Spolsky in Salon

Grok Headline matches for Spolsky in Salon

Spolsky Drops the Big One

Spolsky Drops the Big One 06/17/2004 03:48 AM
Joel Spolsky posted an astounding essay a few days ago that I somehow missed. I don’t agree with every paragraph, but every paragraph is worth reading. If I may pick one minor point out for a bit of special highlighting: We’ve had good full-text search technology since the Seventies, and in the last ten years more or less everybody has become a regular user of full-text search. Why isn’t there good built-in full-text desktop search available right now today on both OS X and Windows, out of the box? (Most of the article isn’t about search, most of it’s about why the Windows API is dying on the vine; don’t miss it.)

New Spolsky Book

New Spolsky Book 06/22/2005 01:56 AM

Introduction to Best Software Writing I: Joel Spolsky just published a new book. I loved his last book. And even though all of its content was contained on his site, just having it in a single text was great.

Well, just like last time, all of the content of this new book is somewhere out on the Net. This is actually speculation on my part, but there are about two dozen essays (listed at the bottom of the linked page above) and I found the first four I searched for as the first result of a simple Google search for the title:

• The Location Field is the New Command Line
• Strong Typing vs. Strong Testing
• PowerPoint Remix
• Starbuck s Does Not Use Two-Phase Commit

Spolsky on RFPs

Spolsky on RFPs 03/28/2005 04:39 PM

The Road to FogBugz 4.0: Part I: Joel Spolsky is running a series of articles about the development of FogBugz 4.0. I haven't even read the first installment, but the fourth paragraph contains a hysterically damning description of the RFP process.

RFP stands for "Request for Proposal." It's a request by a large company for a custom proposal from a small company. The small company works on the 200 page laser-printed proposal like mad for three weeks and Fedexes it in great expense and at the last minute, where it gets put in the trash because the large company has their favorite vendor who takes them on a helicopter to Atlantic City on junkets involving blackjack and strippers, and who is going to get the contract no matter what, but someone in purchasing for some unexplained reason, maybe he's bucking for a promotion is insisting that the proposal be opened up to "competitive bidding" and the small company has been chosen as a victim to write up a proposal that has no chance of being accepted just to make the process look a little bit less corrupt, and if you're a small company, I would recommend that you don't fall for it and don't spend any time responding to RFPs unless it's already understood that you're going to get the contract.

This reminds of the Web design sales process, where a company essentially wants a functional specification of their new Web site before they sign a deal. They want you to analyze, plan, and specify every last detail of what the new site will do before they agree to anything.

You can easily spend a dozen hours preparing this for a complex site. And this can involve consultations with the prospect where you really help them define their plans — to draw some concept out of the haze that usually accompanies the "we need a new Web site" urge. I've found that the time spent is rarely ever a prospect trying to get me to understand what they want. Most of the time is me questioning and prodding the prospect so they can start defining their own plans.

There's no concept that these things have a value all their own. They're not just a freebie byproduct of the sales process. If you do them for free in the hopes of getting a deal, then you can always add them back into the deal when you land it as hours already spent. But if you don't land it, well then you're just out that time.

And they have the spec. You think they'll toss that, or will they hang onto it to show it to the vendor they do hire next week?

Berkeley on Joel Spolsky

Berkeley on Joel Spolsky 02/10/2004 02:56 AM


One of the great things about living in Berkeley is that a lot of interesting people come to town, from political figures giving talks on campus to writers at Cody's to musicians playing at Freight and Salvage, and if you are at all adventurous you can hear and meet many of them. Tonight Berkeley was host to a leading light from the small world of software product and project management, (which also happens to be my profession, to the extent I have one), Joel Spolsky, who writes a well-regarded weblog on software management, Joel on Software. The venue was a funny one, a cafe called Au Coquelet that also served as my alternative office and favorite lunch spot for the eight years that I had an office around the corner. It is a business person's lunch place and a student's dinner and study and hang out place. So I walked into the cafe tonight and looked around for the Joel group -- like any other geek, I was too shy to ask anyone, but when I spotted a big table lined entirely with males, mostly in their mid-twenties to early forties, not too well dressed, predominantly European-American, I knew that I had found the geek gathering. It was a curious scene. Joel was ensconced at the first table, attempting to swallow bites of foot between responding to questions. Latecomers like myself were filling in the table around the corner, where we slowly warmed up to each other by discussing computers in education and citing favorite Joel essays like The Law of Leaky Abstractions, 12 Steps to Better Code, and Fire And Motion. The crowd included its share of local luminaries, such as Berkeley tech writer Scott Mace, Salon Managing Editor Scott Rosenberg, Ten Speed Press founder Phil Wood, Perl Guru Sriram "Ram" Srinivasan, plus the usual crowd of dot-com crash victims, cashed-out retirees and survivors looking for the next interesting thing that I run into at any tech gatherings these days. Next to us were two undergraduate women, who slowly got more and more alarmed as more men kept arriving and hauling over tables, eventually enveloping them on three sides, at which point the women got up and left.

It is always fun meeting someone whom one knows only through their writing, and to compare their online persona to their physical one. In his writing in Joel on Software, Joel always comes across as a little Olympian, delivering his deep insights from his vast experience. Actually, I suspect that he just thinks more analytically about his experience than most of us, and he writes very well. His online persona is calm, considered, and wise. As another C alifornian reviewer noted, even though his website sports a picture of the skyline of Seattle, Joel Spolsky in person definitely comes across like a New Yorker, especially when surrounded by a sea of Californians. He spoke rapidly, intensely, bobbing his head as he held forth with opinions on all matters technical, changing topics with every other sentence, and punctuating each topic with a wisecrack. Although claiming exhaustion from his travels, he was the most energetic person in the room, and he was clearly performing, and performing well. He seemed to enjoy his performance as well, and he was good at it. Talking to him, it was clear that he would be very hard to best in an argument, because, as anyone who reads Joel on Software knows, he has a lot of intellectual horsepower and can express himself very well, but also because he clearly has a lot of stamina for arguing, and would be hard to outlast. The major deviation that he exhibited from the New York stereotype was his politeness. After he finished his meal he got up and moved to another table to talk with some of the other folks who had come, then after a while moved to the next table. He was as attentive to the questions of the twenty-something programmers as he was to those of the local luminaries. One of the things that was curious was to see the crowd (myself included) surrounding Joel and treating him like a Delphic Oracle, asking him "what are Mozilla/Firebird's chances of establishing browser competition again(good), how do you decide what features to put in the next version of Fog Buzz (whatever features the lack of which clearly blocked sales of the last version), what would you use for developing a cross-platform GUI desktop app (don't know). After all, even if he is smarter than I am he probably isn't any smarter than many of the people I've worked with over the years. What's the difference? He writes, frequently and well. It's nice to know that writing still can bring authority, as well as a bit of celebrity. All in all, a very pleasant and informative evening. Thank you Joel for organizing it. Cross posted on The Berkeley Blog

