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Contents contributed and discussions participated by John Lemke

John Lemke

Purging Your Writing Fear - 0 views

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    Some good advice with exercises to assist the writer.
John Lemke

No Room for Error: A Cautionary Tale of A Precarious Tweet - 0 views

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    This is a good article on why it matters what you tweet.
John Lemke

The Physics Front - 0 views

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    This sit is an awesome collection of physic education tools.
John Lemke

Writer Unboxed » Writer, Boxed - 0 views

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    A nice overview of why genre matters, its problems and a few thoughts on solutions.
John Lemke

A Day in the Life of Maggie Koerth-Baker | - 0 views

  • I’m a freelancer, but I have a couple of contract gigs that play a big role in my monthly and daily cycles. I’m the science editor at BoingBoing.net, a technology and culture blog with 6 million monthly readers. I also have a monthly column with The New York Times Magazine.
  • The rest of the day really varies a lot, depending on what I have on my plate at that given time. I have ADHD and it’s really easy for me to get distracted and be unproductive, so I have lots of little tricks I rely on to keep me focused throughout the day. I used to use a timer on my computer a lot, just to have something that, periodically, forced me to look up and think about what I was doing and what I had to do next. But I find now that the two hours between breast pump sessions actually does that job pretty well. I also jump back and forth between stuff on my to-do list, depending on what I feel motivated to do. If I just can’t get myself to write during a given two-hour block, I’m better off answering email or sending out interview requests than just sitting there, staring at a blank page.
  • Skype, Call Recorder, and Stickies.
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  • Word docs and/or Evernote
  • Livescribe pen. The Livescribe allows me to record audio and take notes, with the audio linked up to the notes, so that later I can find exactly the audio quotes and information I want quickly, just by tapping on the note that corresponds to what I’m looking for.
  • I’m experimenting with a new organizational system that I’m calling Just Put Everything in Evernote. All my research notes, papers, Livescribe notes and audio, everything … it all goes into Evernote, organized by story, and I can find it easily on my phone or my computer, even when I’m offline. The new Livescribe pen I got even uploads the audio and notes to Evernote automatically, whenever it has access to wifi.
  • I increasingly do my writing in Google Docs. Or Drive, or whatever they call it now. It’s been worth it for the couple of times I’ve already needed to access stuff when I’m away from my computer. And it helps with the nagging fear that I’m going to lose, damage, or destroy the laptop at some point, halfway through writing a story. On the same lines, I periodically save everything to Dropbox.
  • EasyCrop for quickly adjusting image
  • I do all my presentations in Prezi
  • Twitter and Facebook are both necessary for my work and a huge time suck
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    Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor for Boing! Boing!, a freelance writer and a columnist for The New Your Times Magazine. In this interview she discusses her life, motherhood and her work flow.
John Lemke

7 Stellar Examples of Convincing Copywriting - 0 views

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    One of the reasons writers must read is to learn from example. The same applies to the specialty of copywriting. This post list seven great examples.
John Lemke

Why (and How) You Should Change Up Your Routine, Even if it's Working - 0 views

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    Some people have a hard time changing routines. Others seem to do it naturally. This Lifehacker post covers why it is a good idea to mix things up a little and how to do it.
John Lemke

Synesthesia In Literature: Definition and Examples - 0 views

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    Synesthesia is a when more than one sense is evoked by a single stimulus. People who are synesthetes often have superior memory. (It can also be triggered by psychedelic drugs.) So it makes sense to incorporate it into your writing. I like the taste of the article.
John Lemke

Storyville: Three Essential Books On Writing | LitReactor - 0 views

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    The first one on the list is my number one pick. I can't wait to read the other two.
John Lemke

What happens with digital rights management in the real world? | Technology | theguardi... - 0 views

  • In 1997's Bernstein v United States, another US appeals court found that code was protected expression. Bernstein was a turning point in the history of computers and the law: it concerned itself with a UC Berkeley mathematician named Daniel Bernstein who challenged the American prohibition on producing cryptographic tools that could scramble messages with such efficiency that the police could not unscramble them. The US National Security Agency (NSA) called such programs "munitions" and severely restricted their use and publication. Bernstein published his encryption programs on the internet, and successfully defended his right to do so by citing the First Amendment. When the appellate court agreed, the NSA's ability to control civilian use of strong cryptography was destroyed. Ever since, our computers have had the power to keep secrets that none may extract except with our permission – that's why the NSA and GCHQ's secret anti-security initiatives, Bullrun and Edgehill, targetted vulnerabilities in operating systems, programs, and hardware. They couldn't defeat the maths (they also tried to subvert the maths, getting the US National Institute for Standards in Technology to adopt a weak algorithm for producing random numbers).
    • John Lemke
       
