It marks yet another changing point in my life. Just 15 months ago, I was a student, and from one day to the next, I started working for a law firm. 10 months later, I was signing the first of several documents that would ultimately lead to this day, when I actually own real estate.

I think it’s fair to say that I’ve been extremely lucky in life thus far:

• I have a job (>< a few people I know have been looking for one for several months)
• I really enjoy my job (>< several people I know don’t enjoy theirs as much or actually dislike it)
• My job pays well (>< some I know are paid close to minimum wage)
• I was able to buy a flat (>< not all those with only one year of work behind them get bank funding)
• I think said flat suits me, and I see real potential in it [i.e. for when I'll actually have furniture in it]

My great-uncle often says that it’s all about being the right person in the right place and at the right time, but I’ve never been sure I’m the right person. What I do know is that I’ve been extremely fortunate, and have my family to thank for that in great part.

Of course, there’s always the risk that the wind might change direction. If my luck turns for the worse, I could be left with a massive debt that would force me to sell the flat. The problem with that kind of thinking is that it would make me gloomy and fearful of tomorrow.

Instead, therefore, I’ll keep on believing that, while possibly premature and potentially very brash, my move to buy was the right one. After all, it gives you a boost in self-confidence, and having the right dosage of that allows you to do pretty much anything.

Anything? Well, I’m currently trying to get a whole international law firm to update its website (that cost millions to make, apparently). Ambitious much? We’ll see if my luck holds true.

Consequently, I figured I might as well deal with it. When you know a bit of code, it isn’t too hard to patch together a PHP file to deal with this kind of a problem.

I therefore present… the Timekeeper!
The idea is simple: one giant button per timer. Click on “start” to, well, start, and “pause/continue” afterwards depending on what you require. If something new comes up, just hit “New timer”, and the previously running timer will automatically pause while a new one starts.

[There's plenty of good software for this (I know OfficeTime and Billings are very good at that), but my needs were such that I wanted a web app that I could use, without having to go through the hassle of installing paid-for software on my computer at work.]

For those who want to take a look at the code behind it, you may download the PHP file (all zipped up). I’m sure it can be improved.
And yes, it’s released under a BY-NC-SA Creative Commons licence.

I have been working on what was meant to be a concerto-like orchestral piece, with a piano melody as centrepiece, but the music evolved away from the orchestral setting.

I therefore present to you Thumos, the latest creation of the Peter Craddock music factory.

In other news, I have finally taken the opportunity to put all of my music in Creative Commons. The current licence is “Creative Commons by-nc-nd“, which means that you are free to download/distribute/copy the music, subject to the following conditions (to quote the CC website):

Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
No Derivative Works — You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

Therefore, download away.

Listen at your own risk.

I shall be working as a lawyer in the Brussels office of Loyens & Loeff, a Dutch firm, and in their “Commercial/Intellectual Property/Information Technology” department to be more precise.

After my first full week (i.e. the one that starts on Monday 4 October, with my taking of the lawyer’s oath at the Brussels Court of Appeal), I shall post my thoughts on this new environment. Until then, know that my first day with Loyens is best summarised by three words: fascinating, intense and exhausting (all in a very positive way).

If you fancy spending approximately 24 USD/18.50 Euros on a sci-fi novel of epic scale (seriously: 503 pages in A5 format, 650 in a slightly smaller format), I suggest you read on…

For those who don’t want to read this but want the book in physical format, please visit the Arpia novel page at Lulu.com. There, you’ll find a high quality yet cheap print-on-demand version of the Arpia novel, and the shipping costs worldwide are fairly low.

Note: the prices here are as low as I could get them. I decided against royalties, so you’re paying for the print-on-demand itself only.

Of the three solutions, Blackwell was the most expensive and, unfortunately, the one with the lowest quality. The cost is currently 5p per page, i.e. a bit over £30 for a copy of the Arpia novel, and the heavy paper used for the cover is not quite as high grade as the others. Moreover, the binding doesn’t seem as sturdy as the others. If you live in London and go to that bookstore (on Charing Cross Road) often, however, it may be an easy solution.

The Createspace solution allows Arpia to appear on Amazon.com, which is awesome, but I have no idea of whether this will extend to the other Amazon websites (.co.uk, .fr, …). Shipping from Createspace cost me almost as much as the price of the book itself, as it was shipping from the US… Result: 18.51 USD for shipping to the EU. Apparently, they only have printers in the US, so it may not be the best solution for people based outside of North America. A major qualm I have with Createspace is the fact that it wasn’t easy to set my own “spine” design (the side cover), and theirs is, frankly, not very nice.
Cost in store: 24.17 USD.

Finally, my favourite solution: Lulu.com. This has the highest quality cover paper, and I was forced to adopt a new format for Lulu.com, namely A5. The other two solutions use a format that is slightly smaller than A5, which makes the novel nearly pocket-size. The A5 format does, however, have an unforeseen advantage: the star maps included in the novel are more readable. One of the great things about Lulu.com is that it uses printers around the world, which means that shipping costs are lower than the other solutions. To ship to the EU, I paid 6 Euros.
Cost in store: 18.50 Euros/22.56 USD/£15.66.

Edit: added the Amazon.com link.

This led me to recall the existence of an “Espresso Book Machine”, an easy way for aspiring authors and others to obtain a printed version of a book, be it their own or one that is out of publication (but still with a digital presence). This machine can be found in Blackwell, on Charing Cross Road in London.

On 25 August 2010, I was in London to hand in a paper copy of my dissertation for my LLM, and I took advantage of the trip to London to order one copy of my book. When I receive the copy by post, I’ll be able to let you Londoners know whether you should consider ordering a little sci-fi novel from there – they currently charge 5p a page, which given the size of my novel amounts to £30… Definitely the most expensive novel I’ve bought!

I’m going to work on making the novel available in ePub and other formats (note: ePub now available), perhaps also on online e-book catalogues (if possible for free) and on other self-publishing print-on-demand platforms (hopefully not too expensively).

In the meantime, though, why not take a look at the Arpia novel page, and read through the first chapters or the entire book?