Archive for March 2012
I knew where to go
I’b been there before and knew exactly where to go so please tell me why I didn’t go straight up the stairs as soon as I got through the doors.
As I was going up the stairs the adrenalin started as I recalled the last time I was at the Sebel. It was called the Carlton Crest and we abbreviated it to CC I tried to refrain from silly comments at the time. I recalled the last time I’d been in the foyer, wearing a witch’s hat and cape I entertained the queue of very excited people while we waited for the volunteers to finish assembling the paperwork, bags and badges.
Today we sat in the part we’d previously designated the breakout room. It had tables, chairs and we used it for the odd occasion that had missed the programming or didn’t need a designated room. It was the room Sir Terry Pratchett sat down in for a chat to a few people and ended up being surrounded by a large group totally disrupting the carefully planned programming.
Have you guessed yet? It’s the location of the First Australian Discworld Convention. Yes, my conference today is in some of the exact same rooms and it’s helping to make things that much better.
Discworld in Australia is moving into a new era. We’ve gone from a little convention in Melbourne to another convention in Melbourne, to another in Sydney and this year there’s a little something happening in Adelaide with another one planned in Melbourne next year. We’re also putting together groups for Discworld related events, tomorrow is one of these events and people will be meeting at Realm of Legends for a games tournament, search for Nullus Anxietas IV on Facebook for more details. I’m blogging on my iPad from the conference sitting only a couple of metres from where Sir Terry Pratchett sat in 2007 and can’t figure out how to put in links.
Blogging Conferences
Back in 2020 Darren Rowse of Problogger put out a call on Twitter for anyone interested in a blogging conference. It was a very tentative call and afterwards he admitted to thinking he’d maybe get 20 people interested. By the time the event came around he had 150 people and had sold out three times having to contact the event place and ask them if they could move the walls out. I was there and also at his second blogging conference in 2011 where he split the proceedings up into multiple rooms with multiple speakers. This year he’s planning to run it over multiple days with multiple speakers and multiple rooms. There’s a multitude of multiples in that sentence.
That’s not the entire blogging conference scene in Australia, though. Today the Digital Parents Conference is being held in Queens Road and I’ve been given a ticket to it. But that’s not all. Nuffnang are coming back to Australia and are running another conference, this time in Sydney.
The blogging community in Australia is taking off, there are so many bloggers blogging about so many different topics and from a multitude of different walks of life. Some have a high degree of technical knowledge and others next to none, some have a high degree of writing skill and others need a little massaging to be readable. There are some people who make a full time living out of blogging and others who do it for the love it, make no money but have a lot of friends. In order to help people and distribute knowledge there are a range of blogs out there talking about blogging; talking about the technical aspects, the writing and blog design. Part of blogging is networking, guest posting on other people’s blogs, commenting and making friends and contacts through other social media outlets. Something had to change to make this work better and that something was blogging conferences.
They are a time for people to get together to discuss the basics or the technical aspects and a time for networking in person. Normally when I attend a blogging conference I look at the list beforehand and work out who I need to speak to and who I want to speak to so I can organise to talk to them there. Social media is used very heavily at these conferences with a hashtag handed out and wifi access arranged, at the last Problogger conference we broke the wifi as there were too many of us using it at once and we had to be asked to turn it off on our devices so the presentation could work. Many of us will tweet people during the conference and arrange meetups during break time. At the last Nuffnang conference I arranged to meet several people and from there #ausallergy was born.
Something has to change, though. There are far more people wanting to attend these conferences than are able to fit in. Tickets sell out weeks in advance and it’s a bun fight when someone decides they can’t make it, I was very lucky to be offered a ticket at such short notice. What would be good is if there were more conferences in larger places, this one is in the Sebel which is pretty big so I don’t really know how much larger you can get without going to the Convention Centre and if it was that big you’d negate a lot of the networking.
If anyone’s at DPCon and reading this, I’m the one with the gold hat with wings. Approach me if you dare, but you might need a hand.
