running with paper

Gah. I don’t even want to get into it. The “update” of Lexulous downgraded me to 1.2 from 1.3.

Still crashes. Still requires multiple clicks to play:

1. Place tiles.
2. Click Play.
3. Click to get rid of the “ensure you are connected to the internet” message.
4. Click Play. Hope the application doesn’t crash.

I’m not particularly happy about it, but I should have been watching during the download to avoid getting downgraded.

Lexulous as a service has been having troubles, lately, too. I’ve had several of my friends’ names disappear from the Facebook site – they are changed to “Facebook User” and their user numbers are displayed in-game.

Sure, it’s annoying. But the problem that’s worse is that these “blank” names cause the software to crash on the iPhone. The application simply closes. While playing a string of games, I can’t play my tiles and click Next – the application exits if it hits a blank player. So I’ve got to go backwards to the game list, and skip my neglected “blank” friends.

I hope Lexulous 1.4 is coming soon. I’ve written them offering to be a beta tester and asking about the expected release date of 1.4, but they don’t have information to give me, nor do they seem to require outside beta testers.

I hear there’s Facebook 3.0! I’ve been avoiding lists of features, but I hope:

1. I can “like” things
2. I will actually get relevant updates in News and Status Updates instead of a few random ones
3. Hiding preferences carry over – I don’t want to see a thousand FarmVille updates (sorry friends) ever, especially my phone
4. I no longer have to break my friends, family, and colleagues into individual groups to see their updates
5. Ridding of having to scroll horizontally past Mafia, FarmVille, InaneQuiz 3283, and more, just to get over to the special collection updates
6. Ability to suppress things which I cannot access – game updates – via the mobile interface
7. Ability to include things I want priority access to – pictures, notes – via the mobile interface

Lexulous 1.4

• Stop terminating unexpectedly
• Handle errors better – I should not have to be reminded to ensure I’m connected to the net every time I click an action button
• If you can’t fix that, and I do have to hit PLAY | YES I’M CONNECTED | PLAY all the time, make the word lookup tool hold the word so I don’t have to type it twice
• Make the board “bigger” – I am quite impressed by the tile offset when I move (if I happen to be a right handed player) but it gets a little iffy at the edges of the boards – make a border

The error correction is what drives me the most batty. But I usually play Lexulous on the iPhone when I am stuck in an otherwise completely dead zone of time, space, and reality. So I put up with three clicks to play a tile set instead of one. And it may not be completely Lexulous’ fault. I’ve reported the errors and asked to beta test the next version – no soap. So we’ll see how 1.4 handles the situation.

I’m assuming there’s some kind of low level communication going on without any decent return packets for the game. And it might be that AT&T service is so horrendous here in South Florida (and I spend far too much time with an “E” on my screen rather than a “3G” to prove it) that Lexulous can’t help but error out. So it might need more flexibility in waiting for acks back, or taking a bit longer to punch through. I know I’ve played a move, gone to my next game, played that move, clicked for my next game and ended back up with my first, my tiles unplayed.

Not sure what else is getting upgraded besides the 3.0 iPhone interface, but can I have a folder, please? Or more? I would love to nest my applications. Between the applications I have and others have (the hub, the kids) I am drowning in pages and pages of apps I don’t want to use! Maybe even a profile. One for him, one for me. Please.

I’ve already griped about Facebook’s utter scary of a mobile site. I actually have been planning to review the Facebook iPhone 2.0 software I’m running, but life keeps getting in the way, and every time I sit down with the device and software, it starts “behaving” nicely and I figure the errant behavior was just a quirk of my imagination and everything else I could simply ignore.

However, I’m finally going to review 2.0 very shortly (I’m writing the post now) and put in my wish list for 3.0 (so far I’ve completely neglected to research it avoided the spoilers, yeah, that’s it).

While I was in the process of researching the history of iPhone and Facebook, I found out why it especially sucks to be me and other clueless iPhone-Facebookers.

Facebook has a SPECIAL web page for iPhone users only.

I hardly ever use the word incensed to describe my reaction to software, even when faced with certain nameless OS/hardware configuration difficulties but, yeah, I’m incensed. And I don’t mean that I smell like a house of worship. Continue Reading »

I’ve been doing a lot of soulsearching lately.

I’ve made the transition from full-time writer to part-time writer (and am working going back to full-time or something full-time), and the experience has really made me think.

What is a technical writer? A glorified typist? A precise troubleshooter? An information developer?

