Core Dump

Here's a rather depressing article (that may depend on where you live) about the death of the North American suburb. Acres of emptiness.

The scale of the devastation caused by this type of land use is immense. In addition to building over farmland with bloated single-family houses, residents must rely on automobiles for all transportation needs, as there are no sidewalks on the main road that leads to the freeway.

In looking at these photos, it is important to question why this type of development existed in the first place. It is absurd that people were paying nearly half a million dollars to live 70 miles on a heavily congested freeway from the nearest major cities (Oakland or San Jose). Living more centrally, but in a smaller house or an apartment, seems like not only a better choice for the future of the planet but eminently preferable to spending four hours in traffic every day.

Labels: places, society

Since my post last weekend, I've been looking at options for publishing this blog after Blogger discontinues FTP publishing. It looks like setting up a WordPress blog on my soltys.ca site it the best option. I do need to investigate how I can get my current blog content into the new blog - a quick Google search indicates it's possible, although it might involve some serious fiddling.

I've been thinking about splitting this blog into two - one for technical writing and related topics and the other for more personal interests. I'm not sure how my readers (all 150 or so of them) feel about this though, and I'd appreciate your feedback. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Labels: Core Dump

Thanks to Karl Schroeder for the link to this video, which shows a 3D view of what the surface of Titan might look like, based on radar mapping from Cassini. Neat.

Labels: space

MadCap Software will be offering two one-day training sessions on MadCap Flare in Toronto.

The first course, on April 23, is Advanced CSS (PDF link) taught by Neil Perlin (who is also doing a one-day session on topic-based authoring as part of the STC Toronto education day).

The second course, on May 14, is Advanced Single Sourcing, taught by Mike Hamilton.

Both courses are $599. The location, at Elections Ontario, on Rolark Drive in Scarborough, is a bit awkward (Birchmount and Ellesmere), so I may have to pass on these. In looking at the outlines, I think the CSS course would probably be more useful. The single-sourcing course looks like it covers a bit too much material for one day.

For more information, or to register, contact Jennifer Morse.

Labels: MadCap., technical communication

Here's an interesting summary of and commentary on an article by Saul Carliner, “Computers and Technical Communication in the 21st Century”. Having taken a course from Carliner, I can vouch for his knowledge of the field and his presentation skills - I'm sure the article is both well researched and entertaining. It's part of a technical communication textbook, which I just might track down.

I appreciate Carliner’s grasp which admirably summarizes and structures decades of volatile developments in IT. I was surprised to learn that several technologies that I had taken for granted had been introduced shortly before I started in TC.

It’s interesting to see that some early practices still stick around, for better or worse: We’re still debating whether technical or language skills are more valuable. Carliner’s history is one of evolution, not of discrete stages where a new stage replaces the previous one. So the old is not necessarily bad, the new is not better just because it’s new (and Carliner doesn’t claim it is).

Labels: technical communication

If you've used Word for any kind of technical documentation, you'll know that its numbered lists are not stable. Lists have a tendency for numbering to break, either loosing the numbers completely or making inserting or deleting new items impossible. There are workarounds - the best known is probably using SEQ fields. This requires a bit of work to set up and use but is generally completely stable.

However, if you're used to using SEQ fields in Word 2003 or earlier versions, you'll have to adjust your way of working in Word 2007. CyberText Newsletter has an article explaining how to make the transition. If you're using Word 2007 , you'll definitely want to bookmark this.

Labels: Microsoft Word, Office 2007

Widespread use of antibiotics by modern agribusiness is contributing the the rise of superbugs - bacteria that are resistant to all antibiotics. This is the first time since the 1930s that doctors have faced infections that have no treatment.

“We are seeing infections caused by Acinetobacter and special bacteria called KPC Klebsiella that are literally resistant to every antibiotic that is F.D.A. approved,” Dr. Spellberg said. “These are untreatable infections. This is the first time since 1936, the year that sulfa hit the market in the U.S., that we have had this problem.”

The Infectious Diseases Society of America, an organization of doctors and scientists, has been bellowing alarms. It fears that we could slip back to a world in which we’re defenseless against bacterial diseases.

There’s broad agreement that doctors themselves overprescribe antibiotics — but also that a big part of the problem is factory farms. They feed low doses of antibiotics to hogs, cattle and poultry to make them grow faster.

A study by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that in the United States, 70 percent of antibiotics are used to feed healthy livestock, with 14 percent more used to treat sick livestock. Only about 16 percent are used to treat humans and their pets, the study found.

Labels: Another thing to worry about, health

Featured links for the week of March 1, 2010:

• SF writers talk about which gadgets make them feel like they're living in the future

• Google buys DocVerse, will add online collaboration for MS Office docs to Google Docs

• Don't remake these 21 movies, film these SF books instead

• Workin' on a content farm, writing for (low, low) pay

I've just received a notice from Blogger that they will no longer support FTP publishing after May 1. I use FTP to publish my blog to my own domain, which is hosted by DotEasy, along with my web site and e-mail. So I'm going to have to figure out how to migrate my blog to Blogger's servers (hopefully without changing the URL or at least providing a redirect), or migrating to another platform (probably WordPress), which will likely mean changing the URL and importing my current blog into the new one.

My colleague, Scott Nesbitt, uses WordPress, so I can probably get some advice from him. If any you reading this have migrated a blog back to Blogger, or are using the current version of Blogger, I'd be interested in your comments.

Labels: Core Dump

Popular Science has long been one of my guilty pleasures. I know I should be reading real science magazines like Scientific American and Nature, but PopSci is a lot easier to digest and more fun to browse. Now they've done us a real service by scanning entire 137-year publication run and putting it online, and even better, it's free.

It's not perfect - the articles are scanned and you can't browse by issue, so you have to start by searching. But once you have an issue open, you can read the whole thing and view a hyperlinked table of contents. And as an added bonus, you get all of the ads, which are more fun than the articles sometimes.

Labels: science