I’ve just done something reckless and irresponsible: I’ve purchased two tickets to Buenos Aires. (Yes, round-trip tickets. I’m not that reckless.) Despite the fact that I was able to apply some frequent-flyer points to reduce the cost of the fare, this is going to be one monstrously expensive trip, and it’s going to put us significantly in debt. After all, we still have to pay for the tour we’re taking (meals, hotels, guide, ground transportation and so on), plus still more airfare to get us to and from our final destination: Patagonia.

On Christmas Day this year, Morgen will turn 30, and she wanted to do something special. By “special,” she meant going someplace so exotic that it was completely outside her comfort zone and her (already considerable) experience. I said, “You pick the place, and I’ll be there.” For a while it looked like we’d be going to Spain. Then Rome. Then Australia. But these places were ultimately not exotic enough. Finally she said, with irrevocable determination, “Patagonia.” So Patagonia it is. And my only question was, “By the way…where is Patagonia?”

Everyone who has seen The Princess Bride (that is, I believe, 99.3% of all English-speaking people) has heard of Patagonia—that’s where the original Dread Pirate Roberts had retired and was living like a king. (It’s all coming back to you now, isn’t it?) Patagonia is the name given to the southernmost part of South America, the west part of which is in Chile, and the east part of which is in Argentina. The exact northern boundary is somewhat indeterminate, but it seems to be around the Rio Colorado, giving Patagonia an area of about 350,000 square miles—about a third larger than Texas. It’s a really big place. And yet, it’s one of the most sparsely populated areas on Earth. You’ve got your sheep (producing the famous Patagonia wool), stunning mountains, massive glaciers, vast empty plains, and some of the fiercest winds anywhere. People—not so many. You don’t go to see amusement parks and resorts, you go to experience the breathtaking landscape, the wildlife, and the utter remoteness of it all. You go to think about pirates, explorers, ranchers, outlaws, and prospectors—the people who made Patagonia legendary.

I go for all these reasons, but mainly to help make my wife’s 30th birthday as special and meaningful as it can be. If everything goes according to plan, on her birthday we’ll be in Ushuaia, Tierra Del Fuego—the southernmost city in the world.

In all, we’ll be gone about two weeks. A lot of that is travel time. (Did I mention it’s very, very, very far away?) I’m expecting that this adventure will provide me with enough Interesting Things to last the winter. And I also expect that we’ll return home exhausted, (more) broke, and very happy.

By the way…in a couple of years, when I turn 40, I get to turn the tables and select the crazy destination. The wheels are already spinning.

Yesterday I got my first sample copy of Take Control of Panther, Volume 1, a compilation of the first four Take Control ebooks. These should be appearing on the shelves of your favorite bookstore any day now. It’s nice once again to have my name on the cover of a (more or less) current printed book.

I wrote my portion of this book back in October of 2003, and though I’ve revised it several times since then, it seems kind of strange that it was nearly a full year before it appeared in printed form. Stranger still: I won’t see any money from this edition until January at the earliest, and possibly much later. That’s because of the odd way print publishers still work, even in the 21st century: royalties are computed quarterly (or, in some cases, biannually), but then the publisher generally has another full 90 days to actually send out a check. So in this case, since we’re just at the end of the third quarter, the publisher has until the end of December (i.e., 90 days from the end of Q3) to send out a check for whatever books were sold this month—less a certain percentage as a reserve against returns. The check will actually go to TidBITS, which will in turn send each of the contributors their cut. I don’t think very many copies will be sold in the next two weeks, so if I get a check in January it’s likely to be quite small. Maybe in April I’ll get a bigger check—just in time for the book to become obsolete as Apple releases Tiger!

Here’s a bit of irony for you. I’m using the newest and flashiest word processor (Microsoft Word 2004) running on the world’s most advanced operating system (Mac OS X), and still I have to contend with writing tools that are more awkward and less powerful than the ones I was using 10 years ago. I miss the days of Nisus Writer 4 and 5 in the early 1990s, because that tool, quirky though it was, made the job of writing (whether an academic paper or a 600-page book) as easy as I could imagine it to be. Those were the days.

The old Nisus Writer still runs in Mac OS X’s Classic environment, but with some limitations. And for a variety of reasons, I prefer never to use Classic if I can possibly avoid it. Meanwhile, as a professional writer, I am required to view and edit Word files, including comments and revision marks, which for all practical purposes restricts me to using Word as my word processor. Unfortunately, even the newest version of Word is a poor writing tool; for all its bells and whistles, it makes the basic writing and editing tasks I need to do most frequently unnecessarily difficult.

