Really looking forward to playing around with Writebook. I guess could do a Digital Ocean thing, but I kinda would like to play around with this, you know as an indie publisher of books and other text and image based products.

I’ve started writing a single post on LinkedIn every week. It’s an experiment in publishing online that I’ve not tried before. At the end of the month I’ll have 4 items to compile and add into my newsletter, which can then be replicated also onto my site. I’ve clearly been playing the internet game badly. Time to see if this will make a difference.

Been writing my weekly article, which has reminded me of what I have enjoyed in the past of crafting something a little longer. Will be nice to have something substantial published once a week.

When I joined Micro.blog, over 7 years ago now, I rediscovered my love for writing on the web again. Micro.blog has a simple interface that doesn’t care what the number of characters you intend to use or whether you want to use a title or not. Just write and publish. The freedom was liberating.

This has worked well for me but I was recently finding that I would self regulate some of my output. I felt like sharing some random thoughts throughout the day which felt out of place on my site. I tend to like to capture certain kinds of thought that I share. Hobbies I am getting into. Discoveries I have made. Kid related activities. Things that I can come back to in the future and relive.

This other stream of thought felt more ephemeral. Fleeting. Captured because I will forget them and writing them and publishing them allows me to give them a little bit of weight. Last year I got a Status.lol account and this seemed to scratch this itch. The issue however was that I didn’t own the output. Enter Micro.blog’s new pricing model, I now have the option to have up to 5 sites. I sorted a Status site that does what my Status.lol was doing.

I wrote this introduction while in Tampa this summer and its great to finally share it because it captures my thoughts on this world I’ve created.

Moon Racket! is the story of two buddies living on the moon, making noise and eating cheese. It is also the story of my attempts at learning how to draw and write a comic series.

Comics as a medium has been a passion of mine since my early teens. Sadly I never really got around to the actual act of writing and drawing comics, rather spent time circling around the activity itself. And so it was that all of my previous attempts never amounted to any completed comic work - save a four page story for a Guardian/Observer newspaper comic competition called Coffee Beans. To help me fight through this inherent procrastination, the barrier for Moon Racket! was purposely set very low. The result was that for nearly a decade this world and it’s characters would be my main creative outlet. But lets start at the beginning.

At the start of 2010, I had a serious case of brain crack. Brain crack is a term coined by CGP Grey in an episode of the excellent podcast, Hello Internet, ‘…the longer we procrastinate on something we want to do, the more our brains build up expectations of how amazing it’s going to be. It’s like crack for your brain’. The project was based on an idea I had, after a hazy summer evening out in Athens when I was 21. I couldn’t let this idea go but I also couldn’t move it forward in a meaningful way either. Two events would enable me to break my brain free and allowed me to create my first real body of comic work.

Throughout the 2000s, my creative adventures had been spent developing and honing my web and graphic design skills. I had started life on the internet to help me publish my comic work, the issue was that I fell in love with the web itself. The web combined a lot of what I loved about comics in the first place, but in a vastly different format. The web in the early 2000s was an exciting place. I swam in this space for years until the internet landscape changed (which I attribute to Twitter and Facebook) and it stopped being exciting. Another piece of technology would also come out around this time that offered another creative avenue to explore, the iPhone. With the introduction of the iPhone 4, what was possible on this mini computer in your pocket was starting to expand. I decided that I would try and use this this $880 (the going rate with taxes) device to create a comic, each panel would be the size of the phone screen. While the idea was well conceived, it was beyond ambitious.

This entire series of characters was borne from a few images drawn on an iPhone 4 back in 2012. These were done using the crudest of styluses available at the time, which was a thin aluminium tube with a soft sponge attached to the end of it. The key elements of Corgan were there, the booties, long eyes and circles at all the joints. As I drew these characters, their world started to come into view for me. They lived on the moon. The moon was ostensibly made of cheese (and that would never run out of course). After realising that the little moon worm I had drawn was an organic being, he would need some form of air bubble around him to breathe (please don’t argue with my logic, it’s fragile). Very quickly however I hit technological limits. The combination of the crude stylus, the tiny screen and the poor feedback they both provided (when compared to my trusted Muji 0.38mm blank ink pen and Midori paper notebooks), would mean that I would stop this experiment early on. I count the experiment as a success, because it allowed me to create a new world to get lost in and finally shifted my attention to something different, setting my brain free.

In the early 2010s, my life was transitioning from being a single man, to a fiancé, then husband and finally a father. I was living in the Middle East during this time, which was also going through its own transition as a region, as part of the Arab Spring. The Arab Spring started of as a series of anti-government protests and uprisings that started off in Tunisia and would quickly spread to Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain. Nearly a decade late, the chars of that movement are being felt in Syria which erupted into a civil war shortly after. I felt powerless to stop the strong humanitarian disaster that was unfolding around me, culminating in the image of Alan Kurdi washed up on the shore. An image which still haunts me to this day. My brain would retreat and search for a creative outlet to help me manage through this time.

I can’t even remember how or why I would end up calling the entire series Moon Racket!. What I do remember is that the form of logo was crystal clear in my head once I had settled on the name. From this word mark, I originally intended for the series to be filled with onomatopoeia (which is the formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named). I don’t think it happened as often as I would have wanted, but that is certainly something I am looking to lean into more in the future.

Many decisions, that defined the Moon Racket! world would also arrive in a completely organic manner. It felt appropriate that the technology used throughout the series would be locked in the 1980s, while the architecture that was on display would be of the future. Strangely (even to me), the Moon and surrounding planets are characters themselves, complete with eyes, arms and hands.

In developing the the style of art, I went off what I felt looked right, a tactic laced with struggle and self doubt. It took a while to kick my propensity of cross-hatching and tried to create a vernacular that was is my own continues. Having never previously really spent any time developing a dynamic cartoony style of art before, the art would evolve the more I drew. My annoying perfectionism would take a back seat as I kept reminding myself that nobody was paying any attention, so it didn’t really matter. Keep moving. Keep drawing one strip after the other.

Even though he was the basis of the entire series, I struggled a great deal with the design of the Corgan character. In developing the shape of his body I would struggle with shape and form. I would keep adding new elements to his body, but would never feel truly comfortable in his depiction, until recently. By contrast Corgan’s third iteration, which has arrived years after I stopped drawing him in the manner he is presented in the this volume, now practically draws himself and rolls off my pencil.

Unsurprisingly the characters and this world, never really took off beyond a limited number of readers. This was expected, considering it would take me over a year to write and draw 20 strips. I didn’t publish nearly enough to build a habit with anyone, but mainly with myself. I ran out of energy, as things in my professional life started to take over and I need to focus a lot more on that side of my life. I decided to put the series on hiatus and capped it creatively, published in March 2017, with a movie poster style image capturing all the characters. The characters would come out of retirement briefly in 2021. I finally was able to fulfil my original vision of creating these on an electronic device. This time it was a 12.9” iPad Pro with an actual stylus (the Apple pencil). After I finally learnt how to draw and colour these characters, I ended up taking an extended break from them.

I could not imagine that these characters would stay with me as long as they have, but maybe that is down to the fact that I have not said all that I wanted to say. The next evolution of the Moon Racket! world is not in the artwork, rather it will be found in the type of topics that I would like to discuss. In defining the direction I want to take these characters in, I am reminded of my mother’s admiration for the political fables presented in Kalīla wa-Dimna, and using it as inspiration for future stories.

For now however, it feels good that the original groundwork for these characters and their world is collected in a single place.

Moon Racket! Ambient Hum is available to buy as a paperback.

Buy the paperback on Amazon ➔

Micro.blog has been pretty sketchy for publishing today. Maybe needs an MOT.

Publishing is making public your own enthusiasm.
— Robert Gottlieb

I really love this (via Austin Kleon’s newsletter).

I have been working through some of these thoughts at the moment as I put together my next few books. It’s a small but growing collection.

Over the last couple of days I have felt a little restless. Recently I’ve felt the need to put a little less pressure on myself, when it comes to my creative hobbies. I guess part of this is the realisation that all of these endeavours are a hobby. They all contribute towards a body of work that ultimately helps me get through life; yet they are hobbies nonetheless.

Then I realised how many book projects I have on the go, which likely contributes to that restless feeling. Turns out I have 8 projects in different stages of development. The thing is, a considerable amount of effort goes into the production of any of these book projects. Beyond the writing, illustrating or compiling, putting it all out there takes effort.

KAA Books

With all of these different book projects that I am working on, I thought it would be good to create a new imprint called KAA Books. I did consider KAA Press or even KAA POW, but books just does what it says on the tin. Still on the fence about whether I always keep the books word in there, or just keep the KAA word mark and call it a day.

What’s interesting to me is that these are all different forms of work. Comic strips. Children’s book. Cook book. Illustrated novel. I also have a design book (even have the name ready), and a short story collection (have the first 3 written and published).

In writing this, I imagine part of the restlessness has to be the fact that there are all of these projects that I want to get over the line in some way.

1. Moon Racket! Ambient Hum Vol. 1.

I have had to switch to Affinity Publisher, as this image heavy book was really taxing the Pages app, which is better with other kinds of nooks. This will be my next book. The biggest hurdle is the cover, however I now have a clear idea of what I want it to look like.

2. Moon Racket! Our Solar System.

This is a children’s book idea I have had for a while. what I hadn’t realized was how much I had actually written across 2017. I’m glad I waited a little while as I will need to rework some of this and use the latest character designs which I am really happy with.

3. Leila’s Kitchen.

I started collecting this book earlier this year. It’s a cook book based on my mum’s recipes. The way I see it, we’re co-writing this. I get the receipt, test it out myself and edit according. This is probably a little way off, but I’ll have a ton of fun putting this together and will have something pretty unique and special at the end of it all. This also works really well into the video space, something I’ve not really delved into.

4. Moon Racket! Season 3

This is something I am writing whenever I get an idea. It’s an outlet that I have missed having, it’s been 10 years since I wrote season two. As I have been rereading the older strips, I’ve found that where I have felt most engaged is when I am commenting on the political landscape .It’s a definite change of course (considering I’ve written a children’s book), but I guess the one thing that is clear with these characters is how they have evolved both in their themes and their design.

5. Colours

Originally conceived as a graphic novel, I’ve now decided to work this as a short story. The main concept gave me incredible brain crack, however I think it works well in the 1500-2500 works/season. There will be at least 4-6 seasons. The final version might be a single book with illustrations but honestly that is years away.

Stet

1. Built Environment Compendium Vol.2.

The purple volume. Finally got a print version of this. Will be editing this throughout 2023 and then hopefully Mike can review next year, for publishing summer of 2024.

