Posts

Uncovering a mysterious blogger

This article on Streetsblog , a progressive pro-bicycle and transit website, is fascinating. The lengthy piece, worth reading in its entirety, explains how Streetsblog staff uncovered the identity of a hyperactive negative commenter with his own website, Commuter Outrage. Evidently the man behind Commuter Outrage, a twenty-something conservative who works in a civilian job at the Pentagon, was digging up material for his screeds during work hours using his employer's (and the government's) resources, and Streetsblog's questions about these practices quickly led the secretive fellow to disappear the entire Commuter Outrage website. Instructive were the easy-to-understand steps taken by Streetsblog staff to uncover the man's identity, along with evidence that suggested he was blogging on his employer's time. Also interesting was the fact that the attacks by Commuter Outrage and its putative staff (really just this one fellow, apparently) were not some right-wing consp
Read more

Reader review: 'Unexpected... a diverting read'

My friend Lisa B wrote a very nice review of HOW THEY SCORED . An excerpt: After the men gather, the plot picks up steam and their interactions increase, with Pritchard quietly portraying a shifting dance of male alliance and competition. Their picaresque sex tales start to cast a subtler light on their characters. The story of the Serbian fashion model ends poignantly. A tale of a threesome takes an unexpected turn, with the storyteller unable to perform, feeling both sentimental about an old girlfriend and ambivalent about the suddenly aggressive behavior of his current one. In short, the scorekeeping of these men becomes less about tallying up sexual conquests and more about assessing their own strengths and weaknesses -- and the elusiveness of their desires. Wow, thanks Lisa!
Read more

More oversharing

Just in case you wanted to have a standard system for bragging to the internets how often you bang, now there's Bedpost , an online sex tracking tool. The rest of this post writes itself.
Read more

Choosing between a job and a social networking identity

According to this article , some employers not only are searching the internet for discouraging information on you, but a few companies have asked interviewees for their passwords to their social networking accounts. What in holy Christ. For many people, I think the choice would not be whether or not to give up this information. It would be whether or not to reply calmly, "Why do you want that?" or flipping the bird and walking out. I accept that whatever I put on the internet has to be regarded as public knowledge. If I post it, it's there for anyone to see. I might put a warning on it, or I might hide it behind an obscure or invisible link, but some search bot will find it and display it on search results. I accept that. Indeed, I'm more concerned about someone getting me mixed up with the other Mark Pritchards of the world than I am of someone finding something I did in the past. That's because I've always lived an open life. I'm bisexual, I write porn
Read more

Datamining your Twitter feed

Just as I predicted in How They Scored: Twitter is in advanced talks with Microsoft and Google separately about striking data-mining deals, in which the companies would license a full feed from the microblogging service that could then be integrated into the results of their competing search engines. -- Kara Swisher, All Things D
Read more

Authentication

Here's a nice discussion of authentication , an information technology concept I mention in "How They Scored," and its implications for online identity.
Read more

Now with a nicer cover

Image
I redid the cover so it's nicer, and I also fixed a page bug so that all the chapters properly start on odd pages. Man, this self-publishing thing is a lot of work. I really like the picture of the highway, which I took from a State of Texas government website. The whole first half of my book is a road novel so I thought it captured the feeling. The trip is not to Texas but to the mountains of Washington state, but I really like this picture.
Read more