Update on the VDL and books.

[deprecated]

Hello, Monks,

Originally, I was going to post this in response to Fingo's post, but there have been so many excellent threads and responses to the original post that I felt it was necessary to address all of them and I felt that several replies would be cluttergenic and not reach as many people.

So, here are some references:

• jcwren's Virtual Distributed Library
• merlyn offering a substantial discount on books
• tame1's idea for an area, either on-site or off, in which to organize such an effort
• neshura mentioned gaspodthewonderdog had a similar idea
• neshura also suggested having a look at craigs wish list
• fingo's suggestion was to send all the books to one person

I think of all of these, the one that can make the biggest impact for us as a community is jcwren's addition of VDL tags to the stats page. I see this as a way to get the book distribution idea out to all of our monks, and I think that will ensure the general longevity of the project. However, some of us arent as dedicated to this as others. I shipped two books last week and was responsible for a further two being shipped. The total cost of shipping was less than $20. So, at $5 per book (in the US from the US), I am totally willing to send books out to new people as I have books available. But, if nobody sends me books, I will just send out what I have when I have it. The only way I see sending somebody books as better than the distributed library is that not everyone wants to be a basement for books and paying for shipping/going to the post office.

I think many people may have noticed by now I'm rather a zealot about things I believe in firmly. Perl is one of those things -- I want to help carry this phenomenon on to other people, so they can see just how cool perl is. This means I dont mind spending an hour a week, or two, or three, and the $5 per book to send them out. Other people might not be, but want to spread the books out. I'm happy to fill that role, to allow people without the time a convenient place to dump their books so they will know that they get out to people that need them. As far as sending books to schools, I am also a big fan of this idea. I think probably they will be most useful at high schools, though I have seen some interesting ideas here regarding teaching perl to those who dont program yet I know I even have a few sparc 4's around that would make excellent little perl mules for the right high school, and I'm willing to donate my time to set that up, as well. The problem with it is, I havent quite figured out a good way to reach high schools.

I think what this all boils down to is that I'm going to have to get a domain name registered (my current ISP sucks rocks and the domain name service i use tries real hard but manages to be out of service a lot of the time). I'm moving soon, and in that process, will wind up with big bandwidth and a few static IP's. Then it just comes down to hacking out the CGI/HTML to do it. At the moment I've been working on real piddly stuff, but buying a book or two on CGI would enable me to come up with a site or sub-site that would allow me to:

• accept book donations
• list just which books I have to send out
• provide some mechanism for getting in touch with schools
• give me something to index on the relevant search engines out there.

Of course, if somebody would like to donate time to coding such a site, things would progress quicker. I would also like people to submit to me people they know who might need a book. At the moment, I have a copy of Mastering Algorithms With Perl, the Coriolis Black Book, The Perl Cookbook, and Advanced Perl Programming looking for homes. Let me know if you've got books I dont know about if you dont want to deal with shipping/listing them yourself.

I would also like suggestions for schools that could use books, hopefully with the suggestors having a little bit of time to followup with the school/teachers involved.

And I am of course, still waaaaay open to more suggestions. It appears that we monks are a generous and dedicated lot, out to subvert the world with generosity and good character. I hope we succeed. :)

Yours,
Brother dep.

--
transcending "coolness" is what makes us cool.

[Blue]

Brother dep,

First and foremost, I applaud you. Much discussion was going on, but you and jcwren are actually moving and making this a reality.

Would you be interested in other related books also? I'm specificially thinking other parts of the O'Reilly zoo that may be appropriate based on whatever project a monk is working on.

I willingly donate my CGI abilities to code. They're meager compared to some, but they're on the table. I'll msg you with my email address to contact me directly.

Good job.

=Blue
...you might be eaten by a grue...

[deprecated]

I have gotten a lot of replies to this and the other posts. I have also gotten a lot of /msg's. I really want to encourage people to e-mail me at [e-mail] as the chatterbox and the personal message box are not quite equipped to handle such communication. I have sent away the eight or so messages I had, and tried to get back in touch with people, but please email me if you have books to donate or want to know more.

thanks
brother dep.

[Fingo]

Well, I think that one of us learning the ins and outs of Mac Perl will help the school thing. I will gladly give my time an dcoding, and maybve some money. Sadly, I do not have any books I do not need. I suggest setting up a mailing list for this.