Personal Experimental Art, October 2020

 So, Jake Parker started inktober as a way to encourage people to learn how to draw. That is a noble goal. Unfortunately, he then decided to make a business out of it. And while there's nothing wrong with the idea of trying to make money, it seems he does it in an antagonistic way to the community. Very unfortunate. 

I think this is because he consulted with legal professionals, which is rather prudent, to be honest. However, it seems like the advice he's getting isn't the type that is community friendly. That is, yes, it's legal. No, it won't endear him to the community he's worked so hard to build. Very regrettable. 

I hope he can bounce back from this episode. Consider it, lesson learned. I certainly hope it won't be the case of either dying a hero or live long enough to become a villain. 

In the meantime, I won't be doing Inktober. I'll just do my regular drawing practice and call it Personal Experimental Art, October 2020.

No need to be fancy and call it OctoDraw, or anything like that. Maybe somebody wants to call it Octobrew and end it with Octoberfest? Now, that's a thought. 

Alphonso Dunn vs Jake Parker about Plagiarism

 There's some excitement a few weeks ago where Alphonso Dunn uploaded a video on YouTube, alleging that Jake Parker plagiarised his book. It was rather comprehensive, and I can see why Alphonso would think so. I'm not so sure that Jake Parker can be said that he plagiarized Alphonso's book. 

A necessary disclaimer is that I am not a lawyer, and this is my opinion only. You are free to disagree and to consult your own personal lawyer regarding this issue. Bearing that in mind, though, I do have some cases to base this on.

First of all, is this a clear case of plagiarism? I don't think so. Is Jake Parker in the clear? I don't think so, either! In my opinion, this case lies somewhere in between. Alphonso may not be able to claim a clear plagiarism, however, I think he may have a chance to claim copyright violation. Let me show 3 different cases where Jake Parker could have done differently, and be essentially in the clear.

Case 1: Homage

It is no secret that George Lucas' Star Wars is heavily based and influenced by Akira Kurosawa "Hidden Fortress" movie. We know this because George himself keep praising Akira Kurosawa's genius in film making. He willingly admit that Akira Kurosawa's genius is why Star Wars movie is so great, artistically speaking. That's homage. 

Could Jake Parker have done something similar? He could have. He could have contacted Alphonso immediately and apologized. Followed by a clear advertisement page for Alphonso to use to advertise his book. If Jake would freely admit that Alphonso's book provides his main inspiration and swing traffic that way, I'm sure Alphonso wouldn't be so upset.

Can Jake Parker do that now? I don't think so. It's been a few weeks now, and there's still no statement from him about the issue. Perhaps he's contacting his lawyers, and was told to change enough materials/details as to avoid plagiarism charge. It's the old derivative/transformative issue. By changing enough details, it changes from derivative to transformative.

Case 2: Licensing

If you look at the movie "Airplane" starring Leslie Nielsen, then you may be forgiven to think that it is based upon the popular airplane disaster movies of the time. What it was really based on is the movie "Zero Hour". I hope I get that right. I saw it on YouTube at one time, but it was so long ago, so I'm having trouble recalling it properly. Apologies if I get it wrong, and please let me know so that I can fix it.

If you compare both movies, then you can see that both have the same plot, characters, setting, and movie beats.  How can they get away with it? Easy. Pay licensing. In this case, the producer of Airplane movie pays the license of Zero Hour IP owner to be able to produce their own version.

The same holds true with music industry, too. Look at Weird Al Yankovic. How can he get away with making all his musical parodies? He licences all the songs.  So, Jake Parker could have contacted Alphonso Dunn, and asked for license to provide alternative materials based on his work.

Case 3: Co writer

James Cameron's Terminator movie was based on an old TV episode written by Harlan Elison. Both are famous in their own right. If you can imagine, James Cameron was a new player in the movie industry with his Terminator movie at the time. So, he based it off an old TV episode, but neglected to ask Harlan Elison about it. Predictably, Harlan got angry, and with James Cameron refused to budge, the case went to court.

