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Writing

I have been writing, editing, and occasionally self-publishing since I was a kid.

From an early age I hand-wrote pretend newspapers, created booklets, and even did some homebrew comic books (which a local comics shop indulgently agreed to sell on consignment). In high school, I worked on our school's weekly newspaper, first as an award-winning reporter and then as Opinions Editor. I also founded and edited a newsletter for the performing arts magnet program there. Outside of school, I edited and contributed to several local punk and underground zines.

During my twenties, my writing took a more professional turn. For two-plus years at Club Lower Links in Chicago, I edited and co-wrote a comprehensive monthly press release detailing the venue's nightly programming of music, performance, literary arts, and film. Through much of that decade, I continued to edit and contribute (often pseudonymously) to underground zines and alternative magazines, covering a range of topics and audiences including long-form journalism on national security and politics, and items about film and local fringe music.

As the World Wide Web emerged in the early 1990s I became a publisher of e-zines, public FTP archives, and web magazines. At one of the first ISPs in Chicago, I compiled and maintained support content and link portals for customers, while also regularly contributing to internal support Usenet newsgroups.

In my subsequent career as a web developer I have done a great deal of technical writing, including documentation, consulting reports, and articles for Microsoft.

Throughout it all I've written press releases, program notes, scripts for film and performance, blog posts, and arts reviews.

Technical writing

I have extensive experience writing and editing technical content. I am comfortable addressing a wide range of audiences, including engineers, content managers and editors, senior stakeholders, and the general public.

Much of my work in this realm has been client-facing documentation, often for the use and maintenance of CMS systems. Not surprisingly, all of that is under NDA and cannot be shared here. My output runs the gamut: system and code docs, wiki articles, in-depth procedurals, conceptual explainers, CMS module and capability catalogs, detailed in-code documentation using JSDoc and similar protocols, READMEs, and troubleshooting step-throughs.

As a dev lead and consultant, I've also written project and feature specs, dev plans, product and technology surveys, and similar analyses.

Microsoft Technical Customer Stories and Learning Articles

I've also written for Microsoft's Azure documentation portal and other public learning resources. Here are a few examples.

  • Articial intelligence (AI)

    Microsoft Data Architecture Guide: Azure Architecture Center (April 14, 2020)

    A general overview of AI and its core concepts, positioned as both an introductory article and a gateway to more in-depth content within the official Azure documentation portal. I was the sole writer of the original piece, researched and compiled the myriad reference links, and incorporated feedback from numerous subject matter experts and technology stakeholders within Microsoft. (It has since undergone some expansion, but still retains my original core contributions.)

  • RXR Realty reopens for business using Azure IoT and the intelligent edge to empower tenant safety

    Microsoft Customer Stories (September 15, 2020)
    [link archived from original]

    How one of the largest real estate owners in New York City went from kicking off a smart building initiative to suddenly retooling the same infrastructure in record time to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The article was originally assigned as a pure Technical Customer Story, but evolved to also be part case study and profile. A large number of stakeholders and subject matter experts across Microsoft and multiple partner companies contributed their expertise and feedback. I was the sole writer and interviewer, completing the assignment on an unusually short timeline.

  • MTR innovates with AI and CRM to power a lifestyle mobile app on Azure

    Microsoft Customer Stories (December 1, 2020)
    [link archived from original]

    How Hong Kong's mass transit provider leveraged artificial intelligence to evolve their mobile app from a schedules-and-fares tool into a full "lifestyle companion," tightly integrating customer experiences across transit systems, stations, shops, and malls. This Technical Customer Story was especially challenging to write, and took a very long time to finalize. The architecture is complex, but our limited access to the technical personnel who designed and built it meant we had to deduce from partial information, rather than summarize from the customary interviews. I did all of the initial research and a number of drafts, then worked with another writer who ultimately shepherded it through final approvals and publication.

