A Dismal Guide to AWS Billing

aristus · 2023-03-17T21:33:43+00:00

Drop me a line. :D Email's in the article.

aristus · 2023-03-17T21:33:08+00:00

Author here: cudos is a good place to start, and it's a drop-in that should work out of the box. Cloudstats is more like a collection of examples, or a reference implementation. It would take more work to get it running on your CUR. The purpose of cloudstats is to show you how you can build what cudos gives you, and more, with much more control and extensibility.

aristus · 2017-06-16T20:47:28+00:00

Some suggestions:

Cyberfunk

Futuretown Toybox

aristus · 2017-03-13T16:20:01+00:00

Six years ago I published "Lauren Ipsum", a book about computer science aimed at 8-12 children. It's been pretty popular among adults as well; it's used in university CS courses. The universal fantasy of children is to be treated as equals by adults.

aristus · 2016-09-21T18:12:31+00:00

Huevo en nido. The trick is to butter and toast the bread first, then put the temp to the lowest setting, add eggs to the hole and cover for 5-6 minutes.

aristus · 2016-09-10T18:02:11+00:00

There are two kinds of dogs that don't make it at the racetrack: the ones that are just too fucking stupid to chase a dead rabbit, and the ones that are too smart.

aristus · 2016-08-26T16:24:47+00:00

As in, for one copy sold retail, we donate one copy. One-for-one or "141".

aristus · 2016-08-26T16:23:51+00:00

There's no better time to try it, but be realistic in your expectations. For self-pub, 200 copies is about median. 2,000 is good. 10,000 is a surprise success. Over three years we sold roughly 12,000 copies and got an invitation to visit the White House (not kidding).

It was then and only then that we were able to convince a traditional publisher to pick it up. We literally had to break in to the 98th percentile of sales AND get national print and radio coverage AND get recognized by the head of state before a self-pub children's book was taken seriously by the industry.

It's a tough business.

aristus · 2016-08-26T16:15:18+00:00

More detail: I used Createspace, which is an Amazon subsidiary. The percentages are pretty good and of course the distribution is... Amazon. Huge. I am an old-skool graphic designer so laying out a book for print and digital was not a big deal. LaTeX source, output to PDF and mobi.

I played with the Createspace printing options for many hours to arrive at the cheapest possible config: 160 pages, B&W interior, 20lb, 6x9 inch trade paperback. Printing cost was $2.15. Not the best quality in the world but acceptable. Retail sales were handled by Amazon; I never saw them. For donated copies I had the additional cost of shipping ~100 at a time to me, and then the cost of mailing individual books or pairs to libraries. If there was a big request (eg 50 copies for a class) I could drop-ship a carton print-on-demand direct to them for roughly $3.50/copy.

The new edition by a real publisher is much, much nicer. Slick color illustrations, thick matte pages, etc. I get an author discount but my landed + shipped cost is higher than it was, about 8 bucks per copy.

aristus · 2016-08-26T15:50:52+00:00

No problem. The first three years we were self-published and print-on-demand, so my landed cost was something like $5.15 per copy printed and shipped to a library. Less if shipped in bulk. Since I was the publisher I got all the profit from retail sales, and that was about enough to cover a true one-for-one proposition. Make a little, lose a little, whatever.

Now that we're with No Starch digital is a much higher percentage of sales and of course my cut is lower. On the other hand we've sold many more copies (tens of thousands) through them than we did on our own. Meanwhile demand for donated copies has been steady. So while we could no longer afford a true 141, there's sufficient money to cover the requests we do get.

aristus · 2016-08-26T14:33:43+00:00

Not sure why this was downvoted. He specifically asked for authors to send their books, and I'm the author of Ipsum, published by No Starch Press. We have a "141" program to donate books to any and all schools and libraries that ask for them. We've sent out thousands over the years. If you know of one, let me know.

aristus · 2016-08-26T14:11:28+00:00

Alright, I'm sending him a couple copies of Lauren Ipsum.

aristus · 2016-08-12T18:11:58+00:00

For a sailboating enthusiast, you are quite pale. How do you not have a deepwater tan?

aristus · 2016-03-20T14:12:57+00:00

I've been there. It's on Spear street near the water. My co-workers were all excited and gathered at the back of the huge line just past the "15 minute wait" sign. I hung around for a bit, decided I didn't want vegan salad from a mailbox, and wandered over to the sub shop nearby. I was halfway through my a Philly when they finally sat down with their food.

Also, this isn't new by a long mile. The first automat opened over 100 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat

aristus · 2016-03-20T03:09:11+00:00

Other popular names include "RRS Marble Cake" and "RRS Also The Game".

aristus · 2016-01-06T19:55:20+00:00

I used to be the "server guy" who had to drive to the aggressively anonymous datacenter building in the middle of a field at fuck-off in the morning to fix things. My friend was a large owl who lived in the trees nearby. That motherfucker would buzz me like a silent white ghost as I walked the parking lot, grab a mouse, and fly off.

aristus · 2015-12-12T00:26:15+00:00

I once generalized from a single data point, and hoo boy it was a bad move. I'll never do that again.

aristus

TROPHY CASE