Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category

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Kinda cool…

January 29th, 2010, posted in Tech, Writing

I got a thank-you on an Open Office forum for my article on using page styles to create unique headers and footers in Open Office Writer.

One of my friends asked me why I bother writing documentation that no one will read. I told him I write for that one person who, at midnight while on deadline, encounters a problem and the only resource they have is the product documentation. I’ve been that person on deadline struggling to figure out how to bend an application (*cough* *Word*) to do what should have been a simple thing. (Why won’t this stupid graphic stay where I anchored it?!)

I try to be a user advocate and approach documentation and application development from a user-centric perspective. It is really nice to know that even one person found something I wrote useful.

Even if the thank-you was posted last year, it made my day. Thank you. :)

(And yes, I love what I do.)

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Blood Ties on DVD in the US (finally!)

March 12th, 2009, posted in BloodTies

I received an email from Amazon.com stating that the Blood Ties DVD will be released in the U.S. on June 2, 2009. No word on what will be included on the DVD. Blood Ties fans have been waiting for almost a year and a half since the last episode aired on LifeTime’s web site.

Woohoo!

Update: According to the Save Blood Ties web site, this DVD will only include episodes 1-11 of Blood Ties. Episodes 12-22 will be released on a “Season Two” DVD at some point.

The DVD announcement can be found on TV Shows on DVD.

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That BBC Book Meme on Facebook

February 22nd, 2009, posted in Writing

I think this is based on the BBC Big Read top 100 list from 2003. Most of the books are the same.

I was curious how many books on this list my English studies covered.

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

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Dalek Christmas tree

December 26th, 2008, posted in Geekitude, Writing

3116732665_11f7967f81Someone had a lot of time on their hands and put it to good use this holiday season! The tree at right is the creation of x Plastic Neurospasta who posted picture on Flickr. Any fans of Doctor Who will instantly recognize the Dalek, complete with blue orbs and glowing eye.

If you look carefully between the branches, there is a white tree underneath. The picture, and several others of the tree, are available at x PLASTIC NEUROSPASTA’s photostream on Flickr.

The comments on the Flickr page have some great quotes, among them: “Redecorate! Redecorate!” Heh. Classic.

Here is a video of the tree:

Unbelievable Dalek Christmas Tree from Lindsey J. Testolin on Vimeo.

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Link collection for technical writing

December 10th, 2008, posted in Tech, Writing

At different times, I’ve mentored people who are interested in technical writing. I have over ten years of experience as a professional technical writer and some definite ideas about how to get started in the field. A friend of mine asked me for some suggested reading on getting started in technical writing. I collected a set of links as a starting point (see below) and realized other people might be interested in the links too.

To get ideas for manual layout and structure, take a look at some of the available free templates for Open Office Writer and Microsoft Word. For Word, check out Microsoft’s Office template pages. The exact URL will differ depending upon the version of Office you have installed.

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Blood Ties soundtrack coming!

October 6th, 2008, posted in BloodTies

Some excellent news on the Blood Ties forum within the last few weeks. (I just got it today, so I’m late posting it here.) In a post on the Blood Ties Bloodlines forums dated September 13, James Jandrisch, the composer for the series Blood Ties, said that he is working on releasing the soundtrack indepedently.

Woohoo!! This is awesome news. The series has great music. I can’t wait to hear it!

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The 20 Dumbest Warning Labels Of All-Time

September 15th, 2008, posted in Writing

You know, in tech writing you find some pretty silly examples of poorly translated warning labels and paragraphs. Here are some from general products.

Humor at it’s very best. This article exposes the stupidity of the manufacturers. We know, they need to cover their own asses… but can they go to this extent??

read more | digg story

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MacJournal Anew

September 12th, 2008, posted in Tech, Writing

A while back, I documented the trouble I had using MacJournal with WordPress. I have never gotten the silly program to work with WordPress. Ashame, really, because MacJournal is a nice looking application.

This week I purchased a copy of the Back to School bundle from Mac Update. MacJournal, and about 10 other applications, came with the bundle. Nice set of software.

