Hotter than a witch's inverted nipple.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006 • 09:09:41 AM EDT

Hey! I thought up a terrific joke yesterday. It's topical humor, inspired by the current heatwave:

Q: How hot is it out there?
A: #&@% you. That's how goddamn hot it is, you @%$#@!%.

Ha ha ha! Truly the heatwave and my need to put in 18-hour days in a non-air-conditioned office has moved me several steps closer to death. That's definite. I'm just not sure if it'll be my death or somebody else's. I'm still very committed to the principle that one's back should be turned against violence all times, of course. Nonetheless, the experience of spending four days incarcerated in clothing that weighs five pounds more that it did when I got dressed in the morning has left me wondering why I don't own a gun or something.

I have no intention of actually using it, you understand. My theory is that these 95-degree temps and amphibian-grade humidity won't risk a home invasion if they think that I, Honest Q. Whiteguy, might be armed. I'm pretty confident about this. I have an illustrated pamphlet here from The Whiteguy Institute that backs up this general view on gun ownership. It includes a coupon for 10% off hollowpoints, so go ahead and call that 800-number today before the temperatures dip back down and your rationality returns to you.

Q: How hot is it out there?
A: …And anyone who even looks like you.

Highs of 102 degrees forecast for today. I'll work until noon and then I'll toss Lilith in a bag and see how long I can nurse a $5 ChocoFrappaLatteCupertino or whatever the hell it is that they sell at Starbucks.

Q: How hot is it out there?

A: So hot that late yesterday afternoon, I sniffed the air and thought "Crimeny! I'm sweating up the joint so bad that the whole office smells like fried chicken!"

And that, dear reader, was when I finally remembered the bag of takeout lunch that had been sitting on a nearby table for several hours. My phone had rung the moment I stepped back into my office and I forgot all about it.

Dear merciful Lord in heaven it's way, way too hot.

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Religious Doctrine

Wednesday, August 23, 2006 • 01:34:49 PM EDT

Okay, Andy, new rule:

If you ever do take a deep breath and post in a message thread in which the topic is the existence or non-existence of God, be sure to uncheck the "Notify me by email when new messages appear in this thread" box in the message form.

Otherwise…well, your mailbox tends to fill up rather quickly.

So ordered.

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At Last, The 1957 Show

Thursday, August 31, 2006 • 11:37:22 PM EDT

Okey-doke…it's the last day of the month, so it's probably a good idea to get going on that "Sorry I haven't been blogging much, but I was completely consumed with finishing my next book" post, Viz:

Sorry that I haven't been blogging much, but I was completely consumed with finishing my next book.

…Which morphed into "Really, now that the book is done, the very last thing I want to do is attempt to string coherent sentences together if an editor isn't forcing me at gunpoint," and then to "I was focusing so totally on finishing the book that I had to back-burner a lot of deadline-less projects, but now I've no excuses left."

We are now somewhere in the realm of "I suppose I should give the office a good clean, but perhaps that can wait until tomorrow." It's not on the GPS and I'm afraid to ask. This looks like a seedy part of town. Trash strewn everywhere, lots of half-drunk soda cans and unopened mail…brr.

But yes: Praise the Lord (God, Byron, And Taylor…take your pick), the book is done. I'd include a link to the Amazon pre-order page, but that looks like something that would require me to tab over into my web browser and do a little research. It's now just after eleven, and I'm determined to get this thing posted before we roll on over to September 1, so we'll be flying no-frills.

Plus, y'all ought to get fairly sick of hearing me talk about the book between now and November, when it ships. I'm excited to see how it performs. I'm rather happy with it; as with the Mac OS book, Step One in coming up with this project was stepping back and thinking "What sort of iPod book hasn't been done?" and then finding an approach that I would really enjoy working on.

Writing a book is a lot of work — again I call your attention to all of these half-drunk soda cans — and it's just flat-out a colossal waste of time for both you and the world consumer if you become merely the nth person to cover the same topic.

