Knaddison.com - Books

Some Research Before You Write That (Technical) Book

greggles — Fri, 16 May 2008 15:50:13 +0000

It appears that the costs of publishing have really fallen, otherwise how can I explain that there’s a good chance I’m going to be writing a book that might actually get published. In the last week two referrals came my way and I’m sitting here thinking “Should I do it?”

The major questions in my mind are: Is it profitable on its own? If not, can I do it in a manner which will be profitable (i.e. write about a niche that somehow brings in future business)? Should I partner with a publisher? Write it myself? Or perhaps “dead-tree” books are just “dead” and I should make it an e-book?

Oh yeah, and will I maintain the motivation to get it done? And done to a level that doesn’t suck?

John Resig Writes about Writing For a Publisher

In his post about Programming Book Profits (which, I’m not going to be writing about “programming” but it’s probably a useful comparison to what I would be writing) John Resig lays out exactly what his profits were 1 year after publishing. He also lays out some of the pros and cons and surprises that he found. In short: the paycheck from the publisher doesn’t seem like it will be worth it.

Note: he recommends pretty strongly against the e-book route.

Go It (mostly) On Your Own With Lulu.com or the Kindle

ProBlogger’s How to Be a Rockstar eBook Seller [Interview] mentions the use of Lulu.com for sales of their book. It appears that they’ve made a decent profit. Sadly though, while he gives revenue numbers he doesn’t give “books sold” numbers and the sales $ depends on several factors so you don’t really know how many copies they sold.

Note: they love the e-book.

Amazon has a program for authors called the Digital Text Platform where authors can sell their books. Amazon keeps 65% of the revenue (for what they provide - that seems a little high).

The “Writing the Book” Part

An hour a day? I think I can do that. Good enough to be happy with it? Hmmm…

Book Recommendations for our new Christmas Gift?

greggles — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 23:55:22 +0000

As we’re on our year long trip Nikki and I have read a lot of books. We find that without as many friends, family, and normal recreational activities there’s a lot more time for touristing but also more time for reading. This has been great. The last 5 months I’ve read more non-technical books than the past 5 years (seriously).

At that same time - we’re fresh out of reading material! I (Greg) will be coming back to the states for a usability work session at the University of Minnesota and then for Drupalcon Boston. It’s going to be great.

While I’m home I’ll be bringing back books we finished down here (and some wine) and hope to make a big purchase of books to bring back down.

So, what books do you recommend from the last few years? I’m planning to get a few “web2.0” ish books like Handbook of Usability, Don’t Make Me Think, Cluetrain Manifesto, and Wisdom of Crowds. I also think that some “prediction market” books are in order, of course.

What makes this a little more interesting is that I’ll be purchasing these books for reading on a Amazon Kindle which is a pretty revolutionary device. It’s an electronic book reader which has been done before, but the thing that makes this one work to me is that Amazon has the book distribution to provide over 80,000 books for the device. If the book is available only in hardback and Kindle, the Kindle version is generally represents a savings of 50%. Paperbacks vs. Kindle version is a much smaller discount. I won’t have my fat little fingers on it for some time (a month) but man am I excited to get it.

So - comments are open - recommend books!

Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls

greggles — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 14:13:46 +0000

One of the nice things about being on a trip is that it gets you out of your normal habits and gives you more free time for things you don’t prioritize at home like reading.

Nikki and I both just finished off The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls. It was a surprisingly good book - quite a fast read but still thought provoking. I was amazed at how often I agreed with her parents (if you haven’t read the book, the central premise is that the parents are crazy). The major conclusion we both drew was, of course, that people can survive from some pretty horrible situations. Some fun sub-ideas were that American mainstream is so crazy that even some nutty individualists are right a lot of the time. And we both agreed that Jeanette Walls writing was stunning. It really puts you into the mind of a child at the age she was in the biography and makes you think of the world with wide-eyed-wonder.

It’s definitely highly recommended by both of us. Thanks to Mom Kneser for the gift! We passed it on to our friend Eliana which would probably make Jeanette’s mom happy by not just throwing it out ;)

Travel History

greggles — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 16:55:41 +0000

Bonfils likes to know where I’ve gone and I keep forgetting. So, here it is:

Country	Specific Location	Departure Date	Length of Stay
Netherlands	Amsterdam, Hague, Utrecht	1/28/03	4 months
France	Nice	4-15-03	1 week
Spain	Granada Sevilla	6-10-03	4 days
Germany	Koln	3-15-03	4 days
United Kingdom	Birmingham, London	6-20-03	2 weeks
United Kingdom	Birmingham	2-10-04	1 week
Mexico	Los Cabos, Todos Santos (Baja)	4-10-04	2 week
El Salvador	San Salv. Suchitoto, La Palma	6-20-06	5 days
Honduras	Copan	6-25-06	5 days
Guatemala	Antigua	6-30-06	5 days

More details of my travel history.

My friend brook has a wiki

greggles — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 22:58:36 +0000

My friend Brook has a wiki. It’s pretty awesome. I like personal homepages on wikis or self-hosted blogs way more than I do myspace or whatever.

GAIM Encryptiong using Off The Record (OTR) on Windows

greggles — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 16:19:20 +0000

As of now, you just install Gaim from http://gaim.sourceforge.net/downloads.php

Then, install OTR from http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/.

