Relevant History

New toy

This afternoon I finally gave in and bought an iPad 2. Perhaps "gave in" is not quite the right term for my feelings about the purchase, but still.... It's my gift to myself for winning a contract for the contemplative computing book, so I partly justify it on the grounds that I'll be able to write with it.

I have high hopes that I can leave my laptop at home more often, and take this and a Bluetooth keyboard when I go travelling, to the library, etc.. That won't always be the case; in fact, I suspect that the relationship between my MacBook and the iPad will be like the relationship between my car and bike. I need the car for certain kinds of tasks, but I can substitute the bike for shorter trips and if I think out my day completely enough; a large technology is really a hedge against having to think too much.

Anyway, the Bluetooth keyboard works like a charm, and I have high hopes that I'll be able to make this relationship work.

Another book giveaway

In the course of reorganizing my home office (I'm starting serious work on my next book, on contemplative computing), I've made another cull of my book collection. Like last year, I've got several large boxes of books that are duplicates, books I read long ago, or books I'm honestly never going to read. Some are in pristine condition (alas), while others are annotated. I'm looking to give away to someone who can use them-- preferably a grad student in history of science / STS or some related field, but that's highly negotiable.

Many of them are really outstanding, but the trajectory of my professional work is such that they're no longer really relevant for me, and I've got more books coming in the door every day. Here's a picture of many, but not quite all, the books I'm giving away.

Go to flickr for a full size version

The terms of the giveaway are:

1. The books are free; all you pay is postage (about $25-30 per box).
2. You take the whole set, which consists largely of books in history of science; contemporary science, science policy, or science and business; and a few in history of art and architecture. I don't really have time to publish a catalog of all the books, and mail them out individually; plus as a collection it has some measure of integrity or structure that I think is of some small value, and worth preserving.

If you're interested, contact me at askpang at gmail dot com.

The rise of self-publishing

I've spent the last few weeks working on a book proposal around contemplative computing. It's been a great, absorbing experience, so naturally an article on the growing respectability of self-publishing would catch my eye.

With Bowker reporting an "explosive growth" of 169% last month in "non-traditional" publishing, it's not just vanity projects that are taking the self-publishing route these days. Amazon announced last week that John Locke had sold 1,010,370 Kindle books using Kindle Direct Publishing, making him the first self-published author to join the "Kindle Million Club", alongside the likes of Stieg Larsson and James Patterson. Meanwhile, self-published authors Louise Voss and Mark Edwards currently top Amazon.co.uk's Kindle bestseller list, and say they're selling up to 1,900 copies a day of their jointly-written thriller, Catch Your Death. Faulkner award-winning author John Edgar Wideman last year chose to publish his new collection of short stories through Lulu.com; the site, offering authors an 80/20 revenue split, has published over 1.1 million authors to date, adding 20,000 titles to its catalogue a month. Writers around the world are getting their books to readers – and getting paid for it – without a publisher standing in between. Self-publishing, it seems, is becoming respectable.

Many of the authors who this Guardian article talks about are established authors with fan bases: their name recognition means that they're going to be sought out by readers, and don't have to compete as hard as first-time authors.

So what's changed recently? According to one author who's selling a lot online,

"Two major developments have had a hugely beneficial impact on self-publishing. Firstly, changes in technology, in particular the adoption of ebooks by the mainstream thanks to Amazon's Kindle, the iPad, etc... If you're a self-publishing author today, you have a vast audience waiting, and a decent number of professional channels through which you can easily make your work available. I personally know authors who are doing this to great effect – some are making over $10,000 every month! Secondly, the advent of social networking has had an incredible effect."

Word of mouth matters a lot for both printed and electronic books. And as another author makes clear, for professional writers, this isn't just about disintermediation, or being free of the shackles of the editorial process: to be a success in the self-publishing market, you need to

"Write the best book you can, hire a real editor to make it better. Have it professionally copy-edited to remove typos. Get a real cover artist – if you're not a professional artist, don't do your own cover. Get that book into ebook form. Start promoting, and start on your next book. Repeat, repeat, repeat."

So essentially self-publishing is "create your own virtual publishing house."

Quote of the day: Cars 2

From Slate:

A little girl near me kept asking her dad, "Which cars are the bad guys? What are they doing?" Her father shushed her politely, but he would have done his fellow audience members a bigger favor by loudly and accurately answering her questions, since we were just as stumped.

Uh oh.

Quote of the day: On sleeping in the same room as the kids

From Gizmodo:

[G]oing on vacation is MUCH more stressful and emotionally draining than working. This is largely because I have to spend a full week sleeping in the same room as my children. You should only have to sleep in same room as your kids if aliens have invaded the fucking Earth and are trying to mow you down with their giant alien laserbeams. Otherwise, it should never be necessary.

Contemplative art

I was in Washington DC last week, and managed to take in the Nam June Paik exhibit at the National Gallery. It was an unexpected lesson in technology and contemplation.

via flickr

Qantified self

Just wanted to note brief post about self-tracking and the quantified self movement on my Future 2 blog.

Quote of the day

"All species are unique, but humans are uniquest." (Theodosius Dobzhansky, via Robert Sapolsky)

Ecto is dying, long live... what, exactly?

For years I've used Ecto, and loved it. However, for the last few months I've had problems with it: it's crashing or hanging up constantly, and that's getting in my way.

So what should I switch to? I tried Mars Edit a long time ago, and have the vague memory that it was all right. I've installed the ScribeFire extension, and will play with that a bit (though I'n not seeing an ability to set categories, which may be a deal-breaker). But I liked having a stand-alone blog editor for offline writing, and would like to find another one.

New iPhone

Yesterday I dropped my iPhone 3 G, and of course I didn't have the case on, so I managed to damage the cellular antenna (the wifi and cellphone parts of the phone have different antennas). After a couple hours, it was clear that the phone reception was pretty messed up, so this morning I went to the Genius Bar and had them take a look at it.

They were able to get some of the connectivity back, but I decided, it's time to get another phone. So I got an iPhone 4, a case that I'll ACTUALLY KEEP ON THE PHONE AT ALL TIMES, and a screen protector.

I also decided to get a bluetooth keyboard, which works with this generation of iPhone. I'm still hopeful that I can dispense with the laptop when I'm not doing really high-intensity editorial work or writing, and the keyboard is an essential component in making any such plan come true-- whether it's with the iPhone, an iPad, or something else. There's just no comparison between how quickly I can type, and my pecking on the little thumb-sized virtual keyboards.

I doubt I'll be able to dispense with the Macbook often, but I'm going to think seriously about what things I actually use on the Mac when I'm working, and how I could replicate them on some combination of mobile device, keyboard, and cloud.

I've done some writing in Google Docs, and I think that for at least parts of my book project, and many articles, I could use it instead of Word; I also need to look at having a setup where I have master copies of Word or other documents living in the cloud, and accessed by various devices. (Actually, for things like my personal library of PDFs of scholarly articles, I wonder if iCloud would actually be useful.)

I've also got to find a case for the keyboard, and a stand for the iPhone-- and preferably have both functionalities in the same object, which I suspect I'll have to commission from someone.

My son at the Science Museum

Just came across this picture from their trip to England in April.

at the science museum, via flickr

Deliberate practice, 4 year-old version

This is excellent: an impromptu statement about the relationship between practice, motivation, and reward.

YouTube full-sized version