Bob Space

The more I reflect on it, the better off I think the club will be if we stick to a “misfire alley” range arrangement. Each flyer gets his own pad, his own button to push. The equipment is easier to store. And it’s really easy to extend as needed.

I’m stalking Freecycle and Craigslist now, collecting up launch pads and controllers. The controllers will have to be modified to make them more versatile and robust — the Estes Electron Beam Controller’s continuity check current is sufficient to fire Quest Q2G2 igniters. Oops! Plus the light bulb is just dumb. So the light bulb has to be replaced with an LED and resistor. I guess I finally have to commit to learning how to solder. It’s only taken 30 years… hopefully I can make the ghost of my electronics shop teacher proud.

My “hometown” movie house, CineMark Century Victorian in Sparks, finally put Star Trek tickets up for advance sale yesterday.

I daresay I’ll probably be more comfortable with the tickets I’ve already got, as a) the Summit Sierra is closer to my workplace, and that’s where I’ll be coming from; and 2) the parking won’t be quite as perverse as it will be at the Victorian.

Happy St. George’s Day!

The 2009 Team America Rocketry Challenge finalists have been announced. Hart County (KY) 4-H teams 1 and 3, and the Jefferson County (TX) 4-H team, are headed back to Great Meadow, Virginia to test their mettle (no metal, it’s not allowed in the Safety Code!) against the rest of the best in the nation. Good luck, 4-Hers! That’s 3 of the 12 4-H teams registered … good show!

Other observations: Plantation (FL) High School registered at LEAST five teams … and four of them made the finals! Incredible. Many, many high schools and middle schools have gotten multiple teams into the finals. Western states still tragically underrepresented, plains and eastern states amply represented … which is similar to the distribution of sections of the NAR, really. I’m very surprised that no teams from Oregon qualified, but then only five teams signed up, two of which never turned in score reports. Tsk. Oh, well, I’m hardly in a position to complain when there were NO teams registered from Nevada. THIS time.

… I’ve got ketchup!

Wow. Posting rate fell off dramatically there, didn’t it? Okay, some random news items.

Eldest daughter just turned in her seventh straight “honor roll” report card. We’re hoping that she’ll be able to maintain that enthusiasm and energy when she goes into high school next year.

The Lady of the Manor and I took a weekend away from the Manor and the offspring for some quiet quality time. We spent most of it in South Lake Tahoe, and it seems I spent most of it running and fetching meals for us to eat in the room so we wouldn’t have to go out. We did get a little shopping done, played some miniature golf, rode the Heavenly Gondola and enjoyed some breathtaking views on a perfectly beautiful Sunday morning, inspected some Dr. Seuss art at a local gallery (and deflected an aggressively friendly dealer), and just generally took a breather from the mayhem. Not a bad way to celebrate a 15th wedding anniversary (a couple weeks early) and my 44th birthday (a week late).
Our tax return finally got filed. On Thursday 16 April. It took a couple days to get some duplicate records sent to us. Yes, we’d filed the automatic extension request. Odds are our return got into the system before the extension request did, so I won’t be surprised if the IRS dings us for a penalty. The Lady is under orders to kill me if I fail to file before 1 March next year.

The rocketry books continue to gel in my head, and I continue to bemoan my lack of skills as a visual artist. I think I’m also going to have to dump the “science content” chapters and spread that material through the rest of the book as sidebars. EZFudge Final Frontier will probably go out to previewers later this week (write me through gmail to nvdaydreamer to be a previewer).

The weather was nasty right after Easter, improved through the week and weekend, is very pleasant right now, and then due to get cold and nsaty again this weekend. This makes it very hard for us to fly, or even to inspect the new range site with any confidence of not getting stuck in mud. Pesky climate change.

Bowling league held its organizational meeting last night. Eldest and I had hoped to get our shiny new equipment fitted afterwards, but the pro shop had different hours on the door than they put on the web page. Oh, well. Looks like we’ll take our business elsewhere and have the balls drilled Saturday morning while we’re out at riding therapy.

And that’s enough for now. Back soon!

For the first time in my 30+ years of devotion to Star Trek, I will be in the audience on opening day.

