The story is here.

They’re reopening in a smaller location, a bit off the beaten track compared to where they were… but at considerably less rent, too.

They were — and will be again — a [...]]]> One of America’s last great independent bookstores — Elliott Bay Books — closed tonight. (Powell’s in Portland is still open, at least.)

The story is here.

They’re reopening in a smaller location, a bit off the beaten track compared to where they were… but at considerably less rent, too.

They were — and will be again — a terrific place for a bibliophile.

I’m an author who has sold far more books through Amazon.com than through bricks-and-mortar establishments, but I still believe the world needs — needs — real bookstores.

(And libraries. Right now, I’m at our place on very rural Lopez Island about 70 miles north of Seattle — but it somehow has one of the country’s great libraries, recognized by whatever association rates public libraries. It’s a real treasure… as is the independent bookstore in the village, Islehaven Books With Borzoi. Yes, that’s its name. And the borzoi sleeps behind the counter. Things are different up here, one reason I treasure this place.)

It’s later by an hour, if you’re in the US and forgot to set your clocks ahead. Go, fix it now; I’ll wait.

Good. Let’s move on.

How much dishwasher or laundry [...]]]> I thought I’d turn this forum over to my practical get-through-life side for a few hours.

“Enjoy Yourself; It’s Later Than You Think”

It’s later by an hour, if you’re in the US and forgot to set your clocks ahead. Go, fix it now; I’ll wait.

Good. Let’s move on.

“Watching the Clothes Go ‘Round”

How much dishwasher or laundry detergent should you use? An expert at the NY Times says it should be a lot less than we normally use. And don’t self-clean the oven right before a party.

There are also definitive instructions on how to load the dishwasher properly. Of course, my wife may disagree. So she loads her way, I load mine, and we agree to disagree but not rearrange each other’s dishes.

“Can You Feel the Love Tonight”

The Hurt Locker won. Get over it. I wish I knew how to say that in Nav’i.

Avatar was the biggest seller of the year, but that doesn’t mean it was the best film.

The biggest selling album of 1967 was Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, right? Abbey Road, of course, in 1969. Born to Run in 1975.

Hey, Jude topped the charts in 1968 longer than Bobby Goldsboro’s Honey. Light My Fire was a chart-topper longer than To Sir, With Love in that year. In 1969, the longest chart-topper was a great Beatles song.

All of these statements are false.1967’s biggest seller was More of the Monkees — not even “The Best of.” At least it had I’m a Believer on it. In 1969, it was Iron Butterfly’s In-a-Gadda-da-Vida. And 1975 brought us Reg Dwight’s Greatest Hits — or, rather, Elton John’s Greatest Hits. It wasn’t Born to Run, but I can’t argue with someone who chose his stage name to honor the great Long John Baldry and the sax player in Baldry’s band, Elton Dean.

And in 1969, the records atop the charts the longest were In the Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus) — yes, that was the name of it, by one-hit wonder Zager and Evans — and Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In (The Flesh Failures) — again, that was the name, by the Fifth Dimension, who at least weren’t a one-hit wonder and whose covers brought attention to the otherwise overlooked Laura Nyro.

Avatar may have outsold The Hurt Locker 10:1, but that doesn’t mean it was better. More of the Monkees outsold Astral Weeks and Forever Changes 10:1 too.

(If you haven’t heard Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks and Love’s Forever Changes, listen to them and hear two of the most influential-on-other-musicians albums of all time.)

“Happy Birthday to You”

This bit of highly practical advice is directed at me. It’s my wife’s birthday, and I want to acknowledge her in print. Or in electrons….

Have a great weekend!

None of the Presidents Day retail-holiday stuff for me. I celebrate Abe specifically, and recall when all students learned of his birthday. Of course, we spent more time in, say, fourth grade cutting out dumb silhouettes of the man than learning what he did and what he stood for, but [...]]]> Today is Abraham Lincoln’s real birthday.

