Free content can make money!

Cover of
Old Man's War
Image via WikipediaReaders here (all 6 of you?) know I read John Scalzi's blog. A while back he talked about a new book by Scott Sigler, "Infected" and gave a link to get a free PDF of the book. (That link is no longer valid by the way...)

That's nice of John, to hook his readership up that way... but he himself is no stranger to it. You could say he got his start that way (as, arguably, Cory Doctorow did as well).

So now it comes out that it's possible to get a podcast of Infected if you follow this link.

I suspect that while there will be takers, and lots, it will also drive sales of the book. Why? because I'm sure I'm not the only person who got hooked on Scalzi by reading a free (unless you wanted to donate something, which I did) copy of "Old Man's War", or on Doctorow by reading a free copy of "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom". Although horror isn't my favorite subgenre of SF, the book was good and I plan to keep following the series

What about you? Do you read free books? Do you find yourself buying a copy of the book you got for free? If so, what motivates you?

(Note, I mean free as in beer here, the content is not freely licensed... in particular the image cover is used as a claimed Fair Use for review/discussion purposes)

Money can't buy happiness?

Sometimes following tangents finds you interesting things. Danny's "White Fathers" blog post yesterday on what really would help folk in Africa, whether the WMF's mission of knowledge sharing was the most needful thing started the wheels turning for me.

Those wheels got a push from this thread on Wikipedia Review, and from Danny's "Congo" response to it here. I think maybe sometimes we lose track, in our situations, of how things really are and aren't, and what we can do about them. What I'm about to say should in no way be taken as diminishing how tough things are in places like the sub Sahara, the Congo, Sudan, Zimbabwe and the like. They're tough, make no mistake, way tougher than in the rich world...

So when I hear people saying "Money can't buy happiness?" I want to call BS. First, take a look at this classic essay by John Scalzi, "Being Poor" It's a rich world essay to be sure, but it drives home the point... being poor really really sucks.

Then take a look at this New York Times article... Maybe Money Does Buy Happiness After All ... Granted, its a study of the rich world, and of the well off people within it, but (quoting)

The fact remains that economic growth doesn’t just make countries richer in superficially materialistic ways.

Economic growth can also pay for investments in scientific research that lead to longer, healthier lives. It can allow trips to see relatives not seen in years or places never visited. When you’re richer, you can decide to work less — and spend more time with your friends.

That's rich world stuff... but the same thing is true in the less rich world. As Ben Yates cited in a "White Fathers" reply, cellphones can make a difference, and that says to me that aid isn't the solution. Changing society is the solution. Economic growth is the solution. Knowledge is the solution. Danny's right when he says an encyclopedia per se isn't the answer, that more thought is required, it has to deliver the things that are needed. But those who decry encyclopedias and economic and societal change in favour of direct aid? They miss the mark.

Money can't buy happiness? Tell it the the lady in Alabama with the 800 dollar car. Tell it to the mother in Gambia without the money to buy a sack of maize.

Money CAN buy happiness.... but the best kind of money is money you control because you earned it, because your society enabled it, not money that dropped in your lap.

My secret of Travel Success

ORD... looks pretty doesn't it? Psych!
Image from Wikimedia CommonsOK, this is a bit of a ramble. Like the rest of my blog posts aren't? Grin.

Some of you know that I travel a lot. I work for IBM as a consultant (a Technical Architect, to be exact, which is a fancy title for being fairly senior, and knowing a little about a lot of products in our suite and being good with whiteboards and Microsoft Visio). My travels keep me on the road all week, unless I'm in a lull, or need a day to go to the dentist or whatever.

Some of you know I read John Scalzi's blog. He's pretty amusing for an SF writer (which is saying a lot because I find most SF writers very amusing... must be the geek in me. But I digress.), and if you haven't read "Old Man's War" you're in for a treat. Well, several posts in a row from him recently have been complaining about his travel woes. Seems he keeps getting delayed or stranded in Chicago.

Here's my secret of travel success, free of charge: Don't connect through Chicago. Avoid ORD at all costs. Simple really, but effective. ORD is the source of delays everywhere else, why would someone want to go to the source? It works pretty well for me. Don't believe that hype about it being the traveler's favourite airport 9 years in a row... that's just because so many travelers spend so much time in it, they had to spruce it up.

Secondary secret? Try not to connect through ATL either.

Hope that helps. See you out there! (and stop kicking the back of my seat!)

Don't blog... write!

Gee, I hope Robin Hobb is wrong. She makes the case that there is a fixed amount of writing within ones self to be had, and that if one has a blog, that means less actual writing. (1)

But I fear she is correct.

Writing is something I do for a living, in part... most IT consultants have to deliver documentation to a greater or lesser degree, and system architects like me tend to have to deliver quite a lot of it.

I've long noticed that I procrastinate on deliverables by writing articles... I procrastinate on writing the articles I mean to write (see "procrastination") by getting involved in various admin things, reading newsgroups and mailing lists, writing posts, writing stuff on talk pages, posting on AN/I, RFARs, chatting away on IRC, posting to Wikback, to Wikipedia Review, other people's blogs, etc. etc. etc! Namespace shift at its finest!

And now apparently I have yet another way to procrastinate, this blog. Well maybe I should at least try to be brief, and stop now, then...

Do you find one kind of writing saps your will to do another kind?

--------------
1 - Note, I found her writing via a post at the blog of Cydeweys, which was in turn a reference to a post at the blog of John Scalzi, one of my favorite currently active SF authors.