2. Automated Construction.

The yellow volume. Chapters 1-9 are written, need to stick the landing. This one is proving harder to write because it all has to come together as one volume.

3. Built Environment Compendium Vol.3.

The orange volume. This is the last full volume that I wrote on Stet. Volume 4 is a way off considering all these other projects that I have going.

I always have a serious calm when I am pulling something together. My brain stops whirring around and settles in on the task at hand. I am actually working in Affinity Publisher rather than Pages for this project (had to switch) because the image heavy book I am working on is far easier to manage - maybe it’s because I haven’t worked out exactly how images work properly in the app.

Never heard of Legible.com, but they are going to be publishing Tim Urban’s new book - as a digital only book.

Stet Newletter

If you’ve missed my newsletter In Abeyance, sad news, I’ve decided to stop publishing my thoughts on the built environment in that format. For those wondering if I will do my 1500 word articles, the answer is of course, however they will follow their own schedule and will be released when they are good and ready. In the meantime you can read previous articles here, www.stet.build/articles.

The good news is that I’ve started another newsletter, Stet. Stet will share one single idea about the built environment and will be published every 2 weeks.

The very second article written for the old In Abeyance newsletter was centred around photovoltaics - it’s therefore fitting that Stet starts life on the same topic.

Read the first issue of Stet, Photovoltaic Carrots & Sticks. If you’re not already subscribed, now is a good time to remedy that monsterous error in your email diet.

I’ve been using Micro.blog as my default web site hosting for this site for just under 5 years. I’ve written about the why widely - across the five years, it’s functionality has grown way beyond its initial offering. As far as publishing short thoughts on the web, I honestly feel that it has no parallel.

When it comes to managing or editing said posts however, it is feels to me like there is a very clear hole for an app to exist.

This app would need to sync all of your existing posts and photos. You could then switch between posts quickly manage and edit them without the need for a (clunky) web interface - ideally without having to tap edit, just get in there and edit away. There appears to be a new versioning system baked in Micro.blog, this functionality (if available) could be made to allow you to see the differences between the proposed and the existing post.

I don’t know what the technical limitations of such an app is? Would Micro.blog even allow multiple edits to be uploaded at the same time? I guess I am looking for a MarsEdit on iOS or an equivalent to reduce the friction to managing and editing as much as possible.

I don’t tend to talk very much at what I am planning to do throughout the coming year, having said that this coming year appears to be a pretty busy time with the release of multiple projects that have been gestating for several years. Some will be brand new projects, while others will be putting together of material I have created in the past.

1. Calendar ‘Bubblegum’ 2023 (kaa/002)
2. Typeface 01 (kaa/003)
3. Goodnotes Templates (kaa/004)
4. Moon Racket! Collection. Will need a new cover. I might also add a few new one page ‘stories’. (kaa/005)

I also fully intend to write a short story in November as well and I would like to finish off the short story I started last year as well (but maybe I get to that this year).

Stet

Beyond that there will be three Stet.Build projects that I would like to tackle:

1. BEC Vol.2 - The Purple Edition. This will need a new cover, a ton of editing and pulling the document together in pages. (SB/002).
2. Automated Construction. Complete the draft, currently sitting at 75% complete. (SB/003).
3. Season Four of In Abeyance. Six issues published bi-weekly.

It’s not every day that Affinity releases a marketing promo promising stuff. I imagine Publisher for iPad will be released (awesome!) but hopefully also a way to connect with others maybe?

I really love the ‘micro-story’ format. Roughly 50 words a day for 30 days. I did this in 2019 and 2020. Last year I only managed to publish nine instalments but I will be finishing that story off.

For this November I will be writing/illustrating The Summer of Disruption. I started yesterday and am already on the 6th instalment (I couldn’t help myself).

Otavio Cordeiro‘s Micro.publish plugin for Obsidian is coming soon. Obsidian makes my windows experience tolerable and this adds yet another feather in its cap.

As if he knew I was cheating on him with another book The Hoff publishes his own How To Make The Best Coffee At Home. Yes please.

Since my digital detox from 2 years ago, I have been looking for a good source of ‘news’. Most news websites don’t offer the type of coverage that I crave and never in the form that I want it. I subscribed to The Economist for a few months but the regularity meant I could read nothing more. What I wanted was a dense version published less frequently that let me get into a specific topic more than superficially. Turns out form factor and package matters.

Yesterday we went to a bookstore. In this post pandemic world that is a novelty and something many members of the my family have not done. It wasn’t the largest bookstore I have been to but it was several orders bigger than anything in Copenhagen. I unabashedly fell in love. I could have spent the whole day there.

Because of our imminent move to Canada, I refrained from buying more than a single paperback tome of American Affairs, and with it I think I have found my source of ‘news’ and commentary in a vessel that I can absolutely get behind. Put together like a novel, the ‘magazine’ is 99.5% text (with the occasional graph or image). The articles are dense and let you delve into the subject. The paper is emasculate. The cover stock is sublime. The typography outstanding.

Best of all, it’s quarterly. One of the instant subscriptions when I get a permanent place in Canada.

Based on a semi deep dive into the articles published by @jasraj, I discovered the missing software needed in my book formatting arsenal, Atticus.

It’s a web based tool for formatting and previewing ePubs across devices. Big bonus is the fact that it allows for a ton of things that I couldn’t achieve using Kindle Create. The downside is that it is a little on the pricey side. My thinking is that had I known about this service I would have released my Kindle version months ago. Also the amount of time spent formatting would have been considerably less. Finally, the cost across one book is high. It keeps dropping as I add more books (which I have in the can at the moment).

Based on how it goes with this tool, might also look to use Publisher Rocket as well.

Now that I have completed putting my book up for sale (in all the places I intend to sell it in) thought it would be good to record the experience and what I learnt (in case others might be looking to replicate the journey).

Editions

All in all there are 4 editions across 4 stores:

1. Digital Edition. This is hosted on Gumroad. Comes in two flavours, pdf and Epub3.
2. Paperback Edition. This is a print on demand copy and honestly my favourite version - but I am very old school like that. The only difference for this edition is the lack of full blue page blue insert at the start of the book. I found that this page impacted the binding. This edition also comes with an index at the end (more on that in a bit).
3. Amazon Kindle Edition. This does away with the double page photo images that break the chapters. The graphs and tables are images and does not have an index.
4. Apple Bookstore Edition. The exact Epub3 file. This one is coming soon, as it’s being reviewed by Apple.

Pages

Nearly 3 years ago I lost my Mac. At the time there were rumours of Apple silicone on the horizon and it didn’t feel like the right time to make a purchase that would least me at least 5 years. My only machine was my 2018 iPad Pro, a device with hardware that was (and is?) way ahead of it’s competition. All that was missing was suitable software.

My original hope was that Affinity would release their desktop publishing app, Publisher, on the iPad relatively soon. We’re still waiting for that release. What I found was the incredibly capable Pages app that could do just about everything I wanted. It did take a while to get used to understanding how some of these things were setup, but being able to edit things across my iPad and iPhone allowed me to iterate at a much faster rate.

Being able to share comments and update a file between myself and Mike (my editor) made the editing process seamless. This space could be better in keeping the comments history (after you’ve accepted the comments), but honestly it’s a nitpick at this stage.

The one feature that I hope Apple adds is the ability to create an Index. This was by far the most time consuming and painful exercise - and which I had to do manually. What is encouraging is that Apple continues to update this app several times a year and continues to make it even more capable with every iteration.

Formatting

For Gumroad, creating a pdf and an Epub was trivial. As was uploading to the Apple Bookstore. The web interface for iTuneConnect is ok. You can tell which parts are still legacy from before Apple decided to take the web more seriously but overall no complaints.

Reformatting for Amazon was painful but hopefully worthwhile. For this edition I had to move off my iPad Pro and onto a Windows machine I have access to. Export from Pages to Word. Import it into Kindle Create and then go about formatting everything to suit the different format (ePub2?). Sadly I feel that this is a lesser edition than the others on account of not being able to provide some of the native elements that I have included in the other versions (full page images, native tables and graphes). Having said that everything looks sharp on both my Kindle Paperwhite and my iPhone.

I gave up on Draft2Digital pretty quickly because the final version was asking for too many compromises. My text and supplementary images don’t marry well with the type of book that service is catering towards. If you have a ‘novel’ type of book (a cover and then text), then this system will work a charm for you. Everyone else, it’s probably an exercise in frustration.

This has been a really incredible journey for me. From my original ideas of creating these concise books, I now have my first release across several stores and formats. The barrier to entry is exceedingly low, considering that apart from using a windows machine for a day to format the Kindle edition, everything else was done on an iPad (including all the illustrations). Creatively this has been one of the most complete things I have ever worked on. I have 3 more in the tank, although none have gone through the editing process yet. Now that I know the process, hopefully the next ones will come out faster.

The Built Environment Compendium, while the work of three years, is actually the very start of the journey with all things Stet.Build. I am incredibly excited about how the first book turned out - even more so now that physical copies are available.

I am however still learning what works and what doesn’t work in the indie self-publishing world. Pricing was something that I did agonise over a fair amount. I loved the idea that Derek Sivers uses however it didn’t really work for me.

I’ve decided to change the pricing model for the books, but only after I took care of the super early (and incredible) supporters by sending them a paperback version of the book as well (these are now all in the post and on their way). They now have all the versions for roughly the same price as the new pricing:

• Digital Edition ➔: $4.99
• Paperback ➔: $12.99 / €12.99 / 17.99AUD / £10.99 / 17.99CAD

The final version I am currently working on is the Kindle version. This will likely be priced the same as the digital version and will hopefully drop sometime in the summer.

For all those who have bought it already I want to thank you for the support and would love to hear back from you. For those still on the fence, consider buying a copy (or 2), it’s a concise package of goodness about how the world is built.

Building something is difficult.
It take incredible patience.
It takes conviction.
And it takes belief.
Belief that things will eventually resonate with a wider audience. Belief in that this thing you are building is the best use of your time. What is the opportunity cost? Are you a victim of the sunken cost fallacy?

Even though I have been building Stet for 3½ years now, in many respects the road begins now, with the very first publication out. Creatively speaking, Stet has been one of my most consistent outlets. It has allowed me to combine all the things that I love to do in a consistent manner. My only concern however is that it is not reaching the wider audience that I imagined for it.

I had hoped that creating something good and useful would yield more reach. I was wrong. At the moment it is a creative distraction. Maybe I overestimated the audience of people interested in reading concise and (I want to believe) interesting articles about the built environment?

