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How to write spam that sticks

Feb 25, 2009 in Productivity

Since last week I’ve been receiving upwards of 300 spam comments a day. I somehow made it onto the Internet radar, which is proving to be a mixed blessing. A pet peeve of mine is seeing well known, high profile blogs with spam comments, as if the owner doesn’t care about the quality of their community, only the amount of comments against their posts. For this reason alone I will continue to moderate comments against my blog. Readers who comment regularly will have their comments approved automatically from their third comment onward, unless their comment matches other triggers.

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Ink blogging at #northernvoice09

Feb 20, 2009 in Creativity, Productivity, Technology

Hi Everyone: While watching Tris Hussey's Blog Mechanics presentation I just installed Ink Blog & Live Writer

Example Ink Blog

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At Christmas time, give the gift of PureEnergy

Dec 05, 2008 in Personality, Productivity, Technology

Christmas time is fast approaching. Surely you have those one or two finicky family members who are just impossible to shop for. Allow me to share a secret to my Christmas shopping that has alleviated much of the pressure, and restored the sense of peace to what is often the most dreaded experience at this time of year.

My secret is found in our family’s running joke: “What do you get for the one who has everything?”

The answer:”BATTERIES!”

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Blogs suck, and absolute blogs suck absolutely

Nov 06, 2008 in Personality, Philosophy, Strategy

Now that I have your attention: A fellow Tech Writer (Tina—I mean Holly Harkness) turned me onto a Wired magazine article about how blogging has lost the spontaneous, personal feel, now that there are so many of them out there. According to the writer, Paul Boutin, one would have more success being heard by contributing to the Facebook-, Twitter-, Flickr-, or YouTube-ospheres, rather than the blogosphere.

From the beginning, blogs have always been about conversation and sharing. Yes, several have advertisements on them. Yes, several have hired pro writers (for instance, Duo Consulting hired me). And yes, many do read more like online magazines than personal observations from the field. But nobody’s forcing you to read them. You can select what you want to read.

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About those ultra-mobile tablet/touch screen PCs

Nov 02, 2008 in Technology

Forgive me Father, for I have not yet sinned—but just might. After looking at specs for laptop computers yet again, I am facing another bout of gear lust. We all know that lust is one of the seven deadly sins. The virtual ink is not even dry on my last blog post, yet already the urge is so strong I need to confess my desires right away.

To think: all I was looking for was a Windows-compatible laptop/notebook computer with a full-size 6-pin Firewire (IEEE1394) port and graphics card with dedicated RAM. The machines below don’t have Firewire. They don’t have dedicated graphics hardware. But you must admit, they are cool. If a picture is worth a thousand words, these videos should be just over the top.

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ExtJS befuddles me

Oct 09, 2008 in Creativity, Productivity, Technology

I have only one more week on my current contract. My final responsibility is to finish off this über cool web view of one of our documentation products, which will be integrated as an output stream from the newly-installed XDocs XML content management system. The best part about technical communication is that I get paid to write all day, and when I need a break, I can fix the CSS for an embedded help system or hack some JavaScript. My Technical Communication department manager gave me permission to showcase the web output with obfuscated text in my portfolio, so be on the lookout for samples in the near future.

For the last month I’ve been going nuts trying to hack the ExtJS javascript application framework, recommended by the Technical Adviser from the company’s Web Services department. I have no problem applying different plugins to my project. However, when I try to add custom behaviours to the objects, I get that little red Firebug that shows me the hand and says “not so fast, cowboy!”

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