PolyWogg.ca – Page 11 – The writing life of a tadpole

Finally learning with the Celestron NexStar 8SE

June 14 2015

I have a Celestron NexStar 8SE telescope…for those not in the know, that’s an 8″ optical tube on a simple tripod. They call them one-armed bandits (like the slot machines) because there is a single arm that goes from the tripod mount that it rests on up to the tube. Simple, easy to work, but it isn’t very stable, at least not in astronomical viewing terms. It doesn’t allow for much in the way of astro photography due to its limited ability to track the sky over time, thus limiting the photography options of long-exposures. However, there is one feature where the 8SE shines — it’s ease of use.

This was a key ingredient for me in buying a scope, based on knowledge of who I am and the patience I have. If a scope takes 30 minutes to setup, I’m not likely to use it. I need something relatively simple, and the 8SE requires you to basically setup the tripod, attach the scope to the arm, add some power and eyepieces, and you’re good to go. More or less.

The second feature that was a huge selling feature for me is what they call the “go to” feature. You run a simple alignment procedure on the scope, the computer on the mount figures out what stars you are looking at, and after that, it knows where all the other stars and planets should be.… Read the rest

A newbie’s guide to the RASC Observer’s Handbook 2015

March 9 2015

I’m relatively new to astronomy, have been involved for just over 18 months, and am still pretty limited in my knowledge. One of my learning resources is being a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC), Ottawa Chapter, and by being a member, I get the annual Observer’s Handbook.

The Handbook is a great resource. But I confess that as a newbie, it can be quite daunting. For example, page 23 of the 2015 handbook has a table entitled, “Heliocentric Osculating Orbital Elements for 2015: Referred to the Mean Ecliptic and Equinox of J2000.0”. Umm, sure. I’ll get right on reading that immediately. As soon as I finish grouting the tub at a friend’s house. And this is listed in a section called “Basic data”.

If you know what that table is about, congratulations! However, this means that this blog entry is not for you. It’s for the people who have the handbook and want to be able to use it without an advanced degree in astrophysics or spending 3 hours with a dictionary and going down internet wormholes looking things up on websites.

Getting Started

One might think that the Handbook would start with an overview of telescope options, but it doesn’t.… Read the rest

Articles I Like: US State Department culture and the need to change

March 9 2015

Before John Price became an active blogger/commenter/editorialist, he served as U.S. Ambassador for 3 years in Africa and is now a Resident Scholar at the University of Utah. His career has given him keen insights into the operations of the U.S. State Department and I enjoy reading some of his posts. In a recent post, Price talks about how the culture of the State Department culture needs to change. (Link expired).

Having read lots of communiques from Ambassadors in the Canadian world of foreign affairs, I know that sometimes those posted abroad don’t always “get it right”, and what might improve local operations on a temporary basis becomes unsustainable for an organization over time.

The complaint that people rotate “too soon” is a common one. You see it in lots of businesses, governments, etc. because it is better for the micro-unit of the organization if people join and never leave. Corporate memory isn’t an issue because it hasn’t left. No time spent staffing. You know what else looks great to managers? Slavery and indentured servitude.

But here’s the thing about managers. They’re paid to manage. Not manage when it’s easy, or manage just the easy things, but to actually manage. And one of those “inputs” is people.… Read the rest

Articles I Like: Universities paying lobbyists

March 2 2015

As I’ve mentioned before, I like reading the Higher Education Strategy Associates blog as they have some really interesting articles and topics. Most of the time I find it intriguing, maybe even illuminating, but once in a while I think, “nope, sorry, that analysis is weak”. Today’s article was in a similar vein about B.C. universities’ use of lobbyists to influence the BC government and the government telling them not to spend their money on lobbyists instead of actual programming.

So, the BC Government is telling BC universities that they shouldn’t hire lobbyists to lobby the provincial government. […]
From the university’s perspective, the sloganeering makes no sense unless you take the lobbyists effectiveness into account. If the lobbyist achieves nothing, then yes, that money would be better spent in the classroom. But if by spending 50K on a lobbyist, an institution ends up receiving another 500K in money, then that’s money extremely well spent. Obviously, it’s not always simple to determine cause and effect when it comes to an individual’s work, but that’s how universities need to look at the problem; is there a return on investment?
Admittedly, from the public’s point of view it’s not so simple. There is an unseemliness to institutions who receive public money to lobby government for more money.

