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John Sandford’s web site

I’ve been a fan of John Sandford’s for some time now. The Prey novels are excellent police thrillers, and Lucas Davenport is one of my favourite series characters–right up there with Elvis Cole, Spenser, Kinsey Millhone, and Miles Vorkosigan. But it’s only today that I stumbled across John Sandford’s web site–and it’s a cracker.

Looking at it in terms of my criteria for what makes a “good” web site, the Sandford site excels in a number of areas:

  • Content: lots of it. For most of his novels, there is a brief synopsis, the book’s first chapter, author comments (actually by the author’s son), and also pictures of the covers of all published editions. This is great stuff! Basic facts about the books, as well as insight from the writer himself.
  • Indexing/findability. The Information architecture for the site is beautifully simple and perfectly effective. On the left hand side of the page there is a sidebar with links to main page for each book, and links to the other key sections of the site (FAQ, author bio, etc.). This sidebar is consistent, and always visible on each page. On the book sub-sections of the site, there are contextual navigation links at the top of the page. These allow you to switch between the pages that are available for that book: synopsis, chapter, covers, etc. There is no search facility, but the site is simple enough that it doesn’t need one.
  • Community. The site has a message board. Nothing complicated, but it allows fans to interact.
  • Connectedness. All of the book pages are internally hyperlinked to each other, so if you’re reading the comments for Chosen Prey, and see a reference to Easy Prey, it takes you there. Simple and effective. There is also a links page, which hooks you up to a number of rare book sites and other author sites.

Another very cool thing is that the site is run by John Sandford’s son, Roswell Camp. I can dig the whole father-and-son thing. 🙂

There are a few things that could be improved, for example allowing you to navigate directly to a book’s comments page, rather than having to go via its index, but overall the site is just damn good. It also mirrors exactly what I’m planning to do with my Bob Shaw project.

For some years now I have been on a quest to collect copies of all editions of Bob Shaw’s novels. I’m up to about a hundred or so now, and am probably about half to two-thirds of the way there–for the English-language editions. (I haven’t started on the foreign editions yet.) My intention is to create an “Encyclopedia of Shaw” on the web, containing detailed information about each book, reviews, comments, and all sorts of other things.

I made an abortive attempt at doing this back in 1998 (for some reason Compuserve is still maintaining the page, even though I left them long ago). It was just plain HTML, it was a pig to maintain, and I didn’t really have the time to put into it. Now, in 2003 I still don’t really have the time to spend on it, but Movable Type is going to make it so much more functional (Comments! Trackbacks!) and easier to maintain when I do get round to it.

I really ought to buckle down and get to work on it. It would be kinda cool. And it would be a lovely memorial to a fantastic writer.

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Opera 7 Beta 2

The second release of the Opera 7 beta (beta2) has been out for a couple of weeks now, but I only noticed it on Tuesday. It fixes a whole heap of bugs and partially implemented features, and even adds a few new ones, like the integrated password manager. It’s faster (slightly), and it crashes muchless. Joy!

If you’re running Windows, download it and give it a try. It’s free, it’s fast, and it’s a refreshingly superior product to Internet Explorer.

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Down and out in the Magic Kingdom

In case you don’t read the Boing Boing blog (you should), Cory Doctorow’s book Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom has just been published (in the US at least). Apart from Cory’s status in the blogging community (he has even set up a new blog for the book itself, the buzz around it, details of personal appearances, etc.), why is this of note? Well, he has also released the electronic text of the novel under a Creative Commons license.

Basically, he’s encouraging you to download it, copy it, and share it with your friends–so long as you make sure that he is attributed as the author, and you don’t create any derivative works from it. You can grab it as plain text, HTML, or easily printable PDF.

So what do you think this is going to do? Is it going to reduce the sales of the book itself? Is he robbing himself? Or is it going to bring his work under the noses of people who might not otherwise been aware of it? Are these people going to plunk down money for the dead trees version if they enjoy the free download?

I’m inclined to think that this is a good thing. I think it will probably stimulate sales, and grow Cory’s fan base. But possibly because this is a rare event. If all authors make their books available for free at the same time as releasing the tangible edition, will anyone raise an eyebrow any more? Will everyone then adopt a “try before you buy” stance, and only pay when they think they have received value?

One thing I’m sure of, is that this is going to happen more and more. Prentice Hall is already publishing a series of books under an open license, where the text will be available for free when the book is published. The Baen Free Library has been around for a couple of years now.

The world of publishing is on the cusp of some major change. It’s going to be interesting to see where it ends up some ten years from now.

Update: See also the interview with Cory Doctorow on the Creative Commons web site.

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Chilli Con Carne

In the hope that it would clear my sinuses if I loaded it up with enough sambal to blow the back of my head off, I made chilli con carne this evening. Everyone has their own favourite chilli recipe, but I thought I’d share mine.

Ingredients (serves 4, with 1 bowl each)

  • 1 onion
  • 4 cloves of garlic
  • 1.5 tbsp dried oregano
  • 1 tsp cumin powder
  • 0.5 tsp cayenne pepper powder
  • 3 tbsp tomato purée or tomato ketchup
  • 1 tsp cocoa powder
  • 1 lb ground beef or pork
  • 2 tins chopped tomatoes
  • 1 tin kidney beans

Instructions

Chop or crush the garlic, and chop the onion. Fry them up in a large pan with some oil. Add the ground meat, and cook it thoroughly. Once it is nicely browned, sprinkle over the cumin, oregano and cayenne pepper, and stir until they’re mixed in evenly. Add the kidney beans, chopped tomatoes, tomato purée, and cocoa powder, and then allow the mixture to simmer for as long as you like, stirring occasionally. I like giving it at least an hour for the flavours to blend.

Once it’s done, I recommend serving it with warmed up, or freshly baked french bread. I also recommend using Indonesian sambal oelek to spice up your own portion when it hits your bowl. (The main recipe is relatively mild.) Sambal is pretty much pure ground chillies, so it adds a good amount of heat without any extraneous flavours of its own.

Unfortunately, this still wasn’t enough to clear my sinuses.

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Brad Choate’s redesign checklist

Brad Choate has a great list of things (design, accessibility, etc.) he is planning to do for his blog in 2003. I don’t need to do all of these here on my own site, but it’s a nice heuristic checklist to scan for stuff that I do need to do, but keep forgetting about. (E.g. adittional RSS feeds, a proper “About Me” page. I’ve been meaning to do these for ages now, but they keep slipping off my radar.)