Blog

I’m contributing occasional artwork to the Beesley Project, a yearlong exploration of the LDS hymnbook (doctrinal/lyrical analysis, etc.). This piece accompanied Jen Bosen’s essay.

Reply via email

I know it was just a month ago that I was getting MTP going again, but I’ve found that I can’t run both Mormon Artist and Mormon Texts Project at the same time. (Which should be no big surprise, since MTP’s death rattle has been shaking for over a year now.)

So, no more MTP books. I’m sorry. If someone wants to take over the project, I’d love that, and I’m more than happy to pass on what I’ve learned and help get other people going with something like this.

Reply via email

So I got this idea of making an outline map of Britain and Ireland and then compiling a list of fifty populous/famous towns and cities, to see how well I can locate them on the map. Being an Anglophile, I thought I’d do pretty well. Ha. It was sad. (But I did get London.)

Anyway, should you care to test your knowledge, you can now download PDFs of both the map and my semi-arbitrary list of towns and cities. Enjoy.

Notes on how I made these

For the map, I used TileMill to style and generate the map lines. I exported the map to SVG, converted it to Illustrator, and then imported it into InDesign and added the label.

For the list of towns and cities, I took a list of the most populous cities and added in some literary places as well. Basically, it’s a very-not-comprehensive list of places in Britain and Ireland that I’ve heard of.

Reply via email

Just a quick note: I’ve finished retypesetting the study edition of the Book of Mormon, and you can now get it on Lulu for $20.45 plus shipping (at cost with one penny profit to make it trackable). The PDF—which is 448 pages now, down from the original 538—is also available for free download.

Disclaimer: I haven’t ordered one myself, so it’s possible that something may be wonky. (Explanation of disclaimer: I don’t quite trust Lulu’s system for uploading and printing covers. It’s possible that the text on the cover might not be quite centered. But the body of the book should be just fine.)

Reply via email

Lately I’ve been itching for a way in OS X to quickly create temporary sticky notes but with Markdown support and with decent text processing (regex find-and-replace, etc.) and with the ability to type first and act later (like Drafts for iOS). The default Stickies app doesn’t really fit the bill (and it isn’t pretty).

So I’ve mocked up an OS X app I’m calling Shortform:

I don’t know if I’ll actually write the app (Cocoa learning curve and other pressing needs, etc.), but since the likelihood of someone else writing it is very small, that may have to be what happens. Things of note:

• Console and reusable actions. In the upper left note, you can see a console at the bottom. It’s a command line for text editing, basically. There’d be built-in commands (like replace or trim or what have you) along with ways to send the text elsewhere (email and web services being the two main ones I’d use). You would also be able to save a sequence of commands into a reusable action.
• Keyboard shortcuts. Lots of configurable shortcuts — new note, new note with clipboard contents automatically pasted in, shortcuts for custom actions, etc. And a global shortcut to focus the app.
• Markdown preview. The middle note (with the green header) shows a preview (processed through Markdown to HTML with some CSS). I’m thinking notes could be in either edit mode and preview mode, rather than having two separate windows.

How I think I’d use Shortform:

• Quick text processing. I often need to do a quick regex on a snippet of text — adding hyphens to the beginning of a list of things, for example.
• Temporary notes while I’m working on something. Stuff I need to write down but don’t care to keep in a longer-term notebook. That’s how I use Stickies right now.
• Quick entry for blog posts, etc. I love Drafts on iOS. Type first, then do what you need to do with it. It’s particularly useful with web services — I can type a note, then send it to whichever one of my Vinci notebooks I want.

Anyway, at this point it’s just a mockup. If I do end up building it someday, I’ll let y’all know.

Reply via email

FYI, I’m posting this in case other people publishing public domain ebook editions get similar notices.

Tuesday night around 8:30 I got this email (I’ve removed the contact info):

Subject: This is a verified DMCA Removal Request from Attributor

*** Sent via Email - DMCA Notice of Copyright Infringement ***

Dear Sir/Madam,

I certify under penalty of perjury, that I am an agent authorized
to act on behalf of the owner of the intellectual property rights
and that the information contained in this notice is accurate.

I have a good faith belief that the page or material listed below
is not authorized by law for use by the individual(s) associated
with the identified page listed below or their agents and
therefore infringes the copyright owner's rights.

I HEREBY DEMAND THAT YOU ACT EXPEDITIOUSLY TO REMOVE OR DISABLE
ACCESS TO THE PAGE OR MATERIAL CLAIMED TO BE INFRINGING.

This notice is sent pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act (DMCA), the European Union's Directive on the Harmonisation
of Certain Aspects of Copyright and Related Rights in the
Information Society (2001/29/EC), and/or other laws and
regulations relevant in European Union member states or other
jurisdictions.

My contact information is as follows:

Organization name: Attributor Corporation as agent for Rights
Holders listed below
Email: ...
Phone: ...
Mailing address: ...

My electronic signature follows:
Sincerely,
/Eraj Siddiqui/
Eraj Siddiqui
Attributor, Inc.


