If you've got a minute, please complete a quick survey about a new technical writing track that may possibly be implemented by USF (Univ. of South Florida). The survey's purpose: “We seek your advice on ways to provide the Tampa Bay area with more qualified, desired, and hirable technical communicators.” Survey link: ttp://CTLSilhouette.wsu.edu/surveys/ZS67087
I once read an essay by Joseph Epstein in which he describes the glee and suspense in watching a stranger read his essay. It has happened to many novelists too -- the coincidental (dreamed-about) situation where you encounter a stranger reading page after page of your book, without realizing you're present. I had the opportunity to do somewhat the same today: to watch someone try to follow instructions in a guide I was writing. I learned ...
June 2008 Update: I know you probably found this post by searching for the word Grasshopper. Feel free to save this grasshopper image and use it however you want. I don't know the official name of the grasshopper, but I took the photo in St. Petersburg, Florida. I then removed the background in Photoshop. If you know the specific species name of this grasshopper, let me know. This beautiful grasshopper was hanging out on our patio wall al...
I was reflecting today on Avery's love of reading. When Avery was a baby, Shannon and I had a goal of reading her 3 books a night before bed time. We thought it would be a good idea, and this goal turned into a habit and routine that we have kept up over the years, for the most part. I've watched other parents put their children to bed in 5 minutes, not reading them anything. Now that we've been reading to Avery at bedtime for nearly six ...
Josh Bernoff wrote an intriguing post (titled "I'm sick of users") about why we should avoid the term "users." Josh says, Nobody talks about users of dishwashers, or users of retail stores, or users of telephones. So why are we talking about "users" of computers, browsers, and software? Try, just for a day, to stop using this word. You'll be amazed at how differently you think about the world. Web users become people looking for informati...
If you ask someone who has never written technical documentation before to describe a procedure, chances are he or she will give you a document that looks as follows: It completely omits numbered steps. Each paragraph or line is followed by a full-size screenshot that takes up half the page. Quotation marks surround various names somewhat at random. Fortunately these mistakes are easy to fix. Steps When describing a sequence, number eac...
I recently listened to a podcast in which Matt Mullenweg, one of the WordPress founders, explained that he and other developers are trying to push out new releases of WordPress as quickly as possible -- every 90 or 120 days. He said users like an accelerated development cycle. Software that stagnates, which isn't updated but every year and a half, loses its appeal to users. I like change, even when it's not always for the better. Change i...
Working in IT often means sitting motionless in front of a computer for most of the day. Except for typing, the rest of your body remains stagnant, sedentary, in a state of atrophy. Blogger J. Angelo Racoma explains what happens as he turned into a full-time freelancer and blogger and settled into a sedentary lifestyle: When I quit the corporate grind to be a freelancer and a problogger, I usually stayed at home when I didn't have meeting...
I'm on vacation in Utah right now. The other day Shannon's dad and I rode four wheelers up the side of Tower Mountain. You have to know exactly where to get off the trail to find this monument, because there's no marker indicating its presence, and it's about 25 yards off the main jeep trail. Here's a closer view of what it says: Apparently, on January, 10, 1914, John Koyle says he received a visit from two messengers (in a dream?) tell...
When you begin modifying your blog's stylesheet or designing your own blog, you may notice that some elements display differently in Internet Explorer (IE) than they do in Firefox. IE is usually the problematic browser, and it's hard to say why there are so many CSS display quirks and bugs from Microsoft. But there is a quick, easy fix around the troubling display discrepancies. In short, you create two stylesheets, one for IE and one for...
Shannon's Makes Me Smile Topic asks what I would do with ten days to live. Day 1: Absorb the shock and start planning. Let's be real folks. The first day you find out about this, you'll spend it second-guessing doctors, reacting defensively, and considering alternatives to prescribed ends (assuming its medical). Near the end of the day, you'll begin planning how you'll spend your remaining time. Day 2: Spend the day with your children. ...
White Space is a principle of layout and design well known among graphic artists, but less known and practiced among some technical writers. I have a deep interest in Web design, and white space seems to be one of the first, fundamental principles of design for both on and offline content. Paradox of White Space White space also has an interesting paradox surrounding it: The absence of graphics and text plays a significant role in increas...
Rather than having two distinct blogs -- a professional blog and a personal blog -- you can have one blog with a special hidden category that is separate from the home page and feed. The special hidden category (perhaps for personal, off-topic posts) can have its own feed and template appearance. The posts from this special category also won't appear on your home page, so your readers won't be bothered by your randomness. For example, in ...
I went fishing last night with a couple of friends down at the North Pier by the Sunshine Skyway. We didn't catch a single thing (except a tiny slender sucker fish). It was nice to spend the evening on the pier. It's so picturesque. The appeal of fishing is to be near the water. Dolphins swim around constantly in the water; pelicans fly by and crash into the water or soar like planes in the sky. I was so tired from having stayed up late t...
In an interview with Lorelle Van Fossen on adii, Lorelle says, I have a very narrow focus on Lorelle on WordPress. There are a lot of topics I'd love to cover but won't. I write about blogging and WordPress. That's basically it. If it doesn't tie in nicely, it won't go on that blog. I write very little about monetizing blogs as that turns blogs into businesses, and there are plenty who cover that market. The only time I cover that subject...
