One week ago today, Morgen and I welcomed our son, Soren Thomas Kissell, to the world. In the days since, I’ve been much too busy and sleep-deprived to pay much attention to things like writing blog posts or answering email. But we’re thrilled to have this new addition to our family, and if you’d like to see pictures and videos and keep up with the latest news, you can visit a separate site we set up for that purpose: Morgen & Joe’s Baby.

It’s like this: I just have too many blogs. Not that I’ve had time to write anything for any of them recently, but the problem is compounded by the fact that there are at least two different places where I’d write about stuff going on in my personal life if and when I had the time to do so (here and on Truffles for Breakfast). In theory, TFB is for stuff relating to our life in Paris, but since that sort of encompasses pretty much everything, it leaves little that feels like it belongs here. One of these days I’ll figure out what really belongs where, but in the meantime, for an update on what’s been going on in my life, please read New Year’s Update on Truffles for Breakfast.

I have a few blog-related announcements, which contradict each other only slightly.

Announcement #1: Blogging Guilt Banished Effective immediately, I’m no longer going to feel guilty about going long periods of time between blog posts, and therefore no longer feel obligated to apologize when returning after a long absence. There. I finally said it. I feel much better now.

A typical expectation among people who regularly read blogs is that new entries will occur frequently—at least a few times per week—and that blogs with no new material for a month or so are effectively “stale” and not worth subscribing to anymore. I can’t change the way anyone thinks about blogs, but I can at least admit that my lifestyle just doesn’t accommodate this sort of schedule and probably never will. I’m now officially declaring myself to be OK with that, and I’m not going to try to fight it anymore. I’m just going to go with the flow as best I can.

This has been a difficult issue for me to grapple with, especially since I now contribute to no fewer than six blogs (more on this just ahead), some of which even produce a nontrivial amount of income. But I am not a professional blogger, and as much as I may fantasize about eventually being able to live off my blogging efforts alone, that’s not even remotely the case today, nor is it a top priority for the near future. For now, keeping up with writing blogs is not my life or even my job, it’s just an additional activity in an already full life.

Most of the time, I’m simply too busy doing things to also write about doing them (even when the activities I’m doing themselves include writing). In particular, the whole notion of committing to writing something on a blog every single day—well, for that matter, committing to doing virtually anything every single day—is just contrary to my nature. I’ve done it, but I haven’t enjoyed it, and I can’t sustain it over long periods of time. I don’t have a daily routine and don’t want to have one, but even so, I have relatively little free time. And such free time as I have is time I want to spend relaxing, reading, watching TV, not typing. So unless or until my life situation changes such that blogging is what keeps a roof over my head, it’s going to have to be a pretty random (and perhaps infrequent) activity.

Announcement #2: Yet Another Blog: TidBITS Staff One aspect of the recent redesign to the TidBITS Web site is that each of the staff members now has a “personal” blog. (That’s personal as in “specific to that person,” not “about someone’s personal life.”) And we are all encouraged to put interesting stuff in those blogs, in addition to what we normally write for TidBITS and what we would otherwise write on our personal personal blogs. So, lucky me, I have yet another blog to feed! It’s located here: Joe Kissell’s TidBITS Staff Blog.

In the past, I’ve posted any number of stories here on I Am Joe’s Blog about Mac-related stuff, but now that this new TidBITS blog exists, that’s a more appropriate place for much of that material. So expect the majority of technical topics to migrate there.

This change puts I Am Joe’s Blog in a kind of weird state. Already, I’d shifted most topics relating to my living in France to Truffles for Breakfast and most food-related topics to The Geeky Gourmet; with tech topics now moving to TidBITS, there are fewer and fewer bloggy subjects that don’t already have another home. So, I’m not really sure what’s left to talk about here. Meta discussions about Interesting Thing of the Day and SenseList? Opinions on TV shows, movies, or politics? I don’t know. If there’s something you’d really like me to talk about here, let me know—but no guarantees. Refer to Announcement #1.

