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Read This Carefully

KickFailure

There’s a great post by Cameron Moll on Medium titled The Economics of a Kickstarter Project (or How Much I Didn’t Make) which breaks down the numbers and offers some good advice for would-be crowd-funders.

I don’t know much about Cameron, and I won’t speak ill of him or his abilities, in fact, I love the Brooklyn Bridge piece he created, but I’ve worked in the creative industry (and the print industry) long enough to understand the importance of proofing things. Oh, I call it “proofing” but Proofreading is the more correct term.

About 20 years ago I worked for the creative division of a printing company, and I just happened to be tagging along to a press check with an account executive and they thought I’d like that the brochure being printed had a domain name on it. (Hey, it was the late 1990s!) When I pointed out that the domain name being printed was not one the company owned, there was quite a bit of commotion. There may have been some swearing and yelling as well. (Note: printing ink on paper is often very expensive!)

Over the years I’ve seen time and time again that making mistakes in print is a sure way to lose money. Indeed, had Cameron hired someone to proof his work, and even if he paid them $1000, he would have doubled the amount he had left at the end of his campaign had the proofer caught his mistake.

Proofing is not the same as “checking you work” because you are often blind to your own mistakes. You need another pair of eyes, hopefully a well-trained pair of eyes, to see the things you can’t see. (I’ve seen artists get so obsessed with the details of the type they are designing that they spell their own names wrong!)

Don’t take this post to say I don’t make mistakes, I make plenty of them! I make spelling mistakes and grammar mistakes, though they typically aren’t in print. I made one earlier today on a Facebook post, and one of my coworkers caught it for me. That’s how it works. You can’t do it alone.

Note: I’m currently working as a Technical Editor for a book that should be out this summer. If you enjoyed the previous book I worked on, I think you’ll like this one too. If you need a Technical Editor, get in touch with me.

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Arduino for Beginners

Arduino for Beginners

It seems like just a week ago I mentioned a book, and it was, but here’s my confession: being a contributing photographer to a book is pretty simple. At least it has been in my experience. Writing a book is a huge beast, and while I did not take on such a herculean task, John Baichtal did, and somehow he convinced me to serve as the Technical Editor, and the result is Arduino for Beginners: Essential Skills Every Maker Needs.

The project took nearly a year, and my part consisted of getting chapters from John and checking everything for technical accuracy, and then passing them on to Rick at Pearson. Reading a book is one thing, but reading a book and closely examining everything in it for anything that may not be technically correct is another. I was also instructed to ignore any grammatical errors, which was hard for me, as I was only supposed to edit technical information. (Yes, there were a few typos. Just a few. ;)

Arduino for Beginners

My name is in print. I know, we’re in the future now, and dead trees are dead and what not, but I still like the fact that there’s ink on paper in a book and it’s got my name in it. Did I mention the entire process took about a year?

If you think this book would be useful for you or someone you know who is getting into using Arduinos, grab a copy from Amazon.

(Oh, and shortly after the book came out I was contacted about another book project, this one involving me writing the book, which I sadly declined. There’s just no way I’d have the time to do it right, and I didn’t want to give a partial effort to such a large project.)

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The Art of Tinkering

The Art of Tinkering

I recently got my copy of The Art of Tinkering and I must say, it is a beautiful book. It just looks amazing. It’s full of ideas and images and makers and artists.

I’ve only read bits and pieces so far, though I’ve spent a lot of time pouring over the images and admiring the layout.

And yes, I know you kids with your “e-books” don’t care about “dead tree editions” but I still love books made with ink and paper. They just have a certain quality a digital copy will never have. (And yes, you can hack the book! It’s got conductive ink right on the cover which you can build a circuit with.)

The Art of Tinkering

Oh, I should also mention that one of my photos is in the book! On page 183 is a photo of the MaKey MaKey Banana Pong I created last year.

If you’re at all interested in creating things, or perhaps you just need some inspiration from others grab a copy of The Art of Tinkering.

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Make: Lego and Arduino Projects

Make: Lego and Arduino Projects

Leave it to me to forget things! I forgot to mention that my Arc-O-Matic was mentioned in the book Make: Lego and Arduino Projects. Get to chapter 3 and you’ll see one of my photos.

I should mention that I have not actually read the whole book, I ended up loaning it to someone who is way more into LEGO and Arduino stuff than I am, but if you want more info on it, WIRED has a nice write-up, and you can buy it from Amazon or directly from O’Reilly.

John Baichtal (one of the authors) has another book in the works which I’ll have a hand in, but we’ll save that story for another time.

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I am a (Contributing) Author!

I’ve been writing this blog for almost 10 9* years now, and before that I published magazines, and music, and other things, but it’s true what they say, and actual book, is still pretty neat.

Videoblogging Book

A few years ago, I was asked to contribute to a technical book, but had to decline at the time due to prior commitments. Then last year, I wrote a whole bunch of stuff for a book about videoblogging that was supposed to be put out by that publisher that tends to show an animal on the cover. That didn’t happen, but what did happen is that the authors found another publisher, and got the book done, and some of my writing is in it.

So if you see the book Videoblogging published by Wiley (as part of their ExtremeTech series) take a look at the third page of the “About the Contributing Authors” section, and you will see my name. I still haven’t read the whole thing, but I’ve seen my writing on pages 312 and 327.

In the interest of disclosure, I will note that I do not make any money from the sale of this book. I still think you should buy it if you are interested in videoblogging though…

(* I meant to say 9, not 10, I can’t count…)