Archive for August 2008
An album a year
My birthday is coming up soon (tomorrow). Like most stressful events in my life, I’m medicating it with music. So I’ll jump on the “favorite album for every year of your life” blogmeme.
I see that my list overlaps a bit with that of Nick Carr, the Darth Vader of the I.T. world. Nick, I wish I knew you 30 years ago. We could have gone to concerts together.
I’m following the draconian rules: no reissues, only one album per performer. And I’m adding two more: no thinking about this for more than 15 minutes, no live albums.
1963 (first full year I was alive), The Beatles, Please Please Me
1964, Lonnie Mack, The Wham! of That Memphis Man
1965, Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home
1966, Otis Redding, Otis Blue
1967, Aretha Franklin, I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You
1968, The Band, Music from Big Pink
1969, Wilbert Harrison, Let’s Work Together
1970, Derek and the Dominoes, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs
1971, Rod Stewart, Every Picture Tells a Story
1972, The Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street
1973, Bruce Springsteen, The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle
1974, Firesign Theater, Everything You Know Is Wrong
1975, Toots and the Maytals, Funky Kingston
1976, Graham Parker and the Rumour, Heat Treatment
1977, Never Mind the Bollocks, It’s the Sex Pistols
1978, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, Hearts of Stone
1979, The Clash, London Calling
1980, Pretenders
1981, X, Wild Gift
1982, Ted Hawkins, Watch Your Step
1983, Talking Heads, Speaking in Tongues
1984, Jason and the Scorchers, Fervor
1985, Paul Kelly, Post
1986, The Costello Show, King of America
1987, Prince, Sign o’ the Times
1988, Sonic Youth, Daydream Nation
1989, Mekons, Rock ‘n’ Roll
1990, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Ragged Glory
1991, Guitar Paradise of East Africa
1992, Lucinda Williams, Sweet Old World
1993, Liz Phair, Exile in Guyville
1994, Hole, Live Through This
1995, Steve Earle, Train A’Comin’
1996, Beck, Odelay
1997, Murmurs, Pristine Smut
1998, Billy Bragg and Wilco, Mermaid Avenue
1999, The Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs
2000, Eminem, The Marshall Mathers LP
2001, The Strokes, Is This It?
2002, Red, Hot + Riot
2003, Dengue Fever
2004, can’t think and my 15 minutes is running out
2005, Amy Rigby, Little Fugitive
2006, see 2004
2007, Junior Senior, Hey Hey My My Yo Yo
2008 (so far), Ida Maria, Fortress Round My Heart
Whew. I hope I got the years right. Argue in the comments, friends.
Yahoo death watch: data point 27,398
Early this morning, I wrote a note to the “feature request” email address at Yahoo and received a bounceback informing me that the email address no longer exists. So now we know how much attention Yahoo is paying to building new features on its aging services.
Of course, there’s always this to worry about.
Remember the Milk forgets me … but is it my fault?
Last week I wrote about Remember the Milk’s refusal or inability to synch its excellent task service with Outlook. I received a couple of interesting comments to the post. Rather than respond to them in the comments, I’m surfacing them here, in part because they’re better than my original post.
andreakremer wrote:
So here’s where Twitter comes in: you should Twitter a link to this post, with the title in it, and see if the RTM people are ego-searching Twitter for complaints/compliments. Then see if they respond!
Well, that is exactly what I did. Using the miracle that is Ping.fm, I let those poor souls following my Facebook and Twitter status updates know about the post. Turns out that the RTM people either (a) have better things to do than ego-search or (b) have better things to do that respond to my whining.
Brian Johnson wrote, in part (you can read the comment if you don’t want to miss a word of his thoughtful argument):
Jimmy, I completely agree with your point that the good people at Remember The Milk should be more communicative. Giving you that, I want to address something else in your post: Outlook … [description of his rocky relationship with Outlook] … The good people at RTM ought to answer the phone. And we should be getting on to our next platform already. When I think about the months, maybe years of my life, I’ve spent waiting for Windows and Outlook to load, I want to weep. I’m making a break for it. Are you with me?
So the problem is me, is it?
Well, maybe it is. Since June, I have the good fortune to have a full-time job, for the first time, at a place that’s platform-agnostic. I no longer have the “gotta use Outlook” excuse. I use plenty of the same Outlook add-ins Brian uses to make it work better with the cloud that, except for my writing, has become the center of my computing experience. If I have a large and bulky program that I’m augmenting with a half-dozen large, bulky add-ons that don’t always play well together so they better connect with the lightweight web-based services I’m using more and more, what’s the point?