Squid Ink reads The Knife of Never Letting Go
Someone let Squid Ink loose on a new library and this is the result. I’d never even heard of the book or the author so I had to do some research. It’s about a colony of people on another world, supposedly a Christian colony but there seems to be a lot of Jewish symbolism there. According to my research it’s aimed at teens.
I think it’s Wednesday
There are weeks when I really have no idea what day it is but I think I have an idea that today might possibly be Wednesday. I only know that because Mondayitis was yesterday and Squid Ink is tomorrow, I’m presuming Wednesday is somewhere in between. The other reason I think it’s Wednesday is because the #ausallergy Twitter chat was last night and tomorrow is the #spbkchat. Wednesday is generally in between, although some people might think otherwise.
There is a reason I’m not quite sure of the day. It’s that time of year when Passover cleaning takes over and I’m going through cupboards with the view to cleaning and throwing stuff out. I’ve got a box which is constantly being filled with stuff then taken to the op shop, emptied and brought back for another lot. It’s not a small box but it’s currently on its third fill. I picked up a different box yesterday and on going through found 90% of it could go straight in the recycling or rubbish, or be shredded. I’m not going to make it through all my cupboards this time round but I hope I manage to keep up the impetus.
Another reason is I reassessed my webhosting. They put up their prices and while I understand their need to make a profit I hope they understand my need to also make a profit. I would have been paying 50% more than last year and I just can’t afford that, I’m not making a million dollars…yet. I looked at their hosting packages and found one that would save me a considerable amount and make it much easier to pay the bills. They were really nice about and advised me the process meant I’d be changed to a different server and my websites would be down for a few hours. All seemed well, things went down then the websites came back up but I couldn’t get into the back end. Accessing my email was just not happening. I’m sure you can imagine my emotional anguish and with #ausallergy in the middle I was rather torn as to what I should be focussing on. Thank goodness they fixed it fairly quickly after being alerted to the problem and now things are improved. I closed #ausallergy early as we had so few people and just about everyone had some sort of connection problem, I was the exception. Ended up concentrating on solving the problem of accessing my email. Still not entirely solved but at least I can get it sometimes.
Anyway, I apologise for this self-indulgent drivel. Tomorrow we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled Squid Ink and goodness knows what you’ll get from me for Friday.
Mondayitis – Jodie
A new regular feature here is Mondayitis, published every Tuesday, it features guests discussing a series of questions. People have their own view of the questions and some use them as a starting point while others actually answer them, in their own particular way.
What do you read?
I can’t tell you! No I’m serious I can’t. I won’t read books in public or
tell anyone what I’m reading. Yes I’m officially weird.
When Suzie asked me to contribute to her Mondayitis series I thought I could 1. bail and say no or 2. lie. I planned on doing a quick search on the Angus & Robertson website for the top 10 books to read and just name something from that group.
But it’s time to come clean.
I actually just googled my condition to see if there was a scientific name
to my phobia but there isn’t so I may be the only person.
I can give you a hint though – the books I read are non-fiction. I don’t do
fiction at all, even though I love fictional movies (but I probably wouldn’t
tell you which ones!). The books I read are nearly always business and I can’t remember the last time I actually finished one cover to cover.
I buy a lot of them and usually do so online. This is probably because I
don’t want the salesperson seeing what I’m about to half finish!
Strangely this only extends to published books. I love reading blogs,
e-books and printed magazines and I’m more than happy what to share these with everyone.
Although I do have this very strange phobia, don’t hold it against me. I do have an awesome online haberdashery store, The Haby Goddess and a crafty blog where I’m more than happy to share my crafty life with you.
Jodie Maloni
Thank you for sharing, Jodie. It’s certainly interesting to see other people’s thoughts on books. Maybe I should give you all my business books so you can read them and tell me what I need to know.
Suzie
The Cause of Death – Roger MacBride Allen
The is the first of three exciting novels following the adventures of Hannah Wolfson and Jamie Mendez, agents of the Bureau of Special Investigations. The BSI is assigned to handle any investigation with non-human involvement. When a human is accused of a crime on an alien world, it’s their job to go in and sort out the guilty from the innocent — while protecting the interests of the human race.
More detective than science fiction, some of the evidence is a cross between a gun from now and a gun from the future. This book was a rolicking good tale.
