Month: May 2007

bookmark_borderSomething I said?

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This blog has always been a little up and down, stats are never constant with spikes and .. um… the opposite of spikes… ohh yes, troughs, littering my reports.

However I guess I need to rethink things a little as comments have been very light the past few weeks. I know I know you are all very busy and have better blogs to read but, more as a little experiment than any form of ego-stroking… honest… I’m issuing a call to everyone who reads this post.

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT.

Even if it’s just “Hi”, or “Bog off you self-absorbed wanker”, or “Twins? Twins that love pink? Ohh my worlds, Big Brother has gone mental this time”. I’ll leave the comment up to you.

But please, PLEASE, LEAVE A COMMENT.

(I’d threaten to quit if I didn’t get more than 20 different people commenting but… well I don’t want to quit, and I’m not THAT melodramatic)

UPDATE: Gosh, what a response. I am truly humbled, including those of you who decided to email instead of commenting (you know who you are, and those emails were appreciated as well). As most have rightly pointed out, a lot of people will be on holidays and these days it can be a case of too many blogs, not enough time.

If I’d actually planned this I might have been able to have a stab at how many people are reading via RSS but, roughly speaking, my daily hit count almost doubled yesterday… not sure how that translates but it’s interesting.

bookmark_borderArena Flowers

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Arena Flowers

A while ago I asked “Would you take the money?” in reference to an email I received offering me a cash voucher in return for posting about my experiences using an online store. The answers to that question varied, but by and large you mostly agreed that, as long as I was upfront about everything, there wasn’t a problem with me blogging for cash, as it were.

I can now reveal that the email that sparked that question was sent by Will Wynne, the Managing Director of Arena Flowers a company I had used with some success back in February.

In the email Will said:

“We’re pretty happy with how we’ve put the site together and some of the fancier features we’ve developed and were wondering both what people thought of them as well as how blogging could help spread the word about Arena.

…

Of course you are under no obligation to write good things about us and, if you think we’re rubbish, please let us know. Privately or online, it keeps us on our toes, and we’d rather know something was wrong and fix it than be afraid of bad press. Of course you don’t even need to write about us; you’re welcome to use our service and get the free flowers with absolutely no obligation to say anything to anyone at all. In fact if you think this is a bad idea or feel a little uncomfortable, please let me know your favourite charity and I’ll happily donate the õ0 to them instead.”

So, with all that in mind, I took him up on his order and, as it’s her birthday soon, decided to order my lovely wife a nice bunch of flowers from Arena Flowers (and yes, I disclosed this to her as well, I’m not THAT cheap!).
Continue reading “Arena Flowers”

bookmark_borderMusings on X-Pubs

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Next week I’m heading down to Reading to attend the X-Pubs conference, where I’m hoping to learn more about both how a solid XML publishing solution is implemented and, ultimately, why I need to bother. OK, I know why I need to bother so I guess I should re-phrase that to “how I justify all the effort involved”.

I’ve done my fair share of research in the past, and have previously implemented an AuthorIT based solution. That worked reasonably well for our needs back then, but I’m with a different company now and the needs have, naturally, changed. I know all about the benefits of single sourcing content (re-use), and why XML is the best choice for storing that content (re-factorability, if that’s a word!) but as yet I’ve still not seen the killer product/solution that makes things:

  1. easy to implement – I’ll accept some pain but most of the solutions I’ve seen have a fairly large knowledge mountain to climb
  2. easy to adapt – I have, currently, very specific needs dictated both by the company and our product, and by my the needs of my team.

Of course no such solution exists, or we’d all be using it, right?

And that’s why I’m attending the X-Pubs conference.

I do believe that single sourcing is THE way to go about things in technical communications, almost (implementation costs aside) without reservation for any size of team and almost without regard for what they are producing. Like here in the UK, which is trapped between imperial and metric measurements, the technical communications industry seems to be a mix of differing output requirements. Some audiences demand printed manuals, some want websites full of searchable content, whilst others are happy with PDFs or online help. And that’s before we start worrying about localisation (localization).

I’m not entirely sure what I’ll discover at the conference, and I’m doing my best to keep an open mind, but I truly believe that the power of single sourcing will remain the refuge of the few until someone comes up with a workable, affordable solution that everyone can use.

I’ll be posting from the conference (possible even “live blogging”), so come back on the 4th June to find out what’s going on.

Do you single source? Or have you consider it in the past but never pursued it, and if so, why not?

bookmark_borderThis week…

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… I will mostly be blogging about… hang on.. bloody hell, what’s that noise? Holy mother of all things unseasonal, hailstones! And it’s almost June, what the fuck has happened to our weather, it’s like the whole environment has been turned upside down or something. I wonder if the authorities know about this…

Anyway, where was I?

Ohh yes, this week I will mainly be blogging about the experience of owning a shiny new MacBook, I’ll also be telling a tale of woe involving a certain courier company, and I’ll be revealing why I recently sold my soul.

Admittedly the MacBook stuff is a bit old now mainly because I deliberately kept that purchase quiet. Mind you I’m not entirely sure why I did that, but I’m sure I had a good reason at the time. However it does introduce a slight problem, one which I’m sure many bloggers are familiar.

Blogging is, by and large, about now, the current, events that are happening or are expected, or have just happened in the recent past. By it’s nature blogging lends itself to the immediate very well, and although I do keep a few ‘idea’ posts drafted, stuff that isn’t constricted by time, I rarely plan what I’m going to post here and I guess that’s why this blog has never really hit the heights like those of my peers.

Whilst it’s easy to say that I enjoy this style of blogging, this freeform meandering across the various topics that pique my interest, is the very reason I have this blog, there is a part of me that sometimes ponders why I don’t write about people more often… It’s not that I’m not a personable guy, but I look at other blogs with some degree of envy.

Bloody hailstones, they’ve set me into a winter gloom! How very dare they! Enough of this, I’m off for a bath to ease my aching limbs, all that walking and jogging over the weekend has me more than a little sore. Still, that upcoming 10K won’t run itself!

But before I nip off, which post would you like next, dearest reader? The one about the courier company, the one about owning a MacBook, or the one about the company who bought my opinion with a bag of silver?

bookmark_borderNew Lanark

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Having read a feature in the local paper, we headed off to New Lanark today, primarily for a wander along the banks of the River Clyde to the Falls of Clyde. Alas they aren’t that spectacular at the moment, mainly because the water is held back to drive turbines at a nearby power station, and we deliberately decided to avoid visiting tomorrow to avoid the crowds. For tomorrow they ‘unblock’ the river for one day and whilst it would be quite something it would also be quite busy… so no thanks.

However we did have a nice walk and got to see a rare bird, nesting on a cliff face.

IMG_2349

Thankfully for once I had remember to take my zoom lens with me… and yes, it is a Peregrine Falcon and chick. More photos to be found via my Flickr account, and apologies to those with a queasy stomach. Yes that IS a birthday cake made of dog food.

bookmark_borderStill here

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Just not, you know, here.

My days have mainly contained watching crap TV or crap movies or sleeping. This has been keeping my mind off the fact that I can’t eat.

Nothing more than a stomach bug I’m sure. It’ll pass.

Back soon.