he gets indicted and (perhaps) sentenced for perjuring himself. Unless they find proof (which admittedly wouldn't surprise anyone) they may not have a case just the stink of suspicion. Ultimately if he is backed into a corner where he can't escape, he will just do the public apology thing, cash in and we will all go on with our lives as though all is forgotten.

There has been a published bio: Rocket Man: The Roger Clemens Story and this was the booklist review of the book:

Roger Clemens' 24-4 pitching record for the 1986 American League champion Boston Red Sox earned him a rare double honor: Most Valuable Player (usually the exclusive domain of position players) and the Cy Young Award (best pitcher). He also set a new major-league record with 20 strikeouts in a game. And he's only 24 which is good news for Red Sox fans but not so good for readers of this autobiography, since the baby-faced fastballer has hardly experienced enough to merit an extended article, let alone an entire book. Coauthor and premier baseball writer Peter Gammons keeps things moving crisply enough, but ultimately this is mediocre sports-bio fare. There is likely to be demand based on Clemens' name, particularly since he has settled his contract dispute and won't spend the year on the sidelines.

I recall that summer in 1984. Roger had an August night where he stuck out 15 and came back in his next game and stuck-out 10. Sadly, he has struck himself out but we have all long since lost and now we don't even moan and grown about this latest example of Athletic failure anymore.

Floating Wreck: HMS Queen Elizabeth 1 Hong Kong 1972

Floating Wreck: Queen Elizabeth 1, Hong Kong Harbor 1972

A weekly image from my archive. Click on the image to make it larger.

This image gets a lot of traffic and is also located here on flickr with a second image taken a few seconds later as we took off from Kai Tak.


Another old liner photo but this time a more ignominious end to the star of the Cunard line RMS Queen Elizabeth rather than the one I posted of the USS United States. The Queen Elizabeth had been sold by Cunard and was being refit in Hong Kong as a floating university. The work was almost completed when a fire broke out and the ship was completely destroyed. The ship then lay on its side in the harbor as seen here for months while the owners haggled with the insurance company over what to do with it. This image was taken six months after the fire (and I wasn't on this trip) but I recall seeing the wreck several months later (October) when I visited Hong Kong on my way back to New Zealand.

Join me on Flickr

In addition to the images I've posted on Flickr and those I've periodically posted on PND, I have now produced a Big Blurb Book: From the Archive 1960 -1980 of some of the images I really thought were special.

I now have an iPad version of this book for sale ($4.99) on the Blurb site which you can find here: STORE

I have to say, even on the iPad the book looks pretty good.