April 6, 2013 · 7:30 AM

Publishing to Inspire: The Role of Publications at Adventure Cycling Association Finds a New Online Home

7174197632_70eedc5fdb_oOnline access to my thesis has been moved. Publishing to Inspire: The Role of Publications at Adventure Cycling Association is now held in the SFU institutional repository, called Summit.

Next week I’ll be using the work for a presentation I’ll be giving at a professional conference in Baltimore, Maryland. I was looking for the URL to share with any interested colleagues when I discovered its long-term home on the web.

Summit tracks monthly views of each record in its database, and downloads of each thesis. It looks like in just the first few days of April there have been ten views of my project report page, and six views of the full thesis—only one of which was me. Most of the views came from the US (unsurprising) and one from France. I wish they had longer-term web statistics! It would be nice if I could view past information as well. One of my ongoing goals is to promote this work so it’s not just sitting on a dusty shelf, electronic or otherwise, in Canada.

Are you one of the thesis browsers? I’d love to hear from you!

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March 23, 2013 · 4:00 PM

Geek Cred (or: An Argument for Encouragement)

What is a geek?

Everyone defines it a little differently.

I think that nearly everyone has an inner geek. We all have some weird quirky thing that we get really excited about and have specialized knowledge of that most others don’t. Perhaps we could talk all day about Shang dynasty bronze or the films of “Gabby” Hayes. Get us going on our topic of choice and we’re at serious risk of finding that new acquaintance staring back at us with glassy eyes.

In the past I spent a lot of time with someone who used the “geek” label as a divider—they had an extremely narrow vision of what they thought a geek was and wasn’t…and I wasn’t it. In that sense, that person was using the geek label as an excuse to make someone else (me) a social pariah. My deep knowledge of The Monkees, music, theater, and history? Completely irrelevant since I couldn’t remember for certain which planet Alderaan was. (He acted like millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced… Yuk yuk yuk.)

Recently I had a conversation with one of my coworkers, a software developer for our company. He was telling me that some text I had provided had rekindled a debate with one of the other programmers about the purpose of various coding languages (specifically HTML and CSS). Chuck started telling me about his days working on SGML for the military, and about its original purpose to be a “container” language so it could adapt to various formats.

I asked: hey, isn’t that a lot like XML?

As it turns out, Chuck retorted, SGML essentially got eclipsed by HTML and XML, and yes, XML does the very thing SGML was supposed to do.

Didn’t I feel smart! Not only had I followed a conversation about things I am only barely schooled in, but I was able to connect it to something I was slightly more schooled in (MPub covered some rudimentary XML as it is the format most ebooks use, enabling them to work on a variety of devices). Adding to my imagined geek cred, I told Chuck that in MPub we had been lectured at by a gentleman (Keith Fahlgren) on the working group developing the next version of XML. Please—no autographs.

As it happens, my job is presenting plenty of opportunities to deepen my technical knowledge. Do you think that I would have felt encouraged to seize these opportunities if, say, Chuck had the same exclusionary attitude towards me as the other person? (“You’re not a coder—you couldn’t possibly understand.”)

Women get this message enough from society at large—we don’t need it from our peers and colleagues as well. This is one of the many reasons I get so excited about Ada Lovelace Day each year, which aims to raise awareness of the plight of women in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math. You don’t have to be a professional engineer to see how underrepresented women are in certain fields, nor to have experienced some of the societal programming behind it. (Anyone remember the Barbie who exclaimed, “Math class is tough!“)

It often takes courage to keep pressing on with a challenge, and it’s doubly tough when the people around you say you can’t do it. Insults and condescending attitudes are not what is needed to cultivate an individual’s expertise in an area that may be challenging to them. This quasi-geek would like to see encouragement and a spirit of cooperative cultivation over negativity and squished promise.

That seems like a mundane idea, right? Yet looking around, the reality makes it seem pretty radical.

