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As a college instructor, I am long past thinking that students will heed my advice. God knows I've tried. So with each new class I limit myself to one saying, the most useful one I know: "Eighty percent of success is showing up." What most students don't know is that showing up will be the hardest part about college.
— Brian Burrell
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Blog Statistics
Dates
First entry - 6/27/2003
Most recent entry - 8/26/2010
Totals
Posts - 2109
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Hits - 1,140,239
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Entries/day - 0.80
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Update every 30 minutes. Last: 2:25 PM Pacific
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Tuesday, 6 April 2010
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Writing for Games
posted at
09:08 AM
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 My friend John is interviewed for the Microsoft JobsBlog on how it is that a technical writer works in the Games division:How did your career start off at Microsoft Game Studios?
I was working as a technical writer for Microsoft on error messages for Office 95 and telephony projects and that sort of thing. But, like a lot of technical writers, I had a secret life. When I wasn’t at work, I was busy as a screenwriter.
I started working in games in 1996 when a former copy editor of mine from Office asked me to create an online help system for Mind Aerobics, a new puzzle game by Alexey Pajitnov - who invented Tetris. In many ways, my first game writing job was still technical writing. A while back, I heard a presentation that John did about how the role of writer works a little differently in games than it does in the kind of writing we do. To me this is still one of the most amusing summaries of why reading technical documentation can be less than fascinating:In technical writing, we want to get to order as quickly as possible.
In story telling, we play with the state of disorder and give out pieces of order a little at a time, strategically, so we can maintain dramatic tension and drive interest forward.
So a technical writing approach to Star Wars would have a big bolded notice on the first page that said, Important! Darth Vader is Luke’s dad!
[categories]
personal, writing
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Monday, 16 November 2009
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Geek cred and projects
posted at
10:03 AM
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Of course, the first thing you do with a new gadget is tinker with it, and I installed Whiist and created a photo album. It was so easy to do, I feel like I'm losing my geek cred. I mean, this sort of thing is supposed to involve hours of staring at the screen, scouring the Internet for information, and groveling through hundreds of settings trying to get things working. If anybody can get a home server up and running with automatic nightly backups and an online photo album by just clicking on some fluffy GUI buttons, then what will I have to feel superior about?  This struck a chord with me. While I have never had near the geek cred of a guy like Raymond, I have certainly had the general guy thing of "I bet I could do this." Create a slide-show application? I bet I could do that. Replace an alternator? I bet I could do that. Install a water heater? I bet I could do that.
And yes, I could do that, and I did. The results were definitely not better than if a pro had done it. Cheaper in money, if not time. (The slideshow, of course, was markedly inferior to what a pro might do).
But as I am coming to realize, my days of having to do everything as a project might be drawing to a close. As I might have mentioned, I recently got a motorcycle. It's old (1980s), and it suffers the ailments of its age. Only after some initial probing into minor repairs, tho, did I come to the realization that I actually am not that keen on having a project bike. Once upon a long time ago, I tore down and rebuilt the engine in my VW bug. It was an excellent experience (drawn-out, of course), but not one I really want to repeat. I built a shed this summer from scratch, but I did flirt briefly with the idea of a kit. Not this time, but maybe next time.
 The do-it-yourself instinct runs deep, and it's still my primary reaction when faced with an interesting situation. And I will still try my inexpert hand at many things. I'll still change the oil in my car. I'll still (or so I keep telling myself) write my own blog software. I'll undoubtedly get myself into home-improvement messes many more times to come. But I think I've had enough experience in many areas to convince myself that I've already established by geek cred with them. And then I'l be able to let someone else do the job better.
[categories]
personal
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Thursday, 29 October 2009
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That unmistakable sound
posted at
12:02 PM
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 I think that one of the disks on my server computer is dying -- it's making that spin-up-spin-down noise that they make just before they break. (Break your heart, that is.)[1]
If the blog disappears, it's because I'm, you know, servicing the server.
