Hopefully those of you expecting books from me received them by now. I gather the packaging for the Practical RDF book did not hold up particularly well to shipment; again, hopefully, none were lost in the mail. If so, and the books separated from the packaging and the addressees were lost, then at the least I hope they increase the semantic awareness of our US postal system.
Category: Writing
Just writing
Categories
Media Mailed
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
Tonight I sent off the books for those of you who emailed me your addresses. The UPT is in boxes, and the Practical RDF is in bubble envelopes. Zoë helped me pack the books, so you’ll know which ones are from me by whether they glow in the dark or not.
Just kidding — Zoë’s radiation does not rub off on inanimate objects. Not unless she were to pee on your books. I can assure you that if my cat peed on your book, I would not send it. Well, not without drying it, first.
I got a very good deal on envelopes and boxes at our local Office Depot, and the Media mailing rate is incredibly low. All total, mailing the Practical RDF books came to about 3.00 each and the UPT to about 5.00. Since I would rather not have 3.00 and 5.00 charges on Paypal (of which I believe it would take 1.25 anyway), instead I’d like you to consider donating some canned goods or money to your Humane Society. If you would prefer, you can also donate to another charity, or drop it into the tin of a really good street performer. Or you can have a good cup of coffee and a PB & J sandwich, on me.
Then, if in my journey late summer, my odyssey through the States and beyond, I come into your area and you want to buy me a beer, well, you’re on.
Speaking of the little princess, she’s happily home and has spent the last several hours exploring every last bit of the town-home, climbed into boxes, snuggled, ate, snuggled, played, and snuggled some more. She hasn’t slept once. I did a little research and found out that if we hold her close for three hours a day, the amount of radioactive exposure we’ll experience is 3 mrem/year–an increase of 1% over normal radiation doses we experience from the sun and other sources. This is supposedly equivalent to drinking one cup of coffee or one diet soda per day. We have decided to snuggle Zoë the 3 hours and do without one can of soda or a cup of joe a day.
It was a surprise to hear, though, that coffee and soda add to our radiation exposure. I wonder if Starbuck’s is managed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission? Further research shows that drinking coffee shortens our lives an average of six days. If you think that’s bad, did you know that if you eat 40 tablespoons of peanut butter, one after the other, you’ll die of aflatoxin poisoning?
All in all, I’ll take my chances with Zoë.
Categories
The Eagles have landed
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
Today I finally found the eagles. I am both exhausted and exhilarated. I have photos, which I have to go through to see how many survived both the sunlight, speed, camera shake, and distance. When the five or so out of 300 have been found, I’ll post them and their story online.
In the meantime, O’Reilly has been trying out different publication business models, including a new type of book experience called Rough Cuts and publishing smaller works, online, for less money.
Rough Cuts are pre-production releases of books focused on new, and hot, technology while the book is currently going through final revision and production processing. You pay less money, download PDFs and also, hopefully, provide feedback for the final book. With this, O’Reilly hopes to get books on hot tech into the hands of the readers that much more quickly.
One of the books is Ajax Hacks, which I helped tech edit this last December. Lots of helpful tips and tricks when working with Ajax in this book. It’s this book that inspired me to dive, happily, into Ruby on Rails.
As for the short publications, yours truly wrote one of the first for O’Reilly, on none other than syndication feeds. Per Derrick Story at O’Reilly:
O’Reilly recently commissioned Shelley Powers, a specialist in technology architecture and software development, to create a comprehensive PDF document that would help webmasters manage their incoming and outgoing feeds. Shelley produced nothing short of a must-have reference for online publishers, titled “What Are Syndication Feeds.”
This eDoc, as O’Reilly has termed it, is focused primarily at those newly exposed to syndication feeds and needing to understand what they are, and how to use them. It’s not focused at developers; it is focused at end users, regardless of degree of technical experience. It also doesn’t cover any of the history or the politics, as folks newly introduced to syndication feeds don’t need to know about either of these. RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, and Atom are all featured.
I also noticed that O’Reilly used a bird for the colophon on the eDoc. Rather timely considering my recent successful quest for eagles.
Categories
Great book give away
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
While Zoe is in the kitty hospital, I’m taking advantage of not having my typically very curious kitty getting into everything and am cleaning out my closets. I also need to make room for a bookshelf in one closet in order to, hopefully, start filling it with new works.
I had planned on bringing the rest of the complementary book author copies of my Unix Power Tools and Practical RDF books down to SxSW to give out, but that plan fell through.
So, instead, if you send me an email or leave a comment and agree to pay packaging/shipping, I’ll send you a copy of either Unix Power Tools or Practical RDF — signed, if an author chicken scratch counts for something. When they’re gone, I’ll post a note.
Now, I realize that you’re not getting your copy in a fancy house, after being fed all sorts of nifty foods, but you’re not having to pay for it, either. So, you can take the money you save by not having to buy either, and treat your significant other to pizza in a nice place. Oh what the heck: and buy yourself a beer, too.
With email and comment requests, the UPT books are all gone. Still some Practical RDF to give away.
Update Well, that’s it, all gone. If those who have snagged a copy, chicken scratch and all, could send me your address, I’ll get these out this week.
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It’s cool to be evil
I think Dave’s got the right of it: kicking Google, like kicking Wikipedia, is the new cool. Oh, I have my doubts about both; but then, I’ve always had my doubts about both. Even when the lemmings flocked on the side of do no evil.
I do want to point out, though that my Practical RDF book is in Google’s book search. As is Unix Power Tools, Essential Blogging, and Developing ASP Components, 2nd Edition. That’s a lot of online content when you consider this is in addition to the millions of words, code how-tos and examples, and photos I’ve published online: here in my weblog, at several online magazines, and up on Flickr.
Luckily there aren’t more people cheap like Steve Rubel, or I wouldn’t be able to afford to continue posting to this weblog, publishing my photos online, creating and giving away code, as well as answering questions and helping folks when I can.
I wonder, then, who it is that is supposed to change? Google for publishing the bits from the books? Or Ruebel for not spending a dime on content that helps make people like him famous?