Friday, February 19, 2016

Audio Versions of Tree Planter Training Material

I've been working on a project for the past year and a half that involves a comprehensive training program for first-time tree planters in western Canada.  I've also spent the past week turning all of the information into a series of twenty audio files, to match the twenty videos in the training series.  All of the audio files are in MP3 format, at 320 kbps.  I've posted the files onto my SoundCloud account, in case people want to listen and/or download just individual specific sections.  Also, as an alternative download source, you can go to my public Dropbox folder, then go into the "Canadian Reforestation" section, then into the "Planter Training" section, and see all of the mp3's there too.

djbolivia.ca/dropbox



The final versions of the videos can be found by visiting www.replant.ca/training but for now, here are all the SoundCloud links in one place:


Introduction to the Industry




Why Do We Plant Trees?




Health




Working Safely, Hazards




Rules & Regulations




Camp Life




Map Reading




Nature & The Environment




Basic Silviculture Knowledge




Stock-Handling




Common BC Coniferous Trees




The Planting Prescription




Planting Gear




Planting a Seedling




Meeting Quality Requirements




Spacing, Density, & Excess




Site Preparation




Maximizing Productivity




Behaviours & Attitudes




Wrap Up







 If you'd like to learn more about the Canadian Tree Planting industry, visit:

www.Replant.ca



 If you want to join Replant's tree planter group on Facebook, visit:

facebook.com/groups/replant.ca

 

 





Thursday, February 18, 2016

Introducing the Salmonberry

A couple years ago, I was planting on the coast in the fall.  The owner of the company, Nick, stopped by our room one evening after dinner.  He looked at me, and said, "I'm sorry."  I was puzzled, so I asked him what he was sorry for.  He said, "For tomorrow."  That sounded ominous.

The next morning, seven of us went out to a block together.  At the crew's tailgate safety meeting that morning, Nick had said that we were going to a very challenging block.  It turned out to be two giant patches of salmonberry, over our heads, that needed to be fill planted.  Luckily, the forester had herbicided the block, so although we'd have to work through a fairly thick tangle of brush, at least all the leaves were gone, so we could see where we were going.

It didn't look that bad, and Nina and I set out together on the low side of the road.  After the first four trees, I realized that it was going to be a tough day.  I don't usually bother to ask the tree prices, but I made an exception:  "Hey Nina, did you ask what the price was on this block?"  She said, "Eighty cents."  I started to laugh.  That was the last time that I laughed that day.

The moral of the story is, "When you think you want higher tree prices, sometimes you are wrong."

Anyway, that wasn't the point.  The point is that this purpose of this post is to teach you what salmonberry looks like.  Well, maybe not so much the plants, but at least the berries.  Salmonberry berries are often a very colourful orange-yellow colour, which I've never seen in other berries.



Salmonberry berries can also turn red after a while:




Occasionally, they can get to be quite large:




And most importantly, they're tasty!




So now you know what a salmonberry berry looks like.  Aside from the fact that the plants can grow to be taller than tree planters, and are extremely thorny, and you need a machete to force your way through them, they're a pretty cool plant.  The salmonberry is fairly common in coastal areas throughout British Columbia.

Here's a link to the Wiki, if you want to learn more:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubus_spectabilis



 If you'd like to learn more about the Canadian Tree Planting industry, visit:

www.Replant.ca

 






Sunday, January 11, 2015

Summer 2014 Planting Memories Video

Every summer, I take a video camera with me out tree planting. I don't have a lot of time for filming, but I do generally get to use it occasionally and get three or four hours of footage. And then, after the season is over, I boil that down into three or four minutes of some of the best clips, and turn that into a "Summer Memories" video for Replant.ca, my planting website. I got distracted with other projects for a while this winter, but I recently finished the 2014 video.


Here's a link to the video:





I want to thank Jasmin Frederickson (of Chicken-Like Birds) for providing vocals for the backing track that I wrote, "Time To Plant Some Trees."  If you want to download this song, you can get it from SoundCloud as a free download:


You can find out more about Jasmin at these two sites:
         www.ChickenLikeBirds.com
         WeAreWaterMusic.bandcamp.com



Here are the full lyrics to the music.  I wrote it in C, but this version is performed in E.



“Time To Plant Some Trees” – by Jonathan Clark

Tempo 106bpm, C major, 4/4 time

Chords as follows (I’m writing a chord change every HALF bar here)
  Intro:  C  C  C  C
  Verse:  C  G  Am  Am  F  F  C  G  x 2
               Am  Am  Em  Em  F  F  C  G  x 2
  Chorus:  F  G  C  C
  Bridge:  G  G  F  F  C  C  C  C 
                 G  G  F  F  Am  Am  G  G 
  (single line of chorus repeats four times at end)


Verse 1:

Weary eyed, fumblin’ out of bed
there’s a Chill in my tent, this morning
Check the sky, with a sense of dread
feel relief, I don’t see clouds or storming

Stumble to the mess tent, and make a hasty lunch
the Block treats look quite tasty, I wanna grab a bunch
Steph is laughing in the kitchen, Haley’s making bread
this Heaping plate of food will get me through the day ahead

It’s, almost, time to plant some trees


Verse 2:

No camp meeting, so I go to the truck
“Boots bag shovel water lunch” is my rhyme
the Drive to the block, is, good we don’t get stuck
we Stop and park, the foreman says, it’s tailgate meeting time

the Block today is pretty big, we’ve got to get ‘er done
let’s Work real hard ‘cause staying late, it wouldn’t be much fun
if Everybody plants 2k, that should be enough
Watch for J-roots, close your holes, and don’t plant trees in duff

Bag, up, it’s time to plant some trees


Bridge:

Every day I dream about
the Things I’d rather do
but Working in the city has its
Disadvantages too


Verse 3:

This was day three, tomorrow is day four
Last, day, of the shift, then we’ll have time to rest
Dinner’s over, I am tired and sore
it’s Eight o’clock and I need sleep, I start to get undressed

Planting trees is pretty tough,
the Days are long, the blocks are rough
Swear that this year is my last, but
I know that,  I will be back

Let’s, go, it’s time to plant some trees
Give, me, a creamy section please
Flat, land, easy on the knees
It, is, time to plant some trees


Words and music Copyright 2014, Jonathan Clark.



------------------------------------------------


Follow Jonathan Clark on other sites:
        Twitter: twitter.com/djbolivia
        SoundCloud: soundcloud.com/djbolivia
        YouTube: youtube.com/djbolivia
        Facebook: facebook.com/djbolivia
        Main Site: www.djbolivia.ca
        About.Me: about.me/djbolivia
        Music Blog: djbolivia.blogspot.ca
        MixCloud: mixcloud.com/djbolivia

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Give a Gift to the World - Donate Spare Computer Time for Medical Research

As I write this, depending where you live in the world, today/tomorrow is the Christmas holiday for people of certain religions. Of course, there are billions of people around the world who don't celebrate Christmas, but who celebrate other holidays at certain times of the year when gift-giving is a tradition.

No matter what holidays you celebrate, or when you happen to read this post, how would you like to give a gift to the rest of the world? And it doesn't really cost anything (except a bit of electricity consumption when your computer is turned on).

The gift is participation in a volunteer "grid computing" project. Wait! I know, your eyes started to glaze over when you saw "grid computing."  Please, bear with me for a second!