Once again I wonder whether it's really worth it to maintain my own server. Hmmm.
[1] As an aside, I got this image from a site that obviously is auto-translated. From what language, who knows. Here's an excerpt about the warning signs of incipient failure:
Symptoms of harder drive failure
The pre-warnings of harder drive abortion are not consistently accustomed by declining harder drive, if sometimes the agnate absurdity letters may arise and sometimes not. The a lot of accepted signs are beat or abrading sounds, while others, lower in ratings, cover aspersing arrangement achievement and abrupt behavior.
[categories]
personal, blog
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Friday, 16 October 2009
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Sounds phishy
posted at
12:04 PM
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Dear Seller
I 'm interested in purchasing your advertised item and i will like to know the final price if is okay by me.And if I can pay with a cashiers check, If this is okay with you do get back to me immediately for me to arrange the payment. Concerning the shippment, my shipper will come and pick it up from your location as soon as we seal this transaction. Do get back to me immediately with your Full Name, Contact Address and Phone Number for me to issue out the payment check to u asap cos am right now out of town but i can instruct my client overthere to issue out the payment check to u as soon as u get back to me here also im paying you an extra $50 to get this advert off the internet cuz am really interested in buying it. Hope to hear from you soon.so u can get back to me via my email at kellyqueen06@yahoo.co.uk
Best regards,
Ann
NB:- i will be looking forward to hear from you soon. Do attach the picture if available. Thanks The prose is wretched, but that's par for the course on craigslist. The real tipoff was the offer of a cashier's check, which is a well-known scam. And the fact that the responder is offering to buy my item and ship it. To the UK. Which is slightly suspicious, given what the item actually is:
[categories]
general, personal
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posted at
03:35 PM
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 30 years is a long time. I'm still not a native, but I get a kind of indirect nativeness by virtue of having two kids who are from here. I personally did not graduate from a Seattle high school, for example, but my kids graduated from the storied Garfield High, which makes me almost like being from here.
I arrived on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, which was poor planning in some senses. For example, I wasn't able to check into the department at school that was expecting me, or even go and look for housing. But I had a place to stay, courtesy of a relative of a friend of my mother's, and it was Bumbershoot weekend, so I had a hospitable introduction to my new home.
Seattle was a different city when I moved here. It was smaller, for one. (Altho most of the growth since then has been in the suburbs.) Some of the institutions that put Seattle on the map -- Microsoft, Starbucks, grunge -- had yet to become famous. In those days, it really was still Jet City. The city expansion of the 50s and 60s (including I-5) had engendered a backlash of opposition that we feel even today in endless dithering about how to improve the urban infrastructure, and the city limped along for decades with roads and mass transit that had been designed for a fraction of the population. (We're catching up ... the story of Seattle while I've lived here is its gradual acceptance that it's a big city.)
People have moved here from all over and the essential Seattleite character has been diluted slightly, but Seattle is still the capital of the Northwest, and the outdoorsy, environmental, bookish, vaguely Scandinavian ethos of the city still manifests itself.
I spent a few minutes thinking about Seattle changes since 1979. Here's a list I came up with -- I'm sure there's plenty more I'm not remembering. Leave me a comment if you can think of more. - The population of Seattle was 494,000. (Today it's 609,000. The greater Seattle area, including the Tacoma corridor and the Eastside, is more like 3 million.)
- The tallest building in Seattle was the (then) Seafirst Building -- "The box the Space Needle came in". (That building is now Safeco Plaza, and the tallest building is the Columbia Tower.)
- Mount Saint Helens had not blown up.
 - The Kingdome was 3 years old. (Demolished in 2000, not completely paid off even, to make way for Qwest Field.)
- The Seattle Mariners had played their first game 2 years earlier. (Sick's Stadium, home of the minor-league Seattle Pilots, had been torn down only in 1979.)
- The Seattle Seahawks had played their first game 3 years earlier.
