Last year I flew to America (visiting Boston and Chicago) and this year I’ll be flying to London (twice) and to Singapore later in the year. I’m travelling much more than I used to so I guess it’s only natural that I’m pondering how to rebalance my carbon emissions.

This definitely played into my decision making when I recently changed cars and whilst it wasn’t my main focus, I was pleased to get a hybrid engined car (petrol/battery). It’s also a nice side-effect of getting fit and cycling to work now and then (not as often as I should mind you) that I don’t run my car as often either.

However, to properly rebalance things I need to do more. Recycling at home is one thing but given the air miles I’m clocking up I’ve been looking at other options.

On the face of it, it looks quite straightforward, carbon offsetting through something like carbon credits seems to be the right thing to do but, as ever, when you start to dig a little into the motivations behind some of these things and part of me does agree that all I’m really doing is ‘buying absolution’.

So what to do? Stop flying to far away places? Having not travelled much beyond Europe until recently (one trip to San Franscisco 11 years ago this feels a little bit harsh but no, I’m not suggesting I’m in ‘carbon credit’ already. Perhaps the bike thing is what to focus on first and foremost?

Anyone else got any ideas/suggestions/thoughts?

The time has come, so Gordon said, to talk of many things, of slides and chats, and learning facts, and something else that rhymes but I’m rubbish at poetry (with sincere apologies to Lewis Carroll).

Enough of that though, what I want to talk about is the Technical Communications Conference 2012 (TCUK12) and why you should go.

Disclaimer: I serve on the Council of the ISTC, who organise this event. 

Let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time a young (ok, middle-aged) man had started a new job and was trying to figure out the best way to improve things and solve some of his problems. The year was 2007.

At the time, the young man (oh shut up) had started a blog and was finding a lot of interesting people writing about Technical Communications. From that he heard about something called DITA. To learn more, as it sounded very much like it might solve his problems, he went to a conference (X-Pubs) in Reading. He learned a lot, and met a lot of inspiring and interesting people. Turned out DITA wasn’t for him though (yet).

Later that year, he had the opportunity (entirely thanks to his blog and a lovely woman named Anne Gentle) to attend and speak at TICAD, an opportunity that came about directly through this blog. It was a smaller conference in scale but just as rich in information.

Having set a precedent of attending conferences, he looked around for another the following year and, remembering how good he found the Digitext conferences (many years ago now) he decided to attend the User Assistance conference in Edinburgh (2008). Again, he found himself surrounded by his peers, and took away some valuable lessons.

The following year he heard of new conference, and as it had multiple streams of presentations he thought that would give him the best chance of learning. He also felt foolhardy enough to present at it (but let us not dwell on that). The conference was called Technical Communications UK (2009).

And that’s quite enough babbling about me.

It’s always interesting to see what presentations and theme the conference will have, each year has had a different third stream, and this year it’s focusing on Accessibility and Usability, something I know many technical writers working in a software environment inevitably get drawn into (if it’s easier to use, it’s easier to document). Add in the longer workshops on the first day and, for the money, it’s hard to beat.

Like many people I’ve had to convince my boss it is worthwhile letting members of our team attend, but I’m convinced that everyone will find a handful of topics that they could learn about and look to apply at their own workplace, the trick is to plan to do just that.

Any time I’ve ever returned from a conference I’ve been excited and looking to apply ideas and techniques to what we do. If we hadn’t managed to implement some of these things then it would be much harder to ask again the following year as the evidence of value is a hard thing to argue against!

Above all though, TCUK seems to have a good energy, a good ‘vibe’ and everyone who attends seems that little bit more driven and up for learning, discussion and basically getting stuck in. I does help that most people stay over so you start to make friends over a glass of wine (or three) and that carries through into the next day giving the entire conference a relaxed, friendly feel.

If you only plan on attending one conference this year, I would heartily suggest TCUK as a great starting point.

Hope to see you there!

