it sure is entertaining to me that,

here in the hellish spring of 2020,

the project gutenberg listserve is

discussing how to make a .pdf to

send to a kindle from a p.g. text.

because i was writing software

for a number of years to do that,

and promulgating it right here,

on this very p.g. listserve, and

nobody seemed to be interested,

except to shoot me out of the sky.

maybe you remember those days.

starting about 2000, went on a while.

so yes, i subsequently went away.

didn't seem to be any reason to stay.

google had stolen the e-book thunder.

and michael hart died.

plus i was saddened that everyone

running the show here seemed to

want to run his baby into the ground.

(congratulations!, y'all succeeded!

the profile of project gutenberg

hasn't been lower since 1989!)

and i got tired of fighting the idiots.

(as if that battle has ever stopped;

the chief idiot is in the white house.)

***

so, let me now speak with the pair of

non-idiots in this conversation here

-- james simmons and eric hellman.

james, you'd just started to appear

around the time i was leaving, but

i remember you from a few threads.

congratulations for sticking with it.

i could explain the reasons why p.g.

went with r.s.t., but they don't matter.

the light-markup wars are over now,

with markdown the declared winner.

but books themselves are a lost cause,

so the formats mean next to nothing.

eric, remember your column from 2009?

the one you wrote about me, where you

called me "impolite" and a "troll"? yeah.

those were the good old days, you bet.

here's the link for y'all, have fun with it:

https://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2009/09/public-identity-and-bowerbird-privacy.html

did you ever figure out my "real name"?

or did you finally realize i was correct,

and nobody would even care about it?

reality is a really slippery beast, ain't it?

took some russian bots to teach all of us.

anyway, i just visited that column again.

first with my iphone, then with my mac

using safari (private mode, and regular),

and then with chrome, and then firefox.

so if you wanna do more sleuthing, go!

with the advanced tracking available now,

you should be able to write my biography.

or, you know, you could just call me up

-- same number i have had since 2007,

that's 310-980-9202 -- but hey, send

an e-mail heads-up with your number,

because i'm not answering all calls now;

spammers make that painful any more.

and especially if you're in santa monica;

as i told you the last time you were here,

i'll buy the beer and we can laugh at shit.

that offer goes out to anyone.

except the idiots. you know who you are.

love and kisses, kids.

oh, and stay safe, there's a really bad bug

going around these days, have you heard?

-bowerbird