Over the past few years, Nisus Software, my erstwhile employer, has been recreating Nisus Writer from scratch as a native Mac OS X application. The first couple of versions of what they’re now calling Nisus Writer Express were too limited to be of any real use to me, but they recently released version 2.0, and I was eager to give it a try and see if it held any promise. Read the rest of this post »

More than a year ago, I started working on a book about AppleScript Studio, having signed a contract with a certain publisher—let’s call them Publisher A—stipulating the amount of advance, royalties, schedules, and so on. After I turned in the first batch (maybe one-fifth of the book), the publisher said they’d had a change in their strategic direction and were no longer interested in publishing Mac programming books. So they dropped the project and my manuscript was orphaned.

My ever-diligent agent decided to shop around for a new publisher, and several—let’s call them Publishers B, C, and D—expressed interest. Publisher B made me an offer, but had a condition in the contract I couldn’t live with (more on this in a moment). Publisher C offered high royalties but a low advance (more on that, too, shortly). And then Publisher D offered a reasonable amount of money and a great contract, except for one tiny little phrase that I absolutely refused to agree to and they absolutely refused to change. Thus, after having gone through four publishers, the project is once again orphaned (for now, at least).

The problematic phrase in Publisher D’s contract (which was also one of the sticking points with Publisher B) basically indemnified the publisher against claims of breaches of my warranty that the material is original and free from copyright violations. In other words, it means that if someone were to sue them claiming that I violated a copyright, then even if the claim were completely unsubstantiated, even if I proved in court that I did nothing wrong, and even if the claim were in fact completely frivolous, I would still be responsible to pay the publisher’s legal fees for defending the suit. This cost would almost certainly be far more than I’d ever received for writing the book in the first place.

Although it’s extraordinarily unlikely that such a lawsuit would ever occur, clearly something of that sort must have happened at some point, or the publisher wouldn’t have been so adamant about leaving that language in. I know several other authors who reluctantly agreed to this language because refusing to do so would amount to a career-limiting move. But I said no, because I don’t think it’s ethical to hold an author financially responsible for actions over which he or she had no control whatsoever. Nor is it ethical for me to put my financial security at risk to protect a big company against unscrupulous litigants. I can warrant that my work is original, but I can’t agree to pay legal fees to fight off someone who has a random grudge against the publisher.

The real pity is that I truly like and respect the publishers and editors involved, it’s just that their lawyers are being intransigent and corporate policy dictates that no contract can be signed that the lawyers don’t OK. Read the rest of this post »

As explained in this article on Tabasco sauce, there is an objective, scientific way to measure the spiciness of foods; peppers or hot sauces subjected to this test get a rating in Scoville heat units. Unfortunately, these measurements are never used where it counts: on menus in Mexican, Szechwan, and Thai restaurants. The menus sometimes have little chile symbols, or sometimes just asterisks, that are supposed to indicate how spicy a dish is. But these symbols are arbitrary, they vary from one restaurant to the next, and they are nearly always (in my experience) meaningless.

Even worse: the suggestion “Specify desired level of spiciness.” I do, but they never take me seriously. Maybe I just look like some lightweight gringo who can’t handle his capsaicin, but no matter how spicy I order my food, it’s almost never even hot enough to make my eyes water, which is beginning to approach “hot enough” in my book.

A case in point: One day I went to a Thai restaurant and ordered the dish on the menu with the most chiles next to it. The waitress asked how hot I wanted it. I said, “Extremely hot.” She looked at me with a concerned expression. “Extremely hot?” she asked. “Incredibly hot,” I replied. The concerned expression turned to a puzzled, worried look. “Wait a minute, do you want it extremely hot or incredibly hot?” Clearly, we were experiencing a communication failure.

I tried a different tactic. “I want you to make it as hot as it possibly can be,” I said. The waitress paused for a moment to let this sink in, then gave me a horrified expression, as though I had just asked her to set me on fire. Finally, she said, slowly, “You mean…like death?” “YES!” I exclaimed, delighted that my message had finally gotten through. “Hot like death. Exactly. Please.” She regarded me severely for another moment, wrote something down on her pad, and disappeared into the kitchen.

When the dish arrived, it was noticeably spicy—I’m going to go out on a limb and say maybe two out of four peppers. But not death. Not even “pass-the-hanky” hot. What a disappointment.

When you’ve been married for a while and are comfortably settled, inevitably you start longing to hear the pitter-patter of little feet. So naturally you think about getting a cat.

I’ve always been allergic to cats, but not severely so—as long as I wash my hands regularly and the the cat doesn’t, like, lick my face, I’m in pretty good shape. Years ago I had a cat, though, that apparently intuited my level of sensitivity to dander and out of pure spite took to sleeping on my pillow with me. Bad cat.

Anyway, Morgen and I have so far had an imaginary cat, which was until today the only kind our landlady allowed. After considerable pleading, sweet-talking, and solemn promises of diligent carpet care, we finally got a phone call today saying it would be OK if we got a real cat after all. This is exciting, because in my opinion, the occasional sneeze or sniffle far outweighs the benefits of cat ownership, which include distracting you from getting work done, supporting your local pet shop, and keeping your home free of imaginary mice.

