It was a beautiful spring day on the riverfront. Pleasant temperatures, white puffy clouds floating in a bright blue sky, and the bright sunshine gleaming off of the enormous arch made it seem the perfect day and spot for a picnic. There were a lot of people there, enjoying the weather, walking, having picnics.

        Everything changed in an instant. An automobile leaped off the ground and came crashing down on another car, narrowly missing the Smiths, who were on their way from

        Another car went flying, and of course everyone was running and screaming in panic â" but the cause of all the bent metal and broken glass was a mystery.

        Bob Capone, a sergeant in the St. Louis police force, was there on duty, talking with his friend John Jennings of the National Parks Service. Both whipped out their radios, calling for help.

        Another car leaped into the air and crashed down on a different one, and both burned when the sparks from the collision ignited the gasoline that had spilled out of several.

        The cars then stopped pretending to be frogs. Five minutes later a car driving north on interstate 44 stopped suddenly in front of the Old Cathedral Museum and bounced back, the front of the auto smashed, as if it had struck an invisible and immobile object.

        The destruction continued down Market Street for an hour, and stopped abruptly at Seventh as National Guard helicopters swooped in.

        The aircraft hovered for an hour or two, but there was no further damage.

        The local news media had a field day. This was Big, big with a capital B. The national and world news would be covering this, and the local news men and women all thought âoeThis is it! My career is going to skyrocket!â

        The next day, General Ferguson (whose name was uncomfortably the same as a town in the greater metropolitan area) was in an incredibly bad mood, so of course all of his underlings were, as well.

        âoeWell, Colonel? What happened? Who has it and how did he get it?â

        âoeWell, sir, the investigation is underway. We're not sure what happened but... well, sir, we believe a unit was stolen. We donâ(TM)t know who stole it, but it was probably an inside jobâ

        âoeTerrorists?â

        âoeUnknown, sir, but improbable. It appears that there was no loss of life and few injuries, the worst being broken bones. Itâ(TM)s mostly property damage.â

        âoeDo we know who has it and where it is?â

        âoeNo, sir, not yet. Should I alert the civilian authorities to what they're up against?â

        âoeUnder no circumstances will that happen unless the President himself orders it. This is top secret and will remain that way.â

        âoeYes, sir.â

        âoeWhat are we doing about the situation?â

        âoeWeâ(TM)re loading firefighting helicopters with paint. When it strikes again we'll have an idea where it is, and when itâ(TM)s painted we'll be able to see it. We have men manning the two other units, they should be able to stop it.â

        âoeVery well, Colonel. Make sure no one without a top secret clearance sees it when itâ(TM)s painted. Dismissed.â The Colonel saluted and left.

        The next day, Sergeant Capone was back down by the waterfront. The entire metropolitan area was on alert, and the President had declared martial law in Missouri and Illinois. People were ordered to stay in their homes, as if their homes would protect them from something that could throw cars.

        His radio came on â" he was being ordered back to the station. Curious. As he walked towards his squad car it suddenly left the ground and was hurling straight at him, barely missing.

        Helicopters swooped down, and the invisible monster disappeared. Sergeant Capone radioed that his squad car had been totaled, and was informed that another car would come to pick him up. A couple of hours later the helicopters departed.

        âoeWell, Colonel?â

        âoeWeâ(TM)re pretty sure we know who it is, sir. Corporal George Smith is AWOL, called in sick yesterday and didnâ(TM)t show up for work this morning. We checked his quarters, he wasn't home and his car was on-base.

        âoeAnd we think we know what made him snap â" his brother was an undercover narcotics officer and was accidentally killed in a gun battle with an off-duty St. Louis police officer. Neither knew the other was a law enforcement officer.

        âoeWe think he's out for revenge, sir. Twice heâ(TM)s struck the same area, an area where the other law enforcement officer has his beat. So we have helicopters standing by at LaClede's Landing, camouflaged, of course.