… Read the rest

Articles I Like: Performance-based funding and education

February 17 2015

I subscribe to the daily feed from Higher Education Strategy Associates and I enjoy the main analyst’s take on things usually. He’s got one going this week on “Performance-Based Funding” that looks promising. Here’s an excerpt from today’s post:

At one level,PBF is simple: you pay for what comes out of universities rather than what goes in.
[…]
Take graduation numbers, which happens to be the simplest and most common indicator used in PBFs. A government could literally pay a certain amount per graduate – or maybe “weighted graduate” to take account of different costs by field of study. It could pay each institution based on its share of total graduates or weighted graduates. It could give each institution a target number of graduates (based on size and current degree of selectivity, perhaps) and pay out 100% of a value if it hits the target, and 0% if it does not. Or, it could set a target and then pay a pro-rated amount based on how well the institution did vis-a-vis the target. And so on, and so forth.
Each of these methods of paying out PBF money plainly has different distributional consequences. However, if you’re trying to work out whether output-based funding actually affects institutional outcomes, then the distributional consequence is only of secondary importance.

… Read the rest

Two cultures separated by a common language

April 12 2013

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been blogging about the merger of DFAIT and CIDA and some of the implementation issues that I think they’ll face. In the short-term, it’s probably mostly about basic implementation and structural questions. In the medium-term, there’s a larger question about “what does ‘development’ mean in a Canadian context”, how the new DFATD sets priorities, and even how to potentially modify legislation that appears to be narrowly focused on development but is really an almost-meaningless bit of rhetoric that combines apples, oranges and potentially a few truck parts, and calls it “poverty reduction”.

Yet, even as people focus on the short-term (CIDA: We got FACked!, FAC: DFATD, not DeFeATeD!) and medium-term (calling all pundits), it isn’t, in my opinion, anything close to the greatest threat facing the new DFATD in the long-term.

To borrow a cliché, CIDA and FAC are two unique cultures separated by a common language around Canada, government and internationalism.

Does FAC have culture?

I know, it comes as a shock to most people. But I mean small “c” culture, not Cultural Affairs-type culture, although many of them have that too. So, let’s look at that culture. And, reader beware, I might even say some nice things about them.… Read the rest

Articles I Like: When democracy starts looking weird

April 11 2013

For those who know me in person, you know that I’m pretty much a government-wonk. Not in the “I care deeply about politics” sense, because I don’t. Generally, I think there are a lot of good people out there who do care about those things, and care deeply about the policy direction of various parties etc., but my policy interests are a lot more narrow. However, I do have very strong views about how things are implemented once a decision is taken as to direction, and most of my posts about government will have that as a running theme.

Take for example two very different articles about government and laws in today’s New York Times. The first, about Latvia of all places, reflects the decision that government works best when it is “by the people”. Political engagement at the grassroots level. In Latvia, because they had low political engagement by its citizens, they launched a rule — if a citizen gets 10K signatures on a proposal for legislators, their Parliament will look at it and consider it. Think of it as the deep deep deep deep backbencher option for a private member’s bill.

The plight of local dogs left tied up alone outdoors has long bothered Mr.

… Read the rest

Articles I Like: Self-publishing disrupting the industry

April 9 2013

I admit that I have developed an almost unhealthy fascination with the publishing industry’s changes over the last five years. Separate from my own vested interest, I am also interested from an analytical perpective. People argue that “self-publishing” or “ebooks” are the changes that are sweeping their way through the publishing world, but I personally feel that it is more about the disentanglement of a previously integrated and controlled business model.

In the past, you had authors who produced content as a raw product, agents who marketed those raw materials to publisher after publisher, or editor by editor at each publisher, and publishers who took the raw product, massaged it, processed it, turned it into a final product, and took the sellable version to market. And there were huge barriers to entry into the market — agents wouldn’t take just anyone, publishers often wanted only agent-repped products, stores and libraries would mainly take books only from the Big Six publishers or their subsidiaries. Breaking into those areas would give you huge leverage, but they were jealously guarded corridors of power.

However, in recent years, the whole business model has been disrupted end to end…authors can get their books on Amazon and in ebook form without an agent or a publisher.… Read the rest

Articles I Like: Muzzling government scientists

April 2 2013

Most people who know me might think that since I have a pretty strong view about what limitations on freedom of speech look like and don’t look like for government workers, and that I even blog about stuff related to government, I would likely tilt against the current windmill of supposed Government censorship or muzzling of “scientists”, as the argument is aptly captured in the press (Information watchdog to investigate policies that ‘muzzle’ government scientists | CTV News.)

