Neal Wilson ✅ @neal@social.typica.us
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- https://typica.us
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Author of Typica software for coffee roasters.
Joined Apr 2018
Three days in a row now I've tried and failed to order from one of my suppliers because they took their website down for maintenance. I'm guessing the maintenance crew set something on fire and now they've got people repopulating a product database by typing stuff in manually because what's a backup? That is, of course, only a guess.
(I'm glad I didn't opt for email notifications of new subscribers)
Today I sent out the emails to people who have recently asked me to let them know when the book is available, sending them to https://roastingbook.coffee/
I'm honestly a little surprised by how quickly that list is growing (and you can tell from a lot of the email addresses that these are people in the target market) given the minimal marketing effort going into it.
Given how easy cosmetic surgery is in Star Trek why aren't there people who try on a new species every week?
Updated https://roastingbook.coffee/
Now served up with https, links added to the first paragraph, mailing list sign up form added. Now I can ignore that for a while and get back to finishing the book.
Neal Wilson ✅
boosted
My cat's allowed to make his rap albums, but I don't let him cuss, so he has to say things like "motherflirka"
End of the day and the web site for one of my suppliers is still down for maintenance (they were also down all day yesterday). Part of me wonders what exactly they managed to botch so badly to take them down for so long and another part of me is wondering how many orders they're losing as people look to substitute a competitor's product.
I have enough email addresses. I don't need to set up the new domain to do email at all.
Tentatively decided to go with TinyLetter. I'm already using that for the Typica release announcement list and nobody has complained about that. Considered self hosting but decided that I don't want to deal with that.
If DNS records have updated for you, you can check out the extremely basic site for my book at http://roastingbook.coffee
I haven't turned on https yet.
Starting out with a single static page as a placeholder. The next thing is deciding how I want to handle an announcement list so that people who are asking me to let them know when they can buy the book can just subscribe to that.
Setting up the web site for the book I've been writing. Waiting on DNS propagation.
The down for maintenance page has been updated. It no longer indicates a date when they expect it to be back up. This seems pretty amateur hour.
Neal Wilson ✅
boosted
On leaving the politics out of hacking
So I guess that sufficient time has passed that I'll tell the story.
At a company I once worked at one of the managers sent out an email. Could anyone volunteer to give some programming classes at one of the local schools? It sounded ok: a bit of outreach and a chance to educate the next generation. Until I looked up what school it was. Turned out it was one of the elite private schools for rich kids only.
One of my co-workers replied, saying that they had also looked up the school and that they were affluent enough that they could just hire a hacker for a few evenings. There are plenty of hackers around who could use a bit of extra income. They also said that volunteering for this would merely help to perpetuate special privileged access to skills or knowledge by the rich, and I agreed. I said it's not a feedback loop that we should be helping to reinforce. If it were a state school it would be a different proposition.
It later turned out that the school in question was where the manager was sending their own children, and this pulled the rug out from their previous often repeated statements about "believing in meritocracy". It made them look like a hypocrite - claiming that anyone could rise while trying to give an already over-privileged class yet more advantages.
In a later meeting when the hypocrisy was pointed out the manager went on a rant about "there will be no more politics at this company". Everyone just looked at them as if they had just said something really unintelligent. Which of course they had.
There is always politics in hacking. Many of the hackers of my generation didn't come from elite schools. They were not "toffs" with special tutors. Most attended state schools and were self-taught on home computers. The "apolitical hacker" is just someone who thinks that their own politics should be hegemonic.
At a company I once worked at one of the managers sent out an email. Could anyone volunteer to give some programming classes at one of the local schools? It sounded ok: a bit of outreach and a chance to educate the next generation. Until I looked up what school it was. Turned out it was one of the elite private schools for rich kids only.
One of my co-workers replied, saying that they had also looked up the school and that they were affluent enough that they could just hire a hacker for a few evenings. There are plenty of hackers around who could use a bit of extra income. They also said that volunteering for this would merely help to perpetuate special privileged access to skills or knowledge by the rich, and I agreed. I said it's not a feedback loop that we should be helping to reinforce. If it were a state school it would be a different proposition.
It later turned out that the school in question was where the manager was sending their own children, and this pulled the rug out from their previous often repeated statements about "believing in meritocracy". It made them look like a hypocrite - claiming that anyone could rise while trying to give an already over-privileged class yet more advantages.
In a later meeting when the hypocrisy was pointed out the manager went on a rant about "there will be no more politics at this company". Everyone just looked at them as if they had just said something really unintelligent. Which of course they had.
There is always politics in hacking. Many of the hackers of my generation didn't come from elite schools. They were not "toffs" with special tutors. Most attended state schools and were self-taught on home computers. The "apolitical hacker" is just someone who thinks that their own politics should be hegemonic.
Web site for one of my suppliers is down for maintenance until January 2. I suppose it doesn't say what year.
Latest video was a PeerTube exclusive for a few hours but hasn't seen much attention there. Over on YouTube it took about 24 hours for that to become the most watched/liked episode in the series, mainly because someone shared the book announcement over on a forum. When I start doing videos that are just related to the book I'll be preferring those PeerTube embeds there.
I've also gotten a few people who have worked with me on education projects previously offering to provide feedback as I work through the editing process. I was hoping I'd be able to get that sort of help from exactly these types of people.
On my latest video I shared more info on the coffee roasting book I'm writing and so people are starting to ask to be informed about things like when the ebook version will be available. I think that means I really need to put up a proper web site for the book and let people sign up for a mailing list for that sort of update. Just registered a domain for that and I think I've got an underutilized server that I can put that on once I decide what to put there.
Latest total from yesterday's fundraiser is $832.66. I'm rounding that up to an even $1000 plus a $100 check someone left. Any other post-event donations will go separately if there are any. Not bad for 4 hours.
- Software
- https://typica.us
- Send Money
- https://typica.us/payment.html
Admin
Author of Typica software for coffee roasters.
Joined Apr 2018
