Where to find FREE e-books....

Google book search has many books in the public domain for free download. These are available in text and .pdf formats. The search allows you to select books with full text available as well. Use the advanced search function. The books are mostly scanned from affiliate university libraries.

www.freebookspot.com has full books for free download. Most of these are in .pdf format though there are a few in .djv also. These are downloaded via various services such as rapidshare which offer some free or premium services. The list is heavy with computer and scientific titles, but there is also a nice variety. Warning: some of these titles may be under copyright.

Newsgroups, particularly alt.binaries.e-book.technical has many titles for free download. You need newsgroup server access, which you may get for free via your ISP, or you can subscribe to a service for a reasonable fee. Examples include Usenet and Newsgroups-binaries. A newsreader/search engine is also very useful. I use Xnews.

Of course, don't forget Project Gutenberg, which has a growing list of thousands of public domain titles in multiple formats: www.gutenberg.net .

Finally, most torrent sites have a long list of available e-books including audio e-books. Checkout Mininova for searching torrents and download them with utorrent.

Roger Waters tour book...

Available: In very good condition, one tourbook for Roger Waters, The Wall, Live in Berlin 1990; includes the original mask used by me in the concert. (I'm 10th row center there in the DVD version of the show).

Any guesses as to worth?

The battle against RIAA rages!

Recently, the popular bit torrent site Oink was taken down and its adminstrator arrested. Then, on November 9th Demonoid was forced down by threats to its ISP made by the CRIA. PirateBay is under attack! Meanwhile, music fans are increasingly turning against the RIAA, the real force behind the crackdown.

Read this excellent article and decide: Where do YOU stand?

Back Again

Obviously, I've been away for awhile. This is related to several factors, including my incompetence regarding disk repartitioning which led to the most recent post. I was also soured for awhile based on my experiences with certain manipulative evil bloggers out there on the lunatic fringe. Frankly, I find it difficult to find internet "places" where civility is maintained. Many social bloggers prefer not to moderate comments, in the name of free speech/expression, and/or because allowing anything tends to bring hits. Why in G-d's name any noncommerical entity would care about getting a lot of hits is beyond me....but put many people on the internet and it's no holds barred verbal fisticuffs in response to even the most innocent of comments.

So... Hi Ya!

"Recovery to Factory condition"

Windows cannot boot. Some of the files appear to be corrupt or missing...

Linux desktop

Mandriva 3D Desktop is fantastic. I'm going to dedicate my XP machine to that and run Vista for now on my new machine. There are still important applications which are windows-only. I highly recommend trying out Mandriva at least on a DVD boot.

Home publishing macro available

Recently I completed writing a Visual BASIC macro (for MSWord 2003) which is useful for DIY bookmakers. This code is available to anyone who would be interested.

The input for the code is a text file such as those freely obtainable from Project Gutenberg or the user's self-authored manuscript. The user chooses the size of the signatures; further manipulation requires adjustment of the source code. There is little to no error checking included; it's a bare bones operation.

The output is formatted to print two columns (separated by the gutter) on each side of typical 8 -1/2" x 11" sheets of copy paper. Before printing, illustrations and additional formatting tweaks can be added. When printed, the sheets can then be folded and assembled into signatures and bound.

The macro is very easy to use and comes with a page of instructions for clarification.

Zucchini out the wazoo

Zucchini is coming out the wazoo! Time to learn how to bake zucchini bread before my family is buried in them. Rivka is becoming an accomplished chef. She has made challot, cookies, and "chocolate snowballs" without any assistance. Maybe I can get HER to make the z-bread.

Pinchas' favorite beers

Current "squeeze": Blue moon Belgian White (even though made by Coors)

Other good beers are: Leinenkugel Red, Labatt's Blue, Samuel Adams (original), Moosehead

Crappy beers (to ME): Guinness, Coors, Killians, and all cheap American beer, lite beer which is heavy on the corn.

It must be noted however that a crappy beer is better than NO beer.

Garden update

In the past week the mini-garden has given the following:

Sweet corn
Zucchini
Jalapenos
lot's and lot's of weeds


will late sprouting cukes have time to develop? stay tuned....