Glog

Glenn Fleishman Interrogates the Past

Glenning

Not Wikipedia Entry

Glenning

Not Wikipedia Entry

I had an entry at Wikipedia for years, then it was removed in what I think was a 1–1 vote. Big ups for the person opposed to my notability.

People have tried in the years since to add an article about me back, but they continue to be challenged on that issue. You’re supposed to be covered by media, particularly interviewed or reviewed, in order to be notable.

Despite many entries being about people who just do things, and who have rarely had published interviews! I’m sure the Wikipedians are flooded with garbage, so to make it easier, I’ve written a Not Wikipedia entry, which, in no way, is an entry on Wikipedia. But it scratches an itch for me. If you know me, you know I’m proud of the work I do, but not incommensurately proud of it.

Books

Book Him

In the latest in what feels like a surreal sequence of events in my working life, my name appears prominently multiple times in an essay in the just-released issue of the New York Review of Books. The foreword that Michael Chabon wrote for How Comics Were Made was picked up by the NYRB as a standalone essay for its Holiday Issue, which is already online. (You can register at no cost to read a single article.)

I thought the foreword might be rewritten a bit to detach the context from my book. However, the editors made the connection even stronger, with the book’s title appeaing repeatedly! I’m looking forward to snagging a couple of copies in print. The issue shipped to subscribers last week and should appear on newsstands sometime before its Dec. 19, 2024, cover date.

Glenning

2023 in Review

Last year was a rare exception among adult years in it that it was a little quieter. This year was a return to “normal”: busy, fulfilling, and new projects a-blooming, although with a far tighter focus than almost any year in my career in which I didn’t have a part-time or full-time job or the equivalent contractor position.

Shift Happens

After several years of editing and project planning with my author client, Marcin Wichary, his book Shift Happens finally went from bits to atoms. Shift Happens recounts the history of keyboards, with Volume 1 devoted mostly to typewriters and similar things and Volume 2 covering keyboards from the dawn of computing through the glass and mechanical masterpieces available today. Every chapter is a story about some piece of history or aspect of keys and keyboards. Marcin did a wonderful job of researching, writing, photographing, and designing this massive work.

Bookselling

2022 in Review

2022 is probably the first year in my working life I have done less than in the previous year. That’s all to the good: I am often scurrying around from project to project and spinning lots of plates. It was nice to have a calmer year and build in more time off in my second half-century of life.

To get announcements about my new projects, you can sign up for my legitimately low-volume mailing list—I sent out just seven messages in 2022!

This year’s summary is thus a little simpler, too!

Books

2022 was my second banner year for books. Starting during the first pandemic year, I devoted myself to writing new titles in the Take Control Books roster. In 2021, that involved four new books and updates to several more—some multiple times. In 2022, I wrote just two entirely new books and significantly updated another

Design

Senior Project: A Version of Wolpe’s Albertus

Searching for old photos recently, I uncovered my senior project in graphic design. I majored in Art at Yale with a subject concentration in graphic design, and this work was my part of my graduation requirement for the major. I had a strong interest in type design, and was encouraged by a mentor to produce a high-quality digital version of the typeface Albertus. Albertus had been designed in the 1930s by Berthold Wolpe, and it was one that in the late 1980s wasn’t yet available in a strong digital rendition. I’ve scanned the project for my own posterity and you can download it here. Missing, sadly, are pictures of the large exhibition posters that I created as part of my project.

A page from my 1990 senior project in which I showed progressive improvements in hand drawing test letters.
A page from my 1990 senior project in which I showed progressive improvements in hand drawing test letters.

You can see the child of the adult in

Glenning

The Latest in the World of Glenn

An update from the land of Glenn: I've been a busy bee as usual. September has whizzed by, even with the six-day teacher strike (fully justified!) early this month.

  • At Macworld, you can find piles and piles of stories from Apple's hardware announcements and updates earlier this month, including my essay on how an iPad Pro is a kind of test for an ARM-based laptop running OS X. Benchmarks on the iPhone 6s/6s Plus after I wrote this essay show that it's faster than some of Apple's low-end Intel-based laptops for a broad range of tasks.
  • At Fast Company, I tackled "Happy Birthday": why despite a recent summary judgment in a lawsuit about the rights that Warner-Chappell Music claimed, a judge didn't declare the work in the public domain. But are the lyrics still under copyright? Were they ever? It's the Schrödinger's Cat of copyright.
  • Imagine a friendly cube

Glenning

Character Assassination (Update: Fanboy Accusation?)

Update, Nov. 14: John Cook, the Intercept's editor in chief, will be leaving First Look to return to Gawker. No surprise there.

Update: I received a response from John Cook, Ryan Tate's boss. Added at the bottom. I appreciate he took the time to reply in the middle of turmoil there, and just days before he announced his own departure (see above).

Update: This evening, some tech industry friends explained that I was missing the basis of what I saw from Ryan Tate as an attack on my ethics and approach to life. He was being a jerk of a different color.

Apparently, he thinks I am an Apple fanboy and, three years ago, I followed Apple PR's lead in trying to "suppress" discussion of Tim Cook's sexual orientation and, today, given "approval" from Apple through the publication of Cook's essay in which he says to the world that he's

Glenning

More Glenn Than You Can Shake a Stick At

I created a special RSS feed years ago that distills all the various places I write for at times into a single stream, for those who want to follow all my article. That remains at Yahoo Pipes; you can visit the main page to get the posts by email and other methods, too.

I've now pushed that into a Twitter account, too, if you'd like to follow such a thing.

Glenning

A Tiny Newsletter from Me

I miss blogging and I often tweet too much! I'm going to try an experiment with an intermediate form, which is to jot down a few ideas as I have them, and write a short newsletter, possibly daily. You can sign up!

I'm curious about your feedback.

Buddies

2013 in Review

Last year, inspired by Joe Kissell, I wrote a summary of the enormity of what 2012 had encompassed. It was freaking huge. Joe enumerated for years all the words, books, articles, and such like he worked on. This year, I'm inspired again by Joe: he decided to stop the extensive documentation of his year, having felt he'd proven his productivity. I'm somewhere in between: less documentation than last year, but still quite a bit to share.

In June, I bought The Magazine from Marco Arment. It's been one of the greatest things I've worked on in my life, and it's a constant joy of collaboration with contributors both before and after the purchase. We just put out Issue #33 — we produced 26 issues during 2013, and now have some subscribers who are paid up though the end of 2015. We'd better deliver.

I launched the weekly podcast The New Disruptors