Tinker's Folly
The universe is a Do It Yourself place.
Friday, September 3, 2021
Friday, January 10, 2020
Drinking Coffee, Lacking Motivation
What to do when technical achievements simply become boredom?
Or worse, when even listening to people talk mindlessly becomes painful?
Drink coffee. Maybe cultivate the ability to rock back and forth, standing, with a cup of coffee.
Like this guy. "How are those TPS reports coming?"
Check out this article on office design: "Uninspired Setting? Uninspired Work." - GQ
Perhaps this is a call to clean the office? That helps when I am feeling uninspired!
But first, coffee...
Or worse, when even listening to people talk mindlessly becomes painful?
Drink coffee. Maybe cultivate the ability to rock back and forth, standing, with a cup of coffee.
Like this guy. "How are those TPS reports coming?"
Check out this article on office design: "Uninspired Setting? Uninspired Work." - GQ
Perhaps this is a call to clean the office? That helps when I am feeling uninspired!
But first, coffee...
Tuesday, April 9, 2019
Thursday, October 13, 2016
73 Words - Is Technical Writing a Dying Art?
As a Technologist, I rely on technical writing for my training, product evaluation and selection. When I see a video describing a new technology, I skip to the text.
Reasons to skip the video?
- The video is bound to simplify the important details that are fundamental building blocks in any product.
- The video is produced by marketing people, who all too often do not understand the product.
- If I am coming to you for information, I already have specific questions to answer about how your product will work in my business environment.
- I can read the text much faster and skip to the important parts rather than watch the video.
How can marketers and educators help me?
- Focus on the text.
- Hire technical writers.
- Focus on the technology.
- Eliminate "market-speak", a technical manual is not a place to blather on about innovation.
- Avoid appropriating terms from other technologies that have a similar meaning.
- Write declarative sentences.
Example: "Introduction to Microsoft Windows Server 2016" Microsoft Books
73 words, one period. A bit of a bad cut and paste job there in the middle: "software-defined datacenter features that can were born in..." I am glad they didn’t use the phrase “legacy” anywhere in this run-on sentence! "Legacy" describes me pretty well...
Anyone who survived the 90's in technology remembers Buzzword Bingo so here's a shot on that sentence/paragraph:
Market-speak | Buzzwords | “Self-Improvement” |
Pillars | Security | Are clear about |
Commitment | Software-defined datacenter | Choice |
Platform of choice | On-premises | Now-exist |
Frameworks | Application platform | Necessary |
Traditional applications | Application | Allow |
Azure | Cloud | Prepare |
Thursday, June 2, 2016
Windows Holographic?
Will VR and mixed reality take off? Microsoft touted Windows Holographic today in an email to Windows Insiders - members of its beta community.
Perhaps as much of a misnomer as 'four channel stereo?' Or just a way to say that we support interactive 3D media?
I'll have to reserve judgement on the 'Holographic' tag, as that implies vastly more information storage than 3D interactive.
Labels:
Windows Ecosystem
Thursday, March 31, 2016
Tay it ain't tso!
Microsoft's experiment with an online Bot named 'Tay' was quickly ended when the bot began posting racist and even fascist messages.
The initial response in the Twitterverse was that the Bot was 'trained' to become 'racist', but as the New York Times article reveals - the system was not filtering the type of responses that it came out with, so people tried to get it to say crazy stuff. It worked. Oops!
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http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/03/24/us/ap-us-microsoft-twitter-chatbot-deleted.html?ref=news |
After brief experiences with Chatroulette, I have to agree that this was to be expected if the 'Bot was programmed to respond with no filters. Other systems, such as Siri, or Amazon Echo do not respond to 'inappropriate content'.
We were experimenting recently on a long tech support call, because it has been said that swearing while waiting on hold will result in the call being bumped up in the queue. I can verify that playing a video of swearing Parrots into the phone did not cause any reduction on on-hold time with Sage Software. (I hung up after two hours.)
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Old cell phones make a nice webcam
Need a webcam in my computer room. Old smart phone and free
IP Webcam software. Poof!
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