I’m at home with a slight fever which I aquired last weekend (totally worth it though) and am drinking paracetamol and snake oil. I’ll head to work within the next hour, but thought I’d do my bi-weekly post instead of watching Battlestar Galactica(there are only so many episodes left that I haven’t seen, and I need to pace myself).
The message of the day: Backup your data, kids!
Lars, the architect I’m working with at the museum, hadn’t done it for a while, and his internal drive packed in. The data recovery people said that the driver head had scratched the platterns beyond salvation. A couple of weeks worth of work moved into the great wide yonder.
I immediately bought SuperDuper! and now have schedules backups of everything. I’ve also ordered a new drive to mirror my internal one.
While at it, I also bought Defcon, a tactical nuclear war simulator based on the movie WarGames. Between the sparse graphics and the eerie ambient sounds, it’s an utterly engrossing game that I’m looking forward to spending a couple of hours with. One of the more interesting aspects of the game is that you can ally yourself with anyone else, but are also at liberty to end these alliances at a whim. This makes paranoia and psychological warfare just as important as any military assets you might have, and might give a better understanding of the Mutual Assured Detruction doctrine. It’s like playing chicken with nukes.
Most of my friends and collegues don’t play games more complicated than Tetris, so I need new gaming friends. Get in touch please.
In between days when I don’t do anything but work, the thought has occoured to me that come May I’ll need to make money. Nothing that I nor the Gothenburg crew does lends itself to making money directly from a paying audience, but relies on either getting grants or selling art to collectors or investors. And there’s not a whole lot of that going on.
On that note, it’s impressive how independent writers, musicians and game programmers manage to eek out a living using mainly online self-publishing. It’s not for everyone, and requires a total dedication not only to your craft but also to your audience. If you look at the tremendous work that writers Scott Sigler or Mur Lafferty put in maintaining an active fan base, it soon becomes apparent that their “job description” is similar to that of a herder of cats, or perhaps the Pied Piper.
I’m not sure how well writing compares to the work that I and my friends are doing, which usually involves galleries and curated shows, but as far as making money is concerned, I feel that there are great things to be made and gained from taking a step back from the dead-end-job/show/grant/show/dead-end-job cykle that so many of us are stuck in.
Boingboing.net linked to an artikle by Kevin Kelly that seems right up the ally of so many people who are stuck in the mindset that making a living is an “either/or” proposition (including me): 1000 true fans.
It’s a more personal approach of the whole ‘long tail’ discussion from last year, and if what you do involves an audience, you’ll appreciate the article. Go read.