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Vernon, NJ Author Publishes Autobiography

What Has Life Taught Him Through Miracles.




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SpyHunter 5 Earns AppEsteem's "Deceptor Fighter" Certification & Blocks 100% of "Deceptor" Apps

AppEsteem has awarded SpyHunter 5 "Deceptor Fighter" Certification under its "Unwanted Software Handling Certification Test." SpyHunter 5 detected and blocked potentially unwanted applications and unwanted software identified by AppEsteem with 100% accuracy.




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What different types of travel insurance are available?

Choosing travel insurance is not for the faint-hearted. There are hundreds of providers, and increasingly numerous types of packages. A lot will depend upon your budget, and the type of things you want to cover against. Be careful when choosing any particular policy, and don’t presume anything (for example, check out these common reasons where […]

The post What different types of travel insurance are available? appeared first on Three Monkeys Online Magazine.




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Unseasonably Speaking – Stefan Zweig, Brexit and the meaning of Europe

The Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig was once among the most popular and most translated writers in the world. English Heritage's widely criticised refusal to commemorate his residence in London provides an entry point into a discussion on the role of the intellectual, Brexit, and the meaning of Europe.

The post Unseasonably Speaking – Stefan Zweig, Brexit and the meaning of Europe appeared first on Three Monkeys Online Magazine.




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Tiny Magic - Digital Edition available

Due to popular demand, the Digital Edition of Tiny Magic is now available.

read more




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Alley Cat for MSX 2 available for sale soon

Diogo Patrão's Alley Cat remake for MSX2 will be available for sale soon.

read more




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Public School Grift Infrastructure Falters


I'm a big supporter of public education -- I went to public school and university for my entire education. Despite my libertarian leanings, I think taxpayer-funded, locally-directed public education can be a very valuable governmental function. However, I'm not a fan of the grift and graft that engulfs public education, for example the money laundering between teachers' unions and the Democrat party. I'm also not fond of the ideological indoctrination that many of the grifters seek to impose on American children, without the consent of the parents.

So I think it's great that the "get woke, go broke" trend is finally hitting the public education grift infrastructure.

Seventeen NSBA affiliates have cut ties with the NSBA over their coordination with the White House and Department of Justice in casting parental complaints over curricula "domestic terrorism." And as Axios reports, they're taking their checkbooks with them -- accounting for a 40% loss in revenue at the NSBA:
The National School Boards Association has since apologized, but the fallout could be seven figures in annual funding. At least 17 state affiliates have severed ties with the group -- and some are even considering establishing a competitor.

The 17 state affiliates accounted for more than 40% of annual dues paid to NSBA by its state association members in 2019, according to Axios' analysis of documents detailing those contributions.

Officials fear upheaval at the organization -- the nation's leading trade group representing U.S. public schools -- will handicap it just as national debates over school curricula and COVID-19 mitigation measures dominate the political conversation.

Good.




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Eisenhower Warned: "public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite"

President Eisenhower famously warned America about the risk of the military-industrial complex, but he also foresaw the risk that public policy would be captured by a scientific-technological elite.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

(HT: American Experiment and Victory Girls.)




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DnD situation is a symptom of a larger problem: our insanely long copyright protection (life of the author + 70 years!)


(I posted this to the DnD subreddit also: link.)

The Open Gaming License fiasco with Dungeons & Dragons producer Wizards of the Coast is a symptom of a larger problem: our insane Intellectual Property system that currently protects material for the life of the author plus 70 years. As a comparison, patents generally only protect inventions for 20 years.

The purpose of intellectual property laws is to balance public and private interests. IP law is an agreement between society and creators: the creator is guaranteed an exclusive right to their creation for a period of time, and in exchange the public gets rights to the creation afterwards. It's intended to be a balance of interests, but the balance has gotten completely out of whack thanks to (obviously) lobbying throughout the 20th century by major copyright holders like Disney.

In my opinion, the current copyright term, life of the author plus 70 years, is grossly unfair to the public. I believe that the internet era has demonstrated that creators would be incentivized to create even without such a long period of exclusivity. Think about it: would you create less stuff if your great-grandkids didn't get exclusive rights? I doubt it.

Listen: creators should be able to make money from their work. I don't think copyright should go to zero, but why not bring it in line with patent protection with a 20-year term?

