My dear, dear publisher, Peachpit, asked me if I would be interested in writing an article for their website about the Kindle Fire. I, of course, was interested and wrote 10 Cool Things You Can Do with Your Kindle Fire:
Did you know that you can email documents, load your own content, and sideload apps with the Kindle Fire? Scott McNulty, author of The Kindle Fire Pocket Guide, offers a list of ten cool things he loves about the Kindle Fire.
Go ahead and read it, dude!
Hey cats and kittens, the day you've been waiting for is upon us (well, it actually happened yesterday but I was busy taking the day off): my latest book, The Kindle Fire Pocket Guide
To celebrate I thought I would give away some copies of the book to Blankbaby readers/followers. I have 15 copies of the book to give away, so leave a comment on this post by January 24th to enter. If more than 15 people comment then I will randomly select the winner, and if less than 15 people comment everyone wins (if exactly 15 people comment the universe will implode).
The book covers the basics from using the web browser, buying media from Amazon, and more advanced topics like side loading apps and filling your Kindle Fire up with non-Amazon purchased content (you can do it!).
All that I ask from the handsome/lovely people who win a copy is that you leave a review on Amazon after you've read the book. Just share how you felt about the book: good or bad (though I think this book will be a boon to any Fire owner).
Have you been wondering what I've been up to these last few months? Shockingly, I've been writing a book. Actually, most of the book was written during a 3 week span in November with editing and tweaking done the following weeks. All that work by myself, and the fine folks at PeachPit, translates into The Kindle Fire Pocket Guide (available in paperback
[out January 22nd, but you can pre-order now] or Kindle
[You can buy it now! Heck, you can even buy it before you get your Kindle Fire from Amazon and it'll be waiting for you when you turn on your Fire]. If Barnes and Noble is your thang you can pre-order it there too.).
I think this book turned out very well, and I hope folks who purchase it find it useful.
You may not know this about me, but I live in a building where a lot of older Jewish people live. I don't have a problem with this. They are very quiet, the elevators are easy to get late at night, and they can be quite entertaining.
My building has a little library in the community room, which I have never been to. However, the library had a book sale last week to raise some money.
Given the key demographic in my building, I didn't think there would be many books of interest to me but at a buck a book I figured I could take 15 minutes to check out the wares.
I'm glad I did because I ended up spending $5 on the following:
: I like Auster a lot, so this was an easy choice.
: I enjoyed Yu's second novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
so why not give his first work a go?
: This one is the wild card. I picked it up mostly because it is set in Philadelphia.
: Oh Terry Goodkind. I expect this book to be pretty bad, but I went through a Goodkind phase in high school and I thought I would give him a chance now.
: I was an English major in college, which means most of my classes were discussions. As any of you who have met me in real life (or have listened to any of The Incomparable podcasts in which I appear) know I am a man of few words. I remained generally quiet in class except for two notable occasions: in a creative writing class discussion on Hemingway and the "Iceberg theory" (90% of an iceberg is underwater as a metaphor for how much is concealed in Hemingway's spare prose) I suggested that he wrote so simply because he wasn't a very good writer (the TA of the class didn't agree with me). The other time, in a postmodern literature class, I argued reading Generation X
, Coupland's most well known work, was a waste of time because all the characters did was whine about nothing (the Prof. didn't agree with me). Given that background it might seem odd to pick this up, but I did enjoy Microserfs
.When I went to pay for my five books the little old lady looked at them and said, "Great! We don't get many people with such esoteric taste."
Not sure what she meant by that, but I'll take it as a compliment.
You all know that I'm a big fancy pants author, right?
Did you know that big fancy pants authors get author copies of their books? It is true! It is also true that I have no use for 25 copies of my latest opus: The Mac OS X Lion Project Book
(though I do recommend you purchase at least 3 copies, in case of disaster).
However, two lucky people will win a copy of my book just by commenting on this post by end of day Saturday, September 3rd.
That's right, just leave a comment and you'll be entered to win! I'll pick two lucky people, autograph the book (if requested to) and mail it off to them.
All I ask of the winners is this: read the book and leave a review of it on Amazon/BN.com/iBookstore… wherever you do your shopping. The review should be honest (good, bad, or indifferent) of course.
Alright, why are you still reading this? Leave a comment already!
Hey, did you hear? I wrote another book. Oh, right, I've posted about it.
I'm posting again because The Mac OS X Lion Project Book is now available wherever finer ebooks are sold, including:
I suggest you buy the electronic version to hold you over until you buy several copies of the print version.
