Dec 30, 2008 in Creativity, Technology
Wow. Just about all I could say was “Wow.” My seven-year-old son gave me an awesome Christmas present that he packaged himself. Not only did he give me my favourite Transformer, Sunstreaker, who looks a lot like a Lambourghini or Ferrari Testarossa (I don’t know the difference), but he drew packaging to replicate the same logos that store-bought toys have.
Readers of my RSS feed may want to visit my site to see the pictures.
Dec 09, 2008 in Personality, Strategy, Technology
Last week I mentioned my foray into the world of creative communications consulting. Here’s a sampling of the kind of sideline projects I’ve been working on lately. Many of these are classified: top secret, for-your-eyes-only kind of stuff. By reading this post you agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement: Don’t tell a soul.
[Edit: Okay, the secret is out: the main intent of this post is to provide search engine links to my colleagues' sites in order to improve their SEO traffic... ooh how I hate spilling the beans!]
Continue reading: On Web Programming, SEO Consulting, and WHY
Dec 02, 2008 in Personality, Productivity, Technology
So I says to my wife, “you know, I’d really like to work as an independent contractor for awhile and really get to see the world.” The following day, my manager told me that they’d lost my contract as a technical writer. I wanted to say, “Would you like me to help you find it?” Instead I played it cool. “Great! Lots of time for blogging.” As I wrote my last full post on November 6, obviously I didn’t spend as much time blogging as I thought. What did I do instead? It couldn’t have been because I ran out of things to say.
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.
Continue reading: Blogs suck, and absolute blogs suck absolutely
Nov 01, 2008 in Personality, Philosophy
Leaving a job is hard, regardless of the one making the decision. Whether the choice was mine or the company’s didn’t stop me from the feelings of loss, and the ensuing depression that paralyzed me for a couple of days before I could move forward. Nobody prepared me to be released from a job when I was doing well, and this was the case.
It would have been easy to feel bitter at the apparent injustice of the situation, except that my faith in God, who provides every good and perfect gift, has already prepared me for my next assignment. And my next assignment for me. I know that I need to rely on His strength in my times of weakness. And there have been many times. Several times. Per day.
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!”
Sep 17, 2008 in Creativity, Productivity, Technology
On September 16, RJ Jácquez, Senior Product Evangelist for the Adobe Technical Communication Suite, presented a remote meeting for the Society for Technical Communication Canada West Coast chapter. His involvement actually went above and beyond a mere sales pitch. RJ hosted the entire meeting through Acrobat Connect Pro, which combined a live video feed from our meeting location, prerecorded audio and video files stored on the Connect server, and his own presentation about the enhancements to the Adobe Technical Communication Suite for version 1.3. As part of the A/V team I was stoked to try out this technology. I wrote an article about our rehearsal for Coast Lines, the newsletter of the STC Canada West Coast chapter.
Continue reading: Virtual meetings can make a real-world difference
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