Disney, DnD, and many other creations are part of our generation's cultural legacy, part of a 10,000+ year inheritance that has been handed down through time to our grandparents, our parents, and now us. It's morally wrong for our ancestors and corporations to lock our inheritance away from us.

Copyright protections must be re-balanced to protect both creators and the public. This problem with WotC shouldn't be just about a license, it should be about the IP laws that grant them exclusive rights to creations that are over 50 years old. Our generation should re-open these negotiations and come up with a fair copyright term.



  • Law & Justice

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'It's not all doom' - Heston Blumenthal on bipolar diagnosis

The celebrity chef announced he was diagnosed with the mental health condition earlier this year.




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NetBSD: the portable, lightweight, and robust UNIX-like operating system

NetBSD is an open-source, Unix-like operating system known for its portability, lightweight design, and robustness across a wide array of hardware platforms. Initially released in 1993, NetBSD was one of the first open-source operating systems based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) lineage, alongside FreeBSD and OpenBSD. NetBSD’s development has been led by a collaborative community and is particularly recognized for its “clean” and well-documented codebase, a factor that has made it a popular choice among users interested in systems programming and cross-platform compatibility. ↫ André Machado I’m not really sure what to make of this article, since it mostly reads like an advertisement for NetBSD, but considering NetBSD is one of the lesser-talked about variants of an operating system family that already sadly plays second fiddle to the Linux behemoth, I don’t think giving it some additional attention is really hurting anybody. The article is still gives a solid overview of the history and strengths of NetBSD, which makes it a good introduction. I have personally never tried NetBSD, but it’s on my list of systems to try out on my PA-RISC workstation since from what I’ve heard it’s the only BSD which can possibly load up X11 on the Visualize FX10pro graphics card it has (OpenBSD can only boot to a console on this GPU). While I could probably coax some cobbled-together Linux installation into booting X11 on it, where’s the fun in that? Do any of you lovely readers use NetBSD for anything? FreeBSD and even OpenBSD are quite well represented as general purpose operating systems in the kinds of circles we all frequent, but I rarely hear about people using NetBSD other than explicitly because it supports some outdated, arcane architecture in 2024.




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Ataki spear phishing na pracowników polskich firm i instytucji publicznych

Spear phishing jest oszustwem o charakterze socjotechnicznym, wykorzystującym presję autorytetu i czasu, aby skłonić atakowanego do podjęcia niekorzystnego dla niego działania. Fakt, że zazwyczaj informacje potrzebne do przeprowadzenia ataku są publicznie dostępne lub łatwe do uzyskania, czyni to oszustwo popularnym wśród cyberprzestępców.




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Publikacja zbioru wykradzionych danych logowania - co zrobić?

W tym tygodniu doszło do publikacji dużego zbioru danych wykorzystywanych do logowania przez polskich użytkowników. W ramach tego wycieku udostępniono ponad milion unikalnych rekordów z loginem oraz hasłem do różnych stron. W związku z tym jednostki odpowiedzialne za cyberbezpieczeństwo w Polsce, w tym CERT Polska, podjęły odpowiednie działania w celu ograniczenia skutków tej sytuacji.




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Podatność w bibliotece lua-http

CERT Polska otrzymał zgłoszenie o podatności w bibliotece lua-http i nadał jej numer CVE-2023-4540.




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Podatność w bibliotece class.upload.php

W otwartoźródłowej bibliotece class.upload.php wykryto podatność typu Stored XSS (CVE-2023-6551).




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37. Blogger: User Profile: Nathan

Blogger is a free blog publishing tool from Google ... Push-Button Publishing. Nathan. My Blogs. Team Members. Simplyukgadgets. User Stats. On Blogger Since ...




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13. Nabble - XSB - Dev - preschool

preschool. Now updating the site-wide page layout or site navigationinformation ... htmlSimply UK Gadgets, Simplyukgadgets Forums. Bomboniere Originali. ...




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20. Nabble - wix-devs - cushion

cushion. VPSN WILL MOVE LIKE A COMET AND ITS ONLY GOING TO GET BETTER! Watch this SUPERNOVA closely MONDAY! ... again, viesearch com simplyukgadgets all about new gadgets advice ...