Announcement #3: Twittering In case you’ve been living in a cave for the past year, or this is the first Web page you’ve ever seen (Welcome!), one of the latest memes in the online world is something called Twitter. You might think of Twitter as micro-blogging. The idea is basically that, whenever you feel like it, you type a very short message—there’s a 140-character limit—saying what you’re doing right now, or what you’ve recently done, or whatever other little snippet of text is interesting to you at the moment. People can then follow your activities on a Web page, or download any of numerous programs that will display little pop-up windows when any of the people they’re following post something on Twitter. And that’s pretty much that. It’s a really lightweight thing, not big and complex like RSS, no ads (yet!), and no endless backlogs of long news stories or email messages you have to slog through if you’re out of things for a while.

Well, I’ve been resisting Twitter ever since I heard about it months ago. Because honestly, I can’t be bothered to keep telling my computer what I’m doing. I’m notoriously bad about even changing my IM status, because it feels like an annoying, intrusive, extra task. I don’t want a new list of meta-tasks, no matter how brief they may be; I just want to do my thing.

But, on the recommendation of several people who are also generally disinclined to spend time on unnecessary activities, I’m giving it a try. I can’t guarantee how well, how long, or to what extent I’ll use it, but I’m going to make the effort for a little while and see how it goes. If you want to follow me on Twitter, click here or check out the running list in the sidebar of this page. Or see my Twitters on Facebook, not that I’m a very active participant there either.

Announcement #4: Ziki A number of people have inquired as to whether there’s a place they can go to find all my posts from the various blogs I contribute to. As a matter of fact, there are a number of ways to pull this off, but an easy one is simply to go to my page on Ziki.com. Among other things, it shows my recent posts on Interesting Thing of the Day, SenseList, Truffles for Breakfast, The Geeky Gourmet, I Am Joe’s Blog, and TidBITS, which is a good percentage of my online writing. It doesn’t show stuff I’ve done for Macworld or Datamation, but I periodically update the list of books and articles I’ve written, which includes all that stuff, my ebooks, print books, and so on.

Well, we did it: Morgen and I (and our cat, Zora, too) have moved to Paris! We arrived on Monday, and we’re settling in without any serious difficulties. We’ve even managed to stock our shelves with groceries, set up a bank account, make an appointment at the local Préfecture de Police to apply for our long-term residence cards, and cross a number of other aggravating little tasks off our lists. Oh, and sleep: we’ve been doing a lot of that, too. The combination of jet lag and sleep debt have been truly brutal, but our body clocks have nearly readjusted, so we’re feeling a lot peppier than we were a few days ago.

The new image at the top of the page (just a placeholder until I come up with something more interesting) was snapped from our bathroom window (OK, with a long zoom, but still…). Our apartment is on the top floor of the tallest building in the neighborhood, and we can see Sacré Coeur, the Eiffel Tower, the Montparnasse Tower, and all kinds of other cool sites from the comfort of our home. Yes, I know: we suck. (Also, needless to say, we’re within spitting distance of countless bakeries, chocolatiers, cafés, bistros, brasseries, and all other manner of French food purveyors. Oh yeah.)

It’s a relief to finally be (more or less) done with this huge project. The last couple of months, and in particular the few weeks leading up to the move, were some of the busiest and most stressful of my life, and that’s saying something. Contrary to my earlier expectations, I wasn’t able to get caught up with very much of anything before we left; in fact, I fell much further behind on almost everything. Especially email—I can’t remember the last time I had so many unanswered messages. But now, life is slowly returning to some new-and-improved version of normal, my Inbox is emptying out, and I’m looking forward to doing some significant writing (and photo-taking) in the very near future.