There are literally hundreds of millions of computers around the world.  Many of them are inexpensive laptops or tablets for personal use.  You might not think that your "old laptop" is very powerful, but the interesting thing is that it is probably only "in use" for about 2-5% of the time when it's turned on.  The rest of the time, it's sitting there waiting for something to do.  Even when it looks busy, because it's streaming music or uploading a YouTube video, the brain of the computer (the CPU) is idle most of the time.

So it's possible (and easy) to set up your computers so when they're turned on but not in use, they're helping solve scientific problems that could benefit millions of people.  For example, my laptop is currently running projects to help study proteins.  This research is useful in fighting diseases such as malaria, cancer, Alzheimer's, and HIV.  My laptop is also helping to catalog a high quality model of our near galaxy.  It's also searching for pulsar stars, and working on a few other projects.  And it's not costing me a penny, other than my electric bill.

Ok, at this point, if you don't want to try to help cure diseases like cancer, Alzheimer's, etc., then you can stop reading.  But if I've aroused your curiosity, let me describe in more detail how it works, and I'll explain some of the specific projects that I'm supporting.


The Software:


The project is called BOINC, which stands for Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing.  Berkeley of course refers to the University of California at Berkeley.  You don't have to be very tech-savvy to make it work on your computer.  The people at Berkley set up the software to try to make it as user-friendly as possible, and to run in the background so you never notice it.

BOINC is currently available for a number of platforms.  For Windows, your computer must be running XP (service pack 2) or a more recently operating system, which should cover 99.98% of all Windows machines still functioning.  For Mac's, you need OS X 10.4 or later.  There are also versions for Linux and for Android, although the Android software is currently not working properly since Lollipop was released.  That should be fixed shortly.

Here is the download page for BOINC:  http://boinc.berkeley.edu/index.php


How It Works:


Basically, an institution that has a very large amount of data to process, but not enough computers to do it, can set up their project with BOINC.  People who decide to contribute computer time to a project will receive small chunks of data to process.  Your computer will spend a few hours or a few days processing this chunk of data, and then sends the results back to the project's institution.  The institution then sends you another chunk of data to work on.  This all happens in the background, so you don't have to spend any time answering or sending emails, etc.  And if you're worried about the internet usage, you can restrict the times that data is sent or received, and you can cap the bandwidth if you want.  But for most people, this won't be a big deal.  The bandwidth that most of these projects will send/receive in a day is probably less than you'd use watching a two-minute YouTube video.  If you're on Android on a phone, you can tell it to wait until you're at a free WiFi point to send/receive, so you don't use any of your mobile data.

The strength of the system is that the institution can be sending chunks of data out to dozens or even thousands of computers all around the world to simultaneously help work on analyzing data!  If you're curious about what happens to data that can't be processed, and whether or not it affects the project, there are safeguards.  For example, if you are processing info for a project and your laptop gets run over by a bus, there are deadlines built into each chunk of data.  So for this example, if the institution doesn't get results back from the data chunk that your computer is working on within say, 30 days, it sends the same chunk out to someone else's computer to analyze.


Slightly Technical Section:


You can ignore this short section if you want to avoid technical stuff!

If you want to really control the parameters for BOINC, you can customize a lot of stuff.  For example, I have mine set up so that after ten minutes of no activity on the computer, it starts to run.  I think this is fairly typical, although maybe the default is one hour.  But as soon as BOINC detects that you're using the computer (either through physical interaction such as a keypress, or high CPU usage such as watching a video) then it suspends operations until it knows that you're not using the laptop yourself.  This way, your laptop is never "slowed down" when you're using it.

For CPU usage, I have mine set so that BOINC doesn't run if my CPU is over 15%.  When it is running, I have it capped at a maximum of 95% of CPU.  For people with advanced graphics cards, which probably isn't a lot of people, you can allow BOINC to use the processing power of your card.  For example, I have a fairly nice nVidia GeForce 870M video card, so that's also helping to do calculations when BOINC is running.  BOINC supports quite a few nVidia and ATI/AMD cards.

From the BOINC Manager program, if you want to get really technical, go into View and switch to Advanced.  Then go into Tools and select Computing Preferences.  This is where you can play with your CPU and network and hard drive usage settings.  You can also determine whether or not it auto-loads when you boot your device, or whether it has to be turned on manually.  You can also temporarily do a suspension of processing with a single click in the Manager program.  For instance, I have mine set up to auto-boot and run most of the time, but just in case, I suspend it when my computer is rendering large video and audio files (although it shouldn't run then anyway because my CPU is too busy).

Although BOINC runs on all major platforms, not all individual projects using BOINC are able to run on all platforms.  For example, many projects can't take advantage of GPU processing, and some projects only run in Windows and Mac environments.


Cool Stuff:


BOINC on all my machines has a screensaver, which I've turned on.  I've matched the screensaver start time to my "start BOINC processing after 10 minutes of downtime" setting, so when BOINC starts, the screensaver comes on.  You don't have to run the screensaver.  However, for some of the projects, it's pretty cool, and it's a nice conversation piece if someone notices it and asks what your computer is doing.  You can tell them that you're saving the world.

To get to your screensaver settings in Windows, go to Control Panel then Display then Personalization.  I have mine set to never blank, run the generic BOINC portion for 1 minutes, then run project screensavers for 1 hour.  So it keeps switching back and forth between the generic one (1 minute long) and then an hour of various project screensavers.  Within the project screensavers, I have it set to switch every 2 minutes, so there's more variety.

Some of the screensavers keep spinning or displaying changing graphics of stuff being studied, so a single screenshot isn't very exciting.  But here are screenshots from two projects that my laptop is running, from the Rosetta and Einstein projects:




These screensavers have captured the attention of many people who have been by my house to visit.


Projects:


Here are some of the projects that I'm supporting.  I have them set to cycle automatically, so my laptop processes one for an hour, then moves on to the next, so they eventually all get an equal share of my computer's time.  In the preferences, you can allocate different percentages of your overall CPU to various projects, in case there are some projects that you want to support more than others.

Milky Way 
This project is creating a highly accurate three dimensional model of the Milky Way galaxy using data gathered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.  They have a facebook page and website and YouTube channel, like many of the other projects.

Rosetta
Determining three dimensional shapes of proteins in research that will hopefully lead to a cure of some major human diseases, including diseases such as HIV, malaria, cancer, Alzheimer's, etc.

SkyNet POGS
An astronomy project studying sixteen different properties of galaxies, and also helping to produce an atlas to help astronomers better understand the distant universe.

MalariaControl
Sponsored by the Swiss Tropical Institute, this project is doing modelling/simulations of large human populations to determine optimal strategies for delivering mosquito nets, chemotheraphy, and new vaccines that are currently under development and testing.

Einstein
Searching for spinning neutron stars (pulsars) using data from the Arecibo observatory.  Volunteers helping with this project have already discovered several dozen pulsars over the past couple years!

SETI
This is the project that got BOINC started over a decade ago.  This project searches through data gathered by various observatories and looks for non-naturally occurring radio signals from outside our solar system, in other words, the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence.  So far, none have been found, but people continue to search.  You probably know this joke: "What's the biggest sign that extra-terrestrial intelligence actually exists?  That they haven't tried to contact us."

World Community Grid
This one, sponsored by IBM, is actually a group of non-profit projects on things like research into HIV/AIDS, cancer, tropical and neglected diseases, solar energy, clean water, and many more.  For instance, there is an Ebola research project available from this group.

If you want to see a more complete list of projects to choose from, go here:

Obviously, there are dozens of projects available to chose from.  You can contribute to just a single project, or you can contribute to a dozen or more.  Your choice.  You'll find that most of the projects specifically fall within research areas within the following fields, due to the data-crunching requirements of these areas of study:  astronomy, math, physics, quantum physics, biology & life sciences, and medicine.  Just remember that you have to install BOINC itself before you start participating in a project.