*** INFRINGING PAGE OR MATERIAL ***

Infringing page/material that I demand be disabled or removed in
consideration of the above:

Rights Holder: Deseret Book

Original Work: Life of Heber C. Kimball
Infringing URL: https://bencrowder.net/downloads/mtp/LifeOfHeberCKimball.epub
Infringing URL: https://bencrowder.net/downloads/mtp/LifeOfHeberCKimball.mobi

Initial reaction: Oh crap. They’re going to force my hosting provider to take down my websites. And there may or may not be some maximum security prison involved. Also, is this a scam? It does look like one, but why on earth would they pretend to be an agent for Deseret Book?

Then it got more confusing, because Life of Heber C. Kimball was originally published in 1888 and is unequivocally in the public domain (all U.S. copyrights before 1923 have expired). I did some quick research to make sure I wasn’t misunderstanding the law, and it was clear: Life of HCK was in the public domain.

So why was Deseret Book pretending to be the rights holder for something in the public domain? Seemed evil and greedy.

I responded to Eraj’s email explaining that there must have been a misunderstanding. I also dug up contact info for Deseret Book’s intellectual property person and emailed her as well. And I forwarded the takedown notice to Linode, letting them know that it was a false accusation and that I was working with DB and Attributor to clear things up, in case Attributor sent the same notice to Linode. (I’ve heard horror stories.)

Yesterday morning, I hadn’t heard back from Eraj or the DB person (understandably), so I found the DB person’s number online and called her. Apparently Deseret Book sends a list of titles to Attributor, who then checks for those titles online (title meaning the text “Life of Heber C. Kimball”) and sends out takedown notices when they find a match. The reason Life of HCK was on the list is that Deseret Book has reprinted it with additional material (images, etc.) that is copyrighted by them.

Anyway, the DB person said this is the first time this has happened (presumably because there aren’t really a lot of people making ebooks of old Mormon texts). She apologized for Attributor’s error and told them to stand down. Later in the day I got the following email from Attributor:

After further review of the matter, we would like to rescind the take down notice which was sent for the title and link in question. We have included a full retraction notice which follows.

*** Sent via Email – Retraction of DMCA Notice of Copyright
Infringement ***

Dear Sir/Madam,

I would hereby like to rescind my take down request for the
content described below. My contact information is as follows:

Organization name: Attributor Corporation as agent for Rights
Holders listed below
Email: ...
Phone: ...
Mailing address: ...

My electronic signature follows:
Sincerely,
/Eraj Siddiqui/
Eraj Siddiqui
Attributor, Inc.

Original Work: Life of Heber C. Kimball
Retracted URL: https://bencrowder.net/downloads/mtp/LifeOfHeberCKimball.epub
Retracted URL: https://bencrowder.net/downloads/mtp/LifeOfHeberCKimball.mobi

Phew.

So, Deseret Book is not in fact claiming ownership of the public domain. And the Deseret Book person was nice and apologetic and asked for feedback on my experience and how they could make things better. I made the following recommendations:

• For the public domain reprints that Deseret Book does, have a human check the supposedly infringing content first before they send out a takedown notice.
• For titles in the public domain, where there’s more likelihood of a false positive, have someone at Deseret Book email the person first.
• Add a line to the takedown request saying something like, “If you feel you are not in fact infringing, here’s the name and number of the person at Deseret Book you can talk to.”

Overall: scary at first but turned out not to be a horror story after all. Hurrah for reasonable people.

Reply via email

It’s taken me two years to stop procrastinating this project, but I’m pleased to (finally) announce that my study edition of the Book of Mormon is done and available for free download as PDF.

The goal with this edition was to make something you can print out and write on, with large outside margins and somewhat generous line spacing so there’s plenty of room for notes. I’ve also pulled the verse numbers out to the side and faded them out a little so they’re less distracting.

I originally planned to release a Lulu edition as well, but it’s a bit of a hassle, so I’m just releasing the PDF. If someone wants to put this up on Lulu, though, they’re welcome to. (By “Lulu edition,” I mean a print-on-demand, bound copy you can order online, rather than printing the PDF out yourself or at a copy shop.)

Update: I’ve decided to do a Lulu edition after all. It’s going to take some retypesetting to get the book to fit within Lulu’s coil-binding page limit, but I’ll post again when it’s ready.

Also, I’ve decided I don’t care about (typographic) widows or orphans. Maybe I should, but they don’t bother me when reading, and the aesthetic benefit gained by removing them is minimal at best (to my eye). So yes, this PDF is a orphanage. And I’m okay with that.

Reply via email

I’ve got this itch to record as much of the stories of my family members as I can — particularly the histories of my parents and grandparents who are still around. They’re all getting older and memories are fading and at some point relatively near in the future they’re each going to go full incommunicado. At that point, family history research gets harder, working in the realm of conjecture and secondhand reporting. Much easier to talk to primary sources while they’re still alive. (Sounds coldblooded when you put it that way, though, doesn’t it.)