So … OK, Brian. I’m in. I don’t want to move from a Microsoft-supervised prison to an Apple-supervised one or a Google-supervised one, so I’m going to move my work life to the cloud slowly and carefully. And there are plenty of interesting services so I can mix and match without the system being any more complicated than an Outlook-plus-add-ins scenario. I don’t want to have to do this again in six months if Jobs or Schmidt turn out to be lousy stewards of my stuff. Let the transition begin …
(Unintentional punch line: The transition may have begun already. Earlier today I installed the new IE beta on my laptop. It has an undocumented new feature: It doesn’t connect to any websites. Hello again, Firefox!)
Burning Spear, Garvey’s Ghost (classic album reheard in the car on the way home from work yesterday)
Burning Spear’s Marcus Garvey was stirring and heady, a broadside for what was then a little-known way (in this country, anyway) of hearing reggae. The cover photo of the trio leaning at odd angles in front of wood planks seems shot beside a slave ship, and singer Winston Rodney turns righteous drama into joyous keening. Joe Strummer’s ideas about expansive rhythms started here.
Indeed, the album’s instrumental counterpart, Garvey’s Ghost (1976), solidified the idea of dub as a rhythm zone or a kind of sound playing-field that can be endlessly revisited and revised. The tracks eschew the rough-hewn top melodies of the straight version and zoom in on its low-profile countermelodies. Echoed horns dart in and out of focus; Rodney’s vocals are rarely as audible as they are in the original LP, deployed only to underline a mood that the instruments are already conveying, especially the pained cries on the fervid “I and I Survive”; and rhythm guitarist Valentine Chin anchors the beat as drummer Leroy Wallace dances around it. Producer L. Lindo (a.k.a. Jack Ruby, not the Dallas club owner) places Robbie Shakespeare’s and Aston “Family Man” Barret’s sturdy bass figures as far up front as he can stick them without letting them fall out of the speakers.
At its best, dub shines light on aspects of songs that the original version sometimes gave short shrift. Garvey’s Ghost, along with records from Big Youth, King Tubby, the great Lee Perry, and others, helped set the style for the whole dub sweep that followed and still influences such hip-hop mixer-producers as Arthur Baker and Public Enemy’s Terminator X. Garvey’s Ghost means to make its listener feel cramped inside the slave ship along with the band. When they get to their final “Resting Place,” they mean us to remain uneasy with them too. The sound you hear is the galleon sinking.
(Consumer note: Marcus Garvey and Garvey’s Ghost used to be available together on one compact disc. Don’t know if they still are.)
(Update: They are, but they’re expensive.)
Remember the Milk fails to serve its Outlook users — or does it understand its audience perfectly?
Like everyone else with something resembling a life, the amount of things I have to do beats the crap out of the amount of time I have to do them. So I’ve used a variety of methodologies, software programs, wireless devices, and enthusiast websites (1, 2) to keep everything organized and moving forward.
Nirvana for personal overclockers, at least on the digital side of personal optimization, is complete synchronization across computers, networks, and devices. Yet the most basic of synchronizations — notes and lists of tasks that work together on a computer and a handheld device, something I took for granted when the original PalmPilot came out in 1995 — is unavailable on the iPhone. The failure is Apple’s, of course. But there is one vendor that could solve the problem and make some money from it, but has decided not to. At first I thought this decision was a big, fat fail, but now I wonder.
Remember the Milk is a sturdy web-based task management service. It’s reliable and flexible, and it comes in a very handy iPhone-optimized version. It doesn’t, however, work with Microsoft Outlook, the “productivity” suite millions of people are forced to work with. A service that could connect Outlook tasks to the iPhone via a premium web-based service would seem a smart business. And because it already has an excellent web-based service that works well on the iPhone, you’d think Remember the Milk would be uniquely positioned to own that niche.
So do hundreds (at least) of Remember the Milk (RTM) users, both those using the free and “pro” ($25 per year) versions. An active, energetic thread in RTM’s forums (disclosure: I’ve contributed) is full of requests, demands, and begs that the small company develop an Outlook-synching tool, as it has for some other platforms. The folks who write and manage RTM weighed in early in the discussion but have been noticeable by their absence for more than 18 months.
I thought this was nuts. I wanted to grab the RTM team by their lapels and shout, “People, your customers, many of whom don’t give you a dime, are offering to sign up for your paid service if you just do this. Why don’t you?”
