No Title
Posted on December 12, 2002
Filed Under computers, misc |
In the same vein:
I am 48% Geek
target="_blank">
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You probably work in computers, or a history
deptartment at a college. You never really fit in with the “normal”
crowd. But you have friends, and this is a good thing.
target="_blank">Take the Geek Test at fuali.com
Popularity: 9% [?]
No Title
Posted on December 12, 2002
Filed Under misc |
OK, I’m game. I was searching for “evil genius” on
Blogdex and I turned up the Evil Genius quiz. I was going to put
in a link, but it helpfully finishes the quiz with HTML for you to
paste on your blog. So here it is:
I am 89% Evil Genius
I am pure
evil. I lie awake at night devising schemes of world domination, and
I will not rest until all living souls bend to my will.
target="_blank">Take the Evil Genius Test at fuali.com
Popularity: 2% [?]
No Title
Posted on December 12, 2002
Filed Under books, games |
Something else I saw on the Baen news server - an article by publisher
Tim O’Reilly about file
sharing. I’ve grown used to people discounting my opinions on the
subject because I don’t make my living as a writer or musician, but
here is a man who makes his living publishing books making many of the
same points that get me sneered at.
One snippet:
Lesson 1: Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative
artists than piracy.Let me start with book publishing. More than 100,000 books are
published each year, with several million books in print, yet fewer
than 10,000 of those new books have any significant sales, and only a
hundred thousand or so of all the books in print are carried in even
the largest stores. Most books have a few months on the shelves of the
major chains, and then wait in the darkness of warehouses from which
they will move only to the recycling bin. Authors think that getting a
publisher will be the realization of their dreams, but for so many,
it’s just the start of a long disappointment.
and another:
And overall, as a book publisher who also makes many of
our books available in electronic form, we rate the piracy problem as
somewhere below shoplifting as a tax on our revenues. Consistent with
my observation that obscurity is a greater danger than piracy,
shoplifting of a single copy can lead to lost sales of many more. If a
bookstore has only one copy of your book, or a music store one copy of
your CD, a shoplifted copy essentially makes it disappear from the
next potential buyer’s field of possibility. Because the store’s
inventory control system says the product hasn’t been sold, it may not
be reordered for weeks or months, perhaps not at all.
Popularity: 5% [?]
No Title
Posted on December 12, 2002
Filed Under comics, misc |
Here’s a funny cartoon. I saw a reference to it on the Baen
newsgroups. It makes a statement about the current state
of e-publishing.
Popularity: 3% [?]
No Title
Posted on December 12, 2002
Filed Under computers, weblogs |
In other dorkishness (I do claim in the subtitle that this weblog is
about “geekery”) I added a few things. To the script that posts my
daily weblogs to SFF.net and Dueling Modems, I added some actual error
checking so that it actually retries if the news server is down when
it tries to make the post. Incroyable! Today was the first day that it
actually ran, and sure enough, SFF.net was down for 5 minutes, giving
me a perfect opportunity to verify it performed correctly. Nice!
I also added in the ability to have a cron job autopublish a few times
a day. Over and over again, I keep finding that I’d make an entry,
typically in the late evening, and forget to push it to the main
webserver. If I didn’t make another entry and publish before 1 PM
(which is when the autopost happens) it would get missed. Now it
should be publishing every 12 hours. If there is nothing new, it
doesn’t do anything, but if I forgot to publish, up it will go. Double
nice! Robots check behind me!
Popularity: 2% [?]
No Title
Posted on December 12, 2002
Filed Under computers, music |
Last night we watched our tape of Craig Kilborn from the night the
Flaming Lips were on. I really really liked the song they played (they
were the Band of the Day back here). I must
get their newest album. Actually I must get all their albums. They are
a band I’ve always liked, but never actually owned a release.
Popularity: 3% [?]
No Title
Posted on December 12, 2002
Filed Under misc, tv |
I’m going to say it and get it off my chest. I believe The
West Wing has jumped the shark, big time. The episode last
night really really sucked. Even when important things were happening,
I was just kind of bored. This is with one of my all-time favorite
actors, John Spencer, onscreen. Many more episodes like this and I’m
pulling the ripcord. I outright dislike the Will Bailey character, and
I hate the hamfisted way he is handled.
Popularity: 3% [?]
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