Magazines
If you think any of this gibberish looks interesting, you should poke around and subscribe to my RSS feed to keep up with new content.
This is a post that I wrote in November of 2006 but left in the drafts folder. Given my current plans to launch Eat Sleep Publish on Monday I found it an interesting read.
I love magazines. I love the paper. I love the sound. I love flipping through the colorful plastic pages to the cover story. I love the surprising witticisms. I love the editorial columns.
Magazines are amazing.
My dad has subscribed to Wired for as long as I can remember. It makes me sad that they’re no longer printing on square paper, but I still think it’s a great magazine, and I’m sure I’ll probably get my own subscription before the end of the year [ I did not - jp ]. I’ve subscribed to PC Gamer since 1995, which is almost the entire time it’s existed, and it just keeps getting better (except their internet division - for some reason they’re a bit slow in that department).
For years I was sure that when I came down to school in L.A. I’d do my damndest to get an internship with PC Gamer - after all, I play more video games than I have time to, and I love to write, and I’m a geek at heart. What better place for me in the world?
But I’ve e-mailed PC Gamer several times over the past ten years (sometimes for contests, sometimes for letters to the editor, sometimes to yell at them for idiocy) and never gotten a response. So I haven’t ended up fetching coffee for Greg Vederman (or even Steve Klett).
So instead I blog maniacally about whatever I choose, write occasionally for my school newspaper about things that nobody in college should actually care about, and continue to subscribe to the magazine.
Someday I’ll do something for a magazine. I like writing too much to spend my entire life without making that kind of opportunity for myself. Maybe I’ll start my own magazine with a few friends. Maybe I’ll help a few friends start theirs.
Yoga Fail
Inspired in part by Teresa. It cracks me up.
How much business is conducted in coffee shops?
I’m sure the answer varies from city to city.
One of benefits (or curses, depending on how you look at it) of the job that I have is that I get to spend a lot of time working from random locations. Provided I have internet access, I can do 80% of my job from anywhere.
So a lot of my work gets done in coffee shops or bagel shops or bistros or cafes that provide free wi-fi. And almost wherever I am, I am not alone.
Right now I can hear two people discussing something in legalese that, if I paid enough attention to it, would make my head spin.
Why do businesses have offices?
So you can work elsewhere.
Oh, snap.
Now running on WordPress 2.5
As far as the front end is concerned, everything should look and work exactly the same.
The back end is completely different, but I figure that there’s no use in arguing with the future. Time to settle in and get used to it.
So far I like it. It’s pretty, pastel, and I’m allowed to edit my permalinks on the fly. Kewl.
The iPhone placed in the continuum of email user interfaces
Seriously, it’s so abnormal for Apple.
I think we should force everyone who coded the interface to use it for all of their e-mail until they fix it.
New Yorker cartoon contest submission - get it?
When I get the New Yorker in the mail, the first thing I do is flip to the back and come up with a caption for the cartoon. I like to think it keeps my comedy muscle tuned up, since New Yorker cartoons are so rarely make any sense, and are a pain in the ass to make them funny.
Here’s what I did this week:
Get it?
Historical Documents
I wonder at what point the US Constitution became a historical document, therefore earning the privilege of bullet-proof glass.
For how long did the US Senate huddle around the ungainly pieces of original parchment with magnifying glasses, double-checking the rules? Until 1778? 1780?
I just think it’s a funny image, a room full of bewigged gentlemen, licking their thumbs and turning the page on something that is now essentially beyond price.
Refocusing on my Science Fiction short story: Vespyr
I have a wall-mounted shelf above my desk where I keep a few things that are either useful or sentimental: a picture, a camera lens, the TIE FIGHTER videogame box, a few books, and random things that go between bookends.
One of those things is the first 28 pages of the script to Blade Runner.
I have a tendency to start things that I never finish. All the time. This is a particularly ridiculous example: I decided that I wanted a copy of the Blade Runner script, and, since they don’t sell it that I’m aware of, I decided to print the thing out and throw it in a binder.
I have completely failed, through sheer laziness, to print the whole script (to be fair, I’m printing it double-sided to save paper).
Looking at this reminded me today that I’m about 60% done with an awesome science fiction short story (story written; needs lots of editing), and publishing one of those is something that is very much on my 101 list.
So tonight I’m going to spend at least an hour working on my short story. I will finish this damn thing eventually.
Blogging your interests: diversify or consolidate?
I’m well aware that this blog is a complete jumble of ideas and topics. It’s a fairly accurate representation of what I’m like in person: an opinionated, intermittently absent collection of frequently misplaced enthusiasm.
Which raises, for me, a very interesting question: should I consolidate my blogging, or should I diversify into different blogs? Which is better?
At the moment, I do most of my community and social media oriented blogging over at Web Community Forum. Likewise, I do my blog and blogosphere related blogging at Blog Business Summit. Those are two areas that, if I did not blog there, would probably get integrated here, by default, simply because I’m interested.
