David Barnes @ Packt

Oxford Word of the Year 2009: Unfriend

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:34:03 +0000

From the Oxford University Press blog:

Without further ado, the 2009 Word of the Year is:

unfriend
.
unfriend
– verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.
As in, “I decided to

unfriend
my roommate on Facebook after we had a fight.”

Other new words recognized by the Oxford University language boffins include hashtag, intexticated, sexting, funemployed, deleb, and zombie bank. Many of these words a tech words, of course. Should a technical publisher coin new words in their books, when none of the existing ones will do? At Packt we occasionally have to decide whether a word that an author seems to have invented (but that carries a useful meaning) is something we should print, or edit into more pedestrian language.

http://blog.oup.com/2009/11/unfriend/

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Why the free availability of Unity3D and Unreal Development Kit has me nostalgic for my childhood

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:50:32 +0000

Like many skinny boys my age, the first computer book I ever read looked something like this:

Looking back, it’s easy to be cynical about these titles. Each book contained a whole selection of games. You’d get a few pages of code (a lot to type on a ZX Spectrum keyboard at the age of 9), virtually no explanation, and a lavish watercolor picture supposed to illustrate the game play. When you’d got the whole game typed in, you’d run it and discover that the game consisted of a few lines of plain text. Most of them didn’t even use color.

One game I remember was called “Archery”. I was excited to type it in — the watercolor was really stunning for that one. The game play looked like this: … .0… … .

The “player” had to quickly hit the number corresponding to the position of the 0 (which was supposed to be an archers head poking out between the turrets of castle). It was thrilling. Being able to write a game myself, I knew I was on the bottom rung of a very long ladder that lead all the way to Jet Set Willy.

I feel rather nostalgic that tools like Unreal Developer Kit and Unity3d are now free, and available to any 9 year old who wants to download them. Explore and playing around with the tools and techniques that bring you the games you love to play is a great experience… and I’m happy that a new generation of kids (as well as the rest of us) are going to get that chance.

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Amazon Turns Twitter into a Marketplace - Are You Concerned? (I'm not)

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:00:12 +0000

If you’re an Amazon Affiliate that is. You can now “tweet” Amazon books and get an affiliate link posted to Twitter nice and easily. I guess you could already do this by shortening the affiliate URL yourself — but Amazon’s now made it that little bit easier.

RRW isn’t happy, uses words like “spam” here: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/amazon_turns_twitter_into_a_marketplace.php — seems a bit much when most people just get a bit of pocket money out of Affiliates.

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Some guy makes himself a big paper head (via @everybody)

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:36:44 +0000

Tools used:

3ds Max 2009
Mudbox 2010
Photoshop CS3
Pepakura Any tutorials out there?

http://testroete.com/index.php?location=head

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Help $TYPE_OF_PERSON be awesome at $THING (via @kathysierra)

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:52:17 +0000

Kathy taught me that if you can’t explain your mission in the form, “We help $TYPE_OF_PERSON be awesome at $THING,” you are not going to have passionate users. What’s your tagline? Can you fit it into that template?

via joelonsoftware.com

This is the perfect single-sentence pitch for any book or educational product. It captures the target audience and the goal of the book in a few short, compelling words.

The trick is to define each of those variables in the most specific, vivid way that you can — and then let that mission drive everything about the book’s content and approach.

Not just “we help developers be awesome at Ext JS”, but…

“We help experienced web developers be awesome at building beautiful, interactive, and fun user interfaces using Ext JS”.

You can weigh every bit of content against a sentence like that, and you’ll know exactly what to leave in and what to leave out.

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Ever struggle to understand grammar rules? Don't worry, even the teachers don't understand...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:44:10 +0000

More from Geoffrey Pullum’s Language Log. Well known grammar and writing rules books often written by people with no clue about the rules of grammar.

Looking for a job? How about one where you set your own hours, you don’t have a boss, you have nothing to do but write at your own pace, you end up receiving fat royalty checks, and you don’t have to know anything at all about the topic that you write about? The job is to write non-fiction (textbooks and handbooks), only it’s OK if you don’t have a clue about the subject matter.

