Meta: Tech Adjacent Post Scheduling

How often should I send out Tech Adjacent emails? Was one of my projects published in the MagPi magazine four years ago? What is the deal with all the footnotes?

Hi, Jeremy Cook of Tech Adjacent (and about 10 other things it seems) here. Thank you so much for being among the first people to read this publication. In this newsletter, I aim to bring a more personal/philosophical/story-based tone to my writing than I typically use in the aforementioned many other things.

Current Status of Tech Adjacent:

Currently I’ve got one post a week scheduled on Wednesday at 11:30 AM Eastern Time (with the exception of Christmas) for most the rest of 2024 and into 2025, and ideas for a dozen or so other articles. That being said, I’m considering adding on another intermittent post on Fridays at 11:30, perhaps featuring more lighthearted subjects like my recent Dune 2032 post. I think this would help growth, but I certainly don’t want to spam everyone’s inbox either.

So below is the first official Tech Adjacent poll. Perhaps there will be others in the future:

Footnotes are Cool!

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been doing a lot of footnotes, which is inspired by my recent introduction to David Foster Wallace. I quite enjoyed A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (referring to his essay about cruise ships), along with Consider the Lobster (which is definitely for adults¹ only).

His fictional Infinite Jest… I did not finish. In fact I didn’t even finish the sample of it, which is itself something like 100 pages. I’m told (by Liz) the paperback is so massive that some actually split it into thirds for easier consumption/transportation.

Image from my first non-intro post about AI Music Creation

Using footnotes gives me room to open up in ways that just wouldn’t make sense in the the body of these articles. They provide just a tiny window into where my mind goes while writing (or speaking, or just staring off into space).

I’ve also been thinking that if I ever monetize this publication in the future, I could make the articles free, but have the footnotes be a paid feature. Kind of like how you can look at the outside of my house for free if you know where to find it, but you have to be my friend–or pay me, I guess–to check out what’s inside. We will see where things go.

Feel free to reply to this email to let me know your thoughts on footnotes, this publication, or really anything that’s on your mind. I’d love to hear from you. Yes, YOU!

Any Amazon links are affiliate²

Addendum/Footnotes:

1. If you do decide to check out Consider the Lobster, the “adult” label may seem a bit on the nose, but quite accurate. I’m also not necessarily recommending this book, and certainly not the first article “Big Red Son,” even though its depiction of a certain non-CES event in Las Vegas may have made me LOL more than any other book that I’ve read in recent memory.

2. Amazon affiliate links provide me with some pittance of your purchase price when you click on them and buy the item–or, I think, anything else for a set period of time–at “no cost” to you. No cost in quotes here because, similar to how there is “no cost” when using a credit card (and getting cash back), there is a cost in the aggregate for society, even if the price is the same in that particular instance as when you pay cash. Feel free to type the titles in to your browser, or brave a real, physical bookstore if you so prefer.

And speaking of real, physical bookstores, four years ago, I was excited to be featured in the MagPi, Raspberry Pi’s official magazine. I was so excited, in fact, that I called the local Barnes and Noble to see if they had the magazine in stock. In response to my query, the lady who answered replied that they didn’t have any magazines! This seemed rather strange, but this was the summer of 2020 and there was a whole pandemic thing going on.

The question is, if you’re published in a magazine, but it never hits the store shelves, were you actually ever published? It’s a question for the ages.