Reading an old book is interesting because you know the writer is long deceased. The book is like something frozen at one point in time, the story will never change to reflect the modern use of cell phones and you can't ever contact the writer on Twitter to offer a review of their book.

I do like to look up writers when I am reading their books. I like to see what kind of internet presence they have, do they make use of their Twitter account (if they have one) do they keep their blog/ site updated about upcoming books and give readers tidbits about past books? Do they write a bit about themselves, telling us who they are and why they wrote the story they wrote? I like the odd note about their journey to get the book researched, written and then published.

You can't do all that with a book written 100 years ago. The writer isn't going to be answering your email any time soon. It's a funny feeling, a little eerie/ spooky. Kind of sad too.

What was the last book you read which was older - so old it was written before you were born or more than 100 years ago? If you have never read an old book, why not?

Whether you know it as ASCII art or didn’t know a proper name for all that text art made with standard keyboard characters, you can do it yourself. It really is much simpler than you may expect.

I’ve been creating ASCII line art since 1997. After a few years I left it behind, there were so few places I could still use it once email became HTML instead of plan text. Now ASCII art seems to be making a come back for cell phones and other new technological gadgets which can send simple graphics, in text.

Start with an idea of what you would like to create. Get an image in your mind and then draw a rough sketch, look for a clip art image online or any other way you can get a visible image in front of you. When you are starting and still learning it is important to keep the image clean and simple. Stick to something with only a few lines and not many round shapes. (Circles are one of the more complicated shapes to create and will take some practice.)

Once you have your image where you can see it, open a text editor. I still use the plain, old text editor that came with Linux. You can use Notepad in Windows, it is simple – you will already have a fixed width font ready to use. If you use a graphic editor or anything other than a basic text editor you will need to make sure the font is fixed width. This means all the characters (letters, numbers and symbols) are the same standard space apart from each other. From W to I they take up the same amount of space. Other fonts will give you a very different result and are harder to work with when it comes to displaying text art. (At the very least they will always lean to the far left).

I like to be set up with my text editor taking up about half the screen and my inspiration image/ picture on the other side (unless it’s a print image and then I prop it up in front of me on my desk).

The first thing I do is make some empty working space on the text editor. Just use the enter key to go down a few lines. Start working on a level that is comfortable for you to view – not too high or low on your screen.

No one can tell you exactly what characters to use. That is all up to your own judgement. Base your choices on what will fit/ suit the image you are creating from. Look at the direction the lines go and then find a keyboard character that will work. Take your time, change your mind a few times, try different numbers and letters as well as the basic shapes with / \ | > ( ) < and the small dots from punctuation characters ‘ . -

Use the space bar to move to a new spot you want to type in. You need to create the blank spaces in order for them to appear. This is a time when the mouse is second fiddle. The enter or carriage return will take you to a new line. Backspace erases anything you want to change. This may seem obvious but we have grown comfortable using the mouse – it does take getting used to just working with the keyboard.

`As you work notice how different characters set on different levels. Some are higher and some lower. Use this to your advantage. _ , – ‘ ``

When you want to make eyes there are a lot of options @ o 9 a e b q p d c g 6. Try them all. Each gives a different personality to the image. A combination of q p (for instance) can create eyes and a nose or snout.

Take a look at letters like Y T and W. Those will give you some basic shapes too. When you create smaller ASCII text pictures the shape of letters and numbers matter and can give you exactly what you need in a small space. Y makes a nice nose for a cat’s face.

For making a box I like to use .——. to join it to the sides at the top and then .____. to join it to the sides at the bottom.

For shading/ making a dark area # works well. Some people get more complicated and create greyscale ASCII art. This takes some practice, some familiarity with the keyboard characters and how they combine to create a finished image. Don’t try something too complicated for your early work.

Experiment and learn as you work. Look at the ASCII art done by others and see how they used different letters, numbers and characters to create the shapes they wanted. Think of it as a puzzle, a jigsaw puzzle, where you are fitting the pieces together to create the complete image.

If you have a print image you can hold it up to your screen and match your text to the shapes by comparing how they fit under the paper it’s printed on. I never did this myself. It seems to take away some of the creativity and ingenuity for me. But, if that gives you the will to keep trying, go ahead and do it.

