Adactio: Links

Onword

This is nice lightweight writing tool, kinda like Editorially without the collaboration. Just right for working on a blog posts.

It authenticates with Twitter and doesn’t ask for write permissions. Bravo!

You should write about yourself more

Yes! Yes! YES!

Tom is spot-on here: you shouldn’t be afraid of writing about yourself …especially not for fear of damaging some kind of “personal brand” or pissing off some potential future employer.

If your personal brand demands that you live your life in fear of disclosing important parts of your life or your experience, the answer is to reject the whole sodding concept of personal brands.

Do things I write about my personal life threaten my personal brand? Perhaps. Are there people who wouldn’t hire me based on things I write? Probably. Do I give even a whiff of a fuck? Absolutely not. I wouldn’t want to work for them anyway.

A Book Apart celebrates its third anniversary

Aw, my l’il ol’ book is three years old!

To celebrate, you can get 15% off any title from A Book Apart with this discount code for the next few days: HAPPY3RD.

MATTER and Medium

The news is finally public: Bobbie’s Matter has been bought my Ev’s Medium. Fingers crossed that they don’t fuck it up.

Ideas of March — All in the head

A wonderful rallying cry from Drew.

The problem:

Ever since the halcyon days of Web 2.0, we’ve been netting our butterflies and pinning them to someone else’s board.

The solution:

Hope that what you’ve created never has to die. Make sure that if something has to die, it’s you that makes that decision. Own your own data, friends, and keep it safe.

Notes on remixing Noon, generative text and Markov chains

Jeff Noon and Markov chains—a heavenly match by Dan.

The Aleph: Infinite Wonder / Infinite Pity

Just like in the Borges short story, you can now see everything at once …from Project Gutenberg, or from Twitter, or from both.

This may be the only legitimate use case for (truly) infinite scrolling.

Ensia

A lovely new responsive(ish) website dedicated to science and the environment.

The Vanilla Web Diet by Christian Heilman

I like the sound of the book that Chris is writing for Smashing Magazine. It sounds like a very future-friendly approach to front-end development.

Editorially: Write Better

A collaborative writing tool built by a dream team. I’ve been using it for a while now and it’s very nice indeed.

Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns by Steve Yegge

A classic of writing on the fundamental differences between programming languages.

Offscreen 4: I got what I paid for by Jeff Porter

A really nice write-up of issue four of Offscreen magazine, wherein I was featured.

Owning your own words – is it important?

A fascinating discussion on sharecropping vs. homesteading. Josh Miller from Branch freely admits that he’s only ever known a web where your content is held by somone else. Gina Trapani’s response is spot-on:

For me, publishing on a platform I have some ownership and control over is a matter of future-proofing my work. If I’m going to spend time making something I really care about on the web—even if it’s a tweet, brevity doesn’t mean it’s not meaningful—I don’t want to do it somewhere that will make it inaccessible after a certain amount of time, or somewhere that might go away, get acquired, or change unrecognizably.

When you get old and your memory is long and you lose parents and start having kids, you value your own and others’ personal archive much more.

Interview with Lauren Beukes about Shining Girls

Lauren talks about The Shining Girls and the tools she uses to write with.

To Be Today

A beautiful project from Brendan and the Royal Shakespeare Company: the headlines of today preceded by quotes from The Bard.

The Panasonic Toughpad Press Conference - LOOK, ROBOT

Now this is what I call tech reporting.

The women leave the stage, wet computer in hand, and a new man takes the stage. He plays a schmaltzy video where Portuguese children teach adults to use Windows 8 accompanied by a hyperloud xylophone soundtrack that slices through my hangover like cheesewire though lukewarm gouda.

Issue 4 — Offscreen Magazine

There’s an interview with me in the new issue of Offscreen Magazine. Some of sort of clerical error, I’m guessing.

Olaf Stapledon

The out-of-copyright books of Olaf Stapledon are available to download from the University of Adelaide. Be sure to grab Starmaker and First And Last Men.

30 Great Reads from 2012 - Readlists

Some of the past year’s best long-form non-fiction, gathered together into a handy readlist for your portable epub pleasure.

The Pastry Box Project | 2 January 2013, baked by Chris Coyier

I heartily concur with Chris’s sentiment:

I wish everyone in the world would blog.

Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek - Multimedia Feature - NYTimes.com

Excellent journalism combined with excellent art direction into something that feels just right for the medium of the web.

A New Canon | Journal | The Personal Disquiet of Mark Boulton

An excerpt from Mark’s forthcoming book, which promises to be magnificent.

The Subcompact Publishing Reader - Readlists

A nice Readlist based on that excellent article by Craig on digital publishing:

This reader is made up of Craigmod’s essay “Subcompact Publishing” and essays linked to in the footnotes.

