My father retired from his law practice about a year ago. More recently, he and his wife sold their home and moved west to Arkansas. In this process, he’s been trying to both downsize their household as well as get rid of many years worth of office items. My brothers went to help clean out a storage unit a couple of months ago and returned with one of the ’50s-era, metal office desks that my father had in his law office.

The desk is battleship gray, with quite a few dings and scratches. However, it’s very sturdy (as it’s made of approximately 1,000 tons of sheet metal) and still in pretty good shape. The damage it has is more along Wabi-sabi¹ than disrepair, so I’m okay with it for the most part.

This, along with a similar style desk, were in my father’s office since I was very young. Also, since I was very young, I’ve always been fascinated with not only space exploration and technology, but the aesthetic that is associated with those things. If you can imagine the desk that an engineer at either NASA or IBM might have sat at sometime in the early ’60s, you’re thinking of a desk like this.

This particular desk has an interesting feature where a corner of the desk is lower than the work surface to accomodate a typewriter (no doubt, sized for a 1961 IBM Selectric).

This desk also has drawers (!), unlike my old wood desk. I just need to clean up the glides a bit. I’ve of course never heard a dying pterodactyl, but I think I have a very good idea what one might sound like based on the bottom drawer opening.

1. It’s worth noting here that my wife doesn’t particularly care for the desk. Probably for two reasons: 1) She (rightly) notes that it really doesn’t fit in with pretty much any other furniture in my office, let alone the rest of the house and 2) she —at some fundamental level— doesn’t recognize the concept of Wabi-sabi. That is, not that she doesn’t get the idea, just that in her opinion, it’s just wear and tear that should be fixed rather than aesthetic appeal.↵

It doesn’t amount to making any difference, but as a rule I never vote for a candidate who is running unopposed. Sadly, this happens a lot. Many of the races for Congress I’ve ever voted in were this way.

There was one election in Richmond, Virginia in which I literally voted for no one (though I think I did answer y/n on one of the question votes). Really doesn’t do much to motivate one to vote at all when it really doesn’t matter, right?

So I’m very glad to see some competition —no matter how anemic— on my ballet this November. I’m no fan of Rep. Blackburn or Sen. Corker. Though some of their competition are no-chance, fringe candidates; folks like that have occasionally won races.

So if you haven’t already voted, go vote this Tuesday. Even if you have to skip over some one-horse races, it always matters.

Oh, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?

My last post was mid-March. Since then, I’ve been the busiest I’ve been my entire working career. Problem #1 is that I have a hard time saying no to colleagues. Problem #2 is —one of the main causes of #1— is that I really enjoy all of the projects I’m involved with.

So, after 2-1/2 months of 60+ hour weeks, I’ve scaled back my work-load (thanks very much to my supportive boss & colleagues along with my very talented summer interns). As a result, I’ve had a little time enjoy some cool things in the past week or so:

1. Father’s Day – This year was terrific; much more than I deserved really. Angela made me a delicious breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes. I got drill press (see the following) from Angela and some swim goggles from the kids. And I got to spend almost the entire day with the family (except when the kids were out shopping for swim goggles & I was playing with the drill press).
2. Woodworking – As the kids have gotten bigger, they’ve started to out-grow their play & crafts table. So Angela asked me to make it tall enough to store toys underneath & allow them to sit at the table for crafts. So, using my new drill press, I hollowed out some glued-up MDF blocks to create leg extensions I could lag-bolt into the table legs. It’s a bit rough, but was the first thing I’ve got to make in quite a long time.
   
3. Hunger Games – I completed Mockingjay, the final book of Suzanne Collins’ excellent post-apocalyptic YA novels. I haven’t seen the film based on the first book yet, but I can certainly recommend the books. They are lightening fast to read, thanks to Collins’ choice of first person narrative and her intense action.
4. Prometheus – Okay, this was technically last week, but I went with my brother, Stephen, to watch Ridley Scott’s return to science fiction. There has been some intense discussions about this movie. I, for one, really enjoyed it. I’ve been a big fan of the Alien series for a long time, including the comics. I can’t quite say it was a perfect film, but it met my every expectation and it certainly one of the year’s best sci-fi films.
5. Swimming – So, our kids have been taking swimming lessons for the past few summers and Angela recently competed in her first-ever triathlon. As a result, we’ve found ourselves at the pool quite a bit. As our kids are old enough to actually swim around some and Angela has been also learning how to properly swim for a race, I’ve actually gotten to swim some, as well. Admittedly, I’m surely the worst swimmer in the family. However, it’s a lot of fun to get to spend time in the pool with the family and a great way to beat the crazy heat here in TN.

This post is a technically a couple of days late for our tenth wedding anniversary, but you can skip all the stereotypes about the husband who forgets that sort of thing. That’s not at all why it’s late. Rather, Angela and I were off on a family vacation and not bothering to post it to the internet (that occasionally happens to me).

Despite the most wonderful ten years of my life (and hopefully Angela agrees on that), we didn’t celebrate with a fancy dinner. Instead—in the wee early hours of the morning—we found ourselves sharing take-out pizza in a hotel room bed with our kids while clinking cheap-yet-overpriced wine in a pair of plastic cups. We decided to take the kids on our first big family vacation and went to Disney World in Florida. While not a traditional date, even for us, we’ve always done things our own way and therefore it seemed fitting. Besides, our kids are as much a part of our marriage as anything so it felt right to include them (though they didn’t get any of the wine; there wasn’t enough in the little hotel bottle to share). Our actual anniversary was spent on a long drive home. We joked we’d spend an hour on the road for each year we’d been married. In a way, also fitting as we spent the day after our wedding on a long car ride back home to Virginia. I don’t think we’ll try that for any future anniversaries, though¹.

