Weeknote 1

Dichotomies. Alex Toth. Work thoughts. Photography project.

Hitchcock and the author construct

I’ve been re-watching a few Hitchcock movies lately. Largely some of his older stuff as that’s what Amazon Prime has. Stage Fright. 39 Steps. The Lady Vanishes.

That sort of thing.

Some of it ages surprisingly well.

Some of it doesn’t.

Seams, Stitches, And The Decline Of The Mac

I wonder if anybody at Apple realises that every argument they make against adding touch screens to the Mac is also an argument against the iPad being a Mac replacement?

Neither Paper Nor Digital Does Active Reading Well

Books are coasting on their tactility. Digital is just sinking. Three pieces on active reading.

Leftover Thoughts From 2017

I’ve never been much of a fan of the ‘What I learned in this year doing X, Y, and Z’ tradition of many bloggers.

Over-engineering is under-engineering

There’s a gif going around presenting a debate about whether websites are under-engineered or over-engineered as Daffy and Bugs doing their duck-season/rabbit-season skit.

The process is the thing

A few words on not using the standard publishing industry processes for making digital work.

(This is a follow-up to my earlier blog post Von be don: A few notes on a recent digital publishing project in Iceland)

Von Be Don: A few notes on a recent digital publishing project in Iceland

You may or may not know this, but last year my mother, Bergljót Baldursdóttir, and my sister, Brynhildur Jenný Bjarnadóttir, published a children’s book in Icelandic, Von be don, Magnús og Malaika leysa málið.

W3C and EME: it isn't about preventing DRM but saving the W3C

The debate surrounding the W3C’s involvement has polarised. Unfortunately for the W3C, both sides are right.