I don’t know anyone at RTM and I haven’t heard from any of them about this. (I weighed in a few times in the discussion forum and sent an email, but I never heard back.) These people have developed a good service. Shouldn’t I at least acknowledge that they might know their customers better than I do? They’re certainly talented at getting the service to work in plenty of places: web, iPhone, BlackBerry, plenty of Google services, Twitter, Windows Mobile devices, even when not connected to the Net. If they wanted to provide Outlook synchronization, they could. They’ve chosen not to. There is an API for RTM, so I suppose I could do this myself if I (a) had the inclination and (b) did not stink as a programmer.
There are plenty of good reasons for RTM to punt on Outlook. Maybe the RTM userbase is far more Mac-centric than you’d think. Maybe either Microsoft or Apple are working on this and RTM knows this. Maybe some people at the Googleplex are working on Google Tasks in their 20% time and RTM knows this. Maybe someone outside RTM who (a) has the inclination and (b) does not stink as a programmer is working on this. Maybe no one at RTM has the energy for yet another port.
The problem is: I don’t know. I’m willing to assume that RTM has good reason not to provide Outlook synchronization. But as a paying customer and a fan, I’d rather know for sure.
Why does Billboard exist?
Just read about Lily Allen on Billboard. It’s the same piece, with similar sources, that was on Idolator yesterday. Indeed, in recent months, I’ve noticed that plenty of music-industry news stories in Billboard appeared one or two days earlier, with much the same sources and a lot more attitude and context, on Idolator. So why is there still Billboard?
Most confusing online form of the day, this time courtesy of Interop (an ongoing series)
As we’re preparing the fall relaunch of the MIT Sloan Management Review website, we’re thinking hard about how to make things easier for people trying to get around our site. (Indeed, I have a document on that very topic due for my boss tomorrow.) We’ve been looking closely at forms on other websites and I just came across this doozy:
This is as hostile a web form as I’ve seen lately. Checking the box unsubscribes you, except when it doesn’t … because there are two ways to unsubscribe. The sentence right above the “unsubscribe” button was written by someone who either (1) didn’t like English class in high school and still carries a grudge or (2) has been instructed to make the unsubscribe so confusing that plenty of people will stay on the list by accident.
But why should there be a form at all? Even better, as my colleague (and Wordle enthusiast) Sean Brown points out, wouldn’t it be better, when someone clicks on an “unsubscribe” link in an email, for that person to arrive at a page simply confirming that he or she has been unsubscribed? Do what your customer wants and get out of the way.
“Wooly Bully” by Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs: Greatest song of all time of the week
The back cover of the glorious compilation Best of Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs, which I am unable to locate online, portrays four strangely attired people running around a tree. They don’t seem to know why they are doing this, but they are enjoying themselves immensely, and seem committed to continuing the action until they fall down. This is an ideal image for understanding the band.
Sam the Sham, whose real name is Domingo Samudio, is a Dallas-born crazy (last we heard he was a street preacher and motivational speaker working out of Memphis) who loved raunchy, laconic rock and roll of the most giddily mindless variety, and his sidemen—Ray Stinnet, David Martin, Jerry Patterson, and Butch Gibson—were consistently able to carry him to a demented part of frat-rock heaven. They recorded briefly for something called Dingo Records and then moved to MGM.
Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs are best known for their pair of Number Two smashes, “Wooly Bully,” a masterwork of indecipherability that made “Louie Louie” sound like an enunciation class, and “Li’l Red Riding Hood,” a hormone-laced fairy tale with a happy ending. If you’re guessing an enormous Kingsmen influence on these organ-heavy folks, you’re right. Hits aside, the modest gifts of the band were surprisingly malleable, as showcased on charming, wacked-out cuts like “The Hair on My Chinny Chin Chin,” “El Toro de Goro (The Peace Loving Bull),” and “(I’m in With) The Out Crowd.” All these songs were defiantly insubstantial, and all held out deep meanings to those with the right bent.
Historical note: Every cut on The Best of Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs was produced by legendary Sun Records sideman and sometime Elvis Presley composer Stan Kesler. You go figure the connection.
How much fun is this nonsense? Even a lipsynched version of “Wooly Bully” will improve your day:
Alas, this is one of the most-covered numbers ever:
And I do mean alas:
Progress report: how did last week end up?
