Upgrade pricing for Engineer's Guide to Silicon Valley Startups

Someone asked me over e-mail if I could provide an upgrade for folks who'd bought the first edition. This seemed like a reasonable request, so here's the policy:

1. One upgrade per customer.
   
2. You must have purchased with your e-mail address. In other words, if you checked the "preserve my privacy" button on Google checkout when you bought the book, you're out of luck, no upgrade for you. This is solely because I can't verify you are who you say you are any other way.
   
3. The price is 50% off. That's $12.50 for digital edition upgrades, and $15 for print edition upgrades. Print edition is subject to shipping and sales taxes. If you bought the print edition and want to upgrade digitally, that's ok. The inverse is not true (no print edition upgrades for those who went digital).
   
4. To upgrade, reply to your original receipt (via paypal/checkout, or from the e-mail that had the attached book). If you've lost your original receipt, send me name, e-mail address, and date of purchase and I'll try to track it down.
   

There's no checkout page for upgrading. I'll invoice you directly via checkout or paypal. Note: this only applies for upgrades from the second to third edition. No upgrades from 1st to 3rd!

Book Publishing Experiments

One of the fun things about running an independent book publishing business is that unlike a traditional business I get to make experiments! I've been e-mailing books to buyers of the digital edition of An Engineer's Guide to Silicon Valley Startups directly, and more than one person suggested e-junkie.com, which performs digital fulfillment. At $5/month, this is very cheap and would enable me to keep digital sales going while I was on vacation, for instance. (In practice, I find a friend to do fulfillment and pay them in chocolate from Europe)

I experimented with e-junkie for a week. All I can say is that for a low volume seller with unpredictable sales, e-junkie's one week trial period is too short. For instance, there was something wrong with the Google checkout integration, and I actually had a buyer call me up and ask me how to download the book. I ended up having to send her the book manually anyway, which defeated the purpose of e-junkie. I didn't get a chance to debug the problem and had no way to figure out what I did wrong, so at the end of the week I just turned off e-junkie and went back to regular fulfillment the old-fashioned mom-and-pop way.

My second experiment was with the Kindle store. For as long as the book's been launched, I've had people ask me why the book was so expensive, with a few folks asking brazenly for discounts. My response has always been that the book's targeted to a very niche audience, and if you're outside the niche you will have no interest in the book! In other words, I'm not writing entertainment and I'm not competing with Stephen King. Goodness knows why anyone would consider a book with a voluminous chapter on taxes and another one on financial planning to be entertainment. Nevertheless, one the second edition was up, I put up the first edition on the Kindle store. Over the last month, the second edition digital sales (at the full price of $24.95) has far outsold the first edition (at $9.99), demonstrating that indeed, I was reaching the audience I wrote the book for: high income professionals for whom the biggest cost of the book is the time spent reading it, not the paltry $24.95 that I ask for my time spent writing it!

Just for grins, I typed "An Engineer's Guide to" into the Amazon Kindle store's search box and the first entry is $99.99. I charge $360/hour to help engineers negotiate compensation, and so far, every client has been very satisfied with my services. The book's your way to get all that experience at $24.95, which if you think about it is a bargain.

My third experiment has been to do away with the Kindle version of the second edition. There were two reasons for this. One was that I wrote the book using OpenOffice, and had to export to Word before converting to Kindle format. The automated tools aren't perfect. so I end up having to fix them up manually in Emacs. Then I got a Kindle 3 as a gift and noticed that it rendered PDF just fine. The trick is to rotate the screen 90 degrees and read books in "wide format." This doesn't quite work for the two-column layout that I use is Independent Cycle Touring, but works fine for the Engineer's Guide. I waited to see if I got howls of protests, but nobody complained, which meant that my assessment of the situation was correct --- the audience for the book who cared about the Kindle knew what to do with the PDF, even without instructions.

I will keep experimenting with the business. Unlike a traditional publisher, I can move quickly and am not tied to existing processes at all. And unlike a traditional publisher, I don't care whether my book sales are mostly digital or mostly paper.

Sports Basement Talk

I gave a talk about Independent Cycle Touring yesterday at the Sports Basement in Sunnyvale. It was raining and the talk was lightly attended, but everyone who attended got a sticker entitling them to 20% off store purchases. Despite that, people were enthusiastic and I had many a good question about touring. One big concern was not knowing Japanese, say, in Japan. While it's always nice to know the language, I find that knowing even a few words go a long way. My Japanese wasn't that great, but it did improve during the trip.

The slides for the talk are posted online. I can't embed them like I usually do because it's a photo-heavy talk, which meant that the power point presentation was 20MB in size!

The feedback on the book has been great, indicating that the biggest problem with the book is that I don't know how to market it!

Review: Cowl

Cowl is Neal Asher's time travel novel. The novel, not set in his Polity universe, follows two characters, a government trained special agent named Tack and a former prostitute named Polly as they get pulled back in time by organic time travel devices intended to bring them back to a mysterious creature named Cowl at the beginning of time.

The mechanism behind time travel is never fully explained, though the unique thing that Asher does here is to view history as a series of probability curve, and explaining paradoxes as pushing a particular group of events up or down a probability slope.

The characters aren't very likable, though we start to sympathize with Tack after we realize that he was effectively a programmed assassin and a pawn. What I dislike about the book, however, is that the characters don't seem to have much agency at all. Tack gets dragged this way and that by factions of time travelers and never gets much agency until right at the end of the book. Polly just keeps jumping backwards in time continuously without any agency at all either. So that makes the book a slave to the plot, the reveals, and the world.

Unfortunately, the plot's complex, but the reveal isn't all that interesting. The villain turns out not to be that much of a villain, but is still not a nice guy either, and the wrap up is just full of pyrotechnics for no particular reason. I'm not sure what Asher was trying to achieve, but his attempt at a cerebral time travel story with lots of action falls a bit short of his Polity novels, which at least have some sort of coherence to the violence.

Not recommended.

Review: T-mobile Pre-Paid

At the start of the year, I switched over from a Verizon Droid to a Nexus 1 on T-mobile's Prepaid service. The choice was made mostly because the N1 was given to me, and I did not want to pay a massive monthly fees for a phone on which I did not expect to make many phone calls, and I was mostly in a WiFi zone anyway, so data didn't matter to me most of the time.

For $100 at the T-mobile store, I got a SIM card that's good for 1 year (you can renew and keep the phone #, but since I used Google voice anyway, I didn't particularly care whether or not I kept the same phone #). Since January, I've got about $76 left, which means that I'm paying on average $10/month for phone service.

As expected, T-mobile has less coverage than Verizon, but since phone calls were not made often, I did not care very much. One exception was last week's bike tour, where Yoyo and I played phone tag because we both were on T-mobile and ended up not ever able to connect. It wasn't a big deal though.

One particularly nice feature of T-mobile prepaid that I wasn't aware of when I bought into the plan was the Web DayPass. On the days when you really need data, you turn on your 3G mobile on the N1, bring up a web-browser, and are given the option to purchase a Web Daypass for $1.49. What this does is to give you unlimited data coverage for 24 hours. On Tuesday, when I had intended to take the train but due to other circumstances had to drive instead and was therefore unprepared with directions, I turned on Web Daypass and used Google navigation to get to my destinations. I've been using Web DayPass whenever I needed to travel and needed navigation/web search/etc, and it's been great. [Update: Even tethering works with no extra charge!] The DayPass comes out of your prepaid dollars, so there's nothing fancy to do, no credit card entry, etc. (You do have to confirm that you intend to spend the money 3-4 times though!) Phone calls are $0.10/minute, as are text messages.

All in all, if you're a cheapskate, don't make phone calls very often, are frequently in wifi areas and so have no need for full time continuous coverage, the T-mobile Prepaid plan is an excellent one. The Virgin Beyond Talk plans are still tempting, but my suspicions is that with my usage patterns, the T-mobile plan on the N1 will be far cheaper. Not to mention, if you have an unlocked phone on T-mobile, that same phone is still useful in Europe.

