Tree Weasel Weekly

How not to win ebook friends and influence people

I have been reading ebooks for nearly 10 years now, and have amassed a large (perhaps very large) library. After being locked out of some of my early MS Reader purchases I have endeavoured to only buy formats that I can clean the DRM wrapper off for future proofing. This has worked well, and I have been able to bring my books to PDA, Windows Mobile phones, iPhones, Sony Reader and iPad. This is a familiar path to many ebook veterans, but I present this as a bit of background to my current tale.

One of my favourite set of books, and one that I have been waiting to arrive in ebook format, is the Patrick O'Brian series of tales about Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. I have these in battered paperbacks, and also in audio book from Audible. Nevertheless I would be happy to buy them again in ebook format for convenience. So I was delighted to discover that they have just been released, with the joy slightly tempered by the fact that their publisher has a pretty indifferent record with ebooks, being by far the worst offender in my library for error-strewn titles. I downloaded a sample through iBooks and it looked clean, the opening ship diagram was reasonably sized, viewable on 10" screen without obvious pixellation. No OCR errors were visible. The only wrinkle was that the cover was missing - a fairly frequent problem with eBooks, and one easy enough to remedy.

So I purchased the book from Kobo, where I have purchased many titles. I don't like, or use, their reader software, but the titles are standard ADE ePub files, easily liberated and sideloaded into iBooks or Bluefire Reader. However, this title is grievously polluted with custom CSS and Javascript so that it only displays nicely in the Kobo app. In Bluefire Reader  it displays in a monstrous font size, even at the smallest setting that BF Reader allows. This is worse than DRM. This is embedding metadata into the book, presumably after it was supplied by the publisher, that ties it to a vendors software. It may be a mistake, and they haven't checked to see that the CSS/JS combo they use degrades satisfactorily in readers that don't understand it. However it arose, this renders this title unusable in the reader of my choice, even though that reader fully supports ADE DRM. The ebook has been damaged by the vendor.

Unless there is some way to detect books that have been Kobo-ised I can no longer buy from them. I have a ticket open with them, but doubt that they will be able to supply a clean copy. I hope this isn't the start of a trend.

Fun and Games at the Blackwells Kitschies gathering

The Kitschies gathering at Blackwells last night was a wondefully convivial occasion. Adam Roberts framed a challenging question for people to engage with if they wished, but most chose to engage with the splendid Kraken Rum first, before delving into whether it was right to look at Victorian times through rose-tinted goggles. I think this is a valid concern, for all the reasons he outlined, but the majority of the steampunk I have read feature dystopian takes on the era anyway. So glorification isn't really to the forefront on those. 

But for the majority of the evening it was flitting from group to group, attaching faces to Twitter handles, and obtaining the odd signatures. Philip Reeve, Sophia McDougall, Alex Milway and Gary Northfield even went further and drew small illustrations as well. 

There was a sinister thread though, in the form of stitched cephalopod, Plarchie, looming ominously over the proceedings! 

A thoroughly satisfactory evening.

 

A Blackwell's Kitschies Steampunk Rum Night!

I have a long history with steam - probably springing from the Goon Show's recurring use of steam powered devices. When I left New Zealand for a 3 month working trip to London in 1983, my Dad gave me a business card (see Business Card) whch demonstrates this affection. Note that this was in the days before PCs, desktop publishing and was hand crafted. It also had an advertisement for Dr. Zonbrone's Thunder Pills on the back.

I dug this relic out to take to the A Blackwell's Kitschies Steampunk Rum Night! tonight, where it will be my sole item of "costume". Apart from my distinguished appearance of course.