I am now the designer of two apps that have officially launched in the iTunes store. Both appear to be doing well, although this means different things in both cases. One is a cultural offering by a national non-profit getting raves from culture vultures, while the other...

I get to read the first half of a story that nobody else has ever read!  In other words, I have been asked to review and give feedback on a novel (third draft, first half) that one of the writer's in my writing group is working on. It's historical fiction (mystery murder...

Awrighty then. 1044 pages. I put a lot of miles on Reamde and got to the end of it in one long, guns-ablaze-body-count-rising rush. How quickly I accepted a world in which armed terrorists cross borders with the uncomlicated ease of flu viruses - China, Taiwan, India...

As a basically self-trained animator I have long been a fan of the stick man approach to illustrating the human condition. There is something innately sympathetic about a creature with so little being dropped into such an unpredictable world. (See Alan Becker's famous...

Thank heavens for birthdays. Without them we wouldn't have icing, balloons, wrapping paper, maturity, or this terrific free download from one of my fav design resources, Smashing Magazine. The Smashing eBook contains the best ― most useful, most interesting or most inspiring...

If you, like me, are fed up with the garish blocks of colour that comprise the Adobe Flash palette by default, then you will be just as relieved as I was to discover that there is an alternative you don't have to spend hours developing all by yourself. Thank you from...

It's big. That's the most noticeable thing about Neal Stephenson's latest novel, Reamde. When something is this heavy to carry around, I find myself wondering why I didn't think to check if it was available as an online download. After all, it's a book by a geek for geeks...