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Bins and such like.
A scientist
Because of an ongoing disagreement with Rob we are going to try an experiment. Rob claims that I can write any old thing on here and get loads of comments, while nobody much cares what he writes, even if it's clever an' all. His specific example was posting a Things To Do list that included taking out the bins. So what say you? Anyone care to comment on my current do to list? Anyone?
To Do:
- Hoover
- Learn Ruby on Rails
- Take bins out
- Pay rent
- Photoshop Paul Magrs' forthcoming book cover so that the number on the London bus is the 22 to Putney Common
- And a bunch of other stuff.
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Outsmarting a zombie
Now I'm aware I'm treading on thin ice here. But I've just finished watching the first season of The Walking Dead and there's a question that's nagging at me. I loved the show, but really, what's so difficult about outwitting a zombie?
It seems to me, that the people the stories tend to follow in a zombie attack are the hot-heads who left school too early. They don't really know about cars or locks or gun-maintenance or construction. They're not planners or strong thinkers. They alternate between fear and crazy ideas. They like to settle things with their fists even when their opponents are undead. But what happens to the organised people who work well in teams and can project-manage?
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One strictly for the ONIX geeks
I'm not nearly as familiar as Emma is with the ONIX standard and it's time for that to change. But as I'm staring at it now, I'm wondering why they did things the way they did. I hesitate to describe it as 'wrong' because maybe I'm not as au fait with this stuff as I think I am, but I'm certainly finding bits of it 'curious'. Take an excerpt like this:
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First Impressions
From the thoughts of someone whose job it is to read 'slush piles' of submissions, a catchy quote: "I know I'm going to reject a story before I hit the end of the first page. The more slush I read, the more I find that I know by the end of the first sentence." Go here for the rest.
[link via Cory Doctorow's twitter @doctorow. pic from 101 Reasons to Stop Writing]
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WikiLeaks
click2zoom
So then. What about all this WikiLeaks stuff? As a news story it's got everything I want. And ideologically, I have to say that it feels like poetic justice for all the lies we've had to swallow about wars and what-have-you over the last ten years. Lies give you an edge when they're undetected but backfire when they're exposed. There's been so much lying that it's inevitable the truth will make a lot of people look bad but I think that's their fault and not Julian Assange's.
I feel like the US and UK governments now consider it their right to lie to us and won't stand for any interference. I have a tiny smidgeon of sympathy for the idea that you can't broker a deal if you can't explore unpopular options and change your mind occasionally (as Clay Shirky notes) - and all of that is tricky if there's no privacy. But don't these leaks show that misrepresenting the situation has not been a stepping stone on the way to an acceptable truth; it's been a way of life.
The WikiLeaks sites have been attacked repeatedly and someone has persuaded hosting sites, DNS providers, PayPal, etc; to drop them. Swiss banks, notorious for keeping dodgy money secret, want nothing to do with Assange's cash. And Sweden asked Interpol to help them track Assange down over a rape allegation which, I'm quite certain, would not normally trigger an international man-hunt. (I'm assuming he didn't do it, but I'll revise my opinions of course if evidence emerges that the charge is solid.)
What I'm wondering is, is it just me who's pleased with what WikiLeaks has done, believes it's in the public interest and thinks it's horrible to go after the whistleblower and not the war criminals, madmen and buffoons he exposes? Or am I missing the public mood, here, which sees WikiLeaks as treasonous and criminal?
[cartoon from Macleod]
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Cartography is hard
So here's a fun piece of graphic design/typography. Someone tried to work out why Google Maps is easier to read than its competitors. They used the Google Maps API to tinker about and make changes, and eventually worked it out. There's some subtle visual stuff happening there with some lessons for those seeking legibility in busy layouts. link
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Photoshop tip
We all love Bokeh, right? Even those of us who don't know what it is. I came across a little tutorial (here) for how to draw some pretty Bokeh-style effects, like the one in the thumbnail there. Write down the URL, and then have your secretary get a runner to take it over to your designers. Or better still, give it a go yourself. After all, you're only as old as your Photoshop skills.
And, in case you didn't notice, Em's turned her How to Create eBooks tutorial into a handy PDF to browse, cherish and share.
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Maintaining personal relevancy
Planet Earth seen close up
For most of us, the phrase 'knowledge is power' is maybe a bit strong, but 'knowledge is currency' might be true. And, increasingly, I think that knowledge is relevancy. I meet too many people who are making decisions about software projects, web programming, data standards and digital workflow who don't really know what any of that stuff means - certainly not at the level of being able to do any of it themselves. I suppose it's partly a consequence of extending the idea that older people have more experience into areas where it doesn't really apply - that's to say, areas where technology invalidates the usefulness of what you know at a terrifying rate. And it's also about the idea that 'management' is separate from 'detail'. That's to say, the idea that an experienced manager can exist on a plane of pure decision-making where they don't need to possess any of the specialist skills of the people beneath them. But I've never really believed in that idea. Getting 'bogged down in details' as pure management people often call it, is usually where all the important, make-or-break stuff happens, in my experience.
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How to create eBooks
How seriously hard can it be? The whole world is eBook mad at the moment, yet creating the things still seems like a dark art. Anyway, here's a post distilling my research and practice which I hope will shed some light on how you create the things and make them look nice. It's a deliberately simplified approach designed to get your books converted quickly, which is handy when you have a backlog like me.
---update---
Here's a PDF of this post.