If a book makes you cry, it must be good, right?
I'm reading a book Lift
When Phoebe was young, about a year old, she had a very, very high fever. At one point, it was over 106°. We took her to Children's Hospital of Oakland the first night. They were very worried she had meningitis. The only way to be sure is to do a lumbar puncture. We resisted that, wanting to be sure before we put her through such a difficult procedure. We spent hours there, Phoebe was wailing in a way that only a really, really sick child can wail, tearing at our hearts. What was worse though, was when she was quiet, when she was just so spent, so tired, so overwhelmed that she was quiet. They pumped her full of antibiotics and sent us home. By the time we left her fever was down around 100°.
The next night, same drill. This time they really pushed us for the lumbar puncture, but we'd been through this before, and, after more drugs, and another decrease in her fever, they sent us home.
She got better after that. No more trips to the ER.
What does that have to do with "Lift"? On pages 33-34, the author's child is getting a lumbar puncture. At Oakland's Children's Hospital. She writes,
With your feet in one hand and your forearms in the other, Jeff rounded you out. After swabbing your back with yellow iodine, Dr. Benjamin pushed a long needle between two of you lower vertebrae, "past some dura mater." Your razory screams tormented me. I crossed my arms and bit down on my lips and rocked back and forth in a soothing motion, like I'd accidentally driven into a bad neighborhood and was assuring myself that somehow I'd find my way out. I didn't look at Dad. I couldn't spare the emotion.
Dr. Benjamin pulled the needle back slowly, calmly, despite your awful shrieeking. "That's all we need. We'll take this to the lab and start the evaluation." He stood and handed you to me. You were hot and wimpering. I held you, heart to heart, your hands around my neck. Although I'd betrayed you, although I'd stood by while people spread and bent and stabbed you, you still wanted me most of all.
And I'm crying again.
One of the things I didn't say above was Phoebe did need to get chest x-rays. They strapped her down, and Betsy and I stood nearby, listening to, as Corrigan said, her "razory screams tormented me." It got worse, though. The straps couldn't hold her down. Phoebe pulled and thrashed. I had to put on a lead suit, walk over, and hold her down.
I held her there for what seemed like forever. She kept trying to pull away from this ultimate indignity and I stood there, holding her down. She looked at me with those perfect beautiful blue eyes and I held her down.
When it was done, the tech came over and took the straps off, Betsy came and scooped her up and she wailed and wailed and wailed while Betsy held her and swayed in that Momma/baby rhythm that only they know.
This book reminded me of this, something I'd put away, not to be touched because it makes me so sad, and I cried. And I'm crying.
I don't know if you'd be moved the way I am if you hadn't been there, in those flickering lights, on that night, frightened, knowing you did the right thing, but feeling like you betrayed your child, but I suspect every parent has at least one moment like that, one time where they felt what I felt, what Corrigan felt. It takes a good writer to remind us, though, of just how overwhelming it is.
The irony ….
Rihanna has .. taken over control of an account set up by her record bosses on the social networking website.
[She] was tired of seeing "corny label tweets" attributed to her - so she's taken the page over.
The pop star wrote on Friday, "So now that i finally took over my Twitter page no more corny label tweets......lol! whaaasssuupppp ppl!!!!!
Is it just me or is that really funny? I mean isn't "lol! whaaasssuupppp ppl!!!!!" about the corniest tweet you ever read?
Original article at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/dailydish/index#ixzz0yCnpZ9aR
My writers don’t even realize that they get it, and that makes me happy
- Image via Wikipedia
For those of you that haven't been following along all these years, let me restate one of my fundamental beliefs - writers shouldn't ever worry about layout. Writers are incredibly good at writing. Some writers are also really good at layout. Those two things are very, very different though. Good writing works no matter what the design is. The converse isn't true, though. Good design fails when the content isn't valuable.
My job is to make the writers more effective. When automated publication gets in the way of writing good content, I've made things worse, not better. On the other hand, when a writer has gotten to the point where she's complaining that the automated build doesn't do something she can easily do manually, and she's complaining not because she wants to do the formatting herself, but she's complaining that the build doesn't do the thing she could do, I smile.
I've gotten through to her. She gets it. Not just logically, but viscerally. She doesn't want to make the fix manually, even though it's easy for her to to do it. She wants to write and leave the layout, the publication piece, to me.
It's a good Friday.
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I’m a bit behind on this, but …
Back on my birthday, Phoebe, with, I suspect, a bit of help from her Mom, gave me this gift and even though that was last month, I still had to share it.
Happiness – it’s more than “Am I happier than I was a minute ago?” and yes, Phoebe makes me happy
Many studies show that parents are less happy then other adults without children. I've never really believed the results of those studies.
The academic side of me says,"Well, they did the research, who are you to question it?" while the realist in me tells me that I'm happier as a father then I've ever been, my brother is happier as a father, my father is happier as a father, etc.
