Archive | writing tips RSS feed for this section

Five Cool Things August 29, 2010

By on September 9, 2010 in jazz music portland, technology, writers, writing tips

A very happy Sunday to you and yours. First up in this week’s issue: A worthy entry into the world of restaurants, smart phones, GPS and social media. Next up, get access to all your music on all your devices. Then, which “room of change” do you find yourself in? Roy Peter Clark seduces us with the glories and wonders of grammar. This week’s referral: Blackbird Wine Shop. Check out the new “word of the week” feature in the right column. Forty years ago James Dickey opened Deliverance with this: “It unrolled slowly, forced to show its colors, curling and snapping back whenever one of us turned loose.”

Eats, Shoots, Shares | Foodspotting

This is no time to be a Luddite, friends. Too many groovy gizmos and apps out there. Foodspotting is part of the new wave of GPS based applications that uses your location to help you share and find people, places, a margherita pizza or a chourico and chips sandwich. You first allow Foodspotting to determine where you are, then click on find to get a list of nearby eateries, with photos of drinks and food, or spot to shoot and add a photo to the Foodspotting universe. Very nice!

Life Without Cables | Libox

Automatically sync your entire media library across all your devices? Without cables? For free? What is this world coming to? Here is the simple explanation. Libox turns your computer into a server. Once you download Libox to all your devices – iPhone, Droid, iPad, laptop, desktop, etc., every device has access to your music, video or photo library. One caveat: your computer (your server) must be on for this to work. So if you’re trying to share this campy Windmills of Your Mind by Dusty Springfield, at a dinner party, leave your computer on before you leave the house. Visit Libox.

Sun Lounge or Pit of Paralysis? | The Four-Roomed Apartment of Change

Oh, how I love this. Developed by Swedish psychologist, Claes F. Janssen, The Four Rooms of Change is a psychological theory. “In all change,” writes Janssesn, “we move from a Contentment, which is lost, via a period in Denial, which is a defense of the old, through Confusion, which ends when we give up whatever it is of the old that had to be given up. The giving up is the turning point, making us open to the possibilities, the new, whereby we move on to Renewal.” The graphic you see above is a tarted up version of the Jannsen original which you can see here. I URGE you to take a look. Wicked good!

Angle Face | Roy Peter Clark: The Glamour of Grammar

Will someone please designate Roy Peter Clark a National Treasure? A senior scholar at the Poynter Institute for journalism, Mr. Clark authors the most beautiful books on writing. The Glamour of Grammar is his latest, and I’m hooked. In a delightful passage on the word spell, he weaves a little spell from his boyhood. “I felt the first tremors of manhood most powerfully in the presence of a local teenage girl nicknamed Angel Face. She even had Angel Face stitched across the back of her leather jacket.” But whoops! Roy Clark’s mother burst his bubble: “Take another look buster. Her jacket says, ANGLE FACE.” For young Roy, it was the day that love died. Do you all spot the adverb? (Apologies to RPC for paraphrasing the quote.)

Moore Music & Wine Please | A Night to Remember at the Blackbird Wine Shop

It happened one week ago tonight. I was transported straight into the heart of Glen Moore’s world and what an evocative and ephemeral world it was. All thanks to some terrific advance work by my good friend EM. Mercy me, this music was so, so gorgeous. Just downright sick. It happened because of BlackBird, my local wine shop. BlackBird has opted to support the arts and they do it in style. They brought in the Glen Moore Trio. Moore is the bassist for the legendary jazz ensemble Oregon. Mr. Moore led his trio, Dan Gaynor on piano and Gary Hobbs on drums, through two killer sets. Glen Moore was charming and brilliant, the folks at Blackbird were great hosts. Kudos to you, BlackBird and thanks a million to EM! I’ll be back.

Comments { 0 }

Five Cool Things August 22, 2010

By on September 1, 2010 in cloud computing, e-newsletter copywriter, Portland, OR, online copywriter, website copywriting, writers, writing tips

Happy Sunday to you and welcome to the new and tricked out Five Cool Things newsletter. First up in this week’s issue: A very nicely done online journal, Oh Life. Next, the Paris Review has a John Waters interview in which we learn about tree forts, his reading list and his archaic writing process. Christoph Niemann has a very funny series of drawings about air travel at a NY Times blog, we tip our cap to a great Alice Waters cookbook and we wrap up with a file sharing service, drop.io. Anton Chekhov writes, “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”

Dear Diary | Oh, Life Online Journal

I’m surprised by how cool this application is. Oh Life is a private online journal with a simple and handsome interface. Once you register, (free and easy) each night at 8pm you get an email that prompts you to write an entry. Just hit reply and write whatever strikes your fancy. Your words automatically land in your Oh Life online journal. It’s that easy. I registered and was quite taken with the simplicity and attractivenss of it all. So I think I now have a diary. A nice touch: the folks at San Francisco based Oh Life are very responsive to inquiries and suggestions. An even nicer touch: they subscribe to Five Cool Things.   Have a look >>

John Waters | The Paris Review

The legendary Paris Review was founded in 1953 by Peter Mathiessen, George Plimpton and Harold L. Humes. It may be that you haven’t perused the Paris Review lately, but you should because it is simply amazing – just have a look at the Paris Review blog, for instance.  There’s more of course, such as an interview with Mr. John Waters. Who knew that John Waters writes in longhand on a legal pad and cuts and pastes with scissors and scotch tape? And why am I not surprised by this? The John Waters Paris Review interview is here>>

Delete Neighbor | Abstract City Blog

Goofy airline hijinks are all the rage these days so this is timed quite nicely. Christoph Niemann is an illustrator with a long list of impressive credits: New Yorker covers, Newsweek, the New York Times Magazine, Wired, etc. In a recent blog entry at the Times, our man pens an annotated cartoon of his flight from New York to Berlin with a layover in London. Hilarious. Check it out here>>

Alice Waters certainly needs no introduction from me. Known throughout the land as the heart, soul and chef of

Chez Panisse in Berkeley, she is a shape shifter in our attitudes to food. I thought I would share her cookbook – The Art of Simple Food – with you. It’s been a rock solid ally in our home kitchen for several years running. It will make you a better home cook and you’ll impress your friends even more than you do now. Her Salsa Verde sauce is perfect for summer. Here’s a link to The Art of Simple Food at Amazon>>

Drop.io is a file sharing service. I cannot emphasize strongly enough how useful such a service is. I’m talking to you, SJ. You never have to use You Send It again. You don’t have to mail files to your client. You create a folder that you and your client “share”. Incredibly easy. In a previous issue, I talked about Dropbox, another file sharing service doing much the same thing. Both of these are great applications and well worth the modest cost.

Comments { 0 }