        âoeUnfortunately, we had a fatality yesterday. A police officer got in a gun battle with troops clearing the street and was killed.â

        âoeUnfortunate, indeed. How long until Smith runs out of food or water, or the unit runs out of power?â

        âoePower will last about a week, food and water longer.â

        âoeI want you to get with engineering, when we get it back we need to find a way to keep this from happening again. Is that all, Colonel?â

        âoeYes, sir.â

        âoeOkay, youâ(TM)re dismissed.â

        Things were quiet the next two days, and social media started to grumble.

        The General got a missive from the President himself, he was to meet with one of the Presidentâ(TM)s people.

        General Ferguson called the St. Louis Chief of Police. âoeWe need your help. We know what it is, but we canâ(TM)t tell you. I'd like to have Sergeant Capone on the waterfront today.â

        âoeIâ(TM)m sorry, General, but I don't think you have the authority to give me that order. Youâ(TM)re going to have to speak to the mayor.â

        âoeSgt. Capone, can I see you in my office?â

        âoeOf course.â

        âoeClose the door, would you?â

        âoeWhatâ(TM)s this about, Lieutenant?â

        âoeDamn it, Bob, donâ(TM)t give me that âLieutenantâ(TM) crap, weâ(TM)ve been friends since high school. What the hell is going on?â

        Capone was puzzled. âoeJoe, I have no idea what youâ(TM)re talking about. What the hell are you talking about?â

        âoeDamn it, Bob, what the hell did you do? Why does the mayor want to talk to you?â

        âoeWhat? Why would he want to talk to me? Come on, Joe, tell me what this is all about.â

        âoeHis assistant wouldnâ(TM)t say. Anyway, you need to get down there right now, the guy from the mayorâ(TM)s office sounded scared. Let me know whatâ(TM)s going on. I hope you âre not in trouble.â

        âoeMe, too, but I donâ(TM)t know what I would be in trouble for. Iâ(TM)ll let you know.â

        âoeOkay, get your ass down there!â

        âoeCan I help you, Sergeant?

        âoeI was told the mayor wanted to see me. I...â

        âoeSgt. Capone?â

        âoeYes, maâ(TM)am.â

        âoeOh, please follow me, heâ(TM)s waiting for you.â

        The mayor was with an Army general in uniform. He stood quietly as the mayor spoke. âoeSergeant, the president called me.â

        Bob was puzzled but silent. The mayor continued hesitantly. âoeSergeant, all I know is itâ(TM)s vital for national security that you do whatever General Ferguson asks. Will you do that, Sergeant?â

        Of course he said âoeyesâ. Only an idiot would answer otherwise. The general looked at the mayor. The mayor said âoeExcuse meâ and left.

        âoeYou were in the service?â the general asked.

        âoeYes, sir. Air Force.â

        âoeWhy didn't you re-up?â

        âoeI didnâ(TM)t want to be a bubble chaser, I wanted to be a cop.â

        âoeA bubble chaser? What's that?â

        âoeA hydraulics technician. We were âbubble chasersâ(TM), electricians were âspark chasers', the...â

        âoeDid you have any kind of clearance?â

        âoeClearance?â

        âoeSecurity clearance.â

        âoeOh, yes, sir. I worked on some of the stealth aircraft. I thought you fellows would have looked that up.â

        âoeWhat kind of aircraft?â

        âoeI'm sorry, sir, I can't discuss them.â

        The general grinned broadly. âoeExcellent. Yes, we did look it up. All of this is on a âneed to knowâ(TM) basis. Weâ(TM)re dealing with some top secret gear.

        âoeI can't tell you what's going on, of course, but you need to know we need you as bait.â

        âoeBait? For what, sir?â

        âoeI can't tell you. All you need to know is that weâ(TM)re going down to the riverfront and you need to stick as close to me as possible.â

        A knock came from the door and the general answered it, and was given a sheet of printed paper. He glanced at it, and said âoePlease wait here, Sergeant. Iâ(TM)ll be back shortly.â

        He walked down the hall, where an aide told him âoeThe units are ready, sir.â

        âoeThank you, Lieutenant.â He changed into a police officer's uniform and collected Sgt. Capone. They drove to the riverfront in a police cruiser, got out, walked a few yards and stopped.