The argument from other windmill-tilters is pretty straight forward:

Science is pure, non-political
Science research by the government is paid for by taxpayers
Taxpayers should have access to science research they paid for
Ergo, government scientists should always be able to talk to the press and all research reports should be readily available.

Well, let’s look at those premises a bit more closely.

Science is pure and non-political? Actually, it is not and never has been. What a scientist chooses to study and what they decide is relevant or significant is as fraught with a personal subjective choice as any field of endeavour. It’s why they teach courses like “researcher bias” for scientists and “policy myopia” for policy wonks. This is totally separate too from the internal politics of any organization, non-governmental or governmental, that researchers think their work is the most important and that they should be fully funded, no reason to budget or conserve resources or fund-raise.… Read the rest

CIDA, DFAIT and what’s on the DMs’ minds…

March 27 2013

As with all posts on this site, my views are my own and obviously not that of my paycheque provider. Not that anyone complained, or that I’m being overly “critical” of decisions, as the reality of most decisions made by governments when it comes to structural changes is that most are simply that — choices. They are not “good” or “bad”, they simply have pros and cons. And just as with a hiring decision where one’s strength in being decisive can also be a weakness by being inflexible or quick to judge, the Deputy Ministers and Associates working on what the new merger will look like have a bunch of decisions to make, and most of the options have strengths that may turn out to be weaknesses or weaknesses that may turn out to be strengths.

Since many of you asked, and don’t have much experience thinking “structurally” or “corporately”, here is my guess of some of the things occupying their attention this week.

Job chaos

I may depress a lot of people with identifying this first, but it would be the most emotionless automaton working at that level who wouldn’t be affected by the chaos that just invaded their orbit.… Read the rest

A dark blue suit with Birkenstocks

March 22 2013

Each year, thousands of people compete for jobs at the Department of Foreign Affairs. But, while many are called, few are chosen (100-ish). Yet yesterday, DFAIT’s ranks swelled by 1800 people, most of whom no doubt greeted the news with a lot less enthusiasm than DFAIT’s normal hirings. With the announcement that CIDA was being “folded” into DFAIT, many are stressed that this sounds a death knell for development, that all principles of development will go out the window, and that CIDA will essentially disappear. Fortunately, the announcements of CIDA’s death may be a bit premature.

Some broader context, timelines up until 1998

Prior to WWII, most “economic development history” consisted of experiences with colonization, not development assistance as we know it. International development in its modern form actually began with Foreign Affairs types. When WWII ended, and reconstruction began in Europe, people thought, “Hey, we just need to do the same thing in developing countries, and it will work.” They neglected to take into account that European reconstruction worked because Europe already had working systems that produced the development in the first place, experience in managing it, and a tax and resource base to sustain it. Not surprisingly, the same methods didn’t work in developing countries and the early 1960s saw those same DFAIT types who had been struggling with a lack of success starting to think there was a need for separate organizational entities to deal with this type of issue.… Read the rest

Konrath’s resolutions for writers

June 3 2012

For those who read the rest of my blog, and not just the posts about writing, you know that I have a ~~anally obsessively compulsive~~ rigorous process for setting goals and tracking them — think of it as like setting New Year’s resolutions but on steroids. But there are some areas where “goals” are great, yet they only work if you can break them down in to digestible — and achievable — smaller chunks.

So let’s assume you have a big goal of being an author. Under traditional publishing, the ultimate end was outside your control — in theory, you could hammer away at agents and editors with proposal after proposal and never “succeed”. Your digestible “bits” were process stuff, not a measure of your ultimate outcome. With e-publishing, and self-publishing more specifically, coming of age in recent years (if not months), you can change your goal into something that is actually achievable i.e. even if no one “accepts” your MS for traditional publishing, you can bypass them and publish yourself.

Yet, you might still want to have larger writing goals. Konrath’s website, A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing, included a sample of his writer’s resolutions from 2006 to 2012, and I wanted to highlight a bunch that I think are worthy of emulation because they are not all about process…note, with apologies to the master, that the headings are mine, as are the groupings:

Process
- I will start/finish the damn book
- I will finish every story I start
- I’ll quit procrastinating in the form of research, outlines, synopses, taking classes, reading how-to books, talking about writing, and actually write something
Improvement
- I will listen to criticism
- I will always remember where I came from
- If you’re a writer, you must be a reader.