Recommended

Twitter Presentation

I gave a presentation at Twitter today. I was invited there by David Loftesness, whom I went to school with, and to my non-surprise, saw a number of ex-googlers there. Twitter had just been through a reorganization, and had been through massive growth over the last year. I was hence asked to talk about challenges in scaling engineering during hyper-growth, which was a topic that coincided with my next book, so I was happy to do. Because I wanted to be really open during the talk and provide lots of juicy details, I asked for the talk not to be recorded and also for the juicy bits not to be twittered. Below is the mostly sanitized version of the talk.

Twitter employees asked really good questions, and in more than one case challenged the presentation. This is what I expect from really smart people, and I was also very impressed by the turnout. All in all, I really enjoyed giving the talk and getting difficult questions. One of the tough ones was why I wasn't using twitter more. Well, I'm going to try to use it more, and you can follow me @choonpiaw.

After the talk, I met with one of the co-founders of Vayable, who had requested a meeting with me. It's one of the more interesting travel startups I've heard of recently, and it turned out that we knew many folks in common. There seems to be no shortage of interesting ideas, though as usual, execution is everything!

For those who are interested, I'll be giving a similar talk at Dropbox next week.

What to do when you're wealthy

A soon-to-be-fabulously-wealthy Facebook engineer recently asked on a mailing list what he should consider changing in his life now that he's going to be fabulously wealthy. My response seemed to be received well, so I'm re-purposing it as a blog post:

For practical advice, I refer you to John Reed's Sensible Shopping List for the Rich. Obviously, I don't agree with all of what he says, but it's a good starting point for many people who forget the boring stuff like adequate insurance.

For me, personally, the biggest thing was getting a house-keeper. The realization that I'd never have to clean a toilet if I don't want to was a great feeling and has never gone away. It also eliminated all sorts of conflicts with my significant other, and any time you can throw money at the sort of problem you should never hesitate to do so.

For travel, my travel style is very different than most. (See my bicycle touring pages for a few examples) I agree with what someone else said about getting lost on your own. When you have money and that can bail you out of any mistakes (especially in places like Japan, where you won't make any dangerous ones), it's a great safety net that should enable you to do more, not less. The reality for me is that I have done the luxury travel thing and the budget travel thing, and I have way more fun doing the budget travel thing: I meet more interesting people, and have more exciting experiences, but I understand that's not for everyone.

Finally, I'll submit to you that the biggest thing wealth buys is freedom. That means the freedom to say, "I don't like this place, let's change plane tickets and bail", or "I really wish I could stay longer, let us change our itinerary completely and not worry about the
money." That also includes the "I can't stand another cycle of perf anymore, let me rearrange my life so I never have to do another."

Alps 2011 Pigeon Point Qualifier

From Screen Captures

From Screen Captures

Alps 2011 Qualifier

This year's Tour of the Alps qualifier was originally planned to be a tougher than normal trip. Unfortunately, I caught a flu a couple of weeks ago, and was still coughing on Saturday, so I had to switch to an easier route, going up Montebello Road. Present was Phil Sung, Li Moore, and Shasta Mike. Eva Silverstein joined us for the day. Yoyo Zhou was going to meet us at the Stevens Creek county park parking lot, but due to various reasons, ended up being late so decided to climb Page Mill road to meet us instead. Montebello road was gorgeous, with just a few high clouds. The dirt road was solidly packed and we had nice views of San Francisco from the summit.

From Alps 2011 Qualifier

At Page Mill road, we finally met up with Yoyo, and went on down West Alpine road after crossing Skyline and running into a few Western Wheelers on the LDT Pescadero ride. The views were so clear that we could see all the way to Monterey's Big Sur mountain range!

From Alps 2011 Qualifier

In Pescadero, we stopped at the goat farm, but the kids were only 2 weeks old so we were asked to refrain from petting them. At Norm's market, we had lunch made out of the wonderful artichoke-garlic bread, and then bought groceries for dinner, as Catherine, Li's wife, showed up just in time to carry all that in her car!

From Alps 2011 Qualifier

At Pigeon Point, with 6 of us we booked up 3 hot tub slots, which enabled each of us to sit in a hot tub for nearly an hour each. Since this was my first long ride in a couple of weeks I was very grateful to be able to do so.

We woke up on Sunday to wet roads and drizzle. After a nice and hot breakfast we left the hostel with a 15mph tailwind which blew us right to Pescadero without us even noticing it! Noting that this tailwind would be a headwind in the valley, we eschewed the usual stage + tunitas creek ascent in favor of retracing our route back over Page Mill road. Yoyo and Phil decided they had had enough of the rain and decided to wait for Catherine and Li with their station wagon with 4 bike racks which was more than sufficient SAG.

Once we'd left Pescadero, however, the rain stopped and we had a gorgeous climb along Pescadero creek, which was overflowing with water from the night before. It was gorgeous and I was sorry that neither Phil nor Yoyo had a chance to see it. By the time we started up West Alpine all the rain was gone because we had a beautiful tree cover under the shade of the Redwoods with a roaring stream next to us. You could not ask for a prettier ride.

From Alps 2011 Qualifier

By the time we got to Page Mill road's descents, the pavement was nearly dry and we could take the road at nearly full speed, subject to moisture on the rims and a few wet spots under tree cover. We stopped at Moody road so I could document how little rubber I had on my brake pads so I could justify new Kool-Stop Salmon brake pads.

From Alps 2011 Qualifier

We then took the shortest route home, which got us home around 1:15pm, surprising XiaoQin, who had not expected us until 3:00pm at the earliest. What a great ride, with a great group of people.

Review: Prador Moon

Prador Moon is set in Neal Asher's polity universe. If you're familiar with Iain Banks' Culture, you can view the polity universe as the culture at age 5. The AIs have taken over control and command of that universe, but humans still get to do things, like pretend to be ambassadors or fight.

Prador Moon is set before the sequence of other Polity novels. Those novels refer to a war with the Prador, crab-like creatures who happened to find humans tasty. This novel describes how the war started, and describes the Polity in its state of frantically trying to get up to speed on fighting the Prador. As you might expect, there's lots of violence, loud explosions, and a couple of plots that while interesting, really are side-shows to the main storyline.

There are two main characters in the novel, and the threads that weave them together are tenuous and separated by quite a bit of time. As a result, the novel feels a bit like a skeletal outline in some spots, as the author desperately jumps large time sequences to sync up the two plot-lines. The technical gobbledy-gook is well down, but again nothing like Aliaster Reynolds here. The author knows what you're here for, and it's big loud explosions and space battles with bad guys.

Barely recommended for a brainless read while you're recovering from flu and can't handle anything heavier.

Engineer's Guide goes to the Kindle store!

Many people have asked me why I don't sell my books in the Kindle store. Most readers don't know how onerous the terms are. For any books over $9.99, the Kindle store wants 70% of the proceeds. For books between $2.99 and $9.99, the Kindle store wants only 30% of the proceeds. What it means is that the $9.99 cover price and the $24.95 cover price nets the same profits, so I was unwilling to sell my books at the Kindle store for that reason.

However, now that I've got a second edition of the book out, I'm selling the first edition at the Kindle store for $9.99. My guess is that most people would prefer the second edition (when you're negotiating compensation, the extra $15 is easily justified by the improved second edition). However, if you're a poor student or just want to buy the book for someone as a gift and are cheap, well, the Kindle 1st edition is easy and convenient.

Cupertino Bike Shop is now carrying "Independent Cycle Touring"

Cupertino Bike Shop has started carrying Independent Cycle Touring, my book about bicycle touring. This is the first time any of my books has been carried by a retailer, so if you've been curious about it and want to see the book in person before buying, do drop by. Tell Vance I said "Hello!"