Want to read more about about women in tech and the publishing industry? Try “Pink Collar Geeks: The ‘Ladies Problem’ of Publishing” by yours truly…

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February 10, 2013 · 3:11 PM

Bookish Happenings in January: Raggedy Man

January was a whirlwind here at Bookish HQ.

Fortunately there were books involved!

Clyde Curley, one of my dearest teachers, launched Raggedy Man on January 10th.  The launch party was hosted by Annie Bloom’s Books in Portland’s Multnomah Village. According to Clyde the bookstore sold out of their first shipment (before the launch) in just a week, and as of yesterday Annie Bloom’s employee Jeffrey Shaffer reported that copies are still “flying off the shelves.”

This seems natural given this mystery is set in Portland, Oregon, and Portlanders love to consume artistic interpretations of our fair city (Portlandia, Wildwood, and Grimm just to name some current examples). Whereas some portrayals of Portland use the city as just a place on the map, Raggedy Man is informed by Clyde’s intimacy of having lived in Portland for several decades. (During the reading, a few of his off-the-cuff remarks had the audience in stitches: “He was an anarchist from Eugene. (They’re all from Eugene!)”

While the novel was self-published, it has been garnering some big attention. It recently got picked up by Ingram (a large book distribution company) so it should be widely available through any bookstore, or you can order Raggedy Man directly through Clyde.

Give it a read!

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December 28, 2012 · 10:04 PM

A Bookish Year (2012) in Photos

Over the past week, I’ve been realizing how much I have to be proud of this year. My friend who goes by Mudlips over at Peregrination inspired me to post a year in photos like she recently did. I thought it would be tough to fill up the year in photos on both this blog and Bikish without having holes—I was wrong. There were times I was doing more booking than biking, or more biking than booking, but I managed to get at least one photo per month this year of both.

JANUARY

Began my MPub project report, aka Masters thesis, Publishing to Inspire: The Role of Publications at Adventure Cycling Association. My progress threatened to be derailed by someone coming back to rub salt in an old wound, but fortunately my project report didn’t suffer too much as a result.

FEBRUARY

Did some work as an extra on NBC’s show Grimm in February and a couple more times in the spring. This shot was from my first day on the set, when we weren’t released until about 11:30pm that very chilly night. The second and third shoot days were much more interesting, but they don’t like people taking photos on the set so I kept it to a minimum.

MARCH

Putting the finishing touches on my project report. Those almonds inspired a blog post.

APRIL

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Traveled to Vancouver and turned in my thesis! Closed my bank account, and even found a “I <3 NB” T-shirt for Linnet at my favo(u)rite Vancouver thrift shop.

MAY

Visited Trappist Abbey Bookbindery thrice. The final visit resulted in my picking up a library-bound copy of my project report! Atticus and I also discovered their grounds make for a great hike.

JUNE

Graduated! Unfortunately due to yet another error on SFU’s part, I didn’t get to go to graduation. At the end of the month, I gave an hour-long presentation about my project report at Central Library in Portland. I had 10 attendees, a couple of whom I hadn’t met before. A woman I know who regularly gives free talks to the public says that was an amazing turnout for my first time.

JULY

Took Atticus to one of the most remote spots I know in Oregon for the July 4th weekend, to get away from fireworks. Not only did I get this photo, which I think is my favorite photo of Atticus to date, but I started reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed. Before I started reading I didn’t have high expectations, but it turned out to be the most memorable book I read all year. A new favorite.

AUGUST

Combined my love of bikes and books one afternoon at the Reed Library. The final product can be seen on the Super Relax website.

SEPTEMBER

There were more bookish happenings in September than helping Portland Fruit Tree Project harvest 14,000 pounds of pears in Hood River. For example, my high school friend Courtney Miller Santo hit Powell’s Hawthorne promoting her debut novel, The Roots of the Olive Tree. But—Bartlett pears! Hood River! The setting was fantastic, the weather warm but not hot, and the pears I tested were so delicious. How could I not include a photo?

