Author: francis

When I was searching around for a second income the other week I realised that I have a lot of things around that I can sell multiple times, as in I have something like four novels I have written over the last 20 years or so.

My magnum opus is called Archive Fragements and is about 200 pages long, I’ve been writing it off and on for ever, usually in sustained bursts of a month or so’s free time and then going back to it after a year or so, editing that material, and then writing some more.

I’ve decided that I’m going to self-publish this using lulu (I’ll probably also pay for an ISBN so people can order it from places like Amazon), after I have revised the current draft, and use some targeted adsense and this blog to promote it. I think I will also release an electronic copy of it under the Creative Commons non-commercial share-alike licence, probably on Feedbooks. While some extra cash is welcome I’d also like people to read the damn thing. 

It also tracks my internal journey as a Buddhist over the last 10 years, to some extent.

I had the idea for a site where you could roll your own version of Archive Fragments by either using a random number generator where you set the seed for the numbers or assembling it in what you felt was the best order, plus adding new material of your own if you wanted to. This would all be Creative Commons NC, with me as the final arbiter on any commercial stuff (benevolent dictatorship being my favoured model, and paying lawyers fees to whiners not). I was trying to do this first and realised it was a waste of my time and much better just to finish folding the little paper boat and let it go downstream.

I’ve spent most of my waking time over this bank holiday editing the book ready for publication. I think some of the writing is pretty good, and some not. I feel excited about what is an interesting adventure and have more projects I can look at in the future if this one pans out.

I need a picture of a bleeding hand for the cover, preferably one that looks like it can easily be painted on a flag or banner, for reasons that will become clear if you ever read the book.

Archive Fragments: The back cover

We find ourselves at some undetermined time in the future “after the revolutio” looking through the eyes of Jay, an adjuster who represents a vague computer system called WorldNet. It uses him as a check and balance to ensure that its decisions are correct and humane. As part of this he also catches and punishes people who misuse resources. Jay believes that he is an amalgam, a person who committed terrible crimes and was punished by having other people’s memories forced into his head until he gained a sense of empathy and understood what he had done. The implanting process leaves particular marks on the body so everybody knows that he was, himself, adjusted. He is trying to atone for what he did by helping and preventing others from committing crimes against the commonality.

In Jay’s time there is an historical figure known as Odine. She was one of the architects of the revolution and quotes and musings from her many writings appear at various places in the book. Her story (or parts of it) are in the narrative. She became a national hero after she persuaded a child abuser who was above the law to end his life and was accused of his murder. She was also made, this time by people hunting for wisdom, on or around our current time frame. Her rise to fame and influence was the beginning of the process that resulted in the society that Jay lives in. This event is known as the Attack of Common Sense.

As the book progresses we get pieces of Jay’s attempts to unravel the mystery of a priest drowned in his font and flashbacks from the fragments of other people’s memories that are stored in his brain. They range from being a PoW in the Second World War, to suffering from a weak heart in hospital, to nearly drowning in a kayaking accident. Jay discovers many things about himself, and is pursued by the shadowy figure of Kervas, who helped make Odine.

Not having a huge amount of fun at the moment.

We’re waiting for some venture capital money to come through at the moment and I have’t been paid for April and probably wo’t see any cash until the end of May.

I ran out of overdraft at the weekend. 

We’re having a month’s holiday from the mortgage and I’ve arranged to welly one of the credit cards for something to live on, plus it turns out NPower owe us a lot of money on the gas bill but they have a rep for being extremely hard to get money out of, so I’m not holding my breath.

But fun I’m not having. When/if I get paid things should look up a bit but this is not good for the nerves.

I need to start working on other forms of income like my writing and so on.

Hey ho.

Problem is that if I were to download, say, a digital version of something I already own on vinyl I’d be breaking the law. You have to buy it again and again, which is great for the Beatles. A lot of indie groups just want to be heard and are’t that bothered by this. It’s the big money people that are hurting. In essence they pay the artists the equivalent of minimum wage and keep the rest of the £15 or whatever you pay for themselves. The existing copyright law has been bent (as in it used to only extend for a few years and is now something insane like 100) to keep these jokers rich over many years. If you even hum a tune you’re breaking the law (seriously).

Also, some people put up things that are extremely rare and hard to find and the record companies just sit on them because they can’t make any money so they do the “dog in the manger” thing and prevent anyone from listening to them.

Plus, there are a lot of books from the 50’s and 60’s that are out of print and are decaying because of acid in the paper – they will never be read by anyone and whatever history they may represent (e.g. early SF) will be lost.

It’s not as simple as you think. The laws were constantly redrafted over the last 30 years every time these monopolists looked like losing their grip on control. I’m not a freetard, but don’t like monopolists keeping my history away from me, either – no-one loves them and they are stupid and greedy.

Have a google for Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture – long read but very interesting.

comment here

When I worked for (a well known database company) one of the consultants told me the following story about a bank in the US:

They did some data mining and customer profiling to identify who was “expensive”, as in they complained a lot and had basic accounts that did’t make a lot of money, i.e. the cost more to serve than you were ever going to make from them.

As per the terms of service these customers were put into “special” accounts that reflected the real cost of serving them.

