Tag: johnreddaway

John,

Happy to help!

The trick with ISBNs is not to use Amazon.com, but select Amazon.co.uk as your search library. You'll then find that you get a lot more hits. If that doesn't work, try entering title (comma) author surname in the search box. It's amazing what obscure works come out then!

It's worth remembering that before there were ISBNs, we had SBNs (i.e. they weren't international). So if you come across an SBN, just put a zero on the front of it to make it an ISBN (as long as it's a book in English). The other thing to check is that the ISBN is quoted correctly on the book cover - it's quite common for the ISBN on the dj and the one inside the book to be different and it's the one inside the book that's usually correct.

Nice cover shots are really down to other LibraryThingers. Amazon.co.uk doesn't sell enough railway books for them to justify cover shots - but a lot of amazon ones are quite low-resolution anyway. Plus Amazon covers are ISBN-dependent, so if a new edition comes out with a new ISBN, you'll find the cover picture changes. LTers have uploaded a certain number of cover shots of railway subjects, usually at better resolution than Amazon. (Anyway, Amazon are anti-trade union, so I try not to encourage them too much.) The slightly suprising thing is that Amazon.de have proportionally far more cover shots for German-language railway books - but then again, the railway hobby is much bigger in Germany than it is here (strange but true), so they must shift enough railway titles to justify a cover shot.

I've been surreptitiously getting nice scans made on our big scanner/copiers at the Day Job, but that's coming to an end as I leave there at the beginning of December to chance my arm as a freelance photographer and journalist. Please tell all your friends. I don't actually possess a flatbed scanner, and in any case I won't want to spend more time on LT that I ought to be spending scanning pictures and making prints.

I've now got most of my railway books catalogued, except for large-format overseas titles, but a lot of my pamphlets and magazines for retention still have to be done. I'm just starting on the aviation titles, whilst my science fiction is done down to authors 'S' in paperback but barely started in hardback. So many books, so little time! Once the books are done, I'll have to decide if I do the CDs and DVDs as well...

From what I know of early onset, spelling isn't really a signifier. My other half's mother suffers with Alzheimer's, and Cathy worries about early onset - but overlooks the fact that she's so stressed out about her mother and her job and her house and her comnmunity that she's bound to start forgetting things, short-term memory loss being a major stress indicator. I can spell perfectly well, but I can't touch-type at speed. I just have the habit of reviewing everything I write for spelling, even after I've used the spellchecker (where available) - and that comes from having to use the Microsoft spellchecker at work, which has the disadvantage of being totally illiterate; it doesn't know, for example, that the word 'staff' can be both singular and plural....!

Ah, the photograph. Taken in a field in Oxfordshire at a folk music festival a few Augusts ago, which is why I have coat and woolly jumper on. After all, it was summer! I can do sartorial, I've been high-fived by young black lads for my 'Martin Bell' suit and snap-brim fedora, but there's a time and place for that and Cropredy ain't it! 'Beard 'n' glasses' is almost mandatory for science fiction fans - and indeed many of the various tribes I inhabit - and one of the comforting things I find about Austria, a country I love, is that it's full of blokes who look like me and I pass for a native when I go there! I once met my doppelganger there, on a train heading up the Murtalbahn. I tried to make friendly overtures, but he shuddered and avoided me - in fact, he almost ran away when we bumped into each other in a small market town later on. What I didn't at the time know was that in Europe, when you meet your doppelganger, one of you is supposed to die, so I suppose the fact that I kept following this guy freaked him out somewhat! (I got namechecked by the late John Peel on R4's 'Home Truths' with that story a few years back...)

RobertDay által bejegyzett 6:45 pm (EST) -kor a Oct 14, 2010

John,

I wouldn't worry about tag proliferation. I have probably got thousands of tags by now; one of these days, I'll have a go at editing them because I'm sure there must be some where I've duplicated them due to typos, formatting errors and the like.

I divide up my library by collections, using the tags as a unique indexing system so I can go dirctly to all my books on the Cromford and High Peak Railway, for example. Over time, some fairly general tags emerge, such as 'science fiction' or 'narrow gauge' and some of these duplicate collections, mainly because the 'collections' feature was a later addition after I started on LT (only three years ago!).

RobertDay által bejegyzett 6:33 pm (EST) -kor a Sep 30, 2010

John,

Pleased you find my library of interest! I like your list of interests - do you do the literary criticism after the beer and whiskey? ;-)

As the son of a railwayman who worked on signal & telegraphs at Derby, I consider myself a Midland man, though I also have a soft spot for the North Eastern, having spent my student years on Tyneside; and anything narrow gauge. I also found myself becoming interested in the Continental scene some fifteen or so years ago as an antidote to the awfulness of the privatised railway.

I'm just about to take the plunge into full-time freelance photography, naturally specialising in railways. And there's the possibility that some of my earlier photographs of classic railway infrastructure might make it into print in the next couple of years - more later!

RobertDay által bejegyzett 5:21 pm (EST) -kor a Sep 29, 2010