        Capone noticed the general's strange weaponry, but knew better than to ask about it. It looked to him like a paintball gun. Laser? Maybe. This whole experience was very strange, he thought.

        The day was uneventfully boring.

        It was far from boring at the police station; all hell was breaking loose. Several squad cars were destroyed, and the police were close to panic. It lasted for maybe twenty minutes, and the destruction stopped when the helicopters showed up.

        The mayor appeared on the television news that night, assuring residents that the next day the police would all be on their normal assigned duties but the curfew was still in place until the president ordered otherwise.

        The next morning General Ferguson and Sgt. Capone were back down by the riverfront. An hour later a car became animated, hurling itself through the air at the general and the policeman. Capone ran and the general kept firing his paint gun.

        His fourth shot splattered in the air, becoming an animated blob the general could see flying through the air. He kept firing until his gun was out of paint.

        There was an awful racket coming from the flying blobs, the sound of heavy steel on heavy steel.

        âoeCapone!â the general ordered. âoeBack to the station, Iâ(TM)ll take it from here.â

        The Sergeant mulled over what he had seen as he was driving back to the station. It looked to him after it was splattered with paint like it was some kind of giant headless humanoid robot. He wondered what it was, but knew he would never know for sure, but the military seemed to have found a way to make objects invisible in visible light.

        He went to see the lieutenant as soon as he got back. The lieutenant had him close the door. âoeSo whatâ(TM)s going on, Bob?â

        âoeSorry, Joe, itâ(TM)s a military secret and Iâ(TM)m not allowed to talk about it.â

        âoeWell, at least I know you're not in trouble. The mayor called, youâ(TM)re getting some kind of medal or award or something, so I guess I should say âgood workâ(TM).â

        Down by the riverfront an Army tech Sergeant was unlocking the paint spattered, otherwise invisible machine, pistol drawn and at the ready. After looking inside he holstered his pistol and called down to the general. âoeHeâ(TM)s dead, sir. Apparently shot himself, thereâ(TM)s a hell of a bloody mess inside the unit.â

        The general ordered that the two invisible units put all three units in a semitrailer to be shipped back to the base.

        That evening the president was on the television news, praising the Army and police Sergeant Bob Capone, and informing everyone that the danger was passed and the curfew was lifted. The mayor came on and praised the city police force in general and Bob Capone in particular.

        âoeReinlist...â Bob thought. âoeNonsense, Iâ(TM)d far rather chase criminals than bubbles. I hate working on hydraulics!â

What a mess.

Yesterday when I turned my computer on, an old Acer Aspire One, the "Upgrade to Windows 10!" nag screen popped up. Okay, what the hell, I'll try it, since Microsoft says going back is easy.

It took four hours to download and another hour for "preparing to upgrade Windows" to finish, and I was given a choice - upgrade now, or schedule for later? I scheduled it for nine last night, since I wanted to use the computer for, you know, computing.

At nine I told it to go ahead. I probably went to bed around ten, and the computer screen was still black with a "working..." graphic.

This morning it said it was ready. It rebooted, and took a full half hour to reach the desktop, which was simply butt-ugly and primitive looking. The kids doing the designing at Microsoft really suck at what they do.

Before it got to the password box there were some user-hostile Microsoft spyware to opt out of. That, and the extreme slowness and butt-ugliness is all I could see that was changed. All of the changes seemed completely cosmetic. I found no additional features or usefulness at all.

My shortcut to Firefox on the task bar was gone. Microsoft Word and Excel were gone as well, although Open Office was still there. I went through the start menu's "other programs" or whatever it's called, and those applications were just gone.

Microsoft is just evil.

I have the flashblock extension installed, with a few sites whitelisted. Since KSHE changed their stream provider, I can't hear it on Firefox, so I set it to run IE on startup with the KSHE player as its home page. It took a full fifteen minutes before any music came out.

The new IE is called something else, I forgot what, but fortunately they didn't change the icon much or I'd never have found it. What is wrong with those people?