One word about your new career (and it’s not “Plastics”): grammar! The field where nobody much cares about anything that’s been discovered since the 18th century, and you don’t even need to get the 18th-century stuff right!

The same could never be said of my blog… http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1854#more-1854

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Nerdview: It's the TAM LED, stupid...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:41:31 +0000

Over at Language Log, Geoffrey Pullum moans about user manual diagrams with meaningless labels. Watch out for nerdview — look at everything from your readers’ eyes.

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"Here be dragons" -- challenging technical tutorial as Twitter-integrated adventure quest

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:53:29 +0100

Sarah Maddox writes about her experience on the “Here Be Dragons” project.

Integrating Atlassian’s suite of collaboration apps is notoriously difficult. Sarah’s used technical writing to turn that into an asset. Instead of dry instructions she’s created a quest, and even built in a competitive element — readers tweet their status as they complete each stage of their quest.

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The Missing Manual author guidelines = top rate advice for ANY tutorial author

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:54:45 +0100

Whether you’re writing for O’Reilly, Packt, some other publisher, or for the web — the Missing Manual author guidelines (PDF, 17 easy-to-read pages) are packed with great advice. Check them out. On writing style:

• Set software actions in the present tense. We want Missing Manuals to read as
if you’re standing over the reader’s shoulder, guiding her through a series of
steps. Software actions thus happen as you go. So instead of “The icon will
blink,” try “The icon blinks.” Save future tense for things that will happen later.
• Write as precisely as possible. Avoid sentences that start “There are” as in,
“There are four separate areas that make up….” Instead, try something like
“Four separate areas make up a Keynote screen.” Or “Keynote has four separate
areas that make up its screen.” You get the idea.
• Show clear cause and effect. When you want to explain how a program will
respond to an action on the reader’s part, avoid: “Click OK and Word reformats
the document.” Instead go for: “If you click the OK, then Word reformats the
document.” Or “When you click OK, Word reformats the document.” Also,
when you have a list of actions within a sentence, use “and then” to introduce
your final step. If you have just “and,” readers might wonder whether they
should be performing two actions simultaneously. But if you have just “then,”
you’ve committed a grammo because series of actions needs a conjunction to
link the last one to the rest of the sentence, and “then” is not a conjunction.
• Show readers the right order of events. When explaining how to do
something, tell readers where they should be before telling them what they
should do. For example: “In the Open dialog box, select the file….” (Not, “Select
the file in the Open dialog box.”)

And a favorite peeve of mine (and every tech book editor, perhaps)…

So, Missing Manual Rule Number One: Your job is to act as the reader’s guide as you
take her through a tour of how the software works. In other words, keep the following
point in mind with every feature you describe:

What’s it for?
Nothing makes a reader want to hurl a book across the room more than a passage like
this: “In the Implement Freen Modules dialog box, you have options that let you
implement Freen modules in various ways.”

With each feature, you should never just say how it works. You should always, always,
always help readers understand why they would want to use a feature. A sentence like
“Open the Preferences window if you want to adjust your system preferences” is not only
dull, it also fails to advise the reader that, for example, he can make his monitor easier to
read by changing its preferences. Here are some examples of how to integrate this advice
smoothly into your sentences:
• “You’d find this useful in case of, for example, a power outage.”
• “There’s pretty much only one instance when you’d want this option turned off,
and that’s when…”
• “Although few people will use this setting, it’s designed to…”
• “Many PC fans don’t realize quite how powerful this checkbox can be.”
• “Microsoft’s engineers may have been overly optimistic in assessing the
importance of this feature.”
Here’s where you can really make a difference, setting yourself apart from the robot
authors who just catalog features. Readers love these assessments. Don’t just tell the
readers; advise them.

O’Reilly Missing Manuals are some of the best selling tech books out there. Of O’Reilly’s Top 25 sellers last week, 14 were Missing Manuals — that’s close to two thirds. Anybody who wants to write books that people want to buy should check them out.

There’s nothing secret or unique about the Missing Manuals formula. Most of the advice in the document is best practice for accessible, interesting technical writing. What O’Reilly and Pogue Press has achieved is to reliably deliver books that meet these guidelines — and that’s the real challenge for publishers, editors, and authors.