But more importantly, owning a cat will give me the only possible excuse to buy a gadget I’ve always wanted: the LitterMaid electronic self-cleaning litterbox. Oooh, and maybe one of those robot vacuums to pick up all the hairs, as well as tease play with the cat when we’re away. Just thinking about the home-automation possibilities fills me with joy.

So in the near future we’ll make a trek to the local shelter or SPCA to have a look at some kittens and then, perhaps, a little gadget spree on eBay.

I’ve always marveled at the role sheer randomness has played in my career.

For example, when I got the contract to write my first computer book (about 10 years ago now), it was only because I happened to be in the right place at the right time. I was doing tech support for Nisus Software, and I happened to be answering mail sent to one of the company’s email addresses. A publisher wrote to the company at that address to ask if we knew of any Nisus-using authors who might be willing to write a book on the program. I mentioned a few names, and then said I myself would be extremely interested. One thing led to another, and I got the gig. And the fact that I’d had one book published gave me enough currency in the publishing biz to do a second one, and so on.

In today’s mail I found my copy of the October, 2004 issue of Macworld magazine, featuring an article by yours truly—my first for the magazine. Again, the way I got the assignment was pretty random. I’d written an ebook on dealing with Spam in Apple Mail, and just before the ebook was published, a Macworld editor had joined our Take Control authors’ mailing list. She read about my ebook and told me that another editor at the magazine had been looking for someone to write an article about spam, and would I be interested? Absolutely—I’ve wanted to write for Macworld for a long time.

But here’s what I find interesting. For its first couple of months, Take Control of Spam with Apple Mail did not sell particularly well. However, its publication led to interviews for radio shows and Wired News, not to mention the Macworld article, so it’s had the biggest PR impact of any of my titles. After the companion ebook Take Control of Email with Apple Mail came out, the two titles seemed to boost each other’s sales, and now both are quite successful. So even though the ebook by itself didn’t generate a huge amount of interest, it spawned other processes (so to speak) that indirectly reinforced its sales. And with the upcoming publication of these two books together in printed form from Peachpit, I’m hoping the exposure we get from appearing on bookstore shelves will make even more people aware of the Take Control series and perpetuate the cycle further.

September means back to school and the beginning of fall for many people in the northern hemisphere. But in San Francisco, it means the beginning of summer. While I can usually count on the weather to be pleasantly cool, humid, and (often) foggy here, we’ve now entered our annual hot season, which will last for one or two months. I enjoy the sunshine—as long as I can enjoy it from the comfort of a cool, shady room. Alas, air conditioners are all but unknown in this city, and on days (like today) with no breeze in Glen Park, our south-facing house gets uncomfortably hot. Especially my office, which in addition to getting the brunt of the sun, is full of computers and other heat-generating electronic equipment. In short: it’s sandal weather here, and since every blog needs a “hello world” entry to get it started, I’m pulling mine up by the sandal straps today.

Even though I write daily articles for Interesting Thing of the Day, a vaguely bloglike publication—and even though I once had a massive and frequently updated personal home page listing every detail about my life—I’ve so far resisted participation in the whole personal blog phenomenon. It’s just too trendy, and besides, it takes so much effort to separate the wheat from the chaff.

But I’ve finally made the momentous decision to put those prejudices behind me, for several reasons.

First, I often find myself wanting to comment on current events, and that sort of thing just doesn’t fit into the mold of ITotD. Second, most of the writing I do requires scrupulous attention to spelling, grammar, and style—which is OK, but sometimes I like to kick back and write in a more relaxed way without worrying about word counts, deadlines, templates, or making editors happy. And finally, I wanted to be able to write about my work—Interesting Thing of the Day, alt concepts, ebooks, and so on—because increasingly people tell me they’re curious about what goes on behind the scenes.

So I’ve redone my personal home page and added this blog, which will henceforth be the new repository for news and commentary about my life, my work, and anything I notice that I think is worth sharing. It’s also where I’ll say anything I have to say about the books I read, movies I watch, music I listen to, and so on. I’d like to keep this informal and interactive; I invite your comments, questions, and suggestions.

Because this system is brand new, I assume that things like styles and layout will change as time goes on in order to make the site prettier and easier to navigate. I make absolutely no guarantees as to the frequency or quality of the posts, but I’d like to think that the very lack of pressure to produce will encourage me to write more.

New review: Review of Take Control of Email with Apple Mail by Earl J. Kletsky in the The AppleTree, the Monthly Journal of the Syracuse Macintosh Users Group (September 2004; article no longer available online)

New book: Take Control of Panther: Volume 1 (Peachpit, September 2004), a compilation of the first four Take Control ebooks, including my Take Control of Upgrading to Panther