OCTOBER

Finally met the woman behind The Doris Diaries, Julia Park Tracey, at History Pub. Also started my new job! RMLS pays me to write official communications, manage all their publications and social media, and drink jasmine tea and root beer all day. They’re really nice and did I mention, I’m now paid to write and edit things? It’s like my advanced degree actually got me somewhere!

NOVEMBER

Atticus and I continued our hiking project in November, when this photo was taken.

DECEMBER

Mad Libs, anyone? My mother gifted me a pad of “Undead Mad Libs” on Halloween, complete with a googly-eyed spoof of the Twilight movies on the cover. In December I started forcing people to play, and six people helped me complete all the stories in just a few weeks. Thanks to Sarah and Josh in Missoula, Emily, Ceri, and my mom for participating. : )

One thing you can definitely say: Kick More Ass? MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

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December 23, 2012 · 9:00 AM

Happy Holidays from Bookish

Happy holidays from Bookish!

I hope my readers—hi, spambots!—are having an excellent holiday season filled with opportunities to enjoy an engaging book next to a fire or under a blanket.

Things have been crazy at Bookish HQ the last two months, resulting in few new blog posts. This trend may continue—Bookish may soon be embarking on a capital campaign and/or finding a new HQ. These things do not come easy, but the blogging will continue whenever possible.

I’ve been doing some reflecting on literary themes as well, and hope to serve up a year-in-review next week. Watch for it!

There is a bit of a story behind the photo. Earlier this week the Chicago Manual of Style released a guide to making a CMOS mini-book ornament. When I decided to take a few minutes on Friday morning to make one, I discovered a contest they were running. A half hour later, I had a garland of mini-CMOSes and a photo that they shared online. 

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November 14, 2012 · 8:28 PM

I Need a Copyedit, Charlie Brown!

 

 

Yes, this is real. Normally I wouldn’t bother posting something like this, but it’s sad to see everyone’s favorite beagle can write a la Edward Bulwer-Lytton but struggles with the greengrocers’ apostrophe. It happens to the best of us, little guy!

As of press time, no statement on the issue had been released from Snoopy’s spokesbird.

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November 11, 2012 · 6:00 PM

Gonzo Blogging

Surely you’ve visited Bookish and wondered, ‘who writes this crap?’ Perhaps you saw a post that had a missing “the” or a sentence with a subject-verb agreement issue. Yep, I’ve spotted those too.

Given you are a bookish audience, you’re likely also familiar with Hunter S. Thompson and his “gonzo journalism.” In a complete misappropriation of the term, I often think of and refer to my blogging activities as gonzo blogging.

Ideally, a piece of writing goes through some amount of editorial work before it is published. The piece is drafted, revisited, copyedited, and scheduled for publication. Usually there is at least one reader aside from the writer. The longer it takes from first draft to publication, and the more eyes that see it, usually the more polished the final piece can be.

Not here at Bookish!

More often than not, Bookish posts tend to get written in minuscule pockets of time, and published almost immediately. If I revisit the post hours or days later, copy problems will often jump out at me and I’ll fix them. That’s the magic of the internet: once something is “published,” you can change it pretty easily.

Why are we all about gonzo blogging here at Bookish?

Like the little blue guy above, I like to throw myself whole-heartedly into an idea when real inspiration strikes (“lunatic daring”), but there’s usually not a lot of time. If the inspiration has passed by the time I’m able to sit down and work, I usually write about something else. (Or watch IT Crowd videos on YouTube.) But if I do have a pocket of time, watch out! Over at Bikish I recently wrote a piece about the death of Working Kirk Reeves (aka “trumpet guy”) in about an hour.

Blogging is also a way to continue developing my non-professional writing skills, and promote projects I’m working on. Perhaps someday my blogging will need to step it up a few notches as the audience builds, but for now launching my motorcycle into the rafters at a moment’s notice is just fine by me.

(Apologies and much ‘don’t sue me’ boot-kissing to Disney, new corporate overlords of the patron saint of Bookish.)

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