How to earn a living as a writer with just 1,000 followers of your work!

Yes, I know that for the 'pious', 'un-worldy', readers of this blog, for whom money is of no consequence whatsoever, this post will be of no use... Ha ha! Just kidding! I know we all have bills to pay!

For the struggling authors (like Wessel and I, who are needing to have our kids braces tightened and get new retreads put on old car tires...) it may be of some use ;-)

Regardless, there are two reasons for this post. It makes a lot of sense! Although, in truth, I think that finding 1000 people (described as 'fans' below) who would buy EVERYTHING that I write will be a little more difficult than the author things... Secondly, this is post number 667... I couldn't exactly leave my blog on 666 for too long!

This comes from an original post entitled 'How to earn an artist's living in the 21st century: 1,000 True Fans'

Kevin Kelly's just posted "1000 True Fans," a business plan for all kinds of creators in the twenty first century:

A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can't wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans...

Assume conservatively that your True Fans will each spend one day's wages per year in support of what you do. That "one-day-wage" is an average, because of course your truest fans will spend a lot more than that. Let's peg that per diem each True Fan spends at $100 per year. If you have 1,000 fans that sums up to $100,000 per year, which minus some modest expenses, is a living for most folks.

One thousand is a feasible number. You could count to 1,000. If you added one fan a day, it would take only three years. True Fanship is doable. Pleasing a True Fan is pleasurable, and invigorating. It rewards the artist to remain true, to focus on the unique aspects of their work, the qualities that True Fans appreciate.

Link (via Waxy)

Technorati tags: creative economics, earning a living, 1000 fans, not so easy

An amazing (stalker) tool... Skype, MSN, ICQ, and googletalk (plus GPS location) from a Nokia phone!

My friend Paul gave me a Skype call this morning - nothing too strange about that. However, what was remarkable was that he was calling me from his Nokia E90 cell phone.

He was using a little utility called fring which is free to use... The easiest way to use it is to simply point your phone's browser to the URL, it should automatically detect what device you're using, download it, and once installed you're ready to go!

If you have a phone that has a built in GPS receiver people will not only be able to chat with you (either via voice, or free text), but they will also be able to click on the 'find me' link to see where you are a google map!

It is amazing how such complex communication technology can operate, do so much, and be free!

I can see myself using this quite a bit when I am traveling overseas. All that you need to do is fire up fring, find an open Wifi spot (of which there are PLENTY in the UK and USA), and then you can do free voice chat with your friends and family on skype (or even on fring if they have it installed on their mobile phone). Moreover, within a few seconds they can see exactly where I am on the globe!

Amazing!

Technorati tags: fring, Nokia E90, free voice and text calls, GPS, google maps

Singularity and the Matrix... Spiritual Machines... Mmmmm... Contemporary crazies!? Maybe not?

John van de Laar gave an interesting persepctive on a 'religious movement' that has formed around the central ideas of the first Matrix movie.
I can certainly understand the appeal - after all, throughout history generations have always attempted to locate the sacred within the tools, symbols, and nomenclature of their contemporary culture. The Matrix seems to be so expressive of some of the existential questions, queries, and framing aspects of our reality (these include such issues as the relationship between humans and our technology, eternal existence in terms that we can understand, issues of good and evil etc.)

Some scientists have suggested that these issues may have a far greater influence, and in fact be truer than just sociology, theology, and psychology, could explain. Some others have suggested it is in fact nothing more than 'wish projection' (along the lines of Feuerbach and Freud's theory).

In short, every generation has a built in need to believe that there is more to life than just being born, living, and dying - we seek a transcendent truth (which you can read about in my Doctoral Thesis, by the way - please see the chapter on Neuroscience (chapter 3 I think it was) where I discuss the holistic and transcendent a-priori neural operators that are present in the human brain from birth). In our generation the 'mythology' of our time is intrinsically linked with technology (particularly those technologies that make our lives easier, and in some sense bearable).