Thanks, Vance, for taking a chance on an unknown!

Engineer's Guide goes to 2nd Edition!

An Engineer's Guide to Silicon Valley Startups has been doing so well that it's nearly sold through it's 3rd printing. Since I'd learned a lot about negotiating since I first wrote the book in February 2008, I decided it was time for a 2nd edition. Tom Galloway kindly offered to copy-edit the entire second edition, so I took him up on the offer after adding additional material. Note that while I was able to include 2 case studies on negotiation, I could not include the big counter-offer I helped to negotiate last summer: understandably, the engineer in question was not comfortable with letting the public know about how that deal went down.

I've sent everyone who ordered the first edition in the last month an updated copy of the second edition of the book (in electronic format), and at this point, if you're entitled to an updated copy please let me know. (If you've contributed substantive comments on the book, you're entitled to an updated copy, for instance, or if you paid for the lifetime subscription to the book back when it was a kickstarter project, you're entitled to updates for the rest of your life)

I have less than 5 copies of the first edition of the book available for sale at a discount. Click here to buy.

I'm also currently experimenting with E-junkie for digital fulfillment of the book, which means that you're no longer subject to slow response times for digital orders. If that works out I'll switch to them permanently.

Introducing my Consultancy Service

I've been helping people on various things, ranging from linking up their startups with potential employees, helping various people vet their ideas, to helping engineers negotiate their compensation. All of these activities are time consuming, and do take quite a bit of my time. At this point, I'm having to admit that unless I start charging people, all my time can easily be taken up by random interruptions.

Unfortunately, my hourly rate is not cheap. Nevertheless, given how much I've boosted people's offers, I can safely say that I could charge 10X my hourly rate and everyone I've helped would still come out ahead. Unlike books or generalists, I don't work in platitudes and generalities. In most cases, I tell people exactly what to say to their managers to get a better offer/counter-offer.

If you need someone to help you negotiate your compensation package, see what I can do for you!

Review: The Skinner

The Skinner introduces us to Neal Asher's world of SpatterJay. While it has all the trappings of science fiction, there's actually very little science explained.

The central conceit of the world of Spatterjay is that it is a world driven by essentially one species, the leech. The leech incorporates a virus that when it infects a human, grants the human fast regeneration, growing immunity to wounds (as the viral fibers become incorporated into all parts of the human body), and eventually immortality. Such beings become nearly immortal, and if they live long enough, become very very strong.

The plot revolves around 3 people, Erlin who visited Spatterjay when she was younger and was the one who discovered and described the viral properties, Janer, who was once indentured to a hive mind of hornets (yes, in Asher's universe, the other intelligent species on earth is a hive mind of insects), and Sable Keech, a returned-from-the-dead ECS monitor (think super-cop) bent on avenging his death at the hands of the criminals who once ruled Spatterjay. Throw in some Prador (who were at war with humans some centuries ago), stir gently, mix in with plenty of explosions, war droids, and plenty of underwater action, and you've got all the makings of a thriller.

Is it a good thriller? Yes. The action never gets boring, and nearly all references in the book are made use of at some point or another, so you do have to pay attention so as not to miss anything. You have to like Asher's obsession with parasites and funky life cycles. If you enjoy Iain Banks' depiction of hyper-intelligent minds and droids, Asher's clearly got the same attitude down. The whole thing is a fun read, just don't probe too hard, expect the science to make sense, or wonder why a fully intelligent species could remain undiscovered to humans despite its ability to speak human speech.

Recommended as light reading on a plane.

Review: Peopleware

I've always considered Peopleware to be the best management book for technologists, and recently wanted to re-read it as preparation for working on my next book. Mysteriously, every copy I've ever bought of this book has been loaned out and never returned to me, so I was very happy to see that there's a Kindle Edition where a borrower cannot help but return it to me after two weeks. At $9.99, the Kindle edition is a bargain.

This book is about the sociology of projects, though it spends a lot of time about the physical environment that programmers find themselves in. For instance, there's a long section about putting together an ideal space for a small team, as well as railing about prevailing noise in the workspace and the current favorite solution, headphones and ipods:

During the 1960s, researchers...polled a group of computer science students and divided the students into two groups, those who liked to have music in the background while they worked (studied) and those who did not. Then they put half of each group together in a silent room, and the other half of each group in a different room equipped with earphones and a musical selection. Participants in both rooms were given a Fortran programming problem to work out from specification. To no one’s surprise, participants in the two rooms performed about the same in speed and accuracy of programming... The Cornell experiment, however, contained a hidden wild card. The specification required that an output data stream be formed through a series of manipulations on numbers in the input data stream... Although the specification never said it, the net effect of all the operations was that each output number was necessarily equal to its input... Of those who figured it out, the overwhelming majority came from the quiet room.

In other words, you're giving up significant creativity when you choose to ask engineers to put on headphones and listen to music in order to compensate for a noisy work environment. There's an explanation about why incentives such as "best quarter ever" doesn't work:

Throughout the upper ranks of the organization, there is marvelous ingenuity at work to be sure that each manager has a strong personal incentive to accept the corporate goals. Only at the bottom, where the real work is performed, does this ingenuity fail. There we count on “professionalism” and nothing else to assure that people are all pulling in the same direction. Lots of luck.

There's a long section about the importance of jelling a team, and how most managers do everything necessary in order to get the team not to jell (the authors call this "Teamicide"). What's fascinating to me is that the authors claim that they don't know how to get teams to jell, even though the book is full of examples as to how to make it happen! They do provide lots of counter-examples, however, about how certain behavior causes teams not to jell.

Finally, in the "new" segments of the book (new since 1999, so not that new), the authors discuss how upper management can encourage teamicide:

Here are some of the managerial actions that tend to produce teamicidal side effects: annual salary or merit reviews management by objectives (MBO) praise of certain workers for extraordinary accomplishment awards, prizes, bonuses tied to performance performance measurement in almost any form But hold on here, aren’t these the very things that managers spend much or even most of their time doing? Sadly, yes. And yet these actions are likely to be teamicidal.

Fundamentally, introducing competition disables the coaching process, and what happens then is that people no longer feel like a team. If your promotion package has to be better than everyone else in order for you to be promoted, then your best bet is to hoard knowledge and skills, rather than spreading it around.

There's a very cogent explanation about how the weekly status meeting is essentially a ceremony meant to boost the manager's ego, rather than something that's useful for a team. There's a good explanation of how trust is built and important to individual contributors' performance, and how increased quality is important to establish esprit de corps in a team. There's a lot of railing against fragmentation of people's time.

Do I have any criticism of this book? Yes. First of all, the authors have spent their careers entirely as consultants to large organizations. Many of the issues here don't exist in startups, for instance. I've never seen a startup with a large PA system that interrupts workers, nor have I seen one with a furniture police. The flip side of that is that the authors assume basic things that all managers should know and do, but judging by the quality of the average manager in Silicon Valley companies, is almost non-existent. There's insufficient analysis as to who should be a manager and who shouldn't. There's very little help these folks can give you as to how to hire and grow a balanced team. But seriously, there's no point criticizing this book for something the authors couldn't possibly have been expected to know.

At the end of this read, I still stand by my statement that this is still by far the best management book that an engineer or technical manager can read. Many large and growing companies I know could stand to distribute this book to every new manager. Needless to say, this book is highly recommended.

Piaw versus The Post Office

One of the consequences of being a self-publisher and self-distributor of books is that I'm continually running up against various weird limitations of the post office. Despite that, the post office is still the best service for a self-publisher:

• It's relatively cheap. ($2.24 for Engineer's Guide and $4.95 for Independent Cycle Touring
  
• Daily pick up from my mailbox, even on Saturdays. This is pretty cool.
  
• An unlimited supply of free envelopes for Independent Cycle Touring. Having to pay for my own envelopes is one reason why I have to charge $3 to ship Engineer's Guide.
  

