Category: ad-pre-2021
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Markdown lets any text app do more work
For grabbing ideas when inspiration strikes, or trying to make a long wait into useful work-time, an Internet-connected smartphone is a great device. It’s already with you. Word-processor apps still aim for completeness of function, however, which makes them labored to start – just opening a file can scare a good idea out of one’s…
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The Scientists and the Spy July ebook — out now!
I’m excited to announce the new ebook edition of Chapters 1-10 of my serial The Scientists and the Spy! Weekly episodes are great, but now you can binge-read the last two months of this thrilling wartime mystery set in Washington DC. Includes all the period photos from the website, plus an afterword about writing historical…
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The Scientists & The Spy, Chapter 6
This week, government gal Dorothy’s bus ride introduces her to a charming diplomat-in-exile! If you need to catch up on the novel, there’s a main page with all chapters plus historical material. Thanks for reading!
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Catching up to success and building on it
For the last month now, what writing time I’ve had all belonged to my new serial novel. I regret losing energy both on social media and on my first novel, but I can return to them. The experience of the serial is unusual and worthy of attention. By starting this in partnership with a media…
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My new novel begins!
Today the Forest Hills Connection published the first chapter of my new serial novel, The Scientists and the Spy. Based on the World War II weapons work of the United States National Bureau of Standards, which in that time was based in my own neighborhood, it’s a weekly serial mystery for a general audience. We’re…
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Be here now (Apple’s new Watch)
The Apple Watch is not the first wrist-worn computing device — the Timex Datalink from 1993 could be programmed using the flickering of light from a personal-computer screen — but it seems to be the first designed to interface with the body, not just eyes and fingers. In his review of the device’s first generation,…
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The STEM and the Flower (Education)
Thanks to Fareed Zakaria for his recent column calling out the recent obsession with STEM education — science, technology, engineering and mathematics. I urge its wide readership. The issue is not STEM, of course, but obsession — and it’s not really obsession, in the end, but the lazy desire for a panacea. Wouldn’t it be great…
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Revolutionary atheists vs Stockholm syndrome (John Gray)
Esteemed cosmologist, and my old friend, Andrew Jaffe just posted a quick retort on his blog to a long essay by philosopher John Gray. Gray has an objection to the strident challenging tone of modern atheist thought-leaders like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. I am not the scientist Andrew Jaffe is, and I was hopeful that…
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Posture for writers (standing desks)
For a decade now, I have worked at a standing desk: first on boxes and books piled on a seated desk, then on hasty constructs made from scrap lumber. Now I stand at a custom-built desk, my bare feet on a thick gel mat. There is an obvious and immediate ergonomic benefit for any computer user*…
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Performance anxiety (Facebook edition)
If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise. — William Blake, “Proverbs of Hell” I noted recently that writing has become a performing art, one where we writers all have to be promotional and public. I’ve been mulling that over in regards to social media. Specifically, Facebook. I made my first business…