Leon Atkinson's Blog, page 32
October 22, 2012
Make more money selling your ebook yourself
It’s interesting to contrast publishing of technical books now versus 1999 when Core PHP Programming first came out. Back then, I’m confident would have been a complete waste of time trying to publish it myself. Few would have considered a PDF an interesting source for the information. And while it certainly was a feather in my cap with regard to my career, the reward for the effort was respectable. I wouldn’t work for that rate today, but the publishing of the book helped me get to where I am.
For some time I’ve said I wouldn’t try writing another book because the reward couldn’t justify the effort, but we might be coming close to full circle with printed books in decline and self-publishing in .epub looking more feasible every day. Plus, I have to consider the thrill of sticking it to those emperors of walled gardens: Amazon, Apple, et al.
mir.aculo.us JavaScript with Thomas Fuchs » Blog Archive » 5 rules to sell thousands of copies of your ebook
Wondering what your “hourly rate” is when you go out and write a technical book? Traditionally, publishers will tell you that you do it for “exposure” but we all know that you can die from that. Seriously, even for the publisher it’s a big gamble, and with all the extra costs for printing, marketing, publishing, whole-sale prices, etc. there will be nothing left over for you. And “exposure” will not pay the bills.
No Benefit from Routine Checkups
No Benefit from Routine Checkups
The result sound counterintuitive – a recent Cochrane systematic review of studies looking at the benefits of routine health checks found that there weren’t any. How can that be? Screening for medical conditions that can be treated, where treatment is known to improve outcome, must be beneficial, right?
Creepy Bibleman Mask is Creepy
Being a traditionalist, I do favor scary and/or creepy costumes, and this fits the bill. This is a little less threatening than a priest costume, though.
Best Halloween costume ever: Bibleman cape and mask (For a…
Best Halloween costume ever: Bibleman cape and mask (For a related video, click here http://christiannightmares.tumblr.com/post/379666137/a-promo-video-for-the-christian-superhero-show)
October 20, 2012
There’s no other primate that can pick its nose
This fascinating commentary on evolutionary biology is filled with facts. I’m synthesizing this plus Mark Sisson’s assertion that we max out at 4,000 calories of exercise a week plus Richard Nikoley’s relentless assassination of dogma (whether in politics, nutrition or the paleo community). I think it’s time to mix back in a lot more endurance activities. Also, bonus cool thing: did you know people have been running horse versus human marathons and they are close races?
Brains Plus Brawn | Conversation | Edge
There are many other features in the head that help us become exceptional long-distance walkers and runners. I became obsessed with the idea that humans evolved to run long distances, evolved to walk long distances, basically evolved to use our bodies as athletes. These traces are there in our heads along with those brains.
October 19, 2012
Benioff Announces the Death of Windows
This is somewhat of a retreat, though, from a company that’s used an anti-software trademark for more than a decade. And given the popularity of OS X, I’d be interested in a clarification on its lifespan, too.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff: Windows 8 is ‘the end of Windows’ | VentureBeat
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, always game for a little tech trash talk, said that Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system would be “the end of Windows” and that “Windows is irrelevant.”
Related articles
Salesforce chairman Marc Benioff drops bomb on Box and Okta
October 18, 2012
Ubuntu 12.10 is Out
I’m curious to see if wiping my box and installing 12.10 from scratch will make Chrome and Unity behave again. Although, Gnome 3 has been working fine since I switched.
Related articles
What’s New In Ubuntu Linux 12.10 “Quantal Quetzal”
Ubuntu Linux 12.10 ‘Quantal Quetzal’ takes flight at last
New Scientist Covers Indie Game, A New Zero
I found it strange that the article offers Elite 2 and Elder Scrolls as examples of games that generate their environments procedurally. Nethack comes to mind. But if you watch the video demo of A New Zero, the blocky graphics and soft music might remind you of another little game called Minecraft.
Shoot-’em-up game creates borderless virtual worlds (New Scientist)
A 3D video game that creates a virtual world on-the-fly could change how blockbuster shoot-’em-up titles are built.
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The idea of building gaming environments from code, known as procedural generation, is not new. Austin points to an early 1990s space simulation called Frontier: Elite 2, which procedurally generated a whole galaxy for exploration. The popular Elder Scrolls series of games uses procedural generation to draw many of its dungeons, which are then touched up by artists.
Bountify is like Fiverr Times Fifty
Got a tough coding task? Post it here with a cash bounty ($1-250) to incentivize your fellow hackers.
Pirate Bay Pulls “Wrath of Khan” Maneuver
Like Captain Kirk in Star Trek II, the scurvy dogs of The Pirate Bay have steered their ship into the Mutara Nebula. “We tried it once your way, Khan. Are you game for a rematch? Khan … I’m laughing at the superior intellect.”
Pirate Bay Moves to The Cloud, Becomes Raid-Proof | TorrentFreak
The Pirate Bay has made an important change to its infrastructure. The world’s most famous BitTorrent site has switched its entire operation to the cloud. From now on The Pirate Bay will serve its users from several cloud hosting providers scattered around the world. The move will cut costs, ensure better uptime, and make the site virtually invulnerable to police raids — all while keeping user data secure.
September 7, 2012
Stubborn FAT32 Boot Partition Stops Ubuntu From Booting
My old HP Core Duo Ubuntu server bit the dust last week. Seemed like a PSU issue since it booted once and ran OK for 10 minutes, but sadly, the oddball PSU in this HP case has no easy replacement. No, it’s not a normal ATX12V PSU. Whatever–a suitable replacement, must faster, was had via NewEgg. It threw me for a loop for a few hours, though. I installed Ubuntu 12.04 LTS with no issues, but then the damn thing wouldn’t boot unless I left the USB key in.
So, this seems like a known issue–use boot-repair, yadda yadda–but no, this seems to be something different. I thought I might need to mess with gparted, but I didn’t make a boot partition and I didn’t convert to non-GPT. I noticed in gparted that I had a first /sda1 partition that was FAT32 and flagged for boot. I’m thinking this was a recovery partition for this little Acer box that came with Windows 7. Well, I wiped all the partitions and re-ran the Ubuntu install. Joy! It got the partitions right and boots on its own.
Leon Atkinson's Blog