What's not so good is that Independent Cycle Touring is one pound to ship. Yes, between the large form factor, and full color pages, it's a heavy book in more than one sense of the word. That exceeds the 13 ounce limit, so I can't do what I did with Engineer's Guide and stick a stamp on it and leave it in the mailbox. In fact, the mailbox that came with my house wouldn't even fit the book! Fortunately, Pardo came by and replaced my tiny mailbox with a huge rural sized mailbox. Now I can ship 5-6 copies of Independent Cycle Touring at once, if I am ever so lucky as to get that many orders at once. The problem then is the 13 ounce limit: I once shipped a copy of Independent Cycle Touring in a flat-rate envelope with a flat-rate stamp, and it bounced right back. I took it to my local post office and the carrier there said that the only way to by-pass this problem is to use the USPS web-site to buy a printed shipping label. That also has the side-effect of being potentially cheaper to ship books, but I have to use up my supply of $4.95 stamps first, so that'll have to happen before I switch over entirely to on-line shipping labels. Note that I can't do that for non flat-rate envelopes, so I have to stick with buying stamps manually for Engineer's Guide. With all this, you would think that I'd be tempted to ship media mail, which gets a special rate for books. This doesn't work. For one thing, it's actually not any cheaper for Engineer's Guide, and for another, in the age of Amazon Prime, other self-publishers/self-distributors have reported that people complain when books take as long as a week or two to reach them. It's just easier to use first class mail and not have to deal with the customer complaints. Media mail also doesn't always bounce if the destination is mis-spelled or mis-named. Another strange thing with my two books. Engineer's Guide obviously gets a lot of technologically sophisticated customers. Not so with Independent Cycle Touring. I once got a call from a customer who thought he had ordered a book but when I checked my records, I had no sale record for him. It turned out that he did not actually realize that he had to click the "buy" button and then the "confirm buy" button after that on Google checkout. As a result, I'm going to have to put my phone # on the page for Independent Cycle Touring for people who need help ordering.

Little details like this is what makes fulfillment challenging. It really gives you respect for on-line retailers like Amazon who do this all the time for millions of customers.

Review: The Victorian Internet

In addition to The Box, Paul Krugman also recommended The Victorian Internet, which is an account of the invention of the telegraph and the follow-on consequences.

This turned out to be a very fun read, and Tom Standage draws very appropriate comparisons between the telegraph (which heralded the true dawn of the information age) and today's internet. Interestingly enough, for instance, the telegraph was invented simultaneously by two people on opposite sites of the Atlantic, Samuel Morse and William Cooke. While both systems worked more or less similarly, Morse's superior user interface won wide-spread adoption and he became by far the more famous of the two inventors. Sounds like a familiar story, right?

It gets better. Standage continues to expound on the laying of the first transatlantic cable, complete with cable cuts, funding fiascos, as well as the initial design deficiencies which caused it to fail almost right away. He then describes the community of telegraph operators that grew around the telegraph, telegraphic romances, crimes, and common mis-understandings of the technology which obviously parallel what we see today on the internet.

All in all, a short and enjoyable book, and very much worth your time. Recommended.

The High Costs of Distribution

Occasionally, someone will ask me why I only sell on my web-site. The answer is that distribution is expensive. In particular, my first book, An Engineer's Guide to Silicon Valley Startups is pitched at a niche audience, and one that's likely to be internet savvy. Giving 50% of my revenue to Amazon is unlikely to draw me any additional sales or reach additional audiences.

My second book, Independent Cycle Touring, however, is aimed at cyclists, potentially a much less internet savvy audience. This is a book that really could be distributed to bike shops and book stores, so I approached a local bike shop with a sample to see if he would be interested in carrying it. The owner thought that he could sell a handful of this book every year. Then he asked for a whole sale discount, 40% off the cover price. That effectively lops a whopping 60% off my profit margins! Then he gave me the name of a distributor who could distribute my book to all bike shops in Northern California. Guess what, he wanted 60% off the cover price, reducing my profit to $1/book. At that price, it's not even worth writing the book unless I could sell thousands of copies a year. I suppose I could raise the cover price, but that would only reduce sales further. And note that these are sales to bike shops, which don't return books (unlikely the retail book trade). Those really aren't worth thinking about.

So for the foreseeable future, I'm going to keep selling the book off my web-site, and at local events like the upcoming Sports Basement talk.

Incidentally, I recently sold two copies of Engineer's Guide to the Midwest Library Service, meaning that some library, somewhere, received a request to stock my book. If you want to read my book but can't afford it, try asking your local library to acquire it. I am perfectly happy to handle library sales, and the guys over at MLS even send me a check up front rather than making me navigate the Purchase Order process. Now that's author friendly.

Review: The Box

If you do any sailing on San Francisco Bay, you'll see container ships. Giant ships stacked with containers coming in full and leaving empty. (After all, nothing's ever made in America any more) If you've ever wondered how the logistics worked, or how the standard container was designed and evolved, then The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger is the book for you.

What's fascinating for me is that the idea of the container was effectively invented by one man, Malcolm McLean, and he effectively championed and promoted it through his company which he started for the purposes of promoting this idea. The book describes all the implications of this, including how the Vietnam War effectively sold the military on containers, and thereby enabled the trans-Pacific routes that I see today on San Francisco Bay --- container ships would get to Vietnam full, and then have to return to the US empty, and McLean saw that if he made a stop in Japan, he could fill up the ships and make more money.

What's disappointing about the book is that the author could not manage to compute the drop in costs that could be attributed to container adoption. Nevertheless, the entire story is fascinating, and well worth the time. Recommended.
(Thanks to Paul Krugman for recommending the book over at his blog)

Setting up a Proxy Server on Windows

If you've ever traveled outside the US, you know what a pain that is to access certain web-sites. In particular, lots of web-sites have country-restricts which prevent you from accessing them outside the USA. The solution is to run a proxy-server in the US while you're going to be traveling. There's probably a ton of information out there on how to do this if you're a Linux/Mac user (both of them can run standard UNIX proxy servers), but I haven't seen anything on how to do this on Windows, so here's my stab at it, having recently ran a proxy for a friend of mine in Canada.

My main criteria was that the proxy software be free, as in free beer. I couldn't be bothered to download and compile anything for this exercise.

1. Download CCProxy. There are alternatives, but none of them are easily configured, and most of them just simply broken or have onerous licensing requirements. CCProxy is all you will need for personal use. If you need more users, then you'll have to pay up or compile some open source software.
   
2. Open up a browser to your router's administration page. This will usually be 192.168.1.1. You can now navigate to Applications & Gaming screen, and set it up so it looks like the following:

   From Drop Box

   
   
3. Now look up the static IP of your router. This is usually on the "Status" page of the router's administration application.
   
4. Configure the client. I tell people to run Firefox, since it has a separate proxy configuration dialog box. Visit tools->options, select the "Network" tab, and click "Settings." Now turn on "Manual Proxy Configuration", and use the static IP address you got previously. Hit OK until you're finished.
   

   From Drop Box

   
   
5. You are now all done!
   

Talk at Sports Basement, March 22nd

For those of you who have thought about getting a copy of Independent Cycle Touring but have hesitated because you would rather see a copy of the book in person, there'll be an opportunity to do so at the Sports Basement in Sunnyvale on March 22nd, from 6-8:30pm. I'll give a talk in about 45 minutes about the book and some topics it covers, and then leave some time for questions, book sales, and a signing.

If you're attending, please use the Facebook Event to sign up! You can also it!

I'm also working with REI for a talk later on in the year, and will try to make various other events happen. In general, if you would like to host me for a speaking engagement, please send me e-mail.

Review: Shadow of the Scorpian

Shadow of the Scorpion is a prequel to Gridlinked, starring Ian Cormac, the unbelievably competent ECS agent of the prior novel.

