The Outspokin’ Cyclist got a mention this week in the faculty and staff newsletter for the University of California, Davis.
“Back when he lived in Durham, N.C., Phillip Barron wrote a monthly bicycling column for The Herald-Sun newspaper. Now he works at UC Davis, perhaps the most bike-friendly university in the country, and has assembled his old columns into a book: The Outspokin’ Cyclist.”
Read the blurb at http://dateline.ucdavis.edu/dl_detail.php?id=13646
September 22nd is Car Free Day. Shift it into high gear, and enjoy your ride.
I noticed this while out for a rural bike ride on Sunday. What I want to know is, how would you fight a mountain lion?
The Outspokin’ Cyclist is now available in epub. You can buy it from Goodreads for $6.99 (same price as the Kindle version over at Amazon). The epub version will work on iPads and iPhones (through the iBooks app) as well as dedicated ereaders like the Sony Reader, Barnes and Noble Nook, Kobo, and others. But to make the best use of the Goodreads website, I need some reviews. See below? None yet, but they will show up right there when a new review pops up. Anyone?
Step 1: receive a big box from UPS
Step 2: strap the box to your bike
Step 3: ride home
Step 4: stop making such a big deal out of it
Before I’ve even started to market the book, The Outspokin’ Cyclist is selling well at Amazon. The Kindle edition is all that’s available for now. The printer has to correct a few errors before the paperback can go on sale. But deciding to release an ebook was a good idea. It’s even in the best-seller ranks in sports essays at the moment. And with good company!
Visting Durham this summer made me realize how much I miss my old stompin’ grounds. So I’ve found myself in the habit, recently, of opening up old website bookmarks and browsing the Bull City’s blogs. Linking around from blog to blog, I realize how big the Durham blogosphere’s grown.And since what I really want to do is keep up with a few things (like whether there are any new vegetarian/vegan restaurants in Durham), I designed a tool that helps me search the Durham blogosphere all at once.
And then I thought, someone else might like this tool as much as I do. So, here you go. durhamblogsearch.com
Earlier this summer, I contributed a media review to the journal Transformations as part of an issue dedicated to teaching digital media. The issue is not yet available electronically (JSTOR and other digital journal vendors are sometimes required to release digital copies later than print publication dates), but I returned to work to find the print edition of Vol. XXII No. 1 waiting for me. Click the title below to download a scanned pdf of my review in which I take a skeptical stance on e-readers in academia.
Good luck reading the article, however, on your e-reader since the gist of my argument is that e-readers will not be ready for academic use until they improve display, annotation, and highlighting functions for pdfs.
I am a cyclist.
To say as much sounds strange to me. Not because it isn’t true, but because it is true. Riding a bicycle — for transportation, for errands, for joy — is something I do without thinking a whole lot about it. Pedaling is such a part of my identity that to call it out in the utterance “I am a cyclist” is to call attention to the idea that it could be otherwise. To say “I am a cyclist” when I choose to pedal a bicycle to work, to the grocery store, and along trails in the woods is akin to saying “I am a breather” or “I am someone who eats.” Both are true, but both are also trivially true. For either to be otherwise would convey that I am no longer alive. And once, I came close to knowing what it would be like not to be a cyclist.
In March 2008, I had a mountain bike accident that left me nearly unable to ride a bicycle…
So begins the preface to a new book gathering some of the columns I wrote for The Herald Sun between 2004 and 2008. Along with photography and a handful of writings on cycling previously published elsewhere, The Outspokin’ Cyclist offers a glimpse of what a newspaper and a city can do (and did) to support a growing bicycling community.
In 2010, my brother asked me what I thought about compiling some of my favorite columns into a book. At the time, he was starting up a new publishing house, Avenida Books. By reducing the costs of production and expanding the reach of distribution, new digital publishing tools are revolutionizing the print industry. I have been fascinated by this democratizing effect since the Internet’s early days, experimenting with blogging here at nicomachus.net since 2003 and managing an online journal for the National Humanities Center for the final two years I worked there. So when Andrew asked me whether I wanted to learn more about book publishing first-hand, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see for myself what it took to contribute an edition that would inspire public discussion and private reflection, to paraphrase Avenida Books’ motto.
The book covers topics such as the role bicycles played in women’s liberation, whether mountain bikers can call themselves environmentalists, and why it matters whether Tour de France competitors use drugs. It also offers tips on how to fit cycling into your everyday life.
To order a copy of the book, follow the link below the version you want to buy.
| Paperback | mobi (Kindle) | epub (Nook, Kobo, iPad, iPhone, Sony Reader) |
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If you’re a bookstore and you would like to carry a copy, please get in touch with me at pbarronATgmailDOTcom or Avenida Books at info@avenidabooks.com.
If you’ve got a new Google+ account, you probably are contemplating whether you really want to spend time investing in one more social network. Given the significant privacy enhancements over Facebook, I’ve decided that it is worth my time. Despite beta bugs, Google+ is already the more mature social networking platform, in my opinion. My network of FB friends will move themselves over to Google+ (or not), so that the main set of data I want to make sure I migrate to the new platform are the collections of photos that have accumulated over the years. Soon there will be apps and plugins that help you move photos from your Facebook account to Google+ (for example, move2picasa looks promising, but it has also been closed due to high demand ever since I received my G+ invitation). By following these simple steps, you can move your photos yourself.
You’ll need a Facebook account, a Google+ account, and Picasa to do this.
To get your photos (and all other data) from Facebook, use the (fairly hidden) Download Your Information feature. Log in to FB and click Account, then Account Settings in the top menu bar.
Once you’re on your Account Settings page, click the Learn More link on the line with Download Your Information.
Clicking Learn More brings you to a page with one green button, which says Download. Click it.
A smaller window will appear on top of this screen, with another Download button. Click it as well.
Now, you wait. Facebook will generate a packet of your data for you to download, and they will email you when it is ready. Until then, the download page will simply say “Pending.”
While you’re waiting, install Picasa (if you don’t have it already). Using the Folder Manager in Picasa (on a Mac, this is under Tools, Folder Manager), make sure that the folder to which you plan to download your Facebook data is set to Scan Always. The simplest way to do this is to plan to download your FB data to your Desktop, and make sure that your Desktop is set to Scan Always.
After you download the zipped file of data from Facebook and unzip it to your Desktop, Picasa will automatically find the folders of photos from your Facebook data.You’ll notice that Facebook compiled for you all of the photos you uploaded as well as photos that others uploaded in which you were tagged. Unfortunately, you’ll also notice that FB compiles only smaller versions of your photos, regardless of whether you uploaded a high-res 2000 pixel wide jpg.
To upload these folders to Google+, navigate to the appropriate folder in Picasa, and click on the down arrow next to the Share button, then choose Enable Sync. This will upload your photos to a PicasaWeb album, which is where Google+ keeps all of its photos. You control your Sharing settings (who sees the photos) from within Google+.
