Four years ago today I got laid off from my job @sixapart. What have I been up to since then? Well, I decided to take some time off, and it turned into four years. To me, that feels like a significant, and resonant, span of time. Four years is a... Continue reading

I’ve posted some cover photos and mentioned various projects on Facebook/Twitter, but haven’t done a formal update in quite a while. Be assured, though, it’s been a very busy year for us. So, without any further ado, here’s a project by project status update, detailing everything that’s been happening at... Continue reading

In principle, production cost puts a ceiling on its value, but there is no floor. No protection from competition, unlike the dollar. via www.igmchicago.org My father's take on bitcoin. Continue reading

Game Of Thrones does something much cannier, in that it all but forces us to see things from multiple points of view. We really like the Starks, but if they ever got hold of Tyrion, they’d probably have him arrested for treason. We really like Tyrion, but he’d almost certainly kill some of our other favorite characters. We really like Dany, but she wants to kill everybody. via www.avclub.com Best description of the appeal of Game of Thrones I've found. I can't think of another TV show that is quite like it in that regard. Maybe The Sopranos, if it... Continue reading

Today I am pleased to announce the formal (if it were software I would say 1.0 final) release of Celebrated Summer, Book One: Out Into the Light. Available now, for the special introductory price of $9.99 from Lulu.com, merely by clicking this blue button: But wait, you say. Didn’t that... Continue reading

I wanted to save this news for next week, but the NY Times has forced my hand. Yes, it's true, J. J. Abrams is now attached to direct the the film adaptation of CELEBRATED SUMMER. As a special treat, here's the first half page of the screenplay we've been collaborating... Continue reading

Bloggers by nature are readers, writers, editors, social media experts, system administrators, designers and publishers. As tools improved, some of these specializations became less necessary and the barrier to entry lowered — for instance, TypePad and Wordpress obviated the need to be your own designer and system administrator. With tools such as Measure Map (which became Google Analytics) and Chartbeat, bloggers became statisticians as well. via hello.typepad.com The future of professional text-based content (ie, "writing") may look like this, so I continue to track 29th Street Publishing Company's progress with great interest. Continue reading

It's the Mets fan in me that recognized success and failure in a variety of ways. The aspect of being a Mets fan that I think is helpful to me is contrasting it with the stereotypical Yankee fan who thinks that to not win the World Series is to equate that with failure. I feel, at this point, like [Mets owners] the Wilpons are my friends in ways I never realized. I'm now thinking these guys are looking out for my best interests and saying, "You've spent a lot of time worrying about New York sports teams, and maybe it's... Continue reading

I am very pleased to unveil the cover design for Celebrated Summer, Book One: Out Into the Light, drawn by illustrator Matt David. Writing a novel is, perhaps necessarily, mostly a solitary activity, but it was fun to be able to collaborate on at least one aspect of the finished... Continue reading

Yesterday Boing Boing plucked this curiosity from the magnificent Internet Archive: "Tuning '77," which was created by Michael David Murphy, and which the Archive describes as "a seamless audio supercut of an entire year of the Grateful Dead tuning their instruments, live on stage. Chronologically sequenced," the site adds, "this remix incorporates every publicly available recording from 1977, examining the divide between audience expectation and performance anxiety." via www.slate.com This sounds (obviously) like the most ridiculous thing ever, but listening to it is an odd experience. You keep expecting something to happen, but then... it doesn't. Continue reading

"Game of Thrones is perhaps best read as a meta-textual critique/parody/travesty of the epic fantasy series form, particularly its multiplicity of viewpoints, fetishistic proliferation of back-story/history and secondary creation, and sprawling geopolitical action. The characters in Game of Thrones seem curiously self-aware about the absurd nature of their world... while the hobbits and elves in Lord of the Rings seem to take as a matter of course the fact that they live in a world where people will break out into many-versed songs about five thousand year old love affairs between elves and men, the people of Westeros (and Easteros,... Continue reading

You know, comrades," says Stalin, "that I think in regard to this: I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how. via urbanlegends.about.com Continue reading

If I were in a white rock band playing with Jay-Z, I'd ask to do "Takeover" instead of "99 Problems" because how fun would it be to play the crazy guitar and organ riff from "Five to One" over and over? Also, because it's pretty much the best dis song of all time. A truly comprehensive dismantling of mediocrity. Continue reading

This pattern began to manifest itself most nefariously in what we call the web kudzu of 2010 and 2011 — inline ads that turned keywords into links, URL shorteners, video ads that took over an entire page without warning, and so on. We continued (and continue!) to spend significant time with clients and partners managing community sites and blogging software, and all of them felt frustrated with these “products” whose smothering of the web seemed inevitable. Over and over, our clients told us, “We want a way to give better tools to our audience to see and read our work,... Continue reading

For those people who've already gotten their copies of Celebrated Summer, Book One, here is the soundtrack for Chapter I. If you want to be surprised, just click the play button, but if you're curious as to what songs appear, click the "Continue Reading" link. 1-01 Chapter I Note: soundtracks... Continue reading

Charlie: It's funny you don't like to fly, when so many of your songs are filled with flight imagery. (everyone laughs) Bob: Well, I'm a big pussy. I'm like Brian Wilson singing about surfing. (everyone guffaws) You know, he does all those surfing songs--he doesn't know how to surf. He's afraid of the water. All the flight imagery is just because we come from the birthplace of aviation. via www.gbv.com Amusing insight from Robert Pollard. Continue reading