The novel is short and an easy read, and composes of two threads: Cormac's childhood, and his initiation into the military, where he's quickly involved in quashing a separatist movement. In this novel, he's still not quite believable, but does at least make mistakes. The thread from Cormac's childhood is pretty irrelevant. We get a set up, and there's this build up about his memories having been edited, but the payoff just wasn't there and was quite a bit of a let down.

The main thread is characteristic Asher. Lots of big explosions, violence, and cool weapons. It's a fun read for an airplane ride, but don't consider it anything deeper. Mildly recommended.

Trip Report: Cozumel/Carmen de Playa

Cozumel

Matt Vera's Photos
I just got back from a mostly diving trip in Cozumel/Carmen de Playa. I'm not as avid a diver as I am a sailor, cyclist or backpacking, and would never undertake a diving vacation except that my attempt to organize a sailing trip in the Caribbean completely fell through! Unlike diving, cycling, or backpacking, sailing requires a full crew to make full use of the boat (to split costs), and I'm also not so competent a sailor that I can sail a boat short-handed or single-handed.

Arturo told me about the new Virgin America direct flights to Cancun with the special promotional pricing, and given that he'd already done all the research necessary on the area for a previous trip, I went about organizing a dive trip. Matt Vera, Tracy Ng, and Zaheda Bhorat chose to join me on this outing. Matt and Tracy wanted to complete a dive certification course, while Zaheda wanted to relax.

We signed up for the 5-night/3 days package at Scuba Club Cozumel. At $100/night for 5 nights including food + three 2-tank boat dives, Scuba Club Cozumel is a fantastic deal. The food was wonderful as well, and I consider it money well spent. The diving was very similar to the rest of the Caribbean, so nothing to write home about, except for the Wreck of the Felipe Xicotencatl, which was absolutely the best dive I did at the dive club. As a relatively new wreck, you get to explore all the rooms inside, and experience what it's like to be a wreck diver, wich close quarters maneuvers. This is a technically challenging dive and well worth the effort.

The club is full of avid divers, the kind of people who own their own dive equipment and do 100+ dives a year, so there's not much emphasis on much except diving. The equipment rental is expensive, but since you'll be doing so much diving, things like dive computers are a necessity. Matt and Tracy rented dive computers from the Bay Area, but both of those broke, while the one I rented from the Scuba Club had no problem.

Then we moved to Carmen del Playa to do 2 dives in the cenotes with Pluto Dive. These guys were picked because they were the only folks who ever responded to e-mail in Carmen del Playa. The dives in the cenotes were amazing. You basically jump into a freshwater cave and swim down into the caverns. This is like spelunking but without the scrapes and bruises and squeezing around things. With neutral buoyancy you basically float through the caves shining your flash-light at stalactites and stalagmites, seeing the glorious insides of the caves. At one point, we emerged into an underground cave with just a few air-holes, and could see fossils of tree roots on the ceiling (as well as other fossils), and could see the roots of trees coming through. Unfortunately my camera flooded just before the wreck dive, so you'll have to wait for Tracy and Matt's photos. The water was also the clearest I had ever seen. The transition from freshwater into salt water has to be experienced to be believed! Up until the cenotes dive I didn't think I would return to Cancun, as the diving wasn't any better than what I had seen in the rest of the Caribbean, but having seen the cenotes dive, I could see myself coming for more. These two dives were definitely the best dives I had done. Given that round-trip flights to Cancun are currently $150 or so, I recommend you do something about it before Virgin America's big discounts are gone.

We visited Chichen Itza on our last full day. The long bus ride (5 hours!!) was no fun, and while the ruins were cool (hey, virgin sacrifices... ball games to the death, hearts that get cut out of enemies and then sacrificed to serpent gods --- you just can't make this stuff up!), I thought I could probably get as much out of reading the Wikipedia page. I guess I'm just not cut out for cultural explorations. Worth going to once, but I won't do it again.

Carmen del Playa's beaches are very touristy, and they are nice, but not as nice as what I saw in the Virgin Islands. I definitely think that the Virgin Islands is still the best of the Caribbean, and recommend a trip there instead, especially for those who are sailors. But all in all I had a good time, and will consider returning to do more cenotes diving.

Pengtoh Has Started Blogging

Pengtoh has started blogging, and on a very consistent basis. This is great to see. For those of you who don't know, Pengtoh was the smartest person I knew in college, and being his roommate for one semester must have raised my IQ by at least 10%. Amongst other things, he:

• Fixed his car's radiator with chewing gum.
  
• Modded his Amiga's motherboard to fix a broken chip, and while he was at it, set it up so he could reboot without dropping the modem connection.
  
• Bought a Sun 3, and fixed a fuse problem with a penny.
  

It's also no wonder that when he joined Google he quickly did some pretty amazing things. I was really sad to lose him at Google when he retired (partially due to certain political situations that sadly, are still not fixed at Google today). But now you can get an almost daily dose of smartness from his blog. Read it and learn! Incidentally, the other smart undergrads from my years at Cal (in no particular order) were Steve Yen, Joe Chung, Jon Blow, Insik Rhee, David Lofteness, John Mitchell, Larry Hosken, Jimmy Leftkowitz and Dan Wallach. I'm sure there are many others I'd forgotten, but it's gratifying to see how many of us have done well over the years.

Review: Dollhouse Season 2

My complaints about the first season of dollhouse was due to how slow the plot was, and how nobody had ever seemed to have heard of off-site backups. One thing about Joss Whedon, at least he's consistent in his plot holes.

The second season starts out far more promising. The story accelerates, and we get development of the main character, Echo, as well as an understanding of where Rossum's technology is leading. After all, if you did invent a machine that could wipe people clean and then reprogram them to be whatever you wanted to be, the natural thought wouldn't be to start a high class prostitution ring: you'd go after bigger targets.

Unfortunately, after that story point was resolved, we get deep inside Rossum's past, and the entire plot at that point develops holes you can drive an armored 18-wheeler through. The villains were smart enough to discover the neuroscience behind the dollhouse, but stupid enough to come up with a complex series of schemes that required that they put themselves in harm's way to get what they wanted, rather than pursue their goals directly. The net result of this was a plot that required characters to do incredibly unreasonable things. The penultimate episode was really dumb, in the "Oh, we'll blow up entire buildings to remove this dangerous technology" fashion. At least we know that doesn't work (thanks to the ending of Season One). However, we have to suspend our disbelief that the smart, intelligent characters in this show did believe that this would work! The post-apocalyptic section of the story doesn't make sense as well. Wouldn't the masters of the universe rather keep a high tech world intact so they could live in luxury?

The last episode was even more inane. One of the smart characters designed a device to restore the world, but isn't smart enough to put together a timed trigger. Even worse, the "leader" character in the story doesn't think to herself, "If anything goes wrong we need this guy to fix it, we can't let him blow himself up!"

Ok, good things about the series: it's got the best depiction of nerd love I've seen, very sweet and almost believable. Some of the exploitation of the technology seen in the last episode stems directly from the premise. It would be fun to explore that aspect of the world. Unfortunately, I'm afraid I cannot recommend this series to anyone, even fans of Joss Whedon. I'm afraid my opinion of his work dropped dramatically after watching this series. I'm starting to think
that Buffy was a fluke, and he's been coasting on his reputation since. Not Recommended.

Review: Writing Fiction for Dummies

Disclaimer: I got my copy of Writing Fiction For Dummies for free as a Kindle e-book giveaway.

I was very pleasantly surprised by this book. While there are other books such as Stephen King's On Writing that can be inspirational, these books tend to focus on what a writer thinks could work for him. Ingermanson and Economy, two published fiction authors, describe a wide range of writing techniques and styles that could work for various writers, and describe how each style could work for a certain kind of writer.