Advertising

I have dipped my toe into Twitter ads, but I feel that this isn’t exactly where my audience is. Rather the one that appear to ‘engage’ more with my posts are definitely living (lurking?) on LinkedIn. The thing is it seems that barrier for entry into this space is $120 minimum from any campaign. Seems like burning $120. I don’t mind betting on myself, what I do mind is betting on myself when LinkedIn makes the rules and I have no idea what the outcome could be.

Newsletter

I have been meaning to review what and how I write about this particular newsletter. I really believe in the format. I love sending it out. I love writing and have really developed a love for it. I love the research, I would do the research and write even if it wasn’t being shared with others. However I did conflate two issues. Writing 2000 word essays is a commitment from anyone to read. It has also lacked a consistent publishing schedule this past year. My antidote to all of this has been to reduce the size of what I am sending out but generally send it out every week.

The full version of issue 053 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out, Extreme Environmental Design. This one was actually meant to be published in The Prepared newsletter (this one didn’t quite fit), but I really enjoyed how this came out.

Issue 053 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out. No link to the issue yet (but you can sign up), because I am doing something a little bit different with how I publish things going forward (which I need to write about).

Little strokes fell great oaks.

Milestone today. Finished all the edits from my editor. Have a month of polish before book gets published on the 15th of February. Super excited to have the book out there. It’s taken 3 years from launching the newsletter to this point.

Version 2 of Amit’s stat’s plugin just dropped and it really is an important window into your site output. Focusing on your outputs makes you understand where your efforts went. For my part I can see how my general posting dropped this year compared to the incredible consistency of the prior years.

It’s a small change but one that leans into the whole publish on your own site, syndicate elsewhere, updated my footer to offer all the options (6 excluding the website) that are currently supported.

Currently doing a major overhaul on the Stet.Build website (first time I do a complete update the website since I started publishing 2½ years ago now). A true revelation has been Textastic, which is by far the most polished environment for writing code on the iPad.

Issue 048 of In Abeyance is out. This issue is late, a first in the 2½ years of publishing. It’s hard to write when your main and then your backup work machines both fail. This knocked my writing, researching and publishing rhythm off its axis. So I took a month off. This month its all about nuclear power, Olympic beds and Muji horology.

Took a forced month off from publishing In Abeyance - because of computing issues that knocked me off my rhythm. This is the first time I have had to miss a month in 2½ years. In the back of my mind I hope to make it up before the end of the year but won’t beat myself up if it doesn’t happen.

June is the first time that I missed publishing an issue of In Abeyance on time. Part of the reason is the fact that I don’t have a personal computer (save my iPhone). My MacBook died a couple of years ago. My iPad is getting fixed (or not depends on Apple at this stage). While the iPhone is great for capturing short thoughts (like this blog post), it’s a pretty poor experience for the longer form writing - screen is just too small. I have been looking at the AOC monitor for my home office. Combined with the Shiftscreen app, I could have avoided the delay in getting the newsletter out.

It took a while but I finally reached an understanding of how to go about the self-publishing route. The truth of the matter is that one size definitely does not fit all. In this case my strategy seems like it will be split across 5 separate channels. What I also didn’t anticipate is the fact that the order in which each one is put online also plays an important role in all of this.

First and most importantly is to get your very own ISBN. Handily leaving in Denmark you are given the first 10 ISBNs for free. Not sure what happens after that (I think you just have to ask for more. For those looking to go down this wild route, here are a few key points that I have settled on:

1. Your own site. Digital goods can get sold on your own website using Gumroad. Simple and customisable. The percentage take is pretty reasonable for the convenience factor. I think Gumroad is a solid option for selling digital so that you can continue to create things that matter.
2. Amazon / KDP. This is the big gorilla because it is the big player in this field. Go here first. Set things up accordingly so that they are pretty exclusive to Amazon themselves. Forget about Global Distribution. This is for those who want to buy things from Amazon and are hooked up into their ecosystem.
3. Lulu. This is to offer a print alternative from your website. This is not for global distribution, rather simply to allow those internet savvy people that want a physical copy. They will have to go via the Lulu press website to finish off the transaction. The financial incentive to the seller is actually pretty low, however there is something truly magical about having your creation appear as a high quality physical object for a reasonable price. I have much more to
4. Draft2Digital. This is for everyone not on Amazon. I can’t tell how big a market this is but it will include Apple.
5. IngramSpark. This is for the global distribution to anywhere but Amazon or the internet.

Each channel has a very distinct strength. None of them are ideal, but the beauty of it all is that they exist and someone with an idea and an iPad can put together their ideas into this world and offer it in a number of ways. My view is that I will begin to offer each of these distribution options in the sequence above. Launching them all on the same day is not possible but I don’t think it matters either as the work itself is not particularly topical, rather can be read now or in 5 years time.

Been testing out Descript for editing podcasts. There is a way to do this right and a way not to. Recording and publishing is pretty easy. It’s clear to me that editing is where the hard work lies. Descript is compelling but needs time to develop.

100th episode of the Micro Monday podcast is up. Great overview of the short past and hopefully long future of the platform. I agree that getting all the things that currently exist in Micro.blog more refined and faster is the correct focus. The year of refinement.

The part I didn’t completely agree with was the suggestion by Patrick to add a tag into the profile. My site is random. Sure there are plenty of sites with a singular focus, most personal sites however do not fit this limitation. One, two or thirteen tags would not be enough or representative of my site - depends on how granular you want to get really. That is the charm and need of our digital gardens. We can plant anything we want in them.

So how do you make discovery better? That is a difficult one when everyone’s thoughts are so random. I think we need to move away from topics and concentrate our efforts elsewhere. Maybe the reasons to discover anyone should be more about tone than topic. How you quantify this tone is a tricky question to answer. I do think that understanding how often someone publishes is key to this equation as well.

I have struggled mightily with working out how best to use Twitter. It is a tool with infinite connections. The main issue is that it has never clicked with me. I struggle with finding people to follow and what to post on a regular basis.

The reason I keep coming back to the platform is down to reach. Now in my second year of publishing my newsletter, it has expanded considerably since those initial steps, but it is a long journey.

I keep coming back to this quote from Seth Godin:

Marketing is the generous act of helping someone solve a problem. Their problem. Marketing helps others become who they seek to become.

What problem am I trying to solve? Trying to help people understand the built environment and what we are doing to destroy or protect our planet by way of construction, architecture and policy.

On a personal level, nothing that happens in American politics has any direct effect on my life. Not really. It’s no different than what happens in Australian or Russian politics. In fact what happens in Belgium or Germany is likely more important to my life and I certainly don’t pay them any attention.

I have a bipolar relationship with America. I consume a lot of culture that is produced there (from books, to shows, to music, to software, to electronics). I mean the ultimate endorsement is that my wife is half American. Yet I certainly don’t believe in the rhetoric and I can see many of the social issues that the country has to manage (systemic racism, rampant gun control, undemocratic electoral system, etc).

One of the best books I’ve read about America’s future is called Fall of the Empire. Its not talking about the British one, that fell long ago. No this was published over a decade ago by the same guy how predicted the fall of the USSR, then at the peak of its power and the reasons why, back in the 70s. In this book he described the reasons for the fall of the American Empire. Many of the topics he covers were played out yesterday.

So why am I glued to watching what is happening? Part of it might be that its a well documented car crash. This week has shown just how much of a sham the whole system is. Sure you might argue that the system will get rid of the bad players eventually, proof that there are some checks and balances. The thing is I want to try and remember when an angry mob stormed another parliament building in a first world country? Seriously. The fact that it got this far shows how poor the system in place is. Hell, even countries like Lebanon, with governments soo incompetent they kept a nuclear bomb in the center of the city for over 10 years, is able to control it’s population from entering the parliament building.

More broadly however I think from an early age I realised that the American machine touched many of our lives but in an indirect way. Democracy is in decline. I am someone raised in a democracy and enjoy the freedoms that comes with that. I certainly don’t want to swear allegiance to any ‘dear leader’ nor do I want to operate under the watchful eye of a ‘party’, communist or otherwise. I believe in democracy.

Diving into print on demand publishing, ISBN numbers, Ingramspark, KDP, Lulu and everything in between has been overwhelming.

Selling something online is very easy. The fact that there are options available to tap into all these markets is amazing. Going digital is the smart way to go.

My main issue however is that I have gotten properly excited about the physical object in front of me. I’d like to offer this option to others but not sure the smartest route. Ingramspark can get you into the building, if you take some risk (offer a high discount and allow returns). Lulu royalties make the exercise nearly worthless (0.79 cents for a $15 is a joke). Not a real fan of any of these options.

Issue 040 of my email newsletter, In Abeyance is now out.

Always feels good to get an issue done. Most times I have no idea what I am going to write about until a week before it needs to go out and there is some frantic searching and banging my head against the wall for a few days. I might even get a little grumpy. This is the 23rd issue of the year and what a year it has been. Next issue is the last for the year.

From my introduction:

As a child one of my deepest fears was that of loosing my eyesight. Something about living such a life filled me first with sorrow and dread. With age that point of view transformed into admiration and respect. Throughout my life I have not had any real interaction with anyone that is visually impaired or blind. One of the only real interaction that I have had is those elements present in the built environment meant to cater to the blind. These elements have become more noticeable to me since moving to Copenhagen last year and were the clear inspiration for this week’s issue.

If you are curious about the built environment I urge you to sign up, best email on the subject you will get roughly published every two weeks — I’m trying to resolve my publishing schedule so that I can get rid of the roughly part of that sentence.

Story Exploder

This is now becoming a bit of a tradition on this site. During the month of November I will take my hand at a little bit of short fiction that I make up on a daily basis. This breaks every rule I have for writing. Not knowing what the story is ultimately about and where it is heading is both scary and foreign to me - which is why I insist on doing it. It puts my brain in a mode that I am not used to. It stretches it.

This year was exceptionally hard for me. I came close to giving up a few times around the half way mark which I think is the hardest part of the story. The first 10 instalments are about building the world, the middle 10 instalments are about giving the characters something to do. The last 10 instalments are about bringing it all together.

The prompts are interesting for me in that they help get things kicked off at the start. Even though they are a single word in 50 they do play an important role. When I know where the story is meant to be heading is when I drop them. This year I used them all the way up to day 25 (shows how completely lost I felt this year).

The final story (and title) will be published next week after I have had a few days to let it all sink in. I can get the editing machete to the whole body of text, fine tuning and pruning it into something more coherent. What’s currently published on the site is the first draft. We all know that mostly these are…raw.

Plan is now to go back to writing about randomness that I have actually missed this last month and a half.

Earlier this year I semi stepped away from the Micro.blog community. It certainly wasn’t anything the community did to me. The truth is I enjoyed many of the interactions and the people I ‘met’ on the platform. The problem was that I didn’t like how I was using the service as a crutch for boredom.