And I have never seen a slower computer, and my first one back in 1982 had a CPU that was over a thousand times slower than my notebook. The computer was simply unusable and extremely hard to navigate.

I was really glad I have my passwords written down, and it looked like I was going to lose all my bookmarks. I downloaded Firefox, and decided to go back to W7 before installing. I worried I'd have to buy Word, since the magazines all insist on it and Microsoft had apparently uninstalled it. Oh, magazines. I got my first rejection letter yesterday. I'll post it tomorrow.

Windows Ten is the worst operating system I've ever used. Of course, I understand that W8 was worse.

I went to uninstall it and it said I'd have to plug it in to - and it was fully charged. I figured it would take all day, so I plugged it in and set it going. Then doing something I never do, I went to facebook on my phone, and I hate typing on a phone.

Surprisingly, it only took an hour, and after it booted it seems to be like it was before the "upgrade". Firefox, Word, and Excel were back.

Tomorrow: Stealth

I use the Gnu Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) to design book covers. It's an excellent free open source program that has three weaknesses -- its menu structure is completely illogical (but can be gotten used to), I can't find a full spectrum palette, and its text handling is so poor as to be useless.

I have a workaround for the bad text. Open a word processor that will output a PDF file, choose your typeface and size, choose the text's color and write the text. Save it as a PDF and GIMP will open it as an image in as high a resolution you need. Just make the background transparent, situate it over your graphic, and merge the layers.

Speaking of books, I made a Mars, Ho! YouTube video. Yes, there is a pussy in it.

I've spent the last three days working to fix the ePubs and AZW3s of Yesterday's Tomorrows. I had just ran it through Calibre and did a quick check, noting that the table of contents didn't display anything.

It took a lot of research and learning to fix the ToC, and while doing so discovered something even worse - some of the illustrations were covering up the text. Damn!

Trying to figure out the ToC I tried several things. One was installing the Write2epub extension to Open Office.

It really sucked, especially with this book. It had some ugly sans-serif typeface, and there were huge swaths large and bolded that I never told it to do. And there was still no table of contents.

While googling and reading and finding out that e'books were mostly based on HTML5, XML and a few other things, I got a little disheartened. This was going to take forever, because I had a lot I had to learn.

I ran across Google's e'book editor "Sigil" and installed it. I have no idea if it's any good, because there's no documentation and I can't make heads or tails out of it.

So I went back to Calibre and studied it some more, educated a little but not much by the internet, and saw a long string with an "and" in it, "h1 and h2" and recognised this from HTML and the rest of the garbage from programming for thirty years. Stupid Calibre was telling it to make everything part of the table!

It took a bit of trial and error to get the right parenthesis and brackets in the right spots that the conversion wouldn't crash with an error, but I finally got a working table of contents.

Now to address the obscured text. That took quite a bit of head scratching as well.

I finally just decided to make the input make the output behave, rather than trying to tweak the output itself. What finally worked was to load the offending images in GIMP and add a white space where it was covering the text. That worked.

So if you've already downloaded one of the e'books, you should delete them and download the new version.

ePub

AZW3

I think I'll take the day off tomorrow.

I just uploaded the last item in "Yesterday's Tomorrows", a futurist essay by "the father of science fiction," Hugo Gernsback. In his essay, written in 1926, he describes the year 1976. Those of you who believe the guys who say the singularity is near or that death will be conquered within your lifetime should read it.

Futurists! Where in the hell is my flying car? Why are there no bases on the moon, like the futurists said in the 1960s we'd have by now? Why did no one see digital photography coming? Or phones in your pockets? Or the internet?

Gernsback sold electronic components, some of which he designed himself, yet didn't seem to understand "electricity, the mysterious fluid." He thought we'd be able to control the weather with it, and even more nonsensical things. He seemed steeped in the cult of Tesla, who had promised wireless delivery of electricity.

Coincidentally, Soylent News just mentioned a story about transplanting porcine hearts into humans, and the company's co-founder is a futurist. Of course, I left a comment about futurists.

I go into it in detail about futurism both in the book's foreword and the introduction to the Gernsback essay.

