The Areas of My Expertise
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| Author | John Hodgman |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Dutton Adult |
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Publication date
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October 20, 2005 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) & Audiobook (CD) |
| Pages | 240 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 58043280 |
| 818.607 | |
| LC Class | PN6165 .H64 2005 |
| Followed by | More Information Than You Require |
The Areas of My Expertise (ISBN , first published in 2005) is a satirical almanac by John Hodgman. It is written in the form of absurd historical stories, complex charts and graphs, and fake newspaper columns. Among its sections are a list of 700 different hobo names and complete descriptions of "all 51" US states. The full title of the book is:
The book was later released in audiobook form, narrated by John Hodgman himself with some musical accompaniment by frequent collaborator Jonathan Coulton and a guest appearance by Paul Rudd.
The interior and exterior of the book are designed by graphic artist Sam Potts who is known for the interior and exterior design of the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. and The Writer's Block.
A sequel, More Information Than You Require, was released on October 21, 2008.
The 700 Hoboes Project refers to an internet meme that originated with a recording of Hodgman's recitation of the 700 hobo names from The Areas of My Expertise. An audio file of the reading, accompanied by frequent collaborator Jonathan Coulton playing "Big Rock Candy Mountain" "live for an hour, one take", was posted to a page on the promotional website for the book.
In October 2005, on hearing the audio file, Mark Frauenfelder proposed on the BoingBoing website to have "700 cartoonists volunteer to draw one of the 700 hoboes" that Hodgman listed in the book.
A few days later, the first of the 700 hoboes ("Stewbuilder Dennis") was posted to Flickr by Daniel Cardenas and a Flickr group (700 Hoboes) was subsequently formed.
In March 2006, several contributors to the 700 Hoboes Project decided to build a portal to house the drawings posted to the Flickr group. Len Peralta of Jawbone Radio came up with a design for the site and passed it on to Dan Coulter, who built a back end system using phpFlickr, his open source wrapper for Flickr's API. Hobo illustrators Adam Koford, Mike Peterson, Ben Rollman and Eric Vespoor contributed to the creation of the website, www.e-hobo.com. The URL refers to hobo #450 in the list, "my-e-hobo.com".
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Wikipedia