Steel Wagstaff

Trying to do good things for good reasons

  • 90 Songs [Best of May 2017]

    90 Songs [Best of May 2017]

    Here’s 6 hours of music I listened to and enjoyed on the cusp of summer in May 2017.

  • My June 2017 Reading

    My June 2017 Reading

    Books The good news? I read a lot for my dissertation in June 2017. Even better news? Much of it was pleasurable (at least for me)–a lot of “Objectivist” poetry, biographical material on Williams and Zukofsky, and histories of late 1920s-early 1930s little magazines. I won’t list any of it here, since I’m saving these…

  • 125 Songs [April 2017]

    125 Songs [April 2017]

    Here’s a new playlist made up of nearly eight and a half hours of music I listened to and enjoyed in April 2017. Favorites from April included ANOHNI’s Paradise record, new records from Jenn Grant, Feist, Johnny Flynn and Big Thief, a live album, Waterworks, by Glenn Jones and Matthew Azevedo, and new music from Morton Valence and…

  • My May 2017 Reading

    My May 2017 Reading

    Books Pleased to report that I continued reading a lot for my dissertation (pleasurable reading, but of a different kind), and traveled to a work conference followed by a 2-week vacation starting at the end of the month. Both slowed my pleasure reading, as did the NBA playoffs, since I watched games in the evening…

  • My April 2017 Reading

    My April 2017 Reading

    Books My leisure reading of books slowed down a bit in April, as I continued getting sucked into lots more longform than I had intended and, on a happier note, did a lot more reading for my dissertation (good news!!!). Here’s some of what I read last month for pleasure. Nonfiction I spent much of…

  • 70 Songs [March 2017]

    70 Songs [March 2017]

    Here’s a playlist of 70 songs I listened to and enjoyed in March 2017. Albums I really dug into included Clap! Clap!’s Tayi Bebba, Leif Vollebeck’s Twin Solitude, Jenn Grant’s Paradise, the instrumental version of De La Soul’s and the Anonymous Nobody, Arizona Amp and Alternator’s The Open Road (a Howe Gelb project), the Milk Carton Kids’ Prologue and Serengeti…

  • 115 Songs [February 2017]

    115 Songs [February 2017]

    Here’s a megamix of almost 8 hours worth of music I listened to and enjoyed in February 2017. Records I had on pretty frequent rotation: Clap! Clap!’s A Thousand Skies, Jesca Hoop’s Memories Are Now, Chinese Man’s Shikantaza, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s The Tourist, Dr. Dog’s Abandoned Mansion, Kid Koala and Emilíana Torrini’s Music to Draw to: Satellite, Tinarwen’s Elwan, Anderson…

  • My March 2017 Reading

    My March 2017 Reading

    Books If March had a theme for me, I suppose it would have been ‘Occupy’? I may be several years late to the movement, but most of what I read this month seemed to have been written by someone involved in the Occupy protests and movements of the past half-dozen years. It’s easy to love…

  • My January and February 2017 Reading

    My January and February 2017 Reading

    Books My leisure ‘book’ reading continued to slow over the past couple months, and I haven’t had as much time for this blog, so I’m going to roll my January and February reading recap into a single post. Here’s what I read for pleasure (i.e. not for work or for my dissertation) in January and…

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  • A Guide to DIY Podcast Recording

    A Guide to DIY Podcast Recording

    A little more than two years ago, my friend Dave had an idea: he wanted to do a weekly podcast called “Off the Chain,” on which he would talk about things he thought were off the chain: chiefly, his love of Vin Diesel and terrible action movies. I couldn’t care less about Diesel or action…

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  • 101 Songs [January 2017]

    101 Songs [January 2017]

    Here’s a playlist of 101 songs (around 6 and a half hours of music) I listened to and enjoyed in January 2017. It was a fun month musically. Enjoy! Featured image by Jennifer Bastian

  • Making a Personal Website: A guide for grad students and other academics

    Making a Personal Website: A guide for grad students and other academics

    I currently work as an educational technology consultant at a large Midwestern research university. Most of the people I work with are humanities/social science grad students or faculty. One of the most common questions I get asked is how to build a website. I’ve heard it so often, helped so many friends build quick, simple…

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  • 110 Songs [December 2016]

    110 Songs [December 2016]

    Here’s a huge playlist (7+ hours) of music that I listened to and enjoyed in December 2016. Hope it helps get you through last days of winter! Featured image by Jennifer Bastian.

  • My December 2016 Reading

    Books As the year limped its way to a close, I tried to keep up my torrid reading pace. I slowed down considerably from my October/November frenzy, and spent a lot more of my free time reading and writing on dissertation related topics (hi, Objectivist poets!) but still managed to read a fair number of…

  • 2016: The Year in OER at UW-Madison

    2016: The Year in OER at UW-Madison

    2016: The Year in OER at UW-Madison OER STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK On an institutional level, the big news at UW-Madison in 2016 was the publication of the Open Education Resources (OER) page and strategic framework (pdf) on the Educational Innovation (EI) website at the beginning of the Fall 2016 semester (full disclosure: I was a co-author…

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  • 100 Songs [November 2016]

    100 Songs [November 2016]

    Here’s a playlist of 100 songs I listened to and enjoyed in November 2016. The big discovery for me was Blaze Foley, an eccentric Austin-based singer-songwriter who was shot and killed while trying to intervene in a dispute in 1989, aged 40. I probably listened to his “Clay Pigeons” and various covers of it a…

  • 150 Songs [October 2016]

    150 Songs [October 2016]

    Looking for a 10 1/2 hour playlist? Then let me tell you about this one–it’s a big collection of music I listened to and enjoyed in October of this year. Pretty eclectic, pretty varied stuff. Some records I finally got around to listening to in full and would recommend: Bon Iver’s 22, A Million; Olafur Arnalds’…

  • My November 2016 Reading

    My November 2016 Reading

    Books My reading pace slowed a bit in November (the US elections and their sad aftermath have provided me with lots of avenues for distraction and worry), but I still managed to keep up my love affair with books, though I picked a fair amount of duds this month. The poetry and fiction were great,…

  • Another 145 Songs [September 2016]

    Another 145 Songs [September 2016]

    Here’s 10+ hours of music I listened to and enjoyed in September 2016. Hard to pick out favorites amidst so much good sound, but it was a good month, and I hope you enjoy it too!

  • My October 2016 Reading

    My October 2016 Reading

    Books I wrote last month that I was on a big reading kick, and that surge of devouring books has continued in full force this month. Outside of the reading I’ve been doing for my dissertation and my work, here’s a list of the books I read for pleasure/self-education in October 2016: No Good Men…

About the Author

Hi, I’m Steel Wagstaff. I’m the product manager for Pressbooks, a Canadian company making open source book publishing software.

I live in Eugene, Oregon with my wife, Laurel Bastian, and our elementary-school aged son.

I love poetry, music, libraries, reading, playing pickup soccer, & eating vegetarian food.

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