Chicken Rescuer

I have no words for how weird this is, but the following actually happened today.

At about 4:00, I decided to go out for a walk and do a few errands—you know, check the post office box, pick up a light bulb at the hardware store, buy some cat litter, that sort of thing. It was a lovely afternoon and this was going to be a very ordinary, refreshing walk. So I walked out the door, down to the end of the block and around the corner, and there on the sidewalk, scratching around in the dirt next to a small tree, were two chickens. They seemed perfectly happy and quite at home on the sidewalk in what is normally a pretty quiet residential neighborhood of San Francisco. They weren’t causing any particular trouble as far as I could tell, and they were friendly enough. But they were, I mean, chickens.

I have been to many places where it would not seem at all unusual to see a chicken on the sidewalk. A farming town in the midwest, say, or a small village in Costa Rica. But in San Francisco, where you can find anything—anything—on the street, I have never, ever seen a live chicken, to say nothing of two live chickens. And I simply had no idea what one was supposed to do upon encountering such animals that clearly did not belong there.

Perhaps, I thought, these chickens, which were not yet fully grown, belonged to the elementary school across the street. I saw two young children in front of the school with their father, and I asked them if they had any idea who the chickens belonged to. They did not. And none of us knew what the protocol was for dealing with an unexpected chicken discovery in San Francisco.

One option, of course, would have been to carry on with my walk; this is, I’m quite certain, what the majority of San Franciscans would do. I had an ethical problem with that course of action, however: nearby dogs were expressing a profound interest in the chickens, and had the birds chosen to escape by crossing the proverbial road, they would undoubtedly have been run over by an SUV. But what am I going to do, take the chickens home, keep them in my bathtub, and put up “Found: Chickens” posters all over town? Continue reading…

November 15, 2004 by Bricolage

Take Control of Apple Mail

When I set out to write about Apple’s Mail application for the Take Control series, I had several long discussions with Adam and Tonya Engst about how to divide the material into chunks of the right size, since we generally aim for 50-page ebooks and we clearly had much more than 50 pages worth of content. But as I started writing, I quickly discovered that the subject matter didn’t lend itself to the kinds of divisions we had come up with. After several false starts, I gave up on splitting the information and just wrote it as one very long document, hoping that a logical way to split the text would emerge after the fact.

After a great deal of mulling over that manuscript, Tonya suggested that I could split off the portion about fighting spam (roughly 20 pages) and expand that into its own complete ebook. The rest of the material would then be reorganized into a second book. It took quite a bit of additional effort, but the final result was a $5, 59-page ebook called Take Control of Spam with Apple Mail and a $10, 89-page ebook called Take Control of Email with Apple Mail.

Now, after all that tedious splitting, the two pieces have been rejoined into a printed book from Peachpit called Take Control of Apple Mail. It’s a gorgeous book, in full color, and includes our trademark free updates—anyone who purchases the printed book is entitled to free downloads of any future editions of the PDF version we produce. Quite a deal.

The only problem was that the book was printed a few weeks too late to meet the reset deadlines for certain large retail book chains. So although you can find it on Amazon.com and in a few bookstores, most brick-and-mortar shops probably won’t carry it until after the first of the year, at which point its days may be numbered, depending on how dramatic the changes are to the version of Mail that ships with Tiger. (A complete rewrite of the book, for example, would be beyond the scope of the free updates.)

Still, it was very nice to get my name on the cover of yet another printed book with barely any extra effort.

November 11, 2004 by Books Mac Stuff

Take Control of Upgrading in Dutch

My first ebook, Take Control of Upgrading to Panther, came out just over a year ago. It has sold incredibly well and received rave reviews; it’s also now available in printed form as part of Take Control of Panther: Volume 1. In addition, it’s the first one of my books to have been translated into other languages. The arrangement the publisher has is that any willing and able party may translate the text into their language of choice but with no money paid up front. The translated ebooks are sold at 150% of the cost of the English versions, so that author, translator, and publisher can all receive equal shares of the profits at the same rate as the original. In other words, a translation becomes worthwhile for the translator only if he or she does enough marketing, and sells enough copies, in the target country to justify the time spent.

