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My younger son doesn’t have as many Transformer toys as his older brother. Because of this, he felt inclined to create his own Transformer model. This toy is so colourful, so powerful, uses every weapon and can transform into any vehicle mode.

Note to Hasbro: I am negotiating contract offers for this five-year-old toy designer, and his seven-year-old technical communicator brother. My contact information is below. Child labour is legal where I come from. LOL!

Continue reading: Toy designer for hire

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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.

Continue reading: Best. Christmas. Present. Ever.

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Comic strips are always a great source of inspiration. At the risk of the source for this file enforcing it’s “Redistribution in whole or part prohibited” policy, I’m posting it for your enjoyment. I hope that a link back to the ArcaMax website is enough to hold off the lawyers. I mean, those who know […]

Continue reading: Time for a new phone?

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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!”

Continue reading: ExtJS befuddles me

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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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At first I thought I should write a post about where I was at the moment the planes hit the World Trade Center. Then I remembered I wrote an article shortly afterward that I posted on a reflections website. I could easily revisit that article, adding any new thoughts and reflections from today’s perspective. But then Rick Detorie completely floored me with todays strip. Pictures really do say 1000 words. Or at least the core three.

Continue reading: Remembering 9/11

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As part of my volunteer activity for the Society for Technical Communication – Canada West Coast chapter, I offered to evaluate some streaming video technology we may use to kick off our program meeting in September. Since the spring of 2008, we branded ourselves as a virtual chapter, and shifted our focus from face-to-face meetings to online communities like a forum and wiki attached to our web site. One area we had yet to try was the notion of live video streaming. You can’t get more virtual than live video. On a recommendation from Bruce Sharpe, I explored ustream.tv tonight, and I got hooked. In 20 minutes I joined ustream.tv, set up a channel, and broadcast my first video from a webcam connected to my laptop. I even recorded a clip, if you’d care to look….

Continue reading: We all stream for ustream.tv

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