When Cliff, my editor at Peachpit, asked me to write The Mac OS X Lion Project Book, I jumped at the chance. I wrote, and wrote, and wrote… well, I wrote too damn much!
I only had 240 pages, which seems like a lot when you’re staring at the blank page in Scrivener, but they fill up fast.
I wrote so much additional information that we had enough stuff to six (6!) additional ebooks, which are now available on the iBook Store and the Kindle store (I say buy both formats… cross platform!):
Secure Your Mac with Mac OS X Lion (iBooks | Kindle
Childproof your Mac with Mac OS X Lion (iBooks | Kindle
Manage passwords with 1Password (iBooks | Kindle
Spruce up iTunes (iBooks | Kindle
Video conferencing with Mac OS X Lion (iBooks | Kindle
Powering your home theater from your Mac (iBooks | Kindle
When I first thought about writing a tech book the subject seemed obvious: something Mac related.
That didn't work out, but I managed to write a few books about WordPress
I really enjoyed writing those books, but in the back of my mind I still wanted to write a book about something Mac related.
Enter Lion.
Lion is Apple's latest and greatest operating system, and The Mac OS X Lion Project Book
Now, this book is in Peach Pit's Project Book series, so it won't tell you how to use Lion. It tries to answer the question, "I have this super cool Mac running Lion, now what the hell can I do with it?"
Lots! I had so many ideas, in fact, that I wrote way more than 240 pages (the book's length was capped at 240) so we'll be releasing 6 additional ebooks (which I'll blog about when they are available).
What's covered in the book? Why, I'm glad I asked myself! You'll find out how to:
Now, if you're looking for a book that'll teach you Lion, I have a few suggestions:
by Maria Langer
by Jeff Carlson
by my TUAW friends Steve Sande, Dave Caolo and Michael Grothaus (I don't know Grothaus but he keeps good company!)Sure, I love eReaders (some might say I have an eReader problem) but here's a dirty little secret: if, by some otherworldly force, all the eReaders in the world disappeared I would be sad. If said force was turned against libraries instead I would weep for humanity.
And you should pre-order the Savage Chickens book
The above video is making the rounds of the Internet. It was produced by a fan of NASA who thinks that agency could use some help with their communications (and I tend to agree). It features Carl Sagan reading from his book "Pale Blue Dot
This video is a little unfair to NASA if only because Carl Sagan was probably the best science educator there has ever been. Just listen to the man, and his words, in this video and tell you don't want to give 95% of the Federal budget to NASA. And the idea that it isn't us who will be colonizing the solar system, but a species very much like us.. that's pretty powerful stuff.
If fan made NASA propaganda isn't your thing, but you still want to hear Carl Sagan's words, check out this short film that uses the same voiceover (and music), set to some beautiful time-lapse photography:
As you can see from the above image, Peachpit books are now available on the iBook store. If you're into eBooks from Apple, and a fan of Scott McNulty this is your lucky day. That's right, Peachpit is my publisher which means:
You can buy my books on your iPhone/iPad. Neat, huh? And here's my author's page (which is kind of lame... I can't change anything about it unlike Amazon's author pages):
Just search for Scott McNulty on iBooks and you're all set.
Get to buying, people! I need to pay for all the stuff I bought this month somehow!
I found myself in Penn's bookstore yesterday, and since I was there anyway I checked out the science fiction section as I do.
See what some clever wag did? A little creative re-shelving never hurt anyone, though I do wonder how long those Bibles will stay there.
Two years ago (almost exactly!) I blogged about having written by first book. Over the course of those two years I've written two more books (which you can check out here), changed jobs (and then back), and gotten married. I've been busy.
Today, I'm happy to announce that I've revisited my first book, and on December 1st the second edition of Building a WordPress Blog People Want to Read will be available for purchase. This edition has been completely revised, and expanded, to cover WordPress 3.
I'm proud of the book, and very thankful to the wonderful people at PeachPit for taking another chance on little old me!
Now, what will my next book be about?
I'm a big fan of digital goods. I buy eBooks all the time, and I can't remember the last time I bought an actual CD. Today, however, I was tempted to break my CD free streak.
As you can see above, Neil Diamond has a new album
out. Since I enjoy Mr. Diamond's work, I wanted to nab a copy for myself. I checked iTunes first, and the MP3 album cost $10.99. I figured Amazon MP3 would have it for a buck cheaper, or so, which they usually do so I headed over there. Amazon had it for $10.99 as well, however, the CD cost $9.99.
