I am just getting started as a writer.
During the few fleeting moments when the clouds part in Honolulu, I manage to get in some stargazing. I am in the middle of building a six-inch Newtonian. In idle moments, I have been pondering whether I should build a schiefspiegler (pronounced "sheefshpeegler"), an unobstructed tilted-mirror telescope.
Is ink and paper going to suffer the same fate as slide rules and typewriters?
If you don't know what these are, consider yourself very lucky. These are the TCP/IP equivalents of voltmeters and oscilloscopes. They pay the mortgage....
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The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) has a collection of Articles About Writing which has more useful advice for beginners than any of the print books I have seen.
If you are looking for "how I did it" from a relatively new professional writer, try Forward Motion: Holly Lisle's Writing Pages.
If you want to try your hand at the keyboard too, you can exchange critiques with other aspiring writers at the Critters online workshop.
I have some notes on a Schiefspiegler (Tilted component telescope) that I am thinking about building. |
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For one person's view of how to and how not to build Web sites, I would recommend Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing by Philip Greenspun and his dog Alex. (The Loquacious comment server that I use below is courtesy of Philip's site "greenspun.com".)
CNET has a good section on Web Building for beginners and people who are interested in setting up an Internet store.
SNMP, the Simple Network Management Protocol, is a way for network management software to poll network devices for information. The comp.protocols.snmp FAQ's are a good introduction, available here (part I) and here (part II). The formal definition of SNMP is in RFC 1157 and the format of the data returned (for historical reasons called "Management Information Base-II" or MIB-II is defined in RFC 1213.
MRTG is a freeware package for Unix and Windows NT often used by ISP's to document the performance of their networks for outside customers. It uses SNMP to gather performance information to be plotted. Here is an example from AboveNet. The software can be downloaded from the MRTG site.
Unicenter TNG is a wide-ranging package that includes network, performance, and security management from Computer Associates. The internet newsgroups have lots of job postings for Unicenter experts and few postings from people who are using- it and have advice to offer. Interesting....
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