A new team, Jamie Mendez and Hannah Wolfson, have been put together to watch each other’s backs and see if working in tandem keeps agents alive. They’re sent to Reqwar to escort a human prisoner convicted of murder back to Earth for punishment, when they get there they find the reality differs. They do get to the surface and find some allies. While there the Thelm, the ruler of the planet, is murdered and they get together with their allies to unravel the clues and find out what’s really happening. The challenge is they only trust two of their allies, how can you share information and figure out what’s really going on when you don’t know if you can trust the others? They also have to work their way through the political and inheritence minefield that is the Reqwar system.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I look forward to finding the other two books and reading some more of the BSI operatives. The clues were all there to be able to figure everything out but I’m hopeless with detective stories and am generally the last person to get the solution. In this book I had an idea which turned out to be correct but I had totally the wrong reasoning. It had lots of action.
The future is nigh!
I’ve seen the future in books and it’s awesome, totally full of awesomeness. I was browsing iTunes on my iPad and noticed on the home page they had a free book for download. Stupid me downloaded it, it had the words ‘free’ and ‘book’, oh, and the book is The Yellow Submarine.
If you’re anything like me you would have seen the movie The Yellow Submarine by the Beatles. First screened in 1968 it was, and still is, a fabulous movie. In cartoon format it has the voices of the four Beatles plus a few actors. It is beautifully done and includes some of their music and lots of Beatles jokes. It felt a bit weird and wacky at the time but just makes so much sense now. I loved it then but I didn’t understand it, possibly I was far too young.
Anyway, on to the book. It’s a short book being only 44 pages. It seems to be aimed at kids and is interactive. There’s so much to do in it. Some of the text is in bold and when you touch the words you get a short snippet of some appropriate Beatles music. There are small snippets of the movie for playing. Some of the pictures are interactive and have a certain amount of things that they do on being touched. One page has the four Beatles dressed in fabulous clothing, when you touch various parts the colour changes and cycles through a few colours as you continue to tap them. The last page of the book has links to the various Beatles songs used in the book for your buying and downloading pleasure, I suppose you’re allowed to listen to them having bought and downloaded them.
I see this as the future of the book. At the moment we’re in a middle period where we have physical books and ebooks. Neither of them are terribly exciting having followed the same basic pattern as the physical book since the 1400s, very little has changed. We’ve got more pictures and things are in colour now, with eBooks you can generally highlight a word or phrase and look them up if you have an internet connection. There is the question of ‘does a book need to be more exciting than just having the words?’ but that’s not something I’m examining. Physical books are going to be the past, they will be a luxury and the second hand book market will burgeon, I’m not giving you a time frame but I’m fairly certain that’s where we’re heading. Not just because eBooks are so much easier but also eBooks reduces the burden on the planet, physical books are so much harder to sustain when the Earth has only a finite amount of renewable resources, the amount of paper that needs to be made just to create books, not to mention the chemicals, the water, the ink…basically there’s a lot of things that stretch the physical resources of this planet. eBooks don’t stretch these physical resources, once you’re got an eBook it doesn’t need printing or reprinting or ink or anything else. Yes, the ereader needs electricity but it doesn’t need paper or ink, the consumables are greatly reduced, you need far fewer consumables per book.
Some children and some adults will always need to be drawn in to reading, there are some who get hooked on the printed/eInked word very quickly but others will need to be drawn in and that’s where The Yellow Submarine leads the way. It has interactive features which will suck in people of all ages and they’ll eventually find themselves hooked on reading. If you have the capability, download this book and see what I mean, try not to get suckered in to buying the music as well. It’s a wonderful piece of work and I’m sure a lot more books will be like this in the future.
Squid Ink, Don’t Panic!
I wonder if Douglas Adams would approve.
Someone let Squid Ink loose on my bookshelves again. I can’t imagine what he’d think if he read the other books in the Hitchhiker’s trilogy. I did wonder where that towel went to. He’d better not see the Douglas Adams’ books I have listed, they might grow legs, Squid Ink type legs.