… Read the rest

Articles I Like: Konrath on the Mystery Writers of America

May 3 2012

There are very few windmills that I feel strongly enough to tilt at…stupid people is one. Bullies are another. People pretending they understand policy and government, and being condescending towards others’ views — although that tends to combine both of the first two. But I have a pretty strong respect for the importance of human rights, freedom of association, etc. when they are used as swords to advance legitimate causes or shields to prevent oppression. Where the heck is this idea going? Membership in a society that basically holds itself out as representing an industry but then turning around and barring people from the industry who don’t meet their standards.

If you look back to some lovely research published in the 1980s and 90s by the Harvard Business Review, everybody thinks their job qualifies as a profession. Janitors think they’re a “profession”. Taxi drivers another. And when people of like mind and employment get together, and talk about their profession, they frequently start saying things like “Hey, that person isn’t any good, we should really have standards and block these yahoos. They’re not ‘professional’ like we are. Our ‘profession’ is slipping.”

This makes sense in some quarters where professional certification can and should be required.… Read the rest

Articles I Like: KK Rusch on royalty statements, audits

May 3 2012

One of my favorite bloggers writing about the publishing industry is Kristine Kathryn Rusch, a former “upper-midlister” who has moved into the world of self-publishing and prefers the results. She has lots of history in the traditional publishing world, ranging from short-story mags to full-length novels, and everything in between, and probably every form of publisher alive. However, unlike the evangelical nature of some of the newly converted, Kris’ posts tend to be more practically oriented — here’s a business issue related to publishing, here’s her experiences with it, here’s how she thinks it fits into a current business model, and here’s what she thinks is the best option for her. She’s not trying to convert the masses, she’s sharing info with the masses. It’s a great balance, and she treads it well. One of her latest posts is about royalty statements, and, basically, how screwed up they are. But she also goes on to talk about two other issues that I think are great — basket accounting and the audits by DOJ of the “colluders” who are being sued for the agency model agreements they colluded upon. See excerpts below:

Over a year ago, I wrote a blog post about the fact that my e-book royalties from a couple of my traditional publishers looked wrong.

… Read the rest

Articles I Like: DW Smith on publishing, early decisions

May 2 2012

Dean Wesley Smith is one of my favorite bloggers. As another blogger described him, Dean is an ex-midlister who has drunk the self-publishing Koolaid, is happy with his success in multiple worlds, and is happy to share his approach and results with others. He has a couple of blog-based ebooks going, where he writes a chapter at a time and posts it for digestion and comment. Then he cobbles them all together into an actual book. His latest endeavour, the second edition of “Think Like a Publisher”, is being “reposted” with updates in close sequential order. Here are some excerpts from Chapter 1:

Some of the earliest decisions a publisher has to make can be changed down the road easily. Some are difficult to change. So, I’m going to break down some of these early decisions into basic groups. And keep in mind, there are no correct answers on any of these decisions. Just what you want to do.

…

Get the business set up, do the chores, look at your start-up inventory, and then look hard and fast at what kind of publisher you want to be.
See the full post at Dean Wesley Smith » Think Like a Publisher 2012.

… Read the rest

Articles I Like: Remember Amazon is always the bad guy

May 1 2012

The NYTimes had an interesting article on Sunday from David Carr writing about an author, Buzz Bissinger, who had a book promotion going on with Apple that Amazon matched and thus must somehow be evil.

…Apple, which had been looking to get into shorter works in a digital format, decided to include e-books in a promotion that it does with Starbucks. It selected Mr. Bissinger’s digital sequel as a Pick of the Week, giving customers a code they could redeem online for the book. (Mr. Bissinger said he still received a royalty of $1.50 for each copy sold.)

Amazon interpreted the promotion as a price drop and lowered its price for “After Friday Night Lights” to exactly zero. Byliner withdrew the book from Amazon’s shelves, saying it did so to “protect our authors’ interest.”

…

Mr. Bryant, who formerly edited a sports magazine for The New York Times, said that Amazon’s “price bot” had picked up the fact that the book was being given away as part of a weeklong promotion and responded by dropping its price to zero. (In an e-mail later, Mr. Bryant said that when the company told Amazon about the promotion, before it began, Byliner was warned the price might drop to zero.

… Read the rest

Articles I Like: Consumers vs. Publishers

April 24 2012

Jeremy Greenfield had an interesting post on Digital Book World about e-book pricing — but focused on the costs. The article tries to basically explain both why consumers think costs (and the price) should be a lot less, and publishers saying, “No, wait, costs are not that far off”.