Subcompact Publishing — by Craig Mod

Very smart thinking from Craig about digital publishing.

display: none; | Laura Kalbag

Laura explains the problems with hiding content for small screens, and uses this as an opportunity to elucidate why you should blog, even if you’re think that no-one would be interested in what you have to say:

The point I’m trying to make is that we shouldn’t be fearful of writing about what we know. Even if you write from the most basic point of view, about something which has been ‘around for ages’, you’ll likely be saying something new to someone. They might be new to the industry, you might just be filling in the holes in someone’s knowledge.

Matter: A Look At A New Way To Read About Science - Download The Universe

Just a few hours after launch, here’s the first review of Matter complete with some speculation on where it might go.

Guardian Truncation Team

Celebrating the work of the tireless men and women who shorten headlines so they’ll fit on your iPhone.

The Brand New Printed Smashing Book: “The Mobile Book” | Smashing Magazine

Smashing Magazine are publishing a book on mobile and the web. I’m writing the foreword. I should really get on that.

Your brain on pseudoscience: the rise of popular neurobollocks

I like this skewering of the cult of so-called-neuroscience; the self-help book equivalent of eye-tracking.

Five Simple Steps - Pocket Guides

These short pocketbooks from Five Simple Steps look like they’ll be very handy indeed. Shame they won’t be available in dead-tree format: I bet they’d be really cute.

Scott Jenson | Exploring the world beyond mobile

Excellent! Scott has his own URL now. If you haven’t read everything he has written so far, start from the start and read every single post.

Make it So | Interface Design Lessons from Sci-Fi

Chris and Nathan’s book is finally out. I’m going to enjoy reading through this.

No Evidence of Disease (Idle Words)

Quite a story.

Platforming Books — by Craig Mod

Craig describes the many different ways he’s publishing his book, including putting the whole thing on the web for free:

Why do this? I strongly believe digital books benefit from public endpoints. The current generation of readers (human, not electronic) have formed expectations about sharing text, and if you obstruct their ability to share — to touch — digital text, then your content is as good as non-existent. Or, in the least, it’s less likely to be engaged.

I also believe that we will sell more digital and physical copies of Art Space Tokyo by having all of the content available online.

Your words are wasted - Scott Hanselman

Amen, Scott, A-MEN:

You are not blogging enough. You are pouring your words into increasingly closed and often walled gardens. You are giving control - and sometimes ownership - of your content to social media companies that will SURELY fail.

We could make history — I.M.H.O. — Medium

I quite the look of Medium, but Dave Winer absolutely nails it with this feature request:

Let me enter the URL of something I write in my own space, and have it appear here as a first class citizen. Indistinguishable to readers from something written here.

I think it might get a tattoo of this:

There’s art in each individual system, but there’s a much greater art in the union of all the systems we create.

If Hemingway wrote JavaScript by fat xxx

This is a rather lovely way to show that in JavaScript, as in Perl, there’s always more than one way to skin a cat (in whatever idiom you prefer).

House of Cards | Contents Magazine

Maybe HyperCard is an idea whose time has come. Think about it: the size of mobile screens: perfect for a HyperCard stack.

The Internet of Things - Readlists

Those articles about the “Internet of Things” I linked to? Here they are in handy Readlist form.

Summer Reading… and Programming

This is rather marvellous: a book review from Robin Sloan that requires you to type commands into a JavaScript console.

The Kitschies present… Beukes, Miéville and Ness

An evening with Lauren Beukes, China Miéville and Patrick Ness in London the week after dConstruct. Sounds like fun!

The Manual

I’ve written a piece for issue three of The Manual. Despite that, it’s well worth getting your hands on a copy.

Copywriting: a life-saving kit.

This is so good. On father’s day, Harry asks his father, an award-winning copywriter, for advice on writing. The result is an knowledge bomb of excellent advice.

Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury - Rachel Bloom - YouTube

In light of the recent death of Ray Bradbury, I think we should all honour his memory by revisiting this song (featuring some future-friendly headgear).

I’ll feed you grapes and Dandelion Wine and we’ll read a little Fahrenheit 69…

Monday 31 May 1669 (Pepys’ Diary)

Nine years and five months after he began publishing every entry in Samuel Pepys’ diary, Phil Gyford posts the last entry.

The Publication Standards Project

Like the Web Standards Project but for ePub. I approve of this message.

Readlists

This looks like a really handy service from Readability: gather together a number of related articles from ‘round the web and then you can export them to a reading device of your choice. It’s like Huffduffer for text.

The Truth About the East Wind

This is a terrific piece of writing from Robin Sloan, entertaining and cheeky. Plug in headphones, and start reading and scrolling.

The East Wind was about to get a call from an angry star.

Hull 0, Scunthorpe 3 | Christopher Priest, author

Oh, dear. Christopher Priest is being a bit of a cock.

Good writer though.

Incept Dates – Jack Move Magazine

A superb piece of writing from Erin, smashing taboos with the edge of Bladerunner.

ARC 2012: The future is on its way - New Scientist

A new publication from New Scientist dedicated to future thinking. The first issue has articles and stories from Bruce Sterling, Margaret Atwood, China Miéville, and Alastair Reynolds.

2012 Shortlist | Arthur C. Clarke Award

Well, that’s my reading list sorted then.