This is a service that doesn’t really gain much from me constantly checking it. There are no advertisers involved, and yet I found myself checking the feed. Maybe it was a muscle memory, built across a decade that will be hard to break after a few short months? So as part of my digital detox I cut everything out.

A little while later I thought I could be an adult about this and decided to try and introduce it back into my life. Sadly, I found I was falling into the same trap as before.

I love the service for my hosting and the near limitless ways of publishing. It works perfectly for me. In fact this year I am going the full premium. I don’t like it for reading. So what to do? I created a new tag in Feedbin. Slowly I am pushing everyone’s feeds in there and now i have a dedicated place that I can go and access in a more purposeful manner.

What is missing is the interaction. I wish there was a way to interact with these posts directly from Feedbin, or at least be able to go to the site and somehow leave a comment. My comments made to a post in Micro.blog is then displayed on a persons website. I don’t know what the easy way to leave a comment on a persons website is.

Spent some time sorting out through my various text editors and how I want to organise my typed words. Taking inspiration from the system for my notebook, once again I realised that a single app for all the different threads and channels is foolish. By dedicating an app for a specific task, you are signaling to yourself that this is what I want to get done right now. This is where this type of work lives. Also different apps have different strengths - play to their strengths.

Drafts

This is where all my blogging happens. The direct publishing to Micro.blog is exactly what I want. I open the app and can get writing straight away. If I want to have something with a title, it’s also there. No constraints or worrying about length. Just type and publish.

I set this up with two specific managed workspaces. Default is unpublished and therefore publishing ideas. The second is just an archive of everything that I have written and published.

iA Writer

This is where the projects live. I have synced this up with iCloud. I have individual folders for each project and so when its time to work on any on project I know where to go.

1Writer / Obsidian / Software Agnostic

Finally this all clicked for me. This is my second brain. Using the Zettlekasten method, I am able to start collecting and writing information knowing that it is a single folder of text files. Lives on Dropbox and honestly I can’t wait to have hundreds of thousands of notes in there. The more the better as long as they are tagged and interlinked with each other

Simplenote

I decided to also add Simplenote to the mix. This is really just a place to brain dump. Sometimes I like to work something out. It doesn’t really fit into any of the above modes. Sometimes its clearing out junk from my head, when I don’t want to write things down, I want to type them out. Its not a major part of my routine, but I have found that these random text files find their way into different places. Why not create a dedicated space for this. I have called this my Brain Cleanser.

So you want to write and publish a newsletter? Based on my admittedly limited experience (when compared to the torrent of newsletter out there), it seems that the first 100 subscribers is a battle of attrition. Having said that, it is also the single greatest thing I have done online since coming online. In every respect I wish that I had started my letter 10 years ago (when I had the original idea). So here are 5 dos and 5 donts for those thinking or at the start of their journey:

Dos

1. Do have a clear overarching theme you want to talk about, week after week, month after month. The time between newsletters creeps on you surprisingly quickly.
2. Do have a schedule. If you’ve never done this, start with once per month. Then ramp it up to twice. Only when you know you have the process under control, switch to weekly if you dare.
3. Do remember that this is a marathon, not a sprint.
4. Do have an opinion. People are there for your voice and your thoughts. Developing this will take time. Embrace it.
5. Do enjoy the process. You’re more likely to last.

Donts

1. Don’t be afraid to start.
2. Don’t be discouraged when days, weeks and sometimes months pass and you get no new subscribers.
3. Don’t get discouraged when someone unsubscribes.
4. Don’t be discouraged when nobody forwards your email on - this rarely happens. I don’t think anyone has ever forwarded on my newsletter.
5. Don’t worry about the final look. Email design is an exercise in futility. You could try but there will always be cases when the shit breaks in the worst possible way. Keep it simple, text based, with a few images probably is best.

For 26 issues I have been using Mailerlite to publish my newsletter. For the most part the experience was perfectly fine except the friction between moving from Markdown into the final email.

I switched over to the rich text editor (which admittedly in beta) and while the output was better, the friction has become unbearable. The interface in Safari iOS also does not work, by their own admission. Simple things like adding a link or deleting is just broken. Its been months of literally no improvement. The few times I have sent a support email, I’ve not had my issue resolved. Again I’m not a paying customer, but what I was reporting were bugs that could be fixed.

So what to do? I think I’m going to be moving back to Buttondown. The time spent on formatting a newsletter or wrestling with it could be better spent doing something else entirely. I am trying to reduce the friction in my life and my projects and this certainly qualifies as an important step.

What about the design? I’ve decided it doesnt really matter. Not really. What matters is that my readership get a well formatted email, that is typographically rock solid with a few minor items elements of flair. It’s likely too late for this issue (which comes out on Wednesday) but from next issue for sure.

I must have imported around 500 photos and posts from Instagram and Tumblr, which leaves around 1000 posts over a 2½ year period. At first there is a question as to the reason for posting. Simply, it is primarily for myself. My site is one of the first sites I visit every morning. I head on over to the previously page and relive and remember my life from 1, 2 or more years ago. I don’t publish my deepest darkest thoughts (those I chuck into my journal), rather it is fun milestones that I would otherwise not record.

Today for instance was the first time that I took Zane on a long bike ride. It was a little bit stressful at the start as I needed to set some ground rules and make sure he kept close by and didn’t get in the way of other cyclists. Once we were inside the park it was a pure joy of just riding our bikes and exploring a park filled with trees towering above and around us. Its a moment in time, captured for me to see and relive in the future again and again.

A small update about Affinity Publisher for iPad right at the end of this article. They cannot make this fast enough as far as I’m concerned, but I would say beginning of next year is the earliest we’re likely to get our hands on it.

One of the things about being hyper aware of where your time goes on your machine (because it’s not all that common), is that you can actually analyse what you are spending time on. In this case I spent 2 hours on a single chart for the upcoming newsletter. Why? Because AmCharts. While super powerful is also pretty hard to understand what the 2000 options actually do. I am thankful that the service exists, I do wish that there was a simpler option available. I’ve considered just making things in numbers and publishing images. Whats stopped me is that the interactive charts are delightful and can contain a lot more information that is digestable.

For over a year now I have watched Seth Godin publish to his blog every single day. What struck me the most about these posts was the endless well that he was pulling ideas from and giving them form and pressing publish. What’s even more impressive is that he has been on this train for years. I always wondered what his secret was. He attributed to not having a television. I barely watch television, except specific shows that I watch with general intention. So why couldn’t I focus? Why couldn’t I do the same?

What was missing from the conversation was my phone. My phone offered the biggest distraction. It had hijacked my brain. This was then further augmented by how I used my computer. I let it happen to me again and again, even though I thought I was being mindful. While I was able to create and write a decent amount during this time, I did so inspite of being overwhelmingly distracted. It was very hard to focus. I’m now looking forward to seeing what I am able to produce and read and draw and create with this new found attention.

We’re taught a lot of things sadly we are also ignorant of a lot more. While the digital technology can be powerful and liberating, it can also have the ability to hijack our attentions without remorse.

Obviously there is much to love about the latest update to iA Writer. I’ve been on the beta for a while now and just can’t get enough of this app (huge fanboy). So definitely looking forward to their physical product that they hinted at years ago, which I’m hoping ties into this tenth anniversary. Also they always nail the music for their promo videos.

Some people bake bread. Others collect watches. Some watch birds. I collect iOS text editors. Scratch that, I spend an incredible amount of time considering, testing and playing with text editors on iOS. It all started out looking for a text based nirvana. Ultimately my quest for that perfect editor has come up short as it has now dawned on me that the perfect text editor doesn’t exist. Rather what I have come to realise is that there are several amazing editors that have a number of strengths and weaknesses. The trick is to find the collection that best compliment each other in your quest for capturing and further developing your thoughts.

My collection of apps that I love on iOS are:

1. iA Writer
2. Editorial
3. 1Writer

To that collection I have recently added Drafts as it has become my replacement The Archive on the Mac. My long held belief that the modal design established by Notational Velocity¹ was/is the ultimate method for capturing and searching for text. Drafts introduces another way that is equally as powerful, only different.

Getting Over the Omnibar

In The Archive, once you open the app, the cursor is in the omnibar which lets you create or search for a note. In creating a note, you type in some words, which then become the name of the file and the first line of the new file. It’s an incredibly powerful concept that has not been replicated successfully on iOS yet (although there have been some flawed attempts).

Drafts does away with the search. For Drafts, by default, the first thing that you are allowed to is start writing in a blank file. That is where you start. If you want to search, there are three ways, press the search icon in the bottom right hand corner (prime location), press shift+command+f or pull down to reveal the search. The reason this is better for iOS is the fact that this entire app is replicated on the iPhone, with a single exception (that I can find), which is pinning the sidebar (this seems to only be available on the iPad).

Getting Over the Clutter

One of the things that drove me away from using Drafts was that I thought it was too cluttered. I had bought into the minimal aesthetics provided by iA Writer and I liked it that way.

Except Drafts is more function over form. In many ways, this app is the total antithesis of iA Writer. The icon isn’t great (although you can change it). Both the overall graphic direction of the app and the iconography for the groups sidebar leave a lot to be desired. I’ve quickly learnt not to care.

Being able to write whatever I want and then call up a function and publish to my website in microseconds makes the function trump any ugly iconography found within the app itself. That is where I started seeing that there is more to this app than meets the eye. I published exclusively from it for 2 months before realising that all of my thoughts should live in here. Thoughts that need to be expanded upon can get moved over to iA Writer for a more refined experience.

Workspaces

The Archive has a similar feature to this, except it wasn’t graphically implemented as elegantly as this. This feature is available, but it is mostly hidden.

What I love about this particular feature is the fact that I can flip between different frames of mind. I want to write some thoughts about engineering? There’s a workspace for that. Something for this site? There’s a workspace for that. General reference texts? Yup, there’s a space for that.

Deep

Rearranging the text within a file, as per blocks, sentences or lines is an excellent idea that I’ve not encounter anywhere else. The fact that it has a shortcut for just about everything shows that the developer understands what is important. Version history for all your text is there and readily available within the app. And on the list goes. @cm called this app deep which is such an excellent description of what this app has to offer.

Subscription Model

I don’t agree with the subscription model used and would have preferred if the subscription model established by Sketch was used instead. You pay once and continue to use the app that you paid for at that point in time for as long as you want. For 1 year you get all monthly updates. If you want future updates after that year, you have to pay again. Not sure what happens to all my Workspaces when the year is over tbh.