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Authors Who Have No Time to Write, Write the Best Books : Jeffrey Krames

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:20:56 +0100

Over the years I have edited hundreds of books by authors of evey kind and stripe. Almost without fail, the best books come from the authors with the most irons in the fire . You know the type. These authors lead Fortune 500 companies, they teach executive education in top B-schools, they blog, consult, put on seminars, conduct large scale research studies and more. These are the owners of the laptops which produce the best books.

via jeffreykrames.com

… so don’t come snivelling to me claiming that you are too busy to write.

Other reasons busy authors write the best books:

- They have something to say — lots of practical experience with their topic, and with the sort of people who want to read about it
- They know how to get things done quickly — lots of practice managing lots of commitments.
- The book isn’t their baby, it’s just a book — having a clear goal for the book is great. Being a perfectionist is not. Busy people don’t view the book as their life’s work.
- Busy people are focused outwards. They are writing because they want to reach PEOPLE, not because they want to create the perfect artefact or testimony to their talents. Busy people write useful books.

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Clarification: Packt is still heavily into Open Source.

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 10:07:37 +0100

I’m changing MY focus. Packt as a publisher remains absolutely committed to Open Source. We’ve got plenty of new Open Source titles on the way, we’re running our usual Open Source CMS award, and have more Open Source titles than ever planned in the next 12 months.

But for the time being, I am exploring other areas and invite book ideas and authors interested in writing on non Open Source topics.

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I'm changing focus to commercial software and tools. Seeking enthusiastic authors and killer book ideas...

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 17:15:21 +0100

I’m changing my focus at Packt to concentrate on commercial software. Over the past 5 years I’ve focused mainly on the hippy trippy world of Open Source: Moodle, Drupal, Joomla!, and so on. Now I’m shifting direction into commercial software tools.

If you are an aspiring or would-be author who wants to write about tools and applications from Microsoft, Adobe, Autodesk, Apple, and so on then I want to talk to you. I’m especially keen to look at tools for developers, designers, web programmers, and other IT professionals. .NET, Azure, Live Services, iPhone Programming, Flash, Sketchup, 3ds Max, and so on are all on my list.

As with our Open Source books, we’re interested in focused titles aimed at serious IT users. We won’t be publishing anything to rival the OS X Missing Manual or Excel for Dummies. But I’ll welcome ideas on novel, niche professional tasks using these tools. If you have skills in these areas and want to write, please get in touch. I’ll work with you to understand the skills you have, and develop a book idea that we both agree suits your skills, preferences, and the demands of the market.

You can drop me a line by email on davidb@packtpub.com, or punch your details into my author profile form.

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... it might help to recall that action should do something ,besides advance the hero over the scenery

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:01:10 +0100

That’s a quote from Lester Dent’s Pulp Fiction Master Plot. Lester Dent was a top selling Pulp Fiction and creator of hero Doc Savage.

If you’re writing a tutorial, there’s a temptation to drag the reader around the tool and show them what everything does. That’s just advancing the reader over the scenery — they’re moving around, but they’re not doing anything else.

From as early as possible, put some real action into your tutorial — give the reader challenges to overcome, cliff hangers, victories and solutions as they progress through those early chapters.

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Avoid demon adverbs

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 13:21:39 +0100

Verbs tell us what is happening. The purpose of an adverb is to tell us how something is happening.

If you have a sentence like:

The cat sat on the mat.

… “sat” is the verb — it tells us what is happening. You can throw in an adverb:

The cat sat indulgently on the mat.

In general, skilled writers don’t use adverbs much. Unskilled writers use them a lot. And skilled writers delete most of the adverbs that creep into their first draft.

Adverbs are tricky. They seem to add detail, but usually they make your writing fuzzy. “The cat sat on the mat” conjures up a clear image in the reader’s mind. Everybody knows what a sitting cat looks like. Everybody knows what a mat looks like. You’re done.

But “indulgently”? How are we supposed to picture that? It’s complicated. A simple, vivid image becomes too complex to process.

You can avoid adverbs most of the time by cutting them out — the reader can do just fine without the extra information.

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WordPress 2.7 Cookbook -- the first look inside

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:47:05 +0100

We just published the first book in our new Cookbook series. WordPress 2.7 Cookbook gives the reader one hundred useful recipes to customize and improve their WordPress blog. Each recipe follows a clear, simple structure so that you can find what you need easily, dip in and out with ease, and generally just get the job done.