Archive

February 4, 2017: Unpopular opinion: dismissing indirect pointers is a mistake
January 24, 2017: Anger feels like poison
December 7, 2016: Is JavaScript more fragile?
December 5, 2016: Debating Progressive Enhancement
November 1, 2016: The downside of believing in Apple
October 29, 2016: A short primer on Icelandic politics on the day of the 2016 election
October 18, 2016: The Tragedy/Farce of the Open Web according to journalists
October 17, 2016: Notes on debating for the web development community
October 11, 2016: Addendum on loose coupling and the iOS App Store
October 9, 2016: Idle thoughts on modularity and loose coupling in digital media
June 24, 2016: When fear is rational
June 7, 2016: Once upon a time, I couldn't imagine a better word processor than Word
May 24, 2016: A thought to consider
May 16, 2016: A few thoughts on standardisation, W3C, and the IDPF
April 21, 2016: Filling in the gaps – the dynamics of zero marginal cost
April 12, 2016: Which CMS/blog system would you choose?
March 30, 2016: A few simplified points on web and document security
January 21, 2016: Judge the work
January 13, 2016: Why did Paul Graham argue against equality?
January 4, 2016: Purpose, Joy, Capability
November 20, 2015: You can't fix the App Store, so here's how you fix it
November 4, 2015: Why I am worried about Twitter and why you should be too
October 23, 2015: The crossroads or the wilderness
September 28, 2015: You can't solve people problems with software
September 18, 2015: The discussion about ad blocking is very dumb (but not in the way you think)
September 10, 2015: This is not a book, but it is a podcast
September 7, 2015: A week of 'This is not a book'
September 1, 2015: Launching "This is not a book" – what it is and why you should be interested
August 28, 2015: My kingdom for a new bookstore
August 26, 2015: Modern software sucks
August 25, 2015: The cost versus benefits of disorganised programming power
August 25, 2015: Who benefits the most from Open Source Software?
August 24, 2015: Sex Apocalypse Later
August 23, 2015: Random thoughts on work and that Amazon thing
August 14, 2015: Bookmarks – UI flaws and other great capers
August 13, 2015: Bookmarks – The fluidity of male sexuality and learnable programming
August 12, 2015: Bookmarks – More money for open-source
August 11, 2015: Bookmarks – Leaving bosses
August 10, 2015: Bookmarks – Promoting other people's work
August 7, 2015: Bookmarks – What Would Kamala Khan Do?
August 6, 2015: Bookmarks – Trickle down golden geese
August 5, 2015: Bookmarks – Hateviews are us
August 4, 2015: Bookmarks – Milk it
August 4, 2015: Iterating the web away:
losing the next generation
August 3, 2015: Bookmarks – You haven't been paying attention
July 31, 2015: Bookmarks – It's a note card world, we just live in it
July 30, 2015: Bookmarks – Just call it Smylfeste
July 29, 2015: Bookmarks – That one is shaped like an idiot
July 28, 2015: Blogger nostalgia
July 28, 2015: Bookmarks – Make it simpler
July 27, 2015: Wet streets cause rain and criminal responsibility
July 26, 2015: Tweet bookmarks galore
July 23, 2015: Random links that catch my fancy, part four of ∞
July 22, 2015: Random links that catch my fancy, part three of ∞
July 21, 2015: Mythic visions of sexuality
July 21, 2015: Random links that catch my fancy, part two of ∞
July 20, 2015: Random links that catch my fancy, part one of ∞
July 17, 2015: An exercise for the reader in integration and modularity
July 17, 2015: How to read my nonsense
July 10, 2015: Is it distributed or just a disorganised hierarchy?
July 10, 2015: On the vaunted robustness of the web
July 10, 2015: The rules of the game have changed for RSS
July 6, 2015: The web app developer's lament
June 25, 2015: Other people write about digital media
June 25, 2015: The plural of 'Medium' is clearly 'clusterfuck'
June 24, 2015: Burnout
June 24, 2015: The files Steven Pressfield works with
June 14, 2015: iOS 9 content blocking extensions are not a mobile advertising armageddon
June 5, 2015: From the other blog: "The new age of HTML: the web is being torn apart"
June 5, 2015: From the other blog: "Should I make a WWDC prediction? Yes, let's"
June 5, 2015: From the other blog: "Writing the Other: a book that's useful to all writers"
June 5, 2015: From the other blog: "Other people talk about startups and entrepreneurship"
June 5, 2015: From the other blog: "Other people discuss software quality (spoiler: it sucks)"
June 5, 2015: From the other blog: "A few quick links and thoughts on big web problems"
June 5, 2015: From the other blog: Our Grim Meathook Present #1 and #2
June 5, 2015: From the other blog: "I really want the Supergirl TV show to be fun"
June 3, 2015: Writing the Other:
a book that's useful to all writers
June 3, 2015: Should I make a WWDC prediction?
Yes, let's
June 2, 2015: Grim Meathook Present #2
June 2, 2015: Other people discuss software quality (spoiler: it sucks)
June 2, 2015: Other people talk about startups and entrepreneurship
May 29, 2015: A few quick links and thoughts on big web problems
May 25, 2015: I really want the Supergirl TV show to be fun
May 25, 2015: Our Grim Meathook Present
May 20, 2015: The new age of HTML:
the web is being torn apart
May 19, 2015: From the other blog: "We are a violent species"
May 19, 2015: From the other blog: "Her movie, his name; Mad Max: Fury Road"
May 19, 2015: From the other blog: "Toxic environments: inequality in tech is a symptom of something worse"
May 19, 2015: Her movie, his name;
Mad Max: Fury Road
May 19, 2015: We are a violent species
May 18, 2015: Toxic environments:
inequality in tech is a symptom of something worse
May 16, 2015: Where I write about Facebook's Instant Articles
May 15, 2015: Facebook and the media:
united, they attack the web
May 14, 2015: Speeding up decision cycles with rules and heuristics
May 14, 2015: You are here #5:
UX, design, and CSS as a parasite
May 13, 2015: You are here #4:
an epic journey through app dev and male bodies
May 12, 2015: You are here #3:
the glorious wonders of online reading await you
May 11, 2015: 2015-05-11-18-39-16
May 11, 2015: You are here #2:
an artisanal curation of reading material
May 10, 2015: You are here #1:
a selection of fine links and tweets for your pleasure
May 7, 2015: 2015-05-07-00-59-18
May 4, 2015: Five publishing-related thoughts on a Friday afternoon
May 4, 2015: Why should people read more books?
May 4, 2015: How is taxing ebooks as print books supposed to work?
March 4, 2015: Kathy Sierra's Badass: Making Users Awesome – the book you all should read
March 1, 2015: Idle Sunday thoughts about web trends
March 1, 2015: Repetition only works in fiction
March 1, 2015: The web has covered the basics — that’s why it’ll get harder from now
January 9, 2015: A draft of a chapter of some thoughts on things.
December 31, 2014: Taking stock of 2013 and 2014
December 17, 2014: The weather, of course
December 3, 2014: Publishing business ideas are a dime a dozen
November 25, 2014: EU VAT changes shift the digital landscape
November 25, 2014: Money is a poor measure of value
November 13, 2014: On conferences
November 12, 2014: Crushed by multinationals
November 7, 2014: Software as a strategy: prefabricated publishers
November 6, 2014: Software as strategy in the ebook world
November 5, 2014: The five types of unpublished books
November 4, 2014: Four hundred words from Anita Elberse's book "Blockbusters"
November 4, 2014: The splintered author
November 3, 2014: There is no war between Amazon and Traditional Publishing
October 10, 2014: Ebooks suck for learning
September 9, 2014: The Poisoning of Social Media: A Reading List
August 10, 2014: Wobbly Amazon
July 24, 2014: This week's must-read post
July 10, 2014: Friends don’t let their friends become authors
July 4, 2014: Both at the same time
April 15, 2014: So I had to make an ebook cover...
March 31, 2014: So long, Readmill, and thanks for all the fish
March 24, 2014: What ebook production problems are self-publishers facing?
March 13, 2014: Many stories, many truths
February 28, 2014: Problem statements for digital publishing research
February 21, 2014: To do, to do
February 20, 2014: iBooks Author tempts you with bling
February 19, 2014: Microsoft Word is a liability
February 18, 2014: The print design mentality
February 12, 2014: Book contracts
February 5, 2014: Intermission: sorting through the banal
January 30, 2014: How to create value with a new thing
January 29, 2014: HTML is too complex
January 28, 2014: The ebook as an API
January 27, 2014: My last word on DRM
January 23, 2014: Except, except, except
January 22, 2014: A thought exercise
January 21, 2014: Losing faith in yourself
January 20, 2014: Changing your readership mix
January 18, 2014: Sex, education, readers, and futures: what works, what doesn't
January 17, 2014: The various types of readers
January 16, 2014: The unevenly distributed ebook future
January 15, 2014: Sex, violence, and stílbrot
January 14, 2014: Recipe for pundit response to Hugh Howey’s suggestions
January 13, 2014: Bling it up for education
January 9, 2014: Blogging has trained me to assume you’re stupid
January 8, 2014: Ergodic literature
January 7, 2014: What I thought I wanted versus what I really wanted
January 6, 2014: The mistake of 'enhancing' novels
January 4, 2014: Pessimistic ramblings and other fun links (week overview + further reading)
January 3, 2014: Stumbling into publishing
January 2, 2014: The publishing industry's new product categories
January 1, 2014: The last two Knights and Necromancers stories
December 31, 2013: Random, loosely connected, thoughts on the future
December 29, 2013: Old photos posted without context: Reykjavík Cats
December 22, 2013: Old photos posted without context: Sweep After Use
December 20, 2013: The Checklist: fix iBooks image handling
December 17, 2013: Great text transcends nothing
October 17, 2013: Quarantine all ebooks
October 17, 2013: The self-publisher's perspective of the ebook market
October 10, 2013: Light evening trauma
October 2, 2013: Just say no to ebook CSS and JS
September 17, 2013: The Google Wave Heuristic
September 12, 2013: Amazon's biggest ally is Apple
August 26, 2013: Readmill versus Kindle – Readmill is worth the hassle
August 19, 2013: Proprietary ebook formats versus DRM
August 16, 2013: Publishing has catered to dumb for a long while
