Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town is a perfect example of why we shouldn’t be trying to stuff books into genres (although I will say this book is definitely InfernoKrusher). This wonderful, loopy, deep, moving story has a mystery, or maybe lots of mysteries (including the mystery of the human condition), there are a couple of romances, (not to mention the love of life and technology) and there are wonderful, intoxicating, flights of fantasy.
I’m delivering a midnight keynote at this year’s ADHOC conference (ADHOC is the new name for the old MacHack conferences) in Detroit, July 27-31. Hope to see you there!
The Advanced Developers Hands On Conference (ADHOC) is an annual event that provides a unique environment for computer programmers, engineers, students, and technology enthusiasts. At ADHOC they learn the cutting-edge technologies of the day not only from experts in classroom and conference sessions but also from each other in intense coding marathons. The conference is well rooted in the Macintosh platform – it is also called MacHack – but over the last few years the conference has grown to encompass other technologies, such as UNIX, open source, mobile devices, and more…
The showcase is an intensive, multi-day contest where you try to make something to impress everyone else at the conference. Ideally, you start it when you arrive, and you finish sometime before you go on stage to show it. Many of the coolest bits of software that came out for the Mac started in the Showcase. And, because everyone wants to see something cool, if you need the help from a programming expert who just happens to be at the show, you can ask them, and you’ll learn what you need. You can learn more about the Mac OS in a very short amount of time just by trying to write a showcase entry.
Tim Bennett has done a fantastic text remix of my novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. He says, “The text was generated by separating the novel’s sentences onto separate lines. Then I sorted them alphabetically from the last letter, to the first, so that sentences would cluster in roughly rhyming groups. From that process I refined the rhymes and constructed a short narrative.”
The sun was warm on my skin, and the flowers were in bloom
I woke disoriented and crabby, without my customary morning jolt of endorphin
I lurched out of the bed, naked, and thumped to the bathroom
I nearly started crying right thenI foraged a slice of bread with cheese and noticed a crumby plate in the sink
Lil shot me a look – she looked ready to wring my neck
She set her mug down with a harder-than-necessary clunk
I was an emotional wreckI was hyperventilating, light-headed
“Lil,” I said, then stopped
I hated how pathetic I sounded
Lil folded her arms and glaredI threw my glass at the wall
She went nuts
Now I wanted to hit something besides the wall
I looked inside myself, and I saw that I didn’t have the guts
Tim Bennett has done a fantastic text remix of Down and Out. He says, “The text was generated by separating the novel’s sentences onto separate lines. Then I sorted them alphabetically from the last letter, to the first, so that sentences would cluster in roughly rhyming groups. From that process I refined the rhymes and constructed a short narrative.”
The sun was warm on my skin, and the flowers were in bloom
I woke disoriented and crabby, without my customary morning jolt of endorphin
I lurched out of the bed, naked, and thumped to the bathroom
I nearly started crying right thenI foraged a slice of bread with cheese and noticed a crumby plate in the sink
Lil shot me a look – she looked ready to wring my neck
She set her mug down with a harder-than-necessary clunk
I was an emotional wreckI was hyperventilating, light-headed
“Lil,” I said, then stopped
I hated how pathetic I sounded
Lil folded her arms and glaredI threw my glass at the wall
She went nuts
Now I wanted to hit something besides the wall
I looked inside myself, and I saw that I didn’t have the guts
Dragonpage radio have recorded a podcast with me about the Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town and it went live today. I love doing interviews with these guys — they’re really knowledgeable and fun. Here’s the MP3 link
Joel “on Software” Splosky put together a Best of Software Writing anthology filled with articles he’s cadged from blogs and other web-writing (he kindly included my Boing Boing post on Notice and Takedown regimes in Canada). The contributor list is fantastic:
Ken Arnold,
Leon Bambrick.
Michael Bean,
Rory Blyth,
Adam Bosworth,
danah boyd,
Raymond Chen,
Kevin Cheng and Tom Chi,
Cory Doctorow,
ea_spouse,
Bruce Eckel,
Paul Ford,
Paul Graham,
John Gruber,
Gregor Hohpe,
Ron Jeffries,
Eric Johnson,
Eric Lippert,
Michael Lopp,
Larry Osterman,
Mary Poppendieck,
Rick Schaut,
Aaron Swartz,
Clay Shirky,
Eric Sink,
why the lucky stiff
The book is out now — I’m looking forward to getting my copy!
The software development world desperately needs better writing. If I have to read another 2000 page book about some class library written by 16 separate people in broken ESL, I’m going to flip out. If I see another hardback book about object oriented models written with dense faux-academic pretentiousness, I’m not going to shelve it any more in the Fog Creek library: it’s going right in the recycle bin. If I have to read another spirited attack on Microsoft’s buggy code by an enthusiastic nine year old Trekkie on Slashdot, I might just poke my eyes out with a sharpened pencil. Stop it, stop it, stop it!
On July 24, I’ll be appearing in the online world Second Life to do a book signing/launch for my new novel, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town. The Second Lifers have been conducting a contest to see who can come up with the coolest in-game programmed book-object to decant the novel into, and they’ve picked a winner:
Falk Bergman was the first to bring me by to have a look at his prototype in development, a giant book positioned next to a seat. Sitting on it automatically fixes your camera position in place, to give you the best possible view of the book.“The viewer in-world itself is very simple,” Falk tells me modestly. “It is basically a shopping agent with two displays that hooks into Page Up and Down [on the keyboards] for changing the pages.”
Dragonpage radio have recorded a podcast with me about the book and it went live today. I love doing interviews with these guys — they’re really knowledgeable and fun. Here’s the MP3 link
On July 24, I’ll be appearing in the online world Second Life to do a book signing/launch for my new novel, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town. The Second Lifers have been conducting a contest to see who can come up with the coolest in-game programmed book-object to decant the novel into, and they’ve picked a winner:
Falk Bergman was the first to bring me by to have a look at his prototype in development, a giant book positioned next to a seat. Sitting on it automatically fixes your camera position in place, to give you the best possible view of the book.“The viewer in-world itself is very simple,” Falk tells me modestly. “It is basically a shopping agent with two displays that hooks into Page Up and Down [on the keyboards] for changing the pages.”
Next Wednesday, June 29, I’m speaking on Europe’s coming Broadcast Flag in Cambridge, England, at the Communications Research Network/Communications Futures Program Bi-Annual Conference. Attendance is free — hope to see you there!
At the Plenary Day on Wednesday 28 June, delegates will hear the latest results from the CRN and CFP working groups on Broadband, QoS, Viral, DoS-Resistant, Core-Edge, Spectrum, Security and Photonics. The Plenary day will be of particular interest to CEOs, CTOs and board level decision makers, looking to get up to speed on the communication industry’s cutting-edge in the shortest possible time.