None of the Presidents Day retail-holiday stuff for me. I celebrate Abe specifically, and recall when all students learned of his birthday. Of course, we spent more time in, say, fourth grade cutting out dumb silhouettes of the man than learning what he did and what he stood for, but eventually I learned to read history on my own.

Abe was one of the good guys. Presidents Day seems to imply that folks like James Buchanan and Millard Fillmore, along with some more recent fellows, stand equal to Abe and George (and Tom and a few others), simply because they got elected. Or were in the right place when their predecessor gave up either the office or the ghost. Or prevailed in a tribunal or whatever you want to call the Hayes/Tilden brouhaha.

Here’s to you, Abe. Happy Birthday.

(That said, as long as President’s Day is offered free, I’ll invoke the tragedy of the commons by taking up the offer despite what I’ve said here. In other words, no post Monday.)

LegalTech is a combination conference and exhibition. I’m speaking at the former, doing the demo walk at the latter, and meeting with clients and colleagues whenever I can. Given the recent series on software demos, I’ll take some notes and [...]]]> I’m at LegalTech today through Wednesday, and so I likely won’t be posting much this week.

LegalTech is a combination conference and exhibition. I’m speaking at the former, doing the demo walk at the latter, and meeting with clients and colleagues whenever I can. Given the recent series on software demos, I’ll take some notes and report back on these very difficult show-floor demos along with a few vendor-suite demos in a more conducive environment.

I just sent a mail to folks who had given their EMail addresses with a comment. (I’ve been able to mine the old DB for various items.) I don’t know what happens to people [...]]]> As I noted a few days ago, the blog was hacked recently. I had to restart it at a slightly different address.

I just sent a mail to folks who had given their EMail addresses with a comment. (I’ve been able to mine the old DB for various items.) I don’t know what happens to people who had an RSS feed linked to the old site. I suspect that if you did, you’ll need to recreate it from the new site.

That was the purpose of the mail. I set up a one-time mailing list to send it to a lot of folks without revealing EMails, and I’ve now deleted that mailing list. If you got the mail, please resubscribe… and ignore the mailing-list info that followed my note in the mail.

Thanks for your understanding.

Update 12:44PM PST: I’ve been able to recover the old data… into an Excel spreadsheet. There are over 1000 posts plus innumerable comments. Someone could probably write a script moving the old posts over to the rebuilt [...]]]> The NoCCrit Blog got hacked, somehow, and it looks like everything’s been trashed. I’m working on fixing it. Sorry….

Update 12:44PM PST: I’ve been able to recover the old data… into an Excel spreadsheet. There are over 1000 posts plus innumerable comments. Someone could probably write a script moving the old posts over to the rebuilt site, but I’m not that someone these days. I’ll repost the most recent half dozen or so. I’ll try to turn off the auto-notify feed, but I apologize in advance if you get a flood of notification.

Update 1:10PM PST: If you subscribed to this blog via RSS, I think you need to resubscribe to keep the posts coming. (Re backups: Yes, I had one. No, I didn’t spot the hacking before I took the most recent snapshot, so the backup was also corrupted. I normally keep multiple backups, but I didn’t do that with the blog. That was dumb on my part.)

Also, the new URL is http://NoCCrit.com/Steveblog. Note the uppercase S, though /steveblog now automatically transfers you to Steveblog. The idea that lowercase and uppercase are different is an old Unix it’s-microscopically-faster quirk that Linus Torvalds apparently decided to replicate. The blog is hosted on a Linux server, so Steveblog isn’t steveblog. Luckily, DARPA and the folks who started the Internet (wasn’t that Al Gore?) realized that was a silly quirk that favored computers over humans, so domain addresses ignore caps; NoCCrit.com = noccrit.com = NOCCRIT.COM and so on. (Okay, Al Gore never actually said anything like “I invented the Internet,” but it’s a great urban legend!)