January 2010
14 posts
Four open letters to the book industry - and my... →
Given a recent experience browsing both a B&N and a Borders nearby, I second the original poster’s “good luck with that coffee thing.”
This whole MacMillan-Amazon story reeks of costism. Costism is a disease that affects the general public and managers alike, in which they make arguments and decisions based on cost instead of value. And e-books and dead tree books have...
Geosynchron, book 3 of the Jump 225 trilogy is out →
The last of the Jump 225 trilogy is out, a full twenty-five days before its announced release date. This trilogy follows an entrepreneur in a highly volatile knowledge economy, and the interplay between its government, established companies, entrepreneurs, nascent political movements, and religion. Violence aplenty; alas, no sex.
Ordered, of course. I must be made of biblos bosons, I can’t...
1 tag
WatchMichael Alden (founder of The London Lounge) shows how to carry a pocket kerchief and a neck kerchief with panache.
2 tags
SFO, that leper colony
Not my words, but those of dandy, satirist, social observer, and bon-vivant Lucius Beebe.
On page 195 of “The big spenders,” Beebe refers to “the leprosarium that masquerades as San Francisco International Airport.” He goes on to describe really civilized travel, by private train car or in a suitably appointed stateroom of an ocean liner.
Beebe didn’t like airlines...
Apple kills the Kindle, netbooks collateral damage →
Given how pervasive WiFi is in the Bay Area and in most environments where I’m likely to find myself, I’m not sure I’ll wait the extra month to buy the 3G version; and as Scott Bourne tweeted, a MiFi affords mobile connectivity and can be shared with the laptop or the iPod Touch. (The only issue being that the iPad has an “unlimited” plan — i.e. in the low...
1 tag
Books-a-plenty
In conversation with an old friend I realized that there are more books on my dining-room table than he reads in a year.
Six books lie on my table: Colossus, by Niall Ferguson (SFPL copy); Web Analytics 2.0, by Avinash Kaushik; The Handbook of Statistics, Vol 25, Bayesian Methods; The Big Spenders, by Lucius Beebe; The House of Medici, by Christopher Hibbert; and Gear for your Kitchen, by Alton...
Serendipitous discoveries
Some of the best things I discovered, I did so randomly.
No, I’m not talking of the music I bought from listening to KDFC in the car, or of the books I buy from watching C-Span2’s BookTV. These are predictable outcomes. I mean things that happened by accident and led to an enduring interest.
Take Jacques Loussier, the great jazz arranger of Bach, Handel, and other music usually...
Up in the Air
This movie will probably disappoint me.
I haven’t seen the movie but I read the book. Since most of the entertainment I derived from the book was from the side references to managerial and business material and the integration of that material into the narrative, I’m bracing for serious disappointment from the movie, which, if the reviews I read are anywhere close to accurate, is a...
1 tag
Gibbon on the treadmill
After a day of unsuccessful toil in the writing mines, I decided to jump-start tomorrow’s creativity with an evening run on a treadmill. No, I’m not a gibbon; I’m a slightly more evolved primate.
The Gibbon I’m referring to is Edward Gibbon, author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Audible.com has the complete unabridged classic (around 90 hours...
Posterous out; Tumblr in.
Posterous was a failed experiment. I used to have a tumblelog before, so I repurposed it.