David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
I found this argument in favor of two spaces after a period. I favor the single space, but not for any of the reasons he explained.
I’m also not a graphic designer. I had to take a couple of classes on design and layout, and I was competent. But mostly efficient. I was known for being the first one in the room to finish a design, and it would always be at least middle-of-the-pack. On a tight deadline, I was the guy you wanted finessing QuarkXPress. Read more
Rob O’Hara stumbled across a stash of Y2K survivalist magazines and wrote about it. I wasn’t going to be surprised if there were some minor glitches, but I wasn’t expecting the apocalypse. I withdrew a couple hundred bucks from the bank a few days in advance and filled my bathtub with water the night before, so I would have a supply of money and water to tide me over if some glitch interrupted either of them for a day or two.
In late 1999, a lot of people said I was being reckless. Today, people think I was being excessively paranoid. It’s funny how perspectives change. Read more
Lifehacker has a great writing tip that I take for granted, but come to think of it, may not be obvious to everyone: When you’re in a groove, don’t interrupt your writing with research.
The groove is much too valuable for that. When the words are flowing effortlessly, ride it out as long as it lasts. It usually takes a while to find that groove, so just go with it. I usually won’t break a groove to edit, either. Just let the words flow. You’ll always be more productive that way. Read more
Here’s an old, old, but still useful tip that works on all NT-based versions of Windows, including Windows 10 and Windows 11. This is the clear print queue command line sequence for Windows, and it’s the fastest, most reliable way to recover from a hung print job. It works from the standard Windows CMD prompt.
The sequence is to stop the spooler service, delete the contents of the spooler directory (usually c:\windows\system32\spool\printers\) and then restart the spooler service.
Sometimes in a batch file I find myself needing to perform more than one operation on a server, especially inside a for loop. Rather than do a pair of for loops, which isn’t always desirable, you can use the & operator.
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My battery life on my phone and tablet have been rather lackluster lately. So I decided to do something about that, and installed Juice Defender on both of them. Read more
My check engine light came on this morning. I’ve been driving this Honda Civic since May 2003, and this is only the third time that’s happened. But the other two times were nuisance lights. The car ran fine, so I bought a new gas cap, replaced the cap, and the light went off.
This time was different. I confirmed it when I turned the corner and tried to accelerate to 25 miles per hour. The car acted like I was asking it to go a hundred and twenty-five.
After 10-plus years and 194,000-plus miles, I had my first mechanical problem. For the first time, I was going to the mechanic for something other than arbitrary, mileage-based maintenance. Read more
John Sculley famously fired Steve Jobs in September 1985, a move that’s pretty universally panned today. Nearly 28 years later, Forbes asked Sculley about it.
Here’s the money quote:
“He was not a great executive back in those early days. The great Steve Jobs that we know today as maybe the world’s greatest CEO, certainly of our era, he learned a lot in those years in the wilderness.”
Last week I had to get an air conditioner serviced. The air conditioner was cooling fairly well, but struggling to keep up on hot days when it had kept up just fine last year. So I bit the bullet and paid $79 for a cleaning and health check. In the process I learned it’s possible to clean your air conditioner at home. And save a bundle.
I also learned is that a cleaning can make the difference between running all day and being able to maintain a comfortable temperature while cycling. So cleaning the air conditioner makes it more comfortable and more efficient, saving you money. I also learned that the most important part of the cleaning is something you can do yourself, very easily. If your air conditioner isn’t under warranty anymore, you can save the $79, which adds up.
I saw this piece by Steve Losh last week, and thought it was some of the best advice about writing I’ve seen in a very long time. Programmers don’t generally like to write, but I find if you tell them how, they can do a good job of it. It’s much easier for a programmer to learn to write than for a writer to learn how to program. Losh does a good job of telling how.
But beyond that, I think it’s a good reading assignment for anyone who writes documentation of a technical nature. I’ve worked with some very good writers and some very bad writers over the course of my education and career, and this would have helped both types. It would have made the good ones better and the bad ones at least marginal. The thing about writing is that if you know the rules and you follow them, it doesn’t take much else on top of that to be good.
So, if you ever get stuck writing documentation–and if you’ve been reading me for many years, I’d say there’s a pretty good chance you do sometimes–give this a read. It will help you get into the mindset you need to be in, and write more effectively. Even if you’re not a programmer. Because, even though he’s a programmer, he uses cars and guitars as his examples. So if you were writing about how to build a bookcase, his instructions would help you.