Having said that, there is plenty of room for the app to improve. The aforementioned graphical shortcomings. The selection of themes could be better, maybe something similar to those provided in iWriter Pro. The fact that there isn’t a baked in path to exporting the text as a series of files, which goes against some of what I want (but there might be a pretty easy workaround for that).

These are quibbles in what is otherwise one of the most pro writing app on any platform.

Oh my, when did this happen. Pages for iOS is actually a legitimately good app for setting up a document. While I would honestly have preferred to be using Affinity’s Publisher, Pages is actually pretty handy during these times that I don’t have a Mac - although I am working to resolve that situation.

I really miss my MacBook. I’m a firm believer that using the right tool makes you happier and is therefore more sustainable in the long run. Since September, I have been relegated to using my iPad Pro exclusively for all my needs. In some ways, it has been both a revelation and joy to use. In other respects, it has been abject misery.

Protability

Where the iPad shines for me is it’s portability. This thing is incredibly light. Solidly built and has an incredible battery that keeps on going and going. The fact that the pencil is magnetically attached to the top means it’s always charged and ready to go. All in all, it is definitely the road warrior that I imagined it to be. I opted for the 12.9" version, which is right for me, in most cases. It gets a bit big when I write notes, but this is mainly a mindset thing that I need to get past and work into my routine.

Keyboard Support

While this isn’t perfect, I use this with two keyboards. One by Apple and it’s perfect and the other by Logitech and it works great at work as I need to flip between a Windows machine and my iPad. The only issue I’ve ever really had is that sometimes support across various apps has been pretty buggy recently. Most notably with iAWriter, the keyboard goes haywire if I switch between apps. Its restored only when I restart the app.

Apps

Apps like GoodNotes, Procreate, iFontMaker, Stop Motion Pro, and PDFExpert truly shine on this machine in a way that other apps cannot. There are the apps that have been adapted exceptionally well. iA Writer. Soulver. Drafts. Affinity’s Photos and Designer work surprisingly well but they falter by the limitations of the iPad’s poor support of a mouse which is where these types of apps shine.

Then there are the apps that don’t exist on the platform. The Archive. Affinity say that they are working on a version for their Publisher app, but until then, creating books isn’t really all that possible - sure there is Pages…but I mean, c’mon guys. It’s called an iPad Pro. No Web Developer tools of note. The ones available are barely ok, but certainly not as powerful as what already comes with desktop safari.

Buggy Software

This is something that I have noticed a sharp addition of bugs for iOS13. It’s not been great. Everything from dictionary support to weird and wonderful bugs with the keyboard support. As this is my main machine for production, it’s frustrating.

Fonts

Yes, you can have your own fonts installed, except for some reason, it’s only through third party apps (none of which are very good). Why the hell isn’t this baked into the OS?

Fixing It

I know it’s fashionable to pile onto the iPad at the moment. The truth is that it wouldn’t take very much for me not to pine over my macbook.

1. Add the Safari Developer Tools.
2. Give proper mouse support to the OS.
3. Design a nice interface for font management.
4. Sort out the bugs related to the keyboard support.

Moonshot

The thing that would be the real game changer for me is if the 3rd party developers are enticed to actually develop real productivity software for the platform. I’d love to see ports of Mac apps on iOS. Make it happen Apple. It’s the sort of crazy shit Steve Jobs would ask for. This would allow me to have The Archive, Hemingway, Highland, Marsedit and any number of other great Mac apps that I have already paid for and currently have no way to use.

If you publish on the internet you should watch Sacha Baron Cohen’s keynote address at ADL’s 2019 summit.

I’ve seen a great number of people struggling with finding their voice online. They clearly want to have a presence online but don’t know what to say, or more over they loose the momentum for themselves and end up reposting things or being passive clients scrolling and reading.

I know I had that exact same problem and I honestly think it’s a missed opportunity. So here are two reasons why you should publish your voice online.

A Gift for Your Current Self

The gift for your current self is really to help you develop a new skill. A skill that shows up regularly to do something for yourself. That lets you gain some clarity to your thoughts and your writing that is not meant for your own consumption. The most basic of skills is being able to write and communicate ideas. These skills are needed in every single walk of life. Having a personal site allows you to develop those skills day in and day out. Over time you will be able to get your point across faster and more succinctly.

A Gift for Your Future Self

You might think that you are writing this website for others, but actually if others engage with it that’s just a bonus. That should not be the reason you do this.

Rather, think of your personal site as a present you’re giving yourself 5 years into the future. 10 years. 20 years. You are cataloguing events that meant something to you. Thoughts that were important to you at the time. It’s a time capsule that you wrote and documented. You won’t get to really enjoy and appreciate it till a little later.

One of the questions that is then asked is, why publish it at all? Why not just put it in any type of app for journaling. Different bucket. You fill every bucket differently. The type of things that you write on your site are thoughts, ideas, that you can enjoy in the future. Your journal are is there to try and help you work things out in your daily life. It’s a fine line to walk, but once you have worked it out you’ll appreciate that they are two different things.

Writing The Mark was a really interesting and unfamiliar process to me. First of all it was written as a narrative, while all my previous works of fiction were written as scripts intended for being made into comics. This was obviously a very different muscle that I had to use. For example I didn’t know how to format dialogue (even though I’ve thousands of line of dialogue), I ended up referring back to this page time and time again throughout the month. Apart from the mechanics there is also a question of flow and structure. Two elements I really only considered in the most superficial manner. I will be revisiting the story to see what I did wrong and how I can improve.

One of the limitations I included (constraint is the mother of all creativity), was to the daily word count to around 50 words. This constraint allowed me to peck out the story predominantly on my iPhone. Every night after work I would take 5-10 minutes and just type something out. Having the bar so low meant that I was able to do achieve my goal every night, even when I was busy, or tired or had a headache.

As the process moved forward I finally realised that this was the perfect way to move several fiction ideas that I have had serious brain crack over. So that’s what I’m going to be doing. As an experiment I’m going to see if I can move a story that I’ve had in different stages, 50 words at a time. The thing is I also think that my site isn’t really the perfect place to show the work as it progresses, rather to showcase completed chapters. So I’ll be writing it on a service I’ve been looking for the right project to try out. So I’ll be running a new newsletter that has nothing in it but text (eventually a little logo) that I will hopefully publish to on a daily basis. Once a chapter is written then I’ll publish that on the site.

Why publish it at all? Part of it is building accountability and movement behind something that I otherwise won’t touch. It’s also a break that my creative brain needs in addition to the work that I carry out over on Stet.Build

Took my MacBook to the store to get fixed. Fingers crossed it’s a simple thing and not the motherboard. Quick update on using the iPad Pro as a MacBook replacement - it’s utter misery. While the iPad excels at drawing and marking up, it’s bollocks for coding/debugging website designs and publishing a newsletter. It can be done. It’s just a total ball ache - something you can put squarely on the software not the hardware.

This November, as part of the Micro.blog community, a series of prompts were published every day by Jean. My idea was to use some of these prompts and write a novella. The constraint was to remain with roughly 50 words per day. I have allowed myself the opportunity to go back and edit previous instalments as the story develops.

I will hopefully collate them all with a few sketches. Today is the halfway point of the story, so if you want to catch up, head over to the dedicated category page

I consider my life online across three distinct stints. The first ran been 2004 to around 2010. In that time I wrote around 1800 posts, many long form articles. The second stint was across 2010 and 2017, which I refer to as the nomad years. I meandered from platform to platform, changing the reason for writing with every move. The third stint began last year and with it brought much needed focus.

I’ve managed to publish 680 new posts (the rest where stuff I imported from Instagram and a handful of posts from Medium). During this time, I was rediscovering my writing muscle. Rediscovering how to write online again. And most importantly, rediscovering why I should post online. I’ve been writing more consistently online than ever before - usually it seems that I don’t go more than a few days before getting the itch. Going forward I really hope that I start writing more about the process of writing and drawing for my online publications over at Stet.Build.

I’ve been writing online in some form or another since 2001. Around 2004, blogging really took off and there was a period in time where the system was more important than what was written. Over the years I’ve meandered from one system to another. What I’ve now realised is that the system has a major influence on the type of things that I end up posting. Micro.blog is a truly excellent system for posts that run around the 200-400 word range. It’s great for posting single images. It’s likely pretty good for podcasts and a single video as well (I don’t have any experience for these types of posts yet). Where it fails is anything beyond the confines of those walls ¹. The reason? Friction.

If you wanted to write something a little longer, the system lets you. It even allows you to add a title if you want (you may not want, Micro.blog doesn’t judge). You want to add an image to that post? Go ahead but you have no say in where that image gets added (until after you publish). Friction. You want to add multiple images? Sure, but go to the upload section and then copy paste the link and add your image tags around it all. Friction. You want to edit something? Sure, but it takes a while to load Posts > Edit. Friction.

I’m not saying this is wrong, I’m just saying it’s a thing to bear in mind. What all these little friction points do is allow the software to set a tone. You want to do anything more taxing? You’re going to need to work a little bit harder. Which more than likely means that you won’t. The system plays a part, consciously or subconsciously.

5 months and 2 weeks into the year and I’ve just completed 16,000, written and edited, words. I’ve published 8,500 of those words as part of In Abeyance.

This could only have been possible using the show up every day and do maximum 30 minutes at a time method. My aim was to carry out at least one session every morning as a bare minimum. If there was more juice in the tank, I’d do some more. I may not have hit my mental goal but the system is clear. I’ll get there eventually, one day at a time.

I don’t like to write about the system I’m using but I thought it would be good to check in a couple of times a year and see the lay of the land.

Micro.blog is a personal online publishing platform with a social layer built in. It differs from other publishing platforms in a few key ways:

1. It actively encourages you to use your own domain name.
2. It’s simple to publish.
3. For some it is a paid service.
4. It provides you with some stats.
5. It provides you with some control of what your site looks like.
6. The social element is managed.

I think that Micro.blog handles many issues in a wonderfully elegant fashion. However there is plenty of room for improvement. While I’m aware that @manton is but one person who is already doing a lot, it’s important to recognise that the sustainable thing is to have more than one person involved in the ongoing development of the platform, dare I say multiple people. To help him get to that ideal, the hosted option needs to become more appealing.

The Canonical App

I’m not going to focus on any of the apps that have been made for Micro.blog (official or third party), as I see these as nice to haves. For me the canonical view is the one presented at the website. This is the view that everyone on the platform shares (regardless of operating system). I think overall the simplicity of this interface is what makes things work.

Items that I would like to see included at some point:

1. Let me filter the type of posts from people I follow. So if I want to see everyone’s photos then let me do that. Let me see everyone’s podcasts. Sure you can do something similar from the discover section, but that’s everyone (?) on the platform.
2. It would be nice to see how many responses have been made on any individual post. Could be a small little number next to the ‘conversation’ link.
3. Allow more than one photo to be uploaded at a time.
4. Highlight the emojis that are supported on the platform directly underneath and allow you to insert them from there.

