Making Your Own

Here's an excellent idea stolen from Alan Trotter's ≥ blog. Like many people, I have a backlog of things stumbled across on the internet that look as though they'd be really interesting if I ever got around to reading them, but which are longer than I want to read on-screen. Trotter suggests putting them all together as a one-off print-on-demand book. A fine idea, which I have just finished doing, as an experiment in using the Lulu POD system.

My own version contains a mix of articles, short stories and artwork gathered from all over the place. Now, instead of these things sitting on my hard drive, forever unread, I'm looking forward to having a physical book to read (allegedly I'll have it in about a week). Of course, this also allowed me to indulge in a bit of cover design.

This is what the book should look like (more pictures when it arrives). Click for bigger.



The cover image is a photo I took of one of the residents of our backyard, a bluetongue lizard, and the title was suggested by his/her rather judgemental look. This lizard (which is about 30cm long) likes to come out and sunbathe during the day, but then has to deal with our cat, who is compelled by lunatic instinct to rush past it at regular intervals, tagging it nervously with a paw in passing, and then getting the hell away before getting a savage gumming.



UPDATE: Alan Trotter points out that the original idea comes from Thoughtwax.