Stranger Things Happen, Kelly Link's first (and wonderful) short story collection, is now available to download for free. And so is Jeffrey Veen's The Art and Science of Web Design, a book that was pretty influential when it was released 5 years ago. I'll have more fun stuff to … [Read more...] about Free books
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Seat Complaint
Seat Complaint — "Dear Continental Airlines…" … [Read more...] about Seat Complaint
Server log analysis
I'm swamped with work, and in my free time I've been writing madly. And I'm getting back to that in just a second, but I wrote this up quickly as a reply to someone and then realized that it was too long and I really should just post it here instead. I just went through, for the … [Read more...] about Server log analysis
Tribute to the loneliness of writing
Tribute to the loneliness of writing — Oh, those wacky, wacky Brits. … [Read more...] about Tribute to the loneliness of writing
Revenge of the Sith: The Abridged Script
Revenge of the Sith: The Abridged Script — "YODA leads an army of WOOKIEES to fight against DROIDS. The scene is utterly superfluous and present solely to have a scene containing WOOKIEES. It also serves to make the STAR WARS UNIVERSE seem even smaller with more cameos by … [Read more...] about Revenge of the Sith: The Abridged Script
More Serenity Screenings June 23
I'm off writing madly, but in the meantime, amuse yourself by obsessively reloading the ticket sales page for the Serenity screening near you. They got the list up before everything sold out this time; I think Universal is catching on. … [Read more...] about More Serenity Screenings June 23
Attention, publishers
This is what you should be doing with your websites. None of that takes a huge budget, really, but it does take a dedicated webmaster and not the last dregs of "spare time" contributed by already-overworked editors. … [Read more...] about Attention, publishers
Things that make you look like an amateur on the web, part 3: just plain stupid
Misspellings. I know of at least one NYT bestseller whose name is misspelled in her page title. There's no copyeditor between you and your web audience. And search engines won't recognize you if there's a typo in your name. Script kiddie language. ("R U sexxy?" Probably … [Read more...] about Things that make you look like an amateur on the web, part 3: just plain stupid
Things that make you look like an amateur on the web, part 2: special effects
Mouse droppings. As annoying as pop-up ads — and the only way to get rid of them is to leave the site. Mystery meat navigation. Your visitors should never have to guess where to click. Transition effects. Java plugins or applets. These things are guaranteed to crash … [Read more...] about Things that make you look like an amateur on the web, part 2: special effects
Things that make you look like an amateur on the web, part 1: images
(I realize lists of things you shouldn't do are less helpful than tips on what you should do, but let's get the basics out of the way first. I'll get back to the proactive stuff in a bit.) Backgrounds, borders, bars, and bullets taken from a free graphics site. You don't need … [Read more...] about Things that make you look like an amateur on the web, part 1: images