Cookbooks are written by power users, and aimed at other (slightly less) power users. So if you’re a power user with hacks, tricks and knowledge to share then get in touch with us now… register as a Packt author, and we’ll get right back to you.

Take a look at these pics to see how the Cookbook works.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Do you skip the "technical overview"? Where do you start reading?

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 12:43:47 +0100

Contents
[hide]

1 Technical Overview of Flash Lite

1.1 Capabilities

1.2 Types of Content

1.3 Versions

1.4 The ActionScript Language

1.5 Tools and Support For New Developers

2 Getting Started With Flash Lite Development

2.1 Creating a Project

2.2 Selecting Versions For Compatibility

2.3 Limitations of Flash Lite on a Mobile Platform

3 Working With Flash Lite on the Symbian Platform

3.1 How to Test Applications

3.2 Platform Services

3.3 Using Touch

3.4 Saving User Data Locally

3.5 Packaging and Distribution

4 Summary

5 Related Info and Useful Links

5.1 Example code

via developer.symbian.org

From the Flash Lite Quick Start. I’d probably skip the “Technical Overview” and go straight to the “Getting Started” part. What about you?

And if most people are like me, why isn’t the Technical Overview tucked away in the appendix?

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The difference between need and demand

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:24:28 +0100

Need: something people would be much better off if they had (or even, will struggle to survive if they don’t have). Example: fresh vegetables.
Demand: something that people are actively looking for, and will pay money to get. Example: McDonald’s.

If you want to write a book that sells (or create any other successful product), figuring out if there’s a demand is more important than figuring out if there’s a need.

Lots of security and software engineering books deliver on a need. But is there a demand? Do people really want to buy books on those things?

Valuable, ethical products and books deliver on both. How can you present your useful, important book in such a way that people will want it?

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Ronald Regan doodles

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:40:31 +0100

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6118892

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"Great opportunity for designers ... record their screen while they design"

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 11:44:09 +0100

According to Jason Fried of 37Signals:

Design Screencasts

I think a great opportunity for designers to generate revenue off of ‘waste products’ is to record their screen while they design. Whenever they’re in Photoshop, just hit the record button, and at the end, package up the video and sell it to other designers. That, I’m telling you, is a by-product that is worth money.

http://carsonified.com/blog/business/make-money-off-your-by-products/

How could that work in book (or ebook or blog post or article) form? Simply focus on showing people what you do with simple commentary and explanation. Don’t get too into figuring out what you need to tell people. In books as in life, actions speak louder than words.

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Evolution of Monkey Island characters -- games 1 - 4, attempt 2

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:01:09 +0100

With a new Monkey Island game on the way, let’s see how advances in computer graphics and storage lead the characters to evolve. The early ones use great economy of design so that we can read a lot of ourselves and our own prejudices into each character. In sequels, the characters gradually conform more to the artist’s vision and less our own.

Guybrush

The Guybrush character has to be two things at once. He’s a character in the story — and a fairly stupid one. Also, he’s you. As a character he should look stupid. But as a representation of the player, you have to project on to him. So you mustn’t look down on him too much. The early versions use their lack of detail to make this work. In the later images he looks too stupid and it becomes harder to identify with him.

Elaine

In the early shots she looks like a fiesty and adventurous piratess. Is there anything more fanciable? First with hands on hips, then striding decisively into the future. Wow. In the later episodes she too becomes more realistic and annoying. By the end, she looks like a nag. (Errrrrr… not that all realistic women are annoying.) I recollect that her character went in that direction too. Let’s hope she’s more of an active character in the new adventures.

LeChuck

The second image is by far my favorite. The green pixelated skin does a great job of representing decomposing, rotten flesh. You can almost smell him. As the character develops he becomes less of an unpleasant adversary and arch enemy, and more of an elemental force of nature. His menace and malicious nature has translated into simple, raw power.

Where are they now?

The good news is that early pics and videos of Tales of Monkey island have a less dimwitted Guybrush, a fiestier Elaine, and a green, rotting Le Chuck. Just what I wanted.

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