Difference between revisions of "User:Herzbube"

Latest revision as of 13:13, 25 April 2016

Current status

I am usually "working" for ISFDB in bursts of a few days or weeks, then go MIA for a couple of months or half a year. While I am "on it", there is no fixed day of the week when I will be present.

If necessary I can be contacted by email. See below for details.

My interest in ISFDB

Being an avid SF reader, ISFDB of course is on my list of useful Internet resources, alongside other services such as IMDB or Wikipedia. Since I believe in community efforts, I have always felt a diffuse need for contributing something back to those projects that I take advantage of. Unfortunately, most of the time those projects have already passed the stage where I believe my feeble efforts could make any difference. ISFDB on the other hand has opened up for public editing rather recently, so I think that my help could still be of some use.

My interest in SF

I have been reading SF&F, horror and mystery stories since my early teens, but in more recent times SF has become the main focus of my interest. I mostly read for entertainment, currently I prefer older stuff from the 1940-1970ies. I also try to get a vague overview over the history of SF, but I have no real scholarly interest in the field. Although English is not my first language (I am Swiss), I almost exclusively read my books in English - otherwise I would not be here, I guess :-)

Projects / Goals

Enter my not-so-big books collection into the ISFDB [first pass DONE]
Cleanup of Tolkien bibliography. See this sub-page.
Take a closer look at Aldiss' bibliography. This review of Aldiss' The Complete Short Stories: The 1950s has piqued my interest because it mentions that some short stories have appeared under different titles in US & British editions of "Galaxies Like Grains Of Sand" and/or "The Canopy Of Time" (e.g. "The Dark Millennia" also appeared as "O Ishrael"), but those stories appear in the ISFDB as completely separate title records. Something seems amiss. Dear Bill Longley's notes on this wiki page remind me to tread warily, though!
- From my copy of Galaxies Like Grains of Sand it becomes clear that "The Dark Millennia" etc. are merely expository material that, together, form a frame story that connects the actual short stories into a sort of "future history".
- Both the Author's Note and Spinrad's Introduction state that such a linked story arc has been Aldiss' goal from the very beginning, and that the initial publication of the short stories in the UK without the frame story (in Canopy of Time) was against the author's wishes.
- The Author's Note provides interesting insight into the publication history, and also notably mentions that "Blighted Profile" has been rewritten for the first publication of "Galaxies Like Grains of Sand" by Panther.
Learn python and study the code that runs ISFDB, together with its DB schema.
Generate a list of "books that I own", aka shamelessly exploit ISFDB for personal benefit. Maybe I even have to help working on this feature request ☺. See this sub-page for a list of database queries.

Mini projects

Stuff that I encounter during regular editorial work and that takes more time than usual to complete.

Mini projects - TODO

Cleanup of Expanded Universe. Details are outlined on this sub-page.

Mini projects - Done

Delete "Prologue" and "Epilogue" titles for The Fall of the Towers. Discussion of this can be found on the Community Portal.
Regularize excerpt titles in "The Road to Science Fiction" volume 1 and volume 2. Discussion of this can be found on the Help Desk page.

Contact

I have a confirmed email address in my Wiki preferences, so you can simply send me an email.

Links

Home:

List of verified books
Notes about my activities on ISFDB

Feature requests that I am interested in (FR list last scanned on August 12 2014)

Re-submit edits and Edit proposed submission (yes!)
Pubs "owned by me" (yesyesyes!)
Edit history of pubs/titles
Change "titles" to "works" (see the Community Portal discussion leading to the FR)
List PVs with most-recent on top
Show transient PVs
Auto-notify PVs of pub changes
Regex search support
External IDs
Ghostwriter support

