One of my college roommates from Michigan State saw me on television last night in Austin, Texas. Didn’t recognize me at first, but “the feigned pedantry was the same.” (It’s not feigned.)

He was watching The Writing Code, a three-part series that has apparently been running since the fall on PBS stations around the country. Gene Searchinger of Equinox Films, the director, was in Baltimore in February 2004 to get footage in The Sun’s newsroom.

Should you have an opportunity to watch — and Mr. Searchinger rounded up many people much more interesting and better informed than I am — I think that my brief appearance comes in the second part of the series, “The Art and the Craft.”