Wikipedia now allows you to gather articles into a book. You can download the book as a PDF or actually have a printer make you a hardcopy of you book.

For several years now, Wikipedia has allowed printing articles. The printed pages looked good and were easy to read. Recently, Wikipedia has added a feature that allows you to create a book. The book-building feature allows you to group many articles and print it all as a book.

The book building is fairly simple to use, but I suggest practicing a bit before doing something “serious.” Instead of clicking on the usual “print” on the left side of the Wikipedia page, click on “print/export.” You can now create a book, Download as PDF (also a nice newer feature), or print with the usual Printable Version.

I have used the create a book option to build half a dozen “books” comprising related articles. I’ve put upwards of several dozen articles in some of my books. I put the results of my books into PDF files of over a hundred pages and downloaded them to my computer. I can also go to my Wikipedia page and modify my books at any time.

Wikipedia also provides the option of sending your book (collection of articles) to a printer and having a hardcopy made and mailed to you. The cost of the hardcopy depends on the number of pages. I haven’t used the hardcopy service, but my “books” would each cost less than $10. You can put a photograph from any of the articles on the cover of the printed book.

Why gather Wikipedia articles and print them? Why not. Hold a set of articles in your hand and read them on the airplane or any other place where you can’t access the online library.

Google has an OCR program that works with Google Docs.

I found a new feature in Google Docs this morning. Google now has an online optical character recognition (OCR) service. This is some type of experiment or Beta test or something. You go to a strange URL: http://googlecodesamples.com/docs/php/ocr.php .

When you first go to that page, you click a button to grant access to your Google Docs account. It also asks you to login to that account. You then upload a scanned page (JPG, GIF, or PNG files only). Google’s software scans the image and puts the text into a Google Doc for you to edit and so on.

I tried it; it works. Nice touch from Google if you don’t have OCR software on your computer.

I spent 19-26 August in Louisiana visiting family. Here are some of the things I noticed.

Cars broken down on the side of the road - many of them.

The New Orleans Airport: (1) small and unused for a city that depends on tourism, and (2) as inefficient and slow as ever.

“Tropical” rain - that is what people who don’t live here call it

A real gun store

Fried catfish in large quantities

Fresh coffee available everywhere

Heat and humidity (people in the Washington D.C. area think it is hot and humid up there, but really folks, forget about it)

Super Wal-Marts sell everything - yes even that, too.

A lady in line at a salad bar scratching her back with her salad fork

Staying in other people’s houses shows what I miss from my own.

I am in Louisiana for a week visiting with family. There are items that I have in my house in Reston that are not in the houses I am staying. I understand that these are personal preferences, and that everyone has their own personal preferences, but still, I can meander here.

This every house should have:

a guitar

Internet and WiFi

bookshelves with books

a couch

Windows with the coverings opened to let in the natural light

a TV system with both American Movie Classics and Turner Classic Movies

New display apps are coming to the iPad. I am now using Flipboard (for Facebook and Twitter display) and Discover (for Wikipedia display). They both work well are are worth using.

Several months into the iPad, and better applications come along. Two of the recent ones that I am using basically take information that is on the web and display it in a different manner just for the iPad: Flipboard and Discover.

Flipboard had a rough start. Several famous bloggers praised it just before its official release. That flooded the servers and crashed everything. It was several weeks before Flipboard worked on my iPad. Sigh, but oh well. Flipboard takes web sites like Twitter and Facebook and displays the information in a format much like a magazine.

I like the way Flipboard displays my tweets (DwaynePhillips - follow me on Twitter). Almost every one of my tweets has a URL in it. I put these in during my morning Internet viewing (see my Daybook and CurrentDaybook). The result on Flipboard is a magazine display of my viewing and tweeting. If I push a button, Flipboard takes me to the web page I linked. I like this.

Discover from CoolIris displays Wikipedia pages in different format - much better than reading the Wikipedia pages on Safari on the iPad. Some of the technical articles are not displayed correctly (yet) on Discover. The equations don’t come through. Still, a good application.

These are the serendipitous types of applications that the iPad is spawning. I don’t know that Apple’s gurus sat around one day and said, “You know, we can make this thing for unique ways of displaying web information.” Instead, since its introduction, programmers have sat around dreaming and said, “You know, it would be neat to see web information on this thing in a different way.”

Keep it coming guys.

I finally have a handwriting program on the iPad - WritePad from PhatWare. It works fine, but isn’t integrated into all the iPad apps.