Joel Spolsky and the Temple of Doom

Joel Spolsky and the Temple of Doom 06/19/2004 10:41 AM
I'm back, with a very interesting topic too!

Joel Spolsky, ex-Microsoft Manager and software engineering guru has a new essay, How Microsoft Lost the API War that is creating quite a big storm in the blogging communitiy.

Joel posits that the priests in the holy Temple of Microsoft have lost their way, because it has split into two factions, and the wrong faction is winning. One faction worships on the alter of backward compatibility, while the other is led by fervent priests who are proselytizing to raise up the new gods of .NET and Longhorn. Joel suggests that the new gods will cause the destruction of the holy Temple because Microsoft's great victories were built on the altar of keeping customers happy with backward compatibility. Furthermore the old gods of the Windows API continue to grow more grotesque and cruel with the passing of time, driving former worshipers into the arms of the friendlier gods of World Wide Web.

This story sounds extremely plausible. I must admit that i fit the profile of the developer who used to develop on the Window's API, is familiar with COM and Win32 who now develops mostly using PHP and Python. However I continue to develop and maintain Windows apps that keep our customers happy. There's something fishy about his plausible argument. Some points:

Temple of the Blind?

Firstly, Microsoft is still a compelling place to work for to people who feel that they can make a difference. The Temple continues to attract talented people with a Unix background. For example we have the recent hiring of Ward Cunningham, author of the Wiki. Microsoft is still able to keep talented people like Raymond Chen, and others like him who continue to look after the Windows API, and Longhorn apparently will still give high priority to backward compatibility. Open sourcerers like Miguel Icaza are sufficiently attracted to the .NET vision to stake their careers on Mono. Longhorn and .NET are compelling technologies, so even if Win32 is not so cute anymore, M'soft is providing something over the horizon that remains very attractive.

Temple of the Spider?

Secondly, people don't merely use a web browser. They run the web browser in the OS. So let me ask you, if you are using DreamWeaver or HomeSite or Photoshop or vi or emacs or Gimp, how many of you are willing to give it up for a java applet (or whatever your favorite technology is) running in your web-browser? Precisely.

Temple of the Abandoned?

Third, Joel makes the extravagant claim that developers are not developing to the Windows API. Well if you are using a framework like Delphi or wxWindows then you certainly are insulated from the Windows API, but that doesn't mean that you're not calling the Windows API all the time. I don't see Borland dropping their Windows version of Delphi at any point in time. Joel's argument that developers are dropping Windows like flies sounds attractive to those who have swallowed the open source kool-aid, but i don't think that it fully matches reality.

Temple of the Lost

I do think that Microsoft's IE team has lost their way, and are probably pawns in a bigger game, but that doesn't mean that Microsoft has already lost. And the open source world would be a much poorer place without worthy competitors such as Windows and MacOS.

Joel Spolsky is a first-class writer, in the same order as Philip Greenspun or Eric Raymond. That makes him persuasive and plausible. I think that we aren't talking about Indiana Jones and doomed temples here, but Steve Jobs and reality distortion fields.

Other opinions: Harry Fuecks, Robert McLaws and Oliver Travers.

Joel Spolsky quiere novedades en los
formularios HTML

Joel Spolsky quiere novedades en los
formularios HTML 08/03/2004 07:36 PM

Joel Spolsky picks HTML as the
development platform winner

Joel Spolsky picks HTML as the
development platform winner 06/18/2004 01:53 AM
Joel Spolsky: "The new winners in the application development marketplace will be the people who can make HTML sing." As examples, he cites Oddpost and Google's Gmail. Other innovation, he says, will come via Javascript tricks. Rich clients? Too much...

Will Salon Ever Die?

Will Salon Ever Die? 03/17/2005 03:13 AM

Salon.com : How many lives does Salon have? I just noticed that two years ago today, we were posting about how they couldn't pay their rent and were almost gone.

Well, Salon is almost bankrupt. We've heard this before — Salon is always rumored to be circling the drain, ready to go under in a blaze of glory. Of course, this time they can't pay their rent, so I think it's serious.

Yet, they're still around.

Salon article

Salon article 07/14/2004 10:23 AM
Salon

salon.com/ent/indie/2004/07/13/outfoxed/index.html
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Other: Salon Mac Feature

Other: Salon Mac Feature 02/01/2005 08:48 PM
Will the Mini give the Mac a second chance against Windows?

Technorati Salon

Technorati Salon 05/19/2004 05:45 PM

I have a late afternoon meeting in the City today so I am thinking about stopping by at Technorat i Developer's Salon afterward for pizza, beer, conversation, and adventure (I never been to that part of the town -- Do I need to bring my urban jungle knife, David?).  Maybe I'll see you there.

Salon TV awards

Salon TV awards 09/17/2004 08:34 AM
Your picks -- and ours -- for who should take home Emmy.

Salon in Libraries?

Salon in Libraries? 03/19/2003 10:45 PM

Last year I said I thought Salon should look into licensing content to libraries, and now they're finally doing something about it. Adrienne Crew, their Content Licensing Manager, sent me the following:

"Thought you'd like to know that Salon's Premium Institutional Subscription program for libraries is finally up and running.... Currently we are offering a one year subscription in the $300-400 range and feeds all access to the articles on the site via an IP authentication system or a single password."