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 == Current status ==
-The routine I have currently established is to do work for ISFDB once per week, for one evening/night. There is no fixed day of the week when I will be present.
+I am usually "working" for ISFDB in bursts of a few days or weeks, then go MIA for a couple of months or half a year. While I am "on it", there is no fixed day of the week when I will be present.
-In urgent cases (rather improbable, I'm just a lowly editor :-) I can be contacted by email or (possibly) instant messaging, see below for details.
+If necessary I can be contacted by email. See [[#Contact|below]] for details.
 == My interest in ISFDB ==
 Being an avid SF reader, ISFDB of course is on my list of useful Internet resources, alongside other services such as IMDB or Wikipedia. Since I believe in community efforts, I have always felt a diffuse need for contributing something back to those projects that I take advantage of. Unfortunately, most of the time those projects have already passed the stage where I believe my feeble efforts could make any difference. ISFDB on the other hand has opened up for public editing rather recently, so I think that my help could still be of some use.
 == My interest in SF ==
@@ Line 15: / Line 13: @@
 I have been reading SF&F, horror and mystery stories since my early teens, but in more recent times SF has become the main focus of my interest. I mostly read for entertainment, currently I prefer older stuff from the 1940-1970ies. I also try to get a vague overview over the history of SF, but I have no real scholarly interest in the field. Although English is not my first language (I am Swiss), I almost exclusively read my books in English - otherwise I would not be here, I guess :-)
+== Projects / Goals ==
+* Enter my not-so-big books collection into the ISFDB [first pass DONE]
+* Cleanup of Tolkien bibliography. See [[User:Herzbube/Tolkien|this sub-page]].
+* Take a closer look at Aldiss' bibliography. [http://www.concatenation.org/frev/aldiss_1950s.html This review] of Aldiss' {{P|434433|The Complete Short Stories: The 1950s}} has piqued my interest because it mentions that some short stories have appeared under different titles in US & British editions of "Galaxies Like Grains Of Sand" and/or "The Canopy Of Time" (e.g. "The Dark Millennia" also appeared as "O Ishrael"), but those stories appear in the ISFDB as completely separate title records. Something seems amiss. Dear Bill Longley's notes on [[Author:Brian_W._Aldiss|this wiki page]] remind me to tread warily, though!
+** From my copy of {{P|199181|Galaxies Like Grains of Sand}} it becomes clear that "The Dark Millennia" etc. are merely expository material that, together, form a frame story that connects the actual short stories into a sort of "future history".
+** Both the {{T|270441|Author's Note}} and Spinrad's {{T|133706|Introduction}} state that such a linked story arc has been Aldiss' goal from the very beginning, and that the initial publication of the short stories in the UK without the frame story (in {{T|37621|Canopy of Time}}) was against the author's wishes.
+** The {{T|270441|Author's Note}} provides interesting insight into the publication history, and also notably mentions that "Blighted Profile" has been rewritten for the first publication of "Galaxies Like Grains of Sand" by Panther.
+* Learn python and study the code that runs ISFDB, together with its DB schema.
+* Generate a list of "books that I own", aka shamelessly exploit ISFDB for personal benefit. Maybe I even have to ''help'' working on [https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2883592&group_id=199503&atid=969757 this feature request] ☺. See [[User:Herzbube/DatabaseQueries|this sub-page]] for a list of database queries.
+== Mini projects ==
-== Projects / Goals ==
+Stuff that I encounter during regular editorial work and that takes more time than usual to complete.
-Enter my not-so-big books collection into the ISFDB.
+=== Mini projects - TODO ===
-Learn python and study the code that runs ISFDB, together with its DB scheme.
+* Cleanup of {{T|24384|Expanded Universe}}. Details are outlined on [[User:Herzbube/ExpandedUniverse|this sub-page]].
-Generate a list of "books that I own", aka shamelessly exploit ISFDB for personal benefit. Maybe I even have to ''help'' working on [https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2883592&group_id=199503&atid=969757 this feature request] - mon dieu, quel horreur! :-)
+=== Mini projects - Done ===
+* Delete "Prologue" and "Epilogue" titles for {{T|136425|The Fall of the Towers}}. Discussion of this can be found on the [[ISFDB:Community_Portal#The_Fall_of_the_Towers:_Eliminate_prologue_and_epilogue_title_records|Community Portal]].
+* Regularize excerpt titles in "The Road to Science Fiction" {{T|34616|volume 1}} and {{T|34617|volume 2}}. Discussion of this can be found on the [[ISFDB:Help_desk#Excerpt_titles_that_indicate_the_extent_of_the_excerpt|Help Desk page]].
 == Contact ==
 I have a confirmed email address in my Wiki preferences, so you can simply [[Special:Emailuser/Herzbube|send me an email]].
-Alternatively, you can try to contact me in real time:
-* Via Skype: My Skype name is "patrick.naef".
-* As an experiment, on IRC: For a trial period I am going to hang out on irc.freenode.net, channel #isfdb, while I actively do some work for ISFDB. If you're curious or just want to say hello :-) you can try http://webchat.freenode.net (enter your nick and channel info "isfdb", then hit connect)
 == Links ==
@@ Line 39: / Line 46: @@
 * [http://wiki.herzbube.ch/index.php/SFBooks List of verified books]
 * [http://wiki.herzbube.ch/index.php/ISFDB Notes] about my activities on ISFDB
+Feature requests that I am interested in (FR list last scanned on August 12 2014)
+* [http://sourceforge.net/p/isfdb/feature-requests/67/ Re-submit edits] and [http://sourceforge.net/p/isfdb/feature-requests/21/ Edit proposed submission] (yes!)
+* [http://sourceforge.net/p/isfdb/feature-requests/162/ Pubs "owned by me"] (yesyesyes!)
+* [http://sourceforge.net/p/isfdb/feature-requests/43/ Edit history of pubs/titles]
+* [http://sourceforge.net/p/isfdb/feature-requests/356/ Change "titles" to "works"] (see the [[ISFDB:Community_Portal/Archive/Archive27#.22Titles.22_vs._.22Works.22|Community Portal discussion]] leading to the FR)
+* [http://sourceforge.net/p/isfdb/feature-requests/410/ List PVs with most-recent on top]
+* [http://sourceforge.net/p/isfdb/feature-requests/409/ Show transient PVs]
+* [http://sourceforge.net/p/isfdb/feature-requests/385/ Auto-notify PVs of pub changes]
+* [http://sourceforge.net/p/isfdb/feature-requests/281/ Regex search support]
+* [http://sourceforge.net/p/isfdb/feature-requests/235/ External IDs]
+* [http://sourceforge.net/p/isfdb/feature-requests/346/ Ghostwriter support]