Getting Started:


After you install the BOINC software, you'll have to go to the "load project" section and pick a project that you want to support.  After that's set up, load another project if you want.  You'll probably be impatient at first to see it start working.  Give it time.  When you first install it, it needs some time to download data to process, to think about how to set things up, and so on.  Also, your stats screens and screen saver will display stats showing how many "work units" your system has completed.  Don't expect those to go up right away!  It may take hours or a day or two before your system finishes processing the first batch of data, then the data has to be sent back to the project sponsor and verified.  So it may look like you've processed 0 units of work for a few days, and then all of a sudden it'll jump up to hundreds or thousands of units processed.  Be patient.


Final Thoughts:


You may wonder how many people are participating in these projects?  As of today, it appears that about 236,000 people from around the world are contributing computer time to various BOINC projects.  They are doing this on about 481,000 computers.  By the way, many users are running BOINC on several machines and tablets and phones simultaneously.  For instance, I have it running on three devices in my house.

There are many web pages showing the stats and progress of various projects.  Some users gather together in "teams" to 

I highly encourage you to contribute to this project.  Seriously, what do you have to lose?  Some people leave their computers running all night, doing nothing!  Think of how good you'll feel if you know that your computer isn't dormant, it's helping advance research in the cure of diseases that kill millions of people every year!

Also, the screensaver options are great.  They've really drawn attention to the project when people see them.  The whole concept is a great conversation starter.  Next time you have friends over to visit, wouldn't it be cool to say, "Hey, I just set my computer up to help study a potential cure for Ebola."

If you're worried about the electric bill, remember that it's not going to cost you anything unless you leave the laptop on longer than you normally would have.  And realistically, leaving a computer on overnight, year-round, to contribute to these projects is not much different than donating $20 once a year to a local charity.

Even if you only have a single computer running the BOINC software, and it's only running a few hours each day, you're still contributing to a great cause.  And what about your computer at work?  If you're not on a special networked computer, maybe that one can also be allowed to BOINC?  You better check your company's policies first, but some companies are fine with this.  After all, it's for a great cause. 

Once again, here's the link to get you started:


Please, share this post with other people you know who might be interested in learning about these projects.  I've just added share/retweet/like buttons below.  There are probably lots of people out there who would love to contribute to some of these projects, but just don't know that the possibility exists.










 





Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Graphene: Atomic-Scale Chicken Wire

This post will be of interest to all my friends who are science geeks, and maybe to some people who play the stock markets with very high-risk and long-range investment strategies. Or perhaps I should say "gambling" strategies. Bear with me here, because if you are a bit of a geek, you'll be really glad to know about this stuff.

I'd imagine that most of you haven't heard of graphene before, if you aren't into the sciences. I first heard about it a couple years ago, when Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for their graphene research. It didn't really come up on my radar again until about seven or eight months ago, although I've been very, very curious about it since then. In the past few weeks, a few articles have hit quasi-mainstream news sites, and a video about graphene went viral a week or so ago, so I figured I'd do a quick write-up.

I think graphene is going to completely change our lives in the future, although it may be five or six years before it starts to have widespread commercial and culturally impacts. But trust me, this is something that you ARE going to hear a lot about within a few years.

Before I continue about graphene, you may think you've heard of it before. Graphite is something that we've all used for years. Graphite (the main component of the "lead" in a pencil), is a crumbly substance that resembles a layer cake of weakly bonded graphene sheets.

In simple terms, to take a line or two directly from wikipedia, "Graphene is a substance composed of pure carbon, with atoms arranged in a regular hexagonal pattern similar to graphite, but in a one-atom thick sheet. It is very light, with a 1-square-meter sheet weighing only 0.77 milligrams. It is an allotrope of carbon whose structure is a single planar sheet of sp2-bonded carbon atoms, that are densely packed in a honeycomb crystal lattice. Graphene is most easily visualized as an atomic-scale chicken wire made of carbon atoms and their bonds. The crystalline or 'flake' form of graphite consists of many graphene sheets stacked together. Graphene is the basic structural element of some carbon allotropes including graphite, charcoal, carbon nanotubes and fullerenes. It can also be considered as an indefinitely large aromatic molecule, the limiting case of the family of flat polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons."

Perhaps that description went over a few heads, especially after the first sentence. Ok, let's make it more simple. Watch this year-old video:





If you really want to get into a deeper understanding of the physical and chemical properties of graphene, click here to read the full, detailed wikipedia article as a starting point. But you don't need to do that. Let's look at it more from a layperson's point-of-view:

Graphene is also flexible, so look at these two graphics to help you envision what I mean. The first is a single-layer graphene conceptualized, and then second makes you think about flexibility.







Back in 2003, I first heard about Peak Oil, and that ended up encouraging me to start learning more about fossil fuels and energy. Energy use and consumption, in all of the possible different forms, is basically the single most important issue affecting the human species in the future. Since 2003, I've quite literally spent more hours researching energy issues than I spent getting my first undergrad degree at Mount Allison. It's been time well spent, because energy consumption and sources are "big picture" items that affect us far, far more than 99.9% of the population could ever hope to understand.

If you pay any attention to energy supply issues yourself, you'll understand that two of the holy grail issues are the fact that a theoretical hydrogen-based economy is highly problematic because hydrogen is a carrier, not a source, and that we as a society have not been able to make great batteries for a variety of reasons.

Let me just show you another video, to give you a better understanding of how exciting this stuff will turn out to be:


The Super Supercapacitor | Brian Golden Davis from Focus Forward Films on Vimeo.


Those of you who understand physics and chemistry probably now realize why graphene can probably change our future completely. Imagine having highly effective and flexible batteries that can be charged almost as quickly as you can feed energy into them, and which you can just throw into a compost heap for recycling. Imagine being able to give your smartphone a full day's charge in one or two seconds. Imagine being able to charge an electric car in under a minute, instead of a few hours (which means that a traditional style "gas" station format would be possible, rather than "park & charge" areas). And of course, that's just a start. There isn't that much more that I need to say about it. If you've followed this far, you'll understand the potential, and you'll be able to do more digging yourself. I'll just leave you with a couple of recent articles to get you started:


http://www.kcet.org/news/rewire/science/super-fast-biodegradable-batteries-made-of-carbon.html

http://www.kcet.org/news/rewire/science/more-good-news-on-those-carbon-supercapacitors.html




Edit, March 19th: Here's a good article about the potential use of graphene in water desalinization:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/13/us-usa-desalination-idUSBRE92C05720130313




Follow Jonathan Clark on other sites:
        Twitter: twitter.com/djbolivia
        About.Me: about.me/djbolivia


Monday, February 11, 2013

Differences between Gasoline & Diesel, as Fuels and in Engines

Tree planting companies go through a lot of fuel each summer, and most companies have mixed needs for gasoline (called petrol in Europe) and diesel fuels. More often than anyone would like to admit, people put the wrong fuels into equipment or vehicles, damaging the engines and necessitating expensive repairs. To try to reduce the number of incidents in the industry, I just put together a 25-minute video that explains, among other things:
- The different properties of gasoline vs. diesel.
- Differences in gasoline and diesel engines.
- Storage and labelling.
- Handling tips.