I've written before about this phenomenon, though in that case I was talking about physical books vs. eBooks, and I still don't understand it.
As an author I totally get that lots of folks are involved in creating stuff like this, and they aren't volunteers and they need to get paid. That being said, I'm always amazed when a physical product costs less than the digital version.
Oh, and yes, I did buy the digital version even though it cost me a buck more.
Tonight Marisa and I sallied forth to the Free Library of Philadelphia to get our culture on. We saw two authors speak about their new books: Simon Winchester and Ian Frazier.
Both gentlemen were erudite and succeeded in making me want to read their new books (Atlantic
and Travels in Siberia
respectively) though I must admit I'm a little peeved that the Kindle version of Atlantic is only 12 cents cheaper than the hardcover (sometimes I think publishers don't get eBooks... but that can't be possible, can it?).
Now, I know what you non-Philadelphians and library haters are thinking, "How can I get all the benefits of these author events without all the hassle of living in Philadelphia or going to a commie library?" Simple! Check out the Author Events podcast page which contains many free records of library hosted author events.
Recently Nigel Portwood, the chief executive of the Oxford University Press, caused something of a kerfuffle when he suggested that in 10 years time (when the 3rd edition of the OED might be ready for publishing) that they might not actually print a third edition.
Lots of people (many of whom, I am sure, have never actually seen let alone used the OED) decided they should pipe up and use this offhand comment as a jumping off point to pontificate about the future of publishing (which is now a hot topic amongst tech writers who know very little about the subject, but feel compelled to write about it because Apple introduced the iPad a few months ago and it is going to CHANGE EVERYTHING, i.e. they can get some cheap traffic by mentioning Apple and some other industry in the same article).
First, a little about me and the OED. I've long been a fan of the OED, mostly because I admire any dictionary that says, those other dictionaries define words, we define the language. The OED is less about trying to figure out what a word means and more about researching how it came to mean what it does. The OED does this through etymology (they don't do it through entomology as I first said, though I imagine someone at the OED enjoys insects). and by quoting the first known time a word has been used to mean a particular thing in writing.
I always had it in the back of my head that I wanted to own the second Edition of the OED (which is the one that is currently in print and consists of 20 volumes plus 3 additional update volumes). I told Marisa that I wanted to buy it, and she said yes thinking it was just a plain old dictionary. When the 5 boxes from Amazon showed up she was a little taken aback, but as you can see above in the very crappy picture I took for this post they've found quite a nice home in our den.
Now, the OED is a fantastic set of books to leaf through... but honestly OED.com is much more useful on a day to day basis. It is more up to date, easier to search, and more convenient. Now, unless I miss my guess I think that in ten years time, when the 3rd edition of the OED is complete it will be available in print. It will just be a very expensive, limited edition print version. Something for collectors and reference sections of libraries. Most people will just subscribe to the OED's service and have the OED app on their tablet or whatever the heck we'll be using in ten years time.
One final note to cement the fact that most people writing about this issue, at least on the tech Web sites, don't have a clue about the OED. Mathew Ingram writing for the usually excellent GigaOm has a piece called Oxford Dictionary Goes Online. Do You Really Care? Right off the bat the headline has two problems: the title of the tomes in question is the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press does publish a number of dictionaries, but only one is worthy of the OED monicker. The headline also creates the impression that the OED hasn't been online up until this very point. OED.com has been online for a decade, and available on CD long before that.
Of course the headline isn't the worst part of Ingram's post. He ends it with this thought:
But should a major reference work like the OED go online only? It seems inevitable, but just because the dictionary publishes online doesn’t mean it has to submit completely to the real-time frenzy of the web, and try to emulate Wikipedia. The OUP could continue to update the dictionary only at certain intervals, but this job would be a whole lot easier — not to mention substantially less expensive — without the need to print dozens of books for just a single copy of the finished product.
First off, it makes no sense what-so-ever to update the online version of the OED only at certain times... why adapt the worst aspect of the print version to the online version? Good thing the OUP doesn't do this.