Confessions of a Pod Person – Chuck McKenzie
Ever since Borders and Angus & Robertson closed I’ve been saying it’s a good time to open a bookshop, it’s something I’ve been saying quietly to friends and wishing I had the capital to do it myself. Chuck McKenzie has taken the plunge (without talking to me, he had the idea all by himself) and opened Notions Unlimited in Chelsea, Victoria. It’s a lovely bookshop focussing on most of my favourite genres; fantasy and sci fi with some horror tucked away in there. I’ve been down there already and noted some exciting features including a lifesize cutout of the TARDIS. While there I bought a book, it was a hard choice the stock often mirrors my own bookshelves and if I don’t have the book, I’ve read it or I’m not interested in the series. Awkward. I did find one book on the Australian shelves I didn’t have and by an author I’ve been wanting to read so I bought it and refused his kind offer to sign it as I generally don’t do autographs.
Confessions of a Pod Person is a book of short stories with a very distinct science fiction and comedic bent. I enjoyed every single one of them. They range in length and have some violence, death and swearing in them. Just imagine aliens trying to use the idea of Christmas gifts to invade the Earth. Maybe having old people channelling to bring through an alien? Is it possible aliens have jobs intimidating people on Earth? McKenzie takes these ideas and gives them his own unique twist. They were a delight to read and I’d recommend them to any sci fi fan.
Chuck McKenzie is an accomplished science fiction author as well as being a bookseller of note.
My favourite is the title story – Confessions of a Pod Person. It’s the idea that aliens were infiltrating Earth by replacing specific people and then imitating them, perfectly and without deviation. This story had me thinking about many people with depression who feel they don’t fit into the world and who feel they could possibly be aliens from another planet.
Mondayitis – Mark
A new regular feature here is Mondayitis, published every Tuesday, it features guests discussing a series of questions. People have their own view of the questions and some use them as a starting point while others actually answer them, in their own particular way.
What do you read?
Anything shiney, or that can at least catch my attention for 5 seconds. Curiosity can be a dangerous thing though because it’s what caused me to read all four Twilight books. For which I still have no insight into why they’re so popular. Normally I predominantly read science books and fantasy novels by authors such as Sara Douglass, George RR Martin, and Robert Jordan/Bandon Sanderson.
Why do you read?
It’s compulsory. Also I need to keep reading so that I can keep up with my book buying habit.
Do you read for work or for pleasure and is there any difference between the two?
I have been known to read for both work and pleasure. The difference being how quickly I finish the book and the level of enjoyment I get out of said book.
Do you read to your kids or to someone else’s kids?
I do sometimes but rarely what they ask for, the exception being the Prep class I had last year because they liked all the fact books about spiders, snakes and the natural world. I usually inflict something like The Faraway Tree or Marmaduke the Possom, I’ve even been known to read them Bottersnikes and Gumbles. If I read something I didn’t want to it often ends like this – (George RR Martin reading childrens stories.
Can you do the Safety Dance while reading?
If I’m reading something on my Kindle then yes, yes I can. I do attempt it with other reading materials but it sometimes ends in tears.
Are you a rabid Discworld/Twilight/Harry Potter fan and would you attend a flash mob dressed as your favourite character?
Am I a rabid fan? No, just slightly enthusiastic. Somewhat about Discworld but also to a lesser extent about Harry Potter (when I pretend parts of Deathly Hollows didn’t happen). However I can’t restrict myself to one franchise, it’s too much like only going to one shop, in that it gets boring. Would I attend a flash mob? I wouldn’t only turn up to a flash mob dressed up as a favourite character I’d try to make everyone I know come dressed up too.
Hey my name is Mark and I’m a self confessed bibliophile, I’m also a geek and gaymer. I live in a house that has got extremely good foundations with a cat that loves to test how precariously stacked my bookshelves are. I’m fascinated by science and the natural world and collect shinys related to those fascinations. If you know a good carpenter I always need new shelving and inventive ways to make more shelving fit in my house. My final form of crazy is going on committees, I sit on the Australian Discworld Committee currently. So if you are going to an Australian Discworld event and bump into me feel free to say hello. Alternately I lurk on Twitter so you may find me tweeting with NullusAnxietas4