If you don't want to read any of the info in the blog post below, you can skip all of it and just sit back and watch the video, which is probably more comprehensive anyway:





Here's a partial summary of the content of the video:


Reasons why you don’t use the wrong fuel in an engine:
Diesel in a gas engine isn’t great. But gas in a diesel is much worse: very, very bad. Modern “fuel injectors” in diesel engines do NOT tolerate gasoline. Or water, for that matter. Or dirt. Replacing an injector is around two thousand dollars right now. Always make sure that you’re actually putting diesel into a diesel engine, and make sure it’s clean. Don’t use jerry cans if you can see dirt or water inside. Make sure you never leave the cap off of a tidy tank, because if it rains, you’ll get water in the tank which will go on to harm another truck.

What’s the difference between an engine and a motor?
Well, technically, they’re the same thing, or at least started out that way. In Latin, there was a term “ingenium” which gave the French the term “engin.” That later became “engine” in English. The word “gin” (as in cotton gin) also came from this root, since the cotton gin was a type of machine. Anyway, the term motor wasn’t really invented until about a century ago, and initially referred to internal combustion engines. However, common usage has changed it. There are no real clear definitions, but you can assume that an engine transforms matter interally, whereas a motor doesn’t transform any type of matter and derives its energy from an external source. So an electric motor has no moving parts, but the electricity (which comes from an external source) allows it to produce work (such as a rotating shaft). The steam engine, which was an "external combustion engine" because the steam was produced externally (in a boiler) should probably be considered a motor. The definitions are pretty vague though, and the two words are constantly interchanged in everyday use.

Chemical differences between gasoline and diesel:
Well, first they smell different, but you really have to smell both types repeatedly to learn the smells. In general, diesel smells almost sweeter (to me) and doesn’t make me sick to my stomach. However, a strong odor of gasoline will make me feel nauseated fairly quickly. If you get some on your hand, gasoline is quite thin and on a warm day will evaporate quite quickly, whereas diesel feels quite greasy. Gasoline doesn’t really change its consistency as it gets colder, but diesel does increase in viscosity, getting slightly thicker. And important, diesel burns at a lower temperature. Diesel will ignite at 210 degrees Celsius and gasoline ignites at 246 degrees. I’ll explain why this is important in a few minutes. Incidentally, gasoline is quite explosive, whereas diesel isn’t. That’s because gasoline has a much lower vapour point, so it evaporates much more quickly than diesel. Essentially, the difference between diesel burning and gas exploding is just the speed of the oxidation reaction (the flames). Diesel combusts very slowly, which we see as “burning,” and gas combusts very quickly, which we see as an explosion.

Products that are closely related to diesel:
There are several different types of diesel, but they are all quite similar in chemical composition. Interestingly, home heating oil, kerosene, jet fuel, and agricultural diesel are all very similar to the normal diesel sold at service stations. In fact, people can generally burn various types of diesel, kerosene, and jet fuel in home heating furnaces. Speaking of kerosene, some camps carry kerosene for use in large heaters for “dry tent” facilities. Basically, kerosene and jet fuel are just slightly more refined grades of diesel, with less wax content. So it's OK to burn kerosene or jet fuel in a diesel engine, but I wouldn't recommend that you try burning diesel in a space heater or a helicopter.

Clear versus Dyed fuels:
Gas and diesel are both generally sold as either “clear” or “dyed” if you go to a bulk station or cardlock facility, although normal consumer services stations usually only have “clear” gas and diesel unless you're in a fairly rural area. The difference between the two lies in the taxes added to the price. Dyed diesel is intended for farm, logging, or other types of off-road use, and does not cost as much as clear diesel, even though they are the same chemical composition. Essentially, you might say that the taxes are higher on clear diesel because the extra money goes to help fund the public highway system. Or if you want an alternative way of looking at it, farm fuel and heating oil is cheaper because it’s considered to be more of a necessity, whereas diesel for public highway use is considered to be more of a luxury.

Diesel versus Gasoline Engines:
Did you know that a diesel doesn’t have spark plugs? That’s pretty strange, eh? No fire to light the fuel. Basically, a gasoline engine is known as a “spark ignition” system, because the gas is ignited by a spark from the spark plug. However, a diesel is known as a “compression ignition system.” Let me get more basic for a second. Both types of engines have cylinders. The fuel, regardless of whether it is diesel or gasoline, burns in a cylinder and this combustion causes the piston to move within the cylinder, and that piston movement drives the rest of the engine. So anyway, with a gasoline engine, gas is mixed with air, because you need oxygen for fire, and that is injected into the cylinder, then the spark plug provides a spark which ignites the fuel/air mixture to move the piston. However, diesel doesn’t need that spark. You see, if you took physics in high school, you might remember that when the pressure of a gas (and by that I mean real gas, like oxygen, not an abbreviation for gasoline) increases, its temperature rises. So in a diesel engine, it is ONLY air that is compressed, and it gets very hot when it is compressed because the high pressure causes the temperature to spike. Then diesel is spayed into the cylinder by the fuel injector, and since diesel lights at 210 celsius, and the compressed air is hotter than that, the diesel will burn. Again, it is more of a “burn” than an “explosion.” The gas engine is a bunch of mini explosions. Now of course, a cold diesel engine makes it hard for the diesel to ignite, even when the air is compressed, so that’s what the glow plug is for. It just warms up the cylinders for a few seconds when you turn the cold truck on, to get the whole processes started. But after the truck has run for a few seconds, the metal of the cylinder is warm enough that the compressed air is sufficient warm to keep things going. Anyway, that’s all kinds of info that a regular lay person doesn’t necessarily need to know, but it’s good for a tree planter. That’s because planters deal with a number of different engines in camp, and most camps use both gas and diesel. So let’s focus on how to keep them separate, because that’s the most important lesson that you should get out of this video.

Labelling and identifying:
There are a couple ways to commonly label or identify gas and diesel. A person shouldn’t have to rely on smelling them to figure out what type of fuel you have. The first way to tell them apart is the UN Number. The UN number is a four-digit code system that was invented by the United Nations to label hazardous materials. The UN code for diesel is 1202, and the code for gasoline is 1203. This isn’t really easy to remember, so the way I remember it is that the word diesel starts with a “lower” letter in the alphabet, and the UN number is also lower. The other way to distinguish the two fuels is by the colour of the containers. Gasoline is always stored in red containers, and diesel is always stored in yellow containers. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about a small portable plastic jerry can, which usually holds about 25 litres, or a large “tidy tank” or “slip tank” mounted on the back of a pickup, which often hold around 440 litres. This is important: you should NEVER allow diesel to be put into a red container, and you should NEVER allow gasoline to be put into a yellow container. Even if you want to do that because you don’t have another container, and you think it’s OK because you can put a label on it, mistakes happen. Someone might somehow grab that container and not realize that the wrong type of fuel is in it, and put that wrong fuel into an engine and destroy a vehicle or piece of equipment. I cannot emphasize this too strongly. Red is for Gasoline. Yellow is for Diesel.

Which engines require which fuels?
Next, you need to completely understand what type of fuel goes into an engine. In General, small engines take gasoline. So portable waters pumps, generators, and quads or ATV’s usually take gasoline. But it is possible to buy bigger generators, such as a 6000w generator, that run on diesel. Some planting camps use these, so if you’re uncertain about what type of fuel goes into a piece of equipment, ask someone who is absolutely a safe source of information. Ask your cook, ask a foreman, or ask a supervisor. For vehicles, some camps use gasoline trucks and some use diesels, and some run both types. There should always be a sticker beside the fuel tank to clarify the type of fuel that is required for the vehicle. And it is also a good practice to ensure that the designated driver of a vehicle is the only person who ever puts fuel into the vehicle.