Gordon posted a photo:

Gordon posted a photo:

Gordon posted a photo:

Gordon posted a photo:

Ever wanted to just throw everything away and start over?

I’ve been tempted by this notion recently and, whilst it may seem a bit ill-conceived, part of me does wonder what would happen if we just, quietly, started removing some parts of our documentation.

In fairness, we’ve done that in the past. Our Development Kit has many aspects to it but, applying that old favourite 80/20 rule, we realised we didn’t need to maintain or even publish documentation on every single function point.

One of the reasons for the current line of thinking is that, quite simply, we have too much information. There are too many places to find information about our product, so we are refocusing and slimming down our offerings to make it easier for our customers.

This is a change of direction for us. When I first joined this company, to start building a team as there were no technical writers with the company when I joined, I inherited a lot of legacy documentation, not all of it particularly useful (my oft quoted example was finding one single page of documentation for a particular Tool in the Development Kit. One page for an entire tool packed with functionality, that you launch in the same manner as every other Tool in the Development Kit, which told you … how to launch the Tool. Useless much?). The challenge on joining was to improve the quality and coverage of the documentation.

And we’ve been very successful! We have a rich set of information available, but over time it has, as it always does, started to degrade. We have added more and more and, whilst we have consolidated where possible, the pace of product development here means we are usually hanging on to the coat tails of the next release.

So, with some changes to responsibilities and a shuffling of resource we are now in a position to take stock and start removing content and completely overhaul the structure of what we deliver. That will help improve findability (our main aim) and by focusing on the content that is really needed we can improve the quality as well.

It may also mean a change of authoring tool to support the outputs we want but more on that, later.

Gordon posted a photo:

pussylequeer:

Angelina Jolie photographed by Annie Leibovitz

We did done a holiday!

We had a few simple criteria for our holiday. It needed to be under £500 each, it needed to be somewhere hot and sunny, and ideally it needed to be all inclusive.

After various online searches, we had it narrowed down to a week in Cyprus, or a week in Tunisia. Icelolly.com helped keep the price to just under £400 pp and we ended up picking Tunisia as it was a bit different (and Kirsty has been to Cyprus before).

It’s safe to say we lucked out and had a fantastic holiday!

We stayed at a hotel that was built in the 1970s, built in the style of an old Medina, mostly two stories tall and sprawling over the area of a small town, it was Tunisian to the core. Driving past other hotels in the area (Yasminne Hammamet) and I have to admit it was nice to be in one of larger hotels (the more typical Costa del Sol style, 6-8 floors with boxy rooms).

The room upgrade helped too, of course.

I’ll admit that I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from Tunisian but I’d heard good things about the country and the people. I wasn’t proven wrong. The Tunisian people were friendly and, with a few words of faltering Arabic, always ready to help with a smile and a laugh.

The hotel itself was great, the staff efficient and an enthusiastic ‘animation’ team meant there were plenty of activiteis for us… to largely ignore (we did a bit of archery but our focus was to be lazy!), the food was great and well enough varied that you never got bored, and the sun did it’s bit and for the most part shone brightly, keeping things at toasty 28C or so (we think we topped 30C one of the days).

I ate camel steak, bartered in the souk (and no doubt still got ripped off), visited Carthage and Sidi Bou Said, had a wonderful Turkish Bath and massage, and did a whole lot of lazing around and chilling out.

In fact the only negatives were the security queues at the Enfidha airport, but such is life.

I’m back home now, feeling properly relaxed and upbeat, with a reasonable tan (we were only there for 7 days) and a desire to go back again. The resort itself is very similar to Andalucia, there is a Moorish influence to be found, and a similar climate. Learn a few basic Arabic phrases and don’t get put off by the sellers in the souk, it’s part of the fun to chat with them and avoid getting dragged into their stores ‘just for a look’.

I’d happily, highly, recommend it for a sunshine break. Yes, it was a package holiday, but with excellent customer service, it really did feel like we got a lot of value for our money.

Some of our memories of Tunisia.

