Web Programming, Digital Photography, and The Old Leather Man

Interesting set of subjects over the past couple of weeks. The Adobe Flex For Dummies indexing project turned out to be a competitor to JavaScript for creating interactivity, etc., in websites with programming code. Flex has some interesting features and works like most object-oriented programming languages. It integrates well with the animation capabilities of Adobe Flash Player, but folks could still use JavaScript as well. Lots of class, object, and method names in the index.

Digital Photography is part of a modular lesson series from Labyrinth Publishing. They do great stuff to help novices in particular learn how to use the computer and different kinds of software. This book/lesson series is designed for folks new to working with electronic versions of photos. It goes over the basics of how the different types of cameras work and how to download photos and organize them on the computer. Easy and fast to index, and very useful stuff.

Ah, and for a complete contrast, The Old Leather Man. Wish I could have read this one myself, but my working partner, Sue Gaines got to index this fascinating nineteenth-century story. This old French guy just turned up in the mid-1880s in western Massachusetts and Connecticut and parts of New York as a wandering "homeless" person. He had an extremely regular route and the book is made up of all the journalistic references to him in the local papers of the day. He even got a profile in the New York Times at one point! He wore all leather patched clothing, knew how to read and write, spoke some English and lots of French, but mostly said not a word to anyone. He wasn't a beggar, actually, but seemed to have some money and did odd jobs, they think. Legends grew up about how he'd lost the love of his life and took to wandering in his grief. He lived mostly in rock shelters and caves along his walking route. Many of these shelters are still in existence, I guess. Really interesting little story being published by the University Press of New England.

This week, I'm trying to finish up a book index on global bioethics and a small project comparing Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007.

Joanne

Patents and Poverty

Finished the Patents, Copyrights & Trademarks For Dummies index the other day. Found out that my business name is not ideal (too descriptive and not unique enough) and that it's already registered to a neat little cafe in DC and a bookstore, I think. Oh, well. After reading this humorous tome (you will not be bored), though, I don't think I'd ever try to patent an invention. The cost alone would send me home, but I guess if you had some deep-pocket venture capitalist at your side....
It was a good read, though, believe it or not. Those Dummies folks over at Wiley Publishing are pretty good at picking writers.

Finally got back to The Colors of Poverty, a social science book on why poverty tends to concentrate itself in certain ethnic groups. Mostly, the Russell Sage Foundation researchers find so many complex factors involved in anything they research (humans are so fascinating that way!) that their conclusions tend to be very tentative; they just don't get the statistical results that would floor anybody. This book is different, especially the last chapter on the relationship among race, class, welfare policy, and incarceration in this country. The poor are being thoroughly marginalized, particularly when African American, by a combination of welfare-to-work and massive incarceration and post-imprisonment monitoring by government. It's a bit scary, frankly. The authors call this new thing neoliberal paternalism (despite the name, a philosophy of political conservatism). Doesn't seem to make for opportunities for poor people to get out of poverty, though. And this policy is not in the federal laws that regulate welfare per se, it's embedded in the decentralized implementation of the law at state and local levels.

Lots of factors go into social inequality, and the white folks in power are not responsible for all of them, but this neoliberal paternalism is a blow to individual freedom in favor of social control.

Ok, ok, end of rant. I'm just the indexer, you know. Next up is Adobe Flex For Dummies. I'm pretty software savvy, but I don't even know what this is yet. I'll keep you posted.

Credit Repair and The Colors of Poverty

Well, so much for that Wednesday and Thursday off the last week in May. Actually, I did take that Wednesday off, so, my apologies for goofing off and not writing to you all back then.

As I usually do, when I think I'll have a break, I send out energy to the Universe that puts more work on the desk, and so it was this time. An established scholarly client (Russell Sage Foundation) sent me a book on the persistence of poverty being associated with certain racial/ethnic groups. Very complex factors go into all this, of course, some historical and cultural, still discrimination going on, but it's more subtle, things like that. And the scholars are still a bit befuddled, actually, particularly at how stubborn disadvantage is among African Americans. Lots of complex reasons that are hard to tease apart in order to identify policies that will work to help the situation. I've set this one down after getting about 100 pages indexed, though, because I received another job in the For Dummies series.

Credit Repair Kit For Dummies turned out to be a well-written explanation of how to avoid bad credit situations and how to get out of them once you're in. I certainly made mental note for my own purposes and will be going to monitor my credit reports (all three) when I get a chance. Done with that one today after about a week's worth of work, and thought I'd go back to the Color of Poverty, but, no.

Another For Dummies book came in with a shorter deadline. This one's about intellectual property rights (you know, patents, copyrights, trademarks and such). Just got started this evening, but now my eyes and butt are getting tired in this sitting position, so off to relax.

I did get the last couple of weekends off, though, both days. So that was very cool. Started on a bedroom painting project and got back to my piano.

