E-books that might be of interest to others

[Té Rowan]

https://archive.org/details/jstor-40667579 — "A Cipher Code for Astronomical Messages" by Edward S. Holden (pub. 1896).
This is a code for moving astronomical messages over the commercial telegraph network.

https://archive.org/details/scienceobserverc13chanrich — "The Science Observer Code"
Referred to in the paper above. Lots of small print; gunna look like it was set in 2-pt Flyspeck on small screens.

[Té Rowan]

https://archive.org/details/Astounding_v44n04_1949-12_cape1736 — "The Witches of Karres" in Astounding SF, December 1949.
Haven't read it yet, but it may help with reading dogbertcarroll's "Harry Potter and the Egger Route".

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

I enjoyed The Witches of Karres. It's ideal for a Harry Potter crossover, because the governments in both series are net drags on everything. (I'm extrapolating here. There are four Karres books, but James H. Schmitz was only involved with the first one.)

Another book you might enjoy is The New Hacker's Dictionary. It can be downloaded from the net. Available as HTML, on the Wayback Machine (apparently not downloadable), in a number of formats at Manybooks. (They also have the first edition.) I appreciate the book, because I was there during its formative years. I visited the Tech Model Railroad Club. I programmed the IBM 704. I played the original Spacewar on the PDP-1, and when I graduated and went to the University of Minnesota, I rewrote it from scratch to run on the CDC-3100. Then I sold the article to John W. Campbell.

Note that this book was assembled by the folk process, with the folk in question being hackers. As Eric Raymond said:

"This document (The Hacker's Dictionary) is in the public domain, to be freely used, shared, and modified. There are (by intention) no legal restraints on what you can do with it, but there are traditions about its proper use to which many hackers are quite strongly attached. Please extend the courtesy of proper citation when you quote the File, ideally with a version number, as it will change and grow over time. (Examples of appropriate citation form: "Hacker's Dictionary 4.3.0" or "The on-line Hacker's Dictionary, version 4.3.0, 30 APR 2001".) "

Or, if you feel like it, you can buy it at Amazon, or some other book store.

[Té Rowan]

The latest version of the Jargon File that I know of is 4.4.7 (dated 2003-12-29) at http://catb.org/jargon/. The front page shows 4.4.8 as revision code dated 2004-10-01, but that is the only change I have seen. Anyway, 4.4.7 is downloadable from there, both as text and as an HTML tarball.

Mind, ESR had the bogus habit of deleting entries he considered obsolete, possibly to keep the filesize down.

[Spica75]

https://archive.org/details/Astounding_v44n04_1949-12_cape1736 — "The Witches of Karres" in Astounding SF, December 1949.
Haven't read it yet, but it may help with reading dogbertcarroll's "Harry Potter and the Egger Route".

I had never ever heard of it before reading dogbertc's fic...

[Té Rowan]

https://archive.org/details/ost-geography-atlasofancientcl00 — "Atlas of ancient and classical geography"
Who knows… it might help in fleshing out a story.

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

https://archive.org/details/ost-geography-atlasofancientcl00 — "Atlas of ancient and classical geography"
Who knows… it might help in fleshing out a story.

Whoa! This is one of those books that would take a 60-inch 4k screen to do it justice. It's good to have it available, but no way do I download it. I know people who would, though.

[Té Rowan]

https://archive.org/details/TheMeaningOfTingoAndOtherExtraordinaryWordsFromAroundTheWorld
… to which I would add: Imbakassi = imbecile box = television set.

[Té Rowan]

https://archive.org/details/eatingarchaeolog00gros — "Eating Archaeology: The Official Gag-me-with-a-trowel Cookbook"
Seriously, what do archaeologists get up to?

[J. St.C. Patrick]

https://archive.org/details/eatingarchaeolog00gros — "Eating Archaeology: The Official Gag-me-with-a-trowel Cookbook"
Seriously, what do archaeologists get up to?

Some strange stuff. Actually, mostly tame strange stuff.

In '92 I went on a dig with a group from UBC at the Lunt Roman Fort in Baginton England (near Coventry). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunt_Roman_Fort

One weekend a pair of my fellow archaeologists decided to see how far away they could get. They got to Berlin. and barely made it back in time.
Another group went North to Hadrian's wall. And they barely made it back in time.
I found myself going on a one day trip to Manchester with two other students to a antiques fair on a quest for our professor who wanted a Victorian mourning cup for his collection.

We did have one stout fellow who decided to dress up in a bed sheet toga and paraded around proclaiming himself Caesar - though with his red hair and walrus mustache he looked more like a Celt than Roman.

[Té Rowan]

So… one might see a group out to party like it's nineteen-ninety-nine — but for that bedamned bug, of course.

Oh, well… at least things are not Black Death and 'Spanish' Flu bad.

https://archive.org/details/homecookeryinwar00oldm — "Home Cookery in War-Time" by Ernest Oldmeadow (1915)
His fellow Englishman is a lazy lout. His nearby shopkeepers are greedy misers. His recipes aren't "take X of this and Y of that", but there are definitely interesting ideas in there.

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

We did have one stout fellow who decided to dress up in a bed sheet toga and paraded around proclaiming himself Caesar - though with his red hair and walrus mustache he looked more like a Celt than Roman.

Obelix2.jpg (12.56 KiB) Viewed 5304 times

Would you settle for a Gaul?

[Té Rowan]

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64904 — "Some 'Frightful' War Pictures" by W. Heath Robinson.

Where Denmark had Storm P. and the US had Rube Goldberg, the UK had Heath Robinson. All of them designed strange, complex machines to perform simple activities.

[Té Rowan]

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64922 — "Pyrotechnics" by A. St. H. Brock (pub. 1922)
It's about fireworks, their history, and their use.

[Té Rowan]

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64928 — "The Tournament" by R. Coltman Clephan (pub. 1919)
All kinds of stuff related to jousts and tournaments. Probably mostly SCA material these days.