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17. <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-/W3C/DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional/EN">

simply. uk gadgets, Esempio tesineandofferta regali enna.<br> Sella cio simply uk gadgets incontro ancona ... simply uk gadgets Publishers and getting publishers .<br> ...




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24. Nabble - General Questions - [Plone-Users] pucker

Simply Uk Gadgets Idee Regalo Ingrosso - Simply Valentino - Regali . There is a computer virus that is being sent across...




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14. Nabble - sorceress

sorceress. Simply UK Gadgets is proud to present a . Simplyukgadgets Forums, . on myhome page i put these questions in bullets: let me help you . Simply UK ...




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9 Terrible Reasons To Start A Small Business

There are a lot of articles out there telling you to go forth and start a business! But the truth is, not everyone should start a business. If more of the 80 percent of small businesses that fail had but hesitated and considered why they were getting into business, we would probably have fewer businesses and more successes in those that did exist.

complete article




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12 Online Marketing Blogs Every Small Business Owner Needs to Read

Online marketing is an industry that is constantly changing. The search engines are constantly rolling out updates and data refreshes, pay per click advertising platforms are always revealing new features and social media marketing is always evolving.

complete article




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The Essentials of Blogging for Small Business

Why you should you blog?

Through posting simple things such as helpful tips, special discounts or the latest industry news you can effectively maintain your customer relationships and give people a reason to visit to your website.

More recently blogging and content marketing has been widely used to enhance SEO strategy. Writing articles around the keywords that you are targeting will help to improve rankings in search engines. Furthermore, if you write unique and valuable articles, other websites will link to your content and as a result; this will increase your website's back-links.

complete article




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5 Wearables to Get You Going at Work

Does your back hurt from slouching over your keyboard all day? Having trouble focusing after lunchtime? Do you remember that great idea you had the other day? Whatever is holding you back from doing your best work, there is probably a wearable claiming to solve the problem.

complete article




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Why Is It So Hard To Serve Small Business? Blame The 90% Challenge

There is a convenient narrative about small business that we have all heard a million times.  Small business represents a huge, underserved, and highly lucrative market for finance-oriented entrepreneurs and large organizations alike. The prevailing wisdom is that these businesses run on Intuits QuickBooks, which enables them to have organized, accurate, and timely financial information at their fingertips. By all accounts, the small business market should be an easy one to serve. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Organizations big and small have struggled to serve the small business market in an efficient and effective matter, and it is all due to what we call the 90% challenge.

complete article




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Introducing A Small Business Owner Who Discovered Growth Is A Blessing And A Curse

Meet Fred Warmbier, entrepreneur. Warmbier owns a small business, Finishing Technology, located near Cincinnati, Ohio. The company finishes and anodizes metal parts –and is growing rapidly.

complete article




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10 Top Small Business Blogs

Do you like to read good content online? I sure do. One of the key secrets to being successful in business is to be a voracious reader. I learn a great deal by reading individual and corporate blogs online. If you're like me, I bet you want to to know who provides the most valuable content at every stage of business ownership. I put together a list of 10 top small business blogs to follow to help you improve skills for running your small business. Remember, you must grow yourself to lead your business effectively.

complete article




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How to Avoid Double Taxation with an S Corporation

Paying taxes is unavoidable, yet that does not mean you need to pay more than necessary. You can make smart decisions to minimize your tax burden, without running afoul of the IRS.

For small businesses and entrepreneurs, business structure impacts how you pay taxes, and potentially how much you pay as well. The biggest difference is whether the business is its own entity responsible for paying taxes or whether the business’ profits are passed along to the owners’ individual taxes.

complete article




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6 Tools You Need to Make 2017 Your Most Profitable Year Ever

Getting there starts with breaking down profit into its components and using six tools to move those pieces in the right direction.

