Henry and I are in Seattle. Tomorrow we leave on the Geek Cruise for Alaska with my dad and brother. We visited Paul Allen's Experience Music Project and Sci Fi Museum today. Seeing the Sky Church at EMP brought back fond memories of The Screen Savers episode we taped here several years ago.
This is the view outside our hotel window. What is it about tall structures that attracts my eye? Don't answer that. The Space Needle at night is breathtaking, even if it's not as tall as the CN Tower.
Skepticality is back! Woo hoo! And they're now the official podcast of Skeptic Magazine. Double woo hoo. Welcome back Derek and Swoopy! We missed you!
Last time I co-wrote a book, Gina Smith and I holed up in a hotel room for a week, laptop to laptop, banging out the text. I know what you're thinking, but the only steam was coming off the keyboards. There just wasn't a better way to collaborate on a book.
Fast forward 11 years and things are a lot different. Web 2.0 sites like 37Signals Backpack and Writeboard are designed for large, dispersed groups working on the same project. Wikis make it easy for groups to share information and collaborate on documents. I'm familiar with these solutions - we've been using a wiki to produce Call for Help for the past two years - but none of these are just right for writing.
Adam Engst of TidBits and Jason Snell of MacWorld Magazine obviously recognize the problem. They've issued a joint RFP for a collaborative editor worthy of the Mac. The article's worth reading for a list of programs they've tried and abandoned, but I think I might already have the solution.
I'm interested in the problem because I've decided to collaborate on another book. Amber MacArthur and I are working on a podcasting how-to. We want to write the definitive volume on creating your own audio or video show, covering everything from content, to production, to distribution, to making money. Between us we've learned quite a bit about the process - often inventing solutions to problems as they came up. Inspired by 37Signals's success with Getting Real, we plan to self-publish as a PDF, possibly with a printed book or CD-ROM version from Lulu. But before we sell it, we have to write it.
Amber's in Toronto. I'm in California. How can we work together without spending a week in a hotel room? And what about other authors we want to bring on for specific chapters? How do we incorporate their contributions?
Open source programmers accomplish the task very efficiently with version control systems like CVS and Subversion. Why can't we? (OK it might not be as much fun as holing up together at the Drake, but it's a lot less likely to cause problems with our respective significant others).
I've set up a Subversion server on one of my less used systems. It took about 10 minutes using a Red Hat RPM and the daemon version of the svn server. I've never used Subversion, or any version control system, but there's an excellent, free, Subversion book that showed me what to do.
From now on my work flow is to:
That's if I want to do take the trouble to open a terminal window - but as you'll see, I've found a text editor that eliminates even those simple steps.
Subversion can handle binary files, including Word documents, but I think we'll probably use a plain text editor since books don't typically use Word style formatting. (Publishers use codes much like the old Wordstar dot commands to indicate formatting.) There's a binary distribution of Subversion for OS X. I installed that on one machine. I used Fink to install svn on another Mac. And used Ubuntu's application installer to put it on my Linux box. There's a Windows client, too, although I haven't tried it. I've been able to easily checkout the document tree on all three machines, update it on each, then commit the changes back to the svn repository on the server.
It works flawlessly with one exception. I have had some problems with Mac files that have data and resource forks. svn doesn't see the resource fork so it munges the file. For example, I created a pair of Applescripts to automate the update and commit commands, but they didn't upload properly. The solution was to zip them first, but that's a gotcha for Mac users.
I've written up some simple instructions for Amber. It might confuse a less technically-proficient co-author, but she's very adept with these kind of things. She's going to install it tonight. I have high hopes. Subversion will allow us both to work on files locally (that's why I rejected Backpack - I didn't want to work only online), but makes it easy to update the server, and is great for backups because Subversion keeps all previous versions of all documents. If we happen to make conflicting changes to the same document, Subversion has good tools for merging the changes and figuring out what to keep.
The final piece of the puzzle is Textmate for the Macintosh. Textmate has built in support for Subversion. I can load the entire document tree as a Textmate project, easily add or move files, add text, and so on just by hitting Control-Shift-A in this very capable editor. This setup fits my ADD style of writing: A little here, a little there, iterating over the entire text as I think of things.
Textmate and Subversion are tools designed for programming teams, but there's not much difference between those teams and book authors. I'm thinking this will be a truly useful way to collaborate, and since we want to write the book in record time, it may be the only way to get it done.
