WARNING! For some reason these files will not download with Netscape, though they will download through Internet Explorer. I have read a technical explanation of this, but I was too busy to take in the details, and I am unsure about other browsers. Don't blame me!

(Nobody need miss out: the same content is on the Web as http://www.ozemail.com.au/~macinnis/scifun/projects.htm, and also as a PDF file, http://www.ozemail.com.au/~macinnis/scifun/projects.pdf.)

E-books History of Science Science project help Science Yearbooks Science Periodicals Treasury of Science Science Dictopedia Poems Australian Language Other things Tales of Crooked Mick Other things Print books Radio talks The descants

About the planned books All of these books are produced from HTML which has been fed through the Readerworks sausage machine, and squeezed into the .lit format. This means you need to get the Microsoft Reader software, or a device that can read those files. As you may imagine, the hot link to Microsoft takes you to the site where you can download the reader. Once you have downloaded and installed the reader software, you can open a file by clicking on it. The software will suggest that you transfer new books to the "My Library" folder, and this is a good idea -- the folder is inside the "My Documents" folder on your desktop. The books here fall into two classes: those I have done for and through my employer, and those I have done in my own right. That is why you will find different copyrights in them, but as I will be using some of my material in the stuff I do at work, it is more complete to put them all here in one place. E-book retailers please note: please get in touch if you are interested in carrying some of these titles. If they are mine, you have come to the right place, if they are my employer's titles, I will pass you on.

The works

Back to the top

Project help I expect to have the first of these up in late March, and I am still writing the first one, so you will need to be patient for a bit. Among other titles, I expect to do these: Background to doing a project; Preparing collections; Growing living things; Field measurement and mapping; Statistical records and analysis, designing experiments; and Several titles related to sets of the ideas. The target date will be for one a month until July 2001 or beyond, and much of the material will also appear in the Treasury of Science CD-ROM. As indicated above, a draft form of the first title is now available on the Web -- or it will be if I can find enough space for it on my cluttered site. Go to http://www.ozemail.com.au/~macinnis/scifun/projects.lit and remember to download with Internet Explorer.

Back to the top

Science Yearbook 2000 The first of these to be completed is the 275,000 word Webster's Science Yearbook 2000. If you have the Webster's World Encyclopedia CD-ROM 2001 or later, you will already own most of this text in a different form, but you may wish to have it in this portable form as well, though we have left out most illustrations in this e-book version, to reduce the file size, and you miss out on the cross-links to encyclopedia entries. The CD-ROM goes up to October, this version goes to the end of the year. Note that this text will also be on our planned Webster's Treasury of Science CD-ROM, but it will be linked more closely to the other materials on that CD-ROM. This is ready to go, and is only awaiting commercial arrangements before it goes out. I have tried this one on a number of school teachers and science enthusiasts -- it looks as though my instincts were right.

Back to the top

Other Yearbooks Webster's Science Yearbook 1997: this is still in preparation: Target June 2001. Webster's Science Yearbook 1998: this is still in preparation: Target May 2001. Webster's Science Yearbook 1999: this is still in preparation: Target April 2001. The Collected Science Yearbooks is a project that may or may not happen, but if it does happen, it will probably not be until late in 2001, and is likely to include all of 1997-2001, about a million words of new science. These dates may change, depending on commercial considerations.

Back to the top

Science periodicals We may (or may not) issue monthly, quarterly or half-yearly science collections as the year goes by. Watch this space for more details. There is no target date set on this as yet, but it could happen quite soon if we get the right commercial arrangement.

Back to the top

Treasury of Science The Webster's Treasury of Science is a CD-ROM collection of materials aimed to help teachers and students of science. Target date for release: July 2001, but there will be more than 2 million words of original text in this project, so this is open to change. Note: a number of the other projects mentioned here will be integrated into the CD-ROM: the advantage will be that there are subject/content codes used, as well as extensive cross-linking, but it is less easy to carry around. The rationale for this is to provide a monster resource of science ideas and inspiration, along with support for teachers that should help them bring this material into the classroom.

