We've finished up proofs on Painting the Web this week, and I have my first snap of the new cover. I embedded a version of the cover that's been converted into SVG over at Burningbird, but have included a JPEG below.
Now I can turn my attention to the new book, as well as the site changes and book support sites. I've closed down my experimentation at Burningbird, leaving it for now with an appropriate background image. Red is not normally my color, but I rather like the warmth of the color and the new background SVG works exceptionally well in a flexibly sized environment.
Something will happen to RealTech, I'm just not sure what. Only the Feeds know what lurks within the hearts of online writers. Mwahaha, or something to that effect.
Spring has arrived here in St. Louis, though reluctantly and wetly.
Updated: O'Reilly went with a Golden Oriole rather than a Prairie Chicken.
The cover of my newest book, rendered in SVG. If your browser doesn't support the SVG, you'll see the PNG version.
I used Vector Magic to convert the raster image to an SVG vector drawing. I then "combined" it with another image that I had vectorized.
Now that's really unhappy news this morning: Dare Obasanjo is quitting his weblog. Dare's been around weblogging as long as I have, and I'm sorry to see him go.
Dare's always had challenges with what he could write in his space. He's an outspoken person who doesn't hold back criticism, even about his own employer (Microsoft). In addition, he's also the son of Olusegun Obasanjo, so anything he writes, or doesn't write, bounces against a global political wall–not to mention it would creep me out to know I'm regularly read by most of my family members.
I can understand him saying, whoa, enough. But I'll still miss him.
I like Andrew Orlowski, though he offered me a writing job once and then yanked it. I don't always agree with him, and I don't always agree with how he phrases some of his material, but he typically has a good point.
Take the recent Nine Inch Nails album release. Several songs for free, and the rest of the album costs $5.00. What happens? It's immediately dumped on Pirate Bay. Bandwidth issues aside, as Radiohead found out, people won't pay.
The anti-copyright crowd kicked at the music business, because it was complacent, wasteful and reactionary, and no digital download services were available. Then they kicked at DRM-locked music, because DRM was there. Then DRM died, and they'd indiscriminately kick at the music business - indie or major - simply because there was a middleman. But now, with no middleman, they just kick the creator directly. They can't stop kicking. These zombies are unstoppable. Are they incurable, too?
This goes beyond copyright. Too many people expect immediate access to anything on the Net, or anything that could possibly be put on the Net. They want something for nothing. This isn't free speech, this isn't Free the Mouse, this isn't anything to do with not stifling creativity: people assume a privilege for themselves they, frankly, don't deserve. Their cry is, "gimme gimme gimme", existing in a state of selfishness to bring down the band. And by their selfishness, they'll probably screw things up for the rest of us. After all, DRM doesn't exist so you can't copy a song on to your iPod.
Excuse me, while I go put my DRM locked movie into the DVD player.
