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Daynotes
Journal
Week of 25 April 2011
Latest
Update: Sunday, 1 May 2011 10:18 -0400 |
09:23
- Joe Konrath announced yesterday that he's sold a total of 276,112 ebooks,
with about 30,000 of those so far in April. Joe says he should easily
make 35,000 sales and $70,000 in royalties for this month.
Of
his total sales, about 245K were on Kindle, 20K on Smashwords, and 5K
on CreateSpace. That leaves about 6K total on Nook, Overdrive, and his
web site. At first glance, that seems to indicate that Kindle is
overwhelmingly dominant, but the odd thing is that some big-selling
indie authors have had exactly the opposite experience, with the bulk
of their sales on Nook and Kindle in a far-distant second place. I'm
not sure what that means. Perhaps Amazon/Kindle and B&N/Nook appeal
to significantly different types of readers.
Incidentally, as
impressive as Joe's sales volume is, it pales compared to the
top-selling indie authors. John Locke and Amanda Hocking each sell more
books every two or three days than Joe sells per month. At this point,
there are probably several hundred indie authors who are earning
$10,000 per month or more, and the numbers just keep increasing, both
the number of authors and their sales volumes.
The latest indie author is one whose name you may recognize. Last night, Jerry Pournelle self-published his first title: A Step Farther Out. And it's already doing pretty well.
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #3,274 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
#1
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Business &
Investing > Economics > Development & Growth
#1
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Business &
Investing > Biographies & Primers > Policy & Current
Events
#2 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks
> Nonfiction > Business & Investing > Economics >
Economic Policy & Development
Colin is flourishing. We took him over to Barbara's sister's house for
dinner yesterday, and he did very well, including the trip there and
back. He's curled up under my desk right now. We've puppy-proofed my
office, the hall bathroom, the foyer, and the den, so I'm letting him
have free run of those areas. He comes and asks when he needs to go out.
That means I'm able to work now, so I'd better get to it.
08:21
- Based on good reviews, Barbara and I decided to try watching Fringe. It stars the Australian actress Anna Torv,
whom we both like. Unfortunately, it pegged my bogosity meter
immediately and kept it pegged through the entire pilot episode. The
series is supposedly science fiction, but in fact it's actually
(pseudo)science(y), (badly-written) fiction. I rated it two stars on
Netflix, which is unusually low for me. Usually, I make better choices.
I was expecting some bogosity, perhaps like Bones, but this series is utter dreck. Even Anna Torv can't save it.
Pournelle is making it look easy. He published his Kindle ebook, A Step Farther Out,
late Sunday evening, and it's been climbing in Amazon rank ever since.
When I checked just now, it was at #1,346 overall, which means it's
probably earned him a couple hundred bucks its first day out. Jerry is
working now on converting more of his backlist for Kindle, and I'm
encouraging him to self-publish his new material as well.
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,346 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
#1
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Business &
Investing > Economics > Economic Policy & Development
#1
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Business &
Investing > Biographies & Primers > Policy & Current
Events
#1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks
> Nonfiction > Business & Investing > Economics >
Development & Growth
10:39
- Here's a worthwhile article about graduate science education.
The article was published five years ago, but its points remain valid
today. And, despite that article in Nature yesterday about us producing
too many Ph.D.'s in the hard sciences and engineering, the reality
is that we aren't producing enough. The problem isn't on the supply
side; it's on the demand side.
Well, there are problems on the
supply-side as well. We have kids spending four years in undergraduate
studies, the first two years or more of which they should have mastered
in high school. Then, around age 22, they enter a Ph.D. program, where
they can be stuck for five to seven years. Sometimes longer, for those
that do multiple post-docs. That's simply absurd. A Ph.D. should
require no more than three years after undergrad, and there should be
hybrid programs that produce a combined BS/Ph.D. after six years total.
Simply getting rid of all the crap kids are required to take in
undergrad and focusing on their real goals would suffice to allow that.
But
the real problem is on the demand side. Government subsidizes many
things. If they're going to spend our tax dollars subsidizing things,
I'd like to see a lot more of those tax dollars going to subsidize our
best and brightest in the sciences, which at least has a massive payoff
down the road. And I don't mean subsidizing them while they're getting
their educations, although that of course is important. I mean make
sure they have a high likelihood of getting good, well-paying jobs
after they get their degrees. As I've said, give any company that hires
a Ph.D. scientist or engineer a tax credit (rather than a deduction).
These are the folks who collectively will produce advances in science
and technology that will benefit all of us. Right now, ouir policies
are unintentionally discouraging them from pursuing these careers.
08:32
- I check our Netflix instant queue periodically to see what's going to disappear shortly. Yesterday, I noticed that Rough Science,
a British reality TV program, was to disappear as of 1 May. There are
only 12 half-hour episodes, so we decided to watch one to see if we
liked it. We ended up watching four or five episodes, and will finish
the remaining ones over the next couple of days. There are supposedly
more available on DVD, but Netflix doesn't have those.
