Blog Carnivals, Round Two

Since the first time I wrote about Interesting Thing of the Day articles being featured on blog carnivals (back in June), the number of mentions has increased to the point where I couldn’t even keep up with updating the original list. Here’s yet another round for your surfing pleasure. (Last updated: December 11, 2006)

September 14, 2006 by Blogging

SenseList Launches

For about a year, Morgen and I have been planning to launch several new Web sites to keep Interesting Thing of the Day company. It’s not like we’ve been working on them full-time for months or anything, but we’ve been plugging away as time permits, in between roasting turkeys, writing ebooks, and doing all the usual work that keeps us occupied most of the day. Today, we finally crossed that magical threshold of doneness with the first of these sites, and we couldn’t be happier. It’s called SenseList.

Both of us are compulsive list makers, and we’ve certainly noticed the popularity of some blog entries presented in the form of a list. Hey, who doesn’t love a good list? So we decided to come up with a blog consisting entirely of lists—but not just any lists. We were looking for a certain gestalt, a mixture of the trivial and the profound, the whimsical and the useful. Lists that make sense.

Many of the lists we’ll be presenting reflect random observations we’ve made, such as “Gosh, there seem to be a lot of B-52’s songs with outer space references,” or “Every cookbook I consult gives completely different instructions for hard-boiling eggs,” or “These IKEA product names remind me of ___,” or “I’ll bet I can think of half a dozen actresses that would have made a better Lois Lane in Superman Returns than Kate Bosworth.” So we’ve actually done the research and spelled out all these factoids, and many more, in convenient list form.

One of our goals for SenseList, having learned from experience, was to be able to come up with good entries a lot more quickly than writing Interesting Thing of the Day articles. We’re not telling stories or providing a detailed reference, just getting to the point quickly and succinctly. We hope the lists will be easy to read and fun to share.

Please click on over to SenseList and have a look. Assuming we get done with our other homework, we have (at least) three more sites that should appear in the coming weeks. And then: a little vacation, I think.

August 9, 2006 by Blogging

The alt concepts Mailing List

Now that my wife, Morgen, is officially part of the alt concepts staff, we’re working earnestly at getting several new Web sites up and running. We’ll be making a series of announcements here and at ITotD over the coming weeks. But to make our lives easier and help to get news out more quickly, we’ve also set up a new opt-in mailing list for friends, family, ITotD subscribers, and anyone else on the Net who’d like to be among the first to hear about anything new and interesting stuff in our little corner of the universe.

Thus: the alt concepts mailing list. It’s free (as in beer, but not as in speech, since we’re the only ones who’ll be sending messages), and we’ll keep the volume low and the spam nonexistent. Please feel free to sign up!

August 3, 2006 by Blogging

Backups and Thanksgiving Dinner

For a couple of months, I’ve been on the cusp of producing an update to Take Control of Mac OS X Backups. I updated the manuscript quite some time ago to cover things like using USB 2.0 drives with Intel Macs and backing up Windows data from Boot Camp or Parallels Desktop, but then, every time I thought we were just about ready to publish, some backup app or another got a significant update, and I’d have to go in and rearrange things again. There are just so many backup programs, and they’re in such a constant state of flux, that it’s difficult to keep up with them all—even in an ebook. But we’ve finally drawn the line and finished version 1.3; it should be available later today as a free update.

This latest version of Backups, along with Take Control of Maintaining Your Mac, will (with some modifications) be rolled into a new print book from Peachpit: Real World Mac Maintenance and Backups, due on bookstore shelves in late September or early October.

Meanwhile, even though it’s only July, my attention has been focused on turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce—I’m working on my next Take Control ebook, which (no kidding) will be about Thanksgiving. This fall, nothing will be left to chance, as you’ll be able to follow my simple instructions for a delicious yet stress-free Thanksgiving dinner. It’s our first foray into a food-related topic; if it’s successful, there may be more, but we’re mainly doing it for fun.

And does this have anything to do with backups? Yes indeed. Just as things can go wrong with your computer, they can (and do) go wrong when cooking. So the Thanksgiving ebook will feature a number of troubleshooting, backup, and shortcut tips to enable you to salvage the meal if something doesn’t turn out right.

Update (7/13/06): The updated version of Backups came out today—a bit later than I’d expected, but I’m delighted to report that it’s finally available.

July 11, 2006 by Books Mac Stuff
Joe Kissell is a best-selling, award-winning, hyphen-overusing author and technologist, and the publisher of Take Control Books. He enjoys making complicated topics easy to understand. He’s also a husband, dad, and dreamer. Having lived in numerous places in the U.S., Canada, and France, Joe has now settled in Saskatoon.

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