This post is part of Jane's Blog Carnival. The theme this week is the movie Some Kind of Wonderful, a classic 80s high-school movie that my wife quotes from daily. In one scene, the main character, Keith, intentionally sets off a fire alarm to land in detention, hoping to sit near his daydream love, Amanda Jones. It turns out Amanda -- unbeknownst to Keith -- sprung herself from detention through her flirtatiousness with a teacher, leavin...
One of my readers sent me a link to today's New York Times article on blogging titled "In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Til They Drop." I find it touching that someone would think of me while reading the article. :) Actually, I read a sneak peak of the article in yesterday's Blog Herald. It made me think hard about how much I've been posting lately. Here are a few excerpts from the article: Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla...
"Technical Communicator" is a term that, as much as I dislike, can be extremely important for triggering Google Alerts set up by the Society for Technical Communication's Intercom editorial staff. How do I know this? Well, a couple of months ago I saw a summary of my blog post on video cameras and SMEs mentioned in the STC Intercom's Cut & Paste section (shown below). (Direct link to Intercom article above.) My original blog post was...
This is a funny video of Chris Pirillo talking about how difficult it is to teach people software. In software training sessions I've given recently, I've learned that demos can be incredibly boring unless you do them in a certain way. People don't learn much by simply watching you click through everything and explain tabs and buttons. People learn by doing, so you have to get them doing something. Here's my recipe, recommended by a fri...
Listen here: In this podcast, I talk with Theresa Putkey, a usability consultant in Vancouver, about how she transitioned from technical writing into usability. This is part II of the previous conversation with Theresa. Learn more about Theresa by reading her blog. You can also read Theresa's articles on Boxes and Arrows. Topics in this Podcast In this podcast, we talk about the following: How to move into usability De...
My iTunes podcast page is updated (finally). I'm using Feedburner's iTunes podcasting elements options to meet all the iTunes specifications. I hope this works better than Podpress did. Subscribe to my podcast in iTunes. (I ended up burning a new Feedburner feed and resubmitting it, so if you still see the old one in there, ignore it.) Note also that I have an iTunes subscribe button in my left sidebar now. By the way, how many of you out...
Tonight I participated on a career panel for technical writing majors at Utah State University. In preparation, I tried to think of answers to questions they might ask. The one question that I was sure some student would ask is this: If you were to do it over again, would you choose technical writing as your career? I started reading through some back posts on my site, particularly this one -- Is Technical Writing Boring? There's some tho...
Jane is hosting a blog carnival with the theme "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times." This is a quote from a Dickens novel that I should have read sometime in my life but haven't. The way the carnival works, everyone writes a post related to this announced theme, publishes it on their blog, and then adds a link to it on her original post. Given that Jane, who also doubles as my wife in a fictional blog world in which my na...
I just ran across the most comprehensive list of Twitter resources and other Twitter advice here: Twitter Tools, Tweaks, and Theories, by John Unger. So far I'm only using Twhirl and the Twitter Tools WordPress plugin, as well as TwitterBerry for my BlackBerry. But Unger exposes me to about two dozen more Twitter tools. Unger also lists some of his favorite uses for Twitter: Note to Self: Twitter has become the quickest and easiest way to...
As I was upgrading to WordPress 2.5 today, I discovered a really creepy widget that I just had to add to my blog. The Live Traffic Feed Widget from Feedjit allows you to see details about who's visiting your blog in real-time. If you look in the right sidebar of my blog (lower-right), you'll see everyone who is reading my blog at the current moment -- both what they're reading and where they're from. This kind of information creeps me out...
Although the podcasts I listen to are usually tech podcasts, such as the highly entertaining TWIT (by Leo Laporte), I also enjoy a good alien podcast now and then. Mysterious Universe, produced by Benjamin Grundy, is one of the most fun-to-listen-to podcasts I've come across. I'm not someone who believes in aliens, but dude, you should hear some of the content Grundy plays on the show. For the sake of pure imaginative entertainment (simil...
Just a few days after someone begins blogging seriously, he or she starts hungering after subscribers and comments. We want readership, we want lots of people visiting our site, reading our posts, subscribing to our feed, and regularly leaving comments. This, my friend Clyde says, is the "payoff" of blogging. Although I try to write for a higher purpose outside of trying to get more readers and comments, I must admit that the interactivi...
Next week I'm participating on a career advice panel for technical writing students at a local college. In my attempt to gather some useful advice, I'd like to know the best move you've made to grow your career. For me, one of the best things has been starting my blog and podcast. It's kept me active and engaged in the latest trends of the field. Of course, it has also taken a lot of my time, which I might devote to other things. Still, e...
April 20, 2008 Update: If you're interested in the WordPress training, see the course announcement about the 2-hour session I'm giving on April 26. I'm planning to offer some WordPress training, and I'd like to know if you're interested. By WordPress I mean the self-hosted WordPress blogs that you create with WordPress software from Wordpress.org, not the freely hosted blogs at WordPress.com. WordPress is software that can be so easy a f...
Heidi Miller has some excellent tips on interviewing. In a presentation she gave at the Portable Media Media Expo, she explained several techniques that have encouraged me to change my interviewing style. Here are four key points from her presentation: Don't send the interviewee the questions before the interview. I guess I'm a latecomer to this style, but I'm now totally convinced that it's best not to send questions beforehand. Sure you...
