bookmark_borderNo searching…

I’ve been trying, unsuccessfully, to add a better (Google) search to this site. Alas because I have a hand-coded WordPress theme, and I last looked at it about a year ago, I’ve managed to bork the search results location.

So, for now, the search isn’t working. Nuts.

Thanks to Tom, it’s all working now, and it’s even better!

bookmark_borderA few random things…

Twitter continues to absorb, offering an instant outlet for tiny thoughts and today was Muxtape day. As ever, Meg was near the front of the list, but I soon followed along. Completely illegal I’m sure so I don’t expect it to last…

Asaph has caught my eye as I continue to find a way to gather together my online life, although I’ll happily admit that these days I’m not as bothered, or driven, to find a ‘solution’ as I’m not really seeing it as a problem.

I have two blogs, a Twitter account, a Flickr account and follow copious amounts of sources via RSS. I’ve stopped watching feeds that aren’t full (with very rare and limited exceptions) and I’m quite happy with my ‘online life’. I’ve made my peace with not reading EVERYTHING that crosses my path, letting my own internal filters deal with it as best they see fit. Hey, I also delete emails… shocking I know.

I’m enjoyable busy at work, and currently looking at things like Drupal and Joomla, and possibly Ning as part of a slight shift in my role.

I’ve still not sorted through my books, but we have some time this weekend so I might take a stab at it at some point. We are off into uncharted territory on Saturday, visiting Peggy, and Sunday will be the last day without a kitchen. My letter of complaint is primed and ready (still to send it to the people who generously offered to comment on it, must remember to do that).

Building work has started opposite our office, and the piledriver started today, leaving a nice shockwave rippling across to our office and shaking my monitors ever-so-slightly. You know, just enough to make me feel nauseous. Every 5 minutes or so… bleuch.

Also need to get car tax sorted, order some Florints, organise the tiler, figure out how I’m going to do the flooring in the kitchen, do a little tidying up in the garden and… so on and so forth.

As usual, a lot of little things going on. Most of which I won’t ever mention again!

bookmark_borderI see no… photos

Flicking through Flickr … ahhhh I get it now …

Anyway.

I was … ummm … browsing Flickr last night and it struck me that I’m just not generally of a mind to take photos. I’m still very much a “go and take photos” type of photographer, rather than a “quick, take a snapshot” type of photographer. Now I’ll admit that, in the grand scheme of things, this isn’t really that big a deal but, as we all know, it’s the minor things that tend to piss us off and this, currently, is one of mine.

Before I continue I’ll point out that, as I type, my camera sits in the bag at my feet. It’s been there for the past couple of weeks (in the bag, not at my feet).

The lack of photos is not for the want of subjects either, for a start the building I work in has an art deco frontage and a modern glass, copper and metal extension, and even then I do seem to have a fairly good eye for composition (ohhh modesty, wherefore art thou?) even if my technical know-how still needs to be improved. No, I’m definitely not short of subjects.

So, I have the camera, I have the subjects. What on earth could possibly be stopping me taking more photos? Ahhh yes, of course. The idiot holding the camera of course!

Despite the fact I see many things, on a daily basis, that I think would make interesting snapshots (a shaft of light burning through the air, a discarded bike by the side of the road, the blossoming smoke rising from an industrial chimney) my camera remains unsheathed. I really, really need to get over this. But how?

I guess I just need to get over myself, get over the sense of… what? awkwardness? Not sure but I need to get my mindset sorted. Right. OK. Yes!!

In fact I’m going to take the first step right now.

There.

My camera is now on my desk.

Hey, baby steps and all that..

bookmark_borderA day in the life

As featured in the Spring 2008 edition of Communicator, the magazine for ISTC members.

I’m the Publications Team Lead at Graham Technology, a mid-sized (and growing) software company based in Scotland and like many people in this field, I have a wide range of duties. As well as the more traditional technical authoring work, I also manage resources, consider strategy and working practices for the team, and generally do my best to represent the user during development meetings. I also find myself spending time considering the information strategy of the company, investigating translation requirements, and keeping up to speed with the Technical Communications industry.

I joined Graham Technology just over a year ago and it’s my first time working in an Agile software environment. The development team use the Extreme Programming (XP) methodology and it’s taken a little getting used to, particularly as all my previous experience comes from more traditional teams, with long timescales, project managers with Gantt sheets and lots of process documentation to be completed.

There are specific challenges to working in an Agile environment and to a fair extent they shape my working day and, whilst everyday is different, they all start with the same thing. Caffeine.

I’m usually one of the first people in the office and, once the coffee machine is going, I take advantage of the peace and quiet to pick through the emails that have accumulated overnight. I monitor a variety of automated emails from different systems, all of which help me build a coherent view of what is happening during a release cycle.

We have a development arm in Jakarta so I take the time to sift through their work to check for any possible impact on the documentation. Anything that catches my eye is noted on an index card and stuck up on a dedicated whiteboard allowing anyone to see what is outstanding at any given time.

Next up is a quick check of the Publications build to make sure it has run successfully during the night. We currently use Webworks to generate Javahelp which is automatically compiled into the product each night; small changes are quickly actioned and committed to the documentation, and are then available in the next software build, keeping us in-line with the principles of Agile development.

The final set of generated emails I check are from our bug tracking system and they list what has been fixed or added in the past day. Again, anything that may impact the documentation is noted on an index card and added to the whiteboard. And, by now, the coffee is usually ready; milk and one sugar, please.