They further describe structure and plot in an easy to grasp fashion, breaking down well-known stories into the 3-act structure and describing books in terms of scenes. Examples are provided and very relevant and cogent. Each scene is then analyzed, and further broken down into different types. Styles of narration, including a description of why you might want to use first person, third person, omniscient, etc. narratives are also covered.

Finally, the art of selling your novel is also described. There's a huge emphasis on going to writing conferences to pitch your novel in person, but there's also lots of detail about how to write a proposal, story summary, and pitch. They describe how to get agents to look at your book, and what to do as a first time author.

I am undecided as to whether I will attempt a novel this year (my next book is almost certainly not a novel), but if I do, I expect to go back to this book and use it extensively while writing. Recommended.

Review: The Party - The Secret World of China

Westerners tend to have a very un-nuanced view of China. For instance, when Burton Malkiel came back from China, he was over-flowing with enthusiasm for China, complete with starting up a new fund, and taking all the signs of economic development that he saw there as a sign that capitalism had taken over China in a big way, and conflating capitalism with democracy in the way that only naive Westerners do. He was not completely wrong, but he was missing all the nuances that those of us who grew up in Asia saw.

When Steve Grimm reviewed: The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers, I checked it out from the library since it promised to be a book that was not about the naive-un-nuanced view of China so often touted breathlessly in newspapers and magazines.

I was not disappointed. All the stories are there. The story behind the poisoned milk fiasco? It's there, and yes, it's tied to the 2008 Olympics in a way you might not expect. I wonder if the IOC ever considers that it has blood on its hands when it agrees to host the Olympics in places where there is not a long history of democracy and human rights. The fact that Baidu offers companies a chance to censor its search results are also covered. The Great Leap Forward and its cover-up? Documented in detail here. Why was reunification with Taiwan so hot a topic in the late 1990s/early 2000s and then now is almost never on the radar? Documented here, with all the subtle details that many Westerners over-look. Corruption and graft? All here. The story behind why Shanghai's skyline was completely rebuilt? Someone I know recently posted that she could not see any buildings in common between 1980 and now in Shanghai from a picture of the Skyline --- she naively attributed that to rapid economic development. The reality is far different and explained here in detail.

I grew up in Singapore, and saw first-hand how capitalism does not automatically lead to democracy, even though it can and does lift people out of poverty, which is in general a good thing. It's always annoyed me that Westerners (ABCs included) conflate economic freedom with liberty, without realizing that there's a second model at work in Asia, where economic freedom comes with strings attached. When Google went to China, I deliberately kept myself out of that effort. When Google left China, many people I know thought that it was a bad move. I personally applauded it as a willingness to stand by principle, with a nuanced understanding of the what's going on there that only Sergey Brin, with his experience growing up in a totalitarian regime, could have made happen.

All in all, I consider this a very important book. If you're a naive Westerner or ABC, you owe it to yourself to read this book carefully before visiting China and taking everything you see at face value. While I agree with Brad Delong that we do not want to go down in history as trying to prevent the lifting of millions out of poverty, especially in Asia/China, I think a good understanding of this book will lead you to realize what a Faustian bargain international trade is, and you will eventually come to agree with Dani Rodrik's view as expressed in One Economics, Many Recipes:

Think of labor and environmental standards, for example. Poor countries argue that they cannot afford to have the same stringent standards in these areas as the advanced countries... Democratic countries such as India and Brazil can legitimately argue that their practices are consistent with the wishes of their own citizens, and that therefore it is inappropriate for labor groups or NGOs in advacned countries to tell them what standard they should have... But non-democratic countries such as China, do not pass the same prima facie test. The assertion that labor rights and the environment are trampled for the benefit of commercial advantage cannot be as easily dismissed in those countries. Consequently, exports of nondemocratic countries deserve greater scrutiny when they entail costly dislocations or adverse distributional consequences in importing questions.

Needless to say, this book is highly recommended. Well worth paying full price for.

Review: The Engineer Reconditioned

Neal Asher's Gridlinked was a lot of fun, so I checked outThe Engineer ReConditioned from the library to see if his short stories were up to par.

The opening story, "The Engineer" explores the discovery of a survivor of an extinct civilization. I enjoyed the story quite a bit, even though it was quite predictable what would happen. The clash of causes explored was entertaining, but did not have sufficient time to develop.

Then there came a sequence of "Owner" stories, effectively stories about a super-human intelligence that controls a planet that humans have chosen to settle on. These are much less compelling, as the "Owner" always feels more like a deus ex machina than a proper story hook. These are acceptable. There's also a time travel story that is OK, but not even close to being as good as Palimpsest, still the best time travel story I've read.

Finally, there are two stories about parasites and religion. Asher has a low opinion of religion (as do I), so I'm not sure how well these will go over with anyone who doesn't already agree with those views. Nevertheless, the parasites are at least interesting, though I suspect the source material is more interesting than Asher's stories.

All in all, I can't recommend this book. I think Asher needs novel-length space in order to strut his stuff and ideas. What I particularly dislike is that his ideas are cool but it's also quite clear he's not a scientist and hence can't explain any of the "super-science" he uses and relies on as plot devices, so I would classify him in the "thriller" genre rather than the science fiction genre.

Review: Cutting For Stone

I was told to read Cutting for Stone for a good novel about Ethiopia and Surgery. Literary novels are always hard for me to read: many times they seem more about stringing together pretty words, rather than telling a story in straightforward fashion. Fortunately, Abraham Verghese is actually a doctor and professor at Stanford, and the writing is pretty straightforward and doesn't usually attempt to be lyrical, though there are allusions to "magical realism", a genre that I dislike.

The story is told from the point of Marion Stone, part of a set of conjoined twins that was born to a nun in a (fictional) hospital in Ethiopia. The nun dies during childbirth. The father, a master surgeon with a deadly horror of personal relations, runs away from both his sons, who are then adopted by the community surrounding the hospital. The rest of the novel is about the twins, both of whom grow up to be surgeons, a woman that Marion loves, and the twins (non-)relationship with their runaway father.

Sprinkled all through the novel is witty medical aphorisms. For instance, "What treatment is administered solely through the patient's ear?" "Words of Comfort." There are many details about being a doctor and being a surgeon, but nothing too visceral or discomforting. This is much more tame than the typical Richard K. Morgan novel, for instance. I suppose if you are a careful reader you might come away with a knowledge of Ethiopia. For me, it's all so much background story arranged to fit the story. The medical stuff is the fun part: as Stephen King says, people (myself included) love reading about other people's professions.

My big criticism about most science fiction is that it's all about the ideas, plot, or universe, and the writers are usually terrible at developing believable three dimensional characters. The problem with literary fiction is that it's all about the characters. Strip away the witty medical aphorisms and the details about the process of becoming a surgeon, and you realize that the book's themes and ideas are empty. Now, the surgical stuff is really really good, and for some people, the Ethiopian stuff is worth the price of admission. The characters are good, it's just that the plot is nearly non-existent.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the novel, and it's obviously a great achievement. Given the author's background and the notes, you can be assured that all the medical stuff is up to snuff and you're not getting a simplified view of a surgeon's world. Mildly recommended.

The "Tiger Mom" Parenting Controversy

The blogosphere and quora controversy over Amy Chua's "Tiger Mom" parenting article has reached a fever pitched in the part of the internet where I sit. As a non-parent I normally would try to stay out of this discussion, but since I grew up in Asia and had such a parenting regime, I feel qualified to make a few notes about this.

But first, a note from the author of the article (via Christine Lu):

I did not choose the title of the WSJ excerpt, and I don't believe that there is only one good way of raising children. The actual book is more nuanced, and much of it is about my decision to retreat from the "strict Chinese immigrant" model.