Conclusions:
That’s all I have to say about fuels, and if everyone in our industry understands what I’ve just talked about, we run a much lower chance of damaging equipment. And that’s good, because I’d rather see money being paid out as a higher tree price than being used to pay for senseless repairs. Remember, red for gasoline, and yellow for diesel. There should only be designated people who fuel up generators and vehicles. If you’re fueling something, make absolutely sure you know what type of fuel it needs. And finally, always replace the caps on tidy tanks and fuel barrels after filling them or removing fuel from them, so rain can’t get in to the containers.



Follow Jonathan Clark on other sites:
        Twitter: twitter.com/ReplantCanada
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        YouTube: youtube.com/djbolivia
        Facebook: facebook.com/djbolivia
        Main Site: www.djbolivia.ca

 

 My most well-known book (over ten thousand copies distributed) is called "Step By Step, A Tree Planter's Handbook."  For a free copy, visit this page:

www.replant.ca/digitaldownloads

 




Sunday, November 11, 2012

My Little Library

Time to share a book list.

All of my life, I've been a pretty heavy reader. Some people think it's a problem when they pick up a book, and can't put it down, so they just keep reading until the middle of the night when they finish it. I've done that countless numbers of times, and fairly often, I'll even start another book once the first one is finished.

I'm a huge fan of real, paper books that you can hold in your hand. But despite that, I'm not one of these pretentious people who completely eschews technology. I have a couple of e-book readers (the Nexus 7 is my preferred reader). Most of the time, I'd prefer a paper version of a book, but the e-book reader is handy to carry around when I'm travelling and I don't want to carry an armload of real books. It's also good because I can keep a number of reference books on it that I don't refer to very often, but they're handy when I'm working on music or computer projects and I don't have internet access.


My physical library at home is getting to be pretty big, but I've been trying to build an electronic library too. I'm going to print a directory listing from that library in a minute, because I've been talking about books with a couple of people and this will be an easy way to share. Of course, it's not as extensive as my paper library, but it's getting to be more comprehensive every week.

Most of what I read can be grouped into major categories. In order, from the stuff I read the most to the least, they'd be:

     - Science Fiction/Fantasy (more emphasis on the SF, ie. Asimov, Heinlein)
     - Mysteries/Crime/Legal (ie. Agatha Christie, John Grisham, Sue Grafton)
     - Drama (ie. Tom Clancy)
     - Classic Literature
     - Modern Bestsellers
     - Computers/Technology
     - Cooking/Food
     - Children’s Books
     - Miscellaneous

Edit:  By the way, if you didn't know, I'm also an author.  Here's a link to a couple of the books that I've written about tree planting, and you can get a free digital download of "Step By Step" if you follow the links through to the digital downloads page:  www.jonathanclark.ca/reforestation.html



Remember that the listing I paste here in a minute is just my electronic library. There are a lot of notable omissions from this list that I actually do own at home in hard copy. I haven't read all of the books on the list below. I'd guess that I've read a bit over eighty-five percent of them so far, so there are still sixty or seventy in the list below that are on my short-term "to read" list. One of my problems is that once I read a book once, if I like it, I'll often read it again the following year. Of the books on the following list that I've read, about half are volumes that I've read once, and the other half I've probably read about three times each on average. I'm sure that I've read quite a few of them (like Lord of the Rings, the John Carter of Mars series, and many of the Grisham and Agatha Christie and Asimov books) at least half a dozen times each. I'm a fairly fast reader, by the way.

Anyway, so here's my current eBook library listing, for those of you who like to recommend books to me:



Adrian Johns - Piracy, The Intellectual Property Wars.mobi
Aesop - Fables.mobi
Agatha Christie - 450 From Paddington.lit
Agatha Christie - A Caribbean Mystery.lit
Agatha Christie - A Murder Is Announced.lit
Agatha Christie - A Pocket Full Of Rye.lit
Agatha Christie - At Betram's Hotel.lit
Agatha Christie - Best Detective Stories Of Agatha Christie.lit
Agatha Christie - Body In The Library.lit
Agatha Christie - Burden.lit
Agatha Christie - Complete Short Stories Of Miss Marple.lit
Agatha Christie - Death On The Nile.lit
Agatha Christie - Elephants Can Remember.lit
Agatha Christie - Evil Under The Sun.lit
Agatha Christie - Hercule Poirot's Christmas.lit
Agatha Christie - Hickory Dickory Death.lit
Agatha Christie - Lord Edgware Dies.lit
Agatha Christie - Murder At The Vicarage.lit
Agatha Christie - Murder In Mesopotamia.lit
Agatha Christie - Murder In Retrospect.lit
Agatha Christie - Murder Of Roger Ackroyd.lit
Agatha Christie - Murder On The Links.lit
Agatha Christie - Murder On The Orient Express.lit
Agatha Christie - Mysterious Affair At Styles.lit
Agatha Christie - Mysterious Mr Quin.lit
Agatha Christie - Partners In Crime.lit
Agatha Christie - Poirot Loses A Client.lit
Agatha Christie - Poirot's Early Cases.lit
Agatha Christie - Pricking Of My Thumbs.lit
Agatha Christie - Secret Adversary.lit
Agatha Christie - Sleeping Murder.lit
Agatha Christie - The Circular Staircase.lit
Agatha Christie - The Clocks.lit
Agatha Christie - The Man In Lower Ten.lit
Agatha Christie - The Moving Finger.lit
Agatha Christie - The Murder At The Vicarage.lit
Agatha Christie - The Mysterious Affair At Styles.lit
Agatha Christie - The Secret Adversary.lit
Agatha Christie - They Do It With Mirrors.lit
Agatha Christie - Third Girl.lit
Agatha Christie - Why Didn't They Ask Evans.lit
AJ Jacobs - The Year Of Living Biblically.mobi
Alain De Botton - A Week At The Airport.mobi
Alan Paul - Big In China, My Unlikely Adventures.mobi
Alan Weisman - The World Without Us.mobi
Aldous Huxley - Brave New World.mobi
Alessandro Alciato - The Beautiful Games Of An Ordinary Genius.mobi
Alex Haley - Roots.mobi
Alexandra Horowitz - Inside Of A Dog.mobi
Alexandre Dumas - The Three Musketeers.mobi
Alice Munro - Too Much Happiness.mobi
Amelia Jeanroy - Canning & Preserving For Dummies.mobi
Amy Tan - The Joy Luck Club.mobi
Anne Frank - Diary Of A Young Girl.mobi
Anne McCaffrey - The Dragonriders Of Pern.mobi
Anthony Bourdain - Kitchen Confidential.mobi
Anthony Bourdin - In Search Of The Perfect Meal.mobi
Anthony Burgess - A Clockwork Orange.mobi
Arthur C Clarke - Childhood's End.mobi
Arthur C Clarke - Rendezvous With Rama.mobi
Arthur Golden - Memoirs Of A Geisha.mobi
Asimov & Bear - Foundation And Chaos [2F2].lit
Asimov & Benford - Foundation's Fear [2F1].lit
Asimov & Brin - Foundation's Triumph [2F3].lit
Audrey Niffenegger - The Time Traveller's Wife.mobi
Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged.mobi
Ayn Rand - The Fountainhead.mobi
Barbara Kingsolver - The Poisonwood Bible.mobi
Barbara Obermier - Photoshop CS5 For Dummies.pdf
Ben H Winters - Sense And Sensibility And Sea Monsters.mobi
Bill Buford - Heat.mobi
Bill Jamison - Around The World In 80 Dinners.mobi
Bobby Flay - Throwdown.mobi
Boris Pasternak - Doctor Zhivago.mobi
Bret Easton Ellis - American Psycho.mobi
Bryce Courtenay - Brother Fish.mobi
Bryce Courtenay - Smoky Joe's Cafe.mobi
Bryce Courtenay - The Power Of One.mobi
Carl E Walter - Red Capitalism.mobi
Carl Sagan - Contact.mobi
Carl Sagan - Cosmos.mobi
Carl Sagan - Pale Blue Dot.mobi
Charles Dickens - David Copperfield.mobi
Charles Dickens - Great Expectations.mobi
Charles Dickens - Ye Olde Curiousity Shoppe.mobi
Charles Dickins - A Tale Of Two Cities.mobi
Charlie Nardozzi - Vegetable Gardening For Dummies.mobi
Chelsea Handler - Are You There, Vodka.mobi
Chelsea Handler - Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang.mobi
Chelsea Handler - My Horizontal Life.mobi
Christine Freehan - Dark Descent.mobi
Christopher Hadnagy - Social Engineering.mobi
Chuck Klosterman - On Film And Television.mobi
Chuck Klosterman - On Media And Culture.mobi
Chuck Klosterman - On Pop.mobi
Chuck Klosterman - On Rock.mobi
Chuck Klosterman - Sex, Drugs, And Cocoa Puffs.mobi
Ciril Hitz - Baking Artisan Bread.mobi
CS Lewis - Prince Caspian [CN4].mobi
CS Lewis - The Horse And His Boy [CN3].mobi
CS Lewis - The Last Battle [CN7].lit
CS Lewis - The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe [CN1].mobi
CS Lewis - The Magician's Nephew [CN2].mobi
CS Lewis - The Silver Chair [CN6].mobi
CS Lewis - The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader [CN5].mobi
Dale Carson - Arrest Proof Yourself.opf
Dan Brown - Angels & Demons.mobi
Dan Brown - Deception Point.mobi
Dan Brown - Digital Fortress.lrf
Dan Brown - The Da Vinci Code.mobi
Dan Brown - The Lost Symbol.mobi
Daniel Halpern - Not For Bread Alone.mobi
Daniel Keyes - Flowers For Algernon.mobi
Daniel Yergin - The Prize.epub
Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy.lit
Darrell L Bock - Breaking The Da Vinci Code.lit
David Thorne - The Internet Is A Playground.mobi
DH Lawrence - Lady Chatterley's Lover.mobi
DH Lawrence - Sons And Lovers.txt
Dominique Adair - Last Kiss.lit
Douglas Adams - Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy [HHGG1].lit
Douglas Adams - Life, The Universe, And Everything [HHGG3].lit
Douglas Adams - Mostly Harmless [HHGG5].lit
Douglas Adams - So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish [HHGG4].lit
Douglas Adams - The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe [HHGG2].lit
E L James - Fifty Shades Darker [FS2].epub
E L James - Fifty Shades Freed [FS3].epub
E L James - Fifty Shades Of Grey [FS1].epub
Edgar Rice Burroughs - A Fighting Man Of Mars [JCM07].lit
Edgar Rice Burroughs - A Princess Of Mars [JCM01].lit
Edgar Rice Burroughs - John Carter Of Mars [JCM11].lit
Edgar Rice Burroughs - Llana Of Gathol [JCM10].lit
Edgar Rice Burroughs - Master Mind Of Mars [JCM06].lit
Edgar Rice Burroughs - Swords Of Mars [JCM08].lit
Edgar Rice Burroughs - Synthetic Men Of Mars [JCM09].lit
Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Gods Of Mars [JCM02].lit
Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Warlord of Mars [JCM03].lit
Edgar Rice Burroughs - Thuvia Maid Of Mars [JCM04].lit
Emeril Lagasse - Farm To Fork.mobi
Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights.lit
Eric Schlosser - Fast Food Nation.mobi
Erica Bauermeister - The Monday Night Cooking School.mobi
Erich Maria Remarque - All's Quiet On The Western Front.mobi
Ernest Hemingway - For Whom The Bell Tolls.mobi
Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man And The Sea.mobi
Ernest Hemingway - The Sun Also Rises.mobi
Evan Mandery - First Contact.mobi
F Scott Fitzgerald - The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button.mobi
F Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby.mobi
Frank Herbert - Dune.mobi
Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Crime And Punishment.lit
Gabriel Cousens - Conscious Eating.mobi
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - One Hundred Years Of Solitude.mobi
Gabrielle Hamilton - Blood, Bones, And Butter.mobi
Garrison Keillor - Leaving Home.lit