Back to the top

History of Science This is a collection of historical explorations of science as it has developed. There are biographical entries for about 600 scientists, about 8000 timeline entries, and selections from the works of most of the more interesting scientists. To give the reader a context historical and literary figures like Moses, Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and Adolf Hitler appear in their appropriate places. This book was created out of a love of science, but it grew too big ever to go inside the covers of a book -- and besides, it needed hot-linking for it to really work, so here it is, in an appropriate medium. Note that this text will also be on our planned Webster's Treasury of Science CD-ROM, but it will be linked more closely to the other materials when it appears on the CD-ROM. Target date for release: April 2001 -- all I have to do is find the time to convert a marked up text file into HTML, and then fix about 3000 links. Ugh.

Back to the top

The Dictopedia of Science This is a collection of explanations of science ideas and concepts. The idea is that the key terms of science that you hear at the start of the 21st century ought to be explained, either in the Yearbooks or here. The target date for completion is May 2001, and I will be including the same content in the Treasury of Science CD-ROM.

Back to the top

Australian language Want to know how to take a butcher's at something, what to put in a bewdy boddler, or what it means to be as flash as a rat with a gold tooth? This guide reveals all, complete with examples from Shazza, Tezza, Bazza and Johnno, as they discuss semiotics (Tezza thinks this means listening to something with half an ear), post-modernism (Shazza thinks this means replacing the power poles) deconstructionism (Bazza thinks you need a sledgehammer, and so do I, but for a different reason) and more. This one is complete, and a matter of commercial negotiation at the moment.

Back to the top

Crooked Mick of the Speewah Crooked Mick of the Speewah is an Australian folk hero. If you like tall tales, you will love Crooked Mick, but I have to tell you now that everything there is totally true. You can find two free samples called Crooked Mick on the Railway and another called The Great Speewah Flood by clicking on the links here, but it is probably best to read the stories in context. You also get a handy glossary of some of the more unusual Australian terms, and there are usually hotlinks to the glossary from the first use of the term. This is completed and awaiting a suitable commercial arrangement.

Back to the top

Print books Just for completeness, a couple of my children's picture books are still in print, but rather than tell you myself, go to one of the pages about me at Clevertots -- and when you have done with that, give Clevertots themselves a look over -- they are a Brisbane-based educational and book supplier. There is another children's book for Penguin on the way, this one on the Great Barrier Reef, a companion to "The Desert" and "The Rainforest". We plan on calling it "The Reef", and it features the same team of myself on keyboard and reference books, Jane Bowring on blue pencil and Kim Gamble on brushes -- plus a lot of mutual meshing -- Jane does the practical things, and pulls my head out of the clouds, Kim's luminous water-colours make it all spring to life. One of the impediments to this set of plans is that I have just been commissioned to write a book on the natural and social history of sugar for Allen and Unwin. Sugar cane was probably the first crop grown by humans, and it started in New Guinea. At one time, each ton of sugar produced cost a slave's life, sugar cane reached America on Columbus' second voyage, and Australia in the First Fleet. That's all you get for free -- buy the book when it comes out -- if you want to know about the Great Boston Molasses Flood, Queen Elizabeth's teeth, the Anti-saccharites, The Sugarcane, a Poem, and what Doctor Johnson said about it, or Shakepeare's father's breeches. Please email me if you know a particularly interesting fact or five about sugar.

Back to the top

Radio talks One of my hobbies is doing essays for voice, and I have been delivering these in small doses on the ABC Radio National program "Ockham's Razor" since about 1985. If you want, you can find the text of the frogs talk by clicking here. The more recent ones are available on the ABC's Web site as well: in general, go to The ABC site, to see my more recent pieces, starting with a piece on Eucalyptus oil, broadcast August 1997, and smallpox, broadcast November 1997. After that, I got side-tracked and stopped doing them for a while, as I was busy setting-up and managing networks and such soul-destroying stuff. My odd view of the second microbial revolution went to air on April 2, 2000. I followed this with a piece on scientific inference on July 16, 2000, and my look at the life cycles of new technologies will go out in early 2001. I also appear occasionally on the ABC Science Show on ABC Radio National.

Back to the top

Descants I hardly know whether to mention these small essays in etymological exploration of words, across English, and across other languages, which I do for my own amusement. I want to sell them as a print book, but I am likely to end up selling them electronically -- and giving them away by e-mail as I do now, on a list called the Banyan Tree, operating out of E-groups. You will need to watch this spot to see what transpires, but there are now some samples available.

Back to the top