More details as I get them.

Salon op-ed on DNC bl0ggers

Salon op-ed on DNC bl0ggers 07/29/2004 05:05 AM
Danah boyd has adapted her rant about the NYT's dismissal of the DNC bloggers as "Web diarists" into an op-ed for Salon.

Blogging will not replace traditional journalism, but it presents a threat to the normative press culture and an opportunity for radical reporting. Bloggers do place the issue of professionalism under attack, not by being unprofessional, but by exposing the ways in which the media operates. As blogging reaches the masses, people are introduced to information that was not reported because it did not suit the party line. Bloggers will happily document the power games that they witness in the press room and will expose future Jayson Blairs. Bloggers also capture information that the mainstream press does not yet realize is valuable, which means that ambitious and digitally minded journalists are constantly scanning the blogs for information. More and more, journalists are thanking bloggers for new slants. The competition between journalists and bloggers for readers' attention results in more diverse and compelling coverage.

Reg Req'd Link

as Salon reports today

as Salon reports today 07/18/2004 06:52 AM
salon

salon.com/news/feature/2004/07/16/wilson/index.html
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Stepheon's Confusion on Salon

Stepheon's Confusion on Salon 04/21/2004 03:23 AM
My copy of Neal Stephenson's Confusion, the new, enormous sequel to Quicksilver, arrived in the mail yesterday before I left for Turin, and it's in my suitcase, waiting for me. Quicksilver was a remarkable book, a triumphant combination of Stephenson's trivia-obsessed, research-intensive approach to the precursors of the information age (viz. Snow Crash's Nam-Shub of Enki and Cryptonomicon's Bletchley Park sequences) and his gift for sprawling, braided stoorylines that combine slapstick action scenes with intense, emotional passages.

Salon's running a double feature on Stephenson today: a long interview with Neal, and a review by Andrew Leonard. Both are highly recommended -- I can't wait to sink my teeth into this book.

Science was new and they didn't know how to do it yet. Science was and is a somewhat contentious thing. Someone's got a theory and they promulgate that theory and then something else comes along and alters, improves on or even flatly contradicts it. Now that we've got 350 years of perspective on this, scientists understand that this is how it's done and there's a mechanism in place for how to do it. It's refereed journals and it's become institutionalized. They didn't have that perspective on it. They couldn't stand back and say, Well, my theory may get contradicted here and there, but this guy who's contradicting it will get contradicted in turn. They didn't have that expectation. They didn't have journals. The first two journals were the Journale de Savants, which was about 1665, and the Proceedings of the Royal Society, which was right about the same time. Leibniz had to found his own journal in order to publish his own work. They were kind of banging around in the dark trying to figure out how to do this.

Hooke, for example, when he figured out how arches work, published it as an anagram. He condensed the idea into this pithy statement: "The ideal form of an arch is the form of a chain hanging, flipped upside down." Then he scrambled the letters to make an anagram and published it. That way, he wasn't giving away the secret, but if somebody came along a few years later and claimed that they'd invented it, he could just unscramble what he'd published. He was establishing precedence.

Hooke squabbled with [Christiaan] Huygens over a bunch of clock-related inventions. This kind of thing was just rife. It came to a head in a grotesque way in the priority dispute over [who invented] the calculus. That was so embarrassing to the whole institution of science and people were so nauseated by it that it taught everyone a lesson. After that, no one would dream of doing what Newton did, which was to invent something really important and then sit on it for 30 years.

danah in Salon: The new bl0gocracy

danah in Salon: The new bl0gocracy 07/29/2004 11:49 AM

salon.com/tech/feature/2004/07/28/demoblog/index.html
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Salon.com - Daou Report

Salon.com - Daou Report 06/24/2005 06:00 PM
From the Daou Report: .. foul

daoureport.salon.com/synopsis.aspx?synopsisId=2c4b940b-f2d8-422 d-b97f-a6caa52db966
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Salon.com Technology | Must-download TV

Salon.com Technology | Must-download TV 08/12/2004 02:35 AM
Must-Download TV

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Salon discusses Orkut

Salon discusses Orkut 06/16/2004 03:59 AM
You are who you know

salon.com/tech/feature/2004/06/15/social_software_one/index.htm l
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Salon: Mozilla rising

Salon: Mozilla rising 09/11/2002 06:43 PM
But the best part about Mozilla is that it is not just a browser. Scores of developers are now talking about using Mozilla as a "platform" -- that is, using Mozilla's underlying code to build non-browser applications, like calendar programs and e-mail programs and even Linux desktops. You don't need to download Mozilla to use these apps, as some are distributed with their own stripped-down version of Mozilla's engine -- which, if you think about it, is exactly the kind of thing Microsoft was trying to prevent when it launched its war against Netscape. It didn't want Netscape around, because Netscape was becoming a platform. So wouldn't it be rich if, in the end, Microsoft succeeds in killing Netscape and winning the browser war but still, somehow, doesn't eliminate the platform threat? If Netscape dies but the dragon that it spawned burns Redmond?

"btn" I don't know why so many people in the open source world have an inferiority complex and are always comparing themselves to Microsoft, or planning Microsoft's downfall, or are simply jealous. When I release open source software, I'm just pleased if a hundred or a thousand people are using it. And if Microsoft ever uses my code, hey that would be delightful!

"zeldman.cramps"

Salon.com Technology | The new
bl0gocracy

Salon.com Technology | The new
bl0gocracy 07/29/2004 03:30 PM
¨„§ˆ©§Œ› §„ˆ† .. op-ed piece for Salon .. Danah Boyd

salon.com/tech/feature/2004/07/28/demoblog/index_np.html
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Salon.com Technology Blogging grows up

Salon.com Technology Blogging grows up 08/11/2004 10:09 AM
Salon profile of Movable Type

salon.com/tech/feature/2004/08/09/six_apart/index.html
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The Salon Interview: Bill Clinton

The Salon Interview: Bill Clinton 06/25/2004 09:02 AM
The former president blasts the Bush-Cheney rush to war, explains why Gore lost in 2000 and tells how Kerry can win in 2004.

