Category: Uncategorized

I have a news reader (duh) and with that comes about 500 feeds. I’ve never counted them, but that seems like a reasonable number. One of them happens to be Robert Scoble, who works for Microsoft. His title is something like Evangelist or something like that (I’m too lazy to look it up), but he’s basically a technology-enabled brand-builder for MS. He’s a marketer who gets the web. He’s a salesmen with the soft sell for geeks (well, geeks who aren’t rabid MS haters). In short, he’s someone who works for a company and promotes that company. Evil, right?

He also has a (wildly popular) blog. People can subscribe to this blog. People can not subscribe to this blog. What amazes me is that people think it’s necessary to broadcast that they are now no longer subscribing to his blog. BIG NEWS TYPEFACE INITIATED.

First, nice little traffic booster. Second, who gives a flying…. uhm, fark? You know what, I don’t subscribe to Scripting News. You know why? It’s none of your damn business! If you want traffic, do it like the rest of us; suck up to A-list bloggers.

Oh, wait…

Link

[Via Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]

This hand slap to the head once again brought to you by Technical Writers. Someone with the title Technical Author (cue eye roll) posted a one sentence question to a Help-authoring tool list. To quote: “Can anyone tell me what ‘structured authoring’ is?”. This was met by links to a Google-searched PDF. The person read about, oh, 7 words, then skimmed and then came back to the list with (paraphrasing) “So, it’s using templates?”.

Cue hand to forehead.

Ok, this message is for all you Technical Authors, Content Developers, User Assistance Engineers, and plain ole’ Technical Writers. (The rest of you can leave if you want.)

You. Are. Not. Helping. In the immortal words of Jon Stewart, “Just stop.” If the following phrases don’t mean anything to you, start polishing your resume:

• Content Management
• Information Architecture
• Metadata
• Business Objects
• Format separated from Content
• Assembling documentation (and not in a binder)

And I swear to God if any one of you mentions that XML will solve your documentation issues (such as short timelines and content management) and you don’t have the first clue about how to accomplish those goals in the absence of a consultant, I’m going to really lose it.

I appreciate the communities that exist out there for authors, I really do. There are some really good ones. But, and I mean this in the most abrasive way you can imagine, some of the people that come there are so damn clueless, there needs to be an official person who virtually (or literally) clubs them over the head when they ask dumb questions. Google is your friend. If that doesn’t work, at least think about what you’re going to ask. No one hands you information anymore, and as a documentation person, you should know that first hand.

After that, post away but at least put something there for people to react to. Don’t come like a child with your hand out asking for an M&M; put some damned effort into it. I know you’ve had that job for like 20 years and don’t want to change, but too bad. I wrote for less than 5 years and I had to change more than once; it’s the new way of the world.

Actually, it’s not, it’s the way business has been for a very long time, you just haven’t had to work in a business environment because you’ve been treated like a cost, a necessary cost of doing business. It is in the interest of anyone who wants to keep writing to make themselves valuable. If you don’t, you’ll find out quickly what happens if you aren’t.

Get a “taste” of The Culinary Institute of America’s professional wine courses by taking this exciting course online—for free. We’ll give you a sample of our in-depth, on-site courses by taking you on a virtual journey through three of the world’s top grape varieties. You’ll learn about where they grow, how they’re made into wine, how the wines they’re made into taste, what foods they work with best, and why they’re hot in the marketplace. We’ll suggest a few simple but great tastings you can do at home, and share some delicious wine-matched recipes from our CIA chefs. Along the way, you’ll meet some of our expert wine instructors and get a look at the full program of professional wine courses we offer. In this short course you will:

• Learn about three of the world’s most exciting grape varieties from the diverse perspectives of CIA wine instructors, growers, winemakers, chefs, and wine marketing specialists.
• Discover the principles involved in matching wine.
• Participate in exciting guided tastings that you can conduct at home.
• Receive a sampling of delicious wine-matched recipes from CIA chefs.
• Learn about the CIA’s full program of professional wine courses.

Link

[via Kottke.org]

If I ever meet the author of AAiOR, I so need to buy him/her a beer/wine/stiff drink, mainly for making me laugh my ass off at the absurdity of this town. The term “overrated” barely scratches the surface of this pompous, over-marketed, elitist town. Too bad they have one of the best employers around (despite what GEO thinks).

Take today’s post today over at AAiOR:

So if you’re keeping track, the DDA’s plan for a parking lot at First and William is marginally less bad than a putting a landfill or a war zone there, and about the same as an oil drilling operation. No word on how it would compare to a nuclear waste dump or a bioweapons facility.

