Tip of the Quill: A Journal

Category Archives: Uncategorized

Doing background tiling before tiling was hip (again).

So Evan just redesigned again, and his new look is very… I’m not sure if “Arts and Crafts” is the phrase I’m looking for, but it’s definitely pretty. He’s jumped on the squidfingers bandwagon, like Matt and countless others. If anyone’s wondering where the Inkblots background pattern came from, it’s a modified (with permission!) design […]

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Welcome to The Kingdom.

So Derek’s posting of songs has me thinking about other things that I could share. Since I’m not to that stage yet with my own music, I’ve decided to post an excerpt from my other novel project, The Kingdom, over at geoffreylong.com. In a nutshell, The Kingdom is the story of two brothers on the […]

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A challenge to the iTunes store.

So my recent barometer for the success of Apple’s iTunes Music Store has been the debut album by The Thorns, the new folk-rock supergroup made up of Matthew Sweet, Pete Droge and Shawn Mullins. It’s a little Crosby, Stills & Nash, a little The Mamas and the Papas… Close harmonies, great guitars. Great stuff. Anyway, […]

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Why does academia have to be so joyless?

Maybe it’s just a different type of joy, but whenever I sit down to leaf through some academic journals to see what kind of thinking is going on in the ivory towers these days, I always get depressed. Why does academia always seem so joyless? Why is academic writing so dry, why does it constantly […]

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Photographic proof.

My good man Derek has just posted the photos from Fray Cafe 3 at SXSW this year. I’m here, my good man Scott Andrew LaPera is here, Jish is here, an extremely accurate photo of Ben is here, and Brad is here. I miss these guys. On to Sedona!

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Doing OK, all told.

There’s a big, fat orange cat sleeping on my bed. A late lunch was had, consisting primarily of half a my-God-that’s-huge Baja Fresh burrito and some fresh-baked cookies. It’s a gray, overcast Saturday, and I will probably finish it by working or reading some more of The Da Vinci Code. I am not in Ohio, […]

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Free Wilco.

Did you know that Wilco, the alt-country geniuses behind last year’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, have released a free EP? Anyone can stream it, and owners of YHF can download it. Swanky. Bonus: I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, the documentary about the troubled birth of the aforementioned smash hit album, is now available on […]

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Tempted by the dark side.

I don’t know if y’all remember me kvetching about Apple’s yawnworthy trend in desktop industrial design lately, but if you do, then you’ll understand why I got chills when I saw the new cases from Alienware. Not only are the desktop cases certifiably cool, but the laptops are swanky too. Note the chameleon color option […]

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Scott Andrew never ceases to amaze.

Gosh dang it, would somebody give this boy a record deal already? This song’s going to be stuck in my head all damn day.

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The sound of a plotline deflating.

Rats. I just hit chapter 46 of The Da Vinci Code – a surefire way to tell when a novel is beach material: the chapter numbers run to 40, 50, 60, 120 – and one of my main plot devices just surfaced. Darn. Further, the author handled it fairly well, but he still made me […]

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