Then, if you’re using the Gaim beta, you need to install the files form this zip: http://lists.cypherpunks.ca/pipermail/otr-users/2006-January/000531.html

Then, you probably have to restart the progroms and reboot half the world. Then, go to Tools> Plugins in Gaim, enable Off The Record messaging, and configure it. In Configu you need to generate a key.

If the party on the other end is also using OTR then your conversations can be encrypted.

Enjoy!

Rikki Tikki Tavi - A Children's book name for a kid's level understanding of social bookmarking

greggles — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 14:18:17 +0000

Rikki Tikki Backstory

So, this morning I found Rikki Tikki Tavi’s Garden a reference to the childrens book where a mongoose defeats an evil pair of snakes. The name is well chosen: this user is attempting to defang a group of employees from the Center for American Progress, one of whom uses a snake username on some social bookmarking sites. And it is the involvment in the social bookmarking that is pissing off this particular mongoose.

He (or she…) doesn’t have comments enabled on that blog, which pissed me off, so I wrote a lot more than I probably should have on the subject.

How Social Bookmarking Works

People who like a story will bookmark and “vote up” that story. You may not agree with them, but that’s how it works.

Digg has an uneasy relationship with self-promotion that comes from the community. The Digg FAQ doesn’t say how to handle it so instead we get community opinion on the matter. And therefore we get dissent from that opinion. That’s how the real world works - deal with it.

Reddit saw that problem with Digg and set the ground rules off the bat. Right in the Reddiquette it says:

Post links directly to interesting things. Old content and self-promotion are okay, because Reddit is a meritocracy.

So let me repeat: People who like a story will bookmark and “vote up” that story. This is not a case of people being shills. It’s reality.

How American Non-Partisan “Political” Nonprofits Work

Much as I hate to see it, the reality is that American law currently allows an organization to be a nonprofit think tank (gaining all sorts of tax and social benefits) but only if they are “non partisan”. The IRS test for “non partisan” has to do with advocating for a specific politician. Most people just assume it’s the appearance of a bias, which is not true. However, both the popularly accepted idea of “non partisan” as being “unbiased” and the IRS test of “not advocating for a person” are crossed every day!

People turn a blind eye towards it because the rule is so difficult to enforce and because it’s so frequently violated on both sides. Churches are non-profit - almost every non-wedding occasion I’ve been in a church in my adult life there’s been a pro-Republican message. One time within the last year the sermon touched on how Saddam Hussein was responsible for September 11 and how great it was that Bush got him. Seriously. As for Rikki Tikki Tavi’s test showing that the CAP staffers have histories with the Democracts , try it again with the Heritage Foundation or the Cato Institute. They have similarly biased backgrounds working with Republican representatives, presidents, and everyone in between. That’s the way it works. Wake up!

Personally, I disagree with about 50% of the stuff that Center for American Progress believes (see my political leaning and a test you can take) and because of the way they send out their news I disagree with about 90% of the stuff that they say. As Voltaire said, “I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” The US is a “fair” place where people are treated equally. “Nonpartisan” think tanks that promote “conservative” and “progressive” ideals should be treated equally, even when you disagree with them.

So, my mongoose friend, that’s how it works. From every angle of political leaning. Deal with it.

Hey Googlebot - Colorado Linux User Enthusiast Group mail list archive

greggles — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 15:00:04 +0000

Please go re-index the Colorado Linux User Group List Archives because they were offline for a little while and you forgot about them but now they are BACK! And they’re badder than ever.

Thanks, you’re the bestest,
Greg

Best Cell Phone Provider in Denver

greggles — Thu, 11 May 2006 15:48:24 +0000

Like I said…people ask me for my opinion. And I give it here instead of in email because now the rest of the world gets to enjoy the glory of my opinions:

Your website says you have an opinion on everything…I need an opinion
on cell phone service providers in Denver….

We use Cingular and are pretty happy with them. The coverage is solid around Colorado, though Sprint is putting out ads saying “best coverage in Denver”. I’m not sure who is best around Golden specifically, but vaguely remember both sprint and cingular working fine up there. I just got a new sim card that will work in more international places - but I haven’t tried that.

Verizon is also known to be pretty good. With Verizon you may have better international roaming options since they are part owned by Vodafone (largest international carrier).

T-Mobile is CHEAP, but the coverage is worth what you pay (i.e. the coverage is not good). If you don’t care about getting consistent service and just want a lot of minutes for not much money, t-mobile is good. They also have cheap options for data coverage (e.g. to use with a blackberry) if you like that kind of thing.

Cricket is cheap considering the unlimited minutes and the coverage on the front range is decent. However, roaming is not free nor do they cover a very large part of Colorado and if you care about having any features (voicemail, call waiting) Cricket quickly becomes just as expensive as a moderate amount of usage from another provider.

Simply The Best

greggles — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 19:58:18 +0000

Many times people ask me:

“Greg, what is the best {something}?”

Most of the time I have an answer. That’s because “I know the stuff”. I’m an early adopter. I do research. I just bought a new computer and was asked “how long have you been thinking about this?” well my answer was since I was born.

This section of the site is my collected knowledge on the subject of the “best” in software, technology, and other “stuff”. Most of the artiles in it are old, this just provides simpler navigation to find all the nuggets of wisdom.