Profit is revenue minus costs. But to boost profit, it helps to break it down further into gross profit -- price times quantity minus variable costs (e.g., costs that increase with each unit of product you sell) -- minus fixed costs (e.g., salaries, benefits, rent, and utilities).

complete article




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The 15 Most Profitable Small-Business Industries

Thinking about launching a new business? Here is where to look to for high profit margins.

complete article




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5 Affordable Franchises You Can Start for Less Than $10,000

Everyone says that starting a business is expensive and risky, but it doesn't have to be. One approach, which some consider safer, is owning a franchise. It has a proven business model, a brand built in and corporate support. And not every franchise will cost you millions. In fact, you can start some franchises for less than five figures -- and not just random, bargain-bin franchises, but companies that made our 2017 Franchise 500 List.

complete article




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How to Start a Sustainable Small Business

Roughly 60 percent of millennials want to increase sustainability efforts in business. Millennials make up the largest group of consumers besides baby boomers, and 72 percent are willing to pay more for products from businesses committed to sustainability.

complete article




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10 Pro Techniques to Improve Your Business Blogging

Use a Content Scorecard to Publish Better Blog Posts
When it comes to creating blog content for your business, quality is just as important as quantity, if not more so. To make sure all of your posts are up to professional standards, use the content scorecard included in this Social Media Examiner post by Garrett Moon.

Choose the Right Keywords for Your Blog Niche
If you want readers to be able to organically find our blog content, you need to include some relevant keywords. Choosing those keywords can be a challenge, so check out the recent Abtech Blog post by Abasifreke Etop for some useful tips.

complete article




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8 Ways Leaders Waste Valuable Time and Energy

Time is a valuable, nonrenewable resource that is distributed equally to each of us. We all get the same 1,440 minutes every day. Are you using your time successfully, or are you wasting your time and draining your energy?

In coaching top leaders around the world, I have discovered some patterns in how people waste their time and energy. Here are eight of the most common:

1. Being distracted.
Leaders who have a lot to do are easily distracted. No one can stay on task 100 percent of the time, but distraction can pose a serious obstacle to getting things done. It eats away at your time and causes unnecessary stress. Limit distraction by being mindful of how you organize your time and work environment and by preparing yourself to accomplish what needs doing. Develop habits and strategies to minimize your access to distraction, keep your focus on the task at hand, and improve your overall ability to concentrate.

complete article




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Tax And Regulatory Cuts Solve A Long-Running Problem For Small Business

Then, as the recovery progressed, taxes and regulations reemerged.   But over the last year, those two concerns have been displaced by the availability of qualified labor.  Finding qualified employees is always a concern in a growing economy and has certainly grown in importance in this expansion, even more prominent than in 2000, when the ratio of employment to the population hit a record high.

Assisting its rise to number one has been the decline in the concerns about taxes and the cost of regulatory compliance.  The sharp decline in concerns about taxes and regulatory compliance are most likely due to the policies of this administration.  Record levels of proposed regulations peaked in the last two years of the last administration but dropped to practically nothing early in this term.  Since then, many existing regulations and rules have been eliminated or scaled back.

complete article




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Is Your Small Business Achieving Profitable Growth?

Very few entrepreneurs have an accounting or finance background. Here are four tips to ensure your small business is achieving profitable growth.

Most small business owners start their own business because they have a passion for something, a new idea, want to be their own boss or are seeking more financial stability and/or earning potential. However, very few entrepreneurs have an accounting or finance background.

complete article




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These Shark Tank entrepreneurs turned a class project into a profitable small business

The loyalty to the series clearly inspired a smart pitch, because it didn't take long for the Sharks to warm up to the idea. Plus, offering cold beers in customized Kanga coolers didn't hurt.

complete article




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How Technology Enables Small Business

Small businesses are a cornerstone of the American economy, contributing $6 trillion in economic output and employing 85 million Americans. Unfortunately, small businesses are also heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, with one in five closed either temporarily or permanently. With social distancing restrictions in place, small-business owners more than ever count on technology to reach consumers, market their products, and grow their business. Tech has been a critical lifeline for small businesses and consumers alike during the COVID-19 crisis.

Examining the use of digital platforms as a whole in the United States before the pandemic, the national small business survey finds that the use of digital platforms by small enterprises is ubiquitous:

84% of small enterprises are using at least one major digital platform to provide information to customers;
80% are using at least one major platform to show products and services, as well as to advertise;
79% are using digital tools to communicate with customers and suppliers; and
75% are using tech platforms for sales.

Now, during the pandemic, everything from the way consumers find and purchase products and services to the way small businesses market and ship their wares is enabled by technologies. As a McKinsey study found, the most effective way for small businesses to meet new hygiene and safety expectations is to design effective contactless experiences through adopting new technologies. For example, restaurants and retailers that have turned to digital capabilities and investments in technology fared far better since the pandemic began. In an SBE Council survey, around 76% of small businesses say that cloud services have been critical to the survival and operation of their business during COVID-19.




