Blogging Hiatus. Find Me on Twitter.

July 26, 2011

11/24/11 Update: It’s mostly back to Twitter for me. I’ll probably redesign this site sometime in the next year, but for the most part will not be actively blogging.

I am a bit irritated by the newly aggressive ad placement by WordPress.com. I have no control over that and would prefer no ads whatsoever, but WordPress charges for that. I will probably explore other hosting options if I do revive the site.

In the interim, I am more likely to share longer-form content on Google+. Go to my and put me in one of your circles for that stuff. You can also subscribe to my occasional public updates on Facebook, though I reserve friending for actual acquaintances.

Thanks for visiting.


The Public Editor Joins the Cocktail Party

March 13, 2011

Arthur S. Brisbane, the public editor of The New York Times, turned his attention this week to the newsroom’s use of Twitter. He quoted from an e-mail interview with me, which I am posting in full here, with a few tweaks and links.
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‘What Is This Thing Called the Web?’

January 22, 2011

Fifteen years ago today, on Jan. 22, 1996, The New York Times — which already had a news service behind a paywall on AOL — started its free Web site, jolting newspaper publishers and editors across the land to follow suit. A happy birthday tweet prompted me to go on a memory-jogging journey with the Wayback Machine looking for another newspaper site born that month. Back then, I was working for The York Daily Record in southcentral Pennsylvania. The existential headline on this blog post is from an article I wrote for that paper in December 1995, part of a five-day series explaining the Internet. (I had been a computer dabbler since I was a teenager.)

The article is reprinted below, with permission (My favorite line: “Some people believe the Web or some future souped-up version of it will transform society. Others think the accent in ‘hypertext’ should be on ‘hype.’”) The series was later archived on the paper’s rudimentary Web site (logo at above left), a precursor to the now-thriving YDR.com. That site was pushed into the world a bit early, thanks to some bad weather.
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Time Traveler Needs Cat Sitter

January 6, 2011

A friend from Pennsylvania forwarded this Craiglist job ad. If you’re interested, hurry before it expires.
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Tweetgeist for Early December

December 11, 2010

Nixon was the president of my childhood. This explains something about my view of authority. http://nyti.ms/hvIyoKSat Dec 11 19:29:34 via Echofon Read the rest of this entry »


Embed Tweet Test, With Blackbird Bookmarklet

December 11, 2010

I’m experimenting with ways to turn Twitter updates into blog posts. This bookmarklet from Publitweet works pretty well. I don’t think it plays well with my particular WordPress template, as there is some stray background HTML code I have to delete, but the final effect is what I’m looking for. The bookmarklet is an express version of Twitter’s Blackbird Pie tool, pioneered by @robinsloan, one of the many cool Twitter folks I’ve gotten to know in the past year or two. I am using it in the latest version of Firefox.

Readers Crave Certainty, but Life Is Complicated RT @johnmcquaid The existential paralysis of NYT headlines http://j.mp/gv6XaYSat Dec 11 03:39:33 via Twitterrific


‘Half-Life’ Reading at Sparks on Dec. 11

December 5, 2010

Are you a poetry fan? Jane Rosenberg LaForge (my wife) and three other New York area writers — Lisa Marie Basile, Britt Gambino and Jim Meirose — will present a free evening of poetry and fiction this Saturday in Chelsea.

Jane is promoting her second chapbook, “Half-Life,” from Big Table Publishing. It is drawn on experiences with cancer in her family (her mother died in November 2009 and her sister in July 2010, while many of these poems were being written and revised). (I wrote last year about Jane’s first chapbook, “After Voices,” now in its second printing, about growing up with a deaf father.)
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Quick Coffee Notes From Around Town

November 14, 2010

It was a busy summer and autumn, both personally and professionally, so I suspended my coffee blogging — but not my coffee drinking. The best bean by far was the (expensive) Honduras Cup of Excellence Lot #4 from Fernández Farm in El Cielito, Santa Bárbara, Honduras, as roasted by Cafe Grumpy. (It’s still available: I picked up some today.)

The tasting notes: “Red currant aroma. Floral brightness. Sweet notes of aged bourbon & molasses.” The Cup of Excellence rewards barista skill, of course, but you have to start with a good bean, and this far exceeded my expectations. I was parceling out beans like bits of gold on mornings with important business.
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A Ride to Kaffe 1668 for Los Volcanes

July 18, 2010

One July weekend, I had the opportunity to combine two of my favorite activities — riding my bike through Manhattan and visiting new coffee shops.

My family was traveling elsewhere, and New York had not yet fallen into the drippy hot torpor that has marked recent days. I rode down the west side a bit, diverted to to the Hudson River trail, then passed through TriBeCa, Chinatown, SoHo and my old East Village stomping grounds before chugging up the East Side — a loop of sorts.

I made a pass by La Colombe Torrefaction, but I had already tried beans from there via B. Koffie, so I decided to check out Kaffe 1668, one of the shops highlighted in The Times a couple of months ago.
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That Old Time Coffee on Christopher Street

July 3, 2010

When you step into McNulty’s Tea & Coffee in the West Village, you feel as though you are stepping into another era of coffee, when specialty shops like this were the main purveyors of gourmet beans from around the world. In that respect, it reminds me of Empire Coffee or Porto Rico Importing Co.
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