When they complained (surprise) they were given application forms for the bank’s main competitor!

The other bank did’t understand what was going in until most of these customers had left and they had to increase the size of their call centre to deal with the load.

Call me cynical, but maybe if you can’t make any money let people leave and make it your competitors’ problem?

Comment here

I could get arrested if I leave my power hungry iPhone charging and forget to pick it up?

Plus integrating credit cards and ID cards is being thought of at the moment too.

In Franco’s Spain you had to show ID when you bought anything. I once heard an ex-policeperson say that we should emulate a fascist state and do the same here. It’s already arrived in all but name. Maybe buy a SIM from a car boot sale?

Have a read of Doctorow’s Little Brother, particularly the bit about data mining false positives. You need a data mining technique that is as reliable as the thing you are trying to find, or you will waste a huge amount of time and resources chasing the innocent. No, wait …

Don’t they do that already?

I left this comment in response to some naive comments here (but they deleted it for some reason):

 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/06/dna_deletion/comments/

“My utterly unique fingerprint will be on a database that police can use to exclude me from suspicio”

… and all the members of your family?

… and get you a £60 fine for that fag end you dropped?

… deport you when a Nazi group gets in power and decides it does’t like your racial background?

… and, of course, the old false positive. One in a hundred thousand means there are (60m/100k) 600 people that might have the same match (not counting shared genes with the family). The more non-“perps” in the DB, the greater the likelihood.

and don’t forget they quite often have to “multiply” the DNA to get a usable sample, very easy to “multiply” contamination too.

Plus, personally, I’m just sick to death of the useless gits wasting tons of my money on crap like this and ID cards. SORT OUT THE FUCKING ECONOMY and OBEY INTERNATIONAL LAW – IT’S WRITTEN THAT WAY FOR A REASON, or do we have to another genocide like world war II before they finally understand that no-one cares if they can be trusted, it’s more that can unknown the people in the future can be trusted? Not that we trust them anyway.

Not hard, eh?

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IBM managed to make money from Java, and Sun never really did

So, there’s an irony here. IBM picked Java up, wrote better tools, more popular (although horrible to code against) J2EE server.

It does make sense for everyone, the engineers married to the people who can actually sell things and still understand engineering.

Fiorina destroyed the innovative base at HP and Hurd would’t know innovation if it bit his bits off.

Here we have two competent innovators, a great sales team, a consultancy arm with a reasonable rep. I’d be scared if I were HP or Microsoft. very scared.

I would like to see some proper reporting of the carbon phobia debate.

I would like to see some reporting of the Japanese contention that “climate change” is on a par with astrology. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/25/jstor_climate_report_translation/

Also it changed its name from global warming (which could’t be proved) to climate change – that’s the inconvenient truth – I want science not religion from scientific publications.

I don’t want to see the bogus “hockey stick” curve on the cover of your reputable magazine ever again, I was going to renew my sub after a long time without reading it regularly except certain editions bought from the news stand and decided not to. It was ill-advised and totally innumerate.

Humans add about 10% to the global amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. It’s reported like we make all of it. Some sense of proportion would be useful. It makes all of your other reporting suspect.

I honestly don’t know what the real issues with CO2 are – but you are’t helping me find out, are you?

Bootnote

I did some digging on the web and discovered that we actually contribute less than 5% of the annual CO2 production. There are other greeenhouse gases that are produced in much bigger proportions by humans, but we need some properly funded, peer-reviewed research with evidence. No more anti-technology, screw-the-poor-we-can’t-do-anything dystopian nonsense.

I go for a walk every day. This involves crossing a two bar fence that is made of very thick wood. I have done this for the best part of two years.

As I was walking long I got some aggressive busybody having a go at me, and asking me if I would pay to have the fence repaired if I broke it. I’m afraid I was very rude to him and told him to leave me alone. Then he stared bleating about private land and as far as I am aware the land is owned by the local Council. I told him to grow up and left him to it.

Why am I still angry with him?

Bootnote

24 hours later I’m still angry and did’t sleep properly. This is very boring.

Bootnote 2

Now the council have painted the fence with some kind of grease. I’m going to find out who to complain to if someone’s clothes are damaged or they slip and hurt themselves and get a sign printed saying who to contact. The other thing about Jobsworths is their anonymity.

Bootenote 3

I mentioned this to my Lama because I was a little ashamed at my behaviour and also very surprised at how it had affected me so much. He pointed out that spending a lot of energy opening up your mind and heart to others and then clamping down on it so hard will cause all kinds of mental problems. I need to learn the lesson and not allow my anger to rise. Still does’t mean I have to behave like a doormat or tolerate being shouted at, but the way I deal with it in my mind needs some attention.

Comment here.

Well, yes, but. You also need an idea that’s worth bothering with. Paul Graham points out (at some length) that you need to go for something painful that other people think is too hard or difficult and then find a novel and easy way of doing it.

There are millions of “me too” “Web 2.0” “social networking” sites that do nothing and eat VCap cash that could have been spent on something that sucked less.

So yes, ignore the nay sayers, good! But make sure you’re doing something original enough to make money too (even if original means cheaper and better).