Local Nerds, Dumb Passwords, FB Advertising, etc.

by Alan Langford | 2025-04-08 | Observations on Everything

This was originally published on Substack on April 4, 2025.

Building a Tech Community in Rural Ontario

Our Ontario (Canada) “municipality” spans three small towns and a handful of hamlets, for a total population of around 14,000. Up until the end of last year, I ran a web hosting business, which connected me both to many local businesses and also to other technical people in the area. In mid-2024, I decided to sell my hosting operations, in part to be able to focus on writing, in part to spend more time with in3d.ca (my business centred around 3D printing and related technologies), and in part to spend more time with my family.

I was fortunate enough to be able to transfer my clients to a local web developer, a far better option compared to merging them into one of the big hosting behemoths. Leaving the business also removed the reason to interact with the local community of technical folks, many of whom have become more than just business associates.

Back in February, four of us decided to get together at one of our local microbreweries, to share conversation and pizza. This was rewarding enough that we decided to make it a monthly thing, and to expand the group to other people who were technical and/or worked in the online space. Bad weather forced a cancellation of our March meeting. March also ended with severe weather, an ice storm had most of us without power for a few days, but most of us managed to get out yesterday for meeting number two.

Aside from more great conversation, the meeting resulted in a plan to include some of the other breweries in the area (we’re blessed with four within a 25 minute drive of each other), to set up a mailing list, and to invite others as we discover them.

In terms of personal impact, John Charlton, a web developer who is retiring into photography mentioned that he’s been posting his work here on substack. Aside from touting the features of this platform (which have convinced me to give this a try). He expressed some surprise that it was his writing that garnered the most positive feedback. I’ve read a few of his posts and I can say I’m not surprised. His writing appears effortless, in many cases it’s a small scale travelogue, as he takes you through a day of image-making, along with many excellent photographs. Highly recommended.

Dumb Passwords

For the past few months, I’ve been compiling the “Dumb Password Report”, an analysis of the passwords hackers have been using to try to gain access to my sites. I say the report is terrifying because I see attempts that closely match some of the passwords my hosting customers have tried to use over the years. Last night I prepared the Dumb Password Report for March. Check it out, especially if you think something like “Admin2024@” counts as a good password!

Advertising on Facebook

This morning I’m clearing a little backlog of unread emails. Of note today is David Gaughran’s newsletter (davidgaughran.com), who generously offers detailed advice on promoting books through Facebook. By generously, I mean there’s no up-sell, no bait and switch (“for the full story, [buy/subscribe/etc.].”). He does have books on the subject that can be purchased for a reasonable price, but half the time his newsletter doesn’t even mention them. I think his revenue model is landing big launch deals from major publishers, so putting all this information out there is demonstrating his expertise. He must be a thorn in the side for a group of “experts” who are selling “crack the code” workshops for significant fees. Especially since feedback from other authors is that those thousand dollar courses are often so outdated that they do more harm than good. Facebook is nothing if not a moving target.

I used to follow his emails closely, extracting everything I could from each, making notes. This has been moderated by three factors. Most importantly, I’m not sure Facebook is a great place to reach Science Fiction readers. It looks like a decent place for Fantasy, a great place for Romance, self-help, travel and the like. Then there’s their AI targeting push. They have made it extremely difficult for an advertiser to control who sees their ad, and naturally their “AI” biases toward larger audiences, which means more revenue for them, less efficiency for the advertiser. No thanks! And lastly, the change in Meta’s moderation policies. It’s one thing to keep an account there, to have an author page, but it’s quite another to actively support the thing by advertising there. When seeking a balance between my need to get visibility for my work and the desire to not fund a toxic platform, I’m leaning heavily toward spending my money elsewhere.

Yardwork

The arrival of spring and the aforementioned ice storm have left us with much work to do outside the house. There is a daunting list of projects. So much so that I won’t even begin to list them for fear of wanting to give up. On the list for just today is levelling some ground behind our garage, in anticipation of a new firewood storage bin, a trip to the dump to get rid of the debris that was formerly in that space, and tackling the dismantling of an old deck, the next step in clearing out part of the yard. It is a warm, sunny day and I need to get to it.

Thanks for reading this far!

Capitulation 101

by Alan Langford | 2025-04-05 | Observations on Everything

What follows is my first post on Substack. It’s a somewhat rambling explanation of why I’m on Substack in the first place (TL/DR: the network effect is better, especially now that Google search is useless). Still, I expect Substack to enshittify sooner or later, so it seems that echoing posts here is the best defence against that. I plan to schedule posts to publish here a few days after they publish on Substack, mostly so that search engines can pick it up first and not dilute what little utility they offer.

I’m in the process of writing my first novel. It’s a cyberpunk-inspired hard science fiction story set on Earth in the near future.

I intend to self-publish the book. This carries with it many implications. First and foremost, I’m solely responsible for the quality of the finished product. Not only do I have to craft an interesting story, I need to hire my own developmental and line/copy editors to help me ensure that the work is the best it can be. Then there’s recruiting beta readers: people I’m close enough to to trust with an unfinished manuscript, but distant enough that I’ll get honest feedback. There’s the mechanical aspects, formatting/typesetting the book, securing ISBNs, commissioning cover art, organizing the front and back matter.

And finally the part most writers seem to dread: marketing and promotion. Advanced Reader Copies sent to a select list, both as a final check to make sure there are as few errors as possible, and hopefully as a source of positive reviews, a set of social media posts, emails to my lengthy list of newsletter subscribers, paid advertising, and much more. Hypothetically leading to ultimate success (for a highly individual definition of success ranging from “I finished a book” to “I earn a good living from my work”).

Except I don’t have a lengthy list of newsletter subscribers or a massive social media following. I do have a minuscule mailing list, roughly two orders of magnitude smaller than Kevin Kelley’s semi-valid One Thousand True Fans that a creator needs to sustain their work. Not good.

Not that I haven’t started all the things that are supposed to yield a dedicated fan base. I have. I just haven’t continued them. I’ve got a handful of sites, three blogs, two of which rarely see updates (and the third just documents releases of software I maintain, that’s easy but boring). Even if I was updating regularly, the pathetic state of web search probably means I’d be posting into a void anyway.

I digress. In terms of writing, I there is just one place where I should be doing all the things to build a following, my alanlangford.com site. I should be posting there about progress on my work, offering samples, maybe discussing some aspects of the main characters. This should be easy. The thing is, I’m still not sure. I’m not sure about everything. What if I share part of a chapter now, and by the time I get through two to five more draft/revision cycles, that chapter is entirely cut? Have I been dishonest? Will people be disappointed?

I just don’t feel comfortable writing about this stuff until I’m certain that things I say are going to be part of the book are actually in the finished work. Anything else feels dishonest.

And yet I need to say something, somewhere, or have to settle for a number of true fans that I can count on one hand. That’s not an acceptable outcome either.

As a result, here I am on Substack, capitulating to the promise of benefiting from some network effect, akin to the community of fellow writers I’ve connected with on Mastodon. During the sign-up process, I was asked to provide a single sentence describing what this blog is about, and my best answer is “I don’t know yet.” My suspicion is that if I’m going to post regularly, this is going to be something akin to early “web logs”, some kind of open book journal that reflects the scattered, disjointed activities and interests that pass for my life.

This is in some ways a terrifying prospect. Much like many creative folks, I’d prefer that my fans came after my work, rather than before. But that’s not the way the world works. I was going to write “works these days,” but I have a feeling it was always this way; only the medium has changed.

Buckle up. I don’t know how weird this is going to get.