James Cameron refused to settle because in his opinion, enough changes has occurred so that the movie is no longer derivative, but transformative. Unfortunately for him, the studio decided to not bother going to court and decided to settle anyway. Harlan decided to settle for co-writer credit. Presumably, he got some writer's fee money, as well as writer's royalties off the movie. 

Obviously, this is an ugly way to settle things, but this can happen if neither Alphonso nor Jake is willing to settle.

So, what's my opinion about it? If I was in Jake's position, I would have approached Alphonso and asked permission to use his material, and either do a homage, license, or give him co-writer credit. I'd be happy to give him some licensing money. In fact, I'm sure Alphonso would have been thrilled had Jake ask him to either provide a summary of his techniques (with proper license), or even ask him to provide a chapter for the book (with proper author credit). Not only this was not done, Jake even refuses to acknowledge Alphonso's work at all!

I'm sure Jake Parker have access to lawyers and maybe they told Jake that he was legally in the clear. However, that doesn't change the fact that Jake hid his sources and refused to acknowledge it. Regardless whether or not what he did was legal, I firmly believe that what he did was unethical, and that I would not be participating in his Inktober any longer. 

And as personal note: I have already subscribed to Alphonso Dunn YouTube channel, and that I encourage everybody to do so. He's really a good teacher, and you can learn much from him.

I did not subscribe to Jake Parker YouTube channel, and was not really motivated to do so. But especially now. I think Jake Parker has artistic talent, but the way he does business just rubs me the wrong way, and I'm free to vote with my wallet. I hope Jake will learn enough to be successful in the future, but for the time being, I have other artists to follow.

That's my opinion of the matter.

An unexpected find: my SmallBasic programs is used.

So, apparently somebody from Hungary(?) is impressed enough to use my programs in his book. There's dictionary programs, but also my Fortune Teller, Morse Code, and Rock, Paper, Scissors.  Hmmm. I didn't expect that one liner would be impressive enough. 

Strangely, when he attributes me as his source, he dated it as July 11, 2012. There was no code at all that day. That blog entry was for "Nasty People", or as Jay Carter calls it, "Invalidator".

Well, I'm happy that at least one person finds my programs useful. I was hoping that he'd show the soroban (abacus) program,  though. :)

 

Journal Writing

 It turns out that I'm being hopelessly lost without some kind of journaling. I have too many projects going on simultaneously that I'm being overwhelmed by it all.

I tried bullet journaling for awhile. Unfortunately, BuJo is not good enough for me. I modified it to act more like a Project Management Journal, and so far so good. My productivity improves enough that I'm starting to catch up with my projects.

That is until I ran out of pages. Surprise! It turns out migrating the journal entries takes an incredibly long time. I bought a thick one, and it doesn't do it for me. I'm still using it as reference thing, but not for daily entries. So, I'm back to using standard journal. I'll just carry both until the migration process is complete since it turns out that one thick journal is equivalent to 2 standard sized ones.

I'm using Leuchtturm journals. It turns out Moleskin isn't really compatible with my pen. Lamy Sahara with EF nib. 

Which one is more important? Pen or Paper? I'd say pen. To me, pen is more personal than paper. I'd rather write with a great pen on average paper than vice-versa. 

Update after a year of non-activity

Today is nearing the end of April 2020. It has been a long time, indeed. I have been busy driving a truck where I actually work 60 hours per week, every week. Unfortunately, that doesn't leave much time to do anything else.

However, with the quarantine that is on-going, I finally found some time to set up my computer. It's Raspberry Pi 4, all set up for video editing and 3D raytracing using POV-RAY.

In the meantime, I'm polishing my Project Management skills. It has been a whirlwind 4 weeks, going on 5 weeks. However, I think I'm starting to get comfortable, now. I have been able to go forward with my projects, so hopefully, I'll get something to show real soon!

Moving from G+ to blog

Wow. 2014 was the last post I did? Phew. That's a long time! I've been hanging around G+, but now that is closing,  I'll be back posting here.

