Year: 2014

It’s All in the Engineering

A considerable amount of my time in fulfilling the self-sufficiency dreams Rebecca and I have is spent building new items and repairing existing items. Existing equipment of all types requires constant maintenance as well. If you leave a cage exposed to the elements long enough, it’ll simply rot away. Everything has a tendency to fail without some sort of maintenance. All of these efforts—everything from building to maintaining to tearing down when an item is no longer useful—relies on some sort of engineering principle. If you want to get water to your garden, but the hose diameter is too small, the resulting trickle will only serve to frustrate you. Building shelves that don’t rely on proper engineering principles are downright dangerous. Installing electrical elements without regard to the amount of current the circuit needs to handle will almost certainly result in a fire. In short, in order to know in advance just how well something will work and what you need to do to maintain it, you need to know the engineering behind it.

In the Building Larder Shelving post, you learned about the engineering behind building shelves that will hold up to the weight of canning jars, which is considerable. This is just one of many posts that I’ve created that define the math behind self-sufficiency. If you ever find an error in my calculations, please let me know so that I can provide an update with the correct information. It’s also important to realize that my calculations are for a specific project type and you need to use them with your project in mind (making any required changes).

Fortunately, there are other places where you can find interesting information about engineering principles. One of the best places I’ve found recently (as passed on by a friend) is Engineering Toolbox. This site provides all sorts of useful information about various engineering disciplines, including how to create the proper sort of concrete for a project that you have in mind. If you were to mix the concrete without using a recipe, you’d either end up spending way too much money for your project or you’d end up with a project that won’t hold up to any kind of abuse.

It’s incredibly dangerous to take on a building or maintenance tasks for which you lack the proper equipment or training. Always make sure you understand not only the engineering behind the task, but that you also adhere to any required building codes and obtain the proper permits and inspections, as required. More than a few people have gotten hurt by not taking the proper precautions, so always verify that every step of a process you perform is done correctly before you proceed to the next step. The care you take in performing self-sufficiency tasks will always pay dividends in your personal safety and the longevity of the project.

Finding the right site to discover just how to create, maintain, and tear down the equipment needed to be self-sufficient can be an adventure akin to the mysteries solved by Holmes. You need to exercise care in using the information you find and verify that information across several different sites to ensure it’s accurate. Of course, there always comes a time when you’re simply in deep water and need the help of a professional. Some professionals will mentor you in building your project (for a fee in most cases); others will let you help them perform the task so that you gain needed knowledge and experience.

Building and maintaining your equipment can be a lot of fun. However, doing it the wrong way can be a disaster. Let me know your thoughts about building and maintaining equipment at [email protected].

 

Improving Your Technical Writing

I receive a number of e-mails each month from people who want to improve their technical writing skills. Most of the people who write are in a technical trade, but not writers by profession. For example, I might get an e-mail from a software engineer or an IT manager who needs to write better reports. Of course, the primary way to improve your writing is to practice. A good friend of mine expresses this idea in Make Writing a Habit. It’s good advice. No matter how much talent you might possess, you can’t become good at something until you practice (often, quite a lot).

Practicing applies to any sort of writing, but technical writing has a few special requirements that you need to consider. The first rule of good technical writing is to ensure you know what you want to say. This means creating an outline, even if you’re working on an article length project. In some cases, you won’t even use the headings you create as part of the resulting piece-the headings are there to keep you on track and focused. The more detailed you can make your outline, the better your writing will go.

Creating an outline doesn’t guarantee any sort of success, unfortunately. People often see a heading and can’t quite remember what they planned to put there. It’s a common problem, so you shouldn’t worry about it. What you should do instead is provide notes to yourself on what you plan to put into a heading. I often include URLs for sites that I want to review in depth or provide as part of my piece right there with the notes. If you got an idea for something you’d like to do by reading some resource, make sure you include a specific reference to that resource as well (never plagiarize though-always create your own text from the sources you use). As a little extra safety cushion while you’re working, you may consider downloading a grammar tool, and this grammarly review might help you decide if something like this would help – our eyes alone are not always enough.

In depth research is also a huge part of writing technical documents. Keep thinking about what you want to write and verify every fact by researching it in some way. In some cases, research includes creating an experimental setup on your own system. This may sound like a lot of work, but it’s often the best part of technical writing. Experimenting to find out whether some idea will actually work is fun and interesting. It’s also time consuming, so make sure you plan ahead if you want to perform some experiments as part of creating your piece.