Later!

Schwarzenau Brethren....and...Linux?

Variety is the spice of life, they say...

After my marathon session indexing the AutoCAD Bible, I was about to continue my technical stuff by indexing a Dummies book on the Linux operating system when an indexing colleague became ill and I took on a job for her.

Short book, some guy's dissertation, actually, on the founders of the Brethren Church. I'd done some subcontracting work for this colleague before on this subject; she has an ongoing arrangement to index stuff for the Brethren. They have their own encyclopedia, actually. This little book, only 145 pages, but packed with people, places, and theological concepts (lots about baptism), talked about the origins of the Brethren in what is now Germany in the late seventeenth/early eighteenth century. These folks were part of a "back to basics" movement after the Protestant Reformation. Really into separating from the material world, awaiting the apocalypse (slated for 1700), cultivating a pure and literal obedience to the New Testament and Jesus' commandments. The author's theme was to dig up more about what other movements influenced the Brethren (Radical Pietism and Anabaptism mainly). The Brethren are not as strict as the Amish, or the Mennonites, I think, but close. The Mennonites are the original Anabaptists (adult baptism is better than the infant kind), and the Amish are an offshoot of the Mennonites. It was interesting to keep track of all this stuff. Didn't make much money per hour, but it was a cool story.

Now I'm back to learning about the Linux operating system. Lots of good stuff I'd had a hint of in other books I've done, and this author does a good job of explaining it all. Linux can really be a substitute for Windows if you really, really, hate Microsoft (the different versions have nice, clean graphical interfaces), but its power is in the ability to send commands directly into the system without the graphic interface and do programming stuff. About 350 pages out of 600 left to go. Wish me luck meeting my end-of-Tuesday deadline.

Oh, and you'll notice I'm working on Sunday, and tomorrow as well. I don't pay much attention to weekends and holidays, although I do try to take Saturdays off (God was right about that day of rest idea in Genesis, just for mental health reasons if nothing else). But from the looks of the schedule, I'll get Wednesday and Thursday off instead, since my next project isn't supposed to come in until next week. But....you never know.

AutoCAD Can Take Up Your Life......

Sorry about the delay, but 1100 pages of AutoCAD guidance in seven days really takes up one's life.

Finished up the Social Class book index on May 5. A good analysis of how we do so want to think we're a classless society in America, but....not! As I expected, class even trumps race and gender in helping decide how life goes for people, but not always. What I like about Russell Sage's researchers is that they tell you about all the complexities of an issue, so I get a better perspective than through sound-bites on the news.

I know I indexed an AutoCAD (CAD stands for computer-aided design) book awhile back, but this one was the "bible" for folks looking up more and more specific stuff on how to use this engineering/architectural/mechanical design software. The 3D modeling is the coolest part. Reminds me of computer games like the SIMs where you can build house models, but this is not child's play by any stretch of the imagination. I just wonder how Wiley Publishing can call this a book for dummies. You have to know something to even begin. Not being a designer myself, I've had to absorb what this is about over several projects in the past three years. This book, The AutoCAD Bible For Dummies, gives the best explanation of the relationships among the different elements and concepts involved. I found out that I didn't understand the material as well as I had thought until I was done with this book.

More on what I've been doing since mid-May in the next post....

And Now for Another Kind of Class

Finished my "class" in indexing elementary math textbooks. Long project, somewhat tedious, but good money. And yesterday I wrapped up the index for the book on Tom Lea, WWII combat artist. A riveting story with adventures from England to China to Peleliu Island in the South Pacific. War is definitely hell. Please strive to avoid it whenever possible.

And now, for social class. In America, class is often considered a dirty word because we have quite a bit of potential economic mobility here, but class still exists and is a major factor in how well people do in our society. Starting from the bottom is still really difficult even when the barriers to progress are not official. They are still formidable. This social science book from the Russell Sage Foundation should shed some light on how class currently impacts people's lives here. I'll pass on more when I get into the details.

Visions of a World at War

This week, although I still have a number of chapters of elementary math terms to index, the real interest is in a coffee table book on the work of painter/illustrator/writer Tom Lea. Texas A&M Press is doing up this book that pulls together the El Paso native's artistic work and writing from his WWII adventures as a Life magazine correspondent. Life actually believed in the value of combat art in addition to its addiction to fine photography to capture an experience. And Tom Lea was the perfect agent for that attitude. He bonded with the men on board ships in the North Atlantic and South Pacific, and with troops in North Africa and Europe, portraying their triumphs and tragedies, and more importantly, their daily lives, both in his paintings and his diary and other writings. His paintings are strikingly realistic in a time when abstraction was the artistic rule. The impact is very "in your face." He does not spare us the horror of war by any stretch, nor does he forget the nobility of the warrior.

As you can tell, I'm really enjoying this material. Just gotta make sure I index it, too!