Gentry Stein is incredible. I have trouble getting the yo-yo to do what it’s supposed to do, let alone anything like this.
Disturbing Disorders: A Brief History of Harlequin Ichthyosis
Harlequin Ichthyosis is tragic and in the past very deadly.
I will warn that there are photos on this post that may disturb some. And I’ll throw on a trigger warning for historical child death.
Personally, I find it fascinating what the human body can do when it goes wrong.
Last Saturday, I was lounging around on the couch watching 5 straight episodes of Forensic Detectives (don’t judge) when I heard my computer ping. Being the internet junkie that I am, I immediately checked my inbox and saw a message from my old school friend, Andy, who is currently studying medicine at Case Western. He had an idea for a blog post, he wrote, but worried it might be too disturbing for my audience. Naturally, my curiosity was piqued.
Turns out, Andy had reason to worry. In the next message, he attached a photo of a 19th-century fetus (left), which is now housed at Museum Vrolik in Amsterdam. The baby had died from a very rare genetic disorder known as Harlequin Ichthyosis, which causes the overproduction of keratin protein in skin. As a result, those with the condition are born with huge, diamond-like scales all over their bodies…
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Filed under Uncategorized
Obsession and Sock Puppets
You want to know what obsession is? Start a Kickstarter campaign.
I spend more time hitting refresh to see if there are more backers than I really should. I think it’s starting to trigger carpal tunnel.
I mean, it’s been a week and I should be a little calmer now. I’m not. I’m totally not. I really, really want this to succeed.
One of the reasons is that Golden Fleece Press donating 10% of the proceeds of Wee Tales to support First Book-Northern Virginia. (I’m the chair of that First Book Advisory Board.) That would be a tremendous bonus to us.
Kickstarter doesn’t allow charities or even mentions of charities in their entries, so it’s sort of a secret or a special surprise for people. I think it’s something that needs to be shouted about.
The fact that the sock puppet video is insanely cute is beside the fact.
And that there’s a new magazine coming out at the same time as I hear one has closed means I’m doubly happy to be a supporter and an editor on the project. (Yes, I put my money where my mouth is.)
Check it out here:
Donate, spread the word, laugh at the puppets and show them to your kids. Just get the word out. Please.
Filed under Business
AiW: The Entire Text of Alice in Wonderland as tattoos
Okay, cousins, here’s the thing, I would totally risk the allergy potential of tattoo ink for a project like this. (Lost At E Minor)
Alice isn’t the only work they’re doing, but it is the only one I’d willing donate a body part to be part of. (Well, depending on how the scratch test comes back. If my throat closed because of the ink, I consider that a bit of a … complication, shall we say?)
Wait? What’s this? They’re temporary? Way to leave that out reporters. Hit the Kickstarter
Happy dance. Time to volunteer as tribute.
Look at this wonderful layout and check out the Sherlock and other groups they’re working on.
Filed under Alice in Wonderland, Books, Tattoo
Efficacy, Insanity, and Neverending News Loops
I’ve been dreadfully productive in the past few weeks. I’ve gotten more blog posts written (everywhere but here) and gotten two businesses building blog and twitter traffic.
And yet, it feels as though nothing has changed. I still spend the majority of my life on the net at night, scrolling through emails, Facebook, and Twitter. It’s just, now it’s not for fun. (That’s a bit of a lie. I still enjoy it.)
Rolling hundreds of cookies for one business, debating Kickstarter rewards for another, and making arrangements for a large charity event in September – it’s been a busy week. I haven’t gotten a lick of writing done that wasn’t business focussed, and since this is Camp Nano, that is a bit of an issue. I had been planning to get half of a rough draft churned out.
Insanity, they tell me, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Well, I’ve certainly not been doing that. Personally, I think insanity is when you think that you can burn the candle at both ends and the middle and not change your everyday habits.
It takes about a month to change habits. That’s what experts say. I think it depends on the habit. I think when you actually care about something, you find a way to change it. I have never cared about losing weight – therefore, I’ve never achieved it. I do care about keeping my business moving foward, so I have already integrated checking two new emails into my routine and set up blog posts for two businesses.
I wish I could say that I was magnificantly rich because of the work I do, but that is a lie. I am comfortable because I have a day job, and am ruthless about certain expenses. If I weren’t, I wouldn’t have started either of the busniesses. That doesn’t mean I don’t long to leave the day job and spend my time doing things that I prefer doing – writing, reading, making art, making money.
