What I Do

Unsolicited pundit. Offering my opinion without asking first has gotten me some nice gigs, and helped me name my business. After I wrote Stewart Alsop, then editor-in-chief of InfoWorld, a "Stewart, you ignorant slut" email chastising him for minor errors in a column he wrote in 1994, he suggested that I write a lead Enterprise section feature on Internet Service Providers (ISPs). I've been using "unsolicited pundit" as my sobriquet for a while, as well as my business name. It's reproduced quite large on my business cards, and it never fails to get a savvy laugh when I hand cards out.

Freelance journalist. I contribute regularly to a number of publications, including the Seattle Times (columnist), Popular Science, The Economist, Macworld, and TidBITS (contributing editor).

Blogger. I keep seven blogs: one on the popular topic of wireless networking (Wi-Fi Networking News), five others on other wireless data technology, and another an account of personal and professional observations (GlennLog).

Radio commentator. I appear weekly (Wednesday at 2.07 pm) as a guest on KUOW-FM's Sound Focus talking about technology in a segment called The Works.

Book author. Electronic books may seem like a small part of the market. But for computer-related titles, they sell well, and are quite rewarding even in relatively small quantities compared to the time, effort, and royalty rates of print books. In the last three years, I've written, co-written, and edited a host of ebooks in the Take Control series. The dates are of the most recent update; most of the books have been updated two to three times since their initial release.

eBooks: Take Control of Sharing Files in Panther (Jan. 2005), Take Control of Sharing Files in Tiger (April 2005), Take Control of Your AirPort Network (Sept. 2005); Take Control of Your Wi-Fi Security (with Adam Engst, updated Oct. 2007); Take Control of Podcasting (editor, Nov. 2006), Take Control of Domain Names (Nov. 2006), Take Control of Your 802.11n AirPort Extreme Network (updated Oct. 2007), Take Control of Sharing Files in Leopard (Oct. 2007), Take Control of Back to My Mac (spring 2008), and Take Control of Screen Sharing in Leopard (spring 2008).

Print books: Wrote The Wireless Networking Starter Kit (Peachpit Press, Dec. 2002) with Adam Engst; second edition appeared November 2003. Co-authored Real World Scanning and Halftones, 2nd edition (1998); 3rd edition appeared in April 2004. Co-authored Real World Adobe GoLive 6 (Peachpit Press, May 2002). The previous editions covered versions 4 and 5 of the software.

ISBN.nu. Starting as a thought experiment turned into programming code, ISBN.nu offers a simple, quick price comparison on any book among a dozen online booksellers. The site generates revenues through an affiliate relationship with each bookseller. I've learned a lot about Apache, perl, Linux, and MySQL in the process.

"Practical Macintosh" columnist for The Seattle Times. I started writing about the Macintosh for The Seattle Times in September 2000. I started sharing the column on alternating appearances with my colleague Jeff Carlson after I returned from paternity leave in 2004. I also write technology features for them about topics such as Bluetooth networking, wire-transfer email scams, laptops, and blogging.

Spare time. In my spare time, I do things like learn how to compile, install, and maintain the Apache server, and write MySQL database handling scripts.

Technical Tips

I couldn't find a better place on this site to keep a couple of links active.

Use a simple routine to encode and decode URLs using perl. This includes some advice on converting decimal to hexadecimal that was incredibly hard to find online (12/21/99)

Decode GIF's pixel width and height using a perl subroutine (made more elegant with some help on 11/10/98)