Frustration Friday: Too Busy To Be Frustrated!

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I wanted to go and rant about stuff.  HP?  Maybe Netflix?  maybe DC's relaunch?

But here's the odd thing.  I'm working on Focused Fandom: Cosplay, Costuming, and Career.  And I'm trying to find things to write about, but as soon as something gets me into a good, powerful annoyance I can share – I'm back to examining editing, or publishing, or somthing else.

Seriously, I'm frustrated about not being able to focus my frustration.

This is one of the strange things with a blog – you get into patterns.  This is usual, and it is good, but there are moments your brain doesn't engage.  This is probably even more likely now since most of my focus at this point is my three different series (Scott was a big inspiration).  So I'm used to regular work on things, which isn't as spontaneous as these columns.

And again, the editing – which is very regular.

Most ironically?  I just got a column out of talking about my lack of frustration frustration.

So let's draw some useful lessons – if you're blogging progeeky-wise, then you're going to have those moments of lost inspiration, out of patterns, etc.  It's important to remember, because they will happen.  However the discipline of regular work pays off, even if there are times you're interrupted.

But you might get a post out of it.

– Steven Savage

News Of The Day 9/22/2011

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HP In The News
This is a rumor, but I report it so we can follow it – HP will replace Leo Apotheker with Meg Whitman as CEO. I find Whitman's past political campaign to have shown signs of questionable competence, despite her performance at eBay (which I can say here in Silicon Valley is also questioned despite eBay's amazing growth). Throw in her failed political bid on top of HP's problem, and no matter her actual competence, it may not fix HP's image problem (and may make it worse by throwing in a would-be governor into the toxic mix of publicity problems).

HP hasn't convinced me they can reverse this slide yet.

Facebook
Yep, A lot is happening in Facebook. Among what we have so far:

At the same time this all seems to be too much, you know? Like they're trying too hard.

The sharing of data with others is a good sign, but in another way can push them to irrelevance.

Geek Law:
What the new patent laws mean to gaming. End result – not good.  Speed is not necessarily a benefit here.

Remakes:
. . . and now we get Sabrina the Teenage Witch as emo magical girl?

Video:
Sure Hulu has problems, but It's still growing and plans to invest some $375 million in new content. Their future is still dicey, but the seem to be managing to keep growing.

And Dish makes it's move with A streaming service out to compete with Netflix. Not surprising, and I have to wonder if knowing this was coming was part of Netflix's recent strategies. Oh speaking of that . . .

On top of this Netflix is integrating with Facebook except in the US due to legal issues (which may change).

Lots of disruption in the video space, keep your eyes open. I'm still bullish on Netflix, but Dish is playing smart.

Video Games:
OnLive opens its streaming gaming service in the UK. Notice how these guys keep going but there's little said about them?

– Steven Savage

T-14 Days: Thanks, I think

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As everyone knows I go through Lulu for most of my physical books and for ePub and PDF format.  For Kindle, of course I go through Amazon.  It's how I did Fan To Pro, Convention Career Convention, and the Best-Of Books.

So I'm going to release "Focused Fandom: Cosplay, Costuming, and Careers"

So here I am, and now?  Lulu has some new ePub converters and such available for iBookstore and Nook distribution.

I should be happy.  Hell, I've loved what Smashwords did with Meatgrinder.  But . . .

Now I have a question.  Do I do the ePub myself or try their converter?

See this will make my life easy – except to see if it WILL I have to try it out, and then if it's close-but-not-quite, I have to decide how much time to put into it.

Here's somethign to remember if you're self-published; things are changing.  Rapidly.  YOU will need to keep up on them and pace yourself.

Me?  I gotta find another spare 2-3 hours to try this thing out . . .

– Steven Savage