Leave a couple of lines above and below your finished ASCII text art. I also like to keep my work a few spaces over from the left hand side of the screen edge.

Once you are fairly happy with your creation save the text file on your computer. Give it a name and add it to your hard drive. If you have software to capture your file as a graphic image file you can do that too. I just use a screen capture that lets me pick the size I want to save instead of the whole screen. It is much easier to share and post text/ ASCII art in an image file.

Don’t forget to add your artist initials to your finished work. ASCII art is usually shared freely, often adapted by other artists (diddled as we used to call it in the ASCII art newsgroup) but the initials should be kept with the art as respect to the original creator of the art. Plus, when you find something you really like you have a chance to find more of it when you know who made it.

Books get broken. Some can be repaired. Some aren't worth repairing but could be repurposed/ upcycled instead. Book art is nice to see but, I think it needs to be practical so we aren't just creating clutter but something useful too.

I don't have many hard cover books these days. I miss them.

When you buy a book now it's either a paperback or a bigger sized paperback book. Very few books are published and distributed as real hard covers any more. In stores they seem to think those big sized paperback books are the new hard cover books. They're wrong. I think they just don't want to reduce the price. But, do they really think we are that easily fooled?

The old hard cover books, the real hard covers, needed some extra looking after once in awhile. The old bookbinding sometimes came a bit unraveled if the book were well read many times. We would recover the book. We used wallpaper left over from a home decorating project, drawing paper from architectural drawings my Dad didn't need any more, or plastic which was intended as drawer liners but worked very well as book covers too.

It wasn't just book covers that took abuse. We taped up pages and made home made repairs to the book spines too. Tape wasn't the best choice for fixing pages though. After time the tape would get yellowy and sometime after that it would eventually lose its stickiness and fall right off as if it were just an ordinary piece of plastic. I guess, by that time, it was.

Books Beyond Saving Can be Upcycled

Not all old books can be saved.

Sadly I lost a few boxes full of books when the water heater tank leaked and eventually cracked down in our basement at one house. No one noticed right away. So there was water on the floor awhile. The boxes were in the same room, sitting in the water. The water was soaked up into the cardboard box and into the books.

The books on the bottom were the worst off. Some were mildewed and I wasn't even able to pick them up due to allergies to mould and mildew. Books in the middle were water logged, thickened with wavy pages. They couldn't be saved. No store would have taken them in trade and I couldn't keep them due to the allergies. Most of them were past being readable anyway. Some books on the top were not too bad. But, I was so disheartened I wrote them all off.

We burned them all. At that house we had a large backyard on the edge of a small rural town. So burning out in the back garden was ok.

Burning isn't the only option for books beyond saving. If the pages are okay still you can do a lot in creating book art. Books in bad shape can still be used, just in different ways.

Be Creative but Practical Too

I think there is one very important thing to keep in mind when we repurpose books or anything else. That is to keep the repurposing functional. Yes, a lot of the book art is cool or interesting to see, but where will it be a year from now even? Will we still like it, want to keep it and want to give it space in our home - or will it just become one more piece of stuff we have around adding to the clutter?

There should be new value added to anything we repurpose. If we are just creating mindlessly or for the joy of the moment then are we really repurposing and upcycling at all? Or are we just giving the book a temporary stay of execution?

I think it's very important to find new uses for old things but they should actually be useful.

If you can't fix them... repurpose them!

I love my plug in percolator coffee maker because I can take it almost anywhere and I don't need anything extra (other than ground coffee beans, a mug and coffee cream) to have a cup of coffee. As long as I can plug in the electric percolator I can have coffee as I travel around or visit family.

My percolator pot is actually a Melitta JavaPerk pot. I found it at a second hand store, it had never even been used. Likely someone bought it but didn't understand how it worked or was nervous about the way it works, something like that I would guess.

A percolator pot is different from other pots. Each type of coffee maker brews the coffee in their own way. A drip pot runs heated water through the grounds to drip into a pot below. A French press (my other favourite coffee maker) steeps the boiled water in with the grounds and then the press comes down to push the grounds to the bottom and press the freshly brewed coffee to the top. The percolator heats the water and then uses force to shoot the water through the coffee grounds which are in a basket inside the machine. You can see the water shooting to the top of the machine because percolators usually have a see through tip on the lid. It's kind of fun to watch it while you wait for your coffee. The water that shoots up to the top becomes darker and darker as the coffee brews.