Marginalized

Notes in manuscripts and colophons made by medieval scribes and copyists …in 140 characters or fewer.

It’s a bookmark. But it’s also a magazine.

It’s a blog. It’s a bookmark. It’s a magazine.

russell davies: SXSW, the new aesthetic and writing

Russell was the final panelist to speak at the New Aesthetic South by Southwest tour-de-force, taking a look at how our relationship to text is being changed.

George R. R. Martin’s Fantasy Books and Fans : The New Yorker

A fascinating look at the work of George R.R. Martin and his relationship with his fans, who sometimes sound more like his enemies. There are strong overtones of Paul Ford’s “Why wasn’t I consulted?” syndrome here.

scott_lynch: Against Big Bird, The Gods Themselves Contend In Vain

It turns out that Big Bird is a god-defying instantiation of Moorcock’s Eternal Champion. Magnificent!

Big Bird and Snuffy go with him to stand in the Hall of Two Truths at the gate to the afterlife. The gigantic foam balls on these guys! Sure, Elmo loves you, but when’s the last time Elmo held anyone’s hand on the threshold of eternal night?

MATTER by Matter — Kickstarter

Bobbie’s new journalism project is up and running on Kickstarter. Get in there!

Markup / from a working library

A superb rallying cry from Mandy on the importance of markup literacy for professionals publishing on the web: writers, journalists, and most importantly, editors.

College Misery: Henchminion Sends In the Tale of “The Magna Carta Essay!”

A trojan horse for plagiarised college papers, much like the fakery on maps (“Lie Close”, “Arlington”) and in dictionaries; traps to be sprung on the hapless copy’n’paster.

One Cut - jonronson’s Space

This is one of the best pieces of journalism I’ve read …and it just happens to be posted on a blog. Please read it, particularly if you are a voter in the UK.

A List Apart: Articles: Say No to SOPA

A superb piece of writing from Jeffrey, scorching the screen with righteous anger. THIS. IS. IMPORTANT!

SOPA approaches the piracy problem with a broad brush, lights that brush on fire, and soaks the whole internet in gasoline.

Yelping with Cormac

Because Yelp needs Cormac McCarthy.

Babies and the Bathwater | Contents Magazine

Mandy’s inaugural article for Contents Magazine is a wonderful piece of thinking and writing.

Enjoy reading this.

Newsstand Is Promising, Yay! But Enough with Issue-Based Publishing (Global Moxie)

Josh nails it: publishers need to stop thinking in terms of issues:

Publishers and designers have to start thinking about content at a more atomic level, not in aggregated issues. That’s how we already understand news as consumers, and we have to start thinking that way as publishers, too. This is why Flipboard, Instapaper, and other aggregators are so interesting: they give you one container for the whole universe of content, unbound to any one publisher.

Jeremy Keith (adactio)

I’ve been using Tumblr to store interesting quotations (and cat videos). Findings looks like it could be a good alternative for the quotations (though less good for cat videos). The Kindle integration looks interesting.

Hello Again | Rob Weychert

Rob is back.

The New Value of Text | booktwo.org

A rallying cry from James: since when did we decide that text couldn’t stand by itself without extra layers of “interactive” shininess?

Editing tips for designers : Cennydd Bowles

Good writing advice from Cennydd.

The shape of our future book — Satellite — Craig Mod

Craig has written down his dConstruct talk, the one that completely polarised opinion. Personally, I loved it.

Hyphenation arrives in Firefox and Safari | Fontdeck Blog

Finally. Hyphenation on the web.

Pretty much the only forms of Western literature that don’t use hyphenation are children’s books and websites. Until now.

Being is a Verb | Necessary Trouble

Some great thoughts on the language of the web.

Journal // One

It’s very gratifying to know that I encouraged someone to write something.

>> blog » html5′s new bdi element

An excellent explanation from Richard of the bdi element (bi-directional isolate) for handling a mixture of left to right and right to left languages in HTML5.

Designing for Content: Creating a Message Hierarchy - Web Standards Sherpa

Steph Hay takes a look at how websites can allow a narrative to unfold, with the Ben The Bodyguard site as a case study.

Examples of blockquote metadata ❧ Oli.jp (@boblet)

Now this is how you make progress on getting changes made to a spec: by documenting real-world use cases.

Post-Artifact Books and Publishing — by Craig Mod

Take some time out to read this. Read all of this. Craig’s thoughts on the nature of publishing today:

Digital’s effect on how we produce, distribute and consume content.

The Elements of Fucking Style

Use strong, definite language in your writing. Make that sentence your bitch.

The technological means to produce an archive are not beyond our skills; sadly, right now at least, the will to do so is insufficient.

If You Didn’t Blog It, It Didn’t Happen - Anil Dash

A thoughtful piece on how Twitter can complement blogging, but is far too often used as an impermanent substitute.

…if you didn’t blog it, it didn’t happen. In fact, I first wrote about this idea a bit on Twitter a few years ago. See if you can find it.

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