Tim,

I'm a web developer who's making the transition from working with perl/cgi to the new Microsoft suite of web development products. The first topic I have to tackle is learning about Active Server Pages. Whenever I have to learn a new tool, language, or development paradigm, I always check to see if O'Reilly has a book on the subject. If you do, then I buy it because I know it will be the best one out there.

I've got an issue with your ASP in a Nutshell book. It's got a picture of a snake on it! Of course, I get the pun -- ASP and asp, but in the words of Indiana Jones, "Snakes, why'd it have to be snakes?"

I really don't want to look at a picture of a snake all day while the book is lying out on my desk. Do you have any suggestions?

Thanks,
Nancy Sinclair

Nancy,

Yes. Do what we used to do in school: make a paper book cover!

Or you can get clear contact paper (a kind of plastic film) and use it to make a book cover that holds down the picture of your choice. (I haven't bought contact paper for years, and I'm not entirely sure where you get it these days--probably a housewares store, since it's normally used to line shelves or drawers.)

I still have a copy of John Fowles' novel, The Magus, that I covered this way when I was in high school. I hated the picture on the cover, so I had my girlfriend, who was into calligraphy, make a sheet of paper with the title on it. Then I bound it in place with the clear contact paper. I used to do this (though not normally with the replacement illustration) for any book that I particularly liked, in order to protect the cover and the binding.

This might seem like a flip answer, but I'm afraid that if we worried about everyone's negative associations about animals, we'd reduce the available bestiary by about half. And one thing we do worry about is running out of distinct animals.

--Tim

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