August 14, 2013: Computers are too difficult and people are computer illiterate
August 12, 2013: Why disruption goes unchecked
August 9, 2013: Make ebooks worth it
August 8, 2013: Ebooks and cognitive mapping
August 7, 2013: Ebook silos, update
August 6, 2013: Ebook silos and missed opportunities
August 5, 2013: Technology is not inherently good
July 29, 2013: Administrative note on baldurbjarnason.com and feeds
July 29, 2013: Posted without comment
July 24, 2013: The inefficiencies of joy
July 23, 2013: Winner takes all versus the Matthew effect
July 22, 2013: What you people read (on my websites)
July 19, 2013: Tolerating the heat, noticing the water
July 18, 2013: If the Kindle fails so will ebooks
July 16, 2013: Followup to 'this ebook is a lemon'
July 12, 2013: This ebook is a lemon
July 10, 2013: Caught between madmen and mercenaries
July 3, 2013: Major update to Studio Tendra's Oz project
July 1, 2013: What are self-publishing's biggest pain points?
July 1, 2013: Intellectual terrain
June 26, 2013: Good books don't win
May 10, 2013: Why does it matter?
May 7, 2013: The OZ Reading Club: Books three and four
May 3, 2013: Which kind of innovation?
May 2, 2013: Books and Print Showcase
April 30, 2013: Peasants
April 14, 2013: For the love
April 5, 2013: The idiocies of young men
April 2, 2013: Studio Tendra's grand and marvellous Oz Reading Club
March 29, 2013: Iceland’s ‘crowd-sourced’ constitution is dead
February 27, 2013: The B&N fallacy
February 19, 2013: Hire me!
February 15, 2013: A question only you can answer
February 8, 2013: What would a matriarchy look like?
February 6, 2013: Respect the reader
February 5, 2013: 33 observations on the year 2012
February 4, 2013: Knights and Necromancers: new books and megapacks!
January 2, 2013: The falcon's shriek
December 29, 2012: What is actually going on in Iceland
December 25, 2012: Merry Christmas!
December 21, 2012: Tag soup is history
December 15, 2012: Schlock
December 5, 2012: Strange definitions of 'nice'
December 4, 2012: Books of Christmas Past
November 26, 2012: Using IDs in CSS
November 22, 2012: Design highlights from the Icelandic book season
November 19, 2012: News, updates, and the Icelandic book market
November 15, 2012: A response, of sorts
November 8, 2012: High tide and a room of your own
November 6, 2012: Knights and Necromancers 2 has been released
October 30, 2012: The comment-fiction challenge post-mortem
October 29, 2012: Fantasy, Collapse, and a sense of history
October 26, 2012: Two questions on putting books on the web
October 25, 2012: iBooks 3.0
October 22, 2012: Perceptions of society
October 19, 2012: What I've been up to
October 1, 2012: The Readmill comment fiction challenge
September 27, 2012: Is it safe?
September 26, 2012: Sanitation in fantasy world-building
September 24, 2012: The time work takes
September 21, 2012: I need your help
September 19, 2012: Designing the covers
September 19, 2012: Free Kindle version
September 17, 2012: What is this?
August 1, 2012: The stillborn creature
July 27, 2012: EPUB javascript security
July 21, 2012: I be writing
July 16, 2012: Farce
June 19, 2012: Bad writing
June 7, 2012: A few random points on DRM
May 7, 2012: The web and ebooks have little in common
April 26, 2012: The end of ebook development
April 20, 2012: Aftermath – notes on the Amazon post
April 15, 2012: Today is not tomorrow (or, how to beat Amazon)
April 3, 2012: Bits, bobs, and anecdata
March 29, 2012: Lessons in interactivity
March 20, 2012: Hierarchies of ebook design
March 12, 2012: It's time to treat ebook developers as developers
March 7, 2012: Code doesn't change minds
March 3, 2012: Game over, Amazon wins
March 2, 2012: On CSS Page Templates
February 29, 2012: Javascript in ebooks
February 20, 2012: Explanatory windows
February 13, 2012: Readium and other good intentions
February 10, 2012: ePub windows and widgets – a proposal
February 4, 2012: The semantics of ebook widgets
February 1, 2012: What do we want from the Kindle platform?
February 1, 2012: iBooks widgets – to javascript or not to javascript
January 27, 2012: Disruptive crap
January 26, 2012: Me, elsewhere
January 21, 2012: The pros and cons of the iBooks 2.0 textbook format
January 20, 2012: The iBooks 2.0 built-in widgets
January 19, 2012: The iBooks 2.0 textbook format
January 17, 2012: The publishing animal
December 8, 2011: A day of innovation on the future of the book
November 30, 2011: What a publisher does
November 8, 2011: Design pseudoscience
October 28, 2011: A tale of three blog posts
October 24, 2011: CSS and ebook design
September 15, 2011: The loss of ambient intimacy
August 26, 2011: Friday links and reading
August 4, 2011: Convert or engage
July 30, 2011: CSS3 Hyphens
July 29, 2011: Just you & Google
July 24, 2011: Knowledge is not adoption
July 23, 2011: HTML5 history API
July 17, 2011: Your friends, in boxes
January 27, 2011: Localstorage & messaging in ePub
January 26, 2011: Javascript in epub
January 25, 2011: An epub experiment
December 21, 2010: What is an ebook?
October 25, 2010: Hypotheses and testing
October 7, 2010: Identifying publishing innovators
October 7, 2010: On quality in publishing
June 28, 2010: An interesting discussion