Gordon posted a photo:

Gordon posted a photo:

Gordon posted a photo:

Gordon posted a photo:

Gordon posted a photo:

Gordon posted a photo:

Gordon posted a photo:

Gordon posted a photo:

Gordon posted a photo:

Gordon posted a photo:

Gordon posted a photo:

Gordon posted a photo:

Gordon posted a photo:

Gordon posted a photo:

Gordon posted a photo:

nevver:

Bed Cartography

nothingpersonaluk:

Helmut Newton 1999

IN FOCUS  HELMUT NEWTON

nothingpersonaluk:

edited… /np via spottedhyenas

> Please FOLLOW 

nevver:

Bending Light

dailybunny:

Rabbit Foundling Ruediger Sleeps on Keeper’s Hand

Photos by Rolf Vennenbernd, who wrote the following:

Rabbit foundling Ruediger sleeps on the hand of keeper Kristina at the zoo in Muenster, western Germany, on April 4, 2012. Ruediger, weighing 72 grams, and his sister Kaline (60 grams) were found in a dung pile at the zoo and are brought up now by keepers.

Photos via

http://www.istc.org.uk

It’s Friday the 13th (still!) what better day to announce that the new ISTC website is going live.

I have just updated the domain nameservers to point to the new website. It can take a day or so for these things to propagate through the Internet so it might not appear immediately for everyone.

If you experience any problems or spot anything that needs corrected please let me know.

I have still to upload all of the InfoPlus and Communicator archives, but aside from that, the rest of the content should be available.

http://www.istc.org.uk

But thought I’d say hello.

Gosh, quite a lot has happened in the past, what, 10 days.. hang on, IS THAT ALL? Blimey.

So, I bought a new car. It’s blue (Horizon Turquoise Blue to you). It’s a hybrid. It has a few nice gadgets. It’s quite small. It’s rather bloody lovely and looks like this:

Honda CRZ.

That website is about to get switched on so I will have a fair bit less stress and will finally be able to build my Lego Space Shuttle (my promise to myself for getting it launched… see what I did there…).

I’ve lost some more weight.

Then put some of it back on.

Then lost some more. The trend is still downwards but I also ended up on antibiotics so I’m not disheartened. Determined still!

I have also toyed with writing up my own inner thoughts as I continue to battle to lose weight, largely prompted by reading The Skinny Conspiracy which, if you battle with your weight, or an eating disorder, or just generally struggle with your own body image, then you might want to give it a read.

Ohh yeah, and one of several PPI claims came back with a settlement figure that was a VERY nice surprise (five figures nice!). So my ex-wife and I get a nice wee pot of cash. Smiles all round for that one.

Anyway, can’t stop. Website to launch and need to read up on my holiday.

Oh yeah… off to Tunisia at the start of May… didn’t I mention that?

nevver:

Calvin and Hobbes

spiritguide:

Trust Your Heart! (by katiedaisy)

vintagegal:

Bettie Page and Olivia de Berardinis “Hot Sauce” Illustration

thedailywhat:

Early Bird Special: When Nike gave Internet video maker Casey Neistat a hefty advance payment and orders to #makeitcount, it’s unlikely this is what the company had in mind. Nicely done.

[youtube]

(via xkcd: Lakes and Oceans)

Go on a walk with me?

April?

APRIL!

What the…

How does this happen?!

Anyway, life continues apace (it seems). Holidays are being booked, cars being pondered, and still in the background a website remains unfinished. Must. Get. It. Done.

Weight continues to fluctuate, the last two weeks I’ve been ill (again) and as the course of antibiotics finishes I’m getting back on track, and back on my bike. Need to get rid of 5kg ASAP!

I know I work best when I have a goal so my first is a 50-mile pootle along the Forth & Clyde canal on the 20th May. Plan is to cycle to work a few times, and hopefully fit in a couple of weekend cycles from Glasgow to Balloch as well to get my legs moving. Add in a few games of basketball, the occasional game of badminton and I should be back on track in no time.