A final perspective, which I think is the most rational of them all, is the perspective offered by Professor Cornel du Toit, who suggests that any duality that we create between ourselves and our technology is a false duality. Just think about it, your cell phone is not just an object that performs technological functions, it has become an integral part of your life. For many of us it extends our ability to communicate, it offers us a sense of security, connection with others, and for some (like myself) it even regulates how one lives one's life (e.g., my cell phone has a diary function that alerts me to appointments etc.). Another example cited by du Toit is contemporary banking. We have created both a hard technology (notes, coins, cards, ATM machines) and a soft technology (values, exchanges, commodities etc. which cannot be felt or weighed, or seen, but which have value). Just try to live your life without money and you will soon see how we have allowed a 'created' technology to become an integral part of our identity. How many people do you know whose identity is formed by what they earn, what they drive, and what they use?

I tend to agree with this - faith and technology are not separate realities that are discovering one another, they are complex interwoven system of creating and forming meaning. Both are dependent upon each other.

Anyway, enough of my 'ramblings'....

Read the article below for more on the concept of 'singularity':

Science fiction writer and mathematician Rudy Rucker takes a running swing at the idea of the Singularity, the moment in human history when we disassemble raw matter, turn it into "computronium" and upload ourselves to it, inhabiting a simulation of reality rather than real reality. It's a fine and provocative turn from our Mr Rucker, who has a fine and provocative and deeply weird and wonderful mind.

Although it’s a cute idea, I think computronium is a fundamentally spurious concept, an unnecessary detour. Matter, just as it is, carries out outlandishly complex chaotic quantum computations just by sitting around. Matter isn’t dumb. Every particle everywhere everywhen is computing at the maximum possible rate. I think we tend to very seriously undervalue quotidian reality...

This would be like filling in wetlands to make a multiplex theater showing nature movies, clear-cutting a rainforest to make a destination eco-resort, or killing an elephant to whittle its teeth into religious icons of an elephant god.

This is because there are no shortcuts for nature’s computations. Due to a property of the natural world that I call the “principle of natural unpredictability,” fully simulating a bunch of particles for a certain period of time requires a system using about the same number of particles for about the same length of time. Naturally occurring systems don’t allow for drastic shortcuts.

Link (via Futurismic)

By the way, my own doctoral research considered some of the theological issues in relation to these notions - you can download a copy of my Doctoral Thesis here (please see chapter 2). Two other superb books to read are:

The age of spiritual machines, and Are we spiritual machines. By Kurzweil.
Wiredlife - who are we in the digital age? By Jonscher.

Technorati tags: The Matrix, Singularity, Spiritual Machines, Ray Kurzweil, Dion Forster

Quaker fired from American University for being non-violent.... go figure!?

This story is both sad and disturbing... How far do you go, as a Christian, to stgand for your faith convictions?

This woman simply made her beliefs known, and stuck by them, and so she was fired. I guess it is a little more complex (in that while individuals should have the right to freedom of conscience, that right should not infringe on the rights of others). For example, many Americans believe that it is their religious right to wage war for their way of life! Should one allow those persons the right and freedom to exercise their religious will!? What do you think?

Here's the story:

A Quaker math teacher at California State University East Bay has been fired for inserting the word "nonviolently" into the loyalty oath that state employees are required to sign. The woman, who works with young people who need remedial help with math, has always made this change in the loyalty oaths she's signed throughout her long teaching career, but the CSU East Bay administration fired her for refusing to pledge to violate her religion's tenets to in defense of the Constitution (a document that guarantees religious freedom).

Each time, when asked to "swear (or affirm)" that she would "support and defend" the U.S. and state Constitutions "against all enemies, foreign and domestic," Kearney-Brown inserted revisions: She wrote "nonviolently" in front of the word "support," crossed out "swear," and circled "affirm." All were to conform with her Quaker beliefs, she said...

Modifying the oath "is very clearly not permissible," the university's attorney, Eunice Chan, said, citing various laws. "It's an unfortunate situation. If she'd just signed the oath, the campus would have been more than willing to continue her employment."...

