Three buildings, two librarians, and six hours into my first “real” Library of Congress visit, I’m no closer to getting the research done that I wanted to do. When you’re doing science writing it’s only common sense to look at the literature that’s out there. Most of the time I can access the academic journals [...]
Inspired by The Oatmeal’s fantastic take on high school classes I began thinking about what the most useful classes I took in high school were. Besides the hard science courses, which have turned out to be serendipitously useful (but I really can’t suggest everyone run out and take physics just because they might decide to [...]
I almost lost my entire blog last week. Something (I have theories about what) somehow managed to corrupt my WordPress database, erasing every entry since 2008. That’s pretty much all my clips and everything “important.” My webhost apparently makes automatic backups of the database but deletes them after only a few days. I didn’t notice [...]
I fly out to Austin for SXSW tomorrow, a day early, but then the craziness starts in earnest soon after. Heading down? Hit me up on Twitter and maybe we’ll meet up. I wasn’t super excited about a lot of the proposed panels at first, but with a little digging I’ve found a significant number [...]
This blog is turning into a place to vent. Today I want to vent about poaching sources. A few times I’ve been contacted by people saying very nice, flattering things about something I’d written lately, followed by “can you tell me who you talked to to write the story because I’m doing one on the [...]
I’m testing out MacJournal, from Mariner Software. It’s an offline blog editing client that works with WordPress and a few other blog hosts. I’m told that it even works with WordPress.com (i.e., you don’t have to have a self-hosted blog to use the client.) The software is a hefty $40, but there’s a 15-day free [...]
I’ve finally gotten my website to a state where I’m happy with it..for now, though in a few months I’m sure the renovation bug will hit me again. Some people buy new curtains, I play with style sheets. It does give me satisfaction to use that side of my brain, which isn’t always taxed (or [...]
I had the opportunity earlier this month to be a panelist at the Vocus User Conference here in Washington DC. All the flacks wanted to hear what the Future of Media looks like from a freelance perspective…and out of all the freelancers in the DC area, they chose me. I’m humbled. I’ll be honest with [...]
As some of you already know, this year I’m making the transition from “writer, editor, and blogger” to “writer, editor, blogger, and author. That’s right. I am gonna sell a book this year, darn it! As part of that goal, I’ve added a bunch of agent blogs and writing blogs to my RSS reader, figuring [...]
That’s right, folks, I’ve finished Nanowrimo 2009 with a steampunk story starring the spunkiest wrench wench ever to walk the streets of New Bombay. Considering the speed at which I churned out either 50,419 words or 50,093 words (depending on whether you believe Nanowrimo’s word counter or Scrivener‘s), I’m actually happy with the way the [...]