Photos

Photos should be showcased on a grid of three squares across. Ideally this should be another standard page found at mydomain/photos**.**

Micro.blog already is able to distinguish photos pretty well. Let me see my photos in a gallery. It’s one of the feature that made me stick with Instagram for as long as I did.

Stats

Micro.blog does not, by design, show the number of users that follow you. My view on stats is that as this site is focused on my words and pictures, then my stats should also focus on this output.

I would love to see a yearly view of the number of posts I’ve made on a month by month basis. Each month could have two bars showing how much stuff gets posted to my site and how much stuff is interaction with others.

Additional stats could highlight the total number of photos, posts and interactions. What is the number of people I am following (I can see this in the iOS app but not on the web).

The reason for this is simple. It’s gamifying the experience. Except I’m now in competition with my previous self.

Subscription

This is finally being offered, but not officially (blink that reply and it’s gone)? I’d like to see a yearly subscription to the service become official.

Two Streams

Micro.blog by it’s nature has two streams. The first is your website stream, and only includes your posts, while the second stream is the social one that includes everyone you follow and your posts starting with an @ symbol. As a user both are important, yet they are given wildly different treatment.

Your contributions to the conversation are still your words. These are currently only found in micro.blog/yourusername. I would say that these should either be allowed to be ‘published’ to your blog as part of your stream or captured in a separate page with a link back to the original conversation.

Design

I initially used to love the fact that I was limited in what I could do which was to play around with the CSS and that was it. Since then the addition of updating the footer has been added. A great additions for sure, but I want full control of my site. I’m paying for hosting, eventually I’d like to be allowed to control the whole look of my site.

I recognise that this is likely a much more involved design change, but it’s one that I think is important to provide as an option, so that there isn’t a pretty fundamental reason to go self host and attach an RSS feed in.

Categories

There are currently 9 categories that you can contribute towards. It’s a good start, but hardly what I’d call comprehensive. I’d like to see a great deal more categories. Architecture, Engineering, Comics, Stationary, Country-specific-categories, and the list goes on.

Clearly part of a much larger project, which may require the recruitment of moderators in this space, but again it needs to expand to allow people to huddle around the digital campfire.

Expectations

I absolutely understand how things have improved over the last 10 months since using the service and that I’m effectively providing some ideas/thoughts about how the service would become even more enjoyable for me.

Affinity Publisher Beta is out today! I’ve been waiting for a long time for this. With both Photo and Designer becoming my go to apps for digital creative work, this is the last piece of the puzzle. So excited.

The plastic I use in my life is really starting to grate on me in a bad way. To me it signals a lack of progress, in many ways, for a race who excells at creating problems and then solving them. The latest episode of Hello Internet highlighted that we still have a long way to go.

In it CGP Grey claims that the UK government reviewed the impact of plastic bags when compared to other kinds of bags and that the cloth totes require 20,000 uses to become more sustainable. The document he was probably referring to was this one here, from the executive summary a very handy table is given:

Sure, still a decent number of times that each type of bag needs to be reused, but a far cry from 20,000. I certainly use my bags at least 100 times a year, and have had them for 3 1/2 years so far….they could last for many many years to come.

While it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you’re writing on your website for the ‘internet’, the truth of the matter is that you’re actually writing these things and obsessing about it’s design primarily and sometimes exclusively for yourself.

These words are a snapshot in time. Of where you were and what you were doing. They might be reflections on what happened in your day or what’s currently captured your imagination.

Why not just write this in a journal you say? Because ‘publishing’ something on a site provides a level of finality. A level of accomplishment that a mere text file in a folder, or a journal entry in your notebook doesn’t provide. Not that there is anything wrong with either of those approaches, rather the online published version is different.

One of my favourite new feature/plugins on Micro.blog is ability to create an ‘on-this-day’ page that collects your past posts that happened….erm, on this day.

The reason it’s so great is that it’s another clear tool, made for you. It’s made to allow you to reflect on what you’ve written in the past and what you were thinking 1, 2, 3 or more years ago. If you’re not using this feature, then you’re missing out on one of the joys about blogging, which is reflecting on what you’ve written.

Published nearly 3 1/2 years ago, Jason Santa Maria’s On Web Typography has been sitting on my shelf the entire time. Only really started digging into this over the weekend.

One of the fundamental challenges I faced towards the twilight years of my original stint of writing and publishing on the internet (that was nearly 10 years ago now) was the very fact that I didn’t have a singular focus. As my focus meandered, it became a challenge to continue writing meaningful words to capture those ideas with any regularity.

I remember trying very hard to find a focus, even started writing exclusively about Tesla, before I got bored of it all and annoyed people by cluttering up with Facebook feeds with re-posted articles I’d written. By trying to shoehorn myself and the little audience I had, I effectively lost the drive to continue.

This time it’s different. Very different. There are several reasons for this:

1. To provide me with a location to collect all my thoughts on the subject of reducing mental overhead.
2. To provide everyone else with a resource that might help them achieve something important in their life.
3. I’m now clear that I don’t care to heavily about what the site looks like. Thankfully Blot (and David) have me completely covered in one of the best hidden secrets on the internet.

For the last year and a half, I’ve been working in the background on capturing these thoughts and putting them into a coherent document. At the time I thought that the best way to get the ball rolling would have been to buy a domain name that I liked and then start a website — no matter how crude. This was the first version:

It didn’t work. It sat there, unloved, for an entire year, which is just as well. Last year was by all accounts a tough year for me, but this allowed the idea to bounce around in my head. To learn about Stoicism, to regroup and rebalance my thoughts on these ideas that started back in 2016. Sometimes time and space are an essential partner for letting thoughts mature.

If you’re interested in learning more about RMO, head on over to www.rmo.life

I’m thinking about using Pollen to publish the final outputs made on RMO. In a weird way, I’m actually loving the learning slope. It’s geeky but for me the results are pretty spectacular - as evident here and here.

As I start to rekindle my love for writing and publishing online again (I’m still trying to decide on another word to blogging, a term I dislike the sound of), I’ve decided that I actually don’t want to clutter up my feed with a linklog - even if this link log has some exceptionally witty commentary. I’d like to keep this particular site dedicated to my more thoughtful digital explorations.

What I hadn’t considered was the power of the system that I actually have in place already in my Pinboard account. Interesting links already exist there. The only part of this system I’ve not really been using is the description or notes section. You can subscribe to the RSS feed here.

What is really annoying to me is that I’ve had this Pinboard account for 6 years and never thought to invest the time in it before now.

You have to start somewhere. Creativity is borne oftentimes of constraint. While this is something that has been talked about, finding your own constraints is actually much harder to do in practice.

I’ve always wanted to maintain a voice on the internet. Back in 2004, blogging and the community that surrounded that activity on the internet was an extremely exciting and vibrant. I desperately wanted to be a part of what was happening. The problem was that after I exhausted the initial ideas (which to be fair took years to exhaust) I didn’t really find my voice. The options available to me were limitless…and that was the problem.

What’s in a name

This isn’t the first time I’ve used the term Cerebral Interviews. In my first website, from back in 2004, it was the very first category or tag that I used to describe the general noise that was flowing in my head.

I then tried to use that same term for a newsletter that I ran for a year. The newsletter had a bunch of links and commentary that would be published once a month. It was mainly sent through to my friends and family and received approximately 0% engagement from anyone on the list. Hardly a roaring success but it allowed me to get somethings off my chest.

What I’ve realised is that actually although I love design in general, it distracts me from the actual creative work. I will miss the fun that I’ve had learning HTML/CSS/PHP (I could never wrap my head around Javascript for some reason), but I need to add enough constraints that will allow me to produce more regularly.

Design can now be constrained to the images and stuff that surround the work that I publish, rather than the vessel in which they’re delivered to. Medium has my back.

The Product

Which brings me to the actual content at hand. What’s the point of my existing online. Why not limit my output to links and commentary on my Twitter and Instagram accounts? There’s also all the work that goes into producing Moon Racket!?

Twitter doesn’t allow me to craft an article, or publish comics with the inherent presentation that is available at my fingertips on Medium. Having a platform ready to go will allow me to concentrate on the task at hand and actually just finish pages and publish them is an important one for me.

By publishing here, the amount of fiddling available to me is constrained and that will hopefully help me to focus on the final products.

5 months. That’s a really long time between updates. The truth is that I was creating things until at least the very end of september, it just so happened that I wasn’t really in the mood to talk about them.

The main reason for the radio silence over the autumn and start of winter is down to the fact that I’m relocating to Dubai. That’s been a huge drain on all of my ‘free’ time and drawing and creating has been relegated to the too difficult to deal with drawer.

I have decided to take this time to reflect on what I want to do with my creative output once things have settled down a little bit more.

Moon Racket!

I’ve got 10-15 new strips of Moon Racket! to publish and then I’d like to stick to the routine of publishing something new to Moon Racket! at least once a week for the entire year of 2016. Obviously I’ll likely fail, but I want to at least try.

The main focus moving forward will be to improve the strip with actual backgrounds. I’m painfully aware at the general lack of backgrounds and environment that is missing (or at least that could be better defined than right now).

However I won’t be publishing 4 panel strips. It’s not how my brain works. Rather I’ll be writing stories that will take up several panels, maybe entire pages with these characters in them. I have the first story roughed out, so just need to get cracking.

Chroma

The real push in 2016 will be for me to finally draw and start publishing Chroma. This is a very long time coming and I feel that if I don’t do it now, I’ll likely never do it. After multiple attempts at starting this project, I’m now of the mind that it’s better to get it out there, in whatever form it comes, rather than trying to get it perfect from day one. It will never be that so I should stop worrying about it.

Creative Output

If I’m able to publish 1 page a month of Chroma and the weekly Moon Racket! page, then 2016 is likely going to be a MONSTER year . I’m fully aware that this is an ambitious programme for me (considering what goes into moving to a city like Dubai), but this is work that I’ll be carrying out first thing in the morning. The intention is to carry out 1-2 hours of creative output a day, every day, every morning.

I’ve not published any Moon Racket! In a while, but couldn’t help myself. #superbloodmoon #supermoon #bloodmoon #moonracket #webcomics

I just published the first full colour Moon Racket! strip, Taking a Minute. I’ll be getting into my overall setup at some point, but this is a decided shift from me as I have until now published only in black and white.

This is not a sign that I no longer believe in black & white, but maybe rather the strip is better served on the internet with a splash of colour - I’ll report on whether that theory holds water after a few of these have gone out, but my feeling is that this small change will make a noticable difference.

