Today's Links

How To Predict A Failing Hard Drive
10 Awesome Safe For Work Websites To Overcome Lunchtime Boredom
A portal on tax related affairs and laws in India
Free Data Recovery Software
http://www.longreads.com/ to read long articles.
Track anonymous and missed calls with Phone2location.

Is this a Website?

As a user, would you bother to visit this website again? If you do not recognise it, the site belongs to The New Indian Express, one of the popular English dailies in India.

Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards

It is a fact that albums released by Joe Satriani are good. Or no albums by this virtuoso guitarist is bad.

The latest album, Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards, is simply perfect, melodious, and technically excellent. Right from Premonition, through keyboard laden Pyrrhic Victoria, bluesy Littleworth Lane, rocking Light Years Away, and The Golden Room with an Indian sound, the album is a listener's pleasure. Like all his previous albums, the songs are simply beautiful, but more world music oriented stuff with a tinge of dance music thrown in the right measure. The album is an intelligent shift towards international music, and drifts away from the 80s harder and heavier sound.

If I compare Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards with his previous stuff such as Surfing With The Alien, Flying In A Blue Dream, and The Extremist, then I feel disappointed. Gone are the lighting fast solos, power chords, and exploding riffs. Satch is no more a metal-friendly act. He has abandoned the "metal wave" sound that drew guys like me to him. For metal guitar, I need to look somewhere else. May be Malmsteen might save the day for me.

Walk in, Walk In, or walk-in?

Is it Walk in, Walk In, or walk-in?

The word, walk-in, appears as a noun and an adjective in Merriam Webster online.  I could not find the word without the hyphen. The Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary website showed the hyphenated word only.

As you know, the word means someone who walks in to a place without an appointment. Typical examples are walk-in customers for a bank, walk-in interviews for fresh graduates, and walk-in patients in a hospital.

Editing Technical and User Documentation

As technical writers, most of us get a chance to review documents prepared by colleagues or writers from other teams. While a few may be reluctant to do reviews, it is a fact that the reviews provide technical writers with an opportunity to participate in the quality control process of user and technical documentation.

If the team has a technical editor, he or she may be left with enough time to do a thorough review of documents. A process will be in place to plan and complete editing. If one of the team members take up the taks of editing, the edits mostly will be a mix of “copy-editing” and “technical editing". A“production edit” can also be done on the draft versions of the PDFs created to ensure that everything is all right before it is send to the customer. The limiting factor indeed is time.

The first step in editing is to read the entire document once. It is indeed a quick read just to get an idea of what is it all about. Such a reading does give me an idea about what can possibly be the editing effort required and the complexity of the edit. On most occasions, I have been successful in marking one or more glaring issues.

In the second phase, start reading the document word by word and line by line. I begin by marking the typical copy-editing stuff using the track changes in Word or FrameMaker or as sticky notes or comments in Acrobat Professional, or even in emails. The copy-editing errors looked into include spelling, grammar, punctuation, usage, style, and writing consistency. I tread carefully on spelling mistakes because I do not want to miss spelling errors borne out of a mix of English styles such as UK English and US. I put comments as well as suggestions where the usage, grammar, and punctuation used are mixed up. For example, a comma before the conjunction “and” in a list.

Other issues focused include the voice and the tense used. Paragraphs often have sentences written in active and passive voices. I often feel that some sentences look better in passive voice, rather than in active voice. I keep an eye on sentences that suddenly shift tenses from the present to the past and even to the future for unknown reasons. I also ensure that the author follow a consistent style across the document, including the capitalization used, the terminology used, the length of sentences, and so on. Sentence construction is always a tricky issue. Paragraphs are checked to ensure that multiple ideas are not stacked, but spread out in multiple paragraphs.

Beyond copy editing, I specifically look for sentences that are technical, speak the SME's language and not the user's languages, filled with jargon, and ambiguous. The technical nature of the text and badly constructed sentences create lots of cruft. The result is the user finds it difficult to comprehend the meaning and the idea. A documentation bug is the result in such a scenario.

In other cases, there is less focus on context, but more on procedural tasks. As a result, the reader will not know what a particular feature is about, why he or she should do it, and what exactly can be achieved. Clearing these issues, at times, involve talking to the author or referring to documents such as requirement specs and design documents. In such documents, I put suggestions to rewrite the paragraphs or sentences for clarity. Compromise is the mantra.

