Red Yeti's Blog

This post is simply my recipe for publishing a book via Lulu although a lot of it may be relevant for anyone wanting to write up and format a book.

Though to be frank, I’ve had a lot of trouble getting the images printed correctly. With a lot of help from Lulu support we finally got good copies last week. Hence the delay in posting about the  GR5 Honeymoon ebook.

Next time (and there may be a next time!) I think I’d use Blurb since they review well for image printing. I may still use an uploaded PDF with Blurb rather than using their (admittedly very good) downloadable book creation tool since I think I’ll want more control over how it hangs together (plus I believe you don’t get much choice as to the style of cover with that tool – though I may be wrong!).

There is a wealth of instructional material on the Lulu site. But because there are a great many different options, I thought a very specific path through it all might be helpful to someone.

Besides – I wrote all this out as I went along so it seems a shame to waste it!

Recipe for publishing a book via Lulu: Continue reading »

As we walked the GR5 we made diaries, audio for me, written for LB. “LB” being a nickname, like “Red Yeti”. Some may be surprised by her actual name. Some who know us have been mighty confused by the “LB” mentioned on this blog!

So, assuming you don’t want to spend silly-money on a book about our honeymoon, take a look at the:

Free ebook version of A GR5 Honeymoon

(Right-click the link and select “Save link as” since it’s a rather large PDF file!)

Unfortunately it doesn’t come with the cover that’s on the real book – but that’s at the top of this post – just click the image and you’ll get the idea.

The first Big Walk we did together in the Polish/Slovak Tatra has now faded somewhat in detail with only the pictures, a single, rather retrospective blog entry and the odd good yarn that has been told and re-told to friends to remind us. We didn’t want the GR5, or in fact any other Big Walk in future, to fade so much.

I wasn’t sure that I would remember to make an audio diary every day but with the lack of other distractions I managed it almost without fail.

We then transcribed it ourselves, partly as a way of making it more accessible in future to look back on and partly to add the details that we didn’t think to mention in the original as we went.

And then the project grew…

We added LB’s written diary into the transcription, organised it into a semi-formatted document (using Google Docs which allowed us to both be editing and adding to the same document at the same moment).

We then decided it was very, very “dry” without some photos so they started to come in.

And eventually, we had something not far short of a book. So we decided to go that last mile and create one. Just for us, with a copy for each of our respective parents.

It was completed last November, a couple of months after we returned, but we had quite some trouble getting the images to print correctly.

At last it’s time to “publish” it to the world.

Not that I expect anyone to read it all! But it might be of interest to flick through.

I certainly don’t expect anyone to buy a copy. Particularly since it’s rather expensive. The price that you see is purely the price that the Lulu charges to print, there’s no profit margin on there for me.

But considering it’s around 260 pages with a photos on most of them, and it’s wrapped in a glossy, full colour cover and printed exactly to order – it’s not badly priced at all.

My brother once said “You have girl feet!”

He wasn’t referring to the size of them (most girls don’t take an 11.5UK) but the general lack of smell.

Most of the time it’s true. They do remain reasonably pong-free when compared to other people’s feet under the same conditions. Nothing in the laboratory you understand, just things like being on the hill for a while.

However, wearing shoes without socks is a recipe for disaster even for my feet. And the same goes for Five Fingers.

During the colder weather I’ve taken to wearing them with socks. Also last summer on the GR5 the socks were an attempt to give us a washable layer to prevent the hum.

But as the summer comes, I’m tempted by the ease of sockless Five Finger wearing. It’s easier taking them off when I reach the client site and swapping into them if I step out at lunch and yet again at the end of the day.

But whilst I wear the more work-appropriate footwear the Five Fingers sit in my bag… being rather warm and damp…

Which is certainly not the most sociable thing to have in an office environment.

So, I’ve come up with a solution that not only keeps me from getting too unpopular but also means I should have dry Five Fingers to slip into.

A 32X50CM (12.5X20 inch) OPSak (“Odour Proof Sack”) purchased from Top Of The Range and a pair of Dampire Dryzone Shoe Dryers to dry them out whilst they’re safely encased in the pong-proof plastic (which apparently is used for other bio-hazardous material as well).

That should keep everyone happy, especially my feet since they get to walk about in the Five Fingers as often as possible.

Edit 07 May 2010: Folks – Duct tape is not the same thing as Gaffer tape. Gaffer tape comes from specialist camera equipment suppliers and is very, very expensive. I can use Google pretty effectively and if I could have turned up actual Gaffer tape with a quick search or two, believe me, I would have done. What’s the difference? Read on! :)

I’ve been looking for Gaffer tape for ages and at last my search has come to an end, twice in the same week.

What? Surely you can walk in to any DIY shop or visit ebay to pick up a roll of Gaffer? Same as Duct tape – right?

Nope.

Duct (or should that be Duck tape?) tape is great stuff. It should be part of everyone’s repair and first aid kits.

But if you’ve ever used it (and really, who hasn’t?) then you’ll know it’s sticky.

Really, very sticky.

Which is rather the point. It sticks like… well, you know what.

But it’s also a drawback, you stick it on something, and when you want to peel it off, some of it stays. Or, worse, some of what you’ve stuck it to, doesn’t stay.

When the film and theatre industries started using it for sticking cables and other things that they didn’t want covered in glue, that became a problem.

So, they invented Gaffer tape. Named for the head of the lighting department on a film crew.

Its surprisingly hard to find. I eventually stumbled across it in the obvious place; professional camera supplies.

In the USA Adorama supply a 50 yard roll (they still use measurements that are impossible to convert between ;) and in Europe Calumet do it in a 50M roll (they also have a large selection in their US shop, and also in those odd measurements!).

It’s a specialist item, so, as the Wikipedia article has it; “[it] is therefore not a consumer good“.

Meaning it’s not cheap.

But if, you want to make things using tape or if you find yourself having to repair something that you don’t want to get covered in residual glue, it might be just what you need.

As we walked the GR5, we used a Spot tracker to record way-points along the route. It managed pretty well and only missed one day (oddly, I’m sure it was on…).

As we walked, I had it uploading to a page on the Spot web site so people could track our progress, but sadly it only logged the last seven days of activity. I hadn’t realised that I should have logged in to spotadventures.com and created an “Adventure” so that the way-points could be recorded permanently. The Spot web site, rather like the Spot tracker, doesn’t always have a very intuitive interface.

Luckily though, Google Maps allows you to import several track formats, so in they went. (It only shows 200 track points at any one time; scroll to the bottom of the list of points, in the left hand panel, to see more of them).

The great thing is, since Google Street View has arrived in France, you can see a couple of landmark points on the walk in an “interactive” format:

The start of the walk, just by the roofed-over shelter by Lake Geneva.

Our favourite village, St Dalmas le Selvage.

And the end of the walk, on the tiny beach at the edge of the marina in Menton.

In ordinary map view, try left-dragging the little orange man (in the top left, at the end of the scale) and as you wave him about over the map, the roads that have Street View are highlighted in blue.

Of course, there are only a few points where the Street View images intersect with our walking route, but it’s remarkably evocative to be able to see the route in such detail.

This posting is an assortment of “handy tips” for longer trips although some apply regardless of length.

I originally noted them in audio form as I wandered the GR5 and thought “Oh yes – must mention that on the blog when I get back…”

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