So, why the disconnect? I think Jonah Lehrer nails it in his post, Family Life : The Frontal Cortex. He writes,
And yet, these subjective self-reports and ethnographic videotapes also miss something important. The fact of the matter is that it's much easier to quantify pleasure on a moment-by-moment basis, or document the swing of cortisol levels in saliva, that it is to quantify something as intangible as "unconditional love". Changing a diaper isn't enjoyable, and teenagers can be such a pain in the ass, but having kids can also provide a profound source of meaning. (I like the amateur marathoner metaphor: survey a marathoner in the midst of the race and they'll complain about their legs and that nipple rash and the endless route. But when the running is over they are always incredibly proud of their accomplishment. Having kids, then, is like a marathon that lasts 18 years.) The larger point, though, is that just because we can't measure something doesn't mean it isn't important, or that we should always privilege the quantifiable (pleasure, stress) over the intangible (meaning, purpose). Real life is complex stuff.
I love my daughter Phoebe. She really is the most valuable thing in my life. Living my life with her makes me happy, even though, at many moments I will report that I am unhappy. Even during those moments of unhappiness, I'm more alive then I'd have been without her.
Before Phoebe (BP), I had time to pursue my own desires. I had time to share with my wife, Betsy. I had time to do nothing. Now, finding time for Betsy is hard, finding time to pursue my own desires is harder, and time to do nothing has disappeared.
Now, life with Phoebe (WP), is harder. I have to manage every moment of my life. I am not the alpha and omega of my life. I think, though, that is what we, as humans really desire. We are a social animal. We are most satisfied, most happy, and most at peace when we are doing something that benefits ourselves but also benefits others.
That's why these studies are, in the larger scope, wrong. They measure the change in happiness, not the actual value of happiness. My moments of frustration or unhappiness with Phoebe are still more joyful then my moments of happiness when I was alone. They are more joyful then my moments with Betsy before Phoebe.
It's obvious, really, when you think about it. What's the most touching moment in a drama? It's when the protagonist's love dies. Why? Because a piece of the protagonist dies too. Our loves, our family, makes us larger than the person we would be without them.
Is my happiness lowered, for a moment, when Phoebe pours her cereal bowl all over the floor? Yes, of course it is. My life is better, though, because she's there to pour that cereal on the floor than if she wasn't there.
The studies are wrong, not in the numbers they report, but because they miss the scope of what life is about. I don't say that because I want to justify my choice of being a parent. I say that because I believe that social science is missing a key component in the study of happiness, and I hope someone will do a deeper, more thorough study of the topic.
DITA – The Things Experts Say I am Doing Wrong
A few months ago, JoAnn Hackos told me that I'm not really using DITA. Yesterday, Eliot Kimber told me I'm not really doing reuse.
In a way, it's an affirmation for me to have disagreements with such knowledgeable, skillful people and to honestly believe that I'm right.
We use generic DITA topics. JoAnn's point is that without using specializations of the generic topic in DITA we are not taking advantage of DITA. We're just writing XML. In a way, I agree. One of the great things about using specialized topics is that you can easily create and enforce a consistent information model. However (you knew that was coming, right?), DITA is much more than an information model. You can create information models using many different architectures or processes. It's quite possible to create and enforce an information model using plain text files. Besides, taking JoAnn's position to it's logical extreme, how can you say you are really using DITA if you haven't specialized everything? Why is a task topic specific enough? Shouldn't every project have a task topic that is designed for its information model? If that's a requirement to really be using DITA, then nobody is really using DITA.
At the CMS/DITA conference, Eliot asked if anyone using DITA 1.1 was reusing content. I, and others, raised our hands. He then made the statement that we were wrong - no one using DITA 1.1 is doing reuse. It was a typical Kimberism. Broad, strong statements made, partially, to make his audience think about reuse. When questioned about it, he clarified by saying that "unbounded reuse is not possible in DITA 1.1," which, I think, nearly everyone would agree with. However, bounded reuse is possible. For example, in our system all of our content is stored in
one repository. All the content is always available to every project at build time. As an author of the API documentation, I can always depend on the content from the online help. That means conrefs are always valid. It gets more tricky when you start using cross-references, either using the xref element or a reltable. The problem is that while I can be sure the content that is being linked to is available at build time, I cannot be sure that the content is available in the target. To use an example, I cannot guarrentee that "About Accounts," a help topic, is going to be in the PDF version of the API, so any content in the API guide that includes a link to "About Accounts" will break. So what, you say, "As the API writer I won't put in one of those links."
Ah, but what if you are reusing content and that content includes a reference to "About Accounts"? If it does, your guide has a broken link. Here's the bad part - you cannot know that the content you reuse doesn't include that link. The way to resolve that, as Eliot hinted at, is to bound your reuse. You need to either ensure that elements with cross-references are not reused, or you need to test for broken links at build time. We do the latter.