Here are some excerpts from Greenfield’s post:

Publishers are making a killing on e-books because they cost nothing to produce, distribute and sell and are almost 100% pure profit. At least, that’s what many consumers think.

…

While consumers understand the basic costs involved in the bricks-and-mortar retail world, they don’t understand the costs involved in selling something that is, well, much, much smaller than a bread box.

…

“We still pay for the author advance, the editing, the copy-editing, the proofreading, the cover and interior design, the illustrations, the sales kit, the marketing efforts, the publicity, and the staff that needs to coordinate all of the details that make books possible,” said Bob Miller in February 2009 on the HarperStudio blog (which has been defunct since April 2010 when the publishing start-up folded) when he was president and publisher of that company; he is now president and publisher of Workman Publishing.

… Read the rest

Articles I Like: E-book lawsuit in Canada

April 24 2012

Marsha Lederman had an interesting article in the Globe and Mail on April 18th trying to put a Canadian spin on the charges in the U.S. of collusion and price-fixing by the Big Six publishers (Harper Collins, MacMillan, Penguin, Random House, Hachette, and Simon & Schuster) with Apple. Just to be clear, there are TWO lawsuits in the U.S. — a class-action civil suit launched by “consumers” against this group for trying to raise ebook prices above Amazon’s preferred ceiling of $9.99 (targeting all six plus Apple) and a completely separate Department of Justice civil suit that targets everyone in that list except Random House. I’m not including separate state plans in that list.

Here’s an excerpt from Lederman:

A proposed class-action lawsuit filed in B.C. Supreme Court by the Vancouver firm Camp Fiorante Matthews Mogerman alleges that Apple Inc. and a number of publishers engaged in a “conspiracy” to lessen competition and “fix, maintain, increase or control the prices of e-books.” It is the most recent of at least five such suits filed recently in courts in Ontario, Quebec and B.C.

It also alleges that the defendants or their representatives communicated secretly, in person and by phone, to discuss and fix e-book prices, in the lead-up to the introduction of Apple’s iPad, which can function as an eReader, in April of 2010.In

… Read the rest

Articles I Like: The Threat of Free Riders

April 23 2012

The Harvard Business Review has a great website, combining not only the articles from their magazine, but daily summaries of key articles, interesting statistics and a number of cool blogs ranging from “soft” HR issues to “hard” business articles. Frances Frei and Anne Morriss wrote a blog entry called, “Target and the Threat of Free Riders” that is pretty good. I know what you’re thinking — umm, doesn’t the heading for this blog entry say it’s about “publishing”? Yes, yes, it does. Because while Frei and Morriss are primarily talking about Target, the hidden subtext behind it is Amazon.

You might remember the big kerfuffle at Christmas time…Amazon released a new App that could scan bar codes, and they encouraged you while shopping in bricks and mortar stores to do some price comparisons. And then, *gasp*, buy from Amazon if the price was cheaper. They even had the audacity to offer initial discount coupons to those using the apps. The blogs exploded with stories of how Amazon was evil, how dare they do this, it was destroying the local infrastructure. They were essentially complaining that Amazon was being a “free rider” — the store chains have physical locations with large overhead costs they have to pay, and here Amazon was saying “go visit them, touch and feel your items in person, exploit their overhead, and then buy from us.”… Read the rest

Articles I Like: Critics of E-Books Lawsuit

April 23 2012

The Wall Street Journal has a pretty good article by Thomas Catan entitled Critics of E-Books Lawsuit Miss the Mark, Experts Say (link may expire). In it, Catan gives a pretty good overview of the Ebook “collusion” lawsuit and has some outstanding points about those who think the Department of Justice “got it wrong” (i.e. they went after the wrong company) and are really just puppets of Amazon:

U.S. antitrust law doesn’t seek to protect little companies against big ones, or even struggling ones against successful ones. Companies can grow as large as they want, as long as they do it through lower prices, better service or niftier innovations. Companies can even become monopolies, as long as they don’t get there illegally or try to extend their power by unlawfully stifling competition.

…

“Price fixing is kind of the first-degree murder of antitrust violations,” Prof. Hovenkamp says. “They don’t have discretion to just walk away from what appears to be a strong set of facts that, if true, are one of the most central of antitrust violations.”

…

The government might already have shown some leniency. For one, the Justice Department brought a civil, rather than a criminal, case, so no executives will go to prison.

… Read the rest