Not listening to the endless loop of CNN that’s drones on in the office.
If my sanity is suffering this week, it’s not from writing, or business, or research, it’s from listening to the endless loop of vultures discussing the memorial speech from the teenager who survived losing her entire family; immigration debates; racism debates; children trapped in hot cars; bad customer service; and whether or not Hillary Clinton is running for president.
That is what makes me insane. Being force-fed inane drivel. And being kept from pursuing the things I’d much rather do with my time.
What drives you round the bend?
What is the one thing you’d love to spend your days doing?
Filed under Life in Random
Website design, coding, and tedium
I made my first website in the bad old days of Geocities.
Do you remember Geocities?
No?
*shakes fist* You kids, get off of my lawn.
Thing is, back in the days of Geocities, Tripod, Angelfire, and the like; before Google; when people still used Alta Vista; you could have just a little static page. It didn’t have to be fancy. In fact, text was preferred because we were also on dial up.
The first business page I ever designed was for my father’s business. It didn’t have a shopping cart. It had a teal background. Pictures of products and an email and phone number. These days, that wouldn’t fly.
These days there are heightened security issues. You have to have an integrated shopping cart of some sort.
And heaven help you if you don’t have something trimmed in and neat to the center of the page because your mobile customers won’t be able to read it. And if you want them to read it in Firefox, then it has to use html5. Keeping track of it all is like learning a fourth language. Or viewing Sandskrit though a dirty window and trying to translate it.
What does all this whining mean?
Well, nothing, really. It’s just that I’ve been devoting half an hour a night (or more) to fixing up the website on my 10 year old business. I don’t want it to get lost in the shuffle as I get more to do with the baby-business.
Baby businesses, like all businesses need a lot of tender care and attention.
Older businesses can sometimes run themselves for a few days. But I have goals and plans for both of them. And that means some fierce scheduling and not actually putting off doing the dull parts of the job.
That means today, I created shopping cart buttons for products on the bakery site. (Have I ever mentioned that site? Http://irongatebakery.com if you’re interested.)
And last week and I fought with the secure socket layers to make sure we’re compliant with the new rules and won’t be open to difficulties from Heartbleed. (I watch the security news like a hawk. I shouldn’t need to. I bake cookies, for stapler’s sake.)
And tomorrow, I’ll be taking pictures and figuring out how to integrate the blog into the site proper. And this weekend I’ve got an overnight 48 hour confab with my bakery business partner. We’re going to lay out the path to getting a brick and mortar store.
Huh… wonder if I should make a schedule for posting onto that blog too.
Anyway, I don’t miss the blinking icons of Geocities. I sort of love the way the site is starting to look.
But I will never, never, love the tedious job of actually setting up each individual product button.
Or, you know, being able to take down my under construction gif.
Super Secret turns into Project of Doom
So that Super Secret Business that I did want to name? It’s live!
We signed the first author today and I am utterly thrilled. She’s going to be doing an illustrated children’s series, so we need to get it into the stream pretty quickly.
We’ve got most of our ducks in a row. I’m going to finish up some banking details tomorrow morning, but for the most part, we’re ready to get going and it’s not a moment too soon.
JM is in charge of the organizational schedule and the day to day operations. I’m in charge of the money. It’s a good split that plays to our strengths. Of course, that means all hands on deck for marketing and social media and all of the other little details, like sourcing authors and illustrators.
Strangely, it’s taken this project to remind me just how far the net of my acquaintances runs. There’s artists, writers, computer programmers, and media photographers. I don’t think about what people “do” in their lives. To me they’re just people. That’s a good thing, but it can really hamper you when you’re talking about getting things done.
I’ve always run as far away from networking as I could, even though intellectually I know how it’s done properly. “Networking” is a scary word that elicits ideas of smug salesmen and multi-level marketing schemes.
But that’s not what it is. (What it can be, true enough.) Networks are community. And when you are building a community, or a family, you don’t think in terms of what can you do for me. A good networker shouldn’t think about what they want, but rather what they have in common with the person they’re reaching out to. Isn’t that the squishiest definition of networking you’ve ever heard?