Salon.com Books The man who invented the
future

Salon.com Books The man who invented the
future 07/24/2004 06:11 PM
interview with Alan Moore .. Salon

salon.com/books/int/2004/07/22/moore/index.html
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Salon rules, it is soooo official.

Salon rules, it is soooo official. 04/09/2004 03:55 PM
Happy Happy Joy Joy. Just received via email: As a Salon Premium Member at the $35 level, you may now select a 6-month subscription to the New York Review of Books, the magazine the New York Times calls "the country's...

Joseph Wilson interviewed at Salon.

Joseph Wilson interviewed at Salon. 05/03/2004 02:38 AM
Joseph Wilson interviewed at Salon. They've also tried to portray you, and all the other whistle-blowers who have spoken out against the administration, as partisan democrats. Do you think that has been an effective technique? It hasn't worked with me. People are touched by this story because it gives a human face to a whole host of lies and deceptions that only now are becoming apparent to the American public. Americans don't like this attitude. Americans don't like to see their women taken out and beaten up.

Tao of Extreme Democracy Future Salon

Tao of Extreme Democracy Future Salon 09/15/2004 09:21 PM
Tomorrow night I'm speaking at the Tao of Extreme Democracy Future Salon with Zack Rosen of CivicSpace (formerly DeanSpace, which supports sites like Mitch Kapor supported Baobabs) and Tom Atlee, author of the Tao of Democracy. We'll be talking Extreme...

The Salon Interview: Daniel Ellsberg

The Salon Interview: Daniel Ellsberg 02/19/2004 06:48 AM
Like John Kerry, he returned from the Vietnam War to become one of its most famous opponents. Now the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers blasts the Bush camp's "obscene" attack on Kerry's patriotism.

The Salon Interview: Neal Stephenson

The Salon Interview: Neal Stephenson 04/21/2004 07:26 AM
The author of "Cryptonomicon" and the "Baroque Cycle" talks about the brighter side of Puritanism, the feud between Newton and Leibniz, and the literary world's grudge against science fiction.

Salon Interviews Neal Stephenson

Salon Interviews Neal Stephenson 04/21/2004 08:58 AM

Warning over 'hair salon stroke'

Warning over 'hair salon stroke' 04/24/2004 03:31 AM
A widower who believes a visit to a hair salon caused his wife's stroke calls for safeguards to be put in place.

Salon.com Technology | The myth of
interference

Salon.com Technology | The myth of
interference 03/13/2003 10:21 AM
Salon.com Technology The myth of interference .. [Link]

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My article on David Reed is in Salon

My article on David Reed is in Salon 03/13/2003 10:25 AM
Salon today is running "The Myth of Interference," an article I wrote about David Reed's idea that the federal policies intended to prevent radio signals from interfering are based on bad science....

Johnny Investigates Bioethics for Salon

Johnny Investigates Bioethics for Salon 10/29/2003 12:10 AM
We stood there on the concrete steps of the U-Haul self-storage in South San Francisco, johnny and I, watching the cars accelerate onto 101 South and waiting for a locksmith to come and drill the padlock that stood between us and several boxes of Acts so we could get back in our borrowed Isuzu Trooper and haul ass down that same 101 to the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. To pass the time, and apropos of nothing much, johnny told me the story of how his oldest daughter went extravagantly, cinematically insane one day.

"Repeating and Expanding Salon.com
Story"

"Repeating and Expanding Salon.com
Story" 05/17/2004 10:44 PM

subscribe to salon and make 7 bucks
profit

subscribe to salon and make 7 bucks
profit 02/10/2004 06:41 PM
the dot com boom really has returned!

the Salon article about Bush's service
record

the Salon article about Bush's service
record 09/03/2004 10:29 AM
George W. Bush's Missing Year

salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/02/allison/index.html
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Salon interviews John Brady Kiesling.

Salon interviews John Brady Kiesling. 03/19/2003 10:28 PM
Salon interviews John Brady Kiesling. JBK: "The talking points were pretty pathetic. They may work at home, but they do not work with an audience of sophisticated people who have some experience with the world, who are profoundly nervous about the Middle East and terrorism, and would like to see some signs of intelligent life in American foreign policy." Are Americans too isolationist for their own good?
Grok Description matches for Spolsky in Salon
GrokA matches for Spolsky in Salon

Writing Quality Software: A Primer

Writing Quality Software: A Primer 12/15/2003 10:30 AM
Okay, so you have a respectable handle on syntax, and you are proud of yourself for getting that far. And, truth be told, you should be. But, knowing syntax is not the same as mastering syntax in such a way that builds quick, efficient web software. This article takes a look at not just writing software, but writing quality software.

DevShed: Writing Quality Software

DevShed: Writing Quality Software 12/17/2003 08:28 AM
New to writing code? Wondering if there's a "standard" way to really write the large application you're dreaming about? Well, DevShed.com just might have an answer for you in their latest article.

Writing Software? Setting Up A Website?
How Many Patents Do You Violate?

Writing Software? Setting Up A Website?
How Many Patents Do You Violate? 01/22/2004 03:07 AM
The stories of stupid patents seem to be showing up every day, and this article points out that if you're writing your own software or setting up a website, it's likely that you violate a ton of patents already. The article has the story of someone who wanted to set up an online video store, only to realize that just about every part of the store violated some patent. The cost of "licensing" all of those patents made the business impossible. Note that all he was trying to do was build the fairly obvious idea of an online video store. He wasn't "taking" any intellectual property - but because of the way the patent system is designed, his site never got anywhere. We're certainly beating a dead horse, but it's apparently not dead enough - because there's no real talk of changing the patent system. If the entire point of the patent system is supposed to be about promoting innovation - and it's clearly not doing that, why isn't anyone talking about changing the patent system?

