This Makes No Sense At All

I have a vast appetite for avoiding doing the things at the top of my list, so when Susan got lodging discount tickets for joining Yosemite Association, and suggested a mid week weekend getaway, I was ready. My brain was Kindled out from digging into details about converting a book to Kindle. Off we went in the Subaru, expecting that we might need four wheel drive, based on snow forecasts. About 50 miles out, I realize I've left the chains at home, so we opted for the longer and lower route up through Mariposa rather than up and over the mountains via Crane Flat and down to Yosemite valley. For our last pct trip, we had invested in an Ipod Touch, so we would have some means of internet access at our resupply points. It worked well for that purpose, but I hadn't used it for much else, other than my calendar. I had loaded all our music cds down to it, but did nothing with them. A few weeks ago, I got this car charger for the ipod that also had a little fm transmitter, that wo...

One dark day near Halloween, we took our grandson south, hoping for better weather. We are surrounded by regional parks, most with hiking trails, but some with historic value. Our destination was Ardenwood, a working farm from 100 years ago, now farmed by the park district. Blacksmiths, horses, cows, corn, pigs and pumpkins all are kid worthy attractions. Since Halloween was upon us, we expected some special events. Alas, the budget cuts have struck, so no special activities. The blacksmith was there, pounding away, but he didn't even have his forge going. So, after surveying the farm animals, and getting hot dogs at the little cafe, we huddled under the cafe porch roof, keeping out of the rain. What now? Well, Coyote Hills was just west of us and it had a boardwalk out into the freshwater marsh. Maybe we could surprise some ducks. Good choice. The rain stopped, and we strolled along the boardwalk, taking in the fall scene. Finally wrapped up the day by going out to the fishing ...

This is an as it happens log of my efforts to convert our print book We're in the Mountains, Not Over the Hill  to Kindle. In the process I hope to clarify my own thinking about how to do this. The book has about 20 b&w photos and a lot of carefully crafted layout. Several fonts, use of bold, italics, multiple paragraph formats, all to make the book look well done to the reader. The intent is to have the layout help communicate the book's message. Our print version was created with Pagemaker and resulted in a pdf file which was sent to the printer. The book sized Kindles require an Amazon proprietary format which is a subset of html. You can give Amazon a Word, PDF or HTML file, and they will automatically convert it to their format (free). You have the most control over the resulting appearance if you give them html, the least control if you give them a pdf. There are Kindle readers on all sorts of devices: IPhones, IPads, etc. Kindle is b&w and only a couple...