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How To Make Zoom Meetings Actually Enjoyable

Practice Your On-Camera Speaking Skills
Nothing is worse than having a boring presenter be it in person or on camera. Just like public speaking, presenting on camera is a learned skill anyone can achieve if they have the right guidance. Here are 10 tips to speaking on camera

Dress to Impress
Even though no one can see what you are wearing below the computer desk, you want to suit up.

Use the 8% Rule
As Michael, the CEO of Teambuilding explains Any Zoom meeting should have at least 8% of its time dedicated to non-meetings activities.




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H&R Block Study Reveals Majority of Small Business Owners Need Personal Advice to Recover from Pandemic

Recovery is slow: In fact, more than half (56%) have experienced a slower recovery than expected after shelter-in-place orders began to expire, with nearly half of small business owners fearing they may need to shutter their business within six months if pandemic restrictions are not lifted or if shelter-in-place orders resume in the near-term.
    
Survival requires adaptability: Yet despite fear of survival, owners are demonstrating resiliency and adaptability, with about a third (30%) creating products/services to meet new needs and half (50%) of those with an online presence increasing their digital footprint to meet the moment. And, they’re looking for help in making those changes – nearly 70 percent of female and 60 percent of male small business owners say they need one-to-one small business advice.

They depend on their community: While small businesses continue to be important facets of communities, many small business owners have noted changes in their customers and worry that people will not be able to afford doing business with them. However, half of small business owners believe that there seems to be a renewed interest in shopping locally in their area.




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The Best Brain-Training Wearables of 2020

Your brain is just like any other muscle in your body; just as you lift weights and train your body to make it stronger, your brain needs just as much attention as those biceps.

And with the state of things these days, we should spend even more time training our brains to be more focused, relaxed and creative in order to maintain our emotional control and build our resilience to stress. Only then can we truly thrive in uncertain times and become unstoppable.

So how do you train your brain? You can read and practice-problem solving of course, but there are a plethora of new and exciting devices available to help you level up your training and target specific areas of your brain that need it.




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How just a few days cost some small businesses thousands on their PPP forgivable loans

For some of the smallest businesses that applied for forgivable loans through the Paycheck Protection Program, waiting just a few days or weeks would’ve gotten them thousands of dollars more.

But they had no way of knowing what was coming.

The Biden administration in late February announced a slew of changes to the loan program, which offered forgivable loans in return for keeping employees on a company’s payroll, after it reopened in January with $284 billion in funding. Those amendments included an adjusted loan formula that would mean larger amounts for sole proprietors as well as expanded eligibility for small business owners with certain criminal records, were delinquent on student loan debt or were non-citizens.




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Symptoms of 12 Serious Diseases and Health Problems

Title: Symptoms of 12 Serious Diseases and Health Problems
Category: Diseases and Conditions
Created: 8/14/2006 12:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 5/16/2022 12:00:00 AM




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Alpha-Fetoprotein Blood Test

Title: Alpha-Fetoprotein Blood Test
Category: Procedures and Tests
Created: 11/16/2001 12:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 5/26/2022 12:00:00 AM




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Network Problem

Okay, I got home, sat down to check my favorite bloggers, news sites, and stuff, and found a problem. I...




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Men of the Blogosphere: This One's for the Ladies

Since Playgirl editor-in-chief, Michele Zipp, has outed herself as a Republican, can a Conservative Men of the Blogosphere special...




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Programmer (blood) types

A lot gets said about evaluating technical skills when building teams, but I find that to be relatively straightforward - what's trickier is understanding how a person prefers to work and so how much effort (i.e. change) will be needed for the team to gel once that person is added. Consequently, I spend a lot more time thinking about this than any specific skill a person might have.

It's as if each of us has a personality blood-type. Just as transfusing blood among individuals without taking account of their body chemistry can result in serious health issues, so too mixing otherwise competent individuals without regard to group chemistry can greatly reduce everyone's effectiveness. This is true, even if these same individuals would be very effective in different groups.

