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News Of The Day 3/2/2010

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PS3’s sieze up among other weird naming news, video is all ago, and publishing is a mixed bag!  Nerds assemble, it’s the must-know geek career news of the day!

Career:
Have career/resume information overload? A few tips on how to keep from overdoing it. Some good advice here.

Economics/Geekonomics:
A look at disposable income over the years for some econogeeks

Anime and Manga:
Crunchyroll’s iPhone app will do Simulcasts – And as usual, I welcome our new Crunchylords. The iPhone app almost seemed to come in under radar, but now with the iPad, Crunchyroll is even more firmly established.

Geek Law:
You may not remember the bizarre legal wranglings of SCO or Darl McBride (short summary; lawsuits involving Linux and IP, much humiliation and anger). Some or all of SCO’s remnants may be sold to Darl McBride who was part of the earlier mess. I’m guessing more lawsuits will result from this.

Germany suspends controversial data retention law – But only for six months. Remember laws like thsi vary from country to country – but can affect your plans.

Apple sues HTC for patent infringement – And so it begins. My guess is this is a swipe at Android.

Publishing:
Kodansha reports 2009 loss – Two years in a row, and sales have been dropping for awhile. Though I think Kodansha has ambitions in North America, this kind of economic hit can’t be helping them be realized – though it may drive them as well.

Penguin Publishing is doing well overall – Seems to be due to a mix of factors. Seeing them do well gives me hope that publishing has survived and may recover from all the hits its faced.

Social Media:
How your Social Media Data gets used – Food for thought. Greasy, disturbing food for thought.

Technology:
A useful look at how Google and Apple became enemies – Some history for those that haven’t followed this soap opera.

Asus comes out swinging with it’s new netbooks and more info on their e-reader. Very nice stuff – not overly innovative, but Asus’ big focus is What Works.

Video:
Russia has it’s own Hulu – For those of you keeping track of video site ambitions.

Netflix mulling an iPhone app – To which I say go for it (and go Android too). I think though the iPhone is a big deal, the iPad has increased awareness of video utilities. Of course this is just apparently “mulling” which to me says “going to be done.” More here.

Video Games:
February 28th people found some of their ‘fat’ PS3’s not working. Now it appears the issue sort of fixed itself. It appears to be a clock issue, with a mis-interpreted leap year (in 2010, yes). It seems to have been forgiven by the public, but let’s see. This also makes me wonder if this’ll happen again.

Sony Acquires Media Molecule, makers of Little Big Planet – A good move for them as, questions on sales aside, Little Big Planet was impressive.

Scandal and weirdness between Infinity Ward and Activision. Looks like Call of Duty is in Infinity Ward’s hands.

Hi5’s API is going to work with Facebook


QUESTION OF THE DAY: Did Sony handle the PS3 meltdown issue appropriately?


-Steven Savage

You’ll Never Get It Together

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"Once I get it together, I'll launch my career!"

If you think this way, you're never going have a career.

The truth about careers (and life in general) is you'll never truly have it together.  There will always be something not quite right.  There will always be something a bit off.  Even if you get to your supposed perfect point, you'll re-evaluate it and discover it's not as perfect as you thought.

So you might as well start your career now.  Take that class.  Read that book.  Do that research.  Practice Flash animation or whatever.  You're never going to have it together enough to start, so wade on it.

"Once I get these things together, my career will be perfect."

If you think this way, you'll be waiting forever.

Careers are evolving, unpredictable beasts.  You can set a direction into the future, but you can expect quite a few twists and turns as you head towards where you want to go.  Along the way you may decide where you want to go is something differently entirely.

Want to be happy in your career?  Start as soon as possible, throw yourself into it, and enjoy the ride.  Accept the crazy, chaotic nature of what you'll face.  Enjoy the experience of the changes.

There's never a time it'll be all together.

But it can be pretty exciting!

– Steven Savage

Book Update 3/1/2010

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The latest update on the book:

  • I got a copy from Lulu.com.  I'm pretty impressed with the POD quality – it's pretty good overall.  Layout work, cover worked (except for some brightness/contrast on a photo which I miscaluclated).    Print quality is VERY nice.
  • I then proceeded to go through it with a highlighter and find anything that looked wrong and correct it.
  • I changed the font, it was too small – I had gone with ten point which looked horrible.  It's much better in 12 point, which makes the book bigger, but won't affect the final sales price when it goes commercial.
  • I also changed some page breaking and organization – it's amazing how you can forget things like "Chapters are best starting on odd pages".
  • The next copy is coming to me.  If all is well release will go on end of month if not earlier.

What I learned:

  • You need a copy of your book to truly appreciate it if there's a physical copy.
  • Twelve point, maybe even eleven point, but ten point is NOT a good idea for most books.
  • Underlines can look bad in books too.  I understand they're frowned on.
  • Converting to PDF's is quite an adventure.  This time I had to make sure my formats were right for large-scale distribution, which meant learning about embedded fonts.
  • Book layouts have TONS of subtleties that you have to learn either via study and practice or painfully experiencing it yourself.  I've learned from the latter.  Among my findings are: chapters should start on an odd page (right-hand).  Table of Contents also starts best on odd/right-handed page.  Changes in font size, even a small amount, change the acceptable amount of whitespace in formatting, and appendices somehow flow better when you have a simple "Appendices" labeled page to break them off from the main body.

So far, a lot more work than I thought.  Then again I learned a lot.  And, of course, this will be used in the next book – and there will be more to come . . .

– Steven Savage