At times, another strategy employed has worked wonders while editing. This is to log in to the application and match the procedures in the documents with the application (I know this will not work for complex software and hardware). Such a strategy helps me in ensuring whether crucial elements or steps of the work flow are missing from the documentation. It can be a field, a menu, a drop-down item, or buttons, or a shortcuts, related tasks, and so on. A technical editor can also look into issues such as the mismatch in documenting the names of GUI elements, dissimilarity between the screenshots and procedures, screen names, the tab flow of fields (if present), mandatory values, lack of troubleshooting tips, and so on.

I also look into the template issues, formatting, and layout. Currently, this involves correct use of character and paragraph tags and master pages, heading styles and hierarchy. On PDFs, I also check whether cross-references work and whether they land on the page intended. I do comment on the overall layout: topics starting at the end of the page, orphan sentences and bulleted lists, and pages starting with screenshots and notes and warnings, procedures without intros. I also check the white space present in pages and the proportion of body text and graphics on a particular page so that the “weight” is balanced.

I like words and like to review definitions of terms. While a few can be verified using the internet, on many instances, I need to discuss them with the authors as well as the experts.

I check the organization of the document. Instead of topics organized to relate to each other, topics may look disparate and incoherent. They may lack unity among various sections of the document. It simply means the whole will not be the sum of its parts. Typically, I will try to ensure that writers do not miss the crucial aspect of ensuring a flow so that the information is rendered not usable. If a casual reader cannot find the information easily, imagine the plight of the user who is busy to finish the task. I love cross-references in te documents. I feel the absence of adequate cross references thwarts the unity of the document.  If I enter a few details, I should know how to verify that information. Documentation and its architecture sometimes miss this crucial element.

Finally, I just close the document and come back to it later to review my comments. I do this to ensure that I have missed anything and I have not done any hyper-editing.

For me, copy-editing or technical editing is not nitpicking. It is not an act to put someone on the defensive. It is a quality control process to ensure delivery of good and quality documentation to customers. It is also a learning process for me, as I need to be first sure that my concerns are right, and my findings are valid. It is not necessarily that I am always right. The author can also be right and I can learn from him or her. It is a collaborative process to ensure that the efforts fulfill the wider objectives set for.

Copy editing in Newspapers

How different is copy editing from the editing you do as part of your technical writing? Some might feel that it is nothing compared to what is done in technical writing. Others might say a lot can be carried from newspaper copy editing to technical editing. Others might say both are miles apart.

I can't help from saying that there is an awful lot of misunderstanding about a copy editor's work in newspapers. On the internet, one of the best quoted or linked source of what a copy editor does is at The Slot. Click here to read The Slot's article on What Exactly is a Copy Editor.  Here, I don't intend to pass judgements on which one is more challenging and complex, or which one is easy.

Let me put my perspective what a copy editor (sub editor in Indian parlance) does. Firstly, it is neither a "mere" editing job, nor a proofreading job. It is job with lots of responsibility, pressure, and requires syncing with the editorial team, the reporting team, the graphics team, advertising, and even the sales and marketing team.

A copy editor, as a journalist, needs to know something about everything under the sun. Knowing everything means learning new subjects and keeping track of the happenings in the English language and the profession. (Unlike in the media, a technical writer can focus on the particular domain or tool based on his or her job requirements. He or she is not supposed to know each and every domain).

When a copy editor walks in and logs into his or her machine, there will be nothing on the "queue" to edit. Stories filed by reporters, correspondents, senior journalists, start to flow in slowly, often late in the evening. Of the stories that come in, one has to be selected as the lead or main story. A lead story appears more prominent on the page, usually at the top left or right, spreads across many columns, and is set in the biggest headline style. Editing is based on the house style and the copy editor has to keep an eye on the legal implications of stories.

While most of the day is spent on editing news stories, an hour or more is left to design or make pages using a software like QuarkXPress. A copy editor usually makes more than one page. It is here that the skills get really tested.

The reason is the page. A copy editor does not have any control of the preliminary design of the page. You can consider the page as the template we often talk about in technical writing. Typically, a page is divided into 7-8 columns. This template is initially drafted by the "ad" department. Pages will have ads, which take a few columns at the bottom of the page, or half the page. The more the ad space is, the more happy the copy editor is. This means that the "template" a copy editor works on is never the same. A copy editor actually works on widely different templates daily.

