bookmark_borderMiscellany

Random thoughts of a Sunday morning.

And yes, I’m sitting waiting to get through to buy my ticket for Glastonbury next year. No, the website won’t load, yes the phone line is constantly engaged.

You know you are bad at packing when you have several open ‘I’ll-just-take-them-in-the-car’ boxes.

Anyone else on WordPress seeing a lot more spam in their comments? Thank the lord for Akismet! By the way, does anyone pay for that? Is it like Xmarks, something you’d pay for but don’t?

Speaking of which, if you use Xmarks and want to, maybe, see if you paying for it would keep it going (it’s folding up), then go read this!

Sorting through boxes that have been unopened and in your loft for several years isn’t all that fun. The reality of what is happening is writ large in the memories we will always share.

I need to buy a new kettle. Must remember to write that down somewhere.

Music wise I seem stuck in a bit of a BBC Radio 6 place, all new bands, luscious sounds and the odd blast from the past. Where did all the rock music go?

Quite excited to go to Glastonbury next year though, never been and will need advice on what to take and what NOT to take. Also where the feck to sleep, in a tent? Off-site somewhere? And, of course, there will be endless rounds of “right, I’ll go and see them and then head there to see her, and then I’ll… ohh, wait no. I’ll go and see him, and then her, then I’ll go there to see… no… right. OK, this time… I’ll start here and…”

The cat likes boxes. Specifically, sleeping in them. Specifically, one that almost got taped shut as I presumed from the weight that it was as full as it could be.

You know how I have that other blog, well I wondered why I hadn’t had any comments on it and realised I’d turned them off. Only thing is, I turned them back on but they don’t work. I’ve decided this is for a reason and I’m leaving them off.

It gets really boring sitting watching a website NOT load, hitting F5 over and over and over and over…

Ohhh and applications that popup a dialog and steal focus, with OK set as the default button so, when I’m typing and glance down at the keyboard, the dialog pops up just as I hit the spacebar… in other words, I don’t even see anything except a brief blip on the screen then something starts up, or shuts down. Yeah. I DO NOT LIKE THOSE!

I have a lot patience threshold. 45 minutes sitting waiting and I’m at the “you know, if it’s this bad getting tickets, what is it going to be like at the fucking thing? It’ll probably rain anyway… shall I even bother?”. Then I think of the alternatives… T in the Park, and decide, yeah, I’ll hang in there a bit longer. Note to T in the Park, up your prices! (in the hope of weeding out the dickheads).

Hmmmm yes, yes I am a snob. This fact doesn’t really bother me.

It’s amazing what you can achieve in one room whilst waiting on a website to load. That’s my little office ready to be moved.

And yes, this is what Twitter is like. Except those big long sentences obviously.

bookmark_borderHoping for Mental

Ahhh yes, it makes perfect sense now I’ve realised what is going to happen. There is nothing I can do to stop it, so, as I have before, I’ll just go with the flow whilst the madness unfurls around me.

If you can keep your head when all around you are losing theirs…

We are waiting to hear if the people who viewed our house a couple of weeks ago are going to make an offer. They are waiting on an offer being made on their property and are expecting it this week.

Which, if we are lucky, will mean that by this time next week we will be agreeing moving dates and so on. All good.

That is until I realised that September is already a very busy month for me. I’m speaking at a conference in the middle of September, have several things going on at work that I can’t drop out of at this point, not to mention a few birthdays to remember (my parents both have birthdays in September). I may also be needing to find somewhere to live, pack the house into boxes, get a van and a man service to help us move, deal with the cancelling of accounts, paying off of debts and everything else that goes along with selling a house and splitting up.

Of course, it might not go that way. It might fall through. I’m trying my best not to get my hopes up.

But.

I’m fairly optimistic. Particularly given previous experiences when life has conspired to bring several things together into a mad mental stramash. But I’ve gotten through those times OK, so I’m sure this will be just the same.

So, if it does all happen, it’s fair to say that September is gonna be just a LITTLE BIT MENTAL! You have been warned.

bookmark_borderFirst things first

I’m in the midst of interviewing to fill a vacancy for a technical writer in our team. I’m also thinking ahead as to how to get them integrated into how we do things. And then I remembered what we have done previously.

“Hello, welcome to our wonderful company. Here is a copy of the software, and the installation guide. Go!”

OK, it’s not quite like that but it is a good opportunity to check over a part of the documentation that is crucial but can be neglected.

Product installations come in all shapes and sizes, from those simple wizard driven screens to systems which require all manner of pre-configured and pre-installed supporting applications. The latter can be the trickiest as often there is a myriad of possible, valid, scenarios, and can lead to a lot of presumption.

Regardless, the installation is the first time the real users get to get their hands on your product and so it’s a good place to get reviewed by the closest person you’ll have to a new customer. A new member of your team.

bookmark_borderDrink!