It's an
interesting concept. They plunk down half a dozen scientists from
various disciplines in the middle of nowhere with limited resources and
set tasks for them to complete. Last night, we were watching them
searching for and recovering gold in New Zealand and measuring the
movement of a glacier. I was surprised at the mix of scientists they
chose. They had one chemist, one chemist/physicist, one physicist, and
two biologists (one of whom is a botanist and one a virologist). I told
Barbara I'd have gone lighter on the duplication and substituted a
geologist and an engineer. (Actually, if I'd been them, I'd have picked
me. Every group needs a generalist.)
Interestingly, Barbara and I probably aren't anywhere near six degrees of separation
from any of the cast. One of them, Mike Bullivant, is an organic
photochemist. Our friend Paul Jones is also an organic photochemist, so
I suspect he and Mike run into each other frequently at organic
photochemistry conferences.
I told Barbara in jest that I
wondered if these were real scientists. At the beginning of each
episode they get a box of goodies that they'll need for their tasks.
The contents of that box are pretty predictable. For example, when they
mentioned that it was cold and damp and that chapping of their hands
would be a problem, so they'd need to make protective hand cream, I
knew before they opened the goodies box that it'd be full of raw wool
for the lanolin.
The chemist boiled down the wool to extract the
lanolin and then used solvent extraction with vegetable oil to separate
it from the water-soluble contaminants. The poor guy didn't have a sep
funnel, of course, so they showed him trying to decant off the top
(organic) layer without getting any of the bottom aqueous layer. The
whole time, I was sitting there talking to the screen, telling him a
better way to do the separation. "No, you moron. Just put the bottle in
a pan and add water to the bottle until the organic layer overflows."
But
the real reasons I wondered if they were actual scientists were subtle.
For example, when they opened the goodies box, there weren't any fights
about who got which equipment. Real scientists are scroungers, and
wouldn't hesitate to steal what they needed (or wanted) from the other
scientists. Or, when the botanist was using dendrochronology to
determine when the most recent major earthquake in the region had been,
she came up with a date of 1725. They then opened an envelope from
something-or-other university that gave the actual date as 1718. The
botanist was happy, saying she'd come pretty close. If she'd been a
real scientist, she'd instead have said something like "Hah! The
university was off by only seven years." (Just kidding. They're all
real scientists, and they'd defer to other scientists with better
equipment and better data.)
At any rate, it's a good series. Check it out while it's still available.
08:31
-
I'm now in the he's-not-getting-any-bigger stage with Colin. This
happens with every puppy. At some point, I decide it looks as though
they've stopped growing, even though of course they continue growing
until they reach adult size. IIRC, in a month or so Colin should look
like he's running around on stilts. Interestingly, we're already pretty
much free-feeding Colin. He eats what we put down only if he's hungry.
Sometimes, he eats part of it and then leaves the rest for later. If
he's not hungry, he just ignores it. Right now, he's lying beside me in
my office, sharpening his fangs on my metal filing cabinet.
We
watched more of Rough Science last night, leaving us only three
episodes for tonight to finish the series, or what Netflix has of it. I
finally realized who Ellen McCallie, my favorite of the three cuties,
reminds me of. Abbie Smith, AKA ERV.
(I suppose, in order not be be sexist, I should refer to McCallie,
Sykes, and Smith by their proper titles as the Drs. Cutie. Well,
technically, I believe Abbie is still doctoral candidate Cutie. No
wonder women hit me. Although I did ask Mary Chervenak recently if I'm
sexist. She said I'm not, but kindly left out the "but you are
annoying" part.)
08:39
-
Life with the juvenile Tasmanian Devil continues. Yesterday morning,
Colin indicated that he wanted to go out, so I rushed to the door to
let him out. I was still in my pajamas, and carrying my cordless phone
in one hand. I'd let him out the front door off-leash because he seemed
to be in a hurry. He peed immediately and then decided to play his
favorite game, which is to allow me to get almost-but-not-quite close
enough to capture him before he scampers away.
I finally got
close enough to grab his collar. I was running short of hands, so I set
my cordless phone on the ground while I tried to connect his leash. He
twisted away from me, grabbed the cordless phone, and scampered away to
play his other favorite game, keep-away. So I chased him around the
yard for several minutes, trying to get my cordless phone back. I
finally reclaimed it. Surprisingly, there were no fang marks on it. I
have some lab work to do today or tomorrow, so I'm going to have to
crate or pen Colin while I do it. Puppies and lab work don't mix. He
won't like it, but he's going to have to get used to it.
We
finished watching Rough Science last night. I love watching competent
people solve problems. We also watched an episode of Numb3rs, which is
perilously close to jumping the shark. They had a computer damaged in
an explosion, from which they pulled the hard drive. The forensic
computer specialist couldn't read data from the drive, so she opened
the drive, exposing the platters, from which she then supposedly read
the data by waving a head manually over the disc surface. No clean
room, you understand. She was sitting at her desk. Data recovery firms
should make a note of this. Think of all the money they're wasting by
building those unnecessary clean rooms.
