Over 5,000 downloads!

Man, I go away for a few days of vacation, and the downloads more than double! We're now at just over 5,000 downloads of the book, and 12 more printed copies were ordered in the last five days as well.

Just as I was leaving, Jennifer Willies also posted a ton of good photos from the EvoStar event, including a nice shot of the three Field Guide authors and our cover artist.

More photos from the Field Guide unveiling

Antje Schwefel shared some of her photos from EuroGP, including the shot above of us (Bill, Tyler, Nic, and Riccardo, left to right) posing in our Field Guide shirts with Evelyne Lutton. Thanks to Antje for the photo!

The EvoStar 2008 site also has a link now for EvoStar photos that is in fact a pointer to the "evostar" tag on Flickr. These are currently dominated by the previously mentioned photos from JJ Merelo, and Tyler and myself, but there are also some nice photos from La Singularidad Desnuda, including the nice example of Riccardo's autographing handiwork below.



2,151 downloads and counting!

Field Guide sightings!

Several kind folks have put in a plug for the Field Guide on-line:

• Paul Myers on the prominent biology blog Pharyngula
• On Paulus De Blogkabouter
  
• Paul Wiegand on the Natural Computation and Coadaptive System Laboratory blog
• Pier Luca Lanzi on the Illinois GA Lab blog

Many thanks to all these folks for helping spread the word. Given our non-standard publishing and distribution model, we're particularly dependent on this sort of word of mouth support. Feel free to let us know if you've posted a plug for the book (in the comments or authors AT gp-field-guide DOT org DOT uk).

We're also looking for photos (like the one above from JJ Merelo) from the grand unveiling at EvoStar/EuroGP Wednesday in Naples, so please pass along those as well.

Photos from the grand unveiling

Tyler Hutchison (the Field Guide's cover artist) and I have uploaded all our EuroGP/EvoStar 2008 photos to Flickr. This includes several shots by Tyler of the grand unveiling of the Field Guide, including this photo of Bill and Wolfgang Banzhaf discussing the book. We also have photos from other EvoStar events such as Bill receiving his EvoStar award, and shots around the city of Naples.

This initial upload is without any cleaning or editing, so there's a fair amount of repetition, etc., but hopefully some folks will find it useful.

I know of one other batch of EvoStar photos that has already been uploaded: JJ Merelo has a nice EvoStar set on Flickr, and a slightly larger set that includes his sightseeing around Naples. If you have any photos from any part of the EvoStar event that you'd be willing to share, feel free to post a link in a comment here, or send us an e-mail at "authors AT gp-field-guide DOT uk DOT org". Being the vain creatures that we are, we're of course especially interested in photos of the book release and autographing :-), but any photos from the event are super cool!

It's nearly ready

We ordered our first test copy a week or two ago just so we could see what the printing would look like from Lulu, what the cover would look like, and how some of our graphs and diagrams would turn out. It was quite exciting to see an actual copy, even if the insides where incomplete and in serious need of the proofreading that was to follow. It somehow made it all seem more real.

Things are currently on track for a late March release. Stay tuned for more details!