I hoped for something fresh, but this from Len Merson is only warmed-over GTD. Avoid–go for the original. -m
Category: writing
I’m reading Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide. It’s a more business-ey kind of book than most Web 2.0 faire. So it jumped out at me the section “Who this book is for”. I hate these sections, even though they are quite common. Why would I need a book to tell me who it’s for? Isn’t…
A very short rant on the state of XQuery tutorial materials on the web (not naming any names or linking any links). I get it. Thank you for your fanatical emphasis on FLWOR constructs, but there is much more to it than that. A few introductory sources don’t fall in to this trap, though. Mike…
In my about page, I’ve written my CV in two lines. Why don’t you try it, then link back to here? I’ve been known to use this as an interview question, and it’s quite a bit harder than it looks. A clever candidate will turn the paper sideways giving themselves more room to write “two…
Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother is now shipping from Amazon and other stores. I reviewed a pre-release copy of it and liked it. But the best part is–like Cory’s other books–it’s downloadable right now, for free, under an open content license. I can attest that this is an effective strategy for getting your name and your…
When making hash browns xkcd style, there are at least 14 ways it could go badly. That’s not a potato, it’s a misshapen rock. Unexpectedly flammable tennis racket. Sparks landing on gas can. Food poisoning via undercooked hash browns due to limited flame contact time. Broken plate fragments. Dripping, flaming gasoline. Swing and a miss;…
The Minority Report and Other Classic Stories by Philip K. Dick. This volume has all of Dick’s earliest short and medium-length fiction. It’s PKD so you know it’s good, but this one really gives insight into how he developed some of the themes that came to dominate his later work. Even these early stories are…
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, herself rowling in gazillions of dollars, is along with her publisher suing Steven Vander Ark, a poor librarian who produced a lexicon of the Harry Potter universe. Rowling says it’s not about the money, it’s about control. Poppycock. If that was the case, she would have objected to the web…
Some books you forget immediately, but some stick with you. Some affect you so profoundly that years later you still think about them. They get under your skin and shape your future. Here’s my list: How to Win Friends and Influence People This got me through years of W3C work, and still affects every human…
(sick again…at least I get to catch up on my reading) Something has always puzzled me: I’ve never solidly connected with a Cory Doctorow story. It’s baffling; we’re practically brothers-in-geekdom. Most every nonfiction thing I read from Cory leaves me nodding in agreement. If we met, we’d have no trouble talking for hours about metacrap,…
If you want to get anything done, give it to a busy person… In my life, I’ve started four novels, completed my goals on three, gotten to “The End” on two, and completely flamed out on one. The first was in 2001. I hadn’t written much since high school. Something clicked in my head that…
As one who, in the all-too-near future, will be hammering out the visuals to go with my talk at XML 2007, this made my day. (be sure to check out the deeper pages too) -m
In researching for an XPath 2.0 implementation, I ran across this curious document from the W3C. Despite being labeled a Working Draft (as opposed to a Note), it appears to be a one-shot document with no future hope for updates or enhancements. In short, it outlines several options for the first stage or two of…
My Copious Free Time(tm) has been filled lately by two different evaluation projects. One is the 2nd Annual Writing Show Best First Chapter of a Novel Contest, for which the first round of judging is just winding up. The main benefit for contest entrants is that every submission gets a professional critique of at least…
If a free energy device (like this one) were really possible, simple economics would dictate that (as soon as patents expired, etc.) one or several would be found in every cell phone, iPod, notebook computer, desktop computer, appliance, automobile, airplane, house, building, and factory. That’s a lot of waste heat that would get dumped onto…
I fell asleep one night while reading Ray Kurzweil, and had this crazy dream where the internet called me up (over VOIP, naturally) to complain that none of my web pages made sense. Par for the course, I thought at first. But then I told the internet a few things, to let me worry about…
Once again, I am a judge for this year’s First-Chapter-of-a-Novel Contest hosted by The Writing Show. We’re looking for unpublished, less-than 4000 word entries. Final deadline for submissions is June 15, so there’s just enough time left to put together your masterpiece and get it in. This year, there’s some serious prizes, and the top…