Writing: Blog

I tested OpenMusic to generate a dramatic confession-style backing track for a theatre project, a reality TV take on Antony and Cleopatra. Beyond the usual prompt-based generation, it has stem splitting and MIDI tools that are actually useful for music production.

Revisiting links saved ten years ago, exploring what captured my attention and the world's interests back in 2016.

Much like "googling" has become a generic term for searching, Grammarly has become almost synonymous with a general grammar and style checker, outside of those provided by tools like Word or Google Docs. I have used the pro version for several years, and while its advice is not always correct and inconsistent, it's generally a good aid in giving ideas and pointers for writing. However, every year, that subscription comes up for renewal, and I start thinking about alternatives and features I'd like to have that Grammarly doesn't offer. In this post, I look at the disappointingly few alternatives that exist.

Who do you think reads most of your technical writing? Customers? Potential customers?

How many words do you write every day? Think about it. Every time you send an email, post in Slack, or comment on an Instagram post. Oh, you thought I would mention those wondrous words you pour into your latest novel, blog post, marketing copy, or script?

For Nanowrimo (national novel writing month) 2021 I continued my novel from last year. To remind anyone who hasn’t followed my sparse updates on the novel, the novel is a speculative fiction set after a global zombie and human conflict where the two (let’s call them) species coexist in a tense harmony. For Nanowrimo this year, I set myself two targets.

I appreciate that not everyone who writes documentation is a native English speaker, or even if they are, may not understand the best way to write clearly and concisely. Many native English speakers had our last grammar lesson more than 20 years ago, and have learnt the tips and tricks we now use as professional writers recently. There are three important things to remember to justify the time and effort of making your writing more understandable:

Documentation structure applies to your documentation as a whole, and to each page. Let's start at the top and work down.

What's one of the first things you look at when you look at using a new project?

Start with writing a System Description Document. The Development Plan and Preliminary Audit are optional components but quite valuable for new development teams.

Ten days ago Kevin Small posted Visualizing Bitcoin Transactions in 3D and Virtual Reality, making it the 500th post submitted to Kauri. We thought this was a great time to recap and recount some of our and your favorite posts from the past year since Kauri began.

Slightly late on my yearly roundup, which was the catchphrase of the

If you've wanted a spell checker or autocorrect that simply does more, check out how this tool is bein used to check for tense and syle as well.

I began my round of 2016 with how eventful it was, and 2017 continued to deliver major world events that shook countries, cities and people. Despite this, I had a largely positive year, switching from an employee back to a contractor again, which was a largely positive move. I changed my major outlet from SitePoint to DZone, added a handful of others, wrote a lot of content marketing posts for tech companies, wrote a book and (nearly) finished a video course. On top of all that I travelled to many places, including cities and countries I had never been to before.

You jet around the world, a road and sky warrior armed with a laptop in search of a power socket and decent WiFi. No ties, no responsibilities; work when you need it and when you’re bored, you move on. Sounds perfect, doesn’t it?

2016 has been an eventful year in many, many ways. I don't want to dwell on big global topics in this post, but review what I got up to.

That time of year is upon us, whether it be Christmas, 'The Holidays', Festivus, or whatever else you decide to call it. It's here, loud, everywhere and in your face.

I recently created a package for the Atom text editor that exports your markdown files to Medium. Find out how I wrote it and how you can help me improve it.

When you've spent a lot of time working on the latest great project, library, service or platform you generally would like people to use it. Whether people find out about you from a presentation, the media, internet search or word of mouth, what's the first aspect of your project that people usually encounter?

I spent a long time researching, trying and tweaking text editors. As a cross-platform developer and technical writer (mostly writer these days) I work with different programming languages, document formats and want an editor with particular features, but that is also easy on the eye. Ideally I wanted all the functionality I was looking for in one application, not split between 5.

As a (very) frequent writer and editor I often find myself writing and correcting the same words over and over again. Or in preparation for publishing I have to repeatedly undertake the same steps, such as adding short codes or formatting links.

It's taken moving to a non-English speaking country to realize how wide spread and common place the English languages is in the World. This has piqued my interest in learning about the origins of our bastard tongue and how it got to this position.

I loved this book and couldn't stop reading it, which was a pain as I mostly read before going to sleep. The book takes an era by era look at how the video games and movie industries have tried to collaborate together, and largely failed.

Last weekend I was back in Tirana for my second OSCAL, an awesome little open source conference that has a massively diverse audience and punches well above it's weight. Whilst in Albania I was conducting some interviews and research for a forthcoming article on the Albanian (likely also including Kosovo) startup and tech scene(s), but more of that later. When I visited Albania last year it was my first trip to a Balkan country and since then I have visited Serbia (twice) and Croatia. Last year, everything was new and novel, this trip I was seeing beyond that into things I might have missed.

OK, I'm late again, but this time I have a decent excuse. My Wife has been in Hospital the past week and it has thrown my planning and timing. By pure coincidence, it leads me nicely to the topic I wanted to discuss this installment based on a presentation I have given twice. The topic is physical and mental health for developers.

What better way to start my new blog post and podcast of semi-random uttering and opinions than with a round of the year and thoughts that have led me to starting it in the first place.

As part of creating Chip Shop (and future game ideas) I read recommendations on reading about (and playing) various types of games, not just board games.

First, let's get the disclaimers out of the way. I helped Kickstart this book, but that wouldn't necessarily make my review biased...

I've lived in three countries in my life, and I travel on a regular basis. I wouldn't go as far as to say that we should have global open borders, but there are ways that the life of the new breed of global entrepreneurs could be easier.

You've had and developed an idea, got it started and hit the ground running with people involved, projects happening and hopefully some outcomes.