The joy of minimal, easy-to-follow instructions

Posted on 17. Jan, 2012 by in Tech, Writing

The holidays have come and gone, and with them, several weeks of intermittent box opening, toy assembling, and instruction reading. Much fun was had, but I do have a complaint/observation: Why must companies continue to churn out really, really bad instructions? The instructions included with toys, gadgets, and other miscellaneous whatnots are laughably bad. I [...]

Book recommendation: “Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books”

Posted on 14. Dec, 2011 by in Photography, Writing

I keep thinking I should go ahead and join the e-book revolution, but I haven’t. One reason: I love books as beautiful objects. Now there’s a book that really captures this: “Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books.”

1,000+ Microsoft Word docs, plain text, and a file format mess

Posted on 12. Aug, 2011 by in Tech, Writing

Over the past couple of days, I’ve been opening 1,000+ Word documents on my computer, one by one, and converting them from a very, very old Word format (“Microsoft Word 1.x-5.x”) to something I’ll actually be able to read and open on my computer. It’s a laborious process. When Microsoft “upgraded” to Office 2008 for the Mac, the company decided it was necessary to make it super-difficult to work with some older Word file formats.

Why do I have three (yes, three) photoblogs?

Posted on 19. Dec, 2010 by in Photography, Writing

OK, so maybe you haven’t really been wondering this, but it’s the truth. I now have three separate photography blogs. Not long ago, I wasn’t even blogging, and now I feel like I’m something of a blogging maniac, in part because of the ease of creating and managing a blog with Tumblr. So what are [...]

David Ulin on the lost art of reading

Posted on 29. Nov, 2010 by in Distracted Living, Writing

Back in 2009, David Ulin of “The Los Angeles Times” wrote a short essay, “The Lost Art of Reading.” The premise was simple: Our lives make it increasingly difficult to focus on reading. (And reading, in this context, doesn’t mean reading your Twitter feed.) Why is this? It’s because our lives are filled with noise, [...]

My anti-Facebook rant in the Star-Ledger

Posted on 22. Oct, 2010 by in Writing

Here’s how I open today’s column in the Star-Ledger: “Facebook is a big, sprawling mess, and there’s no saving it.” Yes, this is something of a rant, and it was a lot of fun to write. The column was based on a simple idea: Could I figure out Facebook’s privacy settings and other options in [...]

The iPhone is my new favorite writing tool

Posted on 20. Oct, 2010 by in Writing

I know this will sound crazy to a lot of people, but I’m really into using my iPhone for writing. Now, this doesn’t mean I’ve developed some fancy method to use my fingers and thumbs with the virtual keyboard. For writing on my iPhone, I use Apple’s wireless Bluetooth keyboard — my favorite keyboard, ever [...]

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