Yet in spite of these lurking deadlines (literally), I hardly ever actually talk to my parental and grandparental units about their histories.

It’s a pity. Every time I do talk with them, it’s wonderful, and I learn things about their past and my past that make my life more meaningful and that help me relate more to them, especially now that I’m a father. Tonight, for example, we visited my parents and somehow ended up talking about one of my younger brothers who was born at only twenty-one weeks along and passed away when he was forty-five minutes old. I sort of knew the story from when it happened, but I was only seven at the time and my memory’s fuzzy. Now, though, I’m an adult with two children of my own, including a daughter with some fairly severe medical issues. It wasn’t till I heard my parents talk about it tonight that I really even understood what losing their son must have been like. And now I’ve got the story recorded so I can refresh my memory later when my kids are old enough for us talk about it, and even better, they can hear it from their grandparents themselves. That’s worth a lot to me.

The thing, too, is that it’s far easier to record these things now than it ever was before. I have a phone in my pocket almost all the time. That phone has a microphone and can record audio to MP3s, which take up so little space that I can store hours and hours and hours of conversations on my phone. It’s amazing.

Now I just need to figure out a way to remind myself to do more of these oral interviews before it’s too late…

Reply via email

So … I’ve been very much a slacker in this department. In spite of my negligence, though, there still seems to be interest in these books, so I’m planning to get things going again.

Where I left off

Voz de Amonestacion (the Spanish translation of Parley P. Pratt’s A Voice of Warning) is proofed and I have it formatted in EPUB. All it needs is a final spellcheck, actually. But I’ve been putting it off and putting it off because I don’t know enough Spanish to do it well. But maybe I’ll just release it as a pre-release “alpha” edition and let readers send in typo fixes… (The thing with that, though, is that nobody ever actually sends in typo fixes. And then the book remains full of typos.)

I also need to finish formatting John Taylor’s The Government of God. There’s still a lot of proofing left to be done on Daniel W. Jones’s Forty Years Among the Indians. And in the EPUB/Kindle conversion backlog there are three books left: A Voice of Warning, Succession in the Presidency, and A Rational Theology.

Going forward

Before, I somewhat arbitrarily chose the books we published, but this time round I’d like to focus more on reader demand.

To that end, here’s a list of books I’ve thought about doing for MTP. If you have a preference, leave a comment listing the books you’d most like to see us do. Write-ins are welcome as always. (And sheesh, when did I turn into a total pollster? Positively shameful.) In alphabetical order:

• A New Witness for God, by B. H. Roberts, published 1895
• A Series of Pamphlets on Doctrines of the Gospel, by Orson Pratt, published 1884
• Biography and Family Record of Lorenzo Snow, by Eliza R. Snow, published 1884
• Cowley’s Talks on Doctrine, by Matthias F. Cowley, published 1902
• Late Persecutions of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: With a Sketch of Their Rise, Progress and Doctrine, by Parley P. Pratt, published 1840
• Leaves from My Journal, by Wilford Woodruff, published 1882
• Outlines of Ecclesiastical History, by B. H. Roberts, published 1893
• Popular History of Utah, by Orson F. Whitney, published 1916
• Prophecies of Joseph Smith and Their Fulfillment, by Nephi Lowell Morris, published 1920
• Saturday Night Thoughts, by Orson F. Whitney, published 1921
• The Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt, by Parley P. Pratt (go figure), published 1874
• The Bible and Polygamy, by Orson Pratt, published 1892
• The Blood of the Prophets: Biographical Sketches, by Matthias F. Cowley, published 1902
• The Gospel: An Exposition of Its First Principles, by B. H. Roberts, published 1888
• The House of the Lord: A Study of Holy Sanctuaries, Ancient and Modern, by James E. Talmage, published 1912
• The Latter-day Prophet: History of Joseph Smith Written for Young People, by George Q. Cannon, published 1900
• The Life of John Taylor, by B. H. Roberts, published 1892
• The Life of Joseph Smith the Prophet, by George Q. Cannon, published 1888
• The Missouri Persecutions, by B. H. Roberts, published 1900
• The Mormon Battalion, by B. H. Roberts, published 1919
• The Mormon Doctrine of Deity, by B. H. Roberts, published 1903
• The Philosophy of Mormonism, by James E. Talmage, published 1914
• The Rise and Fall of Nauvoo, by B. H. Roberts, published 1900
• The Vitality of Mormonism, by James E. Talmage, published 1919
• The Strength of the “Mormon” Position, by Orson F. Whitney, published 1917
• Wilford Woodruff: History of His Life, by Matthias F. Cowley, published 1909
• Women of Mormondom, by Edward Tullidge, published 1877

For write-ins: as you can probably tell from that list, I’m mostly interested in doing historical and doctrinal books, not so much fiction and poetry (at least right now). Books needs to published before 1923 so they’re out of copyright. And this may go without saying, but I’m not interested in doing anti-Mormon books.

Reply via email

After a long hiatus, the circle series is back (at least for this piece):

Reply via email