Fan To Pro - The Blog of Professional Geekery

Know Your Rights

With the exception of my last installment of “Beyond the Loading Screen,” this is my last post for 2011.  If there's one big thing I learned this year, it's this: Know your rights.  Know your rights and defend them.

When you get a job, especially if you’re a young person working at entry level, your employers may try to take advantage of you.  Don’t let them.  Do a web search of what workers in your country/state/province are entitled to - the government’s official site should be the first hit on most search engines - and read.  There are rules set up to protect you.  Learn them. 

This applies to anyone at any job, but it is especially important for geeks.  There’s this sense that since you’re working towards your dream job that you’re asking too much for your rights to be upheld too.  We get the idea that there are sacrifices that must be made.

Gimme My Carrot!

“You have to study hard so you can get into a good college so you can get a good job so you can retire and not have to worry about living in a box and being eaten alive by sewer rats.”
-many people’s parents



Something frustrates me when people refer to the carrot-and-stick approach to motivation.  Certainly, the original tale* about the boy who cleverly gets a stubborn donkey to walk was told by geeks.  It applauds coming up with a creative solution to a stubborn problem.  However, the hero and subject of the story are the boy and his idea, not the donkey and the problem it posed.  So why then are we, as students and employees, cast as the donkey in modern carrot-and-stick allegory?

Surely, people learn best when they learn gradually.  Large projects are completed little by little.  I only hope that it’s just the “little by little” part that people are picking up on when they compare those that work under them to the donkey.  Of course, this somewhat misses the mark, as the point wasn’t that the donkey had too far to walk.  It was that it wouldn’t walk at all.

Launch or Be Lunch, Day 15 - Con-Tro-Ver-Sy! (Cue the Prince Music!)

Today we're going to talk about controversy in comics and webcomics, why it can be good and why it can turn around and bite you.  Hard.

Warning: this topic really will likely offend, so if you're the sensitive type, I'm not going to be offended if you skip it.  But if you're willing to chug on, then let's get started.

Launch or Be Lunch, Day 17 - Originality is SO Original, Part 2: Composition is Not a Crime

Aaaaaaand we're back.  Yesterday, we talked about the concepts of originality vs. unoriginality, and why unoriginality isn't rated high enough or that originality is overrated; in the end, it's how you treate the unoiriginality in an unoriginal manner.  In a sense, it's like the concept of Fair Use in copyright: it's the transformative and new meaning to the source that counts.

And now it's time to get into that little shibboleth. Hang on to your pens and pencils, boys and girls, because what I'm about to say is probably going to turn a few heads at best and floor people at worst.  Also, because I could go forever on the subject and all its different permutations, I'm only going to stick to how it related to manga and comics; I'll acknowledge that it happens all too often in other media and others can cover that better than I can.  

So with that, let's get started.

Interview: Cosplay for Japan

Jennifer Bentley is a fashion designer who is combining her geekiness with the power of good.  Using cosplay and the Internet, she is raising money for Japan's earthquake relief efforts.  She's having an eBay auction and the two lucky winners will get custom-made costumes.  Then she will make not one but both costumes in just one day, broadcasting the frenzy on Ustream, and donating the money.

Tweet Your Way To Becoming Prime Minister

Yet another Federal election is upon us here in Canada.  What is interesting to note is how our politicians are making use of social media.  One would think that the greatest democratizing technologies of our time would be a key element in modern democracy.  By and large, the candidates are using social media to run their campaigns, and I can see it becoming de rigueur from here on out.  Let’s have a look at why.

Mainstream News, The Culture Gap and Nuclear Nerves

We ran a link to an article in Kotaku a couple of days ago that talked about the one-sided American news coverage of the Japanese tsunami and earthquake, which over-focused on the nuclear aspect - to the point of spreading hysteria both here and among foreign nationals living in Japan - and downplayed the humanitarian side of the crisis.

What this illustrates is that the skills of people versed in Japanese language and culture - a field long associated in the common mindset with going into translating - may be needed in more areas than you think.

Review of “The Adventures of Unemployed Man”

“Do you ever think maybe thinking positive doesn’t mean being happy while you’re getting screwed by the system.  Maybe it means being positive about your ability to change it.”
- Bruce Paine a.k.a. Unemployed Man

Look!  Up in the sky!  It’s a comic book!  No, it’s an economics text!  No, it’s... “The Adventures of Unemployed Man,” by Erich Origen, Gan Golan, and a hero team of artists.

This unique book explains the causes of the Great Recession, touches on several longstanding societal problems, and presents it all in a way that is accessible and fun to read.  Did I mention it’s a comic?

Usage Based Billing is an Unfair Bad Bargain

And now, News from the North* with regard to Usage Based Billing and the coverage thereof.  First, a long and boring intro for those who are unfamiliar with the situation.

All of the radio, TV, Internet, etc in Canada is run by the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC.  That is, if it involves using electricity to send information a long distance, it’s the CRTC who manages the connections.  Why is it set up like that?  The same reason that everything in Canada is set up as a Crown Corporation and not a bunch of small competitive businesses.  Because, in the early days when Canada was just getting itself together, there was this massively powerful emerging country to the south whose competitive businesses could easily stamp out our own.  Therefore, Canada stuck whatever resources it had all together, so we would have something that would survive and remain Canadian.  The fact that we use our Canadian media to tune into American content anyway is one for the Irony Files. 

Fear not that I have painted a picture of Soviet Canuckistan as a socialist wasteland.  It is required, by law, that our big ISPs (Bell, Rogers, and Shaw) must lease some of the infrastructure to smaller companies.  Even though it’s the big guys who built our infrastructure, they have to allow for some competition.  Now, these little guys often offered better deals and lower prices, until one day...

Dun dun dunnnnn.

The Fluctuating Future of Free

(Yes, I'm still analyzing Free, Freemium, et. al).

So as I've noted many times - and as can be noted elsewhere - giving things away for free builds trust and you can make money with Freemium.  Building trust with free items is an old technique that sadly seems to need to keep being relearned by people.

Free as is rather obvious, is common now with free game demos, free comics, free online books, Freemium games, etc.  We're awash in free things.