The templates are different, but the deadline is the same. The templates are different, but the level of edits required for stories are different. Moreover, every page requires photos to balance the weight on the page. And if the ad department comes with a last minute change, you can imagine the pressure and the mess the copy editor can be in.

The newspaper industry is the only industry that releases a new product every day. In the mornings, you read the news edited by copy editors and view the pages designed by the copy editors last night.

Engaging User Documentation

One of the words that technical communicators should have in their vocabulary is Engage. Because the word also means to "become involved." In reality, many technical writers refuse to get "actively" involved with the project teams and refuse to accept responsibility for mistakes on their part. A few even consider
themselves as "individual contributors" in a team.

Technical writers cannot sit before the desktops and imagine that everything—information, reference documents, software build, and so on—will reach them automatically. They cannot simply shift the blame for incorrect information or missing information in their documents to someone else. For technical writers of any level, engaging themselves with the project team is the most crucial aspect. This may require lots of legwork, casual chat, and intent to even befriend a few team members.

The primary benefit of such an interaction is more or less complete documentation of the software and feature developed. Even though project managers may not be that keen to interact with technical writers, there are others with whom the technical writers can get involved. It is this healthy involvement of technical writers with software developers, testers, and SMEs that will enhance the reputation of the technical writer and improve the understanding of the work a technical writer does. Technical writers would also benefit in understanding the functionality properly and get a holistic view by engaging fully with the team, and not just with the SME.

This kind of "internal networking" will benefit a technical writer in multiple ways. As mentioned earlier, a good engagement works wonders for preparing a complete and proper documentation. It also helps the technical writer to understand the software and the domain in a better manner. It also drives a technical writer to provide feedback, ask questions from the user perspective, and even don the role of a tester at times. Some of the feedback or queries raised can even become a critical issue or priority task for the development team.

A successful engagement will gradually increase the flow of information to the technical writer. People, who earlier refused to divulge information, will open up and provide tidbits of information that will aid the technical writer to write better documentation. For those looking for everything to arrive at their desks, technical
writing is not the best profession.

Links for the Weekend

Pictures of the just concluded Commonwealth Games in Delhi.  Very few photos of Indian winners anyway.
Adobe Dreamweaver's tutorial on building a first website. More here.
This PDF on Introduction to XML and Structured FrameMaker 7.x gives a good overview of concepts.

Alcatel-Lucent opens regional delivery centre in Bangalore, says CNN-IBN.
A science story that was too premature to be published: IISc scientists make progress on new thyroid drug
The Sunday Times on the literary feud between Noble laureates, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. 
30 lakh mobiles disconnected over verification.
Oct 16 was World Food Day. "United Against Hunger" is this year's theme.
Nothing great in this list of top 50 guitar riffs of the decade.

Technical Writing and XML Basics-Part 1

XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a markup language that allows you to define and structure data using tags and attributes. The capabilities of XML can be extended by creating new tags. Data can be structured and validated easily. XML documents works cross-platform. In XML, there is clear separation between data or contents (XML document) and presentation. The presentation is specified by the Stylesheet.

Processing Instruction (PI): The XML declaration statement that begins the XML document.

Tags (< >): The name that identifies the piece of information.

Elements: Basic units that identify and describe data. A Root element contains all other elements. Elements that contain other elements are parent elements. Elements contained in Parent elements are Child elements.

Content: Data represented by the elements.

Attributes: Provides additional information about elements and includes a name and value pair. Elements and attributes are the building blocks of DTD.

Entity: W3Schools.org (http://www.w3schools.com/dtd/dtd_entities.asp) defines entities as “variables used to define shortcuts to standard text or special characters.”

PCDATA: Text parsed by a parser.

CDATA: Characters not parsed by a parser.

DTD: Short for document type definition. Defines the structure of data in an XML document. Specifies the elements, their attributes, and their relationships. Using DTD, you can specify whether an element is mandatory or optional.

Internal DTDs occur within the XML document and cannot be used across multiple documents. External DTDs sit as separate files an can be used across multiple documents. XML documents contain references to external DTDs.

Parsing:  Process that validates the structure of date in XML documents using programs called parsers. A validating parser validates the XML against the DTD.

XML Schema: Defines the structure of an XML document. It defines the elements, attributes, and the data types.

XSD language: The language used to describe the structure or elements in an XML schema. XSD allows creating new data types.