How can these skills translate into other positions within an organization? Systems Analyst? Business Analyst? Programmer (with some classes under my belt)? User Interface designer? Courseware Developer?

When I look at my resume from ten years ago or so, I want to laugh so hard I cry. I was a brave little typist back then, with some skill in figuring stuff out and putting it to paper for other people. And I met a lot of people, and picked up a lot of skills. It’s been a heck of a decade since I threw myself out there with a few years of self-directed experience on a resume that didn’t quite fill one page.

Thanks to the friends and colleagues I’ve met along the way.

I have changed and grown, a lot. But in dealing with a student-oriented software program (I’m back in school and all classes require me to manage my courses and work within a software dashboard) I’ve learned something that’s remained the same for me for well over two decades now. I’ve never really met an interface that I really really liked. I need to stay in the business and keep pushing improvements. I may never get to “totally happy” but I’ll stick with “happy enough for this release”.

That seriously was one of the questions at an interview session I had recently. “What really drives you to be a technical writer? What makes you get up and say I want to do some technical writing today?” At the time I thought it was a silly question (sorry, Brian), because I didn’t have the words beyond, “I like teaching and sharing” which at the time sounded rather weak. And still does. Paying the mortgage isn’t too smooth, either, but I was smart enough to not bring that one up.

It is true, though – I’ve never met an interface I really liked. I like to tinker, and hopefully, improve them. That’s why I like information development and all the baggage that goes with it.

I’d be perfectly happy running a small bookstore or doing some other non-writing, non-software or non-hardware job — but you bet in my spare time I’d be doing that kind of tinkering anyway.

Line feeds and insets and character ’scaping …

But do you recall … a new character needed by all?

Dotty, the non-break full stop
Needed here and there so well
Inserted in domain names
So printed words do print so swell

Okay, I’ll stop torturing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”. I’m probably the only one who can hear it in my head anyway.

But we do need a non-breaking period. Back in the day, we were taught to put two spaces after each period, each full stop. In writing numbers with decimal places, no spaces. Most magazines and newspapers had typesetters and copy editors to ensure that a period with no spaces around it, such as in a number (or in a web site address) didn’t get broken across the line.

But it’s happening. I’ve read half a dozen articles over the last few weeks, each touting recycling web sites, money strategy web sites, educational assistance web sites … and the paragraph broke at the “dot” in “dot com”.

So it’s time to introduce a new character – the non breaking period. I call it the dotty, but you can call it Unicode 2065 … that number’s available. The other option would be to surround the period mark in hyphenation points sent to negative three. That would tell the display and print code (if it can read hyphenation points) to *not* break up a URL.

… she so thoughtfully illustrates on the randomly
updated web site, runningwithpaper.
com. The scourge of the broken URL is a danger
to health, safety, and striped kittens.

becomes

… she so thoughtfully illustrates on the randomly
updated web site, runningwithpaper.com.
The scourge of the broken URL is a danger
to health, safety, and striped kittens.

A few years ago, I signed up with paperbackswap to trade around books I wasn’t using or were done with, to get more books. Like a used bookstore online.

I wasn’t a huge fan of it at the time; not a lot of users, books I didn’t care for (romances or obscure cooking books). But the service picked up, and I’ve expanded into reading more science fiction and picked Young Adult books back up again, and I’ve been trading, trading, trading.

One book I kick myself for giving up was my old Strunk and White book. Handy little book, but I was spoiled by daily access to an editor and coworkers who loved kicking around words and flinging the words about until they all finally fit right. Figured I wouldn’t need it for a while, and traded it away. And I found myself recently missing it so.

But my replacement is here … The Elements of Style, Illustrated. Updated, annotated, pretty little pictures as accompaniment (mostly relevant, but I’ve only had a quick glance). I’m happy to have a new (old) friend at my side again. First thing I turned to was the index; it told me that page 112 has covered the decade-old rule revision I’m still fighting, personally: prepositions placed in sentence at the end. Augh.

I admit that as I’ve transitioned from writing on a manual typewriter to composing on the computer screen, I’ve become a bit lazy in my spellcheckery. Those little red dots are my clean up crew; some days too much so. And inevitably, an error or two can slip in, sometimes making your point a bit more poignantly than you intended. Or just embarrasses the heck out of you.

I’ve been doing some spring cleaning on my inbox, and found a few gems that even the spell checker couldn’t save me from:

I’d suggest a tired approach to people management …

immediately followed by …

At the bottom of the pyramid are simple users.