Mixed. Here’s the final tally:
* get 24 things done at MIT (did 22, but of course the two that remain undone are the most important two)
* dentist’s appointment (done, but all I had to do was show up)
* write drafts of two scenes for the novel (none, but I did solve a crucial Act 3 problem, so I wasn’t a sloth)
* organize the office (home) (as good as it’s going to get)
* organize the office (MIT) (done, but it wasn’t a big undertaking)
* exercise five times (yup; this week isn’t as productive yet)
Friday morning progress report
The work week is nearly done. How am I doing?
* get 24 things done at MIT (21 down, 3 to go — but two of the remaining three are big projects)
* dentist’s appointment (done, but all I had to do was show up)
* write drafts of two scenes for the novel (none; looks like this isn’t going to get done)
* organize the office (home) (as good as it’s going to get)
* organize the office (MIT) (done, but it wasn’t a big undertaking)
* exercise five times (four down, one to go)
That’ll be it from me here for today. I’ve got to get (as many of) these things (as possible) done, plus the girls will be home this afternoon. Seeya next week.
Sentence #31
At that moment she realized she would have to hide the lighter for the rest of her life.
Facebook status message of the day
“[Name redacted] has just learned that the imprisoned ex-husband of the house seller has put a lien on the property and his lawyer will join us at the closing. Sounds like fun.”
Six words to change the world
The six-word novel meme has been around for a good long time. Every now and then, to clear my head, I give myself six minutes or so to come up with as many six-word novels as I can. It’s a fun, easy, low-pressure way to get started writing for the day. Here’s what I came up with the last time I tried (according to my notepad, I took a whopping 11 minutes):
Got hit. Got famous. Got revenge.
All I learned didn’t help me.
Made four promises. Kept only three.
Mother, wife, daughter, mistress, second wife.
I think I saw Mom’s killer.
Dog person and cat person disagree.
He knew the secret and told.
He did too much and paid.
Enjoyed the view. The view changed.
Hated the whale. Whale hated him.
He wanted to show his father.
“I don’t have enough.” He did.
It had to come out somehow.
Telling him stories kept her alive.
He wanted to tell her everything.
She kissed him. It didn’t help.
If only my much-longer novel-in-progress was anywhere near as worthwhile as a couple of these…
Thursday morning progress report
The week’s more than halfway done. How am I doing?
* get 24 things done at MIT (14 down, 10 to go — two of those 10 are huge)
* dentist’s appointment (done, but all I had to do was show up)
* write drafts of two scenes for the novel (none; not looking good)
* organize the office (home) (as good as it’s going to get)
* organize the office (MIT) (done, but it wasn’t a big undertaking)
* exercise five times (three down, two to go)
Sentence #29
That was before she lost her job as a David Lee Roth impersonator.
(It’s time to return to this exercise, as descibed here.)
Wednesday morning progress report
The week’s almost halfway done. How am I doing?
* get 24 things done at MIT (10 down, 14 to go)
* dentist’s appointment (today)
* write drafts of two scenes for the novel (nope)
* organize the office (home) (nope)
* organize the office (MIT) (done, but it wasn’t a big undertaking)
* exercise five times (two down, three to go)
Greatest songs of all time of the day (Lily Allen vs. Clarence Ashley)
Lily Allen, “Guess Who Batman” (aka “Fuck You Very Much”)
The genius behind “LDN” and “Smile” delivers the sharpest flipoff to a racist friend since, well, the Specials’ “Racist Friend.” It’s also a lot goofier, thanks in part to the piano line stolen from the Carpenters. (No video, but I used the YouTube link so my readers don’t have to suffer through MySpace, where Allen posted the song.)
Clarence Ashley, “The Coo Coo Bird”
There’s no video of his 1929 original take, preserved on the awesome Anthology of American Folk Music, I’m guessing. This version of the song, performed during Ashley’s ’60s rediscovery, raises profound questions, particularly the line about seeing Willy “fly by.” Who is Willy? Why will he fly by? Why will that have an impact on the singer?
Bouncy pop or rail-thin folk? I vote for both today.
What would D. Boon do?
A few years ago I saw a documentary about the late, great Minutemen. In it, Flea, the bass player for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, said that whenever he made a career decision he’d ask, “What would D. Boon do?”