As this is still the first one, like with most strips, there will be an evolution of the colour art as I get more comfortable with the process and try different ideas.The only downside, is that the Moon Racket! website will now have to be tweaked slightly to capture this colour palette (which is slightly different from previous iterations of colour that I’ve used in promo art).

Recently I’ve started listening to the podcast Hello Internet - if you’ve not had a chance i recommend you listen and actually try and stick through it as its a pretty good conversation between two interesting hosts.

Just finished episode 3 (although I’ve also listened to a few of the later episodes, and then jumped back) but the concept of 4 dials or light bulbs in ones life was discussed. The concept stuck with me however what I realised is that actually my dials are different due to my physical location. So to recap the original four dials:

• Family
• Work
• Health
• Friends

What I’ve realised is that while the first 3 items remain relevant in my life, the last one however has dropped effectively to 0%. In its place my comic book work has taken its place.

When we moved over to Doha the idea of starting fresh with no support network to start from was a daunting one. The truth is, we’ve not actually really developed this support network in any way since we moved here 3 years ago. Apart from the guys in the office, I’ve really not ventured very far in this realm. I try and maintain my connections with my friends, but seeing as they are far away, this was one aspect that I knew was going to take a hit. The concious decision was that we didn’t expand that circle at all.

By the Numbers

This is effectively what my percentages look like at the moment:

• Family: 30%
• Work: 50%
• Health: 5%
• Comics: 10%
• Downtime: 5%

Will I ever become a professional cartoonist? Not when I only am dedicating 10% of my energy to the task, it’s really at best, a hobby, a simple side project. My job as an engineer isn’t going away any time soon and my family time and health time are as low as I’m going to go at the moment.

The only part that I could take away is the downtime (watching movies, television, surfing the internet, reading a book or magazine). Those things however are important to keep you sane.

The problem I have with this breakdown is that the reality of the situation is such that I am actually using that 10% and doing wonders with it. I’ve been able to create multiple websites that I run quasi-regularly. I’ve been able to create a web comic that I’ve invested an incredible amount of time to write, draw and now publish. I do acknowledge however that this has been at the expense of other things, and that’s fine for the moment, but it’s not going to stay like that for very long.

I’ve decided to use Medium as an additional platform from which I publish the new season of my comic, Moon Racket! Multiple factors coalesced to make this decision.

In the past I have used 3 different platforms to publish and distribute my comic strip:

1. The official website, hosted on Tumblr
2. The newsletter, powered by Tinyletter
3. Tapastic (at least in the first season).

Moving forward I’ll be publishing on Medium, Moon Racket! and through the newsletter. So what brought about this change? To answer that question, I think I should answer another question, how have the other platforms been faring?

The truth is that each of the above platforms provided very specific (detrimental) restrictions on the artwork itself, but also allowed for a potentially wider distribution. The problem is that this wider distribution never manifested itself in a meaningful way.

Tumblr

Moon Racket! is hosted on Tumblr, a platform usually suited for rectangular posts that fit within the stream that is present for eveyone. The restrictions on images are therefore made to suit their platform. The maximum size of image that can be posted is one that is 1200px wide. On a retina screen that’s the equivalent of a 600px image. The effect of this restriction is that my comic always appears blurry.

While this is a nitpick, for a perfectionist like myself, it’s a deal breaker.

Newsletter

If I thought that Tumblr provided restrictions, then I was in for a rude awakening with my newsletter experience. This one can only be typically shown in a 600px wide image, otherwise it will break most inboxes.

My experience with Tinyletter has been mixed. But ultimately my question for a beautiful experience was wrecked by that platform’s constraints. In mitigate I’ve moved things over to Mailchimp, which I’m hoping will offer better options and experience.

Even then, I’m still not showcasing the art in the best possible way.

Tapastic

This platform holds promise, but once again there are size restrictions to the images that can be uploaded. While the platform as a whole does allow for a plethora of things aimed at comic content creators, I don’t believe that I would be able to reap many (any?) of those benefits.

It’s also being lost in the sea that is being published there. Some of which is aimed at a very different audience.

Which brings me to Medium.

The editor provided on Medium is without question the best editor on the internet, have tried a very large number of them.

The other instant win for Medium is how the platform chooses to deal with images. They’re not just first class citizens, they are allowed to exist in a manner that makes them shine. In fact the more I write about this, the more convinced I am of what an idiot I am for not considering this platform earlier.

The biggest question I have is whether I can connect with an audience for an all ages comic strip about a robot (Corgan) and his worm friend (Alfie) that live on the moon, that’s made of cheese on Medium.

That’s a journey I’m happy to take, because if nothing else I’ll take it in style.

Ever since I ‘relaunched’ the Moon Racket! website I’ve not been particularly happy with the footer. I always knew that it would have to change. My initial use of the footer was to effectively send people to different parts of the net that related to all things Moon Racket! - the Twitter account, the facebook account, the newsletter and this process blog. All of these links have now moved to the very top of the website, in a nice menu bar, that’s out of the way, but fully accessible if needed.

I received some negative feedback, when I publishing the first season, that sticks in my mind. It was from a woman that didn’t really understand what was going on in the series. On reflection I totally get that. At the time I couldn’t do anything about it, as the stories and art had been created. I knew I had to do better with the second series.

In an attempt to make the series more accessible, the stories have been written to not be as presumtive, but also the website should be first time reader friendly. To address these two issues, I’ve decided to use the footer as a What You Need to Know section, complete with character head shots and names, using those sketches from the previous post.

Routine is everything when you’re trying to develop and build something. To aid the routine from happening and not being taken off the rails, constraints are typically added into the mix.

A couple of weeks ago I decided to publish something new every weekday on this here process site. While I definitely don’t want to go meta (and blog about blogging), I thought it was important to note that I’ve come up with a way to help guide me through this publishing schedule. Each week I’ll aim to publish a post in one of these categories:

1. Marketing
2. Design
3. Character Development
4. From my Desk
5. Tools of the Trade

The reason for publishing is that it focuses my mind to always be creating. It’s also a great way to help me work things out. Publishing something online is somehow more concrete that writing a bunch of words either in notebooks or in random text files that live in my Dropbox folder.

As this is a process site after all, I’ll be posting many more of these collections as I start to publish the new season.

This is one of the first images I ever drew using blue pencil lead instead of standard graphite. It’s also one of the first images that shows all the recent iterations of the characters are located in one image.

This image however was done pretty quickly (over an evening in fact, pencil to ink) and was meant to be a way of flexing my muscles. I didn’t even know what the characters were saying to each other (or why). You can read the final strip here.

My biggest error (and I don’t know how it got through) was Woz’s stamp, where the perspective is all wrong. Sometime you just need a simple idea, which lets your pencil move - what you sacrifice for this freedom of movement is that the end result might not be as polished as you would hope.

There is much to like about Tumblr and publishing on Tumblr. There are however some constraints that I have been trying to work my way through. High resolution images on Tumblr are constrained in size to 1280px for normal high res photos and 2560x500px for panorama photos.

The problem is that Moon Racket strips don’t really fall into either category. I could potentially use the panorama photos setting, but that would mean making things fit into a 500px height (which isn’t great). Here’s a look of what the panorma would look like using the latest weekly (which dropped yesterday):

Alternatively I could upload the image as 1280px. On a retina display that works out to be a 640px image (which honestly is tiny). My website allows for a 960px width - on a retina display that’s 1920px. If I do let Tumblr do it’s thing, then my crisp black lines that I’ve worked long and hard on, become this blurred mess.

The only other solution I’ve found is to host the images on Flickr and then link them over. I get to post the image that I want in any resolution that I please. This solution does not make for very good Tumblr citizen but it makes for a better web site.

The irony of course is that both Flickr and Tumblr are owned by Yahoo! - so the image is hosted on their servers anyway. The whole thing is just annoying and you end up loosing out on some of the cool features that are inherently a part of Tumblr - for the sake of a few measily pixels.

Currently in inking mode on Season 2. Super excited to start publishing this soon.

You know what I miss? I miss daily blogging.

5 years ago, the last time I was blogging on any regular basis, there was a rhythm to my publishing madness. Every morning would bring with it the promise of writing something new; sometimes it would be trivial, other times it would be ‘important’. The trick was to show up every day.

The last year has honestly stripped me of very little personal time as I juggle being a husband, a father and an engineer. What little spare time I do have, I try and relax by drawing, inking, reading or watching a little bit of television as time permits.

In that respect my online worlds are effectively extensions of a life diary that I’m creating piece by piece. I might own the content, but it’s hosted by someone else.

When I sit and consider what I’ve created over the last several years, my online endeavours are not high on that priority list. I’ve created countless websites, written at this stage thousands of posts (large and small) and while it did provide me with an outlet, none of it will last very long. Maybe none of it will matter except as a marker from a different time in my life.

My online space has now become somewhat diluted across multiple platforms (an Instagram, several Tumblrs, a couple of Twitters, a Dribbble, a Flickr, a Tinyletter). What happens is that I end up not generating as much content for each platform but what I’ve realised is that this might not actually matter. What matters is work that I find meaningful that will last.

Which then leads to be to start questioning my general output. What work can I look back on objectively and be proud of? Over the last 4 ½ years my output has been limited to all things Moon Racket. This was a pretty concious decision on my part. Focus on a single project allows it to grow it’s potential. This is the work that I have devoted my free time for, and this is the work that I hope will blossom over the coming year.

I’ve been drawing Moon Racket for several years now. You wouldn’t know it, as I’ve only released around 23 images in total. The truth is that I’ve got hundreds of sketches, doodles and even strips that have not been released (apart from the odd snap on Instagram). There are two resons for this:

1. Quality. The creative process and the quality in the first few years really wasn’t that great. When I look back at Season One I cringe (and that was the art I was ‘happy’ with at the time). However if I didn’t persevere, then I wouldn’t be in the position I am now, where I am comfortable enough to draw the characters in a few short minutes.
2. Schedule. This one is actually a self imposed reason. My thinking being that I cannot really predict how often I’m likely to finish a drawing and do all the necessary post-production work. So instead the idea was to bank an entire season before I started publishing. The problem with this decision, is that nothing gets published (in my case over a year) and any momentum is lost.

That is actually an issue that I would like to address. The simplest solution is to publish things as they become available and ignore the whole issue of schedule. As a companion to this solution I’ve also decided to create small single image strip (created in my favourite notebooks of all time, the Midori MD A5 notebooks) that takes a few hours to draw and ink to provide stop gaps between more involved strips.

Here’s the first image.

