Blankbaby

10 Cool Things You Can Do with Your Kindle Fire

My dear, dear publisher, Peachpit, asked me if I would be interested in writing an article for their website about the Kindle Fire. I, of course, was interested and wrote 10 Cool Things You Can Do with Your Kindle Fire:

Did you know that you can email documents, load your own content, and sideload apps with the Kindle Fire? Scott McNulty, author of The Kindle Fire Pocket Guide, offers a list of ten cool things he loves about the Kindle Fire.

Go ahead and read it, dude!

The Kindle Fire Pocket Guide is now available

Hey cats and kittens, the day you've been waiting for is upon us (well, it actually happened yesterday but I was busy taking the day off): my latest book, The Kindle Fire Pocket Guide, is officially available for sale in hardcopy!

To celebrate I thought I would give away some copies of the book to Blankbaby readers/followers. I have 15 copies of the book to give away, so leave a comment on this post by January 24th to enter. If more than 15 people comment then I will randomly select the winner, and if less than 15 people comment everyone wins (if exactly 15 people comment the universe will implode).

The book covers the basics from using the web browser, buying media from Amazon, and more advanced topics like side loading apps and filling your Kindle Fire up with non-Amazon purchased content (you can do it!).

All that I ask from the handsome/lovely people who win a copy is that you leave a review on Amazon after you've read the book. Just share how you felt about the book: good or bad (though I think this book will be a boon to any Fire owner).

It is really hard to feel bad for a billionaire

But George Lucas strikes me as a little sad in this great NY Times article about his retirement (of his own choosing). For example:

“Why would I make any more,” Lucas says of the “Star Wars” movies, “when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?”

I know people give Lucas crap for endless fiddling with his movies, but I admire him for sticking to his vision (good or bad) and self-funding it.

Good on ya, George!

Our new loveseat

Marisa and I continue to collect furniture with this loveseat from Pottery Barn as our latest addition (though it won't be delivered for a couple of months).

Marisa wanted a neutral color, but I told her they were all boring so we went with red instead. I win!

How To Launch A Nuclear Missile In The 1960′s - Scouting NY

The How To Launch A Nuclear Missile In The 1960′sblog post ends with this uplifting moment. Imagine it. You've trained all your life, sat for hours doing nothing a missile silo, and finally your job is done. Here's what you do next:

The silo crew, now having done its mission, gets to kick back and wait to die.

Steve Ballmer, straight shooter

I can't imagine anyone at Apple saying something similar in any circumstances, but Steve Ballmer cuts to the point: "At present, Microsoft has 14 retail stores and plans to open up to 75 more over the next three years, usually placing them as close as possible to Apple outlets. “Well, the traffic is going to be there, and we’ve got to beat them anyway,” Ballmer says with a shrug."

I want to be a super-villian

I've always wanted to live either in a lighthouse or a former missile silo. Scouting NY (one of my favorite blogs) checks out a missile silo home.

Neat, huh? I think so, though it is probably for the best if I don't spend too much time thinking about why living in such remote/extreme locations appeal to me (but I would totally turn the missile silo into a huge library. How awesome would that be?).

The Kindle Fire Pocket Guide

Have you been wondering what I've been up to these last few months? Shockingly, I've been writing a book. Actually, most of the book was written during a 3 week span in November with editing and tweaking done the following weeks. All that work by myself, and the fine folks at PeachPit, translates into The Kindle Fire Pocket Guide (available in paperback
[out January 22nd, but you can pre-order now] or Kindle
[You can buy it now! Heck, you can even buy it before you get your Kindle Fire from Amazon and it'll be waiting for you when you turn on your Fire]. If Barnes and Noble is your thang you can pre-order it there too.).

I think this book turned out very well, and I hope folks who purchase it find it useful.

The "war on religion"

I'm not a political guy, but Rick Perry's latest campaign ad has really got my dander up (who knew I had dander?).

I've embedded it above, but I'll post the transcript here (taken from here):

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Christian, but you don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.

As president, I’ll end Obama’s war on religion. And I’ll fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage.

Faith made America strong. It can make her strong again.

I’m Rick Perry and I approve this message.

I had no idea that the President (a self identified Christian) was waging a war on religion, but I figured he must have some help from the folks in Congress. What with the whole design of our government and all being set up with a system of checks and balances to prevent a crazy president from doing something like waging a war on religion.

That got me thinking, I wonder what the religions of all the people in the Congress and Senate are. Surely, given our country's continuing war on religion, both Houses must be populated with hateful non-believers.