Not to stretch the driving metaphor too far, but it has been an amazing journey these past ten years (and the years together even before then…). I’ve got a friend and partner. Anytime I described a dream of mine, she’s never tried to stop me but instead asked “when do you want to get started?” She’s not only supported me but pushed me to always be better and do more. Everything good that has happened to me since we’ve been together has been in a very large part because of her. To have had a friend like that even for a short time is a gift and she’s been married to me for ten short years (and two days).

Here’s to ten times ten more, should we be here for so long.

1. We do plan to go out for a quiet date night to share a nice dinner later this evening.↵

I saw this video today demoing a very interesting user manual concept. Essentially, the manual wraps around a device with queues to manipulate the actual device, rather than some screenshots or photos. Basically the manual is more of a physical template (or jig, since I’m using template in the craftsman sense).

Out of the box from Vitamins on Vimeo.

However, I can’t think of a worse device to apply this idea to than a touchscreen smartphone.

Let me explain: I’ve been using an Apple iPhone for about the past four years now¹. As much as I initially opposed the idea, Apple was correct in taking things like the SIM card and phone battery out of the hands of the user². It’s a far superior user experience to design those out of the experience all together, in my opinion. That being said, if you’re going to force your user into awkward set-up necessities, this is about as painless a way to do it as possible. I can image some layered gadget packaging where each section the user opens, they are presented with the next step in setup or assembly (would work great for Ikea products, too!).

Now, as for instructing the user how to do anything on the phone: with a generous sized touch screen, there’s simply no reason why all of these instructions can’t just present themselves on the screen. My favorite apps on th the iPhone are those where the instructions appear as modal dialogs pointing to the most-used features. Add’l help can get included to, but the top two or three tools are called out as soon as the app launches, making any user almost instantly proficient.

So, as much as I like this concept, I’d much rather see all of this inside the box—er, phone—than in some bulky, physical thing that isn’t going to be with you at all times.

In short: I think the manual for a smart phone should simply be one short sentence: Push the power button.

Via Johne Cook, by way of Bill Swallow & Ray Gallon

1. Yes, this is the part where I start coming off as an Apple fan boy, but bear with me… it applies to any smartphone or other touch-screen device↵
2. Sure, you can still get to the SIM card on an iPhone, but compared to any other phone, it holds virtually no data beyond the user’s account credentials or phone number.↵

I was in the process of reorganizing my computer science and technical writing shelf today during lunch when I began to notice a pattern: I have quite a few books related to DITA and the underlying technologies of the DITA Open Toolkit. Well, this isn’t by coincidence. It’s a big part of my job and something I’m really interested in. But it occurred to me just how much time I’ve spent pouring through these texts of structured authoring and XML-based technology—all in hopes of grokking this for my job.

So, in no particular order, here’s a list of some of my books on the subject:

DITA

• Practical DITA
  by Julio Vazquez
• DITA 101
  by Ann Rockley, Charles Cooper, & Steve Manning
• The DITA Style Guide: Best Practices for Authors
  by Tony Self (Kindle edition)

XML

• Learning XML, Second Edition by Erik Ray¹
• XML in a Nutshell, Third Edition by Elliot Harold & W. Scott Means
• XML Pocket Reference (Pocket Reference (O’Reilly)) by Simon St. Laurent & Michael Fitzgerald
• Learning XSLT by Michael Fitzgerald
• XSLT: Programmer’s Reference (Programmer to Programmer) by Michael Kay
• XSL-FO by Dave Pawson
• SVG Essentials by J. David Eisenberg (free at O’Reilly Commons)
• CSS: The Definitive Guide by Eric Meyer

A couple of books on Ant & JavaScript that I haven’t even gotten to yet:

• Learning JavaScript, 2nd Edition by Shelley Powers
• Ant: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition by Steve Holzner

And, some wider shots of my (sort of) organized bookshelves:

1. I have the first edition. I’d recommend getting the later edition.↵

I tend to write this sort of post every year. It’s not really a set of resolutions, just goals. That is, I rarely say to myself "I will do this from now on." but rather "This is what I’d like to try to accomplish this year." Small difference, but probably worth noting.

So, in no particular order (though numbered anyway):

1. Blog more about the kids

   They’re getting older and doing more. As Angela noted in her remark on Facebook about getting a minivan, it’s just a matter of time until we’re taking them to soccer practice.

2. Become more fluent in XML development

   I can still recall the day Jason Johnson explained to me about what XML was. It seemed so simple then… Now I’m writing XSL transforms as part of my job and concerned with information architecture. It’s been absolutely fascinating and a way to actually do some programming with a real goal¹.

3. Visit more family & friends

   Despite every means of communication that mankind has ever conceived, we (our household, that is) still somehow remain out-of-touch with so many of our relatives. As our kids are getting older² we are at a point where we can just do it the old-fashioned way and visit (no letter writing campaign just yet, though). We certainly have some older members in the family and it would be a shame to someday have to explain to the kids why they never met.

4. Create more

   Photography, videos, writing, drawing, and so on. Our daughter has become very interested in art and has shown a real creative streak. I remember when I used to just draw,write a short story, or make up a tune for fun and I need to get back there somehow. Will I end up with dozens of unfinished bits? Most assuredly. However, the point to this is enjoying making something; not necessarily the final product.

5. Eat healthier

   Okay, so I have to admit that this is starting to sound like a classic New Year’s resolution. Surely, he’ll mention going to the gym more next, right? Of course, losing weight may be an added benefit, but I’m really just interested in trying out new foods. I’m married to a real foodie and it’s really something she loves that I’d like to take a bigger interest in. Certainly, I’d like to add in things like fruits & vegetables that have never really been a staple of my diet