      This is also why they have a hard on for developing a quantum computer.
  • An increase in the security of the companies you buy your media from means a decrease in your own security. When your computer is designed to treat you as an untrusted party, you are at serious risk: anyone who can put malicious software on your computer has only to take advantage of your computer's intentional capacity to disguise its operation from you in order to make it much harder for you to know when and how you've been compromised.
  • The DMCA's injunction against publishing weaknesses in DRM means that its vulnerabilities remain unpatched for longer than in comparable systems that are not covered by the DMCA. That means that any system with DRM will on average be more dangerous for its users than one without DRM.
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  • For example, in 2005, Sony-BMG music shipped a DRM called the "Sony Rootkit" on 51m audio CDs. When one of these CDs was inserted into a PC, it automatically and undetectably changed the operating system so that it could no longer see files or programs that started with "$SYS$." The rootkit infected millions of computers, including over 200,000 US military and government networks, before its existence became public. However, various large and respected security organisations say they knew about the Sony Rootkit months before the disclosure, but did not publish because they feared punishment under the DMCA. Meanwhile, virus-writers immediately began renaming their programs to begin with $SYS$, because these files would be invisible to virus-checkers if they landed on a computer that had been compromised by Sony.
    • John Lemke
       
      How the Sony DRM created serious security issues.  It should also be considered a violation of our civil rights.  Who the hell gave Sony permission to modify my OS!  Furthermore why didn't the OS companies sue Sony?  Likely because they are in bed together.
  • If I was a canny entrepreneur with a high appetite for risk -- and a reasonable war-chest for litigation – I would be thinking very seriously about how to build a technology that adds legal features to a DRM-enfeebled system (say, Itunes/Netflix/Amazon video), features that all my competitors are too cowardly to contemplate. The potential market for devices that do legal things that people want to do is titanic, and a judgment that went the right way on this would eliminate a serious existential threat to computer security, which, these days, is a synonym for security itself.And once anti-circumvention is a dead letter in America, it can't survive long in the rest of the world. For one thing, a product like a notional Itunes/Amazon/Netflix video unlocker would leak across national borders very easily, making non-US bans demonstrably pointless. For another, most countries that have anti-circumvention on the books got there due to pressure from the US Trade Representative; if the US drops anti-circumvention, the trading partners it armed-twisted into the same position won't be far behind.I've talked to some lawyers who are intimate with all the relevant cases and none of them told me it was a lost cause (on the other hand, none of them said it was a sure thing, either). It's a risky proposition, but something must be done. You see, contrary to what the judge in Reimerdes said in 2000, this has nothing to do with whether information is free or not – it's all about whether people are free.
  • The DMCA is a long and complex instrument, but what I'm talking about here is section 1201: the notorious "anti-circumvention" provisions. They make it illegal to circumvent an "effective means of access control" that restricts a copyrighted work. The companies that make DRM and the courts have interpreted this very broadly, enjoining people from publishing information about vulnerabilities in DRM, from publishing the secret keys hidden in the DRM, from publishing instructions for getting around the DRM – basically, anything that could conceivably give aid and comfort to someone who wanted to do something that the manufacturer or the copyright holder forbade.
  • Significantly, in 2000, a US appeals court found (in Universal City Studios, Inc v Reimerdes) that breaking DRM was illegal, even if you were trying to do something that would otherwise be legal. In other words, if your ebook has a restriction that stops you reading it on Wednesdays, you can't break that restriction, even if it would be otherwise legal to read the book on Wednesdays.
John Lemke

Creating Stunning Character Arcs, Pt. 1: Can You Structure Characters? - Helping Writer... - 0 views

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    Some very understandable tips on character development. There is also an audio version.
John Lemke

Writer Unboxed » Is Your Book Good Enough for Publication? A Cold-Blooded Ass... - 0 views

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    This article nicely breaks the rough and tough process into logical stages and steps. It also is very realistic.
John Lemke

Neither… or? - 0 views

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    I always thought you could only use "neither and nor". I guess, technically, that is not true.
John Lemke

» The Routines of Succesful Writers - 0 views

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    A few habits of successful writers, one of the being Winston Churchill.
John Lemke

» Review of Lightspeed - 0 views

  • They pay their authors 8 cents a word and publish stories of up to 7,500 words in length, although their general preference is for stories that are around 5,000 words. They do not publish stories under 1,500 words in length. They do occasionally publish unsolicited reprints, but in those situations they pay 2 cents per word.
  • Lightspeed accepts less than 1% of the work submitted to them. They also reply to all submissions within a week. They request that all authors wait a week before submitting another short story if their work is rejected.
John Lemke

Freelance Writing Questions: Setting Rates - Get Paid to Write Online - 0 views

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    This one gives links relevant to the US, UK and Canada. Not all inclusive but worth a bookmark nonetheless.
John Lemke

How Semantic Search Changes The Way You do Business - 0 views

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    A more detailed article on semantic search and SEO
John Lemke

Why You Should Care About Google+, SEO and Semantic Search - 0 views

  • Everything Google is doing, from Google+ to semantic search serves its mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
  • In order for Google to provide the most relevant search results, it looks beyond the keywords to find context of your query based on your connections and social signals, +1’s, shares, likes etc..
  • Google Authorship ties you to your content no matter where you publish on the web where “rel=authorship” is installed.
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  • Links send signals to Google that people like and trust your content.
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    A brief explanation of how Google+ factors into search in this day and age. Not only worth the read but the sources it cites are as well.
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