Garry Poole - The Complete Book Of Questions.pdf
Gary Small - The Naked Lady Who Stood On Her Head.mobi
Gary Taubes - Good Calories, Bad Calories.mobi
George Carlin - Napalm And Silly Putty.mobi
George Carlin - When Will Jesus Bring The Pork Chops.mobi
George Orwell - 1984.lrf
George Orwell - Animal Farm.lrf
George Orwell - Nineteen Eighty Four.mobi
George RR Martin - A Clash of Kings [GOT 02].mobi
George RR Martin - A Feast for Crows [GOT 04].mobi
George RR Martin - A Game Of Thrones [SOIF 01].mobi
George RR Martin - A Storm of Swords [SOIF 03].mobi
Gordon Ramsay - Cooking For Friends.mobi
Harold McGee - On Food And Cooking.mobi
Harper Lee - To Kill A Mockingbird.mobi
Harriet Beecher Stowe - Uncle Tom's Cabin.mobi
Heidi Murkoff - What To Expect When You're Expecting.mobi
Hervé This - Kitchen Mysteries.mobi
Herve This - The Science Of The Oven.mobi
HG Wells - The War Of The Worlds.mobi
Hunter S Thompson - Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas.mobi
Hunter S Thompson - Hell's Angels.mobi
Hunter S Thompson - The Great Shark Hunt.mobi
Hunter S Thompson - The Rum Diary.lit
Irvine Welsh - Trainspotting.mobi
Isaac Asimov - Azazel.epub
Isaac Asimov - Best Of Isaac Asimov.epub
Isaac Asimov - Buy Jupiter And Other Stories.epub
Isaac Asimov - Complete Robot.epub
Isaac Asimov - Earth Is Room Enough.epub
Isaac Asimov - Forward The Foundation [1F10].lit
Isaac Asimov - Forward the Foundation [1F2].epub
Isaac Asimov - Foundation [1F3].epub
Isaac Asimov - Foundation And Earth [1F6].lit
Isaac Asimov - Foundation's Edge [1F5].lit
Isaac Asimov - Foundation's Friends Short Story Collection.lit
Isaac Asimov - Gold, The Final Science Fiction Collection.epub
Isaac Asimov - I, Robot.epub
Isaac Asimov - Mysteries.epub
Isaac Asimov - Nightfall & Other Stories.epub
Isaac Asimov - Nightfall Two.epub
Isaac Asimov - Nine Tomorrows.epub
Isaac Asimov - Pebble In The Sky.epub
Isaac Asimov - Prelude to Foundation [1F1].epub
Isaac Asimov - Robot Dreams.epub
Isaac Asimov - Robot Visions.epub
Isaac Asimov - Robots & Empire.epub
Isaac Asimov - Robots Of Dawn.epub
Isaac Asimov - Second Foundation [1F4].lit
Isaac Asimov - Stars, Like Dust.epub
Isaac Asimov - The Bicentennial Man & Other Stories.epub
Isaac Asimov - The Caves of Steel.epub
Isaac Asimov - The Complete Stories.epub
Isaac Asimov - The Currents of Space.epub
Isaac Asimov - The Martian Way.epub
Isaac Asimov - The Naked Sun.epub
Isaac Asimov - The Positronic Man.epub
Isaac Asimov - The Rest Of The Robots.epub
Isaac Asimov - The Union Club Mysteries.epub
Isak Dinesen - Out Of Africa.lit
Jack Kerouac - On the Road.lit
Jack Kerouac - On The Road.mobi
Jack Kerouac - The Dharma Bums.mobi
Jack London - Call Of The Wild.lit
Jack London - The Call of the Wild, White Fang.mobi
James Cain - The Postman Always Rings Twice.lit
James Fenimore Cooper - Last Of The Mohicans.mobi
James Fenimore Cooper - The Deerslayer.mobi
James Herriott - All Creatures Great And Small.lit
Jane Austen - Pride And Prejudice.lit
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte.mobi
Jared M Diamond - Guns, Germs, And Steel.mobi
JD Salinger - Catcher In The Rye.mobi
Jeff Potter - Cooking For Geeks.mobi
Jesse Ventura - 63 Documents The Government Doesn't Want You To See.mobi
Jessica Amason - This Is Why You're Fat.mobi
John Allen Paulos - Innumeracy.mobi
John Brunner - The Sheep Look Up.lit
John Erickson - Hacking, The Art of Exploitation.mobi
John Gray - Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.lit
John Grisham - A Painted House.mobi
John Grisham - A Time To Kill.mobi
John Grisham - The Appeal.mobi
John Grisham - The Associate.mobi
John Grisham - The Brethren.mobi
John Grisham - The Broker.mobi
John Grisham - The Chamber.mobi
John Grisham - The Client.mobi
John Grisham - The Confession.mobi
John Grisham - The Firm.mobi
John Grisham - The Innocent Man.mobi
John Grisham - The King Of Torts.mobi
John Grisham - The Last Juror.mobi
John Grisham - The Partner.mobi
John Grisham - The Pelican Brief.mobi
John Grisham - The Rainmaker.mobi
John Grisham - The Runaway Jury.mobi
John Grisham - The Street Lawyer.mobi
John Grisham - The Summons.mobi
John Grisham - The Testament.mobi
John Grogan - Marley And Me.mobi
John Irving - A Prayer For Owen Meany.lit
John Le Carre - Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.lit
John Steinbeck - Cannery Row.mobi
John Steinbeck - East Of Eden.mobi
John Steinbeck - Of Mice And Men.mobi
John Steinbeck - Once There Was A War.mobi
John Steinbeck - The Grapes Of Wrath.mobi
John Steinbeck - The Harvest Gypsies.mobi
John Steinbeck - The Log From The Sea Of Cortez.mobi
John Steinbeck - The Moon Is Down.mobi
John Steinbeck - The Pearl.mobi
John Steinbeck - The Red Pony.mobi
John Steinbeck - To A God Unknown.mobi
John Steinbeck - Tortilla Flat.mobi
John Truby - The Anatomy Of Story.mobi
John Wyndham - The Chrysalids.mobi
Joseph Conrad - The Heart Of Darkness.lit
Joseph Heller - Catch 22.lit
JRR Tolkien - Lord Of The Rings.mobi
JRR Tolkien - The Fellowship Of The Ring.mobi
JRR Tolkien - The Hobbitt.mobi
JRR Tolkien - The Return Of The King.mobi
JRR Tolkien - The Two Towers.mobi
Judy Allen - Confessions Of An Event Planner.mobi
Justin Halpern - Shit My Dad Says.mobi
Keith Richards - Life.mobi
Ken Kesey - One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.mobi
Kenneth Grahame - The Wind In The Willows.mobi
Kevin Poulsen - Kingpin.mobi
Kurt Vonnegut - Breakfast Of Champions.mobi
Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse Five.mobi
Laney Salisbury - Provenance.mobi
Larsson Steig - The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest.lrf
Larsson Steig - The Girl Who Played With Fire.lrf
Larsson Steig - The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.lrf
Learning Python - Mark Lutz.mobi
Lewis Carroll - Alice's Adventures In Wonderland.lit
Lewis Carroll - Through The Looking Glass.lit
Linda West Eckhardt - The High Protein Cookbook.mobi
Louis Debernieres - Captain Corelli's Mandolin.lit
Madeleine L'Engle - A Wrinkle In Time.mobi
Margaret Atwood - Oryx and Crake.mobi
Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin.lit
Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale.lrf
Margaret Atwood - The Year of the Flood.mobi
Margaret Mitchell - Gone With The Wind.mobi
Marian Keyes - Sushi For Beginners.mobi
Mario Livio - The Golden Ratio.mobi
Mario Puzo - The Godfather.mobi
Mark Bittman - Food Matters.mobi
Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time.lit
Martin Jacques - What To Expect When China Rules The World.mobi
Masanobu Fukuoka - The One Straw Revolution.mobi
Melissa Bank - The Girl's Guide To Hunting And Fishing.lit
Michael Crichton - Airframe.lit
Michael Crichton - Andromeda Strain.lit
Michael Crichton - Binary.lit
Michael Crichton - Congo.lit
Michael Crichton - Disclosure.lit
Michael Crichton - Eaters Of The Dead.lit
Michael Crichton - Endstation.lit
Michael Crichton - Jurassic Park.lit
Michael Crichton - Prey.lit
Michael Crichton - Sphere.lit
Michael Crichton - State Of Fear.lit
Michael Crichton - The Lost World.lit
Michael Crichton - Timeline.lit
Michael Ende - The Neverending Story.lit
Michael Pollan - The Omnivore's Dilemma.mobi
Michael Ruhlman - The Reach Of A Chef.mobi