I'd love to hear how other people are solving these issues, and suggestions you might have for making this setup better. We'll let you know how it works as the book progresses.
Is there a 12-step program for podcasters? It seems like I can't stop!
We have nine podcasts on the TWiT.tv network. We cover tech news, the Internet, security, gadgets, open source, biotech, media, computer help, and the Mac. What's missing from this list?
A Windows Vista podcast, of course. I've got a really good host in mind. He's agreed in principal, and I expect we'll launch when he gets back from vacation in early September. You're going to love this one.
And my off hand comment on TWiT a few weeks back about how we need a podcast covering the myriad legal issues surrounding copyright, net neutrality, privacy, and security, stimulated an avalanche of mail from interested lawyers. Denise Howell says she's willing to host - she's perfect for the job - and I think we'll be launching this roundtable in the next few weeks.
So that's three more podcasts coming soon to TWiT.tv. I can't promise I'll stop, but I do think we now have a pretty well rounded offering. You know why I'm doing all this, don't you? I want to be on the cover of Business Week just like Kevin!
"Tom Cruise's doughier little brother" will join us this week on TWiT, by the way, so we can rib him about the cover. Cory Doctorow will be on, too, now that's he's back in the States. Should be a good show.
The discussion of a TechTV reunion has spawned something else. The reunion is still in the works, but this might be even more exciting, and long term.
Naturally we got a lot of interest from companies wanting to host the reunion. We're still sifting through the offers. But one company came up with something really surprising that they've been developing behind the scenes for some time.
Chris Pirillo and I think this new platform just might make it possible to create an Internet-based TechTV.
It's kind of hard to describe the site. It's sort of a dedicated YouTube which would make it easy for all the old TechTV contributors (and fans) to create and distribute text, audio, and video. It would be a centralized place to get all the content that TechTV folks have been creating. Chris has committed his stuff. I'll put everything from TWiT there (and a lot more). And we're hoping to get all the former TechTV people, and friends and relations like Command-N, Lab Rats, and Hak.5, to use the site as a hub. We're not talking about a place to post old TechTV clips. We're really thinking about creating a new, web-based, TechTV. And making it easy for old TechTV-ers to create and post new stuff.
We just need a name. The site is almost ready to go. We have a bandwidth committment. I think by the end of the year we might be able to go public with something really amazing. Chris and I would love to kick it off with a Helpathon. What do you think?
Like Sam and Frodo, Alex Lindsay and I are headed there and back again.
Alex was busy setting up his new Vox blog anyway.
Any extra bit of luxury is more than welcome. I've just finished 15 TV shows in four days. I'm tired, but it's that happy and satisfied kind of tired. I really enjoy the gang in Toronto - we have such a blast shooting the show. It's almost like a vacation every month. The kind of vacation where you work really hard all day then fall into bed exhausted every night. Come to think of it, it really doesn't sound at all like a vacation.
Starting next month I'll be staying at the same hotel every time I come to Toronto, in the same room, and that will make it a little more homey. This will be my 28th trip in two years. I've been staying in an assortment of large hotels in the financial district and they're just so impersonal. Nice, but big.
The new place is a teriffic, fun, little hotel (only 19 rooms) with three great restaurants, including two patios and rooftop dining, and a nightclub in the basement, and it's in one of Toronto's hippest neighborhoods. They already treat me like family.
Despite the grueling schedule, every week I'm here I try to soak up a little Toronto culture. Last night I saw the musical version of The Lord of the Rings at the Princess of Wales Theater. It's an amazing show - well worth seeing if you come to T.O. Unfortunately it's closing and moving to London in September, so you'd better hurry.
It's not perfect by any means, but much better than the reviews would indicate. And the production is stunning. The Balrog at the end of the first act is chilling. Literally.
It was clearly a challenge to get all three books into three and a half hours, but there's as little exposition as possible and ultimately it works. I cried at the end and left the theater singing. Two furry toes up.
I recently came upon a cache of old Tech TV promos. Ah memories.
Many people don't realize it, but my true calling is as a hair and makeup consultant. Here I give Amber a few tips and demonstrate the latest airbrush application techniques. Just remember kids, it's not how you feel, it's how you look... and you look marvelous!