I was shocked to find out that atheists had invaded Congress! Well, atheist. That's right, one congressmen identified himself as an atheist (Pete Stark, who is a Democrat from California… so maybe he doesn't count).

Two other members of Congress don't list an affiliation, so I suppose that could mean they're atheists but they won't come out and say it.

That leaves 432 members of Congress who self identify as being a member of one religion or another (see the full list here).

Damn those religious representatives! Maybe the war on religion is being waged in the Senate. According to Wikipedia 2 members of Senate don't list their religions. That leaves 98 who are members of one religion or another (85 Senators are some flavor of Christian).

It would seem that war on religion is failing.

I'm an atheist myself, but I'm all for protecting the rights of others to practice whatever religion they want. Who cares, as long as you aren't hurting anyone (which is how I feel about a person's sexuality as well) and you don't try too hard to convert me. I wonder if Rick Perry would be as supportive of my rights as an atheist to not say "under God" during the Pledge of Allegiance (not that I often recite the Pledge of Allegiance, though when I was growing up I said it in school every day after prayers. Yep, I went to 13 years of Catholic school).

So, to my Christian friends who must hide your religions away in the many churches, Christian charity organizations, and many Christmas displays and celebrations I offer my support. Though you are represented by an overwhelming majority in the House and Senate, I am sure it is tough. I hope you aren't suffering too much for your religion.

The Kindle Fire

Amazon's latest gadget, the Kindle Fire, and the mixed reaction from tech bloggers (Andy likes it, Glenn likes it, David not so much, Josh kind of liked it, and Marco and Ben both hated it… really hated it) got me thinking about my struggles with weight loss.

I'm a fat guy. I used to be fatter. I used to be thinner. At the moment I'm trying to get back to that thinner place. One thing I've been doing to achieve this is cutting carbs almost entirely out of my diet.

One of my favorite low carb dishes is often called fauxtatoes: pureed cauliflower with some stock and cheese mixed it. While it does kind of look like mashed potatoes, if you eat a pile of pureed cauliflower expecting it to taste like mashed potatoes you're going to be disappointed. There's no way around it, even though pureed cauliflower is just as tasty as mashed potatoes (honestly, it is really good).

They look a like on the surface, but they are very different vegetables.

That's the way I think of the Kindle Fire vs. the iPad. If you look at it as an iPad the Fire just doesn't measure up. If you think of it as a fancy Kindle (which is what Marisa calls it) well it is pretty damned fantastic.

What do I think of it? I really like it. I haven't seen any of the super slow response times others complained about. When I tap on things they respond. Video is great on it.

I love, as always, that when I enter my Amazon account info into the Fire all my stuff is just there. It streams my 17,000 songs on my Cloud Drive without a problem, and books and magazines are fine on it (though I still hate reading on a backlit screen, which is why I also bought the Kindle Touch and the Kindle… though Marisa is getting one of those to replace her Kindle 3). The app selection isn't great, but honestly the Fire isn't about apps it is about buying and consuming stuff from Amazon.

I should mention that I am writing a book about the Kindle Fire (pre-order it now!) so take from that what you will.

Steve Jobs 1955 - 2011

Oddly enough, I don't think I would be married to Marisa if it hadn't been for Steve Jobs.

Allow me to explain: the first time Marisa and I ever hung out for more than a few minutes alone with one another was when I helped her diagnosis an iBook with a failing hard drive. I spent hours sitting at the dining room table (which is now our dining room table) running diagnostics and what have you. That is where our friend began, over that piece of silicon and plastic which wouldn't have existed without Steve. Over time (ok, a long time) our friendship deepened into love and eventually we figured out that we should be together.

Thanks for that, Steve.

I don't really have anything profound to say about his death, other than 56 is too young for anyone to die: world changer or not.

Buying books from old jews

You may not know this about me, but I live in a building where a lot of older Jewish people live. I don't have a problem with this. They are very quiet, the elevators are easy to get late at night, and they can be quite entertaining.

My building has a little library in the community room, which I have never been to. However, the library had a book sale last week to raise some money.

Given the key demographic in my building, I didn't think there would be many books of interest to me but at a buck a book I figured I could take 15 minutes to check out the wares.

