Author Archives: James - Page 71
Coffee on Keyboard
Not a C|N>K event sadly. Somehow I managed to let go of a full cup of coffee two inches above the side table while talking to my daughter yesterday morning about what we were going to do. The laptop took some collateral spillage from the back. It was hibernating at the time and didn't initially look like it was in danger, being on the sofa arm rather than the adjacent side table. After I'd mopped up from the floor I realised that there were splashes on the machine and when I opened it up to check inside the keyboard was wet. So was the inside of the battery compartment. The good news is that I didn't lose any data, although my reserve machine (my 2009 vintage netbook) can't be described as a hot fail over. So I have copied some of the…
Film Review – Big Hero 6
I was a little bemused when I went to see this at the weekend as I was sure that there hadn't been five preceeding This is Disney's latest animation and it is pitched at older kids. Frozen worked well with toddlers and preschool children but this one wants the 8-14 age group. For a start it is a bit darker than Frozen and it doesn't have singing. The death of the parents in Frozen is very tastefully done in the way that the ship just sort of disappears. After that there is little to remind you of their death once the movie skips forwards. In Big Hero 6, Hiro's older brother runs into a burning building which then erupts in a fireball explosion. There are several other references to the death at points in the movie, including attempts by BayMax…
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Book Review – Marketing Essentials by Sally Dibb & Lyndon Simkin
Marketing Essentials by Sally Dibb My rating: 1 of 5 stars This was the main course book for the marketing component of an undergraduate business module (B203). As a course book this was functionally useless. For example the introduction of the extended marketing mix on pg319 is simply a bulleted list. The very next section, where normally one would expect referenced explanation of the concept is about Service Quality. This is somewhat a non-sequitor. This made it very trying to engage with the course material. There are nuggets of useful information in there, and an interesting section on how public and charitable organisations differ from for profit companies. However it is very badly structured, not everything is properly explained or referenced. If the author had written this as an undergrad assignment then they would have failed. What it needs is…
New Books of 2015 pt.2
Here is the second batch of books that I have so far acquired this year, another seven titles to add to the previous seven. So far that makes 14, and my paper book resolution target is still at 20 (but only just, I said I'd try and read five more than I acquired). Like the previous batch there are a couple of late 2014 acquisitions in this group, but some of these are genuine new books of 2015 for me. Here are some of the reasons that I have chosen these titles (where I did choose them, one was an unexpected present). Up Against It by Locke I saw this recommended on Charlie Stross's blog by the man himself. It was cited as being a very good view of the harshness of life in space, especially if you were trying to…
A/B Testing Amazon book sales
A/B Testing is when you try two almost identical approaches out with real people to see which option gets the best response. The only difference between A & B is the thing that you are trying to test. In my trial I had the same science fiction novella available through two Amazon ASIN. Both were enrolled in KDP (there's nothing forbidding this but I'm sure Amazon don't encourage that behaviour). Crisis Point (UK - 2 reviews) Crisis Point (UK - 0 reviews) What was different between these two was that one of the versions has two reviews, both five stars. There are also changes to the wording in the blurb. The test So this wasn't quite true A/B Testing as I didn't perform the free days simultaneously, one was over the Christmas period and the other was last weekend. However…