That time of year again

It’s my birthday. I’ve always felt uneasy about my birthday for a variety of reasons – it feels like a lot of my life’s bigger emotional upheavals have happened within a few weeks of the day. After a while, I actually started planning to take myself on trips around now, both as a treat for myself, and also to put some distance there. It’s worked pretty well, I think. Today’s not much different – I’m actually writing this post the day before and have it scheduled, as I’ll be on the road. Just a day trip this time, but still.

I’ve been feeling a little weird lately anyway, honestly. We’re in the process of preparing the house to sell (planning to list it at the end of the month-ish), and so I’m trying to go through old boxes from the last move that I just hadn’t gotten to (you know how it is), and we’re whittling things down to put stuff in storage while we hit the road again – this time, the plan is to take a few months to trek across Canada. Exactly when and where will depend on when the house sells, but regardless it’s the next plan. (Some of you may be wondering “didn’t you just move in there?” And you’re right – it’ll be not quite 2 years here. Lovely house, no real regrets, but for various reasons I’m not going to bother enumerating, we decided it was time to move on.)

I’ve always had this sort of vision of having a place that acts like a base of operations – a spot to come home to, yes, but also a spot to re-collect yourself before you take off on another wander. I’m pretty sure I’d need to win a small lottery to pull off affording both the home and the travel these days, though. So for now it seems like an either/or, and the scales for both Simone and I have tipped towards the wander.

I’ve been trying to put out a weekly longer, non-life post the past few weeks, and I plan to continue that, but I’m taking an indulgence this week. It’s my birthday, so I’d appreciate it if you could do me a favor: just do your best. Even if it’s small increments, move forward on getting a little bit happier, a little bit safer and more secure, a little bit more in a good headspace than you were yesterday. That’s all I really want for my birthday, just everyone I care about to be alright, or at least moving in that direction. I know that’s a lot to ask these days, but try. It’d mean a lot to me.

Writing Formats

Last week I talked about technical writing as a role, and I figured I’d run with that theme for a minute. One of the things I mentioned was that we tend to write in other formats, and I wanted to expand on that – if you’re used to a “What You See is What You Get” (WYSIWYG) system like Microsoft Word or a Rich Text Format (RTF), or online editors, you might not think about writing formats much – if you want something bold, you click the bold button. The format is how that bold is represented under the hood. (This is related to, but slightly different from a file type – you can have multiple file types that actually use the same format behind the scenes, but are saved as a different type of file for various reasons.)

Click for an infodump

On Technical Writing

I don’t talk about my day job all that often. What I’m doing currently is software development – specifically, I write tools and create infrastructure for a documentation team. This ranges from writing deployment pipelines and build scripts to writing extensions for the writing software we use, to building out sites and wrangling server configurations. I enjoy it, and I like that the role is broad, where what exactly I’m working on can vary a lot from day to day, depending on what needs to take priority. Prior to my current role, however, I was a technical writer – one of the folks writing the docs, and I wanted to talk about that a bit, as I think it’s a great role that I think a lot of folks might overlook.

Continue reading “On Technical Writing”

Apple and Back to Basics

I have never heard as many people avoiding upgrading to the new macOS, this late into the release cycle (we’re up to 26.2), as I have with this release. Between the new UI being an accessibility nightmare and just actively weird, plus it all seeming to be buggier than normal, it just feels like a bit of a mess. I’m not saying there weren’t some good improvements as well, but let’s just say it wasn’t their best.

What I’d like to see from the next release (macOS 27, since they’ve moved to a year-based versioning) is a “back to basics” bug-fix-focused release. Get your house in order, address technical debt, make everything as smooth and reliable as possible, get things into a good state for future development. Address all of the hate on the new UI, and follow your own UX guidelines. Fix the sorts of UI bugs that make the OS feel regressed and sloppy (for example, when dragging and dropping files from one window to another, it’s no longer clear if you’re copying into that window, or into folder inside that window). That absolutely needs to be the priority, though it’s not like I’m in a position to dictate as such.

Worth noting, the idea isn’t a far-fetched one – they’ve done it before with Snow Leopard, and even marketed it as a “No new features” release. It’s time to do that again.

Kindness, Empathy, and Respect

Adam Savage on enduring today’s uncertain, hostile times (found via Chris Koerner):

It’s some good thoughts, and I agree: the experiences that I think about most fondly, and the work that I’m most proud of, were all approached with a sense of kindness, empathy, and respect. (And as he mentions, the regrets that I do have largely center around occasions where I failed apply or communicate with those principles in mind, and let others down in the process.)

Not worth the argument

Jay Springett has a nice piece over on his site called “Just Like Stuff“, and I appreciated the comment about not arguing with people about anything on the internet:

I’ve had a hard rule for almost twenty years, related to, but separate from, not posting negative things on the internet: I don’t argue with people about anything on the internet.