What’s nice about that arrangement is that when people want to read about business blogging or about facebook, they can go to those sites. It’s not about me so much as it is about the topic. It’s cool because I get to be recognized for my knowledge and expertise in those areas.
The same thing happened when I was running Flicker Gaming. I diverted my blogging about video games to Flicker (which has since re-oriented itself back here). I think people like it when a blog’s topic can be summarized inside two sentences (this blog, clearly, fails that litmus test).
In the end, this blog’s appeal lies not in what I’m writing about, but in who is doing the writing. And at the moment, it’s a pretty small group of people who really care what good old (non-NY based former male escort) Jason Preston has to say about things.
That may change some day, but for now I think it can be safely said.
And given that, my friend Ethan and I have been talking recently about spinning our interests out into individual blogs.
For example, he and I both have a longstanding interest in writing (or just creating) works of fiction—short stories, webcomics, novels, you name it. We’re almost always working on some side project or another. And if one of us isn’t, the other almost definitely is.
Why shouldn’t we create a blog about writing (creating) fiction? We don’t have to post that frequently. Just post well.
Would it be better than posting about it here? Possibly.
I think we’re likely to give it a try. But if you’ve made it this far, I’d love to hear your input. What do you think? Is it better to blog in one place about everything, or blog about everything in different places?
Seattle, the “science-fictiony town,” and myself, are sorry to see Arthur C Clarke go
I just learned that Arthur C. Clarke died today.
As a fan of science fiction, the amount of his work that I’ve read is woefully lacking (I do, of course, know everything about 2001 - in fact, I actually referenced it in a post I wrote today for InFlightHQ before I learned he had died. Odd).
That link up above is to The Big Blog, which has an interesting story about Clarke’s last correspondence to the Seattle Sci-Fi Museum.
I didn’t know we had a Sci-Fi Museum until about a month ago. But we do, and they’ve apparently set up a memorial page for him, where he is captioned: “English Writer.”
Regardless, I’m sad to see him go. He’s been a staple of the Sci-Fi world for so long that his absence will definitely be felt.
Jason Preston is the top search term on Google?
I knew you all loved me, but, aww, shucks. Making Jason Preston the top Google search term? It’s too much.
I can only assume this is because my New-York based semi-famous namesake has done something worth talking about (the Google Search does not yet turn up any obvious answers, although the trends report suggests some sort of tiff with Marc Jacobs).
For any of you landing here looking for gossip, sorry to disappoint.
As long as you’re here, why not poke around and read some of the posts. I write about videogames, technology, and other nonsense. I recommend the featured posts in the sidebar as a starting point.
If you like what you see, I’d love it if you signed up for my RSS feed.
In the meantime, I will bask in my (temporary) glory:
Distraction Free Writing
Distraction Free Writing
Some people need to be somewhere without any distractions to get their writing done.
I am not one of those people. Instead of getting different results based on my environment (some people can only write at their desk, pretentious people can only write in coffee shops), my ability to write depends largely on my mood.
I’m generally in one of two moods: either one of production or one of consumption.
Right now I’m in a production mood. I’m spitting this post out like it’s bad milk. I could go on, but I won’t, because I already wrote two headlines in the margin for this week’s New Yorker cartoon contest and I’m going to submit them once I get back to an internet connection.
Right now I’m also sitting in a cabana in Lorento, Baja California Mexico. My dad and I rousted ourselves out of bed at 3:30 a.m. this morning to fly down and observe an occultation, which, for those of you too lazy to click on the Wikipedia link, means that an asteroid passes in front of a star, temporarily occulting it (obscuring it from view).
In other words, a star blinks.
Other times, I’m in a consumption mood. No matter how much I stare at a distraction-full or distraction-free screen, no matter what kind of blazer or eyewear I put on, I’m not going to get anything useful written down.
The only thing I can do is give up and read until inspiration strikes again.
Bjorn Lomborg TED Talk: Why Global Warming is at the bottom of the list
My boss pointed me to this video yesterday from TED. I found it fascinating:
He starts with a very valid premise: we can only do so much good. Which good should we do?
I’m not sure I agree that all good is equal good, however. If we accept that advancing the work in preventing the spread of AIDS is, in essence, the same “good” as the “good” we could do in slowing/altering climate change, then you’ve got a very valid argument here.
In fact, I think he’s got a great argument. I’m just not sure the way he values “good for price” is accurate.
IBM Ideating commercial - why I will always chuckle at the word
I can’t help it. It’s funny when people say “ideate.”
ideate from ax09001h on Vimeo.
Real blog posts
Don’t worry, I haven’t abandoned this site to the whimsical mercy of Twitter, I’ve just been short on time for making real posts.
I’ll also update the Picture of the Day as soon as I get back to my external hard drive (where I have cleverly stashed my photos—out of reach).
Over the past few days I have:
- Gone Skiing in Whistler (extremely fun)
- Finished editing my short story for plot inconsistencies
- Watched the Oscars
- Had my teeth cleaned
OK, you’re up to date.
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