See other posts at AAiOR about the Greenway/DDA dispute

ann arbor is overrated: a weblog: More Overheated Greenway Rhetoric

It’s like you could replace the University in this story with “University of Michigan” and no one would bat an eye. It hasn’t happened at U-M, I’m just sayin’…

Last year, it was the fashion among campus conservative groups to hold anti-affirmative action bake sales: In such sales, prices are calibrated by the buyer’s race, with women and minority groups receiving discounts and white male students paying a presumably “full price” for the same cookie. It was also the fashion for administrators to try to prevent such sales, and, when prevention failed, to shut them down and punish the students who held them. The bake sales weren’t great commentary on affirmative action–they convinced no one who was not already convinced, and they angered people who might have been open to reasoned argument. But, inadvertently, they were great commentary on the state of free speech on campus, as group after group succeeded in flushing out the censors in their midst. There is no question that holding such a bake sale falls within the realm of constitutionally protected speech–but administrators persistently refused to see this, and consistently cited their schools’ anti-discrimination policies (with no sense of irony whatsoever) as justification for refusing to let the sales proceed and for disciplining those who were holding them.

Tales of anti-affirmative bake sales and the censors who hate them have been comparatively rare this year. There is a classic case brewing at Northeastern Illinois University, however. The College Republicans (it’s always the College Republicans) are planning an anti-affirmative action bake sale, and the administration doesn’t want the sale to take place. So the administration has threatened to punish the CRs if they hold the sale, even though a campus feminist group recently held an analogous “pay equity bake sale” geared to criticize inequality between the sexes. The other part of the pattern is typical, too–FIRE has stepped in to defend the group, and has today gone public with the details of NEIU’s unconscionable refusal to recognize the expressive rights of students whose opinions do not reflect the accepted institutional orthodoxy. Read all about it at www.thefire.org.

Critical Mass: A high price to pay

I was playing around with MSN Desktop Search (which rocks, by the way), and came across an email from an old friend and co-worker, Tim (last name withheld for future Google-searching anonymity).

I have no idea if this is true or not, but take it as a parable, not so much gospel. It makes me laugh and wonder every time I stumble across it.

Ever Wonder Why?…

The US standard railroad gauge (width between the two rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates.

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.

Why did “they” use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots first formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Specifications and bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse’s ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses. Thus, we have the answer to the original question.

Now the extra-terrestrial twist to the story…

When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory had to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses’ behinds.

So, the major design feature of what is arguably the world’s most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse’s ass.

And you wonder why it’s so hard to get ahead in this world…

The countdown for the extinction of CDs is about to begin

MP3 players are changing peoples listening habits. We dont carry folders filled with CDs anymore. We carry our library in our MP3 players. We dont listen to CDs. We listen to playlists that we adjust all the time. We dont burn CDs anymore, its too time consuming. We copy all our music to our MP3 players so its all available at our fingertips.
All of our music in a single device. Available to us where ever we are, for whenever we want it. Music how we want it, when we want it. Easy and breezy. Thats how we want to consume music.
Thats not how we are being sold music.

…

There is absolutely no reason I shouldnt have been able to buy the song or CD i wanted from the FYE record store I was standing in side of , IPod in hand, ready to buy. If only I could just connect the thing and download the songs.

…

The only question is who will be the first label to crack and offer this and how soon will it be. Of course the cynics will say that this wont ever happen, but Im not buying it. Its too much cash up front for the labels to say no to. It also makes too much business sense.

Mark, you’re just cool enough to make another billion with this idea. Screw the labels; screw the consortiums. Do it, man. We’ll beat a path to your door.

I just bought this shirt… I think I need to get in the T-shirt business.

Link

[Via Preshrunk]

The Sociology department at Columbia Univ. is running an experiment in what makes a hit song. From BoingBoing:

My colleagues and I in the Sociology department at Columbia University are doing an experiment about pop music which might be interesting to your readers. If they participate they will have a chance to discover and download new music for free.

After listening to the music of Britney Spears, we became interested in why some musicians become superstars while other seemingly similar musicians don’t. To understand this process better, we decided to find out how people form their musical tastes. We have created a website where people can listen to, rate, and download songs by cool, up-and-coming artists. All the downloads are free and legal so the site is a great place to find new music, help support emerging artists, and help out science — all at the same time.

Once the research is completed we hope to be able to shed light not just on the popularity of music, but also on the popularity of other cultural objects like books, movies, and works of art.

Some pretty good stuff there.

Link
[Via Boing Boing]

Support your independent coffee house (or a second, not-as-large chain).

Or, just Googlebomb this site with
Starbuck’s Delocator. Why? From BoingBoing:

“‘The Delocator’ is a site that helps you find independent alternatives to Starbucks in your neighborhood. So why isn’t it called the ‘Starbucks Delocator’? Because the San Francisco Art Institute was too scared that Starbucks would come through with the corporate smack-down. Of course this renaming means the site won’t show up in google when people search for ‘Starbucks’, and what’s the point if people can’t discover it?

Or, it’s a complete fake used to send people to Starbuck’s because there are no “other” options. (It also serves Starbucks locations, which I don’t quite understand; cynacism rising.) I added Sweetwater’s to the list. Comon A2, where are the other ones?