2014: Year in Review

This post doesn’t link to every post I’ve written, but a significant selection of them.

1. Wrote about my problematic relationship with Spanish. I started writing it before the great taxi driver incident where we couldn’t remember the word “fifteen” in Spanish, but I believe I posted it after.
2. Easter Island pic. Easter Island, in case you ever need to know this, is five days of cruising westward from Valparaiso, Chile. Three of those days without Internet.
3. Pitcairn Island pic. Pitcairn is three days west of Easter Island and one of the remotest places on Earth.
4. Mo’orea pic. Mo’orea, in French Polynesia, is two days west of Pitcairn and very close (a few miles/kms) to Tahiti.
5. Bora Bora pic. My favorite picture taken this year. Bora Bora’s about an hour’s flying time from Tahiti, and is a gobsmackingly beautiful descent at sunset. Rick saw it; I didn’t get to because I was seated on the wrong side of the plane.
6. 2-1/2 Years of E-Book Sales Data, which I like to trot out every time someone asks about the reasons not to make their book exclusive at Amazon. I’ve softened a bit: periods of exclusivity are one thing, but exclusive there all the time just strikes me as punting on sales. See also: Sell to Where the Reader Reads (and Shops)
7. Village Voice on Writers of the Future, where I discover I’d made the Village Voice a couple of years ago. I also reposted to my own blog a comment I’d left on someone else’s.
8. Asking for What You Want: My Letter to Steve Jobs. Before I was hired at Apple, I wrote SJ asking for a job. While it didn’t get me the job per se, what it did get me was calls from recruiters. The job I did get turned out to be one I hadn’t applied for. So, it worked, after a fashion, just not immediately.
9. Sochi: A Visit. We visited Sochi in 2013. At the time, I thought it was kind of a rush to see a city prepping for the Olympics instead of seeing long-past history (though there was some of that too. If Russia ever gets its LGBT act together, it’s actually quite a lovely place to visit.
10. Rick’s favorite mongoose joke.
11. I write about my shift in understanding about trans people and pronoun use. In which I come out publicly about my trans ex (still a good friend, and in fact, I worked for her brother at Apple).
12. My senior year of high school and why I took Independent Study Table Tennis. For real.
13. Pinboard WordPress theme icons for Instagram and iMDB. Pinboard’s a great free WordPress theme, and I consistently get several hits a day on this post offering up two more social media icons. It only just occurred to me a few days ago to maybe write the people who make the theme and offer up my changes to them. Doh.
14. Two Lava photos I took in 2011 and 2012. Here’s two more from 2011.
15. Four Hugo recommendations. Hey! Randall Munroe did finally win a Hugo! My work is done. Not in the category I proposed, but that’s okay by me. Note: this was for the Hugos that have already been awarded, btw.
16. That Odd Moment. When you suddenly realize that you’re more likely to have been places that erupt into chaos than not. Contains pictures of Odessa, Ukraine.
17. Random Photoshop Things I’ve Learned Recently. I learned how to composite several night sky photos into one cooler image. Among other things.
18. Two Alhambra Photos. A friend was expressing envy that we’d be going to the Alhambra again, so these photos from 2011 were for her.
19. My short rant about the erasure of indigenous languages from dictionary derivations. A longer rant from earlier in the year.
20. Apple’s Treatment of Mobility-Impaired Employees. In which I detail some of the WTFery I had to put up with after getting a handicap placard.
21. Norilana Books Again. This, along with a few other posts, sheds light onto the problems of Norilana books, which I first posted about in late 2013.
22. How much time it takes to set up a new pseudonym from scratch. Including book cover. Assuming one has all the requisite skills, of course. Related: Building a Brand: Object Lessons.
23. What I learned about myself by making a fan site for my favorite actor.
24. After several decades, I finally get an accurate diagnosis (and medication) for my chronic pain.
25. After I called them out, Box.com changed their “Working at Box” page to be more respectful of women. That page is even better now than it was in April. Initially, it was just a photo swap out, but the page has since been redesigned.
26. Our heartbreaking road trip to Canada. Which, in the long run, turned out okay.
27. “Traitor to the Mens” t-shirts I designed for John Scalzi.
28. Programming Sucks and Why I Quit.
29. A Letter to My Sister-in-Law Written for extended family (and no doubt painful to read for those not in the family), but I get significant Google hits on this every day.
30. The Seventies: Getting into Programming. My experiences back in the day.
31. Author Media Kits.
32. Mockups, the power of 3D.
33. Typecon, in which I discover another group of “my people.”
34. Jay Lake, RIP.
35. Welsh countryside photo I took in 2013. Rick and I went back to the exact same point this year.
36. My First Science Fiction Convention. Or: How I met Mark Hamill before anyone really knew who he was.
37. A frustrating conversation with Amazon support. I’m amazed I don’t still have a dent in my forehead.
38. Marion Zimmer Bradley Gave Us New Perspectives, All Right. My snarky response to a Tor.com puff piece. After being challenged in the comments, I contacted MZB’s daughter, Moira, leading to Marion Zimmer Bradley: It’s Worse than I Knew. and other MZB-related blog posts. This led to pieces in The Guardian, The Washington Post, and Entertainment Weekly. Here’s the complete series of posts. Tough stuff.
39. Kitten, Morocco, 2011. Because Kitten.
40. Doing the Right Thing. Design, but a great reminder of why suckage occurs.
41. Some Thoughts on the Missing Stair Analogy.
42. My birthday lookback at favorite things from the past year.
43. The Great Namaste, aka I helped set a Guinness World Record.
44. Rejecting Bad Writing Advice.
45. My ode to OVERWERK.
46. Branding Done Right. Typecon rocked it on so many levels.
47. All the Important Stuff. I’m deeply honored that Michael Hyatt gave me permission to use his saying for my poster. It’s one I heard when I attended the World Domination Summit.
48. Falling Back in Love With One’s Own Book. A few tips to get back in the groove.
49. Reading Audiobooks. How my usage of the verb “to read” changed after a conversation.
50. Delia Derbyshire, Overlooked Musician and Composer. Amazing woman best known for her performance—and some of the composition—of the Dr. Who theme.
51. How to Get to Helsinki from Pitcairn. Fun post for the 2017 Worldcon bid.
52. Ellora’s Cave Author Exodus Support Thread. My Ellora’s Cave post series has been the second most popular on the blog this year. Book Reversion Game Theory & Consent is one of the popular posts as is Proving Substantial Truth.
53. How I Became a Romance Reader.
54. I’m on Writing Excuses!
55. World Music Break: Tarkan.
56. New Adult Romance: A Few Books. I need to write an update on this with more titles.
57. My Day in Federal Court.
58. My Favorite Indie Type Foundries. For all you type/font people.
59. 100 Countries (and Territories). Made it!

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