In which Rolanni ruminates while the laundry runs

[rolanni]

As most of you know, Steve and I started a Patreon account back in the early part of the year (it's here, if you'd like to take a look), and we've slowly been slipping a little into the community over there.  As mentioned elsewhere, we did an interview with John Mierau for Patreon, and on Friday, we participated in a "Hang Time" in which the CEO of Patreon, Jack Conte, Happiness Team member Taryn Arnold, and creator Shayla Maddox discussed innovations, plans, and the whole idea of patronage as a income stream for artists.

Regarding the patron model -- Shayla mentioned that she had "lost friends" when she set up her Patreon account, because some felt that it was unseemly for a creator to "beg" for money.  Jack responded that, if the patronage model was good enough for Mozart, it was good enough for him, and launched into a riff regarding How It Had Been (a rich person would find an artist/creator, like what he was doing, and give him money to continue doing it), to how it is now (an artist/creator sells their work to a middleman, who then tidies it up, distributes it, and splits the take, with the artist/creator getting the lesser split, even though without the artist/creator the middleman would have nothing to distribute, and therefore no profit.  Which is kind of a Yeah, But. . .).

They also touched on the phenomenon of artists feeling that they always need to "give" in order to receive -- we talked about this in our interview, too.  It was a fascinating discussion, and I'm glad we took the time to participate.

In line with that, Steve and I are thinking about something we might do, first for Patreon subscribers, and then into general circulation, so to be speak.  We need to figure out if We Have The Technology, and/or Can We Easily Acquire and Learn to Use The Technology.  Watch the skies.

In the Real World, and still on the general subject of Patreon, the contractor's estimate for installing the generator has arrived.  It's looking like right around $6,000 to purchase and install the generator itself, including the pad, and the wiring, and the switch, and etcetera.  Now that we have this in-hand, along with an estimated date of installation, we can call Dead River and find out how much it will cost to install the propane tanks, and fill them.

At This Point In Time, given the Total Craziness and Complete Uncertainty surrounding my health insurance costs and what will have to be "paid back" to the Federal Government with our 2015 taxes, we are putting 50% of all income received into the tax account.  Hopefully, this will prove to be an over-reaction, but we really, really don't want to be caught short of tax money, given the depleted condition of the general treasury.

We do again want to thank everyone who pitched in to help get us through this (hopefully brief) period of financial disarray, and give us the freedom to move forward with the installation of the generator.  PayPal, Patreon, checks in the mail, cheerleading -- it all helps immensely and is very much appreciated.

In other news -- InstaGram tells me that there is a way for me to convert my WordPress blog into a "beautiful and compliant" epub or mobi file. While I'm willing to believe that of course any such conversion will be beautiful, I'm pretty sure that it won't be compliant. Just a feeling. . .

In Exciting News, we have a winner for Week Six of the Do It Like A Delm Challenge -- Elaine Walker!  See the winning photograph, with links to All the Challengers, from Week One forward, right here.

Tomorrow, Monday, September 28, starts the Final Challenge Week.  If you were thinking about enlisting in the Challenge -- this is your last chance!

Also!  Wednesday is September 30.  Do you know where your copy of A Night In The Lonesome October is?

And, for the curious, a cameo shot of the Pink Robe:

The pink robe, modeled by Sharon Lee.
Photo by Steve Miller

Comments

Generator Costs

[rosemary jones (from livejournal.com)]

6 Grand is a very good price. We paid somewhat more for ours down in the southwest. It's hooked into the gas line at the house; turns itself on once a week for 20 minutes, and when needed everything is back on in under 5 minutes. My partner needs an oxygen concentrator so power is essential.

[attilathepbnun.livejournal.com]

Nice robe!

[ebartley.livejournal.com]

If you want to convert your blog into an ebook, and the existing tools are insufficient, I can convert an automated ebook into one with formatting you specify. (Or doing the conversion from an XML file might be easier, and I know Wordpress does XML.)

I'm not much good as a designer, so beautiful is on someone else, but if you want all paragraphs to have certain classes and nothing else and/or all double-linebreaks to turn into paragraphs and/or all short bold paragraphs to turn into header three tags, that I can do (well, I can write a script that doesn't care whether it works on one blog entry or one hundred.)

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Pssst! Your antenna are showing! Those little white blobs floating over your head...

[kalimeg.livejournal.com]

I did self-employment for a short time, and the best part about overpaying the tax savings account is the instant refund you get once they receive their pound of flesh.