February 2012
6 posts
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Aar! Take Two
Further thoughts following responses to my previous ‘pirate crew’ writers’ collective notion via all sorts of different channels.
Consensus seems to be that it’d be a fascinating idea, with the potential to descend into a howling shitstorm of hatred, accusations, and rage should such a thing prove successful. (“A good way to lose friends” I think was how my...
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Thank You, And Good Night
Seems iBA has been updated with a clearer EULA with this at the top:
IMPORTANT NOTE:
If you want to charge a fee for a work that includes files in the .ibooks format generated using iBooks Author, you may only sell or distribute such work through Apple, and such distribution will be subject to a separate agreement with Apple. This restriction does not apply to the content of such works...
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MY BAD - Anthony Neil Smith: 2012 →
While we’re on the subject, this from @DocNoir - as opposed to the bullshit from Trestle after the fact (edit: now linked as a FreezePaged copy of the Google cache) - is how you define a mistake (as opposed to knowingly ignoring the rules), and the correct, classy way to deal with one. Good stuff.
Edit to add: Incidentally, I don’t have Neil’s vast back catalogue, but of the...
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Aar, A Writer's Life For Me
And so, while the Trestle Press art theft debacle unfolds - seriously, the ease of finding some of the originals is laughable - I find myself thinking of a notion I had a while back. Nothing so fully-formed as an idea. A dream, maybe.
A writers’ co-operative.
Modelled along pirate lines.
I, uh, should probably explain. We’re all either involved with or at least watching the...
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Trestle Press, Art Theft
I know a few people with ebooks put out by one-man-band publisher Trestle Press, who have a stable of decent writers under some (apparently famously) deeply shonky typography. Now it seems Giovanni “G-Man” Gelati, the one man in the aforementioned band, has been using massive amounts of copyrighted images for cover art without the artists’ permission.
Gelati has responded to...
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“I don’t give a fuck anymore. Whatever will be, will fuckin’ be. I...”
– Ray Banks on the e-ndustry (if you see what I did there).
January 2012
15 posts
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The Ghost Of Book Puns Past
I discovered this ancient list of change-one-letter-in-the-title book puns with associated blurbs buried in a long-disused, spider-haunted folder on my hard drive yesterday evening. I seem to remember doing it several websites and at least one pen name ago, based on what I saw on the shelves nearby. In fact, it must have been before BCon in Madison because I vaguely remember Lee mentioning...
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Ebooks Encourage Authors To Stare At Their Shoes... →
And hot on the last post’s heels, this piece from the mighty @suw.
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The self-epublishing bubble →
Via Megan Abbott, an interesting bit of self publishing bubbleage which echoes my thoughts on it of, what, getting on for a year ago.
(Edited for linkage, and to correct the initial URL. Stupid mobile websites.)
"And then I pass the front door, and all these... →
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iBooks Author Rage
Via @gavreads, I’ve been reading this rage against the EULA on Apple’s sparkly new iBooks Author software. The poster, to my mind, and to the minds of various commenters, is up in arms over very little.
What iBooks Author is, for those in the writing world living under a rock, is a free page layout and inserter-of-cool-media program that lurks somewhere between Pages (word processor...
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“There’s always a line with sex, drawn at different places for different...”
– Rick Santorum’s Sex-Haunted World. SA is sometimes brilliant.
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“It’s impossible to read All You Leave Behind without thinking of William...”
– The charming Eva Dolan says nice things about ALL YOU LEAVE BEHIND here. As always, you can read a big chunk of it and buy the thing for peanuts from my site.
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“When mummy was born, someone was in charge. She was in charge of everything. And when she had a bath, she liked to have electricity in it. Electricity! How weird.”
Aidan, displaying a peculiar level of knowledge of Margaret Thatcher. (I didn’t correct him to say that his mum was 7 by the time Thatcher came to power, but otherwise…)
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December 2011
12 posts
3 tags
Above Us Only Sky →
via @stevemosby, a fascinating post on (possibly) the oldest theological question of all.