All of these approaches will help improve your technical writing. However, the biggest mistake that many technical writers make is writing for themselves, rather than for their target audience. You have to put yourself in your reader’s shoes and answer the sorts of questions your readers will have. Role-playing may not seem like part of technical writing, but it is. You have to put on your reader hat to be successful. In some cases, getting the reader hat on right is nearly impossible, which is why I also rely on beta readers to read my material. These people ask questions I’d never think of even if I spend weeks trying to do so.

Technical writing is about organized and succinct content. It’s about creating a flow of ideas from your mind to the reader’s mind through the medium of the written word. You’re a teacher of sorts, but your classroom is vast and you’re not able to speak with your pupils. To write good technical documentation you have to think about the sorts of questions your reader will ask or find someone who will ask them for you. The outline, research, and roll playing all come together to help you create a document that conveys information to your target audience in a unique manner that reflects your particular philosophy of solving technical issues.

Creating good technical documentation is something that most people can do with enough practice, thought, and research. Knowing your audience is an essential part of any kind of writing, but with technical writing it’s an absolute necessity. Let me know your thoughts about technical writing at [email protected].

 

Where is the Global Warming?

If you’ve read this blog long enough, you know that I take a moderate view of global warming. In fact, I’ve even written a post by that title, The Moderate View of Global Warming. It doesn’t surprise me that a number of readers have recently written to ask if I still believe in global warming given the recent cold wave that hit the United States. Yes, I do. Of course, a belief must be based on something, so I went looking for some statistics. My own blog provides some. For example, the harvest was earlier this year than any other year for which I’ve recorded statistics (17 of them). In fact, I’ve made quite a few observations about the effects of global warming on me personally because global warming seems like this really big issue that affects everyone else.

For most people, my personal observations are nice, but unless they happen to live in the same area of the world in which I live, the observations aren’t really relevant. At first I thought I was going to have to painstakingly research the statistics myself, but then I found an article entitled, Scientists: Americans are becoming weather wimps. It turns out that the US regularly experiences freezes of the sort that we’ve recently had, but that the interval has been 17 years this time. It turns out that in the past 115 years, there have been 27 distinct cold snaps where the average temperature across the country have dropped below 18 degrees. That’s an average of one cold snap every 4 years-so waiting 17 years is an unprecedented interval.

The recent cold snap isn’t even very high on the list of cold snaps-it ranks 55th in the list of cold snaps since 1900 when the statistics were first collected. So, the recent cold snap wasn’t only long overdue, it wasn’t particularly cold. Our predecessors faced much colder weather than we do today.

The statistics that made things clearest for me is that there have only been two days that rank in the list of the top 100 coldest days since 2000. However, there have been 13 days that rank in the list of the top 100 warmest days in the same time period. At this point, I’m genuinely interested in recording some of my own data around the area I live, and with weather stations like Weather Underground and others, it can be easier to find user recorded statistics in a specific location. As well as record and upload my own to see any changes throughout any given time periods which could come in handy for statistic analysis. Although these statistics aren’t much comfort to anyone who has suffered broken pipes due to the cold, they all point to one thing-even though it has been cold, the earth is generally getting warmer.

Reducing pollution is an essential part of bringing global warming (defined as a general warming trend with more frequent extremes in weather conditions) under control. Personalizing global warming is an important part of understanding it. Create a list of changes that you’ve noted over the past ten or so years, such as the additional costs for cooling your home and the number of days you have to use the air conditioner each year. Once you start looking around and seeing how global warming is affecting both finances and health, you begin seeing why it’s personally important for you to control it. Let me know your thoughts about global warming and controlling pollution at [email protected].

 

Diamonds

Winds and the mists that swirl,
their fierce beauty unfurl,
glistening diamonds in the sky.

The barren branches creak,
subtle language they speak,
lustrous diamonds on the plant.

Nature’s children at play,
frolic throughout the day,
gleaming diamonds on the ground.

Light beams shatter and break,
their paths beguile and quake,
polished diamonds in my eye.

The day is at an end,
no more light can it bend,
reflecting diamonds no more.