Note that the Quora responses come from people brought up in America under the Asian model. There's a huge amount of negativity about this "hot house" environment for bringing up kids from Asian Americans. I can believe it. If I had been brought up in Asia like this, I would have been comparing myself to the non-Asian kids who had the freedom to do what they like, and then resented my parents for not being as cool as other people's parents. The truth is, many middle class kids in Asia were all brought up like this, and not knowing any different, there's no resentment. Note that this "hot house" environment is not unique to Asia. Plenty of non-Asians have used this method to develop high achievers. The book, Talent is Over-rated, for instance, describes a Hungarian couple which deliberately set out to raise 3 daughters to become grandmasters in Chess, just to prove a point about how education should be handled. They succeeded, and while their kids eventually gave up Chess, they were hardly scarred for life. Similarly, I know plenty of non-Asian parents who obsess about getting their kids into the right daycare, the right Montessori school, or the right prep school. My favorites are the ones who spend gobs of money on an expensive school district for their home, and then decide that even that expensive school district is not good enough and send their kids to private schools. And of course, in the field of sports, non-Asian parents seem to be exactly what Asian parents are as far as academics is concerned. I have no doubt to my mind which emphasis is most likely to lead to a productive member of society.

If the environment was solely responsible for such emotional/psychological scarring, then Asia should have an incredibly high crime rate/suicide rate. I think the real cause in this case is the huge contrast between that "hot house" environment and what the rest of America values. Certainly, myself and my two brothers are emotionally well-adjusted and our family doesn't show any of the psychological scars and resentment between ourselves and our parents that many of those who visit Quora describe.

It all depends on your goals as parents. One of my friends recently told me over lunch about his philosophy behind parenting: "Your kids will turn out fine, so my goal is to enjoy my time with them while they are kids." Many Asian parents would be horrified to hear that, since their goal is to raise high achievers. I remember having a conversation with a Netscape millionaire in the late 1990s. This was a man who'd arrived from Taiwan with just the clothes on his bags and a suitcase of cash, and was now successful by anybody's standards. He said to me, "My kid has a trust fund, so now I have to make sure she has a work ethic." My response to that was, "That's absolutely the wrong goal for her! She doesn't have to work if she doesn't want to, so what's going to make her life miserable is if she is a poor judge of people! If someone cons her out of her trust fund, then all the work ethic you inculcate in her will not keep her from being unhappy." (No, I don't know how to teach you how to be a good judge of character, but the point is: work ethics, etc aren't the most important things in life)

Ultimately, I don't think that the "hothouse environment" is something every parent should strive for, but it's clearly useful for some parents, and it works for some families in some environments. For me, it was more helpful than hurtful, and I'm sure for others the inverse was true, but it certainly doesn't merit the kind of hysteria one way or another that the internet forums appear to approach the subject.

Google Docs Fail

I've been selling digital editions of An Engineer's to Silicon Valley Startups by simply e-mailing the files to customers. The compressed version of the book is only 800KB, so it fits easily as an attachment via e-mail.

Independent Cycle Touring, however, is a graphics and layout heavy book. The highly compressed version of the book came to 11MB. This exceeded the 10MB attachment limit of gmail and other online services. Furthermore, it would use up my gmail quota in rapid order, not to mention the cumbersome nature of attaching a file to every e-mail sent.

My initial thoughts was to simply upload the file to Google Docs and Spreadsheets as a PDF, and then add users to the access control list with each sale. Not only would this eliminate the need to send e-mail attachments, it would also allow me to update the book online and have all my customers immediately have access to the latest version of the book! What's not to like about that?!

This worked well during the beta-period, and during the initial launch period. However, over the holidays something broke Google Docs and Spreadsheet, and Google stopped allowing me access to my own file! I would get a "This web-site is not available" whenever I tried to click through to my book. OK, maybe I exceeded the access control list limit or some such. I uploaded a new copy. Same thing! Since I had paying customers, I was in a bind.

Fortunately, a startup named Dropbox offers very similar service to what GDrive was originally intended to serve. Unlike Google's product, Dropbox works for my own file and has a bigger free quota than Docs and Spreadsheets. Even better, each customer that installs Dropbox gives myself and him free disk quota. Even better, rather than use the web-interface to upload, I can just drag and drop new versions of the file on disk. I'm pleased as heck.

I've often said that it's a good thing that big companies screw up. Otherwise, startups won't be able to compete. And Google: you might want to consider having a "file a bug" button somewhere on Docs and Spreadsheets. Otherwise, the only way I know how to file a bug is to write it up on my external blog for everyone to see. In the mean time, my guess is I will continue to use Dropbox to distribute the digital version of Independent Cycle Touring.

Independent Cycle Touring has Shipped!

Today, I got 2 big boxes from my postman containing the print edition of Independent Cycle Touring. If you've pre-ordered your copies, the book has gone out and you should receive it in your mailbox in 1-3 days (6-10 days if you're overseas).

Thanks for pre-orders. As of now, the price for the paperback is $39.99 and the price for the paperback + digital edition is $49.99. Those of you who pre-ordered got the digital edition for free!

If you've contributed to the book, rest assured your copy is on its way!

Review: Gridlinked

If you've read many of my book reviews, you'll note that I complain quite a bit of the characters found in many science fiction novels: I think that they are largely wooden with very little humanity in them, more like puppets driven by a plot. Gridlinked was Neal Asher's first novel, and he solved this problem by having the protagonist, Ian Cormac, be someone who was "gridlinked" for so long that he's become in danger of losing not only his social skills (like most of us geeks), but also his humanity as well. As a result, Asher can portray his protagonist with all the puppet-nature that he demands his characters have to serve his plot without fear of such criticism.

The plot is kinetic, spanning multiple star systems, meeting various non-human entities, with lots of weapons ranging from big guns to intelligent shuriken deployed at one point or another at nearly every form of sapient and/or intelligent being in present. The result reads like a summer blockbuster of a movie: lots of loud explosions, plenty of "wow" moments as horrible beings slam at each other, and a plot that seems almost lifted out of a Western. The world building is provided in dribs and drabs, usually as entries from one encyclopedia or text of one sort or another that head chapter entries. My problem with this world is that I just don't see how it could possibly have room for human heroes --- it seems to me that the kind of trouble-shooter Ian Cormac would have to be would be replaced by the kind of Android ultra-terminator style robots that seem to be all over the book.

What, then, kept me reading? Well, the action never stops. You are kept on the edge of your seat wondering what trick the author will think of next to keep one character or another alive. One scene has a character attempting suicide only to accidentally set off a sequence of events that ensures her survival. The weapons are pretty darn cool, if improbable. In other words, this is exactly the kind of guilty pleasure you can indulge in if you're about to get on a plane on vacation. I have no doubt I'll be loading up the Kindle with more from Asher for my next flight. Nevertheless, if you're looking for a deep read, with the kind of reflection that Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon has, there's none of that here. Read Morgan instead. Asher is Tom Clancy for the pocket-protector crowd, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Mildly recommended.

Movie Review: 非诚勿扰

非诚勿扰 2 so caught my attention that I checked the prequel from the library. Sequels are rarely better than the original, so if I liked the second movie, 非诚勿扰 should have been even more impressive, right?

The opening sequence was indeed funny, but not in the way the sequel was. Then the initial half of the movie degenerates into a sequence of "in search of the right woman" dating scenes. While these are entertaining enough, and even cleverly written (there's one scene where a friend introduces our lead actor to a recently widowed woman that just had us giggling), at this point we're introduced to the lead actress.

I was quite puzzled as to why I didn't like the movie as much, but I think I know why now. The protagonist is extremely smart and observant: he sees what's wrong with his leading lady right away, and walks out on her multiple times. Then we are led to believe that he's willing to take a trip to Hokkaido, treats her cruelly, and then becomes devoted to her? Nothing adds up. Ok, human beings don't always add up, but as someone once said, the difference between real life and fiction is that I expect some consistency from fiction. One theory could be that the sequel had a larger budget than this movie, and hence the sight-jokes could be better implemented. Thinking over the script though, I don't see how a bigger budget would have made this movie better.

