Previously on Writing or Just Practicing...
Archived posts from 2009. Note that due to the increased security for RSS feeds in IE9 you must either add this site to your trusted sites list to make the link work, or copy the URL...
View ArticleBeing Resolute...
So we're out of the noughties and into the tens, and I suppose I should decide on some New Year (or, more likely, recycled from the last several years) resolutions. Of course, one of the nice things...
View ArticleA Picture's Worth a Thousand Wg8nX
As a full-time 'Softie, I am - of course - a fully converted Binger. However, I occasionally pop across to the competition just to see what graphic they've used for the search engine name, designed to...
View ArticleHoney, I Shrunk The Internet
If any UK-based Internet users noticed that the Web was running a bit slow last Thursday, I apologize. Probably I was partly to blame. I managed to send an extremely large zip file on a four hundred...
View ArticleLiving in a Cage
Funny stuff, wireless. We take for granted that we can wander aimlessly about the office or home while maintaining a robust connection to the outside world, or just to the server down the hall. Let's...
View ArticleYour Giraffe Is Upside Down...
Reading a UK computer magazine last week, I came across the delightful phrase "like playing a recording of a swarm of hornets to a group of blindfolded mime artists". It conjures up a vivid mental...
View ArticleCum On Feel The Noize
Why is it that the U.S. manufacturing industry seems unable to make anything with an electric motor in it that works without generating enough noise to wake the dead (or, at least, the sleeping)? Its...
View ArticleIn Search Of An Up-to-Date Definition
Maybe we've just been lucky with car insurance. When somebody reversed into the side of my wife's parked car some weeks ago, our insurance company sorted it all out with one phone call, got the car...
View ArticleSock It to Me
I was rather concerned to discover this week how little I know about socks. I have a colleague who is a sock expert - even to the extent of knitting her own in a most startling range of textures,...
View ArticleImage-inary Complexity
Like most computer geeks, my needs are simple and few - a quad core box with a big disk, a decent connection to the 'Net, plus occasional injections of coffee and cold pizza. My daily bread-winning...
View ArticleLocation Dependent Narrative
Perhaps it's just anecdotal evidence, but it seems like you often hear about people who are afraid of the countryside. For those of us brought up amongst fields, trees, and wildlife, this seems an...
View ArticleWhat's In Your Sandwich?
One of the most amazing things about being in the US is the unending choice of stuff - everywhere. And that fact that everything seems to consist of all kinds of other things. Waiters in restaurants...
View ArticleWeather It's Musical?
If I told you that my wonderful wife bought me a Vantage Pro 2 for my birthday, you might be thinking I was now spending every afternoon outside polishing a gleaming new custom sports car, or happily...
View ArticleMaking a Use Case for Scenarios
Technical writers, like wot I am, tend to be relatively docile and unflappable creatures. It comes with the territory (and, often, with age). Especially when most of your life is spent trying to...
View ArticleDrowning in Vagueness, Maybe
Life was a lot more positive when my grandfather was alive. If he felt ill, he simply had to pop into the local pharmacy, explain his symptoms, and they would sell him a bottle of liquid or a box of...
View ArticleRecovering Old Memories
There's an ongoing discussion about how we, as a society, should be archiving our heritage to make it available to future generations; that is, if global warming, financial crises, and energy shortages...
View ArticleHow Broad Is Your Band?
I'm glad I'm not a doctor or a dentist. They say that, if you are, every conversation you have with people who know you starts with a description of the pains in their feet, or asking for advice on...
View ArticleAgile Government
Talking with a colleague the other day about how a pre-agreed plan can morph over time so that the final outcome bears almost no relation to the original specification, I tossed into the conversation...
View ArticleFiring Up The Imagination
Ever since we moved into this house some ten years ago, my wife has irregularly reminded me that she hates the rather cheap and nasty, imitation coal effect, fan driven, generates hardly any warmth,...
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