- The Seattle Supersonics had won the NBA championship the year before. (They have not won it since and, of course, they are no longer in Seattle.)
- Bumbershoot and NW Folklife were 8 years old.
- The Pike Place Market had been saved from redevelopment 8 years earlier.
- The Seattle Art Museum was in Volunteer Park.
- SIFF was three years old.
- Kenny G had not recorded his first solo album.
- I-90 had a single bridge, 4 lanes total.
- I-90 and I-5 had not yet been connected as freeways.
- The old West Seattle bridge had been rammed and was stuck open.
 - Starbucks sold only beans (not yet beverages) from its store in the Pike Place Market. That store still exists. [1]
- Nordstrom had stores in Washington, Alaska, and California.
- Microsoft had moved to Bellevue (from Albuquerque) in January.
- Boeing was HQ'd in Seattle, as it had been since its founding. (No longer, tho.)
- KING-FM still belonged to King Broadcasting.
The following did not exist:- West Seattle Bridge
- Columbia Tower
- WAMU Tower
- Fremont Troll
- Benaroya Hall
- McCaw Hall
- EMP
- Safeco Field
- Qwest Field
- Boeing 757, 767, 777
- Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains
- Bite of Seattle
- MTV, Fox Broadcasting
- "Cheers", "Magnum PI", "Star Trek TNG", "MacGyver", "Blackadder"
- "Breakfast Club", "Risky Business", "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "Rambo", "Airplane", "The Blues Brothers", "Friday the 13th", "E.T.", "Ghostbusters"
- Cell phones
- CDs
- PCs[2]
- The Internet
[categories]
personal
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Saturday, 25 July 2009
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Eyewear by PhotoShop
posted at
11:45 PM
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The downside of ordering by web, of course, is that you can't put the frames on and then squint at the mirror to try to decide if you like the way they look. (Those of you who have serious correction for nearsightedness will probably understand what I mean when I talk about squinting at the mirror.)
Ah, but combine a clever daughter with PhotoShop, and you can get a darn good idea. After I had flagged a number of frames that I thought I might like, Sabrina got my Facebook profile picture, copied the picture of the frames from the Zenni site, and then did a little mashup in PhotoShop. The results were, I thought, excellent:
The site needs a preview function like this, wouldn't you agree?
[categories]
personal
[tags]
glasses, eye wear, PhotoShop, shopping
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Thursday, 25 June 2009
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Two things at a time
posted at
01:28 AM
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 - family
- work
- friends
- reading
- home improvement
- guitar
- blogging
- exercising
- taking classes
- teaching classes
And etc. Per my theory, I can only really be putting serious energy into two of these at a time. So, if work is intense and I'm practicing guitar diligently, I'm ignoring family and blogging. If we're doing family things and I'm working on some house project or other, work and guitar and all the rest get short shrift. I can prep to teach a class and work, or I can work and have a busy social life, or I can work out regularly and do home improvement, or I can blog regularly and read a lot, or ... anyway, you get the idea.
Clearly there are people who can handle three or four or more of these types of things concurrently. (I seem to work with a lot of people like that.) But one has to know oneself, no? And I have to recognize, after long experience, that taking on some attention-sucking task means I have to jettison something else, until the total count of tasks is, like, two.
What's your limit for number of concurrent tasks?
[categories]
personal
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posted at
10:50 PM
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Eight? Yes. Or more. Or fewer. It all depends.
Of course, I’m screwing with you. (haha, get it?) I'm using a mathematical definition of dimensions: In Cartesian terms, an object's dimension is "correlated with the number of coordinates that is required to map it."[1] It seems probable that when Descartes was inventing analytic geometry, he did not realize that he could have been analyzing a problem I've been having with coffee cans. Which I'll get to in a moment.
