Budaeli

I’m aware of the low value of  discussing things which could or should be done. Shutting up and doing what you’ve been thinking about doing is far better than merely talking about it. You may have come up with the greatest sci-fi story of all time, but if you never write it down and share it with another human, that story is worth nothing.

But I’m going to do it anyway.

Over the next several days I’ll be posting a series of articles on ideas I’ve been having about what we all should be doing right now. What kinds of ideas? Well there’s some economics, some art and culture, maybe more (though that’s almost the extent of what I can competently talk about). They may be wrong at times and it may turn out I’ve had my head up my ass the whole time. But if they spur someone, anyone into action, it’ll be worth it. That action could even be a troll-worthy, point-by-point dissection of why I’m full of shit.

More importantly, I’m also writing these for myself. By sharing these ideas with others, they become more real.

In fact, the point of this post is to make it harder for me to renege on the writing.

Budaeli used to have ads. There was a Google Adwords strip and a selection of products from Amazon.com along the side of every page. Then I read a rant by someone (who I doubt even knows I exist, let along been to this site) about personal blogs having ads. His argument was along the lines of “if you’re maintaining the site for your own enjoyment, and not for some business, don’t insult your visitors by showing them ads.” I don’t agree with the argument entirely: sometimes you need ads to help pay for maintaining the site (never mind that there are plenty of free hosting services available now that offer advanced features). But that was when I decided to pull ads off my site, without thinking about it much. I wasn’t making anywhere near enough from the ads to even warrant a payment from either Google or Amazon.com, so the loss in revenue wasn’t equal to the increase in aesthetics gained by their absence.

This means I’m giving away my content. For free. On top of that, I’m not too concerned about being compensated for what I’ve published. The copyright to my words is still mine, but I won’t be too alarmed if someone copies my work (with attribution, of course) or creates any derivative works (say they take my Culture Engines idea and make it into something else). Part of it is because I don’t want to spend the time enforcing a restrictive copyright, and part of it is because my thoughts are mostly derivative.

The reason I’m publishing my work online for free is because it would cost me too much to make readers pay.

What I mean by that is my audience would shrink to a statistical zero if I made people pay to read this site. Unless I reblog the content elsewhere, the cost to read is only visiting this site or reading the RSS feed.

I would love to be able to charge more for my content, because it would give me a greater incentive to write. As it stands now, I only write when I feel like it, and just accept that the value of my work is nothing more than the pieces of my thoughts that end up stuck in my reader’s thoughts. It’s an inefficiency that I hope someone solves soon. The current methods of incentives for writers have been made outdated by the web’s method of publishing, and there’s no guarantee that they will survive long enough for a replacement.

So, thanks for reading, whoever you may be.

(Inspired by “Please Excuse Our Inefficiently High-Quality Blogging”)

I’ve decided to shut down Budaeli Fiction as a separate site and publish all my short stories on this blog. There is no reason to maintain two sites when most people only stumble upon this one.

If you’re affected by this change, that must mean you’ve read my short stories, therefore you rock! Also, comments, all one of them, have been moved too.

Here are the new links to the three published short stories:

• Only Once
• Managers at a Power Plant
• Where Little Bluebirds Fly (latest story)

As the number of stories increases I’ll create a separate archives page to separate the stories by genre and subject matter.

The few (by few, meaning less than five) people I’ve mentioned this site to have all had trouble with the title, Budaeli; in the sense of pronouncing the word and why in the hell would someone pick a title as obtuse as that.

…Explaining how to pronounce the title will be a little easier than answering the latter question.

Budaeli is pronounced “boo-DAH-LEE” with emphasis on the last two syllables. It’s a blend of the words Buddha, Daedalus, and literature. It was the best I could do at the time and now I like the result, so it stays. Besides I like the way those three words sound, so why not mash them all together? Creating the word made the process of registering a domain name much easier (of course, I own my own namesake domain, which redirects to Budaeli, but that’s more than a little boring for a domain name).

For those of you who wouldn’t accept that I came up with the name one cold day in December when playing with words: here’s why those specific three words are blended together.

Buddha is a word that represents my belief in mindfulness, living in the moment, and clarity of life. I don’t claim for a moment that I embody these ideas in my own life; only that they are a noble attainment.

Daedalus is not referring to the father of Icarus but rather the dedicated creator of the labyrinth and inventor of images. And an artist intensely jealous of rivals.

Literature – the simple addition to Budaeli. It refers to one of my two most deeply ingrained interests*. It’s part in the name of this blog will be more apt in a few days.

Please refer to this post when confused about the name and all that embodies. “kthx.”

*my other deeply ingrained interest is music.

Budaeli.com is in a renaissance in the traditional sense: a rebirth. The original set up of Budaeli was poorly planned and even less well executed.

It may look vaguely familiar to the original design, but this is a wholly new site. New purpose, new goals, totally different content. New content will arrive on Monday.