Guest bloggers: Gareth Branwyn and Charles Platt!
They'll be posting their own bios shortly, but here's a brief introduction:
Gareth is one of my oldest friends. He's a wonderfully creative designer, maker (budding amateur roboticists should seek out his highly praised book, Absolute Beginner's Guide to Building Robots), and brilliant writer and editor. We got to know each other in the late 1980s when we saw each other's zines (mine was bOING bOING, his was Going Gaga) listed in Factsheet Five and we swapped subscriptions. We've been friends ever since, and have collaborated on a bunch of projects together.
Charles Platt and I have known each other professionally for many years (he wrote some of my favorite articles for Wired when I was an editor there, later, when I was an editor at Wired Books, I republished his novel, The Silicon Man). Charles is also an amazing maker of things -- designing and building everything from board games that are 100% skill and 0% chance (other than who gets to go first) to medical equipment that can save people's lives. Over the years, we've become good friends.
Both Gareth and Charles are editors at MAKE, and their contributions delight me and MAKE's readers.
Please welcome Gareth and Charles!
the latest
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Gareth,
Looking forward to your work on boing boing! Congrats!
All of us have a fine treat on the way.
Rob
Gareth is among the finest hackers known to man. I believe Charles Platt is the author of that epic work, Free Zone. If so, leave me your e-mail address. I always wanted to write you a fan letter (I posted about your at-the-time definitive work of science fiction on my silly blog, stuffilikenet.wordpress.com).
Welcome, both of you, and shed your pearls here freely.
Yeah Gareth! Can't wait to see what ya post!
Mark
I don't know Charles or Gareth from Adam - but I trust the BBer's taste and I'm sure these two will be just spiffy. But do we really have to have a continuous, unbroken stream of guest bloggers? I come to BB for what BB is known for - not for something that is slowly becoming a "random" button on the (vaguely BB congruent) blogosphere.
And it is SO exhausting. Guest bloggers were a great idea as occasional additions but this non-stop assault is getting to me. Maybe I'm just too lazy to get into someone else's groove every two weeks - fair criticism - but am I really the only one who finds this originally great idea to now be debased by over-use?
Sorry for the negative vibes on Gareth and Charles' introduction - not sure where/how else to see if this rings anyone else's bell.
George,
I don't agree. I enjoy the freshness the guest bloggers bring to BoingBoing. Do you really need a higher concentration of steampunk posts?
I think the guest bloggers have fit BB's sensibility well while adding to the breadth of topics covered.
Plus, that dude made a plane crash in the Hudson last week. He's pretty amazing!
Well I, for one, welcome our new guest bloggers. And I remember Charles Platt - he wrote Micromania! What's he been doing since then?
#5
OK .. soooo... the main benefit brought by guest bloggers is simply the dilution of the concentration of steampunk posts. Well I hadn't thought if it that way before, but I sure agree!
Seriously, though, don't misunderstand me - I'm not agin them in general - just the constant rolling wave after wave with no respite. A two week guest-blog slot with a 2 or 4 week "normality resumed" interval would, to my mind, mean that guest bloggers' contributions would be much MORE fresh to BB. The constant, relentless freshness is getting stale.
#6 - as above - I was actively NOT trying to not welcome these particular new guest bloggers