Welcome

I am a technical communicator with a love of explaining technical concepts in documentation, blog posts, videos, books and more.

I currently work for Chronosphere and have a small technical writing agency called Gregarious Mammal.

I am a podcaster, video maker, writer of interactive fiction, and games. This website is a home for all my blog posts, podcasts, newsletters and creative projects.

Need advice for your documentation project? Sign up for my office hours.

Hands on - Improving code standards with mega linter

Mega-Linter analyses consistency and quality of 48 languages, 22 formats, 19 tooling formats, and so much more. Is it all you need or overkill? I take a look!

Only fools and tech courses

In this episode I cover AI coding, GitLab, filling all those tech vacancies, trusting VPNs, undersea cables, and obscure actors with popularity in equally obscure places…

How I set up a RaspberryPi to share my files and media

Over the past months, I’ve been slowly assembling a suite of self-hosted tools and services on a shiny new RaspberryPi 400, and finally, I think I am finished and ready to write up my experiences. At the least, it will help remind me what I have, but I hope it might also help others taking similar journeys.

Hands on - Review web projects with Netlify preview

I’ve been a happy Netlify customer for some time, but recently noticed that deploy previews added a handful of promising looking features for change review. I take a look at the potential.

Ep 6 - The Light, Chronicles of Ghaistala

Chronicles of Ghaistala Episode 6 - The Light, was streamed live Sep 12th on Twitch.TV/CritTestDummies Join us on Twitch every other Sunday at 6PM CET for new episodes! Ghaistala is a creation of Daylight Publications and their sourcebook Supers and Sorcery, available now on DriveThruRPG.com BG art by Daylight Publications (@daylightpub1066) and @AbbieJArt, both on Twitter Character art by @DougErbert on IG and Twitter Graphic design by @Stoppushingme on IG. Thank you to our players, Chris, Alex, Luke, and Patrick as well as our DM Peter!

Ep 5 - Up, Up, and Away!, Chronicles of Ghaistala

Chronicles of Ghaistala Episode 5 - Up, Up, and Away!, was streamed live Aug 29th on Twitch.TV/CritTestDummies Join us on Twitch every other Sunday at 6PM CET for new episodes! Ghaistala is a creation of Daylight Publications and their sourcebook Supers and Sorcery, available now on DriveThruRPG.com BG art by Daylight Publications (@daylightpub1066) and @AbbieJArt, both on Twitter Character art by @DougErbert on IG and Twitter Graphic design by @Stoppushingme on IG. Thank you to our players, Chris, Alex, Luke, and Patrick as well as our DM Peter!

Screw you reality!

In this episode I look at attempts at a floating “paradise”, AI in education, the race to delivery groceries, Umberto Eco’s advice for writers and more!

Like what you hear?

Hands on - Build content-optimized websites with Docusaurus

Powered by markdown and built on top of React, Docusaurus is an open sourced static site generator. How does it compare and does its React roots complicate things? I take a look!

You're not as smart as you might think you are

In this episode I cover… The history of smartphones, Docker, and Hyperlinks. Also is AI fast catching up to (bad) developers, and what will become of Afghanistans Internet?

Devx5 - Empowering developers with Rust

Rust is infamous for not only its performance and feature set but also its developer experience and documentation. How true is this for beginners with the language? We take a look.

My audio and video production setup

I’ve been running podcasts for years, and while I worked on some video courses in the past, over the past year I have invested more time in my audio and video setup, primarily for live-streaming. After months and months of getting It to a point where I am “kind of” happy with it, I thought it was high time I documented it. Partly so others can learn from my setup, and partly so I can keep tabs on it myself.

Hands on - Build a Content API with GraphCMS

GraphCMS gives you instant GraphQL Content APIs to create, enrich, unify, and deliver your content across platforms.

Nextcloud and Kubernetes in the Cloud With Kuma Service Mesh (article)

Want a powerful, self-hosted personal cloud? Then look no further than Nextcloud running on Kubernetes with a service mesh to add all the help and features you need.

Nextcloud and Kubernetes in the Cloud With Kuma Service Mesh (video)

Want a powerful, self-hosted personal cloud? Then look no further than Nextcloud running on Kubernetes with a service mesh to add all the help and features you need.