Like one's actual blood type, there are multiple factors involved, but I find three especially important. So, to run with the metaphor let's call them 'A' factor, 'B' factor and 'Rh' factor:

  • A Factor: Knowledge Sensitivity: A person has this trait if I expect the effort needed for them to understand the Situational Context of the team will be a significant factor in the gelling process. Considerations include: current knowledge, learning preferences (online research, training, books, etc), learning-speed, learning-skill, open-mindedness and how (and how easily) they'll learn from their teammates.
  • B Factor: Environmental Sensitivity [1]. This stuff matters to most everyone, but some are more sensitive to it than others. If it looks like it'll be a prominent part of the gelling process, they have this trait.
  • AB: Person has both traits.
  • O: Person has neither. I don't expect the person will require radical shifts in team cohesion to gel with the group (though they still may cause such shifts over time).
  • Rh Factor (+ or -): Tendency toward taking social initiative[2]. This one's hard to define. To get a sense of what I mean, the next time you're in a casual group discussion (ideally of peers), note the people who tend to pick the topics of conversations, suggest lunch destinations and so on. These people have this trait. When work topics arise, they're the ones proposing new ideas and things that need focusing on in the first place. Incidentally, if you believe you have this trait, you might need to reign it in to get a sense of who else has it (and a good habit for you to develop regardless).

I see these factors as neither strengths nor weaknesses. Nor as (necessarily) fixed traits. A successful team may contain (or require) people exhibiting any combination of these traits. Adding people who learn quickly or who care a lot about how customers are acting toward the group or are passionate about their work environment [3] is just as important as having deeply experienced people who are agnostic to the details of the work environment. Even when people's quirks or lack of knowledge might seem to be burdensome, our work is a creative activity not a mechanical one. Taking the effort to incorporate people who have a particular genius or ability into my teams has paid off more often than it's been a liability.

It is also important to understand this is my thinking process after it becomes clear the person is a plausible fit for the team. That means they've already passed the no assholes rule, otherwise appear to have the skills the group needs and I believe will get along reasonably well with the rest of the team outside the context of the goal at hand.

Of course, I also consider many other non-skill traits to be important - e.g.: risk aversion; time flexibility; tolerance for ambiguity, tool/practice prejudices and social neediness are all relevant - but regardless of which ones dominate a particular gelling process, what I'm always after is a better understanding of how the person will complement the rest of the group. Most importantly, reflecting on why people work well together helps me to do my job better. Hope you find it useful for that too.


[1] More precisely: How sensitive the individual is to forces acting within or upon the group; this important topic will get a separate blog entry hopefully soon

[2] Leadership in the narrow sense of desire to influence direction of a group of people.

[3] Tool and process preferences is an entire - large - subcategory that can even be considered an entire trait all it's own. We do so love our tool and practice religions!




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Really bloody excellent omens...

Many, many years ago (it was Hallowe'en 1989, for the curious, the year before Good Omens was published) Terry Pratchett and I were sharing a room at the World Fantasy Convention in Seattle, to keep the costs down, because we were both young authors, and taking ourselves to America and conventions were expensive. It was a wonderful convention. I remember a huge Seattle second-hand bookstore in which I found a dozen or so green-bound Storisende Edition James Branch Cabell books, each signed so neatly by the author that the bookshop people assured me that the signatures were printed, and really ten dollars a book was the correct price. 

I could afford books. Good Omens had just been sold to UK publishers and then to US publishers for more money than Terry or I had ever received for anything. (Terry had been incredibly worried about this, certain that receiving a healthy advance would mean the end of his career. When his career didn't end, Terry suggested to his agent that perhaps he ought to be getting that kind of advance for every book from now on, and his life changed, and he stopped having to share a hotel room to save money. But I digress.) Advance reading copies of Good Omens had not yet gone out, but a few editors had read it (ones who had bid for it but failed to buy it) and they all seemed very excited about it, and thrilled for us.


On the Saturday evening Terry left the bar quite early and headed off to bed. I stayed up talking to people and having a marvelous time, hung in there until the small hours of the morning when they closed the hotel bar and all the people went away, and then headed up to the hotel room room. 


I opened the door as quietly as I could and tiptoed in the dark across the room to where my bed was located.


I'd just reached the bed when, from the far side of the room, a voice said, “What time of the night do you call this then? Your mother and I have been worried sick about you.”


