Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Bits and Bytes are Silver; Paper is Gold

Until now, my blog has only existed in digital format, a series of 1's and 0's on a drive somewhere in California (or wherever Google keeps its data servers). But over the past few months, I've been looking for ways to make a hard copy of this blog, which has covered the past half-decade of my life. I wanted a back-up, lest in some parallel universe Google should fail me, and hundreds of thousands of other bloggers, perhaps by an act of God (electromagnetic solar storms, for example). I looked at some of the blog-to-book sites. They'll "slurp" your blog and put it in a coffee-table type book. But this would be no quick fix- If I was going to shell out $19.99, then I'd want to do a decent job with the editing and formatting. Something that could be on my family's own kitchen table. That editing task could be formidable... But by fortune and chance, I came across Blogbooker . It's a free service, supported by donations. And it's fairly simple to use. To me, it's that type of discovery that gives you a thrill-- (just like how I found Youtube for the first time some years back). The result? A complete PDF. Not just that, but it auto-assembles a Table of Contents based on chronology. I chose oldest to newest. The book is an utilitarian product; with a PDF creating/editing program, I'll be able to jazz up the cover, write a dedication, and so forth. I know that question will be asked: can I get a copy of the book? Sure! Email me at atticussawatzki (at.) gmail (dot.) com. In like spirit, I'm offering this as a free service. Check out blogbooker at www.blogbooker.com