Writing A Software Technical Reference
Manual (part 2)

Writing A Software Technical Reference
Manual (part 2) 02/13/2003 05:29 PM
With the groundwork out of the way, this concluding part examines the standard components of a technical reference manual, explaining what goes into each section and why. It also discusses the process by which such a manual should be reviewed and vetted prior to delivery to a customer.

Writing a Software Technical Reference
Manual (part 1)

Writing a Software Technical Reference
Manual (part 1) 02/05/2003 06:23 PM
For most developers, writing code is the easy part - it's explaining it to a customer that's the tough bit. In case you need to create a technical manual explaining how your software works, take a look at our handy two-part cheat sheet, whcih should help make the process a little less intimidating.

Writing Software for Worldwide
Distribution Proves Difficult

Writing Software for Worldwide
Distribution Proves Difficult 08/19/2004 09:45 AM

Writing style and bl0gging

Writing style and bl0gging 01/18/2004 06:02 AM

Poor writing style, like bad manners, makes someone appear less intelligent than they are. Writing style, like manners, can be learned in many ways. Reading and writing a lot is the first step. Having people critique your writing is probably the next best thing. There are many basic writing mistakes that people make, which can easily be avoided by being aware of them.

I have never been a great writer and I am self-concious about my writing style. If you are serious about your blogging, I think that time spent polishing your writing style is well worth the investment.

My favorite reference is the Chicago Manual of Style.

Some web pages:

• G eorge Orwell : Politics and the English Language
• Ten Mistakes Writers Don't See (But Can Easily Fix When They Do)
• The Economist Magazine's Style Guide
• rebecca blood's ten tips for a better weblog

Special thanks to my editors on #joiito.

Software Review: Style Master v.3.5

Software Review: Style Master v.3.5 07/06/2004 06:31 AM
Cascading Style Sheets are an important element of current web design. Today, Lee Underwood examines Westciv's Style Master, an application dedicated to the creation and tweaking of Style Sheets. 0605

Bad Writing = Good Writing?

Bad Writing = Good Writing? 10/30/2003 11:56 PM
Bad Writing = Good Writing? The academic journal Philosophy and Literature used to hold a "Bad Writing Contest" to ridicule dense, unreadable academic prose... but a new book argues headache inducing sentences are necessary to express subtle theoretical points.

STEVE RAKER
ON WRITING

STEVE RAKER
ON WRITING 01/27/2004 01:46 PM

The blogless Steve Raker regularly sends us his creative and sometimes apoplectic writing by e-mail. Whenever I'm tempted to republish his work on my blog, I find that Mark Hoback has already beat me to it, posting the best of Steve's work on his excellent blog Fried Green Al-Qaedas, or in his wonderful e-zine Virtual Occoquan. Here's an example of Steve at his finest, with his wry sense of humour aimed this time at contrivances in writing, in a two-part post. The photo above is also his: Cupla years ago I overslept.  It musta been that morning when the great comet hit the earth and killed all the editors for disposable mystery/detective/lawyer fiction.  Since a stopgap measure is needed, I offer the following helpful hints for writers: Hire somebody, anybody, to proofread your work.  Most of your errors in word choice, minor plot points, etc. can be caught and corrected by a bright high school student. Absolutes are rare.  Please stop your characters from incessantly tripping over them or being them. e.g.  in a recent read, a minor character, an attractive woman, was used as bait in a sexual harassment scam.  Her beauty grew with every mention.  In short order, 'quite attractive' became 'irresistible to any man, dead or alive'.  The freakin' Pope was in line for a shot at this gal. I was afraid to read further, least her beauty become so intense that the sun should fall from the sky. When you need to speak of things mechanical, don't just throw out a few mechanical sounding words.  Get help.  Please don't have a character get stuck on a lonely road because of a 'bad engine block'. You will be allowed one extraordinary coincidence per book; use it wisely. e.g. a woman phones her husband who is a jazz musician; he answers his jazz musician cell phone while fishing.  Their baby (named after a jazz musician) is with him in the boat (built from the ribs of dead jazz musicians).  During the wife's ensuing rant about baby safety and jazz musician husband irresponsibility, he notices his fishing rod wobble.  He catches a **5 POUND BASS**.  note: this was not a story about a man catching a 5 POUND BASS, the 5 POUND BASS did not reappear in the story, nor did this extraordinary coincidence lack for company, lots of company. P.S. the woman's husband is a jazz musician. If a character has a distinctive characteristic or job, show some respect for your readers' ability to catch that plot point during the first twelve or fifteen times it's mentioned.  If say, your protagonist's husband is a jazz musician, perhaps you could limit your references to his jazz musicianship to three or four per page.  Maybe then it might be a surprise and a neat literary trick to have the husband (what is his job again?) kill the 100% evil bad guy with a musical instrument (remember now what he does for a living, are you following this?). Sorry, I must go now.  My incredibly beautiful ex-wife, a ten time Miss Universe, that we all thought had died in the volcano, just stopped by to tell me I won the biggest lottery in the world. We fall in love again in five minutes. We almost have sex but, "Oh no, here comes another volcano. Quick, lets find a helicopter. Sure, I know how to fly a helicopter.  ..Wow, that was close. Wait a minute, you're not my ex-wife, you're her identical twin sister. My real ex-wife would have known all about my helicopter flying from our last adventure. And where did you catch that 5 POUND BASS?"  Dang, now my car won't start; must be the engine block again.  Ha ha, that's life. Recently I wrote a piece of drivel where I bitched in a light-hearted and heart-warming way about lazy-ass fiction authors who insert extraordinary coincidences into their stories.  I'm speaking of the superfluous extraordinary coincidences, over and above the string of wacky coincidences upon which the plot balances, like a fat ballerina on tiny feet.  As you may recall, the novel that set me off involved a jazz musician catching a 5 POUND BASS during a phone call with his wife.  An S.E.C. plopped into the story for no reason other than, "I bet this'll fill up a few pages and be easy as Paris Hilton* to write."  ...Let's start calling an extraordinary coincidence that does nothing to advance the plot, a '5 POUND BASS'.  This'll be great.  You too can be in on the ground floor of this newest pop culture phrase. ...Imagine warming yourself by a glowing fireplace, tucked in your favorite chair, adoring children clutching at your cuffs (black lace apron); "Grampa (ma), tell us about your literary experiences", followed by a chorus of, "Pleeeeez".  "Well children, many years ago, before we had flying cars and computer edited fiction, I was instrumental (you are interrupted here by several of the adults gathering round, "Go on Pop (Mom), we love this story."). I was instrumental in the popularization of the literary put-down '5 POUND BASS'. I would say things like, 'You've got a 5 POUND BASS on every other page here Dude'."  There are visible admiration rays flashing from the children's eyes, heads are nodding, hopeful wives nuzzle their husbands; the world becomes a warm and forgiving place. "Yes, this is the beauty of age," you think, as several of the smaller children faint in the crush. "This is fulfilment writ large on my soul".  ...Destiny knocks but once**; start popularizing now.    * I don't know for sure that PH is easy, but that is the consensus among humorists so I'm going to pretend I'm with them.  And I'm not saying that 'easy' is bad; don't try and hang that 'double standard' anchor around my neck, ya bastards.  As my Aunt Hazel used to say, "It takes two to be easy." ** Again, I don't know for sure