Several months into the iPad and I finally have a handwriting program. I am using WritePad from PhatWare. It works just fine. I find that I can write by finger on the screen faster and more accurately than I can type using the virtual keyboard on the screen. So now I can write using the iPad and at least e-mail things to people and also to myself.

Shortcoming: I can only write on the screen using the WritePad application.

When I open Wikipedia on the iPad and I want to search for a topic, I have to use the virtual keyboard. I can’t write on the screen with WritePad. The same goes for all the other applications on the iPad. I can’t write on the screen; I have to use the virtual keyboard. Rats.

When will Apple integrate something like WritePad into all the applications on the iPad?

Most government agencies are dysfunctional. There are simple reasons. One reason is that the path to promotion lies in spending money, not bringing value per cost.

Try to understand how people “get ahead” working inside a government agency. To make more money, you are promoted to a higher grade. I worked in a government agency for 28 years, so I have some experience here. Please note that the agency where I worked is a relatively non-bureaucratic and efficient one.

How are you promoted to a higher grade? Managing more people and more money.

How are you assigned more people and more money? Receiving credit for accomplishing something through the people and money you now manage.

Consider two paths to accomplishing something:

(1) A person in your charge has an idea. They work on the idea at home in the evening. They walk into the office on Monday, implement the idea (like a small yet ingenious computer program), and deliver big value.

(2) A group of people in your charge work on a highly funded program. They deliver value. The value doesn’t have to be more than what is spent as usually it isn’t.

Path (1) does not bring promotion as it comes about NOT from the people and money you manage. Path (2) brings promotion as it comes from the people and money you manage.

Path (1) often occurs inside a government agency. The result is usually canceled or deleted as it is not from the approved path (2). It is embarrassing as the opportunity to bring great value at low cost always existed, but you didn’t recognize it - one lone person did. The person who actually accomplishes the inexpensive to implement but valuable concept is labeled as a “loose cannon” or “loner” or something bad and is either squashed down into a dungeon or leaves the government agency in frustration.

Note, all this dysfunction comes from the desire to be promoted. There are two parts to being promoted: [1] higher pay and [2] a bigger title.

[1] Higher Pay: I always sought higher pay. My reason was simple, I needed the money to pay bills and save for college for three sons.

[2] Bigger Title: This didn’t interest me as I was interested in [1] Higher Pay. I knew people who worked in government who truly considered their work as a service to the public. Their income from family investments and such equaled or surpassed their government salary. Pay didn’t matter to them.

I don’t know that there is anyway to remove the desire for [1], [2], or both. I don’t know that we need to remove the desire for those. I do believe we need to do something about the dysfunction in Paths (1) and (2). Diligent oversight and rewards for Path (1) would help. I see neither of those happening any time soon.

Government employees retire and go to work for companies that the government is supposed to regulate and hire and such. This is a revolving door. Is it bad?

This story from the past week discusses how Telcos hired retired government employees to help them influence how the FCC (current government employees) regulates the Telcos. This is but one story that is repeated often. Government employees retire from government “service” (the government’s term, not mine) and then work for companies that work with and around their former agency.

I am in this group. I retired from government about two years ago and now work for a company that tries to do business in the general area I worked for 28 years as a government employee. This is all legal and it is ethical as well. There are plenty of regulations about what and when former government employees can do, and we adhere to them. The stakes are too high to try to cheat the system.

Guess what? The retired government employees are more knowledgeable  and competent than the current government employees. The retired employees know more simply because they have done the work longer. They retired employees are more competent because if they weren’t competent, a company would not have hired them. Again, simple years on the job create the situation. Why would a company hire incompetent retired government employees?

So, in this example, telecommunications companies have employees who know more and know better than the government agencies who are supposed to regulate the companies. There are exceptions, but this is the rule.

I suppose we, government employees, could stay with the government to balance the expertise between the agencies and the companies. That, however, carries a large economic penalty. For us old guys under the Civil Service system, this means you go to work for half pay. If you retire, you receive about half your pay for staying home. If you don’t retire, you receive all your pay for going to work. Hence, going to work only brings half your pay - a 50% cut.

There is greed in the picture. There are people in the picture, so we have to assume there is greed, malice, envy, dishonesty, and the like. There are people in the picture, so we also have to assume that there are plenty of good qualities from plenty of good people as well. We are all taxpayers, so we want neither government waste nor regulations that cost taxpayers.

