Category Archives: General

General

Self-publishing

November 30, 2011 – 12:35 pm

Books
Photo credit: ginnerobot on Flickr

This is the last day of November and you should have finished your NaNoWriMo novel today. Once you’ve written your novel you’ll want to publish it, for what is a novel if not read?

Unlike Rowling who had her first manuscript rejected by several publishers, you can get yours published online with relative ease by the miracle that is modern technology.

Here’s a list of self-publishing resources to consider:

  • PubIt! by Barnes & Noble - get your ebooks distributed on Barnes & Noble. I couldn’t find any information about their royalty percentage on their website.
  • Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) by Amazon – sell your ebooks on the Amazon store. KDP offers 70% royalties.
  • Lulu – ebooks are distributed on Apple’s iBookstore and Barnes & Noble in the widely accepted ePub format. Unlike the others on this list Lulu also allows you to publish your books in print and even issues an ISBN. They also offer services such as pre-publishing, editing and marketing. Lulu offers between 80% and 90% royalties.
  • Smashwords – similar to Lulu, Smashwords also issues an ISBN and distributes your ebook to a host of online distributors, including Sony Reader Store, Kobo, iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Stanza and more. They offer between 60% and 85% in royalties.
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General Technology

Here’s To The Crazy Ones [Video]

October 8, 2011 – 4:56 pm

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General

Notice: Website Overhaul

October 4, 2011 – 1:53 pm

I’m doing some major tweaks to my website and am pretty much operating in the dark on this, so things may screw up. Presently, all previous blog post permalinks no longer work, but I’m trying to get it working again.

Wish me luck.

Update: I realised that I will need to work on a virtual private server at the very least to get the upgrades to work. All blog posts are back to normal and are working with their original permalinks. I have made some structural changes in terms of blog category hierarchies which will effect some blog posts. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

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General

Down The Rabbit Hole

September 22, 2011 – 10:59 am

One day I’ll write a book.

But that day will never come because I will always have one thing to do or another. I could wait till I’m retired. But then I might be busy traveling around the world. And look at all these books that are stacked up on my shelf. I promised myself I’d read them when I’m retired, too.

The truth is, we will never have the time to write a novel or learn to play the guitar or do any of those things we had said we would one day like to do. We will never have the time for them because we never make time for them. And secretly we really don’t want to start because just as your dreams may lead you to success it can also lead you to failure. So to start is to introduce the possibility of failure. It’s like going up to that girl you’ve had a crush on in school, if you never ask her out she’ll never be able to reject you. And so we live our lives without ever realising anything worth realising, meandering around the potholes, careful never to step into one of them lest we fall in too deep. But the pothole is Life’s way of saying, “Now’s your chance. Go for it.”

Each year, from 1st November to 30th November, budding authors from around the world participate in the National Novel Writing Month, better known as NaNoWriMo, organised by the Office of Letters and Light. The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.

Still need convincing, listen to this TED talk by Google Software Engineer Matt Cutts, then read his blog post about his 30 Day NaNoWriMo Challenge.

And when you travel down this rabbit hole it might just lead you to Wonderland.

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Education General Technology

Everything Is A Remix

September 19, 2011 – 9:58 pm

When I was teaching my students about plagiarism, one particular student asked if he was allowed to use information he had learnt from his textbooks or did he have to credit them, too. He was definitely on to something. Those textbooks had, in themselves, information that was borrowed from centuries of scientists works and mathematicians like Pythagoras had originally taken his equations from the Assyrians.

I decided to deviate from the lesson to address his question, which I thought had an underlying importance. The question was a philosophical one. How do we know what we know is what we know and not acquired from someone else? The branch of philosophy called epistemology was set up to answer just such a question. If indeed everything we know is borrowed knowledge then everything is plagiarised from someone else’s work.

And perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in movies. Kirby Ferguson is the creator of Everything is a Remix, a four-part video series. In part 2, he postulates that most of the movies we have grown to love were mostly recycled from other works – that is, plagiarised.

Part 3 of Everthing is a Remix explores the elements of creativity. I find this especially intriguing, as well as important, if we want to truly understand the creative process.

Head over to the reference page of Everything is a Remix to get references to books, videos and websites to the series.

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