  • Baseball decision analysis with ML.NET and Blazor

    Microsoft Data Architecture Guide: Azure Architecture Center (June 10, 2020)
    [link archived from original]

    An "example workload" describing the high-level logic flow of a ready-to-use AI application, with build and deployment instructions. I was the primary writer, working directly with the app developer.

Program notes for film screenings

Since co-founding The Sprocket Society in 2007, I have compiled and written program notes for many of its screenings. These booklets (over 25 to date) include production histories, biographical profiles, preservation info, and excerpts from archival sources. I always like to include annotated bibliographies, sharing source info so that folks can dig in deeper on films, artists, or technologies that interest them.

An archive of these program booklets is available at The Sprocket Society web site.

Selected program booklets

  • Talking Pictures: Origins of Sound Cinema 1913 – 1929

    Grand Illusion Cinema (August 21, 2018)
    PDF: 12 pages

    A journey through the evolution of sound movie technology, from the Edison Kinetophone to De Forest Phonofilm to Vitaphone and Fox Movietone. The program notes discuss each film's production and historical context, as well as technical information about the sound process used. Following the program's chronological progression, this approach provides something of an historical arc without an additional backgrounder piece. An appendix of photographs depicts notable equipment and film formats.

  • Film Dada: Cinema of the Bearded Heart

    Base: Experimental Arts + Space and The Church House (January 26 & 27, 2018)
    PDF: 20 pages

    Detailed notes on the production, history, and original musical accompaniment of seven films associated with the Dada avant garde art movement. Prepared for a pair of screenings accompanied live by musicians Lori Goldston (cello) and Dave Abramson (percussion). I believe this is one of the only thorough surveys of the art movement's cinematic oeuvre along these lines (in English, certainly), focusing on the historical aspects rather than theory and analysis. The information about the original music scores and accompaniment is also unusually comprehensive. While admittedly hampered by my lack of French and German, researching this took a surprising amount of digging and piecemeal collation (particularly viz. the music).

  • Silent Magic: Trick Films and Special Effects, 1895 – 1912

    Northwest Film Forum (May 20, 2014)
    PDF: 16 pages, plus poster reproduction

    A survey of pioneering special effects epics by Georges Méliès and others, with films from the United States, France, England, and Russia. The notes include biographical sketches of the filmmakers, historical context, and production information. A backgrounder piece adapted from entries in the Encyclopedia of Early Cinema situates the films within the arc of early cinematic evolution, as well as their roots in European theatrical tradition. This particular screening was an expanded version of a program originally presented in 2013 at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz in Austin, TX.

  • Robert Breer – Visions in Motion: A Memorial Retrospective, 1954-2003

    Northwest Film Forum (April 18, 2012)
    PDF: 15 pages, plus poster reproduction

    An extensive evening-length program of 17 short films by the celebrated experimental animator, spanning his long career. These program notes reflect an approach I'm fond of as a reader: heavy use of raw nuggets, excerpts, and interview quotes pulled from primary sources and contemporaneous press. I find these tend to give a particularly vivid flavor of the artist's intentions and the original reactions to their works, in a way that post-facto analysis and summaries rarely do. In this case it was also quite appropriate, given that the screening was a retrospective memorial to Breer himself. The screening was the second of three in a series called Experimental Memoria, which was devoted to notable filmmakers who had passed away within the prior year. Also featured in the series were George Kuchar and Adolfas Mekas.

  • Funny Stuff: Silent Comedies and Cartoons

    Grand Illusion Cinema (April 18, 2012)
    PDF: 10 pages, plus poster reproduction

    Three two-reel comedies, each preceeded by a silent cartoon. The program notes begin with one-page historical backgrounders on two-reelers and early cartoon animation, and then cover each of the films shown, delving into the various filmmakers and stars. I did another screening using the same format the following year ("Funny Business"), and the program notes for that are also among those available on The Sprocket Society's site.

Blog archive

For many years, I maintained a blog called Mugu Brainpan. I decommissioned it in 2016, after a prolonged languishment. A few of my posts have been cited elsewhere in footnotes, or linked to as source info. These are archived below. (The original URLs are still active but redirect to these instances.)

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