Hello Rodenians — The short, brutish, lonely month of February (for us N. Hemi folk) is done and the Spring winds are whipping all the fine sand along the coast into our ears, and so it is I — Craig Mod — Q-Tips in hand, Mt. Fuji on the horizon, once again writing to you, kind su … | Continue reading
Hello HELLO — It’s me, Craig Mod, the guy who ran that Q&A a couple weeks ago about memberships. Thanks to everyone who popped in. This is Ridgeline, the newsletter (sort of) about walking (kinda). I’m deep in Book Mode. It’s been a while since I’ve been in the Writing Phase of B … | Continue reading
Walkers Worldwide — Many thanks to the many of you who joined SPECIAL PROJECTS in the last week. It means a ton. Connected with memberships and walking, I’m giving two public livestream Q&A / presentations today. The first starts in about 30 minutes (from me sending this email), … | Continue reading
How to run a successful paid membership program in 2022 | Continue reading
Walkers extraordinaire — I’m Craig Mod, and this is Ridgeline and yet another year has passed! Three years ago — in tandem with this newsletter — I launched my SPECIAL PROJECTS membership program. Today marks the start of Memberships, Year Four. Each year I do a mega look back at … | Continue reading
Fine Rodenians — It is I, Craig Mod, proprietor of the Dreaded Yearly Membership Issue™ of this, Roden, the monthly newsletter to which you subscribed. I’ve now been running my membership program, SPECIAL PROJECTS, for three years. Meaning — it has some history. History! A strang … | Continue reading
Hello mostly-chilly Ridgeline walkers — Tags! I’ve been slowly adding tags to some Ridgeline entries as a year-end project. You can view all the current tags here. I’m chopping stuff into groups based on walks and routes. For example we have Nakasendō and Tōkaidō and Kumano Kodō … | Continue reading
Walk-curious walkers of Ridgeline: I love rules. They’re helpful: Helpful creatively, helpful cognitively (they reduce rote decision making load). Walks can be powerful tools or “platforms.” Well-considered rules applied to walks are like the low level “code” of the walk. They de … | Continue reading
Rodenians — Hello from the very futuristic sounding year of 2022. “I lived to 2022 and all I got was this t-shirt, a mind-blowing telescope that can look back a trillion years in time, and across-the-board life-changing advancements in viral mitigation.” I’m Craig Mod, and this i … | Continue reading
Hello Subscribers to this Electronic Mail Magazine — To jog the brain: I’m Craig Mod and this is Ridgeline, a newsletter about “walking” that I started in January 2019. It’s been a few months since I’ve written to you all. You may have signed up a long time ago, or very recently, … | Continue reading
How Apps are Made - Trench notes on app design | Continue reading
Hello from the middle of my November / December 2021 Ten Japan Cities Megawalk / Adventure. It has been hot, cold, freezing, a little snowy. One day it hailed with impressive violence. I’ve walked some 200km and biked 80km and have about ten days left on this trip. I ate raw chic … | Continue reading
Roden Readers! Hello. I feel like I’m in a tunnel of doing stuff and the stuff wind is whipping around and I’m about to head out to do even more stuff. I bonded with an air conditioner repairman today about the moisture a human body releases into a room. A family of four, he says … | Continue reading
The next walk is mapped and planed and booked! It starts on November 15 and ends on December 20. As usual, I’m running a pop-up newsletter. This time, it’s called, Tiny Barber, Post Office. Sign up here. Subscribe to Tiny Barber, Post Office I like big walks with strange rules. … | Continue reading
Ridgeline Walkers — Hello! I come bearing film. Today is the “premiere” of “The Craft of ‘Kissa by Kissa’” — a short doc I made showcasing a bit of the craftspersonship and production behind Kissa by Kissa. The doc is premiering (and will continue to be viewable) on YouTube right … | Continue reading
Here in Japan, to walk in the summer is madness. To bike, sanity. And, to ride an electric bike — pure divinity. I figured this out a few months ago, having — after much hemming and hawing and prolonged consideration — invested in an electric bike. I nabbed a matte black BESV PSA … | Continue reading
For the first time in a long time I spent some time with some strangers. The invitation to walk came by way of Japan’s Ministry of Environment via the Hakuhodo-backed boutique travel outfit, wondertrunk&co. Come explore the Ōdaigahara area of Yoshino-Kumano National Park in Mie / … | Continue reading
Hello from the other side of September. Good lord. What a month! I hope you’re all doing OK out there. This is Roden, a monthly newsletter by Craig Mod, written since 2011, but monthly since 2019. The humidity, I have to say, is dang near perfect. We’re in the HUMIDITY POCKET A N … | Continue reading
Ridgeliners — As you may have noticed, we’re on break. I’m on book hiatus, which is a real thing old magazines use to offer up to fancy writers. And if you were mega fancy, you still got paid while on hiatus. What a thing. (And it turns out, some magazines still offer it if you k … | Continue reading
Hello from the other side of summer. It’s cool-ish, the humidity is low. It feels like a big wet hot sick dog that had been sleeping on our faces finally woke up to go for a walk. We’re not quite ready to wind down the dehumidifiers but we can start eyeing those off buttons in gl … | Continue reading
A few days ago I did a 10,000 step walk around the Kagurazaka neighborhood of Tokyo. It was one of the hottest days of the year. You were soaked simply by standing still — the humidity in the air was high enough to nullify any effects of surface evaporation. In fact, the wet bulb … | Continue reading
Hello from the other side of an 80km pedal-assist sun-soaked bike ride culminating in a midway treat of donuts (good!) and wading into the Pacific Ocean (baptismal!), only then to hop back on and ride home one sweaty / salty human. I’m Craig Mod, this is Ridgeline, and I am feeli … | Continue reading
How the pandemic taught me to look closely at the world, and how I hope to carry that forward out the other side | Continue reading
How to run a successful paid membership program in 2020 | Continue reading
A Need to Walk - How and why we walk and how to walk better | Continue reading
There are a thousand beautiful ways to start the day that don’t begin with looking at your phone. And yet so few of us choose to do so. Technology is commanding our attention in infinite, insurmountable loops. A country trip off-grid helped me escape. | Continue reading
Our software feels less refined as our hardware achieves platonic ideals | Continue reading
How to run a successful paid membership program | Continue reading
Notes and tips on how not to be a newsletter ding-dong | Continue reading
Notes on the process behind producing the pizza toast article for Eater | Continue reading
Well, in Japan, charcoal — real, serious, gorgeous, perfectly proportioned, cylindrical, rings-like-a-chime when you clank ‘em charcoal — is still very much a thing. | Continue reading
On the resilience of books in the face of apps, attention monsters, and an ad-driven online economy | Continue reading
Soviet cosmodrome, Gagarin, Leika, launch pads, Sputnik, Soyez | Continue reading
Essay on the benefits of performant software, and how it affects user perception of engineering quality and overall usability | Continue reading
A long walk and how apps suck us in and never let us go | Continue reading
Some notes on running a publishing experiment over SMS while I walk a big chunk of Japan. | Continue reading
An interview with Lisa Brennan-Jobs, author of the best selling memoir, Small Fry. Lisa and Craig Mod discuss the design, production, and writing of this fascinating book about family, identity, and the complications of growing up in Palo Alto as the daughter of Steve Jobs. | Continue reading
Getting the iPad to Pro — The new iPad Pro is a computer from the future, with software from yesterday | Continue reading
Ebooks for All - Building digital libraries in Ghana with Worldreader | Continue reading
Notes on how to survive airplane travel, the Dalai Lama way. | Continue reading