So, eight dimensions? Here are eight attributes/characteristics/coordinates/dimensions to identify this object uniquely:
| Fastener type | screw | | Category | machine screw | | Drive type | Philips | | Length | 3/4" | | Diameter/Gauge | #8 | | Thread count[2]/pitch | 32 | | Material | Zinc-plated steel | | Head style | pan |
Go on down to the hardware store and take a stroll through the eponymously labeled Hardware department. Screws, nuts, bolts, washers, pins, nails, anchors ... this department consists of a very large number of small boxes. The boxes are grouped by the categories listed above, and probably several more, like measuring system (US or metric)[3]. If you're in a playful mood, approach an employee who’s skulking about and ask them if they can help you find "a screw." Count the number of questions they have to ask you before you settle on one particular fastener. That's the measure (well, one measure) of how many dimensions the fastener has.[4]
Let's go back to the screw at the beginning. If I ask my lovely bride what this thing is, she can tell me precisely: "Yeah, it’s a screw." Which is to say, it's not a pony. Those eight dimensions? Who cares. Sarah has no more need to distinguish screws by thread count and head style than I have to categorize, dunno, crochet needles by diameter and length (and 12 more dimensions, no doubt), or women's sandals by size and style and color (ditto), or letters by font and size (wait, no, that one I need).
I've been thinking a lot about the dimensions of fasteners because when the frogs are croaking and the woodpecker is whanging on our chimney flue, it's time for my annual garage cleaning and organization festival. Among this year's organizing tasks was what to do about all the damn fasteners that I've accumulated over the decades as leftovers from dozens of home-improvement projects.
 When I first met Sarah, she had a simple approach to this task. Nails, screws, hooks, whatever -- it all went into a coffee can. When she needed a nail to hang a picture, she could root around in the can and pick out a likely looking piece of hardware. Which is to say, Sarah utilized a one-dimensional system -- the number of variables by which she organized fasteners was 1, namely, the can.
My collection used a system that was basically a version of this. I had nails and screws and hooks and miscellaneous stuff "organized" in every conceivable container from Tupperware to cottage-cheese tubs. Among all these I had one can labeled "Screws," another "Washers," another "Nuts." Any time I needed a fastener, I would dump some containers and rake through them to find, say, a 1/4" screw and matching nut and washer.
In my dreams, my garage would be organized like a hardware store, with little bins for every conceivable value of every dimension of every fastener I have. If I wanted a 2-inch #14 machine screw with coarse threads and made out of brass, why, I'd just pull out the right bin and I'd be all set.
But does that even make sense? How many dimensions do I actually need, anyway? If I had the eight- or ten-dimensional system that a hardware store uses, three-fourths or more of the bins would be empty. When I go scrounge around for a screw, what exactly are the characteristics that will help me home in on the fastener I need? Or stated in another, more practical way: how many coffee cans was I going to need to organize everything well enough that I could find stuff when I want it?
This is where dimensionality becomes subjective. If you were organizing your fasteners, you might decide that after you've sorted everything into nails and screws, the next most important characteristic is length. You would have bins (or in my case, cans) that might be labeled "Screws- 1 inch," "Screws-2 inch," "Nails-1 inch," "Nails 3-inch," and so on. Me, I might decide after sorting screws and nails that I want to sort screws into type (wood screw, machine screw), then size (1 inch), then coating (zinc, brass).
 Point is, the dimensionality -- the sum of the characteristics that puts the screws and nails into individual cans -- becomes a matter of utility, of experience, and perhaps of personality. My collection of machine screws might be three-dimensional; yours, two- or five-dimensional.
And we don't even have to fix on a single dimensionality. I might sort most of the screws using three dimensions, then have a can for "Screws larger than 4 inches." Or I might throw all carriage bolts into one can. And I might have a can labeled "Tuftex Deck Drain Fasteners" (I do), whose dimensionality (1) has no relationship to anything else in other cans.