I’ll be at the CineMark Century Summit Sierra, 1:45 PM.

I’m a little dazzled by the whole prospect, really.

It’s been an interesting evening of research, in between bouts of laundry, dishes and tidying. I’ve been reflecting on my two or three model rocketry books and what to do with them.

One thing I don’t want to do is just put the books out on the website, and leave out a tip jar. The reward for me at the far end of this is The Book: a physical artifact with my name on it and my words in it.

Another thing I don’t want to do is have to pay $325 for a block of 10 ISBN book numbers. (Or even $125 for a single book number.) This automatically closes me out of Lightning Source and the like. It also confirms to me that I don’t really care about being a “publisher.” I don’t want or need to get into that sort of business hassle.

That leaves me at Lulu and its three options: Published by Lulu (gets into distribution chain, no extra costs upfront), Published by You (gets into distribution chain, $100 resale of a Lulu ISBN number which I would own), or Lulu Marketplace (lives on Lulu.com, but not exclusively).

Getting into the distribution chain with Lulu instantly doubles the purchase price of the book, with half going to the wholesaler. Yuck! Now, my book would still be less expensive than anything comparable on the market … but much more expensive than a mass-marketed product which benefits from the economies of that scale. And again, I don’t really care about being a publisher, so I don’t really care about getting distribution. (In spite of the “But wouldn’t it be cool?!” voice behind my left ear.)

So, what *do* I care about?

I care about having this opus assembled into a reasonably proper-looking book. Truly I expect I’ll be my own biggest customer, as I buy copies to give to my Rocketeers. That’s okay. I can deal with using Lulu as an “on-demand” vanity press. And hey, maybe other people might buy copies. That’d be cool, too. Lulu Marketplace satisfies those needs. And it’s easier to implement revisions or corrections than it would be otherwise.

So what is the book? Well, the paper is letter-sized and “publisher grade,” a little lighter than the usual POD but still substantially heavier than stock office paper. It’s perfect bound (glued at the spine like a paperback novel) — I don’t think saddle-stitching (binding staples) would hold up under the target audience’s use, and coil binding is really tempting but adds to the price. Full-color cover, black and white interior. And I’ve got a minimum requirement of 84 pages. Once I start loading in all the new pictures and illustrations, I think it will be very easy to get from my current 64 to 84.

That works just fine for “Go For Launch!” or “How High?”, but the Projects book (which I think is changing into “Budget Rocketry Workshop”) isn’t going to get anywhere near that. I don’t want to fold “Workshop” into “GFL!”, and it wouldn’t thematically fit into “HH?” So I’m expecting “Workshop” will be PDF-only and $2.00 to $3.00.

Downsides? Lulu’s a bit finicky about the layout and format of the content I provide. But I understand finicky layout and format and I can make us both happy. Again, no wide distribution. No particular marketing advantage. I’m still not in the business of publishing, really. Piracy of the PDF? What, do I look like Hasbro or something? What worked for Microtactix works fine for me: put a fair and honest price on the product, and people will be more likely to buy than to steal … and if they do steal, and LIKE the product, they’re more likely to come back and buy it to make themselves legal.

I do still need to hire a pro editor to go through the book and catch my faults. But that’s after I finish writing, revising, and getting the illustrations in. Still. With some effort, I might have “Go For Launch!” ready for sale … this summer? I wonder if I can get the president of the NAR to give me a blurb…

Bowling gear is here and very pretty. I’m going to see if we can get them drilled out tonight.

EDIT: Nope. Shop closes in an hour, and Eldest isn’t dressed.

Happy Birthday, David Morgan-Mar! I am very glad to be part of your audience and have the opportunity to share thoughts with you from food to fizziks.

It’s Yuri’s Night. Nothing else needs be said.

It’s also the 28th anniversary of the first Space Transportation System launch, which will always have a special place in my heart. I still cannot believe how fast these things climb to orbit compared to the previous boosters. (And they could go faster still, but they get throttled back toward the end of the climb to reduce the g-forces on the crew.)

BBC America is running Torchwood again. Starting from the Now, that puts the end of the second series out in October.

Prediction: Torchwood: Children of Earth will broadcast in the UK in late September/early October, and on BBC America in October.