So, I got two Fortune  Cookie messages:
1. It's a good time for you to travel. Take a vacation.
2. You have a charming way with words. You should write a book!

I do like to travel,  but I don't like taking  vacations.  So, I'll be changing my job to truck driver,  doing dedicated route on the northern states. It's somewhat a light load, compared to what I'm used to, so just like a vacation. Job starts April 1st, BTW.

So, I'll be putting up my portable computer and write something in between. 1000 words per day ought to do it.

The Art of Social Media Review

A review of The Art of Social Media

The book The Art of Social Media is written by Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick. They are basically heavy social media users. So, it is my pleasure to have their knowledge available in the form of this book. Disclaimer: I received a free electronic copy in exchange of a review.

The nice thing about reviewing a book, especially non-fiction book is the fact that I can use it to do stuff with it. In this case, my usage of it was light. It's my fault, though. I was expecting to use it with my Nanowrimo project, and this is the first time in years that I failed to complete my project. Oh, well. Better luck next time.

The book itself is excellent, typical of Guy Kawasaki's work. If you haven't done so, I suggest that you check out his other books as well. They are all terrific. To be honest, there's some information overlap across that many books, but I don't mind. I'd rather have all the knowledge contained in a book, than having a book refer me to other books just to complete my knowledge. The fact that I have an electronic copy on my Kindle is a bonus. It's very convenient to just open it up and read, without having the burden of carrying papers around.

I think I screw up on my first item. It says that my profile should give the impression that you are likable, trustworthy, and competent. I guess the name "Simpleton Geek" isn't all that likable (who likes a geek?) and competent (Simpleton? Eh, move along, please). You can be sure to trust me, though. Would it help to say that I am likable (at least to other geeks), and competent?

Overall, I took notes on the first chapter on how to spruce up my profile. Maybe not enough to go the whole professional looks in one evening, but enough that I should be able to be more approachable, and not at all clueless looking. Yes, the book features a whole chapter on "cluelessness."

Chapter 2 shows several ways to curate contents. That's because according to Guy, a twice weekly content is not enough. Mind you, I subscribed to several on-line comics, and some of them are  3 times weekly. I even read Megatokyo webcomic, which if you're in the know, once-a-week update is not adhered to most of the time. I have to differ with Guy here regarding frequency. I don't know about timeliness, but sometimes people are responding to my old posts. So, I'd like to post well-crafted posts. Unfortunately, that's a weekly schedule for you, as I am terribly busy and lacking in free time. I tried to do a little each time, but it didn't work, and I predictably burned out. 

Still, if you do as much research as I do, the book does list useful resources that you can tap into, of which I am eternally grateful. I don't have to do 6 hours of research daily anymore. Now, I can compress it down to just 2-3 hours. Eh, not much time saved? Oh, well.

Chapter 3 is basically the meat of the book. What are you trying to say? What kind of posts will people find popular? Will you find a date on Tinder? These and other questions like them defines this chapter. I was just feeling very sad. If only I had known better. Then again, there's no time like the present to start improving yourself. Already my head is spinning with ideas on how to re-phrase certain planned posts. Thanks, Guy and Peg! What you write down here is worth the whole book to me. I know it's kind of silly to say that the a mere chapter is worth the whole book, but I'd say this holds true for me.

I do have some issue regarding some advice. Giving free Wifi to an event is great. Not providing password to the wifi is incorrect. Yes, if you put on password, it'll have to be posted everywhere. But you'll see the network name and connection, and this will mitigate the man-in-the-middle attack. I certainly don't think that a free wifi is a big deal to risk that and absolutely refuse to connect to free public wifi, which means that the existing wifi is useless to me. If you have the means, then by all means provide more than one, with at least one as protected "premium" version.

A very useful plan is provided for a book launch at the end. It provides a comprehensive step-by-step method to promote your book on Amazon, Goodreads, and other platforms. It is certainly useful to anybody who has any aspiration to promote a product or service on social media. Highly recommended.