A new adventure

Two problems have come up to cause me to start a new project, one that I hope I can finish faster than the others that I have been dealing with.

1. Frequent readers will have noticed that I occasionally provide links to Amazon.com. I have done this not out of a sense of necessity but of "oh what the hell." Because of this, many of the things that I could have linked to have not been -- going to Amazon to work up the code is just a bit too much of a bother for me to have gotten into the habit. (By the way, Amazon has really been pushing me to put up links so that I can entice you to purchase a Kindle. Not gonna happen.) This hasn't been too much of an issue for me as I set the thing up because I was inclined to link to listings on Amazon anyway, so why not make a few bucks (or pounds) off it. A new service that Amazon has is a link that offers recommendations based on what Amazon feels the readers of my site will want to read. At first I thought that this meant that they analyzed the site text for content and offered suggestions that way, but it turns out that what they do is analyze based on what people who go to Amazon from my site actually buy. Some friends in Academia have used my code on their webpage related to a textbook they wrote. Because of this, the algorithms in the bowels of Amazon's processors believe that you, gentle reader, are interested in little other than books about thermodynamics. Which means that if I put up these links, I will all of a sudden have a bunch of ads for books on thermodynamics. Which is funny, but not very helpful.
   
2. One of the things that I am doing is sitting down to read the source material for all of the Hitchcock films - When I said I was starting, I mentioned that I did not have the source of his first film (The Pleasure Garden by Oliver Sandys), after a bit of time it turned up on e-Bay. I bookmarked the link to the item, and waited a few days to bid. In that time, the person putting the book up withdrew the item from bidding, but my bookmark resolved into a different auction from the same fellow. Not realising that I was bidding on the wrong book, I put my high bid in, and went on about my day. Result: I spend $62 on something called "Peril Island" by someone named Percy James Brebner.

I have a solution, but first perhaps you would be interested in purchasing a copy of the new Robert Plant/Alison Krauss CD as a holiday gift for a loved one.



So here's my solution.

I will do a close reading of Peril Freaking Island and include Amazon links in the posts. My goal is to earn back the $62 and break even. This should also show that Amazon that I'm about more than just thermodynamics.