Secondly, it would appear that Mr. Ingram isn't all that familiar with the OED otherwise he would be aware that Wikipedia itself has its roots in the way the Oxford English Dictionary is created. The fine lexicographers at Oxford are very talented but they can't research every word in the English language alone. The dictionary wouldn't exist if there wasn't a legion of 'readers' that submit quotations they believe to be the first use of a particular word in the English language. If you're gotten this far in the post you'll recall earlier I mentioned what set the OED apart from other dictionaries, in part, were the quotations. The OED is the great-grandfather of Wikipedia, and the Internet has only made the process more efficient (check out how you can help them find words here).
By the way, I busted out my OED to see where the word 'kerfuffle' comes from. Turns out kerfuffle is a colloquial version of curfuffle, which has its first known use in 1813 by George Bruce in the following sentence, "An' Jeannie's kirtle, aye sae neat, Gat there a sad carfuffle"
If you've been reading my blog for any length of time you know that my lovely wife, Marisa, runs a far better blog than this one called Food in Jars. As you might guess it is all about food in jars (canning, preserving, the like) and the delights therein.
Marisa just broke the big news: she's writing a cookbook!
Two authors, one apartment: we rule!
OK, Blankbaby readers! Here's a little experiment. Over the last year or so Blankbaby has been somewhat fallow. However, you might have noticed an uptick in posts as of late.
I have no idea how many people still read this blog (to be honest, I never really understood why anyone would read this, but that's a subject for another time), so in an effort to see how popular I am (you like me! You really like me) I thought I ask for a little audience interaction.
As you know, I love to read but I tend to fall into ruts in my reading:
Sound off in the comments and let me know what you're reading, or what you've read recently you really enjoyed.
I just finished The Good Thief's Guide to Vegas
Lookin' pretty good, if I do say so myself.
Also, I have a new favorite Kindle.
Can you tell I'm a little excited? Ok, it is true I might have a Kindle problem, but thanks to the low price of the Kindle WiFi model and $70 worth of Amazon credits I had this Kindle only cost me $78. It is like Amazon is paying me to buy it.
For those keeping score, here's my Kindle score card (keep in mind this only takes into account the current generation of Kindle hardware):
Obviously I need to get myself an Android phone.
I'm not a teenaged girl (shocking, I know) so there are some cultural phenomenon that escape my attention until they become or prevalent that one is forced to know what they are.
Twilight is a recent example (sparkly vampires and hunky werewolves? Brilliant!). It seems the next Twilight (though I have no idea if anyone is calling it that, other than me) is the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins (of which the last book, Mockingjay
, was just released).
Here's how Scholastic, the publisher of the Hunger Games trilogy (which, I suppose, means I should compare it to Harry Potter) describes the first book in the series (titled The Hunger Games
):
Twenty-four are forced to enter. Only the winner survives.In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. Each year, the districts are forced by the Capitol to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the Hunger Games, a brutal and terrifying fight to the death – televised for all of Panem to see.
Survival is second nature for sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who struggles to feed her mother and younger sister by secretly hunting and gathering beyond the fences of District 12. When Katniss steps in to take the place of her sister in the Hunger Games, she knows it may be her death sentence. If she is to survive, she must weigh survival against humanity and life against love.
You know what? That actually sounds kind of interesting. Perhaps I'll try and convince the folk on the Incomparable podcast that we should talk about it in a future episode so I'll have an excuse to read it.
Just because I own a pile of eReaders doesn't mean I hate books (well, physical books). As anyone who has visited my home can attest to, I love books.
I was rooting around in a desk drawer looking for something, as you do, when I came across the pile of library cards pictured above. The red one is for the New York Public Library, the yellow one hails from the Bethlehem Area Public Library, and the gray one is for the Yonkers Public Library.
I clearly remember my mom taking me to the Will Library on Central Avenue to get my very first library card (I was very young, though I can't recall exactly how old I was). Here's what the Will Library looks like, courtesy of Flickr user bitchcakesny:
When I was a kid I didn't really give the architecture too much though, it was just my library. However, looking at it now I really dig the building, and the font they used on the Yonkers Public Library sign.
I will admit, though, that despite my love of libraries I couldn't find my Philadelphia library card to add to the photo-shoot. I have one, though I have no idea where it is.
Blankbaby is known to his friends as Scott McNulty (though he is @blankbaby on Twitter). He writes this blog, co-hosts (with Marisa) Fork You, is a senior contributor to MacUser, frequent contributor to Macworld, and author of "Building a WordPress Blog People Want to Read."
Everything on this blog is Scott's opinion, and his opinion alone. It in no way reflects the opinions of his employers, friends, concerned passers-by, or anyone else for that matter. But you're smart, you knew that already.
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