On Wednesday I wrote a thousand words. Slightly more, but the goal was a thousand. I did the same the day before. And the day before that. In fact, Wednesday concluded the twelfth week in a row--the eighty-fourth consecutive day--in which I had written at least one thousand words. I set myself a goal on April Fools Day, of all days. In...

I love writing software. Ever since my junior year in high school, when I first discovered the magic incantations that bent computers to my will (mwa-ha-ha-ha) I've spent countless hours experimenting with programming languages, algorithms, frameworks, and everything related to them. I've written a ray tracer in Ocaml, a logic game for...

When I was writing my first book, Mazes for Programmers, there were many days that found me staring at a blank page, wondering how I was ever going to make this void magically align with my chapter outline. The same has happened every time I've participated in NaNoWriMo, or while writing my second book, The Ray Tracer Challenge. More r...

A few weeks ago I was at the airport in Eugene, Oregon, waiting for my flight home. I had an hour to kill, so I do what I usually do at airports: I went for a walk. Down one hallway I found an art installation with works by artists from the OSLP Arts & Culture program. I'm normally pretty superficial when it comes to my appreciation of...