Corgan’s been through some tweaks ahead of the release of Season 2 of Moon Racket. Super excited to finally restart publishing this series soon. #moonracket #ink #cartoon #comics #webcomic

It’s been a while since I checked in on progress for Moon Racket Season 2. My original deadline for this season has shifted somewhat, but my plan was somewhat flawed in that I thought I could finish off the art the same year that Zane (my son) was born - I am that hopelessly optimistic. That was never going to really happen. The good news is that I made incredible progress while I was on holiday and thankfully I am still riding that momentum. When I left in December I had 6 strips fully completed. Now a little over a month later I have over 20 strips that are in varying degrees of completness. In addition to that I was able to work through the thumbnails for the remaining 10 strips. That’s right, unlike the first season (which was 20 strips in total), Season 2 will be expanded to 30 strips.

Frictionless Creation

I attribute the fact that I’ve been able to create anything at all to the fact that I’ve made a concerted effort in trying to remove as much friction in the creation process as possible.

1. Make sure that each script has the thumbnails worked out for the entire page. Doodle, change the script if necessary.
2. Do all the lettering. I use Sketch for this as it’s my Freehand alternative. This gives me the word placement so that I can taylor the art accordingly (make sure the character’s head isn’t covered by a balloon).
3. As I’m drawing all the artwork on A3 board, I need to cut them down the middle. I then also drew all the panels in, so that I have one less excuse to actually getting started on the art (ie doing something without actually doing anything).

Hopes & Aspirations

One of my desires for this strip, is that as I continue to draw it in the future, I’ll always be able to look back and see a progression from the previous year. It means that I’m trying to make the strip better and make myself better at the creation process. What I didn’t anticipate was seeing a fluidity in the characters between the very first strip I drew and the recent strips.

This poses the question of whether I should go back and rework the original drawings to meet that fluidity or leave them as they currently are as a marker. My initial reaction is to leave them as they are. This is an ongoing strip, rather than a finite graphic novel. Things don’t actually have to look consistent (nor do they, when you compare the very first season even).

Deadlines

I know I shouldn’t really tempt fate and declare a deadline, but I want to be able to start publishing the newest season in the spring some time and feel that this goal is completely within my reach. The next massive hurdle that I have to start considering is how I promote the hell out of this series once I’m finally ready to actually publish. More on that in future posts.

I missed this.

For 10 years I’ve published to the internet through Broken Kode. These last few years that site has meandered a great deal, but has now finally settled down to a very focused topic, which ironically is what is was always intended in the first place, namely a process site for my comic book and creative work.

Although I intend to rebrand it (and therefore discontinue the name that has held up for 10 years), I think the change will be a positive one.

This site (khaledaboualfa.co) is wearing it’s heart on it’s sleeve. There will likely be little focus, which is actually by design. My intention is to give myself the room and space to express myself and my thoughts freely and comment on any topic that happens to capture my imagination at the time. Hopefully I’ll get some people to stay for the ride.

Like I said I missed this.

A few months after publishing the last episode of Moon Racket Season One, I’ve now finished writing the second season. If the first season was all about seeing a project through to completion, the second season is taking the idea and adding some polish.

One of the things I’ve always enjoy watching is the natural maturing process a body of work sometimes goes through while the creative minds behind the work hone their skills. Although I can only dream of reaching the lofty heights reached by a series like The Simpsons, an apt comparison in one regard would be how the first season looked compared to what we recognise as the characters now. There was a maturing process and this is something that I aim to achieve for Season Two, both for the writing and the art.

I’ve already spoken about the proposed increase in paper size (and therefore Panel Size) of the coming season. One thing I realised very quickly was just how important the initial scripts were. The first season had a bit of looseness in the scripts. I would often times rewrite the thing as I was drawing it - sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.

For this season I decided to really pour into the details of every script. I would not go on to the next one until I actually had completed the one I was working on. If I got stuck on any one strip, I would remove it from the document I was working on and paste it into a second document that acted as my ‘graveyard’. This allowed me to focus on one strip at a time. What I realised was that some ideas took days, weeks to mature or develop in my head and other ideas effectively wrote themselves. What I also realised was the last 5 episodes were extremely difficult to complete, which might have been a mental block on my side, or the fact that I had a lot going on in my life at the time.

Today marks 20 consecutive weeks that I’ve published a new episode for my online comic Moon Racket, so I thought it would be nice to take stock and review the experience.

All 20 strips in a nice overview image.

Rather than being completely harsh (which would come easily for me when reviewing my own work), I think I’ll first highlight some of the things that I thought went well.

Firstly, the strip never missed a ship date. All 20 episodes were released every Sunday for 20 weeks. Secondly, the general reaction on both Facebook and Tumblr have been really great and I’m grateful to everyone who has liked, shared or read the strip. I’m still debating whether or not Tapastic is worth it, but I do it for the 3 that have subscribed and hopefully enjoying the strip.

Overall, I give the strips an overall 5/10. There are some stories that I think worked out better than others but the truth is I could have written better stories and could have developed the characters better.

One aspect that I am genuinely happy with is the evolution of the artwork. I still think it’s ok and only the errors jump out at me, but at least I can see a proper improvement over the life of the strip.

With that in mind the series is going to take a break for a few months while I write better stories (currently I have 10 in the bag) and come back stronger with Season Two.

Earlier this year I completed rewriting the script I have been working on for many years now. I originally conceived of the idea in my 20s. Now in my early/mid-30s I’ve finally completed the works in a fashion that I believe I can actually start making some progress on this idea by drawing it and eventually publishing it.

Although it’s never the tools that make the end product, the right tools remove unnecessary friction. In this regard, Highland has been an irreplaceable solution for creating scripts. I thoroughly recommend it to all script (and non-script) writers.

Earlier this year I contemplated shutting down Broken Kode, a site that has been part of the internet landscape since January 2004, a total of nearly 10 years online. In a last attempt to keep the name and the site alive I tried changing things around to see if I could maintain my enthusiasm for it.

My first attempt was to try and focus on all things Tesla Motors. However I quickly realised that actually I was writing to an audience of one (myself) and that I wasn’t enjoying the process all that much. My next idea was to use the site as a simple Tumblr, a digital drawer for things that others created. My attempts can still be read here.

Ultimately I felt that the site deserved better treatment. In the last few months I have started publishing my comic work, on Moon Racket and I have several other projects in the pipeline as well. So this site will be used as a way to log my ideas and showcase the creative process, in the attempt to better understand what I am doing and how I could be doing it better. The posts on this site will be more limited, however each and every one will be infinitely more personal.

Maintaining focus with your side projects is a difficult task. Life doesn’t always give you all the time and space to do this at your leisure, then again life doesn’t owe you anything and it’s up to you to use the time that you do have available wisely.

Currently I am publishing Moon Racket weekly and have finished writing the script for my next project. Work on the new project is going well, as I’ve also managed to draw the first couple of pages of this series, with the hope of actually publishing it at the start of the new year - also on a weekly publishing programme.

I sometimes lament the time that’s come and gone that I could have used to create the art and words; however the main problem was understanding that sometimes you have to take the plunge, create something (even if it’s not up the standard that you want it to be), with the understanding that the more you do something, the better you eventually become at it.

The Olympic City

The Olympic City is an ongoing photography project by Jon Pack and Gary Hustwit (director of the Helvetica, Objectified and Urbanized documentaries) that looks at the legacy of the Olympic Games in former host cities around the world.

The printed version is limited to 1000 copies, and retails for $100. However there is much more affordable (and manageable) digital copy which can be found here.

Always start with a name. A good name.

We have planes, trains, automobiles and boats. What if there was a fifth mode. I have a name for it, called the Hyperloop.
— Elon Musk

Hyperloop.

Imagine a world where travelling from San Francisco to Los Angeles takes less than 30 minutes. A method of transportation which is meant to be 4 times as fast as a train, and 2 times as fast as a plane. Now imagine this method of transport is available to you as soon as you arrive — no waiting for everyone else to get there. That’s the future that Elon Musk is proposing with his hypothetical high-speed transportation system. Details for this system are extremely thin on the ground. In fact, apart from the name and a few choice quotes (by Musk himself) nothing substantial has been published or released about the concept;

Although Musk was meant to publish a paper on it back in December 2012. That has now been pushed back to the 12th of August 2013, according to this tweet by Musk. The Verge has an interesting article on how they believe the system could potentially work.

However until Musk releases his Alpha design documents, there is no real engineering to review.

The first time Hyperloop was discussed was in this interview on Pandodaily, with Sarah Lacy. Based on the little that has been shared, one might think that Musk’s idea will be akin to something like the ‘tube’ transportation system in Futurama or The Jetsons. Many of the ideas (commercial space travel, commercial electric cars) that Musk discusses could have been taken straight out of science fiction novels. The reason you should take these ideas seriously, is because he makes those ideas a reality.

Musk’s idea doesn’t appear to be completely unique (as opposed to the science fictious world). Joelle Renstrom, (who teachs at Boston University) has a good breakdown of the realities of this technology. One such reality is the Aeromovel. The other is the Evacuated Tube Transport a system that has been proposed by the ET3 consortium. The main question is therefore how does his proposed system differ.

As if the potential of this idea wasn’t intriguing enough; the way that Musk’s idea could become a reality is equally as intriguing.

I’m considering just open-sourcing. Describing the idea, saying this is what would be done, if someone wants to do it then they could do it. Maybe I should patent it and open-source the patent to anyone who can make a credible case that they can do it.
— Elon Musk

I think it’s safe to acknowledge that Elon Musk sees the world in a different way to most people. Probably one of the best articles I’ve read about him, is unsurprisingly on Bloomberg. Between commercial space travel, electric cars and pneumatic transportation, he is building the future that we were expecting. The future we dreamed we would be living in, when we got older.

Image Comics is now allowing you to keep the digital copies of the comics you buy from them - about bloody time. What’s also incredibly interesting however is the percentage of the sales that the digital copies account for the overall sales of the publisher. Last year it was 12%, this year they’re projecting 15%.

Will the digital percentage ever surpass the actual physical monthly books? I think this is inevitable and actually a great thing for the creators. The main point is to put the books in the hands of people that want to read them (and pay for them) regardless of the format.

I stopped buying monthly comic books years ago. However I would definitely consider buying digital comics and then a trade collection if the art, story and overall package warranted it.

If you have any interest in sequential art (in all it’s forms, regardless of country boundaries or language) the passing of Kim Thompson has made us all that much poorer. The comics industry has lost a true pioneer.

The latest version of Byword 2 was released yesterday for all devices. The most exciting addition being the ability to publish to Tumblr directly from the app itself. I’m not completely convinced by the new yellow accents this new version brings however (mainly found in the radio buttons).