Terry was wide awake. Jet lag had taken its toll.


And I was wide awake too. So we lay in our respective beds and having nothing else to do, we plotted the sequel to Good Omens. It was a good one, too. We fully intended to write it, whenever we next had three or four months free. Only I went to live in America and Terry stayed in the UK, and after Good Omens was published Sandman became SANDMAN and Discworld became DISCWORLD and there wasn't ever a good time.


But we never forgot it.


It's been thirty-one years since Good Omens was published, which means it's thirty-two years since Terry Pratchett and I lay in our respective beds in a Seattle hotel room at a World Fantasy Convention, and plotted the sequel. (I got to use bits of the sequel in the TV series version of Good Omens -- that's where our angels came from.)


Terry and I, in Cardiff in 2010, on the night we decided that Good Omens should become a television series.


Terry was clear on what he wanted from Good Omens on the telly. He wanted the story told, and if that worked, he wanted the rest of the story told.


So in September 2017 I sat down in St James' Park, beside the director, Douglas Mackinnon, on a chair with my name on it, as Showrunner of Good Omens. The chair slowly and elegantly lowered itself to the ground underneath me and fell apart, and I thought, that's not really a good omen. Fortunately, under Douglas's leadership, that chair was the only thing that collapsed. 




The crumbled chair.



So, once Good Omens the TV series had been released by Amazon and the BBC, to global acclaim, many awards and joy,  Rob Wilkins (Terry's representative on Earth) and I had the conversation with the BBC and Amazon about doing some more. And they got very excited. We talked to Michael Sheen and David Tennant about doing some more. They also got very excited. We told them a little about the plot. They got even more excited.


Rob Wilkins and David Tennant on the second day of shooting.

Me and Michael and Ash aged nearly 2.
What it was mostly like shooting Good Omens: peering into screens while something happened round the corner.



I'd been a fan of John Finnemore's for years, and had had the joy of working with him on a radio show called With Great Pleasure, where I picked passages I loved, had amazing readers read them aloud and talked about them.


(Here's a clip from that show of me talking about working with Terry Pratchett, and reading a poem by Terry: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06x3syv. Here's the whole show from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7OsS_JWbzQ with John Finnemore's bits too.)




L to R: With Great Pleasure. John Finnemore, me all beardy, Nina Sosanya (Sister Mary in Good Omens) Peter Capaldi (he played Islington in the original BBC series of Neverwhere).

I asked John if he'd be willing to work with me on writing the next round of Good Omens, and was overjoyed when he said yes. We have some surprise guest collaborators too. And Douglas Mackinnon is returning to oversee the whole thing with me.


So that's the plan. We've been keeping it secret for a long time (mostly because otherwise my mail and Twitter feeds would have turned into gushing torrents of What Can You Tell Us About It? long ago) but we are now at the point where sets are being built in Scotland (which is where we're shooting, and more about filming things in Scotland soon), and we can't really keep it secret any longer.


There are so many questions people have asked about what happened next (and also, what happened before) to our favourite Angel and Demon. Here are, perhaps, some of the answers you've been hoping for. 


As Good Omens continues, we will be back in Soho, and all through time and space, solving a mystery which starts with one of the angels wandering through a Soho street market with no memory of who they might be, on their way to Aziraphale's bookshop. 


(Although our story actually begins about five minutes before anyone had got around to saying “Let there be Light”.)








  • Good Omens
  • What time of the night do you call this then?

bl

Bloody Sunrise

Your humble web goblin here again, after a brief hiatus of eight and a half years. How time flies.

 

"Remember when you hosted 13 Nights of Fright and got to lie in a coffin?" I was nonchalantly decorating for spooky season.

Mr. G allowed that he did without looking up from his latest manuscript.

"That was fun." A pause. "Look what I found in a back corner of the basement, between the mummified shedu and Chabon's golem."

Like a cat with a box, so is Mr. G to a red velvet lined coffin; leave one in the middle of a room and he'll be laying in it the next time you turn your back. I was ready with a handful of box nails and a hammer. It won't hold him for long. We don't have long.

 

Twelve hours from now, something will premiere. Something seasonally fitting. Something fun. Secret for now, but the revelations begin there.

ETA: More here.



  • I have alluded to something secret
  • here comes the sun
  • bloody labels