The first translation to appear, back in February (four months after Panther’s release) was Japanese, of which a respectable (if not stunning) 181 copies have been sold so far. In June (release + eight months), a German translation appeared; it’s sold only 26 copies, meaning the translator received a paltry reward for his efforts. Amazingly, just last month—a full year after Panther came out—a Dutch translation was released. Total sold so far: 17.

As cool as it is to be able to say my work has been translated into three other languages, I really feel for these folks who have invested so much of their time for virtually no pay. And yet, the reason seems fairly obvious to me: by the time the German and Dutch translations had appeared, the vast majority of potential customers had undoubtedly already completed their upgrades to Panther, with no further need for a book to help them. As it is, I’m only selling about one or two copies a day of the English edition (down from hundreds a day in the first few weeks), because most Mac users who have not yet made the move to Panther are now more likely to wait for Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4), due out some time in the first half of 2005.

Computer books always have a relatively short shelf life, because the products they describe change so rapidly. Thus, any hopes of making significant money from a translation require that the work be done as rapidly as possible after the book’s release. There will of course be an English edition of Take Control of Upgrading to Tiger when the time comes, and though no one has said anything to me yet about translations of that book, I certainly hope that if they happen, they happen quickly. Not just for the sake of the translators, either, but for the sake of the readers!

November 10, 2004 by Books Mac Stuff

T'ai Chi Redux

Morgen and I just got back from a t’ai chi class. As I’ve been studying t’ai chi off and on for about eight years, this is not in itself a remarkable fact. But the circumstances under which we’re now studying are kind of interesting.

We had been studying at the Inner Research Institute for about a year, and though we liked it at first, we had reached a point of frustration for multiple reasons. Our teacher, Dmitri, was great, but there were other things about the school’s approach and methodology that caused us some consternation. Plus, ever since we moved to our current home nearly two years ago, the school was much harder to get to, and the thrice-weekly classes, especially given the commute, were putting a real strain on our schedules. Apart from our pedagogical, stylistic, and logistical issues with the school, our income had dipped to a dangerously low level, and we couldn’t justify the expense anymore. So around September of 2003, we reluctantly decided to drop out.

At that time, we said to ourselves that Dmitri should really start his own school, in which case we’d be very happy to study with him.

So a couple of months ago, Dmitri called me and said that he had just been thinking to himself that maybe the time was right to strike out on his own, when he unexpectedly ran into a former student at the BART station. This woman runs a Montessori preschool a few blocks from our home, and she said Dmitri was welcome to use the space in the evenings to teach t’ai chi if he were so inclined. He took that as a sign, made up some posters, and started classes a few weeks later.

Since about the beginning of October, we’ve been back in class, Tuesday and Thursday evenings. We’re having a great time, and you can’t beat the five-minute walk to get there. We invariably leave with very sore legs, but I couldn’t be happier. It’s been too long since I felt that kind of pain on a regular basis. I don’t exactly look forward to the classes, and the actual repetitions of some of these moves can be grueling, but as I limp out of there, I always think to myself, Wow, this feels good. Maybe it’s just the endorphins, or maybe it’s the ch’i, but in any case the sensation is one of meaningful, useful, body- and character-building pain, coupled with a kind of relaxation I can’t seem to achieve any other way.

If you happen to live in San Francisco, you’re welcome to join us: 6–7 p.m., Tuesdays and Thursdays, 647 Chenery St. in Glen Park (about a block from the Glen Park BART station). Cost is $60 per month (two classes per week). Everyone is welcome, from absolute beginners to advanced students. We do the Yang style short form (Cheng Man-Ch’ing tradition), and will also be doing push-hands probably after the beginning of the year. More info: call Dmitri at (415) 285-1453.

November 9, 2004 by Bricolage
Joe Kissell is a best-selling, award-winning, hyphen-overusing author and technologist, and the publisher of Take Control Books. He enjoys making complicated topics easy to understand. He’s also a husband, dad, and dreamer. Having lived in numerous places in the U.S., Canada, and France, Joe has now settled in Saskatoon.

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