The list is the key. You want a good list. The EFF made a really really good free one, using tons of research! You can read about it (and download it and print it out) here: https://www.eff.org/dice

This book makes USING the list—actually looking up the words—fast and fun, and it's much easier to store/use than a sheaf of papers. It uses Halyard Micro, an awesome font for small referencey stuff by Darden Studio, and has dice-style headings at the top of each page.

I’m pretty happy about the fact that this little book is about the same size as a Beatrix Potter book (and only 4mm taller than a Hobonichi Techo (darn CreateSpace's 6" minimum height requirement!))

Thanks to the mostly-magic of CreateSpace, it's now available to anyone in the world for $6 USD with no upfront printing, inventory or fulfillment costs on my part. Super Neat.

NOW is when we start to go a little deeper. At this point I have to explain that publishing password-security-fetish fanfic was NOT actually my main motivation in all this (my DMs are open though, so to speak).

I didn't touch Word or InDesign or any graphics/WYSIWIG software to make this book. It was all made with code. Code which I am writing in the first place because I have…a long-term hobby project…to make a Machine (a coding apparatus) that turns websites into printed books. 🤯

A big motivation for doing this is having been around long enough to see websites I liked disappear, & knowing all my own websites will someday disappear. (I wrote about this in more detail: https://thelocalyarn.com/excursus/secretary/posts/web-books.html) But also (mainly?) I just really like making books ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Until now, one of the big logjams in my thinking on that whole idea is: how to make book COVERS. Book covers are fussy to make—their proportions have to be calculated based on the printer's requirements, paper type, page count, etc; lots and lots of 🖱️ around.

BUT thanks to the amazing Racket & to Butterick's online book Beautiful Racket, I was able to create a **little programming environment specifically for making book covers.** I called it (amazingly) 𝚋𝚘𝚘𝚔𝚌𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚛 & it's available for everyone: http://docs.racket-lang.org/bookcover/index.html

Another thing about the book: I threw in a few QR codes that link to useful Diceware stuff online.

But these aren't just any QR codes. These QR codes/URLs will *never* result in "404 Page Not Found" for PROBABLY AS LONG AS I LIVE.

🏛️Did you know the Internet Archive provides free ✨PERMANENT URLs? ✨ https://purl.org

If PURL link ever breaks, just redirect it to a snapshot of the same page, or to a different page. And, unlike bitly/googl, PURLs will prolly be around as long as the internet is.

PURLs are a cool and elegant way to make stable welds between printed things and online things (something I think about a lot 😛). We should all be grateful they exist.

and, NB: They are PERMANENT—un-deleteable! Don't make one unless you plan to house-train it & take care of it!

I wrote more about the technical parts of making this book in this blog post for hackers: https://thenotepad.org/posts/publishing-dicewordbook.html

In that post:

✅Using Pollen (a LISP) to generate LaTeX
✅Using Pollen to cook SVGs for use as pseudo web fonts

I also wrote a short post about this project on my main website, where I (very briefly) attempt situate it within my larger goal of un-digitizing my favorite bits and pieces of the web: 🔖 https://thelocalyarn.com/article/a-little-book-project

(That website is next in line for un-digitizing, by the way)

That's all! Thanks for indulging in my long, nerdy, hopefully-not-too-advertisey thread.

This is probably the first time I've refrained from talking about something until I was totally completely ready to release it. I highly recommend it. Helps keep the steam in the project.

@joeld Tahts' really neat.

I've had a project like this on my someday list for a while.

@ajroach42 thanks! it felt like it took FOR EVER. But that's because children are really bad for creativity.

@joeld My idea was to take something like this and combine it with a library of curated backgrounds, fonts, and clip-art, to generate wholly unique books for print on demand runs.

Let the reader set their preferences on Font, Font Size, Cover Style, Paper, and the like, and then automatically procedurally generate a book to meet those demands.

@ajroach42 Yes, there are lots of interesting projects in that space. Haven't yet found a print service with an API though! 🤔

Awhile back, I bookmarked this as being something that would be cool as part of generative print books: http://mewo2.com/notes/terrain/