Thoughts on public relations (Part 1)

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So here we are again. Last time I tried to knock the dust off this blog, it was to announce that I’d parted ways with The Register and would be moving on to my next chapter, whatever that would be. And then … silence.

Mea culpa. What happened was things got busy again fairly quickly. I decided to accept a new position, one that was different from anything I’d done before. I took a job at a public relations firm.

It certainly was a change. I’ve never had a company issue a press release about hiring me before, and nobody has ever interviewed me about my new job – although I suppose neither should have surprised me, given the industry in question.

I ended up staying in the role for 12 months, almost to the day. Now I’m on my own again, and itching to get back into editorial writing. I do expect to continue to do some communications work, albeit in a consulting capacity. The most interesting part of the experience for me, though, was the inside look it gave me at the other side of the tech media circus, a side I’d never investigated before. » More... » →

A writer’s bookshelf

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TypewriterFor as long as I’ve been a professional writer (almost 20 years now), and with all the writers I’ve known and spoken with, one thing that surprises me is that I don’t recall ever having a conversation with another writer about writing. I mean the writing itself.

Any time you do something creative, be it writing or painting or poetry or comedy or whatever you do, you always get someone who will say, “I wish I could do XYZ like you do.” Well guess what? Nobody was born with it. Nobody.

Me? I believe I am quite good at what I do, but nothing comes for free. I think I am different from many of the writers that I’ve met, in that I consciously work at self-development all the time. Writing can be an art, but it is also a craft, like carpentry or ship building. When you’re doing business writing, it’s almost all craft. This means you can consciously choose to get better at it, through practice and study. » More... » →

A new chapter…

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What's next?Hi all! I suppose it’s not hard to notice that this site hasn’t been updated in a while. Truth to tell, I’ve been kept pretty busy with social media, not to mention that most of my time over the last two years or so has been taken up by my day job as a reporter for The Register.

Still, since this site is the quickest way to find me with a Google search, I thought it worth mentioning here that I’m no longer with El Reg, so you needn’t bother trying to contact me there. I wish the gang at the Vulture Annex in San Francisco all the best.

As for what I’ll be doing next, that’s actually undecided at the moment. (If you have any ideas on that score, let me know.) For the time being, though, I’m content to take a breather, enjoy some hobbies, catch up on some reading, and so on. I’ll post any significant updates to this site (and I also plan to do some general housekeeping, because it’s sure looking dusty around here).

Thank you to any visitors who have stopped by while I was away, particularly those of you who took the time to drop me a line. Sorry if I was late/unable to respond. All the best!

Handwritten code

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Code Monkey font by ComicraftI just love this. Comicraft is one of the companies that pioneered digital lettering for comic books. These days, they earn some of their income selling their custom-designed fonts, most of which resemble hand-lettered comics text and sound effects. Among their latest additions is Code Monkey, a hand-lettering font for computer code! Code Monkey lets you add a little bit of humanity and flair to your code listings by making it look as if your output was written by hand. Unlike most of Comicraft’s fonts, it’s fixed-width, making it ideal for text editors and terminal windows. It’s also available in a proportionally spaced version, if you prefer that.

America’s next top programming languages?

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Source code iconWelcome to 2012! Once again, I’ve been remiss in keeping this blog updated, but I’ll try to do better this year. Remember you can always follow the latest from my Fatal Exception blog for InfoWorld in the box to the right!

My first feature article of the year is another piece for InfoWorld. This time, I’m looking at up-and-coming programming languages. You’ve heard of C, Java, Python, Ruby, and maybe even Haskell, OCaml, and Scala … but have you ever heard of Zimbu, Fantom, Chapel, or haXe? Probably not — but you may, soon. Some people say we already have more than enough programming languages. Others say the computing field is changing so rapidly that the same old languages can’t move fast enough, and the only way for developers to gain the agility they need is to start over from scratch. In this feature, I look at ten experimental programming languages, why they were invented, where you can get them, and why they matter.

First look at Adobe Edge

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Adobe Edge logoWith the rise of HTML5, a lot of folks wonder whether it might displace plug-ins such as Adobe Flash for rich Internet Application development. Adobe doesn’t see it quite that way. It sees the two technologies as complementary, and it’s putting its money where its mouth is. Adobe Edge is a new technology from Adobe Labs that aims to make it as easy to build complex animations in HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript as it is to do the same in Flash. It’s still rough around the edges, but it does make it possible to do some pretty remarkable things, especially if your goal is to develop banner ads, infographics, or other short animated sequences to be embedded in Web pages. Read on for more of my first impressions of the Adobe Edge Preview.