WRITING OUR
NEW STORY

WRITING OUR
NEW STORY 01/07/2004 01:12 PM

If Thomas King is right, and stories are all we are, then it seems to me we have two choices in life. We can either live the story that others have written for us, or we can write our own story. The story of our culture, the story others wrote for us, teaches us: that we are at heart sinful, lazy, untrustworthy, in need of salvation or redemption that our world is a place of danger, frightening, cruel, brutal, plagued with scarcity and adversity that we should do what we're told by our betters, and be grateful for what we have that the world was created for man and man alone, as his dominion that we should multiply and fill the earth, regardless of the consequences for the rest of life that we should spend our life working hard and acquiring, because our worth is measured by what we own that our heroes are fighters, warriors, those who struggle and conquer and overcome that no matter what we do, god will forgive us and clean up our mess before it gets too bad There are several novel resources that those of us who find this story unsatisfactory, counter-instinctive, and dangerous, can use to write a different story, a New Story: Steve Denning, formerly of the World Bank, has a whole archive of storytelling resources, including how to write a 'springboard' story -- one that precipitates change Creating the 21st Century has an introdu ction to storytelling that explains why storytelling is so powerful Inner Self, drawing on the work of Daniel Quinn, suggests a setti ng for a new story, almost the antithesis of the adversarial setting in which most of our culture's stories are written In business the process of writing a Future State Vision is very similar to creating a new story -- envision a possible world, a few years in the future, from the perspective of your 'representative' character, where her/his objectives have been met and her/his problems resolved -- and let the reader fill in the blanks on how the future state was achieved (in other words, invent the possible) My own earlier post on Why Stories are Subversive has links to several other storytelling resources Not that we should not be bound by how others say stories should be written. I think we know instinctively how to tell stories. Children start telling stories, to themselves and anyone who will listen, almost as soon as they can talk. And it's only later when they fall victim to the cultural biases that say that a story needs tension, drama, heroism, conflict, resolution, and substantial length. Some of the best stories are joyful, simple and brief. Economists Peter Jay and Marshall Sahlins have both told stories that have essentially rewritten 'pre-civilization' history, changing our conception of hunter-gatherer cultures from poor, dirty and brutish to affluent, comfortable and carefree. Regardless of their focus, good stories change the way we think and therefore change who we are. They can even show us a new way to live, and hence be transformational. As I've written often in these pages, I believe the only hope for our world is for some, then many, and finally most of us to walk away from the old culture, the old economy, the old politics, the old business models, the old religions, that are driving us headlong to ecocide, endless war, violence, psychosis, oppression, and physical and imaginative destitution. We can't fight them, change them. But we can create new ones that will undermine and replace them. But to walk away from the old, we need something to walk to. Through stories, we can invent a new world, a new culture, completely different from the one we live in now. Instead of teaching us the eight dreadful lessons bulleted in red above, these new stories could teach us some things almost unimaginatively positive and astonishing, things that we somehow forgot when the existing culture took hold 30 thousand years ago: that we are magic, perfect, wonderful that our world is a paradise, and we are inextricably part of it and welcome in it that we should trust our instincts, and that by listening to the earth we will always know what to do that the world is a sacred organism of sacred organisms, and that it belongs to all of us and to none of us that our purpose is to be and to let others be, in balance and in harmony that we should spend our life experiencing and sharing joy and learning that we do not need heroes, leaders, hierarchy, order, possessions, property -- earth works perfectly well without them that we are all responsible for sustaining the balance of the natural world to which we belong Is it naive to believe we could achieve a world like this? Maybe. Is it contrary to basic human nature? Not at all. Our destructive, acquisitive, fearful modern culture has only been around for a mere 30 thousand years. For three million years before that humans at least behaved as if they believed, for the most part, the green bullets above. I think we know, in our hearts, instinctively, that there is something very wrong with our culture and what it's done to our planet. I think we know that if we really knew what sustains our current culture -- what goes on in prisons, third world child labour camps, slaughterhouses, corporate and political backrooms, torture centres, factory farms, schoolyards, dictatorships, hospitals and asylums and old-age homes, and behind the closed doors of private homes where women and children are beaten and abused -- we could not allow this culture to continue, we could no longer believe its false stories. But in the absence of an alternative, a New Story, we turn away, preferring not to know the terrible truth about our culture. Imagine that the Nazis had 'won' WW2. Do you think today we would be, most of us, angry and ready to overthrow the Thousand Year Reich? We wouldn't. The opponents would have been exterminated and the rest of us brainwashed to believe that aryans are 'naturally' the master race, and that corporatism (that's what Mussolini called the complete integration of corporate and government power and the suppression of opposition to it via a ruthless police state, before the historians renamed it fascism) was necessary to the order and good government of society. The education system would have taught us, elite and masses alike, stories that reinforced the rightness of this status quo, and ensured our obedience, our subservience to the powerful, our fear of scarcity if we didn't conform, our inability to imagine any other way of living. Our situation today isn't all that different. Don't believe me? If my Ten Things To Keep You Awake list wasn't enough to convince you, consider this: The most successful story-teller of 2003 (his was the best selling CD of the year), entitled (and there is no irony in the title) Get Rich Or Die Tryin is a guy named 50 Cent. The number two best sellers were a band (can't remember their name) who have made their entire fortune around a new line of sneakers (they have a 20-foor Reebok sneaker that they dance around during their numbers). MTV and MuchMusic have entire programs devoted to which celebrities are currently endorsing which products, including customized six-figure limited edition 'gangsta' vehicles issued by the Big 3 US auto makers. These artists don't care if people download their songs free -- they make their big money on endorsements from Nike and the Gap, who in turn make their real money from third world sweatshops, offshoring American jobs and child and slave labour. Now, guess what the messages of the very powerful stories in these artists' very popular songs are (check out the lyri cs if you doubt me): money and power and property are the measure of every man life is brutal and violent and you must be ruthless and competitive to survive or succeed it's OK to kill, cheat, rob, rape, lie if your victim is even vaguely associated with your 'enemy' -- the end justifies the means women are chattels, property to be collected for the pleasure of rich and powerful men, for display god is on the side of the rich and powerful -- why else would they still be alive and have money and power? Sound a lot like the red bullet list above? Sound like the belief system of some corporate and government leaders you know? Today's best selling artists are bombarding a generation of sadly under-educated kids and uncritical young adults with the fiercest corporatist might-makes-right neocon cultural propaganda since the McCarthy and Nixon Eras, and they're eating it up. This is why we desperately need new stories. We are running out of time. The defenders of our bankrupt, reckless, out-of-control culture know what they're selling is counter-intuitive, irrational, unethical, but they have everything tied up in its continuance, everything to lose, and they're holding on, throwing all their money and influence at keeping it going, at subverting opposition and attacking other ways of thinking. Our only defence is three million years of instinctive knowledge, and the power of stories. The power to change everything.