I'm glad I did because I ended up spending $5 on the following:

• Mr. Vertigo: I like Auster a lot, so this was an easy choice.
• Third Class Superhero : I enjoyed Yu's second novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe so why not give his first work a go?
• Bonk's Bar : This one is the wild card. I picked it up mostly because it is set in Philadelphia.
• The Law of Nines : Oh Terry Goodkind. I expect this book to be pretty bad, but I went through a Goodkind phase in high school and I thought I would give him a chance now.
• Jpod : I was an English major in college, which means most of my classes were discussions. As any of you who have met me in real life (or have listened to any of The Incomparable podcasts in which I appear) know I am a man of few words. I remained generally quiet in class except for two notable occasions: in a creative writing class discussion on Hemingway and the "Iceberg theory" (90% of an iceberg is underwater as a metaphor for how much is concealed in Hemingway's spare prose) I suggested that he wrote so simply because he wasn't a very good writer (the TA of the class didn't agree with me). The other time, in a postmodern literature class, I argued reading Generation X, Coupland's most well known work, was a waste of time because all the characters did was whine about nothing (the Prof. didn't agree with me). Given that background it might seem odd to pick this up, but I did enjoy Microserfs.

When I went to pay for my five books the little old lady looked at them and said, "Great! We don't get many people with such esoteric taste."

Not sure what she meant by that, but I'll take it as a compliment.

Win a copy of The Mac OS X Lion Project Book

You all know that I'm a big fancy pants author, right?

Did you know that big fancy pants authors get author copies of their books? It is true! It is also true that I have no use for 25 copies of my latest opus: The Mac OS X Lion Project Book
(though I do recommend you purchase at least 3 copies, in case of disaster).

However, two lucky people will win a copy of my book just by commenting on this post by end of day Saturday, September 3rd.

That's right, just leave a comment and you'll be entered to win! I'll pick two lucky people, autograph the book (if requested to) and mail it off to them.

All I ask of the winners is this: read the book and leave a review of it on Amazon/BN.com/iBookstore… wherever you do your shopping. The review should be honest (good, bad, or indifferent) of course.

Alright, why are you still reading this? Leave a comment already!

Haircut and trim: Before and After

The Mac OS X Lion Project Book ebook now available

Hey, did you hear? I wrote another book. Oh, right, I've posted about it.

I'm posting again because The Mac OS X Lion Project Book is now available wherever finer ebooks are sold, including:

• Amazon
• iBook Store


• Google Books


• Nook Store

I suggest you buy the electronic version to hold you over until you buy several copies of the print version.

My Lion ebooks are now available

When Cliff, my editor at Peachpit, asked me to write The Mac OS X Lion Project Book, I jumped at the chance. I wrote, and wrote, and wrote… well, I wrote too damn much!

I only had 240 pages, which seems like a lot when you’re staring at the blank page in Scrivener, but they fill up fast.

I wrote so much additional information that we had enough stuff to six (6!) additional ebooks, which are now available on the iBook Store and the Kindle store (I say buy both formats… cross platform!):

Secure Your Mac with Mac OS X Lion (iBooks | Kindle): Out of the box, Lion is pretty darned secure… but it could be even more secure (people are out to get you). This ebook covers how to use Lion’s Firewall, FileVault, and change some default settings to thwart the criminal element (just like a superhero!).

Childproof your Mac with Mac OS X Lion (iBooks | Kindle): Kids have sticky fingers and they want to prod and poke your Mac, launch apps they shouldn’t, and spend all your money on the Mac App Store. This ebook will show you how to enable Parental Controls on your Mac and put those ankle-biters in their place (you will even learn how to limit their computer usage using a Lion feature).

Manage passwords with 1Password (iBooks | Kindle) Ok, this book isn’t Lion specific but 1Password is a great app worthy of an ebook unto itself. Thanks to 1Password I am of the opinion that the best password is a password that even you don’t know. 1Password creates, manages, and fills in passwords for you. Brilliant! I have no idea what any of my password are anymore, and I love it!

Spruce up iTunes (iBooks | Kindle): iTunes is kind of a beast, and this ebook shows you how to keep it in line. Learn how to add album art, edit meta-data, dedup your iTunes Library (and even more your Library to another disk). Rock on, you crazy diamond.

Video conferencing with Mac OS X Lion (iBooks | Kindle): There are lots of ways to video conference with Lion, but this ebook covers one you might not think of first: Skype. I know, I know: what about iChat or FaceTime? Well, I thought it made the most sense to go with the app that people have heard of, and that non-Mac users can actually use (madness!).

Powering your home theater from your Mac (iBooks | Kindle): You’re made your iTunes library all pretty, but no iTunes library is an island! How do you get all that sweet, sweet media from your Mac onto the screen of your giant HDTV or stream Jefferson Starship to your kickin’ audio system? This ebook tells you how (and you just have to buy a couple things).

Just worked out

Ready to workout!

This much change!

I went to the bank to change my change into REAL money, and they gave me $50.60 (minus a service change, DAMN YOU TD BANK!).

And how did I end up with 144 quarters?

How much change?

Answer here later today!