I picture someone asking me "Well, why should I buy your book and not this other person's?" It's good to have a ready response. "My iPod book is better than all the others" is a subjective answer (and one that simply begs to be mocked) but when you say "Because mine tells you things that the others don't; buy both, and you'll have the alpha and the omega of the thing."

Tick, tick, tick…well, before pushing the magic button here I'll simply say that through no work of my own, this is proving to be the most Mac-centric social week of the year, barring those times when I'm not surrounded by some sort of conference. Had dinner with five Mac-ish pals last night. Tonight, it was off to glorious (not really) Natick, MA for dinner with my pal and editor Jason, and a few fellow contributors to MacUser.com. Tomorrow, lunch with my pal Rich, this time in the guise of Software Magnate Rich, who wants to show me Something Cool His Company Will One Day Release.

And good news in the mailbox this afternoon: pals Adam and Tonya Engst (famous for publishing TidBITS and operating one of the most respected clammeries in western New York) are in town and intend to eat food on Sunday night. As luck had it, I had planned on eating food as well, and we have agreed to do so at the same rough GPS coordinates.

Still some time left…well, I haven't posted any of the photos from my trip to Philadelphia, which includes a shot of what must certainly be one of the three largest murals of Larry Fine ever executed. I also took a pal on a two-day road trip that can be adequately summarized as New England: One Lap Around. Many good photos from that adventure…including documentation of The God-Damnedest of God-Damned Coincidences in recent human history.

But here's one of the drawbacks of digital photography: I came home with more than 500 photos. Of Nubble Light in York Maine alone, I took nearly a hundred shots. I've started editing these pictures down, beginning with the lighthouse. I find that I can only cut about twenty at a time before I'm frustrated and itchy all over. Nubble Light has been described (with justification) as The Most Photographed Lighthouse In America. This is a lighthouse that truly flaunts it, and which is polite enough to be situated on a little jetty across from an observation area where it's almost impossible to take a bad picture.

So what do you do? You stand there for an hour and try to take a fantastic picture. I bracketed exposures. I changed composition. I waited for small hairless apes to wander aimlessly into the shot to add foreground interest. Et cetera.

Result: 100 photos, 80% of which are nearly identical to the untrained eye.

Things where different in the world of analog photography. I was so excited about a weeklong trip to Alaska that I bought my first really decent SLR (a Nikon, which started a lifelong love affair). I brought maybe 108 frames of film, and when I had to buy two more 36-exposure rolls there in Anchorage I imagined that I wasn't exercising enough self-control.

Pah! I blew through all of that in twelve hours! Every frame of film you shoot costs you about twenty cents. Digital snaps are free, which means that you employ the same attitude towards free space on your memory card as the Marines have regarding spare ammo: "You're not being paid to bring this stuff back unused."

Well, I'll certainly get to that. Also to a few little upgrades to CWOBber, my blogging app. I've seen a Certain Feature pop up on some other blogs that seems (a) super neato-cool and (b) really simple to implement. And implement it I shall.

And now that I own a smartphone, I want to figure out how to incorporate moblogging. I think I've figured out a simple trick.

More worrisome: an idea that would make lots of other features way easier to build, but which would force me to make a fundamental change to the app's architecture. This isn't as neat as adding moblogging features. When you do that…hey, cool, you can now post to the blog from your phone. When you Make A Fundamental Change To The App's Architecture, you've just put in two full days of work and the only reward is that you maybe didn't break the thing too badly in the process.

But the main point remains: the book is done, I no longer wake up thinking "All right: how much time do I have before offices open on the west coast, and can I get something new finished and uploaded to the project server before people start wandering in with their coffee and bagels," life is, with certain simple exceptions, good.

Now I just have to think of what the next book is going to be. I'm already long-signed to do a Leopard update to my (best-selling, thank you very much) Mac OS book, but there isn't enough software to really get spinning on it yet. So in the meantime, I must once again call fire down from the Heavens and determine how the Humans shall best be warmed and illuminated by the radiance of my Genius.

Oh, and laundry. I need to do laundry. Mustn't forget that.

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