There's Life after Microsoft, Say Free
Software Advocates

There's Life after Microsoft, Say Free
Software Advocates 01/24/2004 05:01 PM
Vicente Ruiz, a Spanish advocate of the use of free software, feigned displeasure as he sat down to help a journalist working at the World Social Forum (WSF) in January. ''Aghh, Windows!'' he quipped. ''Working with Windows is like being in prison,'' fellow technical expert and free software campaigner, Juan Carlos Gentile of the free software group Hipatia, told IPS.

Arnold vs. old-style politics

Arnold vs. old-style politics 07/19/2004 09:33 AM
Budget impasse, "girlie men" stall Schwarzenegger.

Tiobe Software: Programming Community
Index

Tiobe Software: Programming Community
Index 07/16/2004 08:27 AM
According to the TIOBE Programming Community Index (updated once a month) PHP is not only the most popular module for the Apache Webserver but also one of the most popular programming languages. With the highest "Delta 1 Year" (indicates the changes in ratings for the last 12 months) and "Status A" (denotes mainstream languages), PHP is growing fast, really fast!! Thanks to Sebastian for the link.

Broadlook--#1 CRM Software
Solution--Empowers your CRM Software and
fill your CRM Software with contact
management relationships.

Broadlook--#1 CRM Software
Solution--Empowers your CRM Software and
fill your CRM Software with contact
management relationships. 06/18/2004 03:03 AM
Whichever CRM software your company uses, you need to look at the Broadlook Suite of Software which should seamlessly integrate with whichever CRM software you are using. BroadLook is an integrated set of applications designed to harness the Internet as a powerful real-time data source--the data from which can be exported into your CRM software. [PRWEB Jun 18, 2004]

Not writing about war

Not writing about war 03/19/2003 10:44 PM
My guess is that now and in the coming days some people will be looking for more news and opinion about the war in Iraq—and other people will be looking for less, they’ll be looking for other things to read about.

So, just so you know, I don’t intend to write about the war either here or on ranchero.com.

Writing XML

Writing XML 09/03/2002 04:40 PM
This article shows you how to create XML documents using manual writing, DOM and SAX. It provides you with some excellent learning material, but using either DOM or SAX for creating XML still looks like overkill to me.

"zeldman.ming"

On Writing XML

On Writing XML 01/18/2004 12:24 AM
In a recent essay I offered, given demand, to author some XML-writing software. There’s been quite a bit of feedback, and the consensus seems to be that the Java community is fairly well-served with XML writing software, but that this would be real useful at the C level. So that’ll be my coding fun for the month of February. The rest of this essay lists some of the Java options that people told me about, and introduces some issues around the C implementation...

Writing RSS 1.0

Writing RSS 1.0 01/09/2004 09:54 PM

Writing for the Web

Writing for the Web 03/13/2003 10:15 AM
One of the things that traditional journalists find unsettling about the weblog medium is the notion that you're "working without a net" -- i.e., without an editor. In fact, everybody edits your stuff, albeit after the fact. The other day I wrote a column in which I asked:

How do we tune networks to deliver the right information to the right people at the right times?

The triteness warning bell sounded in my head, but not loudly enough to force me to find a better way to express that thought. And sure enough, somebody calle d me on it. (How do I know? I found that URL in my referral log.) I really enjoy this kind of thing. Writing is infinitely improvable, and too often mine goes unchallenged. Partly, that's because of my brain wiring. I have an unusually strong built-in editor, watching everything I do as I write, and complaining loudly. As a result, what I write for print publication is very close to what you see in those publications. If you added up the diffs, over the many hundreds of articles I've written over the years, they wouldn't amount to much. ...

