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There was an interesting post on John Scalzi's blog yesterday about Amazon Shorts. Scalzi's an author, so it was interesting seeing the commentary from that point of view, rather than as a developer or consumer:
My feeling about Amazon Shorts is it's best suited for writers who already have a significant and self-sustaining fan base. i.e., writers who are rather popular already. In the SF/F genre, I have no doubt whatsoever in my mind that if Neil Gaiman or Orson Scott Card or Connie Willis dropped something into Amazon Shorts, they would be likely to make a fair chunk of cash in short order. Some other writer whose name recognition is slightly less luminous -- a comfortably mid-list writer, in other words -- might not see a difference one way or another. But strictly in terms of the money, most writers (and I would include myself here) would probably be better off going to the venue where the money is offered up front, unless said author is ready, willing and able to flog the Amazon Short to all and sundry on a regular basis. If you're not an inveterate self-promoter, this probably won't be your bag.
The comments in the blog post lead into a conversation about how the Amazon Shorts program, with some good editors on board to weed out the dreck, could lead into the direction of self-publishing. Maybe I should start working on a short story in case they open the program to any hack with a keyboard. Then I could make my 40% of $0.49 when my mom buys a copy.
I've changed hosts for this blog. Up until yesterday, it was hosted on an old Pentium II machine with a 97% full, non-backed up hard drive and very little RAM. I've signed up with Dreamhost after hearing good things about them. Everything seems to be working fine so far. This will be my first post on the new host and a test to see if I've got everything set up properly.
By the way, Dreamhost is running some great deals right now through the end of August. I got triple the normal bandwith allowance and triple normal disk space, as well as 60% off of monthly fees for as long as I maintain an active account.
I'm a sucker. I signed up for Amazon Prime
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The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. & E.B. White Not wanting to contribute to the ever-declining state of grammar, spelling, and general writing quality on the internet, I thought this book would be a nice addition to my collection. |
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Principles of Statistics by M.G. Bulmer I managed to make it through college without taking a true statistics course and still ended up with a B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science. I ordered this page-turner to fill in a few holes. |
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Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell Ms. Vowell provided the voice of Violet in The Incredibles and had a segment on the DVD extras showing off her history-geekiness. Seeing that piqued my interest enough that I bought this when it showed up in my Amazon recommendations. |
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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling I've read the rest, so I had to get this one. |
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Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi I've been reading Mr. Scalzi's blog for a while now, so when I saw a recent post about how the print run of this book was limited and that 10% of the cover price goes to the Child's Play charity, I used an Amazon gift certificate I had sitting around to buy this book. My book is #526 of the 1500 numbered copies, all of which have been autographed by the author. |
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Accelerando by Charles Stross In another of John Scalzi's blog posts, The Myth of the Science Fiction Monoculture, he says, "I think [Accelerando] is just a tremendous science fiction novel, full of the things that make you go hmmm, science fictionally speaking. They might as well just announce Charlie's Hugo nomination for it so the rest of us can go about our lives." Since my aforementioned gift certificate had a bit left on it after Agent to the Stars, I added Accelerando to my order. |
I may have to go back to riding the train to work to find the time to finish these in a reasonable amount of time.
Sunday's beautiful weather demanded that I grill dinner out on the deck. So, I bought a flank steak. I used a recipe that I've adapted over the past few years from dishes found in Cook's Illustrated and Fine Cooking.
Add enough olive oil to the paste to loosen it up a bit. You don't want it runny, but it should be thin enough to spread easily over the flank steak. Stir it up and smear half of it over each side of the steak with a spatula (or your hands). Leave the meat on the cutting board while you preheat the grill.
Once preheated, turn the grill down to about medium heat and put on the flank steak. Flip the steak every two to three minutes to ensure a nice, evenly cooked-through piece of meat. Once the flank steak feels somewhat firm to the touch (see this interesting guide to steak doneness) or reads whatever temperature you prefer on an instant-read thermometer, remove the steak to a cutting board and cover with aluminum foil for at least five minutes.
After the meat had rested, cut it into thin strips—about half-an-inch—across the grain of the meat. Be prepared a mess with this step, since meat juices tend run when cutting it. Serve and enjoy!
I served this with some grilled zucchini (cut into quarter-inch strips lengthwise, tossed in olive oil, salt, and pepper) and home-fried potatoes (quarter-inch diced Yukon golds, pan-fried in butter and olive oil, with a bit of salt and pepper). It was good.
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