Some time this weekend I’m going to try and get MacJournal 5 to work with WordPress 2.6. I’ll post my results here.

September 16, 2008 update

I followed the settings described by Oscargodson in the comments below. I was able to connect to my blog and to post a simple text entry.

I was able to download entries from my blog successfully. I’m documenting what I did here since searching for “download” in the user guide for MacJournal did not return any hits.

There are some quirks with this command. Choosing “All” does not actually get all of the posts — it seems to max out at the number entered in “number of entries.” I had to enter a considerably higher number and use the Download Entries from Blog command multiple times.

Using Download Entries from Blog more than once does not create multiple entries. The program is smart enough to only download entries that do not exist in the local MacJournal database.

I had two draft entries saved on my blog. When downloaded, these entries appeared at the bottom of the entries to a date of November 29, 1999 — four and a half years before my blog was active. (It makes sense that MacJournal would not be sure what to do with draft entries. After all, most users would be using MacJournal to write blog entries and would be saving draft entries locally.)

To download entries after your blog successfully connects:

  1. Choose Download Entries from Blog from the Journal menu.
  2. Enter the username and password for your blog.
  3. Choose the number of entries to download or select All.
  4. Press OK to retrieve up to the specified number of entries.

I’ve just modified this post. I’m going to see if MacJournal will realize the post has been updated.

Update: Using the Download command, MacJournal does not update posts that have been modified using the blog’s web interface. (Basically no diff is performed to verify that the ones on the local machine are the latest.) If you delete an entry from the local database, using the Download Entries from Journal will not retrieve the entry.

It was also disappointing to realize that tags and categories are not downloaded. It might be different if I tried importing entries using the Import … Entries command from the File menu.

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Quote, continued

August 11th, 2008, posted in Writing

Sappho is one of my favorite ancient poets. I’ve found some wonderful pieces by her, and also some good quotes. This one is probably my favorite:

“Here cold water babbles through apple branches, and roses keep the whole place in shadow, and from the quivering leaves a trance of slumber falls; here a meadow, where horses pasture, blooms with flowers of spring, and the breezes gently blow.” ~Sappho

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Doctor Who: Journey’s End

August 2nd, 2008, posted in Geekitude, Writing

(If you haven’t seen the episode, fair warning: here be spoilers.)

The saddest thing about Journey’s End is the contrast between the Doctor having a TARDIS full of friends and family and the end scene where he is alone in the TARDIS. If you watch Confidential for this episode, the people at BBC say that the Doctor is at his most powerful when he is alone and that he is a tragic character.

There comes a point when it is too much, though. At the end of every season in the new series he has been alone (with the exception of season 1, where the Doctor himself regenerated). He has lost everyone. Now, when he finally has a chance to find some sort of closure with Rose, he leaves her at Bad Wolf Bay just like he did at the end of season 2. (The video is “Almost Lover” by Piratewench32.)

And how does DoctorDonna (10.2) fit into the series itself? In the episode, apparently all of the time lines were converging on Donna towards the creation of DoctorDonna. Why then is 10.2 just dumped on the bay with Rose and abandonned? Is he a clone just to make Rose happy? Rae has some excellent thoughts on this.

Maybe this constant tragedy is getting ready to build the Doctor into the Valeyard, the Doctor’s last incarnation. For the Valeyard to exist, then Gallifrey could not have been destroyed because the Valeyard is the prosecutor in the episodes of Trial of a Time Lord, which takes place on Gallifrey.

Rae, a fabulous fan fiction author of Doctor Who stories (mostly Rose/Ten stories), has some excellent insights on her LiveJournal blog. She posted a link to a video below that summarises many of her disappointments in Journey’s End. The video is “The Doctor Returns – Alt. Ending (Journey’s End)” by abstractvmilk.

What will the future hold as Steven Moffat takes over for Russell T. Davies? The BBC reported on Moffat’s appearance at ComicCon–including that he intends to not bring back the Daleks.

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