Writing

Writing 03/13/2003 10:23 AM
My writing leaves much to be desired. I've been thinking about it lately and I have to say that I didn't start blogging to become a writer as such, let alone a good one. It just helps if you can string together some sentences with a semblance of meaning. Technically speaking, there's much room for improvement. Vocabulary wise I'm circumscribed (like it?) by a short attention span that causes me to spend too little time searching for suitable, uncommon words.

But beyond possessing a good technical ability when it comes to writing well, I suppose that being a good writer all-round must surely mean writing about things that also interest people. There has to be a middle ground, a balancing act between mono-syllabic grunting about albeit very interesting subject matter and writing exquisitely well about excruciatingly boring things.

I can't help but think that it would be a hell of a lot easier to maintain this blog if I wasn't confined by the limited range of source material I choose to be confined by. Perhaps I need a specialism? I can't talk about my work, well I could but it wouldn't be very interesting and I chose not to talk about it early on. Perhaps one day. I envy those that can and do. Nothing wrong with professionals blogging. Speaking of which, the bag lady's new blog design is the best I've seen. Seriously, it looks the cat's pyjamas.

On a different note, World of Ends (World Offends?) strikes me as not only a very cool and necessary thing to do but it inspired me to think about what else we, the people of the Web, should be doing to help outsiders understand, integrate and take part in it more effectively. Surely this honourable responsibility doesn't only lie at the feet of the likes of Doc Searls and David Weinberger, however qualified and bang-on about it they happen to be? Who are the new thought leaders on the Web? Where can I find them?

More On Writing for the Web

More On Writing for the Web 03/19/2003 10:28 PM

[VBB] Manifesto writing

[VBB] Manifesto writing 12/17/2004 06:31 PM
Joi Ito and Jim Moore are leading a discussion of what could be in a "manifesto for a better global conversation." The first comment is that generally we care about our families and towns before we get to worrying about the world. Alex Steffen from WorldChanging says that our goal should be to expand our notion of family. Ethan says that we should start from the common ground: All of us are trying to reach out beyond where we are. The conversation meanders a bit into more abstract topics. (I am guilty of contributing to it.) Ethan slaps it upside...

Writing Genx

Writing Genx 02/15/2004 08:58 PM
In between beach time and rainforest time, I’ve been coding away on genx; herewith some impressions with one important lesson and an interesting bit of history...

Writing for Google

Writing for Google 05/11/2004 04:33 PM

Tips for writing articles that answer questions posed to search engines.

Writing about your friends

Writing about your friends 08/09/2004 10:24 PM

Over the years I've become quite friendly with many professional journalists. It's interesting that two of my best friends are journalists and they both have told me, "the only bad thing about becoming your friend is that I can't write about you any more." As a blogger, I don't think I have any trouble writing about my friends if I explain my relationship. The issue of professionalism aside, I think the first person tone of blogging makes it easier to write about your friends in the context of providing information. It's probably much harder or impossible to write about your friends objectively in third person.

Comment - TrackBack

Useful Writing Tools

Useful Writing Tools 04/10/2004 02:29 AM
Let's face it, we all get stuck for words from time to time. I'd like to take a moment to recommend a couple of tools that can help you create more diverting dispatches. By Christopher Breen, Macworld (via MyAppleMenu)

Writing an end to the bio of BIOS

Writing an end to the bio of BIOS 12/30/2003 07:21 AM
Intel and Microsoft are set to start pitching "EFI" as an improved way of starting up a PC's hardware before its operating system begins loading--a task that's been handled by the BIOS for a quarter century.

so i have this cool new writing gig . .
.

so i have this cool new writing gig . .
. 02/01/2005 09:52 PM

Do you ever have something really exciting that you want to share with the world, but you're not allowed to talk about it? It drives you nuts that you have to keep it to yourself, so you quietly mention it to Janet, but Chrissy overhears you from the kitchen, and thinks you're dying, so she tells Larry, and pretty soon you're attending your own wake down at the Regal Beagle. You think this could be a chance to get Mr. Roper to give you a break on the rent, and maybe get a little something-something from that Kaylnn girl who passes out skates at the roller rink, but Mrs. Roper finds out the truth, and somehow you're learning an embarassing lesson in front of all your friends, rather than getting lucky on the waterbed in your cousin's van conversion.

In other words, I've been sitting on this big news for weeks, and I just got the green light to announce it. So pay attention, Chrissy:

I am writing a weekly column for The Onion A/V Club! Yeah, that's right! The Onion A/V Club! Wooo!

Check out the spiffy announcement:

The Onion A.V. Club also extends a hearty welcome to a new contributor who comes to us from Hollywood via the Internet. Each week, actor/author/gaming enthusiast/icon/renaissance man Wil Wheaton, who maintains an online presence at wilwheaton.net, will take a look back to games past with his Games Of Our Lives column, reaching beyond Pac-Man and Donkey Kong to find the dusty arcade games and worn-out cartridges that paved the way for the games of today.

(When I read that, I told my editor, "I love it. Can I just tell you how happy I am that it's not all 'Star Trek Star Trek Star Trek Star Trek (tiny font: writes some stuff too.)'?"

He said, "Well, the original draft referred to you as 'the spunky lad who saved the universe' and then went on to say 'Star Trek, Star Trek, Star Trek.' Then I had second thoughts.")

Can you freakin' believe that I get to write for them?! Holy shit! Writing this column is as much fun as doing Love Machine at ACME each week. I get a chance to be funny, add something pretty prestigious to my resume, and I finally have an excuse for playing so many classic video games. I mean, how many people do you know who could deduct an X-arcade Controller? :)

I did an interview with The Onion A/V Club in 2002. If you haven't seen it, you can read it here.

My first Games of Our Lives appears tomorrow. Check it out, and let me know what you think!

Writing a Mailbot in PHP

Writing a Mailbot in PHP 11/08/2002 11:10 AM
Interesting article on writing a mailbot in PHP. It's surprising to me that the author avoided using PHP's IMAP classes and just focused on parsing mail as sendmail files. [ Go ]

Spolsky in Salon

The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry: spolsky "best software writing" review "ken arnold" -"the best software writing i contains writings from" -"piece that advocates making programming style"