Stylesheets: Cascading style sheet (CSS) and eXtensible stylesheet language (XSL) are the stylesheets used for XML documents.

XSLT: The language used to transform XML documents into other formats such as XHTML. XSL contains XSL Transformations (XSLT) and XML Path (XPath). XML Path is the language for navigating XML docs.

Interesting links

Tips to circle text or object for emphasis in PowerPoint.
Which kind of technical writer are you?
Robohelp tutorials on You Tube.
More about Immersive Journalism.
HTML, CSS, and Java Script videos on Google.
How to avoid risks posed by tabbed browsing.
Adobe TV for technical communication.
Getting started in technical communication.
Things non-technical users do not understand about software.
Earth-Like Planet Can Sustain Life, says Discovery.
The Social Network: Ecosystem vs. Egosystem.
A Handbook of Rhetorical Devices.

Afternoon Notes

Swinge - A verb meaning meaning thrash or punish.

Obama wants to keep them for all but the rich; the doves think they should be continued for everyone and the hawks say they should not only be abandoned but accompanied by swingeing tax rises..

The following terms impressed me very much:

Pluralia Tantum - A word meaning nouns that have only plural forms. Thanks to Richard Nordquist.

Singulare tantum - Nouns that appear in singular form only.

The following are extracts from an Prospect magazine article:

"...Psychoanalysis was born 113 years ago when Freud applied the term “psychical analysis” to his treatment of disturbed patients....CBT, now the NHS treatment of choice, was developed in the 1960s by American psychoanalyst, Aaron T Beck."

The End of Science (1996) is a book written by John Horgan, a staff writer for Scientific American.

Science News

1. Water molecules in Antarctic fish "dance a more ordered" dance due to the presence of anti-freeze proteins in their body, said a news report. The technique used to study this is called "terahertz spectroscopy".

Spectroscopy is a method by which an object's properties are studied by the way it disperses light passed through it. This is just like passing sunlight through a prism. When light is passed through a prism, it breaks into its constituent colours. By studying the constituent colours, scientists can know more about an object's properties.

Terahertz spectroscopy uses frequencies in the range of 0.3 THz to 10 THz. This frequency is invisible to the naked eye and can penetrate matter. In this study, Terahertz spectroscopy was used to study the interaction of water molecules with the anti-freeze proteins.

2. "...Universe was formed because of laws of physics and not divine intervention, " said acclaimed scientist, Stephen Hawking. He has added that the Universe was created spontaneously and the M-Theory would offer the best explanation for the creation of Universe.

Planet Earth is in Deep Trouble

The Environment was back in the news because of an oil spill at the Gulf of Mexico and the release of a report by US president Obama's cancer panel of the link between chemicals and cancer. Oil spills cause irreparable damage to fauna and flora, and people who depend on these resources for livelihood. The recurring episode shows that we have not yet learnt the right lessons from Exxon Waldez.

The report prepared by Obama's cancer panel says that, "...Approximately 41 percent of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, and about 21 percent will die from cancer...". The panel, in its 240-page report, suggests strengthening of research into environment chemicals and cancer. The chapter, Environmental Exposures Related to Modern Lifestyles, is a great read on how humans are being exposed to environmental carcinogens daily.

After carbon footprint, the digital footprint is also affecting the environment or is going to affect the environment in a much bigger way. A report in Guardian says that cloud computing will use energy in such a way that the carbon footprint increases by leaps and bounds, unless reined in by truly green technologies. Jan Wildeboer, an open source evangelist, says in a video posted on YouTube that proprietary formats will augment the volumes of digital waste, unless replaced with open source formats. Sounds pretty grim. Watch the video anyway.

BBC reports that the ash misery from Eyjafjallajökull will continue to haunt air travellers.

Commonplace Books and Echo Chamber Effect

I have a fascination for terms and jargons. My eyes lit up when I feel that the connotation of something I read is more than skin deep.

Commonplace books: I saw this word in a post titled, The Glass Box And The Commonplace Book. Wikipedia defines the words as "Commonplace books (or commonplaces) were a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into book."

Echo Chamber Effect: Echo Chamber effect is used to describe how media outlets follow stories reported by a major media outlet.

A Few Quotes

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting-Milan Kundera in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Beauty, the last triumph possible for man who can no longer hope-Milan Kundera in The Art of the Novel.