Is this a bad situation? It has some bad in it. It also has good in it. Remember that Congress passes the laws, the Courts interpret the laws, and the Federal agencies attempt to execute them. There are checks and balances carrying plenty of praise and blame to share.

From June 28th through July 3rd, I had the privilege of being on a raft on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. This was part of a family trip “for the guys.” On a trip put together by my father-in-law Allan, his two sons, me (a son in law), my three sons, two other grandsons, one grandson-in-law, and one great grandson spent five days and five nights on the Colorado River. These blog posts are part of the story.

The question people asked me on my return from the rafting trip:

So how was it?

My first answer was, “It was an ordeal.”

The trip was difficult. The water was too cold to enjoy. The sun was really hot. We camped at night on sandy beaches in the wind - the resultant mix of sand and wind was predictable. I didn’t sleep well at night. Looking at my journal notes, I took Tylenol before going to bed four nights and Excedrin three mornings when I woke.

The food was great.

There was fun. Everyday had something that I enjoyed or that was someone’s favorite. We rafted on calm water, splashed through rapids, hiked in side canyons, dove into pools in those side canyons, sat around and ate and chatted, and camped under the stars. There was something for everyone.

Everyone on the trip - all 30 individuals - enjoyed parts of the trip. Funny thing, on the morning that we left the river, no one said, “I want to stay a few more days.”

The scenery was unique. If you like to look at rocks, if you like geology, this is the single best place on the planet.

There is one great good of this trip. I learned it one evening while we were sitting around waiting for dinner. The mother of the Canadian tomato farmer sat next to my son # 2.  She was asking him questions while my nephews sat out of sight making faces. She asked how often he saw his cousins. His answer was, “Every year or two.”

That was it. These cousins catch glimpses of one another every year or two at Christmas or a wedding or something. And those are just glimpses, nothing more than, “Hi, how are you?”

On this trip, they were together every waking moment of the day for five days in a row. There was no place to go, no excuse for running to Wal-Mart or the mall, no movie on TV to quiet the conversation. They were together.

That is the great good of such a trip. You are with people all day for five days. I haven’t thought of another place or circumstance to vacation where you are with someone all the time.

So,

How was it?

It had its good and bad moments. It had its fun. It had its one great good. Something that I cannot deny, I wrote 30 blog posts about the trip. Everything I write the rest of my life will be influenced by the week. I guess that summarizes it for me. It was a big experience that added to both the breadth and depth of my life.

That is pretty good after all.

From June 28th through July 3rd, I had the privilege of being on a raft on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. This was part of a family trip “for the guys.” On a trip put together by my father-in-law Allan, his two sons, me (a son in law), my three sons, two other grandsons, one grandson-in-law, and one great grandson spent five days and five nights on the Colorado River. These blog posts are part of the story.

We exited the Grand Canyon on Saturday morning. Up with the sun at 5 AM, shave, write in my journal, eat breakfast, pickup the camp site. A 15-minute ride on the rafts took us to the take-out place. Our cast and those of several other rafting trips were taken away by helicopter while other groups were brought in by helicopter. The other groups were to do a two- or three-day trip from this point to Lake Mead - the end of this section of the Colorado River.

The helicopter ride was great fun. This was my first helicopter ride, and if you are to ride in a helicopter once in your life, this is the place to do it - rising out of the Grand Canyon. I loved it.

The helicopter took us to the Bar 10 Ranch. This ranch is some sort of motel on the edge of the Grand Canyon. I don’t know much about it. I do know that it had showers and indoor plumbing. Those were nice after a week of dunking in the cold river and porta-pottys.

I showered, dressed, bought a Coca-Cola in the little store, and sat on a bench on the front porch. It was hot, but there was a little breeze and the front porch provided shade. I sat on the bench with some guy I had never seen before. We talked about nothing and stared into the distance. There is lots of distance here, out west, for the express purpose of staring.

Sitting on this bench was like sitting on the bench in front of the Marble Canyon Lodge some five mornings earlier. I loved it. Just sitting on a bench, sipping a drink, chatting with a stranger, staring into the distance - just relaxing out west.

Sitting on this bench and on that other bench five days before - those two hours were the most enjoyable part of the week for me. I guess that describes who I am. I like to relax on a front porch in the morning. I like to be out west. I like isolated places. I have loved experiences like this my entire life.

These front-porch benches provided expectation and reflection. Five days earlier on that first front-porch bench I was expecting the river trip. Here on this front-porch bench I was reflecting on the river trip.

I loved it - part of the wonder of the Grand Canyon.