Categorizing and organizing is an exercise that can sort of run away from a person who has tendencies toward obsessiveness. It can become a thing onto itself, where the goal drifts from having a way to quickly find a bolt when you need one to the goal of devising a perfect system, each dimension identified and labeled, a can available for every possible value of every possible dimension. I know this, because as I organize all my screws and nuts and nails, I can feel that tug toward the ever-finer categorization of everything in the shop.
In the end, tho, practicality has to rule. I don't have enough cans; I don't have enough space for those cans, even if I had them; and I certainly don't have time to get out tweezers and calipers to examine every last fastener and make sure it goes into its proper home.
So I now have a shelf of cans for pretty much everything. Some of the fasteners are finely differentiated, some a little less so, and I still have a couple of cans that could have a label on them that says "Screws (1 dimension)" Instead, tho, those cans are labeled "Miscellaneous." And that will have to do for now.
[categories]
general, personal
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Tuesday, 24 February 2009
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Speaking of large numbers
posted at
09:59 AM
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As noted earlier, compared wtih actual, real blogs, this is nothing -- most of the people whose blogs I read pick up a million hits in months, if not weeks. But hey, it's sumpin' special for this blog, anyway.
So, 5-1/2 years, 2000 posts, a million hits, half a million words:
Blah-blah, yadda-yadda, a milestone hit today
A million times the server has been asked for to display
These pages of Verdana 8-point text all bluish gray
And weeks ago the blog post count inched slightly past 2K.
A half a million words, by god, so little to convey
You'd think by now I might have had some useful things to say. Haha.
[categories]
blog, personal
[tags]
hit count, word count
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posted at
11:22 AM
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The class is specifically an intro class (I got to write the course description, in which this was emphasized). Even so, I get ... nervous. My anxiety derives primarily from a fear that I won't know enough. This manifests itself in a certain compulsiveness. In the time leading up to the class, I start obsessing about ever-more-arcane details, like "How do you remove a multilevel list template from the gallery?" and similar esoterica that a) no one will ask and b) even if they did, I could legitimately say "Dunno, I'll get back to you on that."
Realistically, and in my experience, people for the most part sign up for the class precisely because they are a bit confuddled by this styles business and just want an intro. As described in the catalog. (A few people in the class are usually even still a bit unsure even about general formatting issues, coz let's face it, unless you use Word all the time, this stuff ain't obvious.) You'll always get a question or two from left field, but you don't have to know everything, do you?
But it's hard to let go. And I'll tell you a story. Many years ago (24, to be exact), I started at a new company, which had hired me due in part to my (alleged) expertise with their product. I had barely been there a week when they told me that I would be flying from Seattle to the east coast to do three days' worth of training for a big corporate customer. Big customer. I'd done training before, so this wasn't unreasonable. But I was nervous and because it was mid-winter and I was stressed, I started to get a cold.
But off I went. Training started at some awful time like 8:00 in the morning, meaning of course I had to find my way to the facility early after way too little sleep. We got all set up to start the training, and I launched into the agenda for the standard course.
Their main dude stopped me at that point and said, "Oh, we already know all that." What they wanted, as it turned out, was a class that explored the deep innards of the product, which of course I had only superficial knowledge of.
So. 20 minutes into the first day of a three-day course, and I was out of material.
Somehow we bashed on. They were very good about the situation, and we worked out something, I forget what, where we did more of a seminar that I believe also involved me phoning home for advice at various times. (This would be been before email was prevalent, even.) I was stressed, though, man was I stressed. I slept badly and my cold had flowered impressively, and it was cold as hell and the air was dry, and at one point I sprang a nosebleed right in the middle of the class. Hey, there's a way to make a good impression, right?
This memory has lingered, as you can see. Since then I've never entered a classroom without thinking about this, because I have actually lived the nightmare that everyone has about getting up in front of an audience or a class and having no clue.
Hopefully I won't need to report to you next week that I've lived it again. Indeed, hopefully I will have made more converts to the wonderful world of styles and templates. Either way, I'll let you know.
[categories]
personal
[tags]
Microsoft word, teaching, class, styles, templates
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