Networking theory says that if I build friendships with people, when I need someone, they’ll be there for me in the future. Well, yeah, that’s what friendship means.
I have always separated building friendships and professional relationships as unrelated to networking and that is one of my stupid moments. This particular enterprise has reminded me that friendships, professional relationships, and networks are all interconnected.
But I’ve been burned by a “professional networker”. She stopped being a friend and started being all about what she could get from me. Don’t be that person, okay?
I promise I won’t be. I’m just a little taciturn.
How did you build a community? How do you navigate between relationships and networking? Where is the line?
Filed under Business, Networking, Uncategorized
Super-Secret New Business Project
Yeah, so, this won’t be super secret very much longer.
I’m starting a business with one of my friends. Have started actually. At this point we’re just trying to get all of our ducks in a row before our grand opening/press opening/three cheers for social media opening. That means making sure all of our i’s are cross and our t’s are dotted…. erm something like that.
The name started as a joke, but now sounds wildly formal. It’s a neat trick.
I don’t know how manic I’m going to be about this, but I’ve already put in several long nights and I know they’re just going to get longer until we get staffed and organized.
Businesses are a tricky little critters. There’s a lot of local laws, so your mileage may vary, but I’m going to talk a bit about nuts and bolts here. I’m based in Virginia – as you may have guessed. We have different laws than say, Rhode Island. The tax codes are different and such.
The first thing to understand is that it is disturbingly easy to start a business. To make it successful is a pain the ass, but to start it? No worries. I’ve started three now. My father had his own business too. I started this latest one (number 3) on the basis of a snowballing conversation and a handshake.
Come to think of it, I started number two that same way. Scary. Different partners though and completely different businesses.
First thing is to come up with a name and make sure that no one else has it. Google is your friend, but you’ll need to check with your county/state as well. People may have registered a business and done nothing with it. The name still belongs to them.
Once you have your name, you should probably do this in the right order as I did not – get a trade name document. This is an “also known as” or a “doing business as” or a “fictitious name” document. In my county, it costs around $10 and takes about ten minutes to do. (Remember to fill out the paperwork ahead of time.) Then, get an FEIN from irs.gov. That takes about ten minutes – longer if you need to fax in the paperwork, but that only happens in specific instances. Most people won’t have that issue.
Once you have the all important FEIN (trust me, it’s more than just giving the government dosh, this can save you big bucks in the long run), you have to register with your local state authorities. Say, another 10-20 minutes in Virginia.
There we go. The business is started.
Business license you say? Check your local codes. I didn’t need to file until I started making over 10K gross. That’s not going to happen this year on my newest business, so I’m not worried about it.
Well, wow, I’d forgotten that I love business. How did I forget that? I got so focused on what I wasn’t going to blog about that I forgot that I’ve got 1, no 2 very interesting things I can talk about on a regular basis.
Viva la new businesses!
Bad day for a dunk tank
So, the weather is being particularly bipolar this spring/summer. We hit nineties in the early part of the week and now we’re in the sixties. I pity the poor bastard who agreed to be part of the fundraising dunk-tank today. Silly managers.
Beyond that, it’s just sort of a grey day all around. I have the motivation of a limp noodle and the distinct dislike of the world. A perfect noir type of day. And I’d love to say that I was inspired, but I’m not.
Work is dull and dragging (as all day jobs just to bring in money are.) I can think of half-a-hundred things to do, but just don’t want to.
I can’t tell if this is just me being under-caffeinated, or if I just don’t care. You know what I’d love? Someone to pay an assistant for me. Yeah, that would be the best gift in the world.
I’ll get my mythical patron right on that.
Filed under Uncategorized
AinW: Alice in Wonderland Pillow
I’m a huge Alice fan. I am not kidding about that. In fact, I’ve been working off and on on a collectables book.
I’ll be featuring Alice related items here. Like this pillow available on ThinkGeek for $24.99. Yes, I’ve ordered it. I couldn’t help myself.
The Alice pillow is the rectangular one. It’s permanently open and it actually features the Cheshire Cat. (Good ole Tenniel illustrations.) It’s yellow. I have no idea what I’m going to do with it, but I think it’s cool to see Alice popping up again. For awhile it was almost impossible to find Alice collectables. (Even in Disney World.)
Filed under Alice, Alice in Wonderland, Cheshire Cat
BitterSuites 