We live in an age of conspiracy theories, some people preferring to believe that nothing is ever what it is but an elaborate plot by powers elsewhere-From Malcolm Bradbury's Doctor Criminale.

The sea is a symbol of collective unconscious because unfathomed depths lie concealed beneath its reflecting surface-Carl Jung in Dreams

Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end up by destroying the Earth-Albert Schweitzer

Daily Recap

I watched the recorded version of the Author-IT Dynamic Assistance Platform webinar. It was interesting to read Steve Job's article on Adobe Flash, and also to know that Ozzfest 2010 would have Girls Girls Girls! fame Motley Crue and Rob Halford. Another article says technical writes can be good scientifc writers( not sure), while The FrameMaker Five turned out to be written for FrameMaker 9. On a day I bought a few Indian philosophy books, there comes a list of science fiction detective novels in New Scientist. The week also saw the Indian parliament passing a bill to establish a national green tribunal in India. According to Business Standard, this is "the first serious attempt in the country towards environmental rights."

Daily Recap

The barbaric act of Hartal was enacted by Marxist-led political parties in my home state of Kerala, in the name of protest against high food prices.

The Word MVPs site I frequent regularly has an interesting and long article on Conditional Cross-Reference Labels for Numbered Headings, while PowerPoint earned some flak from the US military. Alternet ran an excellent article on the deleterious impacts of industrial agriculture on the environment and Bangalore daily Deccan Herald published a dubious article supporting GE crops. It was refreshing to read about the rise of new generation of British poets (I am currently reading poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy's poems anyway) and an interview with well-known science fiction author Ray Bradbury, who has never been to college. Noted defence analyst K Subramanyam writes on Communication intelligence in the backdrop of the phone tapping allegations by opposition politicians in India.

Usage of And/Or

The debate on whether "and/or" is correct or not refuses to die down. It was pleasing to see an entry on 'and/or" in the Chicago Manual of Style FAQ site (Look at the March Q&A section).

In the March Q&A, CMOS says, "...and/or “can often be replaced by and or or with no loss in meaning." For multiple choices, CMOS says use or . . . or both .

Despite knowing this, we make mistakes, right?

Phenomenons or Phenomena?

What is the plural form of phenomenon? School kids will tell it is phenomena. But what happened to "phenomena" in this newspaper report?

Pachauri said: "Given the variations in the ocean currents, wind patterns and related sedimentation as well as other phenomenons related to the weather..."

The news report also has other usage issues. "The six-member Pachauri Committee, tasked to examine the possibility of cutting a canal through land mass between Dhanuskodi and Rameshwaram,..."

Tasked to? When Task is used as a a verb, 'with' follows it. It can be "tasked with" and not "tasked to".

The third paragraph has a spelling mistake in "environemntally", that too on World Earth Day!

Technical Writing and 5Ws' and one H

Can the legendary 5 Ws' and one H, widely used in journalism, applicable to technical writing as well? I had this doubt after I viewed a presentation titled, How to Write.

Let us look what 5 W's and One in journalism. It means:
Who?
What?
When?
Where?
Why?
How?

Does who, when, and where matter for a scenario where a user is operating a software? I have my doubts. Anyway, this is an interesting point and I will keep it in my mind whether 5Ws' and One H can indeed be a guideline for technical writing.

In journalis, the inverted pyramid style evolved due to space constraints in a newspaper. For a newspaper, space is a very important thing, because ads occupy some amount of space in a newspaper page. Moreover, the technique was also useful to readers who want to get all the necessary information by reading the first paragraph or lead. It is difficult to apply the same in the strictest sense to a user manual. While space is finite in a newspaper, it is not so for a user manual. Page design also does not limit how much and what you can put in a user manual page.

Journalism is called the first draft of history. A user manual is not a first draft of history. The content in a technical document is always restricted by the product it documents, and it is always meant for specific or multiple audiences. Unlike journalism, where the topics are varied, a user manual is somewhat restricted in what it can document.

The level of precision required in a technical document is very high, compared to newspapers. Newspapers deal with facts, that can turn wrong later, because News is supplied by human sources with a specific personal intent. Such news can be true or it can turn out to be false later. SMEs in a software company do not have a personal choice in providing information. What they provide or what the technical writers learn should be precise information.