"All they care about is my name on an unaltered loyalty oath. They don't care if I meant it, and it didn't seem connected to the spirit of the oath. Nothing else mattered. My teaching didn't matter. Nothing."

Link

Technorati tags: non-violent, religious freedom, Quaker, fired

All in good time - patience is a virtue

IMG_8008
Originally uploaded by [dudu79].

Isn't this an amazing old Vespa VLB? This is one that was restored to an almost 'new' retro look - if you look at some of my older photos you'll see that my Vespa originally came in a similar silver to this.

If my Vespa is back up to speed before we leave Pretoria I am going to put my white wall tires on her! I have a set just like this in a box in my office just begging to go into action!

Patience is a good thing - but so is a little bit of healthy motivation!

Moof! You don't know the interwebs until you've studied up on the Clarus 'dogcow'

'Moof' that's the sound the dogcow makes... This internet icon was created in the Apple studios in 1983!

The name Clarus is related to the now defunct Apple office suite called Claris Works. For those who remember early Apple operating systems (I still have a Powerbook running system 6 (0r is it 7) in my cupboard!), the dogcow was used by Apple to show the colour and orientation of paper in the print dialogue.

When Apple released OS X the dogcow was no more... Some diehard fanboys petitioned the company to reintroduce it... But alas, it had long since joined other dogcows in the sky.

Some of us still remember the days before the internet... When I first studied towards a BSc (back in the days when science was still busy being invented), the fastest computers were intel 286 SX 25's (or some such), running UNIX and we communicated via usenet and gopher.

By the way, this last week saw the 'death' of an internet icon - the Netscape Browser.

technorati tags: clarus, moof, dogcow, Netscape, usenet, gopher

Secular Sabbath - it's time to unplug

I am 'wired' - by this I mean that there is never a time of the day or night where I cannot access the internet (and particularly my email). My trusty Nokia E90 and iPhone keep me connected to the net when out and about.

Other than that I have wireless network at home to which I connect using the wifi adaptor on my Macbook Pro.

I will confess that I like to remain connected! I like to check my email, occasionally check the RSS feeds on the blogs and websites that I follow, and be able to connect and communicate with ease and reliability wherever I am.

Since my accident, however, I have been trying NOT to answer my phone! It is amazing - I have a message indicating that I am on sick leave, with contact numbers and details for persons to phone if they have work queries, and yet I still get around 10 calls a day saying things like "I know you're off, but could you please...", "Sorry to worry you, but would you mind..."

At first I felt guilty, but then I thought, I am not well, there are others who can deal with the queries and so I have plucked up the courage NOT to answer those calls. Let me tell you, it is NOT easy! I feel guilty, lazy, and worry that others may not answer the calls as quickly or directly as I would.

There are many of us who feel this way about dealing with things. As I think about it, there are a few reasons why we feel this:

1. We want people to think about us as efficient, effective, helpful, and validate our worth. So, we sacrifice our own wellbeing and needs to try and get others to create an impression of us that is unrealistic.

2. We are not secure enough to trust other persons who can do our work as well as we can (although differently) to just do it! This is NOT a good thing! We tend to secretly believe that we're indispensable, and others will manipulate this 'secret' feeling in order to get us to do what they want, when they want it and how they want it.

3. Perhaps we haven't set up good systems to work in spite of us. This is not a good thing in the Church in particular! A great deal of what every efficient, clever, hard working person should do is to work themselves out of a job by helping others to develop and be able to do what they're doing. A good leaders should empower others to do their work, and do it even better than they can. This not only gets the work done but develops participation and sustainability.

I'm sure that there are many other things that you could add to this list (please feel free to do so in the comments!).

What trigured this post? Well, the following article from www.lifehacker.org

Self-described "techno-addict" Mark Bittman (who sleeps with his laptop on his night table to check email first and last thing) decided to unplug every weekend for 24 hours, a day he calls "secular Sunday." At first the experiment made him twitchy and nervous, but over time, he came to enjoy his unplugged day. He writes:

I would no more make a new-agey call to find inner peace than I would encourage a return to the mimeograph. But I do believe that there has to be a way to regularly impose some thoughtfulness, or at least calm, into modern life - or at least my version. Once I moved beyond the fear of being unavailable and what it might cost me, I experienced what, if I wasn't such a skeptic, I would call a lightness of being. I felt connected to myself rather than my computer. I had time to think, and distance from normal demands. I got to stop.

