Things that don’t go as planned
Things that haven’t gone as planned lately:
Managing a beta book in PDF/InDesign format.
D’oh on that one. It’s taking a lot longer to update the book than I expected, because of the layout issues.
And by “issue” I mean “my boneheaded decision to do the book in InDesign, even from the first beta.”
I’m sorry. I goofed.
So, informal poll:
- would you guys rather get frequent small updates (e.g. a PDF of only the newest chapter), or
- a couple big updates (with the whole book)?
Let me know.
Answering ALL questions submitted for my QoTD
But I WILL get to them. It will just take longer than I expected. Partially due…
New Zealand’s Internet access
We recently took a 6-week “workcation” to New Zealand. We thought we’d have no problem working from New Zealand, as long as we booked motels in advance, and picked only ones with wifi, and then called them to confirm it worked, and took our own super booster antennae to compensate for crummy signal.
Turns out that most places will tell you it works, then you get there and it doesn’t, and despite the fact that they advertised it, they will claim they have zero control over it because “that’s another company, yeah.”
And at many internet cafés, you may be lucky if you can download at 800 bytes a second. Not kilobytes. Not even kilobits. Bytes.
Groan.
Free time. Workcation’s all I ever wanted…
In addition to net access, we had planned some free time to recharge. It didn’t work out.
That’s because, on top of everything else, we were working on the mother of all Twitter visualizations, for PepsiCo’s sponsorship of SXSW.
Yeahhhhh. It was a surprise to me too, as a fairly last-minute project.
I’m incredibly glad for the opportunity & outcome, of course, but I would have liked a day or two off in New Zealand that didn’t involve being laid out with a sinus infection.
That took the “cation” out of “workcation.”
Soon back on the saddle, nose to the wheel, ear to the grindstone
Just wanted to let you know what was up.
Oh, and, if it’s not too obnoxious, if you dig the PepsiCo Zeitgeist, would you mind actually digging it?
At SXSW? Come say hi
I’ll be floating around but you might catch me at the PepsiCo corner, with the highest concentration of huge plasmas showing the zeitgeist.
make sure you add the formatting on this blog post to your list 🙂 textile isn’t rendering your h2’s properly.
the visualization is neato
I think little bite size chunks would be nice, I am really enjoying the beta of the book, and it does seem like content that is good to read a bit of it and spend some time digesting, then go back for some more bites…
Sam D
Le sigh, Jeffrey! I don’t even have textile installed, just markdown. Too little sleep, too much exposure to 37signals products, I think. Fixed now. Thank you.
(I also need to install my new WordPress blog, since my Mephisto installations preview function doesn’t even work. Ha!)
Sam, thanks for voting 🙂
The http://pepsicozeitgeist.com/ site is amazing! Job well done.
Your PepsiCo Zeitgeist is so awesome!!!! The creativity and thought that went into the design is what every site would like to have! mine included 🙂 You pick one of the best time to launc @ SWS! Your site is the new skittles!!!! God Bless! http://www.twitter.com/powerspeaks http://www.powerspeaks.blogspot.com http://www.power4c.ning.com
I’d definitely prefer frequent, smaller book updates.
If it’s any consolation, my 3G plan didn’t work any better. Although since my computer broke and the repair’s taken over two weeks, it didn’t really matter in the end.
Oh, and if you have extra Pioneer plasmas lying around over there, would you mind sending one my way after the show since they apparently thought it’s a good idea to just stop making the best TVs on the planet.
I guess I’m pretty much ready to go back home as well, as nice as it’s been here.
My 12 points go to "frequent".
Hi Amy,
Tiny bite sized chunks would be great.
Also, the DOM Monster bookmarklet that came with the PDF, is totally awesome thank you so much.
One tiny weeny gripe though. I dont know how the innards of bookmarklets function, but maybe you could exclude the bookmarklet script as part of the overall script tag count on the page that we run the DOM Monster bookmarklet on?
Meaning if lets say we have jquery and slider as the only 2 scripts loaded on the page, DOM Monster reports that there are 3 script tags on the page, the final one being the javascript of the bookmarklet itself. I have learnt to live with that after looking at it closely today and checking out the source of the page. Not a biggie and really appreciate the hard work, blood, sweat and tears you guys are putting into making it a really easy, awesome and simple book on Javascript! I learn something new from your book every time i read it!
I’d go for a few big updates, myself.