We may all ask that, but none of us actually do what Boon would. We don’t know what he would do now, more than 20 years after his death. Some background: When they were a going concern, I loved the Minutemen more than was healthy. When Boon died in a car crash in 1985, shortly after the release of the band’s best album, 3 Way Tie (For Last), he left with his career frozen. He didn’t get old or boring or repeat himself. We could always remember him as one of the guys screaming righeously on the cover of the 1983 EP Buzz or Howl Under the Influence of Heat:
I’m not the first person to ask this question in a blog post, but whenever I read about some performer I like threatening to do something stupid, I wish D. Boon, or at least my idealized version of him, was around to give advice.
Why am I thinking about the Minutemen this morning? Because this morning at the coffee shop I heard a John Fogerty song, which made me think of Creedence Clearwater Revival, which made me think of the Minutemen covering Creedence, which they did not only on record but in someone’s backyard:
And while we’re on the subject of transformative covers of ’60s classics by SST rabble-rousers:
Another reason to miss Eli
I’m glad Eli is away having creative fun, but I miss having him around to say things like “Pizza is the only food you can build a party out of. You never hear of a salad party.”
Beginning-of-day progress report
I warned you. Will the fear of public humiliation motivate me to get everything done?
* get 24 things done at MIT (six down, 18 to go)
* dentist’s appointment (not yet)
* write drafts of two scenes for the novel (nope)
* organize the office (home) (nope)
* organize the office (MIT) (almost)
* exercise five times (one down, four to go)
Two new Neil Young songs
He’s about to start promoting his catalog with the beginning of the Archives onslaught, so what is Neil Young doing? Debuting new songs, of course:
1. “Sea Change” (on YouTube, but it’s audio only):
2. “Just Singing a Song Won’t Change the World”
in MP3 format
(I found both of these via the useful Neil Young News fan blog.)
When I take over Penguin Classics…
…the first things to go are the introductions. Here’s why.
I was looking forward to reading the Penguin collection of Heinrich von Kleist’s short stories. I’d seen the first sentences from two of his stories quoted and I both grabbed me.
From “The Marquise of O–”:
“In M–, an important town in northern Italy, the widowed Marquise of O–, a lady of unblemished reputation and the mother of several well-brought-up children, inserted the following announcement in the newspapers: that she had, without knowledge of the cause, come to find herself in a certain situation; that she would like the father of the child she was expecting to disclose his identity to her; and that she was resolved, out of consideration for her family, to marry him.”
And from “The Earthquake in Chile”:
“In Santiago, the capital of the kingdom of Chile, at the moment of the great earthquake of 1647 in which many thousands lost their lives, a young Spaniard called Jeronimo Rugera was standing beside one of the pillars in the prison to which he had been committed on a criminal charge, and was about to hang himself.”
Each of them practically beg to let you know what comes next. I wanted to know, so I bought Penguin’s colection of von Kleist’s stories and read the introduction. That ruined the book for me. The introduction is brisk and informative — but it GIVES AWAY THE ENTIRE PLOT OF EVERY STORY IN THE COLLECTION. It’s like a spoiler site for classical literature. The introduction is like a Cliff’s Notes for the story collection. It summarizes the plots and then sends you away. Who, when reading a book for pleasure, wants to know how it ends before it even starts?
Two quick caveats:
1. Some introductions are great. Bernard Knox’s notes prior to Robert Fagles’ translations of Homer and Virgil were essential to my having even a rudimentary understanding of what I was about to read.
2. Sometimes it’s OK to give it all away in advance. Here’s how Vladimir Nabokov’s Laughter in the Dark opens: “Once upon a time there lived in Berlin a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a beautiful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster.” The mean and funny novel that follows offered heightened meanness and humor because we know what’s coming.
But those are the rarest of exceptions. Introductions are for context, not for giving it all away. In a few weeks, after this passes, I’ll try again to read these stories. From now on, I’m reading the introductions last.
How much is your privacy worth?
If you’ve ever wondered: the answer, according to a large pharmacy chain, is a mere four bucks, and that’s only after you make a $20 purchase.
Elegy vs. The Dying Animal
Philip Roth wrote a corrosive novel about a corrosive character and called it The Dying Animal. Now I see that it’s been made into a movie called Elegy. How much you wanna bet that the movie and the character will be a lot less impolite than the book? Amazing what a name alone can tell you about a work of art.
The week ahead
Is it true that you were in a traffic jam that lasted for three states?
Yup. Started in Maine, ended in Massachusetts: all of New Hampshire was stop and go.
Why were you in Maine?
Dropping off Eli and his BFF at a photography workshop. I’ll get to spend 9-1/2 hours in a car again picking them up a week from Saturday.
