Next steps for FTL

I’m planning to send Files that Last to the proofreader on March 7 or 8, before I go to the OPF Hackathon. She’s set aside a block of time for it, and I don’t want to mess up her schedule if I don’t have to. If those of you who have advance copies could send feedback by then, that would be great. I can sneak in changes after that, but the closer the proofreader’s copy is to the final copy, the easier it will be all around.

Pre-publication FTL now available for backers

The pre-publication version of Files that Last is now done, and instructions for downloading it have been sent to all backers at the $25 level and higher. If you didn’t get that message and think you should have, let me know.

This week I attended the Personal Digital Archiving conference at the University of Maryland and was glad to see how digital preservation is starting to catch on with non-library people! The things I learned there resulted in a few last-minute additions to the book.

Thanks to all of you who backed Files that Last at any level. All of you helped to make it possible. It’s still on target for an April release.

Boskone and dataliths

On Saturday I was on a panel at Boskone on “Dataliths: Digging the idea of the programmer/archaeologist,” along with Vernor Vinge, Charles Stross, Dana Cameron, and Janice Gelb. As you’d expect at a science fiction convention, the discussion got very speculative at times, with ideas like “life recorders” that keep a complete record of each person’s activities and “data diamond” that stores 1’s as carbon-13 atoms and 0’s as carbon-12 atoms. Vinge brought up some interesting ideas about how to provide bootstrapping information for an archive that might be read after the collapse of civilization, and Stross showed he’s quite an expert on computer issues. This was my first opportunity to show off the cover of Files that Last and give out promotional cards at a convention.

The high point for me came later on, when Vinge thanked me for inventing the term “datalith.”

The advance version for people who pledged at the $25 level will be available this week. Those of you who’ve seen the pre-advance version, I’d appreciate it if you could send me any comments on it as soon as you can.

Cover art!

Here’s the cover for Files that Last, created by Matthew Leger. I like it, and I hope you do.

 

By the way, I’m now an author on Goodreads. It’s not clear yet how active a presence I’ll have there, but it seems like a site I should be on if I’m promoting a book.