Tags: writing

100 words in a 100 days – Monique Dubbelman

I was chatting with Monique after her Paris Web talk on doing 100 days of code. I told her about my 100 days project and now she’s doing it too!

Consume less, create more

Editing is hard because you realize how bad you are. But editing is easy because we’re all better at criticizing than we are at creating.

Relatable:

My essay was garbage. But it was my garbage.

This essay is most definitely not garbage. I like it very much.

The Crowd and the Cosmos - Chris Lintott - Oxford University Press

This’ll be good—the inside story of the marvelous Zooniverse project as told by Chris Lintott. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on a copy of this book when it comes out in a couple of months.

Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters

A short, snappy web book on product development from Ryan Singer at Basecamp.

Like Resilient Web Design, the whole thing is online for free (really free, not “give us your email address” free).

Design is a (hard) job. | Zeldman on Web & Interaction Design

It me:

Writing comes naturally to me when I’m expressing myself on my own site, with no outside assignment and no deadline except my own sense of urgency about an idea. It’s easy when I’m crafting a brief text message or tweet. Or a letter to a friend.

But give me a writing assignment and a deadline, and I’m stuck. Paralysis, avoidance, a dissatisfaction with myself and the assignment—all the usual hobgoblins spring immediately to life.

Curating A Design System Newsletter

Some time ago I was going through the backlog of around 90 unread articles on Design Systems. About 80 of those were Medium articles and about 40 of those took me to either their user-hostile “you ready a lot and we like that” pop-up or their money-grabbing “you’ve read lots this month, pay us to read some more.”, it turns out that Medium only likes you reading things when you give money to do so.

Therefore I’ve started to add a little warning notice to each article that’s on Medium.

Why your design system should include content | Clearleft

Rachel makes the case for integrating content design patterns into component libraries:

Instead of content design systems and visual design systems existing in isolation, the ideal is one design system that accommodates everything, marrying the content and design together in the way it will actually be used and experienced.

The Problem With “Content”   – On my Om

My website has my words, my interviews, my photos, and my identity — what it doesn’t have, as far as I’m concerned, is “content.” Looking at it from the other side, for platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, everything is “content” regardless of its provenance. Each creation is merely an object, only valuable for its ability to increase our time spent on their platforms, allowing them to sell more advertising.

German Naming Convention

Don’t write fopen when you can write openFile. Write throwValidationError and not throwVE. Call that name function and not fct. That’s German naming convention. Do this and your readers will appreciate it.

Language and the Invention of Writing | Talking Points Memo

Language is not an invention. As best we can tell it is an evolved feature of the human brain. There have been almost countless languages humans have spoken. But they all follow certain rules that grow out of the wiring of the human brain and human cognition. Critically, it is something that is hardwired into us. Writing is an altogether different and artificial thing.

Khoi Vinh on How His Blog Amplified His Work and Career – Own Your Content

It’s hard to overstate how important my blog has been, but if I were to try to distill it down into one word, it would be: “amplifier.”

Khoi talks about writing on his own website.

I personally can’t imagine handing over all of my labor to a centralized platform where it’s chopped up and shuffled together with content from countless other sources, only to be exploited at the current whims of the platform owners’ volatile business models.

Resilient Management | A book for new managers in tech

I got a preview copy of this book and, my oh my, it is superb!

If your job involves dealing with humans (or if it might involve dealing with humans in the future), you’ll definitely want to read this.

Plotters, pantsers, and user onboarding | Krystal Higgins

Krystal compares two styles of writing and applies them to onboarding.

The Training Commission

Coming to your inbox soon:

The Training Commission is a speculative fiction email newsletter about the compromises and consequences of using technology to reckon with collective trauma. Several years after a period of civil unrest and digital blackouts in the United States, a truth and reconciliation process has led to a major restructuring of the federal government, major tech companies, and the criminal justice system.

Science Fiction Doesn’t Have to Be Dystopian | The New Yorker

Ted Chiang has new collection out‽ Why did nobody tell me‽

Okay, well, technically this is Joyce Carol Oates telling me. In any case …woo-hoo!!!

Humanizing Your Documentation - Full Talk - Speaker Deck

The slides from Carolyn’s talk at Beyond Tellerrand. The presentation is ostensibly about writing documentation, but I think it’s packed with good advice for writing in general.

Into the Personal-Website-Verse · Matthias Ott – User Experience Designer

There is one alternative to social media sites and publishing platforms that has been around since the early, innocent days of the web. It is an alternative that provides immense freedom and control: The personal website. It’s a place to write, create, and share whatever you like, without the need to ask for anyone’s permission.

A wonderful and inspiring call to arms for having your own website—a place to express yourself, and a playground, all rolled into one.

Building and maintaining your personal website is an investment that is challenging and can feel laborious at times. Be prepared for that. But what you will learn along the way does easily make up for all the effort and makes the journey more than worthwhile.

Brendan Dawes - Permission to Write Stuff

A beautiful post by Brendan, comparing the ease of publishing on the web to the original Flip camera:

Right now there’s a real renaissance of people getting back to blogging on their own sites again. If you’ve been putting it off, think about the beauty and simplicity of that red button, press it, and try and help make the web the place it was always meant to be.

Some Unsolicited Blogging Advice - daverupert.com

When you greet a stranger, look at his shoes.

Keep your money in your shoes.

Put your trouble behind.

When you greet a stranger, look at her hands.

Keep your money in your hands.

Put your travel behind.

Very Dictionary. Because ‘very’ makes your writing stale.

Improve your word power:

Using ‘very’ + adjective makes your writing stale. This dictionary finds you a less dull, alternative word. It’ll help make your writing more convincing and engaging.