Did you bring enough music to listen to in the car on the way back when you didn’t have to listen to two teenage boys blurt out whatever came to mind?
Depends on whether you think hearing the 57:19 version of “My Favorite Things” from John Coltrane’s Live in Japan is way beyond enough. I never want to hear a bass solo again (except by Eli).
Why do I hear an echo?
Because I’m alone in the house. Eli’s clicking pix in Maine, Jane and the girls are on the Cape for the coming week, and it’s just me in our modest-sized-but-enormous-feeling home.
What are you wearing?
Next question, please.
Will you blog more this week than last week?
Probably. It’s only Sunday night, the last time we can still feel optimistic about the work week ahead.
What else will you do?
I suspect I’ll veer wildly between GTD and GND. Here’s what I hope to accomplish between now and Friday:
* get 24 things done at MIT
* dentist’s appointment
* write drafts of two scenes for the novel
* organize the office (home)
* organize the office (MIT)
* exercise five times
I’ll update my progress daily. Perhaps tracking all this publicly will serve as a productivity tool: the threat of public humiliation works. Sometimes.
Do you have any photos of a turkey you saw recently saw on a highway divider?
Sure:
Questions for the proprietor
Where you been?
Canada, mostly. The five of us and a friend of Eli’s packed into the van: half a week in Montreal (good, and I was not responsible for this), half a week in Ottawa (great), and a one-night stopover in Burlington, Vt., on the way back. As of Tuesday, I’m three-quarters of the way to Inbox Zero. I need to learn French for the next trip to the Great White North.
Was everything the same when you returned?
Mostly. Manny is gone, and so is Scrabulous, but it looks as if the latter has returned in not-too-diminished form. I missed a particularly weird Carl Icahn hissy fit, and I’ll have to check in with Paczkowski for guidance on how to interpret that.
What did you learn about your newspaper-reading habits while you were gone?
As I’ve noted previously, I’m done with print newspapers. For the first half of the vacation, I did a reasonably good job of staying off the laptop (and we were in another country, so I didn’t want to turn on the iPhone unless absolutely necessary). If I wanted to know what was going on in the world I had to read the print versions of the Times and Journal, both of which were available in hotel gift shops at imminent-apocalypse prices. I imagined that reading newspapers this way would feel like a luxury. Instead, compared to their younger online siblings, they felt out of date and, well, short. Aside from the immediacy you get from following news via the net, chances are you see that news as part of a larger river of information. It’s always coming at you. In comparison, reading the news in a newspaper feels limited, finite. It ends. News on the net never ends (for better or worse).
Is there anything better than watching your girls swim in a hotel pool?
Not much.
Also worth looking at was the National Gallery in Ottawa. We spent two hours there. I bet we could have gone at least two days without running out of surprises. I was particularly taken by William Kurelek’s “Arriving on the Manitoba Farm,” which looks dark and formless in this image, but reveals more and more layers of detail and meaning when you have the pleasure of standing in front of it.
When you stopped in Burlington, Vt., on the way back, did you see any newspaper headlines you’d expect to see only in Burlington, Vt.?
Yes.
What did you read?
Parts of Francine Prose’s Read Like a Writer (mostly zzz, but it did introduce me to this guy) and Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance, and (several times) my favorite Chekhov story, “The Lady with the Dog.”
And you read them all on your…
Kindle, right. It’s a usability nightmare and the selection of Amazon-blessed-and-DRMed books is insufficient and random, but I found it convenient and comfortable under all but the most low-light situations.
Did you write?
Yes, especially early in the week when I was still keeping that off-the-net promise. It’s amazing how less depressed you can be about the quality of something if you’re actually working on it. And maybe I should consider a new business model.
What was Jane’s most memorable quote during the week?
There were so many candidates, but I’m going with “I’m trying to save the tattoo.”
How’s the new job going?
So far it seems like a very good fit. I’ll have a full report at the end of The First 90 Days.
Weren’t you going to tell us the point of this blog?
Comments from Doug, Owen, and Andrea — and a gift from Brian — showed me the limits of my thinking from a few posts ago. And Jane has suggested that I write about what I think about: namely, media and technology. So, unless you’re reading this via a newsreader, you’ll see that the blog now has a new tagline: “media, technology, and the rest of it.” I’ve got some ideas for making this more than a vanity blog; we’ll see if I can live up to them. Oh, and to warn you, I’m going to pay more attention to Twitter.
What’s next?
Gotta see how the WordPress app for the iPhone works.
