NaNoWriYear

It’s a new year, shining with promise. One promise I see floating around the intertoobes is that many people want to “do” NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writer’s Month. This involves writing a novel in a month, which is entirely possible but sort of against the point, in my opinion.

I hereby suggest taking a year to write the thing. Splurge. Spread it out. Write a draft in a month if you must, but don’t forget that REAL novels involve many drafts, lots of editing, and sometimes entire rewrites. Promise instead to spend a certain amount of time each week, and actually set that time aside from your normal hectic routine. At the end, if you decide to try publication (or even if you don’t) the product will be improved greatly through the use of an editor (here’s my favorite one). At the very least, you will learn a lot about your own personal writing process, your work processes, project planning, and ability to stick to a long-term project. At the most you’ll end up with work you are proud of.

So there’s my advice for the new year. 🙂

World Health Care in Graphic Form

Link to National Geographic chart showing relative cost of health care per person in several countries, contrasted with average life expectancy, care of the National Geographic blog.   I am reading Tufte right now so I find this fascinating.   I am also living in the US as we pass “sweeping” health care reform, so I find it a bit scary as well.  The data are not perfect—in fact they are quite reviled by some—but I think the point is made well, which is the point of any graphic element.

Happy Holidays

I’m taking some time off from work, blogging, and pretty much everything except breathing, eating, and gathering firewood.  I’ll be back to my regular irregular posting schedule in January.  Happy holidays to all 4 of my readers, and to everyone else.

Who reads this blog?

I just have to know whether it is worth continuing to write.  If you are reading this, and the content here is more interesting to you than what I write in my professional blog, please let me know in the comments section below.   Feel free to comment anonymously, I won’t tell.

1928, first flight across the Pacific Ocean

Thanks to Wired for this historically significant article about Charles Kingsford-Smith and Charles Ulm and their unbelievable journey from California to Australia by air in 1928.

Look at the photo at the top of my blog, and picture heading out to sea—without the Golden Gate bridge, as it was not yet even begun—at less than 100mph.  That takes a serious leap of faith.

Cake Wrecks

Fantastic.  http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/

Another geek joke

This page is excellent:  Strangest comments to appear in source code

Found while messing around with FriendFeed.

Visual Guide to Tax Spending

This image has been making its way around the tubes.  Beware, it is a large download, but worth the effort.

Visual Guide to Where Your Federal Tax Dollars Go

This incredibly interesting and well-researched poster shows the current spending of the US Government as a large single poster.  It originated at WallStats.com, who have produced it for four years, calling the “Death and Taxes” poster.  The data comes straight from the White House.  What is most interesting is the presentation—straightforward and honest, which makes it an anomaly among representations of government spending.  The poster sells for $24 from their website.I’ll be subscribing annually, as soon as I can find an extra $24 in my own budget.

Bravo to WallStats, which is the brainchild of artist Jess Bachman.  Also check out his image showing the USA’s credit score, and the Visual Guide to the Financial Crisis.  Very well done.

UPDATE: I found one even more compelling: The Evolution of the Household from 1950 to today.  Note that all values are normalized for today’s dollars.

geek joke

struct SoftwareProfessional
{
    double     salary;
    long       lunches;
    float      jobs;
    char       unstable;
    void       work;
};

(this passes my parser completely.  credit to Jack Ganssle() )

Hacker Spaces

HackerSpaces are places where people can get together and… break things.  And then solder, weld, or glue them back together in interesting ways.  Or invent brand new things, or make existing things better.  Or get together and teach each other interesting things.  A recent article from Wired has legitimized these places—check it out, one may be near you.  The list shows hackerspaces all over the world.

I find this a Sign of Good Times because it means people are using their creativity to improve things and to gather together based on mutual interest.  It is an excellent sign that people are turning off the TV and getting out into the world to play together.