In most companies, technical documents get written based on approved structure and style. The writing is always restricted by a style guide that effectively prescribes the Do's and Dont's. In journalism, there is considerable freedom to write in a style that suits the writer. In fact, media houses do have a style guide, but features provide the journalist to adopt a free style in their writings.

Lastly, technical docs are meant for users to complete a particular task. They are not meant to entertain anybody. Moreover, the news published is governed by values such as proximity and significance.

The challenge in technical writing is to convert complex technical concepts to simple information readable by any kind of user. This is a unique challenge that requires considerable self-study, analysis, and judgement. Writing a front-page story is not that similar to writing complete procedures that can reduce support calls.

Terms for Technical Writers

Agile Development: Software development based on an iterative and incremental approach. Regular feedback and frequent changes effected to plans to develop a software. See Agile Manifesto for more.

API: Short for Application Programming Interface. According to Webopedia, An API is a set of routines, protocols, and tools for developing software products.

Application Server: A software (set up in a centralised location) used in intranet/internet environment to query databases or for business processing.

Batch Process: A process that runs a series of commands or processes.

Build: Generally, a pre-release version of a software program. There will be many builds that will be tested before the final product is shipped to the customer.

Burndown chart: In Agile software development, this chart tracks sprint progress so that project managers can decide which items must be removed from the sprint backlog and moved to the next sprint.

CSV File: Short for Comma Separated Value file, which is a file format used to exchange data between different applications.

Design Spec: A technical document that contains descriptions of the design of a particular product.

DITA: Short for Darwin Information Typing Architecture, an XML-based architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information.

Eclispe: Eclipse is an open source and free development environment.

Exception: In Java, exception refers to an object that describes an error condition in the code.

Flat File: A text file or database that contains unrelated records.

Iteration: In Agile software development, a short period of time (varies from two weeks to a month) in which the development team develops a complete feature or functionality.

JDK: Short for Java Development Kit. A Java Development Kit (JDK) is an environment for creating Java applets and applications.

Run book: A reference document, generally used by system administrators, containing procedures to begin, stop, and supervise a system or network.

Single Sourcing: A documentation approach used to create multiple documents from a single content source or library.

Six Sigma: A data driven system to continuously build and improve quality into processes and products developed.

SOA: Short for Service Oriented Architecture.

SOP: Short for standard operating procedures. A document that contains the standrad operating procedures to run a system efficiently.

Table: In a relational database, a Table is a set of columns that contain data.

Test Case: A document that lists inputs, actions, events and the results expected from a working software build. This is used to test the functionality or feature developed by the software development team.

Test Plan: A plan that details the approach to test a software as a whole, and not the parts.

Topic-based Authoring: A content creation approach that creates stand-alone content, which can be easily reused in any context, managed, and assembled.

Use Case: A document that describes how a type of user uses a sofware to achieve a particular goal or goals.

Software Design Document: A document describing a software or an overview of the architecture of the software. There are two kinds of design documents: High Level Design Document (HLDD) and Low Level Design Document (LLDD).

XML: Short for Extensible Markup Language, a markup language.

Bad Day for Indian Space Research

It was sad to read that India's efforts to launch the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle(GSLV D-3), powered by indigenously developed cryogenic engine, failed to succeed. Read the report in the Times of India.

List of Celebrities

The following minds do not find space in newspapers and magazines published in India:

Agnes Heller - Hungarian philosopher

Héctor Abad Faciolince-Colombian novelist, essayist, journalist, and editor. He has studied Medicine, Journalism, and Philosophy.

Claire Denis, the well-known French film director.

Uladzimir Arlou becomes first laureate of “European Poet of Freedom” award.

French philosopher Elisabeth Badinter

Geert Lovink-media theorist, net critic and activist.

Javier Cercas, writer and Professor of Spanish literature.

Rosa Montero is an award-winning journalist and author of contemporary fiction.

Manuel Rivas is a Galician writer, poet and journalist, and founding member of Greenpeace Spain.

Michal Hvorecky is a Slovak author and winner of many prestigious awards.

Robert Pinsky is a well-known American poet, and the poetry editor at Slate.

Krzysztof Varga -Polish writer and journalist.

Jonathan Safran Foer is an American author best known for his novels Everything Is Illuminated.

Edward Hirsch, American poet, has writteb a book, How to read a poem: and fall in love with poetry.

Barbara Ras is an american poet.

Colm Tóibín-award-winning Irish novelist and critic.

