I’ve been publishing this blog for almost three years and I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a difference in approaches in covers for the US and UK markets. US is on top, UK on the bottom. And here’s a link to the Guardian UK review so that you can begin to try to figure out what the ants mean.

NOTE: The Guardian review shows the cover with the soldier image but this version doesn’t seem to be on sale until October 2007; the black and red cover appears to be what’s currently on sale in the UK. Sorry for any confusion.

Black Mass, US and UK versions

I’ve spend quite a bit of time over the years talking about the importance of making decisions, and how to keep to them. And today I want to return to the subject.

One of the problems most of us face is that we are so busy dealing with everyday decisions that we never take the time to make the strategic decisions that are really going to make a difference. Well here’s a little exercise in two parts to look at those decisions. Set aside a few minutes to do it.

** First Part **

Think back to what you were doing five years ago 2002 and imagine that you had the power to go back and make all the decisions that you didn’t make then. What would you chose to change?

What you may realise is that the decisions you were making five years ago (or failing to make) have had a profound effect on the way you live now. They might have been decisions to sort out a relationship, or to change jobs, or to have a medical checkup, or to lose weight, or to give up smoking, or to learn a new skill, or to get fit. With any of these, if you had put them into effect five years ago you would now be reaping the benefits. How might yourlife be different now?

** Second Part **

Imagine that you’re five years in the future in 2012 and you are looking back doing the same exercise. What are the decisions that you wished you had made in 2007?

Well, this time you CAN go back and make those decisions… you can make them right now!

Changing the Past?

The Trikke is a machine you ride and propel by wiggling your body in a way that’s Zen training on three wheels. It puts into direct use the conservation of angular momentum – if you carry a mass through a turn around a center with a radius that decreases while you’re turning, then your linear velocity will increase. You move the Trikke by leaning and ’S-turning’ your way through a succession of these turns. The Trikke manages to turn all this physics into a fun ride as well as a no-impact aerobic workout (good for aging skeletons).

It was a slow learn for me – took about a month – but skiers, rollerbladers, and almost any kid will get it right away. Adults who’ve forgotten some of the finer points of operating their bodies will take longer, but that’s one of the neat things about this no-pedal, definitely-not-a-scooter, tricycle: it will teach your body, all by itself, to make it go. You’ll learn faster if, unlike me, you keep your mind out of the process.

When you do finally get into the groove, the feeling is beguiling. You move in a sinuous carving motion gently S-curving your way along city streets or park paths on the flat, downhill, and (eventually) uphill at an average 8 mph. It never (not in 8 months, anyway) gets boring. It requires upward of 350 of your calories per half-hour for propulsion, so it’s damn good exercise. It involves 20 or 30 muscles from your neck all the way down to your feet, working in concert, so you don’t hurt or feel exhausted after a workout; you just feel the afterglow of a good generalized energy output.

You also look both weirder and cooler on a Trikke than a penguin on skis, so if you don’t like the idea of getting double-takes (and questions) from almost everyone you pass, that might be a reason not to ride one of these.

Trikke-Tech makes models with air tires and solid polyurethane wheels. For an adult, in normal city environments, I’d say air is the only way to go because of its natural shock-absorption. I have the sporty T-8 Convertible, the smallest adult-sized Trikke with optional air tires. The $500 T-12 is, apparently, the Cadillac of the line; according to Trikke obsessives, it gives the cushiest ride and is best for long cruises. Nevertheless, I’ve found the cheaper T-8 to be fast on its “feet” and very responsive, and it folds up into a package that fits into almost any car trunk.

– Craig Umanoff

Trikke
$370
Available from Amazon

Manufactured by Trikke Tech, Inc.

Trikke

The underused caret (shift + 6) is an excellent tool for managing file versions. If you’ve got several versions of a file to track and no full-blown version control system to use, just append the caret and a version number to the file name. Tech site WorldStart.com explains that this method of versioning makes it easy to locate file revisions by entering the caret as criteria into your search app du jour. How do you manage the various versions of your important documents? Share in the comments.
More On Carets [WorldStart.com]

Version Control: Use the caret (^) to manage file versions

Superboy #131
Superboy #131

Found some old sketches in the HP character file while I was waiting for the scanner to scan some designs we’re working on for the kid show gig. These go back a few years.

In order: Harmony, Fibby, Chako, Royce. 

Some Old Hectic Planet Sketches

Teppo

Alexandre Petrov has created a short film of Shmelev’s My Love (1927).

Here’s the trailer; visually rather stunning, oil painted on glass.  Here’s a review.  Here’s an interview, from last week.  Here’s the wiki entry.

weekend link: petrov trailer and interview

Editions of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy often have excessively small print.  Why?  The major works by those authors are long.  Larger print will make the volumes too long and thus too expensive.  Perhaps more importantly the volumes will appear too forbidding to the average buyer.

But isn’t miniscule type for Raskolnikov hard to read?  Ah…most of the people who buy the book don’t read it.  If miniscule type gets them to stop reading sooner rather than later, you might even call it a Pareto improvement.

Self-help books almost always have reasonably large print or even ridiculously large print.  The author doesn’t have much to say and the publisher wishes to pad the book so it looks real.  Furthermore most self-help books are read (at least in part), so to keep the reader happy the print should be large.

Can you think of other generalizations?

Which books are most likely to go into “Large Print” editions? 

Which are the books with the smallest print?

Conan the Barbarian #10
Conan the Barbarian #10