If a link in the PDF fails, we drop it. The text is still there, but the link is gone. The writer gets a message from the build indicating the issue, and then it's the writer's choice to either drop the reuse, change the source with the cross-reference, or let the build drop the link.
In a way I like the problem. I have two reasons for that.
Our main focus is online content delivery. When your online project includes search and hierarchical navigation tools (like a table of contents, index, etc.), inline links are, IMO, a usability problem rather than a usability enhancement. First, due to the fact that we need to style a link differently than non-link text, when a user scans the content, the link jumps out. The user focuses on it. That leads to the second problem; a treasure hunt. The user scans the page, finds a link, clicks it, scans that page, sees a link, clicks it, etc. Next thing you know, they have scanned 10 different topics, the answer to their question wasn't as apparent as all the links, and so, the user gets frustrated; "I looked all over the doc and I couldn't find an answer". So, inline xrefs actually make the documentation less effective.
The second reason is a more subtle one. A topic is the smallest piece of information that can stand on its own. If you include an xref, is it really standing on its own? It's a crutch that lets the writer be lazy. If they need the information in the link to really grok the information in the topic, then the topic doesn't stand alone. If the topic works without the link, then why include it? You don't know what the user is trying to do, and trying to predict it with an inline link muddies the path the user would choose to follow.
Some great writing in “Brodeck” by Philippe Claudel
I'm reading Brodeck: A novel
It's always been difficult for me to speak and express my innermost thoughts in person. I prefer to write. When I sit down and write, words grow very docile, they come and feed out of my hands like little birds, and I can do almost what I want with them; whereas when I try to marshal them in the open air, they fly away from me.
I think a lot of writers feel the same way, but I've never seen it written so eloquently.
Every day, Fedorine fed me with bread, apples, and bacon, which she drew out of big blue canvas sacks, and also with words; she slipped them into my ear, and I had to let them out again through my mouth.
As someone with a toddler, watching her going through the stages of language acquisition, I have to say that this is exactly what I see happening. We feed her words, just like we feed her peas and rice.
It's been a long time since I've enjoyed the words of a book so much. What makes it more amazing is that it's a translation (translated by John Cullen). I wonder how it would read in the original French.
A Former Freeway Turns into a Farm
I used to live in the Hayes Valley neighborhood of San Francisco. I often walked past the remnants of a highway off-ramp that was destroyed during the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. Often I wanted to walk through the abandoned lot, but high fences and a natural fear of homeless encampments keep me away. Now I've found that there are braver people then me there - they've turned it into a farm. Okay, well, an urban garden, but still, that's a great use of abandoned space.
Okay, I might have to buy a iPad after all – PadNotes iPad app preview
PadNotes is a tool that allows you to draw or type on top of a PDF on an iPad. I can see how this would be really useful for reviewing PDF documents, filling out those PDFs you always get (you know the ones, where all you need to do is sign it, but to do that you have to print it out, sign it with a pen, and then either fax it or scan it so you can email it?), or even for note taking when you are studying a subject.
It may not sound that exciting, but watch the video before making up your mind.
Of course there are features I hope it has, such as reading ePub and image formats, not just PDF or actually being able to use PDF functionality (like filling in PDFs that are forms, or taking part in a shared PDF review), but even without those, this is the most compelling thing I've seen for the iPad yet.
Is this the first step toward replacing physical books for student? I think it might be. In place highlighting and note taking. It even appears to be quite usable for jotting down graphs and diagrams a teacher writes on the board.
WebDAV on linux – make it writable by me
I just signed up for a box.net . It's a great service. What I really wanted it for was WebDAV. Be aware that they don't officially support WebDAV, but it works, so, if you want to experiment, go for it.
I'm using WebDAV for emacs org-mode. There's a new feature called mobileorg, that allows you to use an iPhone app for managing your org files. It depends on you being able to store your files on a WebDAV enabled server.
Fine. I work mostly on emacs, so it should be pretty easy to mount a directory. It was, too.
- Make sure you have the davfs2 package installed. If you are using Ubuntu/Debian,
sudo apt-get install davfs2
- Add something like the following to /etc/fstab
http://www.box.net/dav /home/username/Documents/box.net davfs rw,users,gid=users,uid=username 0 0
- Replace username with your Linux username
- Update the path (/home/username/Documents/box.net) to where you want to mount box.net. Make sure that directory exists!
- Update /etc/davfs2/secrets with a line like the following:
https://webdavhost.net/username/ username password
replace username and password with your box.net info.
- Test the mount, using a command like the following
sudo mount /home/username/Documents/box.net
If that works, you're good to go. The fstab file will remount it whenever you reboot. The other instruction sets I've seen neglected to include the gid and uid information so I couldn't write to the directory.
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