Recently updated blogs

Cover of first edition of Repent in Haste. There was a time when John P. Marquand was considered the best novelist of manners in America, even — according to a Chicago Sun review quoted on the dust jacket of Repent in Haste, “the best novelist in the country.” He never made such claims for himself, and regretted Little, Brown’s decision to use the Chicago Sun quote, since it only encouraged …

There was a time, before the screens took over, when people read these things called "books". Remarkably efficient things. Always-on display. Could survive dropping from a great height. Somewhat fragile but who cares when you could mass produce thousands of the things for hundreds of dollars.

Steamboat Willie (1928) was one of the earliest cartoons with synchronized sound. That is, it had post-production sound effects; this was something new and exciting. Now that the cartoon has recently entered the public domain[bbc24] we can safely delve into its famous soundtrack. See, there's something interesting about how it sounds... If you listen closely to the soundtrack on Youtube it sounds somehow distorted. You might be tempted to point …

I’m delighted to announce that I have brought on Stephen Hackett to help me with my apps. He will be working on customer communication, marketing and generally creating space for me to focus on the programming oriented parts of my work. Something that’s been rattling around my mind recently is the phrase “Independent as in Freedom, not Independent as in Alone”. For so long I think I have been conflating …

Michael Kerr joins me on the podcast to chat about the transformation of travel media from storytelling to a more utilitarian approach driven by the internet and market forces, the current trends in travel books — particularly the rise of narratives addressing social and environmental issues and how they have revitalized the genre —, and Stanford's Travel Book of the Year awards. Michael is the creator of Deskbound Traveller, a …

I assume that most of you have already listened—at least in part—to the latest episode of Upgrade, the 40th Anniversary of the Mac Draft. Any podcast with both John Gruber and John Siracusa is going be longer than your average Upgrade; I’m impressed they brought it in at 2½ hours. The whole show is good, but the Hall of Shame section is just hilarious. I don’t have the sort of …

The other day my partner said, “Thank you. You’re the best.” I thought: Yeah, I’m the best for a lot of people these days. My kids, work, you. When do I get to be my best? And then I remembered: people are people through other people. Meaning comes from between us, not within us. Connection makes us whole. Right! what could be more fulfilling than being The Best for the …

How to celebrate the 30th anniversary of a personal web site? I considered this morning as I fashioned a three-legged stool over my morning ritual oracular vapors. I thought it would be good to have a petting zoo here. Basically, I thought, I'll declare links.net a virtual single human petting zoo mostly in text. I've already set myself up as an exhibit, so I don't have to do very much …

*Sighs in Shakespeare* I think I may have officially given up hope of my Shakespeare page ever being completed. Last week the RSC announced a ridiculous amount of productions (covering most, if not all, of 2024) without The Two Gentlemen of Verona in sight, and today The Globe have done the same; I know I’m being incredibly self-centred on this front, but over the course of seven years it should …

With most of the construction on the e-mando now complete, it’s time to concentrate on the tailpiece and bridge and getting the mandolin set-up. And that’s exactly what I look at in this video!And just in case you’ve been wondering……..here’s the latest Standard. It’s rosewood body has been fully bound in cocobolo and the next step is fit the neck.

During the third Arbuckle trial, in early April 1922, the prosecution called a surprise witness to the stand, Lillian Blake, a San Francisco photographer who claimed to have taken a single photograph of Virginia Rappe in September 1914. She testified that Rappe had spent about thirty minutes in her Geary Street studio. Her purpose was to rebut the testimony of a defense witness, Helen Whitehurst, who claimed that Rappe attended …

Macintosh computers and Mac OS turn 40 this year, and the media tributes are starting already. The Upgrade podcast linked here asked a few Mac-media luminaries for their picks in a personal Mac retrospective. I did something like this when Steve Jobs died, but that was more than a decade ago, so I figure I’ll play along with their topics: First Mac owned: the Mac LC, when I went to …

What do the most effective people do to increase the velocity of their teams? There are several roles people take on teams, that make their teams move faster. I describe one of these roles today, and how you might learn from them. Role #4: The Nowist The Nowist moves everything towards the present. For a Nowist, every action either makes things move faster, or makes them move slower, and they …

I’m trying to write more, but lately my fire has been replaced by noise. My most toxic trait is one I work really hard not to project on anyone, either in terms of judgment or expectation: that suffering contains a virtue in itself, and that one must submit to some small degree of suffering in order to achieve what one truly desires. The German word “leiden” means to suffer; Leidenschaft, …

Katharine Jenkins has artfully stitched together a radically pluralist account of human social kinds using materials drawn from recent work in analytic feminist metaphysics. If the reader is interested in an overview of recent developments in social ontology, Jenkins’ book would be a good place to start. In addition, Jenkins identifies and defines two novel kinds of ontological wrongs, namely ontic injustice and ontic oppression, a species of ontic injustice. …