I had an appointment with the nurse this morning, to get my blood pressure checked. Currently at 147/71 which I’m quite happy with. The second number is the important one, it’s down from 86 at the previous reading, and as I started with 196/122 (eek!) then it seems the pills and exercise and trying to be more careful about salt in my diet is helping.

After the nurse had taken the reading she asked me a few questions about my drinking habits, part of a new health push she said. Do I consume more than 8 units of alcohol in one go? Weekly? Fornightly, Monthly?

To which my answer was, no.

If I’m on a night out then yes, I will consume more than 8 units of alcohol but as they are less than monthly what else could I say? She agreed it was a bit of a nonsense and is more aimed at people who regularly consume more than the recommended units.

One interesting question was whether I’d ever failed to meet my duties the day after consuming alcohol. To which I asked “What? Like not cutting the grass?”.

So yes, I’m a binge drinker. I drink to ‘excess’ on a night out. Yet I don’t see that as a problem as, like most of my friends and acquaintances will know, I rarely lose control and only twice in my life have I ever woke up and had a few moments of discombobulation (aka, where the FUCK am I??).

In fact my next night out will be in London, at the Groucho Club, no less, although having checked the price list, this Scottish drinker is already considering a tee-total night!

OK. Not really.

bookmark_borderDumping the manual

I honestly can’t remember the last time I picked up a user manual, an honest-to-god paper book of technical documentation. Actually that’s a lie, it was just last week when i was tidying up. I picked up several user manuals and moved them to a lower shelf on my bookcase.

It’s also been a long time since I last worked for a company that produce and printed user manuals but that’s more to do with my career path than any decisions I made within those companies.

Even now whilst we have a “documentation set” comprising several different user manuals, it’s published to PDF and made available as part of the product distribution (and also online).

So why do we still maintain this view of how information should be provided?

There is a level of comfort in having a table of contents and a structure to the information available when writing technical information. It allows you to make sure all the required information is in place, but most of the research I’ve read, and most of the anecdotal evidence I’ve heard, suggests that those lovingly created table of contents are not heavily used.

The index is another area, hell it’s another profession altogether, that we spend a lot of time crafting and rightly so as it is used by many people to navigate their way through a document.

But one thing that trumps both of these methods isn’t available in printed documents but is widely available for online information. Search.

OK, so none of what I’m saying is new, or revolutionary, far from it. Those of us who have been creating online help, regardless of the format (a lot of which was before the internet was popularised), know that if there is a search option available, it will be used.

With that in mind, and this is most definitely something we will be consulting with our users about, we are toying with the idea of dumping the index and the table of contents, making sure the content has a good set of internal reference links so users (power and novice alike) can find “paths” through the information, and switching the front page to be a Google-esque search.

Luckily we can pilot this approach whilst still producing the Javahelp, PDFs and HTML (Webhelp in Author-it terms) output so we don’t completely alienate our users. It’ll be interesting to see outcome.

bookmark_borderMusings on Manchester

So, that was Manchester eh? I’m just processing some of the photos I took and thinking back over the past couple of days. What sort of impression did Manchester make on me?

Hmmmm.

Let’s start with the good stuff. The main reason I was there to see Elbow in their last gig for a wee while. Apparently since releasing The Seldom Seen Kid, they’ve played 144 shows so I guess they are due a wee bit of time off.

The gig was ace, the M.E.N. Arena was a pretty good venue (unlike the Glasgow equivalent which I despise, the S.E.C.C.) and the band were on top form. As ever Guy Garvey had a good line in banter, and they played a couple of tracks that I’ve not heard them play live, with Bitten by the Tailfly being a bemusing but welcomed choice. They are such a good live band and the songs play a large part in that, as they have a good mix of uptempo tracks to get people out of their seats, quieter numbers that are delivered with passion, and what might just be the best closing number of any band (On A Day Like This). I was also pretty impressed that the crowd managed to sing All You Need Is Love by The Beatles whilst waiting for an encore (all part of the Elbow gigging ritual).

So the gig was excellent.

The people of Manchester are a friendly bunch, possibly because I was a “tourist” in their city, particularly those working in the shops and cafes and bars. I wasn’t sure what the ‘tone’ of the city would be like but it’s quite a friendly feeling place.

That said the city of Manchester could well be any big European city. It’s probably because I didn’t have the time to head anywhere else out of the confines of the centre of the city but by and large it was the usual mix of ancient buildings sitting alongside large slab sided office blocks.

I had hoped to jump on one of those tour buses but they finished their season last week (a bit premature, surely?) and I’m guessing I missed a lot. But then, even now I’m struggling to think of what else I’d have wanted to see.

Ohh yes, and the Arndale shopping centre is huge.

So, that was Manchester. An OK city.

And, alas, it’s the last we’ll hear from Elbow for a while as I’d imagine they will be off for a holiday and to start on the next album.