Im experimenting a bit further with Creative Commons licences, this time on my main site, www.liamodonnell.com. This blog and the posts within it are all under a CC licence and I have no reservations about that, because the nature of blogs lends itself to sharing of information and knowledge. Also, my blog posts are definitely not as well thought out or researched as my print articles.
Though no one pays me money to blog, I view the sharing/linking of my posts as form payment. However, I view my print articles differently. With them Ive negotiated and sold certain rights to the publishers of the magazine or newspaper and my payment has been in monetary form. Once an article has been printed, good freelancers try to re-sell the same articles to different magazines in different markets for another cash payment (much lower than the first payment from the first magazine.) I see re-selling as cousin to the theory of import stretching put forward in Jane Jacobs The Nature of Economies. Im not very good at re-selling articles and putting my stuff online isnt going to help. But then again, it might.
I wont get any more money for these articles because of their CC licence, but I might get a bit of blog-like payment in the form of having my ideas and writing reach a wider audience. And that is pretty satisfying.
Below are links to my three recent article and their opening paragraphs. Enjoy and let me know what you think.
Video Game Invasion
(Appeared in YES Mag, a Canadian science for magazine kids)
Watch out, video games are taking over! Okay, it isnt exactly horror movie material, but its true that the line between computer graphics and reality is getting blurry.
Check out NASCAR racing on TV, for example. Bubble-shaped graphics follow race cars around the track telling you the drivers speed, their position in the race, and much more. NFL football games have now a yellow line runs across the field, marking the distance to a first down. Some luxury cars even have night vision systems that project hard to see road obstacles onto the drivers windscreen. These are more than fancy computer graphics. These are the first steps in a new wave of computer technology known as Augmented Reality.
Augmented Reality, also known as AR, puts computer graphics over real things in the world. Just like those bubble-graphics hovering above the race cars on TV. The AR graphics give us information about what were looking at, like how fast that car is racing around the track. Research into Augmented Reality is still very new, but scientists are learning a lot from a very familiar source: video games.
Read the rest of Video Game Invasion
Deep Sea Counting
(Appeared in YES Mag, a Canadian science for magazine kids)
Want to explore the final frontier? Then ditch your space helmet and grab your wetsuit. Scientists arent travelling into space to discover new life forms. Theyre going swimming.
Read the rest of Deep Sea Counting
High Performance Graphics
(Appeared in Canadian Bookseller, the magazine for the Canadian Booksellers Association)
Last year, a new book telling the story of a Canadian historical figure was listed as one of the top 5 non-fiction books of the year. Whats the big deal? It wasnt a typical book. It was a comic book. More precisely a graphic novel.
In just 2 months, Chester Browns Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography, sold over 3000 copies spent time on non-fiction best-sellers list across the country. For graphic novel authors and publishers this was a long overdue nod of respect. For booksellers it was a signal that graphic novels are no longer solely the domain of cape-wearing superheroes or spell-slinging wizards. For many years graphic novels, also called graphica, have been tackling tough subjects, captivating large audiences and ringing the cash registers of many booksellers. But, in the last year graphic novels have really taken off.
Read more of High Performance Graphics