Michael Schrenk - Webbots, Spiders, And Screen Scrapers.mobi
Miguel De Cervantes - Don Quixote.lit
Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book Of Apocalyptic Science Fiction.mobi
Mike Riley - Programming Your Home.epub
Mitch Albom - Tuesdays With Morrie.lit
Moby Dick - Herman Melville.mobi
Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins.mobi
Mykle Hansen - Help, A Bear Is Eating Me.mobi
Nancie McDermott - Quick And Easy Chinese.mobi
Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Scarlett Letter.lit
Neil deGrasse Tyson - Death By Black Hole.mobi
Neil Jackson - The Outsiders.mobi
Nick Douglas - Twitter Wit.mobi
Nick Hornby - High Fidelity.lit
Nicole Mones - Lost In Translation.mobi
Nikki Sixx - The Heroin Diaries.mobi
Nitesh Dhanjani - Hacking, The Next Generation.mobi
Norton Juster - The Phantom Tollbooth.mobi
Novella Carpenter - Farm City.mobi
Ode Ogebe - Achebe's Things Fall Apart.mobi
Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray.mobi
Patricia Cornwall - The Last Precinct.lrf
Patricia Cornwall - Trace.lrf
Patricia Cornwell - All That Remains.lit
Patricia Cornwell - Black Notice.lit
Patricia Cornwell - Blow Fly.lrf
Patricia Cornwell - Body Farm.lit
Patricia Cornwell - Body Of Evidence.lit
Patricia Cornwell - Cause Of Death.lit
Patricia Cornwell - Cruel And Unusual.lit
Patricia Cornwell - From Potter's Field.lit
Patricia Cornwell - Hornets Nest.lit
Patricia Cornwell - Isle Of Dogs.lit
Patricia Cornwell - Last Precinct.lit
Patricia Cornwell - Point Of Origin.lit
Patricia Cornwell - Postmortem.lit
Patricia Cornwell - Predator.lrf
Patricia Cornwell - Scarpetta.lrf
Patricia Cornwell - Scarpetta's Winter Table.lit
Patricia Cornwell - Southern Cross.lit
Patricia Cornwell - The Body Farm.lit
Patricia Cornwell - The Scarpetta Factor.lrf
Patricia Cornwell - Unnatural Exposure.lit
Patricia Cornwell - Unnatural Exposure.lrf
Peter Hessler - Country Driving, A Journey Through China.mobi
Peter Hessler - River Town, Two Years On The Yangtze.mobi
Ray Bradbury - Death Is A Lonely Business.lit
Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451.lit
Ray Bradbury - Something Wicked This Way Comes.lit
Ray Bradbury - The Martian Chronicles.lit
Raymond Charles Barrett - Short Story Writing.mobi
Richard Adams - Watership Down.mobi
Richard Neer - FM, The Rise And Fall Of Rock Radio.mobi
Roald Dahl - Charlie And The Chocolate Factory.lit
Roald Dahl - Charlie And The Great Glass Elevator.lit
Roald Dahl - James And The Giant Peach.lrf
Robert Anton Wilson - Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy.mobi
Robert Ludlum - The Bourne Identity [B1].lit
Robert Ludlum - The Bourne Supremacy [B2].lit
Robert Ludlum - The Bourne Ultimatum [B3].lit
Robert M Pirsig - Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance.mobi
Robert Sullivan - Rats, New York's Most Unwanted.mobi
Robertson Davies - Fifth Business.lit
Robertson Davies - The Manticore.lit
Robertson Davies - World Of Wonders.lit
Robin Cook - Acceptable Risk.lit
Robin Cook - Blindsight.lit
Robin Cook - Brain.lit
Robin Cook - Chromosome 6.lit
Robin Cook - Coma.lit
Robin Cook - Contagion.lit
Robin Cook - Fatal Cure.lit
Robin Cook - Godplayer.lit
Robin Cook - Harmful Intent.lit
Robin Cook - Outbreak.lit
Robin Cook - Toxin.lit
Robin Cook - Vital Signs.lit
Roni Sarig - The Secret History Of Rock.mobi
Roy Peter Clark - Writing Tools.mobi
Rudyard Kipling - The Jungle Book.lit
Russell Aiuto - Lizzie Borden Took An Axe.lit
Samuel Beckett - Waiting For Godot.lit
Sean Wilentz - Bob Dylan In America.mobi
Sharon Moalem - Survival Of The Sickest.mobi
Sonny Barger - Let's Ride.mobi
Stan Berenstain - Old Hat, New Hat.mobi
Stan Berenstain - The Berenstain Bears And The Spooky Old Tree.mobi
Stan Berenstain - The Big Honey Hunt.mobi
Stan Berenstain - The Bike Lesson.mobi
Stephen Crane - The Red Badge Of Courage.mobi
Stephen Hawking - A Brief History of Time.lit
Stephen King - 11 22 63.mobi
Stephen King - Cujo.lit
Stephen King - Firestarter.lit
Stephen King - The Dead Zone.lit
Stephen King - The Green Mile.lit
Stephen King - The Stand.lit
Stephen Leacock - Sunshine Sketches Of A Little Town.mobi
Steve Earle - I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive.mobi
Steve Knopper - Appetite For Self Destruction.mobi
Steven Adler - My Appetite For Destruction.mobi
Steven D Levitt - Freakonomics.mobi
Steven D Levitt - Superfreakonomics.mobi
Stuart McLean - Vinyl Cafe Unplugged.mobi
Sue Grafton - A is for Alibi.lit
Sue Grafton - B is for Burglar.lit
Sue Grafton - C is for Corpse.lit
Sue Grafton - D is for Deadbea.lit
Sue Grafton - E is for Evidence.lit
Sue Grafton - F is for Fugitive.lit
Sue Grafton - G is for Gumshoe.lit
Sue Grafton - H is for Homicide.lit
Sue Grafton - I is for Innocent.lit
Sue Grafton - J is for Judgement.lit
Sue Grafton - K is for Killer.lit
Sue Grafton - L is for Lawless.lit
Sue Grafton - M is for Malice.lit
Sue Grafton - N is for Noose.lit
Sue Grafton - O is for Outlaw.lit
Sue Grafton - Q is for Quarry.lit
Sue Grafton - R is for Ricochet.lit
Sun Tzu - The Art Of War.mobi
Susan Richards - Lost And Found In Russia.mobi
Susie Middleton - Fast, Fresh, And Green.mobi
Suzanne Collins - Catching Fire.mobi
Suzanne Collins - The Hunger Games.mobi
Terry Brooks - Sword Of Shannara.lrf
Terry Brooks - The Elfstones Of Shannara.lrf
Terry Brooks - The Wishsong Of Shannara.lrf
Thomas Hardy - Far From The Madding Crowd.lit
Tim Haas - The Herb Garden Gourmet.mobi
Timothy Ferriss - The 4 Hour Body.mobi
Tom Clancy - Clear & Present Danger.lit
Tom Clancy - Debt Of Honor.lit
Tom Clancy - Executive Orders.lit
Tom Clancy - Hunt For Red October.lit
Tom Clancy - Operation Rainbow.lit
Tom Clancy - Patriot Games [JR2].lit
Tom Clancy - Patriot Games.lit
Tom Clancy - Rainbow Six [JR9].lit
Tom Clancy - Red Rabbit.lit
Tom Clancy - Red Storm Rising.lit
Tom Clancy - Teeth Of The Tiger.lit
Tom Clancy - The Bear And The Dragon.lit
Tom Clancy - The Cardinal Of The Kremlin [JR3].lit
Tom Clancy - The Sum Of All Fears [JR5].lit
Tom Clancy - Without Remorse.lit
Tom Holt - Life, Liberty, And The Pursuit of Sausages.mobi
Tom Wolfe - The Bonfire Of The Vanities.mobi
Truman Capote - Breakfast At Tiffany's.mobi
Various - Golden Age Of Science Fiction Volume 01.mobi
Various - Golden Age Of Science Fiction Volume 02.mobi
Various - Golden Age Of Science Fiction Volume 03.mobi
Various - Golden Age Of Science Fiction Volume 04.mobi
Various - Golden Age Of Science Fiction Volume 05.mobi
Various - Golden Age Of Science Fiction Volume 06.mobi
Various - Golden Age Of Science Fiction Volume 07.mobi
Various - Golden Age Of Science Fiction Volume 08.mobi
Various - Golden Age Of Science Fiction Volume 09.mobi
Various - Golden Age Of Science Fiction Volume 10.mobi
Various - Golden Age Of Science Fiction Volume 11.mobi
Various - Golden Age Of Science Fiction Volume 12.mobi
Various - Golden Age Of Science Fiction Volume 13.mobi
Victoria Boutenko - 12 Steps To Raw Foods.mobi
Walter M Miller - A Canticle For Leibowitz.mobi
William Dietz - Prison Planet.lit
William Golding - Lord Of The Flies.mobi
William S Burroughs - The Naked Lunch.lit
Williams Goldman - The Princess Bride.lit
Yann Martel - Life Of Pi.mobi

Here's the cover of my most popular book (more than 10,000 copies distributed):