John Siracusa
Really Specific Stories
What's It Like to Write for Arastakitika?
When he started writing for Arastakitika, not a lot of people were reading the website. "I think I benefited from having a gentle introduction to being a public person on the internet" He says his readership grew organically over time and has grown much more slowly than Slashdot.
John covers his extensive history as a Mac enthusiast, web developer, writer, podcaster and lover of music and art. He also explains his transition to a fully independent career on the Internet and how he has juggled various personas, roles and fandoms over the years.
Podcast case study: Accidental Tech Podcast (producer)
Find John at hypercritical.co.
Read a transcript of the episode as a styled PDF or in plain text.
Links and Show Notes
I Was Primed 00:00:00
- Mur Lafferty
- Geek Fu Action Grip (now in the Internet Archive)
- I Should Be Writing
- iPod
- iTunes
- NPR
- Apple Inc.
- YouTuber
- Dan Benjamin
- RSS
- Hypercritical (podcast)
- Gabe Newell
- Valve Corporation
- Half-Life (series)
- Portal (series)
- Ars Technica
- Book review: Infinite Loop — John’s first article for Ars Technica
- Ivory tower
- Hypercritical (the mentioned article from John’s Ars Technica blog, now linked on his website)
- Steve Jobs
I Had the Cultural Context 00:08:22
- Home computer (redirected from ‘personal computer revolution’)
- Commodore VIC-20
- Macintosh 128K
- Graphical user interface (GUI)
- Pictionary
- Usenet
- U2
- Ken Fisher
- Mac (computer)
- Mac OS X
- NeXT
- Macintosh clone
- OS X Reviewed (a blog post that links to all of John’s reviews)
- Engadget
- ebook
- Amazon (company)
- Unix
- MacUser
- Macworld
- MacWEEK
Multiple ‘Me’s 00:20:13
- Accidental Tech Podcast (ATP)
- A text file online that preserves information from John’s U2 Lyrics Archive
- Perl
- CPAN
- 5by5
- Jason Snell
- The Incomparable
- Robot or Not?
- Merlin Mann
- Back to Work
- Marco Arment
- Build and Analyze was a weekly news and discussion show about technology by Marco Arment and Dan Benjamin, which can now be found in the Internet Archive.
- Casey Liss
- Hypercritical (website)
- Independence Day (blog post about John’s career transition)
- Open source
A Childhood Dream 00:33:42
- BASIC
- HyperCard
- Computer programming
- Web developer
- Below are blog posts about John’s two Mac apps:
- Front and Center; and
- SwitchGlass, along with the more recent SwitchGlass 2.0.
- Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC)
- API
- iOS
- CodeWarrior
- App Store (iOS/iPadOS)
- Mac App Store
Apple Tech-nerd World 00:42:18
- AnandTech
- Tom’s Hardware
- Microsoft Windows
- Windows 95
- Celeron
- Context collapse
- Fandom
- Anti-fan
- Some references to terminals include:
- ‘Seeing the matrix’ means seeing the true nature of reality (or any particular situation) and is a phrase from The Matrix franchise.
- Marvel Comics
- DC Comics
- Ford Mustang
- Chevrolet Camaro
- Tom Cruise
- New York City
- The Incomparable Mothership
- Mastodon (social network)
Repotting Myself 00:59:13
- John’s use of the initialism ‘m.o.’ refers to the Latin term ‘modus operandi’, which is translated approximately as ‘mode (or manner) of operating’.
- ARM architecture family (John’s reference to ‘ARM Macs’, running Apple Silicon)
- John Gruber
- BMX bike
- Remote-control car
Credits
Recorded and edited by Martin Feld, using Audio Hijack and Ferrite Recording Studio
Original podcast theme music by Alex Canion
Contact
- Website: rsspod.net
- Email: martin@loungeruminator.net
- Mastodon: social.lol/@martinfeld
- Micro.blog: micro.blog/martinfeld
A Special Note
Martin is a paid subscriber of John Siracusa’s shared membership program for Accidental Tech Podcast; this did not influence any of the questions that were asked and did not place any expectations on John as a participant of this academic podcasting project.
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