My percolator sits on a stand which has the electric pad (and plug) so they call it cordless. This means it does not need to sit on the stove to heat the water. This feature makes is great for travelling. I don't need to boil the water in a second cordless pot or find a stovetop to brew the coffee on. The percolator is the most all in one solution I have found yet. Plus, it's quick! I was surprised at how short the wait was once I set up the coffee maker and let it run.

If you travel and love your coffee, I suggest you pick up an electric percolator coffee maker. They are quite durable and you can keep all the parts inside the machine when you pack it up. Keep it clean though - old coffee never tastes good mixed with fresh brewed coffee.

Using the percolator coffee maker is easy. They generally work the same no matter which brand of pot you use. The main difference is whether your pot is an electric pot or needs to be on the stove to heat the water.

Whether you make pumpkin pies or jack-o-lanterns with your Halloween/ Fall harvest pumpkins, afterwards they have that thick rind which will take time and some labour to compost.

If you have a compost bin or have the space to dig a hole in the garden itself, or you might have a compost pit... the pumpkin is better in your own compost than going to landfill.

Have a little respect for the Jack-O-Lantern and give him a green burial.

If you can not compost check around for someone else who does commercial composting. A local business or someone who does have a garden space or a local grower of just about anything. Bag up the pumpkin or pumpkins and donate them to a good home.

Clean it out

Don't leave decorations, tin foil, candle wax, inside the pumpkin. Keeping your compost to organic matter only makes it simpler later when you use the composted material in your garden. Anything like tin foil or a forgotten candle stub is just one more thing you will be picking out of the compost and soil mix later.

All the pumpkin guts, the stuff you scoop out when you carve a pumpkin, can be added to the compost too. Many people will do double duty and use the insides for pies or other holiday recipes. If you don't, the insides are already mushy and will compost easily along with your regular yard waste, kitchen scraps or anything else you routinely add to the compost heap.

Chop it up

If you start with a whole pumpkin you have a bigger job just because it's that much thicker and bulky. So begin by chopping it up. Even those miniature pumpkins used for decorations can be cut up.

Anything bulky and thick skinned like a pumpkin is going to be extra work for the fungus and little creatures who do the real work of reformatting in the garden. Give them a head start by breaking it up as much as you can.

If you're a bit lazy pull the pumpkins out into the yard, in an area which can get messy, and chop them with the shovel. Let them get a bit on the mushy side before you start so you don't have to break through the fresher, harder rind.

Remove the seeds

Take the seeds out, any seeds left in the compost will begin to sprout and grow a pumpkin patch. This could be a good thing if you have the space and don't mind pumpkins growing on top of your compost heap. But, you won't want all those seeds to germinate - that would take up too much space. If you have ever seen pumpkins growing you know how well they like to wind around and spread out.

Pumpkin seeds can be roasted in the oven as a snack. Just remove the pumpkin from them. Don't actually wash them but pull off the stringy stuff. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or tin foil, spread the seeds out over the tray. You can sprinkle salt on them, or something else that perks your imagination. When your oven is hot put the seeds in to roast. Check a recipe for roasting times and temperatures. I just peek through the glass and decide when they look done enough. They should be dry but not dried out like a mummy.

If you don't want to roast and eat the seeds you can still compost them. Roast them and then toss them into the compost. Or, grind them, anything which will prevent them from germinating in the Spring.

Begin the compost pile up

Gather leaves as you rake them, grass clippings, vegetable peels and such from the kitchen and line a hole with this lighter compost. Bury the pumpkin under more leaves and garden soil. You can add bone meal to help it all compost faster.

If you use a compost bin make sure the lid fits on to prevent rodents from getting in and leaving you a mess to clean up.

Look into composting with worms if you have the space in your backyard/ garden for a compost pit (a hole in the ground which you pile levels of compost material into).

You can also wrap the pumpkin compost in a black plastic bag which will help speed up the time it takes to rot. But, it won't smell pretty when you unwrap it to distribute your compost into the garden.