I grew up in the late 90’s and early 00’s on phpBB forums. At university I was immersed in the blast furnace of 4chan for days at a time. Maybe it’s the Gen-X hangover I carry as a Gen-Y geriatric millennial, but I realised in my early 20’s that I just don’t care enough. I spent whole days, whole summers even when I was younger, lost to endless back-and-forth about whether a band sold out, what sci-fi books were overrated, or particular egregiously on my side, what choice of operating system or KDE vs GNOME proved you were secretly a poser. My mind boggles at it all now, the thought of spending my youth in a permanent trial by forum post. I saw the pattern in my self, how it was making me feel and how permanently warfare online was effecting other people so I opted out. 

The times I have argued about something on the internet as an adult, have all resulted from a lapse in judgement, and without exception left me feeling guilty and full of shame. Not because of what others might have thought about the argument, but because I had wasted my energy and got emotionally involved in something that just… didn’t matter.

Jay Springett, “Just Like Stuff“

Sounds about right to me. I spent enough time in my teens and early twenties getting into arguments on forums and IRC channels and whatnot, and yeah. I just don’t care enough. To borrow a line from War Games, “The only winning move is not to play.”

RSS and how I use it

Based on some conversations after my last post, there was some curiosity about how I personally end up using RSS and what seems to work for me.

  • Start with an RSS reader that feels good to you. It’s not one size fits all, you may want a different experience than me. A lot of them are free (and most of the rest at least have a free trial) so there’s no harm in trying a few out. I’ve been using Vienna (which just celebrated 20 years of development).
  • Then start figuring out which sites or content you want coming your way. You can start with blogs you already read, and can see if any of the newsletters you’re part of might feel better as a feed. Then let it accumulate and keep adding as you bump into stuff around the internet.
  • It’s better to let your subscribed feeds build up naturally than it is to dive right into a firehose. Personally I don’t like leaving things unread, so I try to find a sweet spot where if I’m reading daily, it feels manageable in a reasonable amount of time.
  • While things come in chronologically, you don’t have to read them chronologically. There are some days where I’m just not in the mood for a longer, deeper post. It’s okay to punt and read those later.
  • Most people aren’t particularly prolific, so it’s generally fine to have more feeds than you’d otherwise expect.
  • That said, some folks ARE high volume. Like, Wil Wheaton posts regularly on his Tumblr. But they tend to be quick pithy things or sharing a quick picture or meme, so it’s like a quick palate cleanse to quickly scan through them. But when I got busy and didn’t read my feeds for a week, and I came back to 197 unread posts, I didn’t feel bad about just marking the entire feed as read. If I really want, I can always go back and read them later.
  • It’s your own personal feed collection. Don’t feel obligated to keep subscribed if you’re not enjoying the content. Especially if they tend to be high frequency, long content. If there’s not a compelling reason (the writing is exceptional, I know them personally and want to keep up with them, the topics they cover are interesting enough that it’s worth the slog), I just unsubscribe. I tend to keep the feed around, just disabled, in case I want to revisit it later.
  • Find a consistent time to go through your feeds. Some folks are morning readers. I tend to go through my feeds after work as sort of a wind-down. The point is to find a routine that works for you, as RSS works best (in my opinion) when it’s built into your day rather than an occasional afterthought. (Looping back to Molly’s newspaper metaphor, a newspaper works best when read daily, rather than letting a week or two build up to slog through all at once.)

Of course, your mileage may vary. RSS is a protocol and a tool, not a methodology or system – find what works best for you. Hope that helps!

RSS as Personal Newspaper

Over at Citation Needed, Molly White has a nice piece on how you can Curate your own newspaper with RSS. If you’re not reading Molly’s work already, you really should, especially if you care about what’s happening in the tech sector (mostly a mix of web3/crypto, and tech’s impacts on human rights and freedoms).

The basic gist is that RSS is a tried and true protocol that tons of services already have running but don’t do a great job of advertising, and it lets you read things at your pace, in an easily digestible, consistent format. I’ve been saying similar for ages, but I think she makes a more compelling argument for it, not the least of which being that it’s a lynchpin in how she gets her job done.

What if you could take all your favorite newsletters, ditch the data collection, and curate your own newspaper? It could include independent journalists, bloggers, mainstream media, worker-owned media collectives, and just about anyone else who publishes online. Even podcast episodes, videos from your favorite YouTube channels, and online forum posts could slot in, too. Only the stuff you want to see, all in one place, ready to read at your convenience. No email notifications interrupting your peace (unless you want them), no pressure to read articles immediately. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Molly White

I initially saw this article as a link in Blue Sky… but when I actually had a chance to read it, it was in my RSS reader.