Tag: books
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Review
Back in the ’80s when The Smiths were a going concern I was going through my heavy metal phase, and they completely passed me by, dismissed as “something for the cool kids” (one of which I most certainly was not). Many years later, in college (and quite possibly thanks to the girl I was dating) I finally ‘got’ The Smiths, and set about devouring their back catalog with a vengeance. I also picked up a fair bit of Morrissey’s solo output, although that has proven to be much patchier. Still, even with some occasional lapses in the music quality control… Read more
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Self-publish and be damned
Way back in 2009 I thought it would be fun to write a book. The result of this ill-thought-out endeavor was Oracle User Productivity Kit 3.5, a technical reference to an obscure piece of software that myself and apparently three other people used. Although it didn’t sell particularly well (around 1,000 copies), it was a fun little project that kept me busy for a couple of months, and gave me something new to put on my resume. Once I’d finished it I had absolutely no intention of writing another book (or certainly not another reference work – I’m still working… Read more
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Fire Eyed Boy
A couple of weeks ago I took delivery of my latest toy – a Kindle Fire. I’d been eyeing Kindles for a while, and the combination of an ‘expanded functionality’ e-reader (I don’t know that I’d call it a full tablet PC) and a price point of $199.00 (and me having $199.00 worth of Amex Membership Rewards points to spare, for a net cost of zero) made the Kindle Fire an interesting proposition. It’s not really a ‘true’ Kindle in that it doesn’t use e-ink (which was really the main selling point of Kindles) but the screen is of a… Read more
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978-1-849680-16-5
For U.S. bands, the traditional way they would know they had ‘made it’ was when they were featured on the cover of Rolling Stone (witness Cover of the Rolling Stone, by Dr. Hook – yes, I’m embarrassed I know it, too…). For UK bands, it was when they performed on the now defunct Top Of The Pops. For me, I always thought that the pinnacle of achievement was getting a book published. Or, more specifically, getting a real book with an actual ISBN published. Many years ago, I worked on the Torchum Never Stops books, but these were self-published [by… Read more