Like other geeks, on my recent vacation I also found that unplugging does bring about a calm you can't find in your RSS reader. Good night, secular Sunday. See you next week.
I Need a Virtual Break. No, Really.

Technorati tags: secular sabbath, always connected, iPhone, Nokia e90, tunning out

Fake intimacy and cabin fever...

It has been two weeks since my accident. I am pleased to say that I am coming along nicely. Yesterday was my first real trip out of the house since being released from hospital a few days ago. There are some things that you simply cannot ask others to do, like the wedding of a friend. So, there I was, on crutches, light headed, in a a bit of pain, dressed in a suit and clerical collar, in a MAGNIFICENT private Chapel (8 Hope Road, Mountainview in Houghton Estate, Johannesburg), with my friends Mike and Jodi and two witnesses.

It was good to be out, but trips like that take their toll. My knee and ankle seem to be the most uncomfortable at the moment. I am not sure if it is the thought of plates and screws wedged into the bones, or if there truly is some discomfort. Regardless, having my leg out of its usual elevated position left it quite swollen, throbbing, and uncomfortable. The infection seems to be abating a bit - the colour in my leg (around the wound) is starting to change form a yellow / blue, to a more healthy pinkish hue (forgive me for the graphic descriptions, but trust me words are better than pictures at this point)! This means that my fever has been relatively low. I am grateful for that since the fever has left me so FLAT and listless for the last two weeks that I have not be able to move, let alone do anything creative at home. I have slept through most days, occasionally reading, sending a few emails to make sure that the most necessary things are happening at the College etc.

Then, of course, since getting my replacement Macbook Pro, I have been enjoying the delights of virtual communication! I have done a few video calls with my friend Paul in Cape (using skype), and I have checked some flickr photos, read my friends blogs, and very occasionally dipped into facebook.

While I am still not ready to 'face the world', I am getting there.

I found this funny little image (above) that explains my 'cabin fever'.

Technorati tags: cabin fever, accident, recovery, internet,

When violence goes wrong - the coin toss from the movie 'No country for old men'

I'm not sure how many of you have read the book (or seen the movie) No country for old men, that walked away with all the Oscars last week?

Well, here's a magnificent parody of the 'coin toss' scene!

So, what do you call? Heads or tails!? ;-)

Technorati tags: no country for old men, coin toss, Conan O'Brien, parody, youtube

Why does power have the capacity to silence the truth? Jacob Zuma and the Tax 'man'

I am well aware of the complexity of the struggles for leadership and control in the ruling party in South Africa, the African National Congress. Politics is a dirty business! The fight for control of a nation is an ugly and dirty one. I am not so naive to think that Thabo Mbeki is without blemish (in fact the human rights abuses that he has perpetrated against persons who are HIV+ and could have survived much longer had he not adopted his maniacal and denialist stance against antiretroviral medication).

However, what causes me great disdain, and so becomes the source of some of my intercessory prayer, is the saga of immorality and thuggery that surrounds Jacob Zuma! I fear for our nation if we should elect someone of his moral and ethical stature to the presidency (whether it be the presidency of the nation, or the party that runs the nation)...

Just today the Mail & Guardian reported that there is another issue of concern around Mr Zuma - it would seem that he has not declared his income to the South African Revenue Service. Sadly the power of the ANC to squash the truth has already been seen (as the Scorpions, South Africa's directorate of special operations has been all but disbanded for doing nothing other than showing corrupt people for who they are).

I hear the conversations about immigration more and more frequently among thinking South Africans (both black and white). This is SO sad! Why should the good move so that the wicked can prosper.