It turned into a beautiful thing. It's full of illustrations, plus photos of the authors and covers of the magazines the stories were printed in. It has the first use of the word "astronaut", the cover story of the issue of Astounding that is said to have ushered in the "golden age of science fiction, A.E. van Vogt's first published science fiction, a few other firsts, and five stories that are printed from cleaned up scans of the magazines. There are biographies of all the writers in the book.

I usually encourage folks to read the stories online or check a copy out from their local library, but not this time. The printed book is head and shoulders better than the electronic versions.

There are stories by Isaac Asimov, John W. Campbell, Murray Leinster, Frederik Pohl, Neil R. Jones, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., A. E. van Vogt, Theodore Sturgeon, Poul Anderson, Phillip K. Dick, Frank Herbert, James Blish, Lester del Rey, Jerome Bixby, and a futurist essay by "the father of science fiction" Hugo Gernsback.

It will be a little while before the HTML version is available, since they're not done yet, but I'll post them as I finish them. Meanwhile, there is a PDF, an ePub, and an AZW3 posted for free download.

Yesterday's Tomorrows

I just sent off for the fifth and, I hope, last pre-publication copy of Yesterday's Tomorrows. I was sure it would be finished a month ago, but there were problems printing it due to some of the illustrations being too high of a resolution. It took a month to get the fourth printed.

I can't decide whether or not to assign an ISBN to it, since the book may not be legal in all countries. What do you think? I only have three or four left, and a block of ten is $250. Should I use one? The only country besides the US that has bought my books was Great Britain, and very few there although the web site gets visits from all over the world.

I'm pretty sure I'll never sell a book in Australia, because they're crazy expensive down there; tariffs, probably.

Oh, if you want to read the copy of Huckleberry Finn at my site, better hurry because when I post Yesterday's Tomorrows I'll have to take the Twain book down to make space. It will be back up this fall when I renew my URL and upgrade my hosting level. When it's back up I'll have a version that's easy to read on a phone.

There are an awful lot of pages on my web site, and I've been busy making them all "mobile-friendly". Most of them are little or no problem making them look good on all platforms, but there are three that are especially problematic.

I jumped this hurdle (well, sort of stumbled past it) by making two of each of the pages with a link to the mobile page from the index.

Ideally, I could just check to see if it was a phone or not and redirect phones to the mobile page, but there's no way to make this 100% successful*. Each brand of phone has a different user agent, there are a lot of installable phone browsers. On top of that, is it an Android phone or an Android tablet? With the minimum typeface size and viewport set, those pages are fine on the PC version but the phone version looks like crap.

Apple should have thought of this when they made the first iPhone, and Google should have thought of this when developing Android. The answer is simple, but it can only be implimented by browser makers and perhaps the W3C.

From the beginning of the World Wide Web, browsers looked for index.html, the default front page in any directory. This worked fine before smart phones, but no longer.

Phone browsers should look first for mobile.html, and if it exists display that, and display index.html if it isn't there. Tablets and computers would behave as they always have.

It doesn't have to be mobile.html, it could be any name as long as everyone agreed that it was the standard, like they did with index.html.

Maintaining a web site would be much easier if they did this. What do you guys think?

* A reader tipped me to the Apache Mobile Filter. It looks promising, especially since my host uses Apache. I'm looking into it.

I finally got the full texts of Nobots and Mars, Ho! to display well on a phone. My thanks to Google for showing me how, even if the way they present the information is more like trial and error, but it's actually easy once you jump through all their hoops. I'll make it easy.

First, you need to make sure it will fit on a phone's screen. I've been preaching for years that it's stupid to use absolute values, except with images; if you don't tell the browser the image size and you are using style sheets, your visitors will be playing that annoying "click the link before it moves again" game.

Some of you folks who studied this in college should demand your tuition be refunded, because they obviously didn't teach this.

Giving tables, divs, and such absolute values almost assures that some of your visitors will have that incredibly annoying and unprofessional horizontal scroll (*cough* slashdot *cough*).

