Extra Future

Hi, I’m Phil Nelson, a writer, developer, and audio-visual maker of stuff. I have been making stuff online for over 25 years. I run RetroStrange and Set Side B. Good to see you.

Blog Archives

Tag: books

  • Public Domain Day 2026 Around The Web

    Good news, everyone! It’s January 1st, and among other things, that means it’s Public Domain Day here in the United States of America. A bunch of great works from the past are now no longer under copyright, far fewer than should be if not for the interference in our legal system by massive copyright rent-seekers like Disney, but it’s still something. Here are some of the newly-free works that I think are worth your time, along with links to some more collected lists.

    • The works of P.G. Wodehouse, one of the funniest and sharpest writers I’ve ever read. His Jeeves series is just tremendous. Yes, this is where calling all butlers “Jeeves” comes from in popular culture.
    • The works of jazz composer, saxophonist, and bandleader Charlie Parker.
    • The work of Hannah Arendt, an incredibly important writer on history and philosophy. Her most known work is probably The Origins of Totalitarianism which is still as vital today as it was when she wrote it post-World War II. Perhaps moreso.
    • The Sam Spade detective story The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett.
    • The Skeleton Dance, the first Silly Symphonies short made by Ub Iwerks for Walt Disney.
    • Blackmail, the first sound film by Alfred Hitchcock
    • Singin’ in the Rain, the seminal musical
    • Rhapsody in blue by George Gershwin

    As of right now all of these works are now free to use, distribute, and display in public free of charge in the US! You can find a bunch more to dig through at Public Domain Review, Everybody’s Libraries, and the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University.

    As always, the absolutely essential Internet Archive is the best place to find copies of all these things in various formats for streaming, reading, downloading, etc.

  • The Bone Mother

    Amazon’s shipping robot has informed me that David Demchuk’s book, [The Bone Mother][pub], has shipped. I’m looking forward to it:

    >Three neighboring villages on the Ukrainian/Romanian border are the final refuge for the last of the mythical creatures of Eastern Europe. Now, on the eve of the war that may eradicate their kind—and with the ruthless Night Police descending upon their sanctuary—they tell their stories and confront their destinies.
    >
    >Eerie and unsettling like the best fairy tales, these incisor-sharp portraits of ghosts, witches, sirens, and seers—and the mortals who live at their side and in their thrall—will chill your marrow and tear at your heart.

    Sounds spooky. [Buy it on Amazon][store].

    [store]: http://amzn.to/2u1a6HU “The Bone Mother by David Demchuk on Amazon.com”
    [pub]: http://chizinepub.com/the-bone-mother/ “The Bone Mother on ChiZine”

  • The Icon Handbook

    [Jon Hicks makes great icons, and I look forward to learning what he has to teach.][link] The 323-page book ships January 30th, 2012 and there’s [a PDF sample][samp].

    [link]: http://www.fivesimplesteps.com/products/the-icon-handbook “Five Simple Steps – The Icon Handbook”
    [samp]: https://s3.amazonaws.com/fivesimplesteps/IconHandbook-sample.pdf “Icon Handbook Sample”

  • Steven Frank: Programming for Mere Mortals

    [Part 1 in a series, available for $2.99 on the Kindle.][link]

    Steven is the co-founder of Panic, the legendary Mac development house that brought you Transmit, Coda, and Unison. You need this book.

    [link]: http://stevenf.com/pages/book.html “Steven Frank: Programming for Mere Mortals”

  • 101 Reasons to Shop

    [My friend and super-neat person Carly Monardo][link] has illustrated a book, [101 Ways To Shop, which is available today][book]. It was written by Jessica Waldorf, designed by Mary Austin, and is published by Harper Collins. [You should buy it.][buy]

    [link]: http://carlymonardo.blogspot.com/2011/04/101-reasons-to-shop.html “Carly Monardo’s Art Blog: 101 Reasons to Shop”
    [buy]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062045172 “101 Reason To Shop on Amazon”
    [book]: http://www.harpercollins.com/books/101-Reasons-Shop-Jessica-Waldorf/?isbn=9780062045171 “101 Reason to Shop on Harpercollins.com”

  • “Writing on the high seas”

    [Author Tobias Buckell’s treatise on book piracy and what it means here in the now][link]:

    >A certain book that usually sells about 5,000 copies, locked down and protected, seems to sell the same 5,000 copies as a book with a free giveaway and pirated. The difference, according to O’Reilly and many, will be that the second author sees a 5,000 copies sold book, and 5,000 downloads and wonders “why, I should really have had 10,000 sales!” But the truth might be more like, 5,000 people purchased each, and one of them got 5,000 additional reads.

    Most of this analysis seems like it should fall under the rubric of “common sense,” but there’s obviously a pretty big lack of that in the traditional publishing channels right now. Some people will read your stuff, some people will pay you, and the best you can hope for is enough people fall into the second category that you can pay your bills.

    [link]: http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2011/01/27/writing-on-the-high-seas/ “Writing on the high seas at Tobias Buckell Online”

  • Mark Twain’s Autobiography To Be Released 100 Years After His Death

    [Following Twain’s wishes][link]. It’s chilling in a vault at UC Berkeley. I’d love to see a rundown of where the manuscript had been all these years.

    [link]: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/after-keeping-us-waiting-for-a-century-mark-twain-will-finally-reveal-all-1980695.html “After keeping us waiting for a century, Mark Twain will finally reveal all – News, Books – The Independent”

  • Illustrated Editions of The Hobbit

    Focusing on the illustrations in the different worldwide versions of The Hobbit. The Swedish ones (1947, 1967) are especially lovely.

  • The Devastator – A New Book Series of Comics and Satire

    [Issue #1 features Extra Future royalty James Urbaniak and David Malki][link].

    [link]: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/969059914/the-devastator-a-new-book-series-of-comics-and-sat “The Devastator – A New Book Series of Comics and Satire — Kickstarter”

  • Lukas Mathis on Scrolling .vs. Page-flipping

    [In response to a response][link], he grabs this quote from Kottke:

    >The page flipping animation in the iBooks app though? Super cheesy. It’s like in the early days of cars where they built them to look like horse-drawn carriages. Can’t we just scroll?

    He says:

    >How is scrolling desirable to the person who is trying to read a book? If I’m reading a book, I want to fill the screen with text. Then, I want to read that text. Then, I want to fill the whole screen with new text, and read that.

    and I smile and nod, because he is extremely right. The reason the page-flip metaphor still works is that my eyes/brain shouldn’t have to be in charge of figuring out where I am in the text every time I scroll.

    It’s not as simple as eliminating “pages” entirely, I think, but re-implementing the _good_ functionality of pages.

    [link]: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2010/03/06/jon_bell_on_scrolling/ “ignore the code: Jon Bell on Scrolling”