Day: February 27, 2013
News & Upcoming Events

Everything’s Coming Up Milhouse

Cool Thing the First: I recently discovered that the StoneSkin Press webstore is live, which means you should now be able to pick up copies of The Lion and the Aardvark: Aesop’s Modern Fables if you live in places like the US or Australia or, hell, I’m assuming you’re pretty much anywhere the internet reaches. There’s only a handful of times I’ve been really excited to work with an editor and, as I noted quite effusively last year,  this project was one of them. Robin Laws is one of those writer/editor/creative types whose work effectively crosses many areas of interest, and I was a long-time fan of his frighteningly smart observations about RPG gaming as a younger lad. Cool Thing the Second: The Buzzcocks are Touring Australia in April. I’m not sure I can truly explain why this makes me happy, beyond pointing out that Have You Ever Fallen In Love with Someone (You Shouldn’t Have Fallen In Love With) was one of those songs that

PeterMBall 27/02/2013
Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

KPIs and Writing Data

So I have KPIs at the day-job this year, a neat little grid of goals that serve as the line between “doing my job well” and “not quite meeting expectations.” This is something of a first for me – for most of my life I’ve done contract work or found my way into jobs that were…well, lets say insufficiently defined for the purposes of generating things like key performance indicators. I’ve spent most of my life listening to friends talk about their office jobs and KPIs were part of that arcane language that floated around, reminding me of how little my work-life resembled theirs. I used to envy that KPI talk. Lots of my friends weren’t fond of the meetings, or found them a waste of time, but for someone who is, at their core, a moderately competitive person, they mean something important. They mean the day-job can be won. There is a line to reach and once I have

PeterMBall 27/02/2013