None of the elements (images, divs, etc) can be more than 320 pixels wide, and you need to tell the browser to make it fit on a screen. To do this, add this meta tag to your page's head:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">

Next, you need to make sure the text is large enough to read without double tapping. The <p> tag does this:

<p {min-height: 16px}>

This needs to be placed after the <body> tag and before anything having to do with text.

To test it, just pull the page up on your phone. If it scrolls sideways, you need to work on it.

If you're worried about your Google pagerank, Google has a "mobile friendly test" here. If you flunk, well, when Google says "jump"...

My main index page fails their test. To make it pass the test I would have to ruin the desktop/tablet design. As it is now, the text is readably large on a phone but it has a sideways scroll, which is tiny if you hold the phone sideways, and I added a link at the very start of the page to a version that will pass Google's test, looks fine on a phone, not bad on a tablet but looks like excrement on a computer. The main index works fine on a tablet, since I've made it as "mobile-friendly" as possible.

I'd have it redirect if it saw Android or iOS, but it's been fifteen years since I've done that and I've forgotten how.

I have two new stories nearly finished, but I've decided to see if I can sell first publication rights to a magazine. If everyone rejects them, I'll post them then. If one is accepted, it will likely be quite a while before I can post.

With three books in the works I've been really busy. Hell, I've been working harder since I retired than I did when I worked! I got the index pages to my three published books and the "coming soon" page for Yesterday's Tomorrows "mobile-friendly". I don't know why I'm bothering; almost nobody surfs in on a phone or from Google. But at any rate, I got the book Triplanetary and the first two chapters of Mars, Ho "mobile friendly" as well. The Time Machine is next; the epub versions of my books are better than the HTML versions, on a phone, anyway. Twain, Dickens, and God are going to be mobile-hostile for quite a while because of all the artwork in them.

I couldn't make the main index "mobile friendly" without making it look like crap on a computer screen, so I made a copy "mobile friendly", posted it as mobile.html and added a link from the main index.

Site stats say Google has spidered, so I tried to find Mars, Ho!" by googling on the phone. Nothing but Marsho Medical Group, Andy Weir's The Martian, and a facebook page for someone named Mars Ho. Googling "Mars, Ho! novel" did bring up Amazon's e'book copy halfway through the page.

"Mars, Ho! mcgrew" brought up Amazon's e'book first, followed by the mobile-hostile main index, THEN the actual Mars, Ho! index which IS "mobile friendly" (it passed their test). And I thought "mobile friendly" was supposed to raise your ranks? What's up, Google?

The second copy of Yesterday's Tomorrows came yesterday. I didn't expect until the day after tomorrow. I went through it twice yesterday and it's almost ready; there is still a little work before it's published, but it won't be long.

It's a really nice book, with stories by Isaac Asimov, John W Campbell, Murray Leinster, Frederik Pohl, Neil R Jones, Kurt Vonnegut, A. E. Van Vogt, Theodore Sturgeon, Poul Anderson, Phillip K Dick, Frank Herbert, James Blish, Lester del Rey, and Jerome Bixby. Covers of the magazines they appeared in are shown, with short biographies and photos of the authors. It's also well-illustrated with illustrations from the original magazines.

Random Scribblings: Junk I've littered the internet with for two decades will probably be next year.

Oh, how do you like my new shirt?

Around the first of the year all three working computers were just about stuffed full, so I thought of sticking a spare drive in the Linux box, when the Linux box died from a hardware problem. It's too old to spend time and money on, so its drive is going in the XP box (which is, of course, not on the network; except sneakernet). I decided to break down and buy an external hard drive. I found what I was looking for in the "Seagate Personal Cloud". And here I thought the definition of "the cloud" was someone else's server!

I ordered it the beginning of January, not noticing that it was a preorder; it wasn't released until late March. I got it right before April.

I was annoyed with its lack of documentation -- it had a tiny pamphlet full of pictures and icons and very few words. Whoever put that pamphlet together must beleive the old adage "a picture is worth a thousand words". Tell me, if a picture is worth a thousand words, convey that thought in pictures. I don't think it can be done.