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The Lego Question, And A Theological Query
I distinctly remember the day I became an atheist. I don’t remember how old I was because I was so young - four, I think; just before or just starting school. Religion wasn’t a big thing when I was little - Dad’s a (somewhat vague) Catholic, Mum an atheist, and both had apparently agreed to basically not make a thing of it, figuring we’d sort things out ourselves. Which in...
“If only Guy Hands had not just invested in Crust as a tax dodge - but made sure...”
– Adam Curtis is never less than interesting.
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“While they waited for the program to begin, Nas lit a blunt and passed it...”
– Via Nick Malone, this. THIS.
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Aidan: “What’s the best thing there is?”
Me: “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.”
Aidan: “… What does that mean?”
On the school run this morning.
“The problem is not with any particular belief system but with belief itself. Sir...”
– Islam, Charles Darwin and the denial of science - Steve Jones. His point is brilliantly (and inadvertently) demonstrated by some of the commenters beneath. Never, ever, read the comments on a newspaper website. Ever.
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“In this paper Wiley provides what may be the clearest discussion yet of the core...”
– (via @cstross) The Deepening Paradox — Karl Schroeder. Fascinating stuff for anyone with an interest in SF, or S.
November 2011
14 posts
1 tag
Off The Record →
Temporarily emerging from the dark to recommend people buy this because (a) it’s for charideee, mate, (b) it’s got some awesome writers in it, and Steve Mosby, and (c) I haven’t done so yet.
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Project 1: Stats
Writing started: July 5.
Writing finished: November 22.
Length: 51,000 words and change.
Yes, that’s short of the 60k I was aiming for, but still, 4 and a half months to do a book, start to end and get it away to my agent (plus x time planning beforehand; probably a couple of weeks doing it heavily). In that 4.5 months, Future Wife had Morgan, I’ve sold my old flat with all the...
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This Week In Facts: Water & The EU
“EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydration” screamed the Telegraph (and my Facebook feed; hence my interest). Blimey, a three-year investigation, pompous Eurocrats, needless time-wasting, and all they can say is that water doesn’t make you hydrated. CRAZY!
So what’s the truth?
It’s not much less bureaucratic, and some EU rulings genuinely are crazy, but...
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Future Sister-In-Law’s 50th birthday at the weekend, and I was rousted into doing some photo work. Used my newly acquired 55mm f1.4 Olde Manual Chinon lens since we were going to be indoors and I don’t like flash. Now I have to burn 70 images onto DVD. :(
Future Wife and Young Mr Morgan.
Very busy night for some.
(As almost always, click to embiggen.)
Five Cognitive Biases That Prove Your Brain Hates... →
WHAT SHUT UP I DON’T EVEN
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Test Shots
(clicking makes with the embiggening)
Chinon 55mm f1.4, old, old, incredibly old M42 manual lens. Both shot at f1.4, the can slightly overexposed (in original; fixx0red now) through my own fault. Thoughts: detail on focal plane is crisp, edge contrast chroma is minimal, bokeh is surprisingly smooth. Don’t know how the latter will fare on single light points, though; don’t know...
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“The roughly 54-hectare Manila North Cemetery is considered to be the largest and...”
– A Placid Coexistence with the Departed, by John Javellana. His accompanying photo set is, equally, well worth your time.
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October 2011
13 posts
More Details, As Promised
Man, I’m awesome.
Edited to add: proper linkage and alternative linkage for the download.
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Tonight, My Dulcet Tones
My interview with the charming Alex from Sci Fi London is in tonight at 8pm on Resonance 104.4 FM (London)/streamed at www.resonancefm.com and at www.panelborders.wordpress.com at nine. More details to follow when I’m not on my sham of a phone. But I’m very interesting and intelligent and sexy.
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Chuck Wendig's Shotgun Gravy
“Uh-huh. So. You asked me, now I’ll ask you: what’s it like to be you?”
“It’s fine,” she says, plodding along. “Pretty boring.”
He rolls his eyes. “Oh. Sure. I bet. The town of Dullsville, population: You.”
“Now you’re just being sarcastic. That’s not cute at all. My Daddy used to say, Darlin’, sarcasm is the first refuge of bitter men.”
“Well I say that sarcasm is a...