Next week there’ll be an update to Take Control of Running Windows on a Mac, and with any luck, new content will soon begin appearing on Interesting Thing of the Day, SenseList, and perhaps even The Geeky Gourmet too! We’ll also, as soon as we possibly can, be starting a new blog exclusively about our adventure in France. Stay tuned!

When I turned 40 in January, I declared that the next 10 years would be my Decade of Wealth and Influence. (My 30s were, at least in theory, my Decade of Risk. That’s a story for another day.) Six months in, I can’t say I’m making much progress in the wealth department, but much to my surprise, at least some people seem to think I’m influential. I’ve been named one of MacTech’s 25 most influential people in the Macintosh community—I even get my picture in a printed magazine. Weird. My blurb in the article, featuring a now somewhat outdated bio (I really should update my “about” page a little more frequently), is on this page.

The article, cribbed as it was from (an earlier version of) my description of myself on this site, doesn’t say why it is that people think I’m an influential figure. And I find the whole thing curious, in a way, because even though I write an awful lot about Macs, I don’t really write with the goal of changing anyone’s mind about anything. I help people to get their work done and solve problems, and I report some news, but in terms of offering actual opinions, I haven’t said much beyond “you really really really need good backups.” Even Interesting Thing of the Day, which now has well over 150,000 feed readers, is merely expository in nature, not hortatory. Not that I’m complaining or anything; it’s just that I honestly don’t know who I’ve influenced to do what. But, you know, I’m OK with being famous for being famous.

Anyway, I’m in really good company: four other TidBITS personalities are on the list, along with numerous other Mac movers and shakers I respect a great deal. I’m honored to be counted among the Mac illuminati.

If I may quote liberally from my post at The Geeky Gourmet…

I’ve done countless interviews for radio shows, newspapers, and podcasts, as well as live presentations of various kinds. But tomorrow, I’ll appear in my first TV interview—on a live broadcast, no less!

As I mentioned last week, Take Control Books is donating $1 from every copy of Take Control of Thanksgiving Dinner sold in November to the San Francisco Food Bank. As another part of that effort, I’ll be appearing as a guest on CBS-5′s Eye on the Bay this Tuesday, November 14, at 7:00 p.m. (Pacific time). This episode is a special live broadcast from an Albertson’s supermarket here in San Francisco to promote the Food Bank. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, set your TiVo now!

I’ll probably be on the air for just a few minutes during the half-hour show, partly to talk about the Food Bank and partly to promote my book (which, in turn, supports the Food Bank). Wish me luck!

This week is the annual Take Control fall (in the northern hemisphere) sale. Every ebook is available for half price, which makes for some truly outstanding deals. (Printed books are not on sale, as we have limited control over their pricing.) Just 24 hours into the sale, we’ve already seen some really delightful sales figures. Since I’ve written a dozen of the Take Control titles, I tend to see bigger results than most of the authors, but we’re all thrilled at how nicely the sale is progressing. If you’ve been on the fence about buying one of our ebooks, there’s no better time than now! Go to this special link between now and next Monday, November 13, to take advantage of the special prices.

Meanwhile, we’re also running another promotion: For the entire month of November, we’ll donate $1 from the sale of each copy of Take Control of Thanksgiving Dinner to the San Francisco Food Bank. You can make Thanksgiving a less stressful day for yourself and help to feed low-income people at the same time. And, if you make your purchase in the next week, you can make a difference for $5 less!

If I’ve counted correctly, I’ve been a guest on Gene Steinberg’s Internet radio show The Tech Night Owl LIVE ten times now. Tonight I appear on the show again, this time to discuss Take Control of Mac OS X Passwords (and a bit about Thanksgiving dinner).

Despite the word “LIVE” in the show’s name, the interviews are prerecorded. You can hear a streaming version of the show as it’s broadcast at 6:00–8:00 p.m. Pacific (9:00–11:00 p.m. Eastern, or Friday at 0200 UTC), or download an MP3 recording of the show starting a day or so later.

Update: The link to the MP3 file of the show is here.

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.