Publicity
drorzel | May 22, 2009The release date for the forthcoming How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is December 22, seven months from today, and I got a look at some sample pages yesterday, so things are moving right along. To mark the occasion, and give you something to entertain you while I'm spending another day at DAMOP, I thought I'd offer some video:
This is me reading the dog conversation that goes with Chapter 3, on the Copenhagen Interpretation. The cheap computer microphone doesn't do that great a job picking up the Dog Voice, but it'll give you the basic idea. The images that go with it were mostly taken by…
drorzel | April 22, 2009The official release date for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is December 22nd, exactly eight months from today. It's probably a little too early to go into countdown mode, but I thought I would mention a couple of recent developments with the book.
First, the book itself continues its steady progress toward publication. I got the copyedited manuscript last week, and got off remarkably easy. There are only a few substantive changes, and remarkably few grammar and spelling corrections. Credit for the easy copyedit probably ought to go to Kate, for proofreading almost as many drafts as I have…
drorzel | April 21, 2009The book-in-production will be released eight months from tomorrow, which means that I'm thinking of ways to promote it on-line. One obvious possibility would be some sort of YouTube video type thing, showing a conversation with the dog about physics. This runs into problems, though, given that the dog is, well, a dog, and thus doesn't take direction very well. It'd be really difficult to get the right sort of video of her.
One solution to this would be to get some really basic video of me talking to her as a frame for the conversation, and do some sort of animation to fill in the rest. So,…
drorzel | April 1, 2009Because a book isn't a real book until it has a promotional website, I give you:
http://dogphysics.com
the official(ish) site for promoting How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, which will be published this December (and can be pre-ordered on Amazon).
The site does, in fact, contain content you won't find on the blog, including "interviews" with me an Emmy, so go check it out.
A note on the design: the site is cobbled together by me, using my cargo-cult CSS skills. It was more or less ready yesterday, until I discovered that it looked awful on Internet Exploder, because Microsoft chooses to…
drorzel | March 29, 2009I'm putting the finishing touches on Monday's lecture notes when the dog comes into the library, looking concerned.
"Shouldn't I be doing something to promote the book?" she asks.
"Since it won't be out for another nine months, I don't think it's that urgent."
"But aren't there more Internetty things I could be doing?"
"Well, you make regular appearances on the blog, and you've got plenty of friends on Facebook. I suppose you could Twitter."
She draws herself up very haughtily. "I am a dog. I do not twitter."
"Beg pardon?"
"I'm not some stupid bird, fluttering around twittering all the time…
drorzel | March 13, 2009I have an official release date for the book-in-production: December 22nd. There's no lay-down date, though, so they may turn up in stores before then. Mark it down on your Christmas list now...
There's also an official title and cover:
Emmy's slightly miffed that she's not the dog on the cover, but that's what she gets for refusing to do the quizzical head-tilt when I have the camera.
I am, as you might guess, pretty excited. I've also got a complete schedule for the process from here on out-- the next step is getting the copyedited pages, which should get here in the second week of April.…
drorzel | March 11, 2009"OK, here's your profile.""
"You used the good picture of me, right?"
"Of course. Look here."
"Oooh. I like that one. I look regal."
"Yeah, I guess. So what do you want to add?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you can add applications, and become a fan of various things. Here, I'll make you a fan of Physics."
"OK, but isn't there better stuff. How about steak? I like steak! Make me a fan of steak!"
"Ummm... Well, there are over 500 results for 'steak.' Which do you want?"
"All of them! Click them all!"
"Why am I the one doing this again?"
"Because I can't work the mouse."
"All right, look, I'm…
grrlscientist | July 29, 2008
I receive a fair number of books to review each week, so I thought I should do what several magazines and other publications do; list those books that have arrived in my mailbox so you know that this is the pool of books from which I will be reading and reviewing on my blog. You may have noticed that some weeks, I am at the top of my game and read one book per day and review it within two or so days after I've finished it. Other weeks, like this one, I am unable to concentrate long enough to read a paragraph, so obviously, reading these books, all of which are worthy of a careful reading…