Sun, 14 May 2006
Linux Journal - Advert Delivery System?
While I'm thinking about magazines I'm going to complain about Linux
Journal. I've been a reader for over six years now and apart from the
horrible "Cooking with Linux" columns (where Marcel Gagme badly pretends
to be a French restaurateur) I've been happy with the content. Mick
Bauer's "Paranoid Penguin" and "At The Forge" by Reuven Lerner have long
been highlights.
Recently the magazines tone seems to have changed a lot. It's now almost impossible to find a two page spread that doesn't have an advert in it. The graphical layout makes it hard to tell where the articles begin and the magazines physical dimensions have altered, making it a bugger to stack.
I'm giving it another issue to find its feet and if it's no better I'll stop reading it. When I started looking for Linux information my reading options were pretty limited. Thankfully, these days, there are other sources of Linux information.
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Posted: 2006/05/14 15:32 | /geekstuff | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Event Signup Emails - What I do with them
I've had a couple of people ask what I do with peoples emails addresses
once they've sent me a request to sign-up/register. In an attempt to
prove I'm not making millions with them (but if you know a way, I'm
open... :)) I thought I'd document the reasons I ask for email addresses
and what I do with them afterwards.
The reasons I ask for them are pretty simple: so I can adjust the venue if we need somewhere with a bigger capacity. The original Frameworks night venue held 40 people. We ended up with 207 people in the audience. Without knowing how many people were going to turn up I'd have turned a lot of unhappy people away.
Secondly, some venues require a list of attendees before they'll let anyone in. If we go somewhere that does this I give them names but not email addresses. This way they can check you off their list but they can't spam you.
The last real reason is so that I can send interested people last minute updates/amendments. If Murphy bites I'd like to let as many people know as early as possible. Most people read their personal mail before mailing lists so having your address available may make the difference between a cold night on your own outside a locked building and sitting indoors watching Firefly.
After the event I nuke the mailbox I stored the sign up emails mails in, and the sent mails about the event. I keep a tally of how many people registered, for future planning, but I don't keep any specific details on individuals. Hopefully, making the why more transparent with ease suspicions. Yeah, right.
PS: The most amusing one so far was a man complaining (via email) that he didn't want me having his email address...
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Posted: 2006/05/14 15:10 | /unixdaemon | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Magazine Collection Rules
I've recently had to get rid of a bundle of magazine back issues, some of
them from as far back as November 1999 (sysadmin mag, an article on Expect
that I've still not read...) and I've decided to put a couple of rules in
place to help keep things sane:
- Any magazine over three months old goes.
- No more than 20 magazines in the pile at any time.
The first rule serves two purposes, it stops me saying "I'll read that on the weekend" month after month, and it helps keep my information up to date. We're in an industry that never slows (we'll ignore the irony of me having so many dead tree publications) and while working through my backlog I found whole issues that were now completely redundant to me. In-depth articles on IPChains, Kernel 2.2 and similar don't really deserve the shelf space anymore.
The second rule will hopefully stop me buying too many magazines that I never get much out of. I read, well buy, 8-10 technical magazines a month. And a lot of them ain't much use anymore (*Cough* Linux Journal *Cough*). By making myself conscious of how many I've got at home hopefully I'll start dropping this number. Which'll save me money, shelf space and from getting annoyed at the quality of the articles. It's not anal, it's proactive!
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Posted: 2006/05/14 14:49 | /geekstuff | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Copyright © 2000-2005 Dean Wilson
