It’s been ten years since my first dog passed away and I wanted to do something to remember her. Yes, I know I had promised that I was going to try to keep the pictures of my cat to a minimum but, well, this is not my cat (still, don’t worry, it is a one time thing). Anyway, here you have her:
And here we have another pointless personal post… or maybe this one won’t be quite so pointless.
Yesterday I had to take my dog to the vet. She had an allergic reaction to something and she was scratching so much she was sent home with several drugs and an e-collar (aka a ‘collar of shame’). The thing reminded me of a medieval torture device, my dog was miserable, I was miserable and it took me about twenty minutes to decide that the thing just wasn’t working, so I set out to find an alternative.
I found some very fancy products online, but none of them came across as particularly appealing and they were not available from my local vet. Seeing how I needed them now, not in 48 hours, they were most definitely not an option. That meant I had to come up with an alternative by myself… and I had to use materials that were readily available.
Here you have a picture of what I came up with, and I have to say that she is much happier. She can see where she is going, she can eat and drink, she can rest comfortably and she is not bumping into things or falling down the stairs. Continue reading Collar of no shame, a how-to
Hey, I have a voice!
Ever since I first started the comparison of POD publishers I have had no choice but to try to remain impartial… and that meant that there was a lot going on behind the scenes that I could say nothing about, now I can. Oh, I realize that e-mail is supposed to be private, so I’m not going to be quoting from my inbox here, nor am I going to be naming names, but if something annoys me, at least I will be able to get it off my chest.
In fact I had an incident along these lines the other day when one of my ‘favorite’ pushy publishers wrote to me to whine that there was a ‘mistake’ in the comparison. After a back and forth that caused me to waste the better part of an afternoon, said publisher went back to his/her site, made a change to correct the problem s/he had been arguing did not exist, and then continued to insist that it had been my mistake all along. For the sake of accuracy I did modify the comparison to reflect this change, but the truth is that the whole thing left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
Yes, I realize that publishers have a reputation they are eager to maintain, and in that regard I understand why some of them may not be too happy about how they come across in the comparison, but the bottom line is that when someone goes back to correct a problem they have stubbornly been refusing to acknowledge, and then insist that it was the other’s mistake all along, that does not paint a very pretty picture of their sense of ethics, and that most certainly qualifies as a red flag.
After a lifetime of being alone, Lonesome George is alone no more.
R.I.P. for a whole species (Chelonoidis nigra abingdon)
Yesterday I decided that I wanted to reread Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. I had read it eons ago, and I figured it would be interesting to read it from an adult perspective. I got as far as the Table of Contents before realizing that either Jules Verne had been a perfect moron, or the book had been translated by one.
That may seem like a shocking assertion, but what I found while going over that TOC was that Chapter XX in Part II had the following title: From Latitude 47° 24′ to Longitude 17° 28’… say what? Latitude and longitude define a single point, so there’s no going from latitude to longitude, end of story. Having read that I headed for Project Gutenberg and looked up the original. In French that chapter is called Par 47°24′ de latitude et de 17°28′ de longitude (In Latitude 47° 24′ and Longitude 17° 28’). That was a relief, I had spotted my moron and it certainly wasn’t Verne.
A bit of additional digging (i.e. a quick trip to Wikipedia) confirmed that the book had been essentially gutted by a man by the name of Lewis Page Mercier in what is in fact the standard English translation, but in addition to that I also found that there was a far more accurate version which was produced in 1966 by Walter James Miller… and that he had also been kind enough to release it into the public domain. It is available via Project Gutenberg here: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2488.
I haven’t tackled it yet, but I am looking forward to it. The thing is that if you read this one as a kid you may want to go back to it and have another look. I also want to thank Mr. Miller, and whoever else happens to be responsible for this decision, for making this work available for free.
Six months ago today I lost my friend of almost fourteen years. Yes, he was ‘just a cat’ and I should be over it by now, yadda-yadda-yadda… Well, I’m not. I still miss the little critter, so you get stuck with a bunch of photos (don’t worry, I don’t intend to make a habit of this).
