Tag: PDF

bookmark_borderRecently Read

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As a wise man once said, time flies like a banana. I may be paraphrasing (badly at that, sorry Groucho) so let’s skip on quickly. Brevity is the name of the game today for whilst I’m delighted that the company is allowing the development team to swan off for an afternoon of beer and ten-pin bowling, I am still losing several hours from my working week. With that in mind..

ISTC Conference 2007 writeup
File this one under “Ask and ye shall receive”. I’m a member of the ISTC but couldn’t make it to the conference, so I pinged their mailing list to ask if anyone who had attended would possibly write up their thoughts.

Many thanks to Mike Unwalla for taking the time to write up summaries and thoughts on the presentations he attended:

  • Keynote address by Scott Abel
  • Certification for Technical Authors
  • Translation-oriented authoring—a prerequisite for efficient authoring
  • Managing the lifecycle of your technical communication
  • Leveraging DITA in a multilingual environment
  • Writing justifications and comparative analyses
  • Developing a communication-across-the-curriculum culture
  • Staying agile
  • Reasons to be cheerful—part 1
  • CMS: how to avoid a content mess system
  • Around the World in 80ms

Of key interest to me was the thoughts on working in an Agile development environment, with the suggestion of “Decoupling the publication of documentation from the delivery of the software” being something we are discussing at present. More on that later.

Scott Abel on Web 2.0
A shared set of slides from a presentation that aims to help us better understand how the semantic web (that’s the Web 2.0 bit) is impacting on technical communications, and how we can leverage some of the tools and ideas to our benefit.

I’ve touched on this myself a little, although I’m pretty sure the biggest impact is, and will remain, Google. This area is still (constantly) evolving so it’s worth keeping an eye on things.

Dependency Calculator

“In determining the risks involved in completing a publications project on time and on budget, some years ago my organization developed a simple assessment tool that we call a Dependencies Calculator.”

And oldie but a goodie. I developed something very similar at a previous company and after a few iterations it proved very valuable.

Requires Java.

Information R/evolution
Interesting little video that explores the continuing evolution of how we treat information. Simple and yet powerful and thought-provoking.

Sun Labs lightswitch

“I gave a talk at Sun Labs where I encountered a special light switch in one of their conference rooms. At first I thought it was some kind of silly “engineer” joke. But the light switch functions as stated for real.”

An excellent example of over documenting something rather than changing the design

Who am I?

“The biography is probably one of the most basic elements in a portfolio (what kind of website or blog doesn’t have an “about” page?) but can be one of the difficult. To this day, I still haven’t written one I’m 100% happy with. But hopefully with some different perspectives, it can be easier.”

I struggle with this kind of thing too, some good hints which should help improve things a little.

Writing for the Web
The website of the book that I’m now waiting on being delivered (gosh, what an ugly sentence).

PDF exploit in the wild
Sorry to end on a bum note, but something to note for those of you who, like me, distribute docs in PDF format. Don’t worry, it’s not as bad as things are made out (but what ever is?).

bookmark_borderHow to make a cup of tea

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Further to my Too Simple post, and in response to the comment from Annie about the state of software manuals, I thought I’d try and give a bit of insight into the basic workings of my profession. Yes, that’s right I DO have a day job. I am a technical author and I write software documentation (actually I don’t like the “technical author” job title but that’s a different story).

Before I begin I’ll state that I’m not the most experienced technical author (there are people who have been doing this for 40 years), I’ve only ever worked in a software environment, and as in most professions there are a number of different methodologies and working practises which I can choose to follow. OK, caveat finished.

Ohhh and you may be wondering about the title of this post so let’s start there, how DO you make a cup of tea?

It’s a question I’ve used in a writing test (for graduate technical authors or those new to the profession) in the past, and it’s usually fairly effective at giving a rough first impression of how the candidate thinks in relation to product documentation.

Now, I’d warrant that most people reading this have some idea of how to make a cup of tea, but let’s presume that you didn’t, in fact, let’s presume that you haven’t even heard of tea. Starting to get a little tricky, isn’t it.
Continue reading “How to make a cup of tea”

bookmark_borderPresenting

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A while back I mentioned that I’d been ask to give a presentation on “Blogging and Communities”. Well I’ve finally finished writing the damned thing and wondered if anyone would be interested in giving me some feedback. Obviously I’ll be talking over and through these slides, and I’m confident enough on the topic that I won’t just be reading the slides (death by powerpoint!), so I can only really ask you guys and gals for thoughts on structure and topic choice.

The audience is people who want to explore different ways of increasing communication and learning in their organisation or business place, but it’s more about the basics of blogging and I’ll give them a quick demo of creating a new blogspot blog as well (all 4 minutes of it). It’s a 45 minute slot, and I’m pretty sure I can waffle for that long on this topic, as I’m sure you’ll agree. I will be rehearsing, so please spare some thought for my captive audience darling wife.

Anyhoo, here’s a PDF of the presentation (final draft).

Have at it!

bookmark_borderAt a blogmeet

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If you are in the Glasgow area – hell if you are in Scotland and can make it to the Glasgow area – anytime this afternoon, then
head to the Merchant City area and seek out Babbity Bowsters, it’s the furthest right pub (just below the middle) on this map (PDF download). It’s only a 5 minute walk from Queen street so no real excuse for you East Coasters either!

The big orange Blogger logo is fairly prominent so you should be able to spot us. Come alone, or bring a friend, and remember those
cameras!

bookmark_borderYen Rotunda

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Off to dinner at Yen Rotunda, a yen oriental & teppanyaki restaurant, where 20 or so of us will be dining in the teppanyaki section. It’s my first time in that restaurant and my first time experiencing teppanyaki and I’m quite looking forward to it. The fact that the company is stumping up the lion share of the bill may also have something to do with it.

Only problem is that it feels like my holiday begins tonight, meaning dragging myself out of bed tomorrow morning will be quite a challenge.

We went, we saw, we ate
God damn that was a great meal!

The food was superb, the staff were efficient if a little bossy at times (but then we were a party of 20 and we do get a little noisy), and I’ll be going back there again!

Naturally the chef is the star turn, clanging, flipping and twirling his spatulas, flicking bits of food up in the air for you to catch or, in the case of one of the ladies in our party, to lose down your top… but despite all the showmanship everything was cooked to perfection. Eight courses in all, a small starter of oriental beef and suriyami, then salad in a sesame dressing, miso soup, then the first “meat” course – I had king prawns – then fried rice, the second “meat” course – I had chicken – then some fried vegetables, and finally a lovely dessert (PDF of menu), and whilst I felt full I didn’t feel stuffed to the gunnels.

Next time I’ll be more adventurous with my choice of “meat” dishes but I decided against the lobster tails as it was a company dinner and one doesn’t want to be seen to be extracting the urine, and personally I think it’s just bad form when you are out in a group of people to be that selfish. I digress.

The photos of the evening don’t do it justice, and there are only a few as the rest are mainly of the people I work with and, frankly, they’re not the prettiest bunch…

Update – If you decide to eat at the restaurant, and this review has been helpful, please let me know via email: gordon AT gordonmclean.co.uk