Last but not least, there may be requests for information that have come in from our Deployment staff out on customer sites. Sometimes all they need is a copy of a specific manual, other times it takes a little research to find the information they need. Once that’s done, I spend a little time skimming my RSS feeds for anything else of interest.

It’s now around 9am and the office is filling up. I typically have a few things to chase up from the previous day, and it’s a good time to have a few quick chats with the developers before they get too embroiled in their daily work.

Our Development Group is split into six distinct teams, with three technical authors covering their output from brand new features to bug fixes and product enhancements. Most of the teams have a standup meeting every day to take a quick look through the tasks that need to be completed, and during these I play user advocate, considering UI design and any information requirements that need considered. It’s a very dynamic and collaborative way of working.

Working within an Agile development environment means that things move fast and information flies in from all sorts of sources and directions. Monitoring email, changes to our internal Wiki, and chatting to the developers and testers in the teams are all part of a typical day. Placing yourself in the path of these streams of information is the best way to keep up to speed, and learn what is really happening on a day-to-day basis.

I also try and keep in touch with Marketing and Training to understand their plans and see if there is any cross-over with what we are doing in Publications. I’m striving to make our message more consistent, and improve the way we plan, design, create and distribute our product information, and maintaining direct lines of communication is crucial.

Part of my Team Lead role is to make sure the product documentation is meeting customer expectations. We have two products, a user-friendly out-of-the-box product which our Deployment staff extend using our development kit. Gathering requirements from the Deployment staff is a constant push-pull exercise and, as they are talking directly to the users of our out-of-the-box product they act as proxies who can be interviewed to make sure we are providing the right information, at the right level for the expected user.

The rest of my time is spent writing documentation. This is broken into three main types of work at any one time; small changes to the products which require less than half a day to complete, larger changes to the products which may take between a day and a week to complete, and documenting the brand new features that are being added to the product.

I start with a high-level plan of what is required and then trickle the information into the relevant document throughout the development cycle, handling changes in scope and requirements as they arise. I try and plan to work on small chunks of content, making it much easier to drop something if the requirement is descoped at any point (this is a key reason we are moving to single source our content) and I spend any additional time researching and learning the part of the product I’m working on, playing with the software regularly to make sure I fully understand both how it works and how it would most likely be used.

Like everyone else, I don’t really have a typical day. I do try and stick to plan for the first few hours but interruptions, conversations and changes of priority are all part of the challenge of working in a fast-paced software development company.

bookmark_borderLaughing is good

It’s fair to say that we are both fairly stressed with the ongoing ‘lack of kitchen’ saga, so it’s been good to have a hearty chuckle over the past couple of days.

The cat flap we fitted for Ollie is working fine. It uses a magnetic lock to stop just any old feline wandering in, and means that Ollie now has a small magnet dangling from his collar. I’m sure there are other cats in the area with the same cat flap fitted in their homes but it will stop the strays getting in.

Unfortunately for Ollie, having a magnet attached to collar makes life… interesting… particularly when your food and water bowls are made of metal … *CLUNK* … or you have to walk past the washing machine as it’s currently sitting in the living room … *KLANK* … or you walk past the clean dishes, lying at the top of the stairs as they are currently being washed in the bathroom, and a spoon attaches itself to your collar … *CLINK*. Cue one bemused cat staring down at this spoon as it follows him along the hall… “But I’m not carrying it! Get it off me!!”.

We shouldn’t laugh at him of course, but we do…

And then, off to see Jimmy Carr last night. We started with some teppenyaki, and then we (my sister and her boyfriend were with us), headed over to the Clyde Auditorium.

Suffice to say (without wanting to spoil the show for others) that he was hilarious. I’d say he was edgy but that wouldn’t really sum up his brand of humour. What he does is very smart of course, taking the audience to a place where it’s ok to laugh at a particularly distasteful joke and then taking you one step further to shock you.

Peppered with one-liners, and a nicely handled ‘open session’ with lead to some arsehole just shouting abuse (which Jimmy handled excellently “You know, whenever I get someone like you in the audience I get a nice warm glow. After all, somewhere a carer is getting the night off…”) the highlight was probably the consistent way in which he related the jokes to two 14 year olds that were sitting in the front row….

A great show and a very smart, very funny man. If you get a chance to see him live, and you aren’t easily shocked (there are recurring themes of paedophilia for example) then go and see him.

Just be careful if you decide to heckle him. He is quietly and lethally brutal.

bookmark_borderRemember to live

It seems I can’t avoid this blog post so I may as well crack on and see what falls out of my head.

My father-in-law lives in small town in Spain and, as such, is part of a tight-knit ex-pat community over there. Early this week a man we’ve met a few times, and who was always friendly and welcoming, dropped dead. We saw him just last month. Quite a shock.

Then I read this post from Tom about a man who dropped dead in the street. Tom closes his post with some advice:

…live life to the full. Make yourself happy. Try to make those that you care for happy. Your life is the only thing that you truly own and you only get one – so don’t sweat the small stuff.

Sounds twee, sounds “new-age hippy crap” but he’s right. It’s not easy though, grabbing fragments of life during the bustle of your day, pausing long enough to breathe in a moment of beauty. But we must try, mustn’t we? If not, what else is there to this life?

We all face challenges, situations arise and every day we put off doing something simple and easy. Reality slips past unnoticed, our vision narrowed by repetition. There is always something beautiful and unique, always a moment to grasp.