hermiene.net

I spent the last few days painstakingly rummaging through my books, transcribing their structure (in most cases this means their table of contents). Incidentally, this represents my first forays into JavaScript (or more specifically, the library jQuery). It gracefully degrades (meaning that it at least doesn't break for people browsing without JavaScript support), but I'm ambivalent about the fact that it displays the structure by default for non-JavaScript browsers. As an example, check out 2001. The [Toggle visibility] button exhibits the JavaScript magic. I'm pretty satisfied with how it works, overall. (So far it only works while displaying single books. I'll try to work that out.)

My vision for the Books page is to simply let it grow, hopefully into a big and useful online library, for my own (and hopefully your) delight. But before that, there are many bugs and wrinkles that must be ironed out. I suspect I'll have to meander into the dark, scary forest of "Web 2.0" for that.

I went through the Books page and re-scanned the poor scans (since I started scanning the fronts, spines, backs, and, where applicable, dust-cover flaps of my books, I've learned some tricks), and in the same swoop updated the default height of the scans from 700 to 1000 pixels. (My policy now is, "1000 pixels in height, more if the situation calls for it". At the least, all text should be legible, even if the text is part of the cover art; as an example, the letters in the DNA illustration on the front of Richard Dawkins' book The Ancestor's Tale are perfectly legible.) I also read a number of books, although I haven't gotten through the doorstoppers as I'd planned. I re-read and scanned The Blind Watchmaker in addition to reading and giving a review to The Greatest Show on Earth. I listened to the three audio books of George Carlin, Brain Droppings, Napalm and Silly Putty, and When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops. All of these will get reviews when I've read them (this seems to be evolving as another policy of mine). I did the same with Bart Ehrman's books Misquoting Jesus and The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot; these will also get reviews when I've read them. I also read Livingstone: Oppdageren — Forskeren — Misjonæren, The Man in His High Castle, The Sex Revolts, American Poetry: An Introductory Anthology, and The Blank Slate.

I linked to Micrographia, the book that made the word "cell" famous (I haven't read it myself, but the illustrations are awesome), Notepad++ (my new favorite text editor), DOSBox (a DOS emulator), and two gaming wikis, KeenWiki and Minepedia (caveat lector: it is extremely easy to get addicted to this game).

As for future updates, I will really, really, really try to make them more timely. Really. I mean it this time.

I've read a slew of books: The Tyrannosaurus Prescription, Words in Genesis, The Greatest Show on Earth (only the audio book, but as soon as I've read the real book I'll review it), Frankenstein, Lord of the Flies, The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume Two, Lake of the Dead, Breaking the Spell, The Stars, Like Dust, and Deception Point. I have a couple of doorstopper books (mostly anthologies) that I plan on reading next. (I've started on several of them.)

I updated my Links page with a single game: Knytt. It's a wonderful little game; if you like it, you'll probably like its cousin games, too.

I removed the link to The Aristophrenium. David Smart, who started the blog, wanted to have an all-Christian staff, and he kindly asked me to step down, to which I agreed. It was a fun experiment; it was primarily an outlet for me to try my hand at essay-writing, and I'd like to start something similar again sometime. (My old essays are still there, and David says he'll let them be.)

More to come soon.