Careful where you put that data

In this episode I look at the many facets of unintended data, Google’s messaging journey, happy birthday Linux, and much more.

Transcript

Recommendations and Newsletters

I currently curate 4 newsletters on Ethics (mostly in technology), gaming, Language and Linguistics, see my latest recommendations and join those newsletters below.

The Chinchilla Squeaks Newsletter

My general newsletter "Chinchilla Squeaks" draws content from all these sources and a couple more, sign up to that below.

Latest ethics posts

Newsletter coming soon, for now enjoy the posts below.

China has started a grand experiment in AI education. It could reshape how the world learns.

from MIT Technology Review

Zhou Yi was terrible at math. He risked never getting into college. Then a company called Squirrel AI came to his middle school in Hangzhou, China, promising personalized tutoring.

The battle for control of Afghanistan’s internet

from WIRED UK

The Taliban has yet to decide what to do with the internet in Afghanistan. The same is true for the global companies that underpin it When the Taliban last ruled Afghanistan, between 1996 and 2001, the nation remained resolutely analogue.

GitHub, f*ck your name change.

from

Last summer an(other) unarmed black man was killed by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The subsequent 8 minute and 46 second video clip swept across social media and raised widespread condemnation. Hours of discourse and weeks of protests followed.

Can Silicon Valley Find God?

from The New York Times

“Alexa, are we humans special among other living things?” One sunny day last June, I sat before my computer screen and posed this question to an Amazon device 800 miles away, in the Seattle home of an artificial intelligence researcher named Shanen Boettcher.

Inside the fight to reclaim AI from Big Tech’s control

from MIT Technology Review

In 2020, as the co-lead of Google’s ethical AI team, Gebru had reached out to Emily Bender, a linguistics professor at the University of Washington, and the two decided to collaborate on research about the troubling direction of artificial intelligence.

Latest language posts

Newsletter coming soon, for now enjoy the posts below.

China has started a grand experiment in AI education. It could reshape how the world learns.

from MIT Technology Review

Zhou Yi was terrible at math. He risked never getting into college. Then a company called Squirrel AI came to his middle school in Hangzhou, China, promising personalized tutoring.

Why is the English spelling system so weird and inconsistent?

from Aeon

English spelling is ridiculous. Sew and new don’t rhyme. Kernel and colonel do. When you see an ough, you might need to read it out as ‘aw’ (thought), ‘ow’ (drought), ‘uff’ (tough), ‘off’ (cough), ‘oo’ (through), or ‘oh’ (though).

from

Michael Moorcock's Three Day Novel

from

In his early days of writing, famed fantasy and Appendix N writer Michael Moorcock was a disciple of Lester Dent's Master Plot.

How we made Typerighter, the Guardian’s style guide checker

from The Guardian

The Guardian’s style guide was originally published in 1928 as a physical book, and is available to everyone on our website. Over time, it’s grown bigger and more complex, containing guidelines on important topics that we want to get right.

Latest gaming posts

Newsletter coming soon, for now enjoy the posts below.

5 Room Dungeons + Contest

from

The following tips originally appeared in Issue #156, and they are among my favorite. I thought it was time to feature them again with some edits, a new tip or two, and a contest. Though I call them 5 Room Dungeons, they actually apply to any location with five or so areas.

Tools to Create Emotions

from

I'm developing a list of tools and resources for ways to create emotions in players. I've divided the list into three sections: rhythm, transportation, and loss aversion. My thoughts on this subject are still evolving, so my categories may shift in the future. Rhythm sets the mood of a game.

Corrupted Blood incident

from Wikipedia

The Corrupted Blood incident (or World of Warcraft pandemic[1][2]) was a virtual pandemic in the MMORPG World of Warcraft, which began on September 13, 2005, and lasted for one week. The epidemic began with the introduction of the new raid Zul'Gurub and its end boss Hakkar the Soulflayer.

Creating Interactive Fiction: A Guide to Using Twine

from

Editor’s note: Aidan Doyle’s introduction to writing interactive stories can be found here.

Spire: The City Must Fall, or, “Menzoberranzan Writes Back”

from

I am probably late to the party on this, but just this past week I discovered the game Spire: The City Must Fall. It looked absolutely fascinating, so I threw myself into it and read the entire book cover to cover, and now I have thoughts about it.