The Word Hurt Locker

Hurt Locker means a state of intense physical or mental pain, says the MacMillan dictionary.

Hurt Locker won the Best Movie Oscar this year.

New Screen Capture Tool

Here's a new screencasting tool: http://www.screenpresso.com/index.html.

For Windows XP users, Microsoft.Net Framework is required.

The Thing Called Relational Database

I have attended meetings that often discussed and questioned how the product I document on access or query the database at the implementation level. While a few of these 'technical' discussions do not make much sense, it usullay creates a sense of curiosity to know a little more on the topic.

It was with much interest that I read, Is the Relational Database Doomed?, an excellent piece on relational databases and alternatives. I cannot help myself from telling that this is a great piece of 'technical writing. Great post!

GNR Rocks

Rolling Stone report on GNR live was an interesting news to read. It was 1989 when I first listened to 'Sweet Child of Mine' through the Voice of America.

Bad Day for Indian Science

1. The goof-up over Himalayan glaciers is nothing new as far as Indian science is concerned. Anybody, who is a bit acquainted with Indian universities, knows what happens in the departments and labs.

But the absence of official action against those who disgraced India in front of the world Himalayan glaciers is a bit hard to digest. And, even more, I did not understand what this lead to a story on CNN-IBN really meant. Poor journalism anyway. "The Rajendra Pachauri-led Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that claimed that most of the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 owing to climate change and global warning was made without any scientific basis."

The problem with this sentence is that it is both wrong and confusing. It must have been rewritten to clear the ambiguity caused by the word 'that'.

2. From Coredump, I went to Wall Street Journal to peer at the salaries technical writers get in the West. Looks good.

3. Should I watch Avatar or not? There is indeed a buzz around town to not skip this movie. I've my doubts. By the way, when did the Golden Globe became the benchmark for us, the poor Indians. I salute the Sanskrit language for the word.

My Old Notebooks

I've not discarded my old university notebooks, as I cannot forget the glorious days of my post graduate studies. It looks as if I'll never get back those golden days, when only knowledge and discovery mattered and nothing else.

Today, I opened one of those notebooks. The funny thing is a few of these notebooks are a collage of lectures of different subjects. There is no continuity in the notes.

In the first few pages, it lists the following types of volcanic rocks:

Andesite, Apanitic, and Basalt

Next, it lists the texture:
Glassy, Vesicles, Porphry, Pegmatite, Plutonic rocks, Phaneritic, Gabbro, Ultramafic
Diorite, Granite, Rhyolite, Obsidian, Country or Wall Rock, Concordant, Pipes and Necks, Dykes and Sills, Laccolith, Lopoliths, Stock and Batholith, Extrusive, Chilled Margins, Xenoloiths, Clastic sediments

A brief note on sting rays is written in pencil. This is followed by pictures and descriptions of the following animals: Sardine, Echeinesis, Cynoglossus, Mullet (there is a newspaper photo of Erikson with Stephen Graubard), Salamander, Axolotl, Gegenophis, Rhacophorus, Clarias, Necturus, arterial system of a frog, Cobra.

The first part of the notebook ends here. The text then returns its direction. I start reading again.

This part starts with notes on physiology and then moves to two ecology topics, Symbiosis and Mutualism. Mites follow these topics followed by tables on Geological Time Scale, notes comparing Anopheles and Culex mosquitoes, and notes on bed bugs. Notes on the blood group system, ABO, appears after a brief note on ecology. I read with interest these notes with also had info on the Lewis system.

Notes on agricultural pests, a beetle and shoot borer, is followed by Rh-antigen and its inheritance, pests of sugarcane, a list of topics on animal physiology, cytology and genetics, economic zoology, which I assume can be questions related to old question papers.

Embryology comes next, with notes on Modulations, ooplasm, evocation, and names of two textbooks. I don't remember whether I've read these textbooks. Diagrams on polygenic inheritance of fruits. This section of the note ends after a few blank pages.

I close the notebook, as a dog whines somewhere in the residential lane nearby.

Let the media be slow

Trevor Butteworth writes an excellent piece on the need for a slow media movement, to restore the grandeur or decency of good old journalism. He says, "The idea of consuming less, but better, media--of a "slow word" or "slow media" movement--is a strategy journalism should adopt."

http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/29/media-newspapers-internet-opinions-columnists-trevor-butterworth.html