Is the movie worth watching? Yes. It's still better than expected for a romantic comedy. But the sequel was definitely much more impressive in terms of writing. The photography is nice, but it's quite clear that the director did not make full use of Hokkaido's gorgeous scenery, which properly belonged to the characters. It's just that if I had watched this movie first I probably would have waited to watch 非诚勿扰 2 on DVD rather than seeing it in the theater, and that would have been a loss. Nevertheless, recommended.
[Note: I watched this movie with only Chinese subtitles turned on, so I can't speak to the quality of the English subtitles. One of the coolest things about the movie is that it makes no compromises about languages. The Japanese people speak Japanese, the Chinese people speak Chinese, and the one non-Asian with speaking parts speaks in both English and Japanese. Hence turning on subtitles is useful even if you are fluent with Mandarin.]

Review: Cryoburn

Cryoburn (The Vorkosigan Saga) is Lois Bujold's latest foray into the Vorkosigan saga, her hyper-kinetic space opera hero. Unfortunately, it was not her best work.

Scarlet wrote a thorough review of this book a while back, so I'll outsource most of the criticism to her. The book didn't grab me plot-wise or emotionally, and we see precious little character development, either of Miles or any of the supporting characters. We don't even get the little thrill that we should get when Miles solves a puzzle. Even the setbacks were too easily resolved. Unlike other novels, where Miles gets put through the wringer, he solves all the problems far too easily.

Unlike Scarlet, I didn't see the ending coming, but it wasn't much of an emotional punch. Not recommended. Bujold is a brilliant writer, and you should start elsewhere in the series for really good reading.

Movie Review: 非诚勿扰 2

I'm really skeptical of romantic comedies. They tend towards cliches, and when I see the "2" which means it's a sequel I'm doubly skeptical. Yet the movie theater I was in at 1:00pm had nearly every chair filled on Christmas Day! Granted, Cupertino has a large Chinese population, and it was a rainy day, but that drew my attention.

I'll try not to spoil the movie, but if you are the type who's easily spoiled, don't read any further.

The opening sequence is a surprise: a divorce ceremony, complete with all the pomp and grandeur devoted to wedding ceremonies in other romantic comedies. Then the next sequence is a little confusing to those who did not watch the prequel, despite the opening "catchup" exposition. The meandering plot features not very much by way of surprises, or even character development, but smack in the middle is another great sequence featuring a wake for someone who's not dead (it is a fantasy of mine --- why waste all the good things you'd say about someone for only after they're gone?). The script's dialogue is fast paced and fun, but I'm not sure how the English subtitles were translated: I was too busy with the dialogue and scenes to pay attention to the subtitles. There's definitely a healthy amount of cynicism and snide remarks in the movie, which earned it my respect despite the genre.

All in all, I guess I'll have to find the prequel and see if it's just as entertaining. Recommended, though if you were to wait for it to come out on DVD, there's nothing that requires watching it on a big screen. In fact, in some scenes the cinematography and photography seemed to be overly grainy, which is a surprise in this day and age.

Lenovo Customer Service Rocks

My X201 developed a sticky key. By itself, it wasn't too bad, but it was annoying. Since it was under warranty, I decided to give Lenovo a call yesterday. I was given a choice: send the laptop back, or they'd send me a replacement keyboard. I opted for the latter after being told that all it took was unscrewing 4 screws on the bottom of the machine.

I was amazed when I opened the front door this morning to find the keyboard already waiting for me: they had shipped it next day air! 15 minutes later I have a laptop with a new keyboard and no stuck keys. The box came with a return tag so I could return the old keyboard at no charge. Amazing.

Two thumbs up for customer service. There's no question that my next laptop will also be a Thinkpad.

Review: Motorola Power Adapter Micro USB Rapid Charger

My Motorola Droid is a power hungry beast. Despite plugging it into my car with a micro-USB charger, the battery would not stop draining, leading me to carry a spare battery all the time, especially when planning to use the phone to provide turn by turn navigation. I thought this was the phone's fault, and just lived with the inconvenience. Then I learned that the phone drew 750mAh while navigating. I looked at my current charger and saw that it was outputting 500mAh. When I saw the Motorola Vehicle Power Adapter MicroUSB Rapid Rate Charger on sale for $3, I jumped on it. This charger puts out 950mAh, which would be plenty even for iPad users. Trying it for the first time a couple of days ago, I finally saw the phone actually charge while driving!

Note that this charger will not solve the other problem with charging the Droid: if it gets too hot, the charging circuitry shuts off to keep the battery from over-heating and exploding, so on long drives in the summer, you probably still have to carry a spare battery. But for now, I'm pretty happy with this charger. Recommended.

Review: The Facebook Effect

Despite the huge amount of hype surrounding Facebook, I still get occasional questions from engineers asking me if I think Facebook would be successful. Perhaps if they had read David Kirkpatrick's The Facebook Effect, they would already have anticipated my answer: "Facebook is already successful, and whatever happens next, that success will not go away."

The book starts with a story of how political organizers have used Facebook to effect a change in the world. I think that's the very definition of success for any kind of startup: the product it has created has changed the world. Netscape, for instance, didn't make the kind of money Google and Facebook ever made, but it also changed the world, and the founders at Netscape have parleyed that success into important roles, including one described in this book.

The Facebook origin story has been documented in lots of places, including The Social Network. Kirkpatrick goes beyond that, however, and covers several other social networks, including Friendster, ConnectU, and of course Orkut and its predecessors. He even has a plausible theory as to why Facebook succeeded over all the others, though of course as a non-engineer he discounts the importance of the design and engineering efforts in letting Facebook scale beyond many of those competitors. I knew Facebook had a solid engineering team when they hired Jeff Rothschild, and several other folks that I had worked with in previous startups, but the numbers I had heard in 2007 were nothing short of astounding: Facebook was serving at that time 5 times Google's daily page views with 3% of Google's machine infrastructure. That's 5 times all of Google properties, not just search. You can dismiss Facebook's problem as being easier than search (and I will dispute that: search serving can be treated as being fundamentally stateless, while Facebook has a lot of state), but just the sheer volume and efficiency is impressive.

All this history is there. The investments, the hiring and firing of various insiders (though obviously, some of the most juicy gossip can only be heard from insiders), but of interest to most people will be page 272-273, where various financial numbers are disclosed about Facebook's business. They add up to some very impressive numbers, and the entire chapter puts paid to many myths and answers questions about how Facebook makes money. I'll admit to being surprised at some of the answers myself! I'm starting to think that despite having a track record of advising people to take a "smaller" package at Facebook over a "larger" package at Google, I might still have under-estimated how much potential is still to be unlocked over at Facebook (meaning that yes, earlier this year when I bought some Facebook stock at $7 a share I should have bought more).

The book does cover many of the fracas between privacy advocates and Facebook's founding and management team. It should come as no surprise that I side with Facebook on this: given how most people happily sell their purchasing habits to their local grocery store for $0.50 discounts on milk and other items, I have yet to see behavior which reflects that people actually believe in privacy about information they put online. If you don't want it spread around, it doesn't belong online.

All in all, I should have bought this book and read it earlier this year, rather than waiting in line at the hold queue at the library. Recommended.

Review: Fables #14 - Witches

Fables #13 was a disappointment. Fables Vol. 14: Witches, however, has started a brand new story arc, with a new villain, some very funny moments, and a light-humored interlude. Willingham is back on form! Many characters have changed and evolved, and we get to see aspects of some of the old witches in the stories that we did not know about before. Very well done.

One thing I do not like is that the Fables now seem to have more politicking around than they did previously. That's only to be expected, since they've already had one overwhelming success against the adversary, but you'd think that having Fabletown demolished would knock some sense into the characters. I'm also sad that my favorite characters don't seem to be playing a role in this new story arc.

Nevertheless, I am very happy to put Fables #14 back onto the recommended list.