Today I read these verses in scripture (Proverbs 24:19-20):

Do not fret because of evildoers Or be envious of the wicked; For there will be no future for the evil man; The lamp of the wicked will be put out.

Please could you join me in praying that justice, change, and moral renewal will come to pass in our fair land? Let's do all that we can to bring about moral regeneration and renewal in our land. Truly friends - we deserve better than this!! We deserve leaders who are trustworthy, honest, and are not so overcome by their personal agenda's that the needs of the nation have to take second place... Let's pray that wickedness gets put aside, and that the lives of the wicked are transformed.

Technorati tags: Jacob Zuma, moral degeneration, evil will not prosper, please pray, tax evasion,immigration

When organic meets electronic - DIY, set up your plants to Twitter when they need water.

I think this is hilarious! As I have mentioned before, people who have HUGE deadlines (doctoral students, editors, writers, and other 'creative types' will do just about anything to AVOID their work!!

The guy (or girl) who designed this gizmo must be a creative genius with a deadline second to none!!!!!

What do you think!? I'm going to give this a go... So keep an eye on my Twitter account (I think, however, I'm going to rig mine to my pet dog Wendy's food and water bowl!!!) Just kidding!!!

Here's the story:

Engadget hit on this one, and it's technically possible to do it with a Windows PC, but considering that Mac users are greener than most folks, and lovers of both plants and cool tech DIY, we're posting it anyway. Botanicalls, which is a project to help your plants make phone calls, has posted a how-to guide on getting your plants to twitter when they need water, got water but not enough, or are even being overwatered.

The whole rig requires an Arduino board, and it's not exactly for Mom to do on her own (unless of course your Mom is an electrical engineer, which is entirely possible), because it also will walk you through making your own moisture sensor. Once you've got everything plugged in, the Arduino software will talk to the unit via USB and ethernet, and a terminal script will actually send the Tweets out. Unfortunately, despite a quick search on Twitter, I wasn't able to find any plants actually tweeting, but if you have one, let us know.

Technorati tags: uber geek, organic meets electrical, twitter, work avoidance behaviour, avoiding a deadline, Apple Mac, Doctorate

A University is giving out FREE Apple iPhones or iPod Touch's to all first year students.

A few years ago when I was invited to Duke University I was amazed to discover that all 'freshmen' (basically, in South Africa we would call them first year students) received an iPod when they came to study at the University.

As an aside, I also heard the other day that Duke University is the first ever community wide 802.11n network to be established over a whole municipal area! When I visited I had my old 12" Powerbook with an iSight camera and used the free wifi on campus to call home to my family (doing video chat) for hours at a time! It was like being home!

Well, here's a related story! Wouldn't it be great if we had the resources to offer our first year students a free laptop, or an iPhone or iPod touch (with video tutorials, Audio of lectures, and a hard drive full of PDF's etc.)... We do something similiar (in a VERY small way on our Seminary Campus - all students get a free flash disk at the start of the year (not only does it save paper since we can put PDF's of the rules and regulations, the yearbook, and other useful documents on the drives, but it also helps us to avoid the complaint that 'the dog ate my assignment'!)

This story comes from TAUW:

Abilene Christian University is announcing a pilot program to provide an iPhone or iPod touch to every new student. At first glance, I found myself wondering: if some colleges are providing MacBooks with tuition, doesn't an iPhone seem like a less-expensive attempt to lure new blood? Upon further consideration, I think there are some distinct advantages to a pocket-sized device in a learning environment. From constant connectivity to ultra-portability, it could provide a means for every student to access learning materials any time, from any place.

ACU has obviously considered this, and then some. With apparently well-coordinated plans to take advantage of the devices – including podcasts, mobile-accessible class materials, active-learning strategies and a re-focusing of the campus media – they're preparing to take maximum advantage of the iPhone/iPod touch possibilities. If it's a gimmick, it sure seems like a useful, well-thought-out one. For more information, case studies and future plans, take a peek at the ACU Mobile Learning page.

Technorati tags: free iPhone, free iPod Touch, creative marketing, videos of lectures, tools for studying