Archive for the ‘This Digital Life’ Category
How to succeed in blogging without really trying (which is, coincidentally, the ONLY way to succeed)
Man, it’s tougher than ever out there for writers. Or is it? It may seem like the only jobs available are the journalistic equivalent of waxing Tom Cruise’s motorcycle for $50/week — but it ain’t true. Those are the only jobs advertised. There are much better ones hidden in the foliage, available only to those […]
Filed under: This Digital Life | 5 Comments
I cross-posted this on Freelancer Hacks, but I don’t think anyone’s reading that anymore, and I want to get this down, even if it’s only for myself. The most important lesson I learned about successful, productive freelancing in 2010 was this: everything is generative. In plain English, that means this: Doing trumps planning. There’s no […]
Filed under: This Digital Life, Thoughts, Work | 7 Comments
I just learned an embarrassing little lesson that I should have known already: Twitter is a small world. It’s fun to serve up “witty” 140-character takedowns of stuff you don’t particularly like, but if you’re not careful, you might very well be slagging someone you know and like without realizing it. I just did that […]
Filed under: This Digital Life | 1 Comment
I finally saw The Social Network this past weekend. Believe the hype: it is a truly thrilling piece of popular art, and an amber-encased chunk of Aughts zeitgeist to boot. But not because of what it says about Facebook, or us — because of what it says about us when we talk about Facebook. Which […]
Filed under: This Digital Life, Thoughts | 7 Comments
[As you can tell, I’m really digging this Dr Strangelove-style formatting for all of my post titles lately. Anyway] So I just splashed some coffee all over my hardcover of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, a book on my nightstand that I’m alternating between devouring and slowly savoring. First reaction: this Second reaction: […]
Filed under: This Digital Life | 7 Comments
As one of my Twitter friends quipped, I have a love/hate relationship with Apple. I love their powerful, visionary computer products and will proclaim to the rafters that their intuitions about hardware/software experience are second to none. But I also flew into a weeklong rage about AntennaGate (even though I don’t own an iPhone), unable […]
Filed under: This Digital Life, Thoughts | 3 Comments
Yes, this is another post about goddamned phones. One of these days (soon?) I’ll exhaust my own interest in this subject, but until then… This is an update of sorts to my previous semi-anti-Android essay, and a continuation of my quasi-anti-smartphonesingeneral post. Topics to be discussed: My new Droid Incredible, and what I do and […]
Filed under: This Digital Life | 4 Comments
Haters are the best makers
I was amused to discover (to my complete non-surprise) that Armond White was one of the only two film critics on earth who hated Toy Story 3. You may not be familiar with Mr. White’s reputation. Suffice it to say he is batshit insane, or at least pretending to be. He is a professional hater. […]
Filed under: This Digital Life, Thoughts | 1 Comment
Don’t get me wrong, I love me some Manjoo — his book about living in a “post-fact society” should be required reading in schools — but his tech tips often leave me cold. In his latest “Killer Apps” installment for SlateV, Manjoo laments how easy it is to get distracted online and recommends two tools […]
Filed under: This Digital Life | 6 Comments
I used to be a lifehacking addict, and in some ways I still am. I have a perverse love of systems and efficiency: analyzing, configuring, optmizing, categorizing, defining, and parameter-setting. (I’m the son of two librarians, one of whom also worked as an unofficial programmer/sysadmin. I guess it’s genetic.) I loved my first Palm Pilot, […]
Filed under: This Digital Life | 44 Comments
John Pavlus 