Because pyramids are all about the tiers, don’t you know. Not! As the recipient later pointed out, though, sometimes tiered management is rather tired.

Other times, I get full of myself. On a short “white paper” on domesticity, I went way out there:

One could write books about [subject]

Editors are great for helping keep your ego in check. If only Clippy had been that useful.

Have you hugged your editor today?

But I do. I snagged a 3G iPhone when they became available, and installed the new and improved Facebook application as soon as it came online. It needs work (and its own post) but it’s better than nothing. I can check on friends and family with a few clicks, zip pictures out to folks, and kill a good five, ten, fifty minutes here and there.

For example, a friend posted that he was feeling “like peppy Beatles music” the other day. A few clicks later, I was connected to his voicemail, singing “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah,” in Peter Sellers’ style. A couple of days later he fired back with “A Hard Day’s Night” on my phone just as I walked out of a meeting. Being a new phone, he didn’t have my number programmed in, which made it funnier. He used his call log to song-back the ‘random stranger’ who had voicemailed him.

Ten minutes with the internet, and we can dig up the originals, or an exhausting list of Wilhelms and an examination of the originality of the Star Wars theme music. We’re getting to the point that everything is out there, and then someone unintentionally comes up with another internet phenomenon.

This time the honor goes to Microsoft’s SongSmith. If you’ve ever wanted to hear Ozzy Osbourne get his oom-pah-pah on, or pretend Paul and John suffered delusions of grandeur, everyone and anyone is having a grand old time.

Why words when pictures say it all?

Click for more movies as retro book covers …

I just paid some guys $24.95 to gain a way for me to email an old colleague. Not only that, I didn’t know for certain who I was emailing, but I had a suspicion, based on his profile, “private” or not. Colleague, if you’re reading this, it was worth every penny.

I’ve used LinkedIn for a while, mostly as a “by the way, look me up on LinkedIn” comment, punctuating meet and greet conversations, wrapping up lunches or other encounters. Now I’m hearing from a number of employment professionals that it is a major employment hub along with a companion site, indeed.com. With the spate of layoffs in my neck of the woods, my connection list has been growing. Former coworkers, longtime friends, even a few “imaginary” people whom I’ve never met in real life (but if I ever get to Europe, look out, Danu!).

Since LinkedIn is the place to be, I’ve been beefing up my profile. Adding positions, skills, friends. Making recommendations, and seeking a few of my own, hence the search for a former colleague. And I think I found him, but I ran into a couple of problems: first, his profile was private. Second, I was out of “InMail” credits. Being in a bit of a hurry, I decided to pay the $24.95 for some InMail credits, but one friend suggested I talk to a LION.

Apparently, there are minmaxers on LinkedIn. These LIONs (LinkedIn Open Networkers) are linking to everyone as much as possible, as fast as possible, to gain “net cred” and power at LinkedIn. The idea is that I link up with one or two of them (there are a couple of recruiters that have snuck into my alumni circles, so it wouldn’t be that hard) and in a few days, ding ding ding, this “Private” profile is easier to connect to and email for free.

But I didn’t want to wait. I paid the money and composed my message blindly (InMail gives you a choice of addressing the note as Name, or Dear Name if you’re feeling formal, and Hi, Name if you’re on the casual side), using the pronoun of you, hoping I had the right guy but not typing in his name. Off the mail went, and now I had to wait for a reply and to find out who I’d emailed.

If I’d been a little more patient, I could have run two queries, one on the company name and one on my colleague’s name, caught the match, and used his name in the email. I could have been a bit more targeted, asking him directly for another letter of reference on LinkedIn to replace the paper one I’d been given about a decade ago. Serves me right for doing this at 11pm at night, rather than approaching the problem with rested brain.

However, it’s done. And it turns out that my sleuthing, my comparing the “name” search to the “company” search wasn’t necessary. The blind InMail has a bit of a flaw: once you’ve sent the mail, you can view the message, complete with formerly private name showing. So much for a “private” profile. But if you want privacy, you shouldn’t put anything on the internet in the first place.

While I’m fond of wiggling everything until it works, breaks, or improves, I didn’t in this case. But if I had the InMails to spare, I’d revoke the email (now that I have “Private’s” name) to see if I got my credit back. You can get a lot of mileage out of a couple of measly InMail credits if that is the flaw in the ointment. Meantime, I’ve got more LinkedIng to do, if I ever stop being annoyed with the mountains of JavaScript that muck up my browser so.