The political news continues to be depressing. There's little doubt
that Obama will run for re-election, but at this point the leading
Republican prospective candidates are Huckabee and Romney, either of
whom is nearly as bad as Obama, and Trump, who is complete buffoon. Ron
Paul has taken preliminary steps, and may well run. That's the best we
can hope for. Ron Paul to be elected president, with fiscal
conservatives holding both houses of congress, ideally with two-thirds
majorities. Unfortunately, that also means that social conservatives
will hold both houses, which doesn't bode well for personal liberties.
Fortunately, although Paul is personally a social conservative, he is a
principled man who does not feel compelled to force his personal
beliefs on others.
Sadly, that's unlikely to happen. More
likely, we'll end up with a disaster. Four more years of Obama, or four
years under another statist like Huckabee or Romney.
09:46
- I think I was right about Colin actually being a Tasmanian Devil.
When I visited the Wikipedia page, I found this image of Colin (on the
left) and one of his litter mates. The fangs, the claws, the
steely-eyed stare, they're all the same. They even sit the same way.
Well, actually, I think Colin is cuter, but that's probably just
because he's one of our pack members.
Here's Colin for comparison.
12:56
-
I see that, starting tomorrow, AT&T will set a cap on their
broadband services. As expected, it's ridiculously low: 250 GB/month
for their fiber customers, and only 150 GB/month for their DSL
customers. To put that in context, 250 GB/month is only about 3.5
hours/day of Netflix HD streaming.
ISP's use "bandwidth" as
their excuse, but that's a red herring. Major ISPs pay a tiny fraction
of their broadband revenues for bandwidth, probably in the 2% to 3%
range. In other words, for every $100 you pay for your broadband
service, the ISP pays $2 or $3 for bandwidth. The real reason ISPs
desperately want bandwidth caps is that streaming video cannibalizes
their lucrative cable TV offerings. The last thing they want is people
watching Netflix streaming instead of paying for their ridiculously
overpriced cable TV packages.
In the past, regulations forbade
those who provided the "pipes" from also selling content on those
pipes. For example, the phone company was not allowed to deliver any
programming over the phone wires. That's the way it still should be. If
Time-Warner wants to be in the broadband utility business, fine. Let
them do it. But don't allow them to sell cable TV programming, VoIP
telephone service, and other enhanced services over those lines. The
infrastructure must be completely separated from the content delivered
by that infrastructure.
Failing that, legislators and
regulators should at least require any cap set by ISPs to be
reasonable, high enough to prevent the ISPs from using the cap to force
their customers to buy other overpriced services from them. A 250
GB/month cap is ridiculously unreasonable. In today's market, a 2,500
GB/month cap would be reasonable, but as bandwidth-hungry services
continue to be developed, that cap should be increased. A decade from
now, a reasonable cap might be 25,000 GB/month. Just as important, ISPs
must be forbidden to discriminate against packets because of those
packets source or type.
10:18
-
Colin turned 11 weeks old yesterday. He's been with us for less than
two weeks, and Barbara and I are already exhausted. She remarked
yesterday that this would be our last puppy. I suspect not. The
aggravation is temporary, and before we know it Colin will have turned
into a good adult dog. As it is, he spends most of his days curled up
on the floor of my office. Most people would assume he's sleeping, but
I know he's actually lying there growing.
We're teaching him now
that he's not allowed to chomp people. With infrequent relapses, he now
pretty much licks me, but he's still chomping Barbara pretty
frequently. She squeals and pops his snout. He jumps back, but he still
hasn't learned not to chomp her. We're also teaching him that his leash
is not a toy. He has great fun grabbing the leash and tugging on it,
getting it wrapped around his snout, legs, tail, and other body parts.
I simply take the leash out of his mouth and tell him "NO" firmly. He's
starting to get the idea.
Colin has backslid on house training,
particularly when he's in demonic phase. He still usually pees outside,
but he's apparently decided that the hall or master bathroom is the
correct place to defecate. Fortunately, both are floored with ceramic
tile.
We've started him on tennis balls, which he'll happily
chase down and bring back 20 or 30 times. Unfortunately, he eventually
decides to take a break from retrieving and shred that nice fuzzy cover.
Speaking
of tennis, back when I was playing seriously I always wondered what it
was like to receive my own serve. I just happened across a YouTube video
that gave me some idea, starting at about 50 seconds in. The only
time I had the speed of my cannonball serve measured was when I
was 15 or 16 years old, when it was clocked at 137 MPH (220 KPH). I'd
grown and gotten stronger by the time I was in college, so I don't
doubt it was by then in the 150 MPH+ (240 KPH+) range.
Copyright
© 1998,
1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010,
2011
by
Robert
Bruce
Thompson. All
Rights Reserved.