I did find a good manual on the internet. For what I wanted, I really didn't need a manual, but since I'm a nerd I wanted to understand everything about the thing. Before looking for a manual I plugged it all up, and Windows 7 had no problem connecting with it. It takes a few minutes to boot; it isn't really simply a drive, it must have an operating system and network software, because it looks to the W7 notebook to be another file server. Its only connections are a jack for the power cord and a network jack.

The model I got has three terrabytes. I moved all the data from the two working computers (using a thumb drive to move data from XP) and the "cloud" was still empty. Streaming audio and video from it is flawless; I'm completely satisfied with it, it's a fine piece of hardware.

However, it WON'T do what is advertised to do, which is to be able to get to your data from anywhere. In order to do that, Seagate has a "software as a service" thing where you can connect to a computer from anywhere, but only the computer and its internal drives, NOT the "personal cloud". And they want ten bucks a month for it.

I downloaded the Android app, and I could see and copy files that were on my notebook to my phone, but I couldn't play music stored there on it. I uninstalled the crap. "Software as a service" is IMO evil in the first place, but to carge a monthly fee to use a piece of crap software like this is an insult. Barnum must have been right.

If you're just looking for an external hard drive, like I was, it's a good solution. If you want what they're advertising, you ain't gettin' it. The Seagate Personal Cloud's name is a lie, as is its advertising.

I'm surprised that this hasn't been addressed by the academic communities. Someone with a degree in English or linguistics or something like that should have though of this decades ago.

This word (actually more than one word) has various spellings, and I've probably used all of them at one time or another. The word is email, or eMail, or e-mail, or some other variation. They're all wrong.

It's a contraction of "electronic mail" and as such should be spelled e'mail. The same with e'books and other e'words.

So why hasn't someone with a PhD in English pointed this out to me? I have no formal collegiate training in this field. It's a mystery to me.

In his 1951 short story The Fun They Had, Isaac Asimov has a boy who finds something really weird in the attic -- a printed book. In this future, all reading was done on screens.

When e'books* like the Nook and Kindle came out, there were always women sitting outside the building on break on a nice spring day reading their Nooks and Kindles. It looked like the future to me, Asimov's story come true. I prefer printed books, but thought that it was because I'm old, and was thirty before I read anything but TV and movie credits on a screen.

And then I started writing books. My youngest daughter Patty is going to school at Cincinnati University (as a proud dad I have to add that she's Phi Beta Kappa and working full time! I'm not just proud, I'm in awe of her) and when she came home on break and I handed her a hardbound copy of Nobots she said "My dad wrote a book! And it's a REAL book!"

So somehow, even young people like Patty value printed books over e'books.

My audience is mostly nerds, since few non-nerds know of me or my writing, so I figured that the free e'book would far surpass sales of the printed books. Instead, few people are downloading the e'books. More download the PDFs, and more people buy the printed books than PDFs and ebooks combined.

Most people just read the HTML online, maybe that's a testament to my m4d sk1llz at HTML (yeah, right).

Five years ago I was convinced ink was on the way out, but there's a book that was printed long before the first computer was turned on that says "the news of my death has been greatly exaggerated".

* I'll write a short story about the weird spelling shortly.

I'd like to know why in the hell nobody is selling a tablet, or maybe an app for existing tablets, that will let me watch over the air TV on it?

All the necessary hardware is there. Wi-fi and bluetooth are radios. Some cell pones can pick up FM music stations, and have been able to do so and have done so for years.

The FM radio band sits between channels six and seven on the VHF television channels. If it can hear radio, it can see TV.

The technology is there, why isn't the commercial device to be found? Offer a tablet I can watch TV without the internet and I'll buy one. Maybe two.

I've uploaded a new book to mcgrewbooks.com. Edgar E. Smith was a well known science fiction writer known as "the father of space opera", and Doctor Smith was a food engineer in his other life. The novel I've uploaded is Triplanetary, first published in serial form in Amazing Stories in 1934.

Some of the dialogue is a bit juvenile, but it would make a great movie.