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On the Street - the Preacher

I met a guy yesterday who claimed to be Jesus. I asked him how he knew that he was indeed Jesus. He said, "How do you know that I'm not?" I looked at him with a puzzled look on my face. He then said, "How do you know that you're not Him?"

I started to walk away, but I noticed the man speaking to other individuals, pointing in my direction. I could not hear what he was saying. Finally, he shouted, "It takes only one person to have faith!" I wasn't sure what this meant, and I really didn't want to ask him about it.

Spam turns 30, but it's still trying to give away a million dollars of Nigerian inheritance

Just for an instance, don't be a spam hater. You don't actually have to open anything in your inbox with "enlargement" in the title. Just play along for the simple fact of nostalgia.

Next stop: Johns Hopkins Spring Festival

It's a quick turnaround from the CityLit Festival, but I will be in attendance at the JHU Spring Festival, which takes place April 25-27 at the Hopkins Homewood Campus. The details are a bit sketchy as when I will be there, but I plan to hand out another box of "The Developers" to event visitors.

Visit the event's website to learn more about other vendors and a full schedule of happenings there.

Free book giveaway has begun!

Starting April 19, 2008, with the Baltimore CityLit Festival, I plan to give away a few books this spring and summer. I hope the next wave of "The Developers" readers gets as much enjoyment out of the book as the first wave did.

Anyway, if you received a free book and want to show your appreciation, check out the free book page "donations" options and/or email me your comments about the book!

Wait, people still use IE 3?

So the news out recently is that PayPal is going to block "unsafe browsers." I'm not talking about people here, but actually web browsers. How will PayPal know if something is unsafe? Good question, but one way they will tell, according to this article, is by determining the version of the actual browser.

From the Archive

Search engine optimization is a pizza cake

I hope at least a few of the 17 people who read this column are interested in building their own Web site, or already have, or would want to if all the letters on their keyboard weren't missing.

The trouble with starting from scratch on the Internet is it's tough to find your newly created URL in the search engine. The good news is there are ways to make it easier. The bad news is you will need more than just the return and shift keys to accomplish this.

Clip art works best with other things

While there is a bounty of useful items on the Internet, there is also that vague area of things that serve some purpose, but by themselves, would be utterly useless.

An obvious example of this is a Web counter. Create a Web page by putting nothing on it other than a counter. Put it on the Web. What does it prove? If people actually go to your site, they are insane? True, but in a sense, we already know that everyone is crazy.

Tech illustrations are often pretty bizarre

Sometimes, technical manuals are hard to read and understand. Occasionally, they may even include pictographs that are supposed to help the user better understand the instructions. But what happens when even the pictographs make no freakin' sense?

The Surprise Visit now available!

The Surprise Visit cover

Raymond and Damon are back to their shenanigans in "The Surprise Visit," the second book in the Caimans at Work series.

Raymond and Damon are busy with many orders these days. Their friend Clara stops by the shop with an urgent request. Will the caimans be able to help her before time runs out?

Recent appearance in the LEO

My latest stop on the print publicity trail for "The Developers" brought me to the Louisville Eccentric Observer, where writer Paul Kopasz completed a feature story on self-publishing and on-demand printing.

I received a decent write up concerning the steps I took to get printed, plus a photo from my appearance in New Albany. Here's the link to the article.

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