Dedicated to Rebecca for her homecoming.
Copyright 2014, John Paul Mueller

The Ongoing Evolution of Libraries

I read a news story this weekend that confirms some of the things I’ve been saying about the future of libraries. The story, Texas library offers glimpse of bookless future, describes a new library in Texas, Bexar County’s BiblioTech, that doesn’t actually contain any books. This library contains computers and e-book readers that people use to work with content electronically. The article states that a lot of people are looking at this library to see how successful it becomes because the cost of maintaining such a library is significantly less than a traditional library. In fact, advances in technology will continue to make it possible to further reduce the cost of maintaining this particular kind of library.

However, I’ve been exploring a question for a while now about the future viability of libraries as physical entities. I first described this particular issue in my A New Emphasis On Libraries post. For 3 ½ years now I’ve tried to expand on the theme discussed in the Future of Libraries? post. The problem with a library that serves up only electronic media is that it’s overkill. Eventually, such libraries will disappear because people will be able to find the content online. A national library that’s based on the Internet will eventually take hold and that will be the death knell for the local library.

Something that the article brings up is that this library serves a neighborhood where few people have the hardware required to read electronic books and there is no Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) connection in the area for them to use. At one time rural areas didn’t have telephones because it was too expensive to service them. Now rural areas have good satellite or Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) connections. It won’t be long before rural and less serviced areas in cities have WiFi connectivity. So, the first problem this library solves won’t be a long term condition. We’re in a transitional phase.

The devices used to read books electronically will continue to evolve and become less expensive. At some point, the government will figure out that it’s less expensive to simply issue a device to those in need, rather than build physical libraries. At that point, a virtual national library will become feasible and probably appear on the scene. Paper books will eventually be relegated to the niche market—sold to those who have the money required to buy such products.

I’m one of the few, I’m sure, who will miss the paper book when this change happens. Using e-books for technical reading really is quite nice, but the feel of paper when I read fiction just can’t be overcome by the convenience of using an e-book reader. At one time I predicted that paper would continue to be available and preferred to meet my fiction needs, but things have changed faster than I could have ever predicted. It may very well be that the transition to e-book as the only viable media will happen within the next few years—only time will tell.

What do you feel about the transition to e-books and virtual libraries? If you like the idea of being able to find any book and check it out using a virtual library, let me know how you envision this system working. More importantly, how will such a system compensate authors for the time and effort spent putting the books together? Send me your ideas to [email protected].

 

Understanding the Need for Perspective in Development

I have received a lot of e-mails over the years from developers who don’t quite get the idea behind application design. The problem is that developers are taught about tools, strategies, patterns, and all sorts of other technical details, but are never taught an essential lesson that all applications are essentially products and that it’s up to the developer to sell them. The societal claim that all developers are socially inept nerds who are incapable of communicating with other humans doesn’t help. The fact of the matter is that an application that doesn’t serve the customer’s need will never get used—it will never be successful. Developers need to get the idea that they’re creating a product that must satisfy customer needs in order to be successful.

Many applications today are akin to inflexible restaurants. Imagine how you’d feel if you went into a restaurant and ordered a single egg, fried, with white toast, and a side of sausage and the server says, “I can’t fulfill your order.” Your first question would be why the order is so hard and her response of, “It’s not on the menu.” takes you completely by surprise. It turns out that the menu specifies two eggs, not one. Many applications present users with precisely that sort of choice, yet developers seem surprised when users are less than thrilled. A response of, “It’s not on the menu.” was never a good or valid one, yet that’s the response developers have offered users for a long time now.

In order to be successful, an application must be flexible enough to meet user demand. A developer must understand the user perspective and create an application that can meet the demand for one, two, or even three eggs (or how many ever eggs the user wants). After all, it doesn’t matter how many of an item the user ultimately wants, as long as the user is willing to pay for those items. In order to gain that perspective, developers must talk to users, listen to what they have to say, and engage them in the development process. All other businesses that I know of engage their customers in some way to ensure their products meet customer needs and the computer industry must learn to do the same.

Many applications also make things entirely too complicated. It’s akin to going into a restaurant and not being able to order until you provide the secret handshake. Servers who say, “Talk to the hand because the head isn’t listening.” won’t stay employed for very long. A restaurant won’t stay in business very long with that attitude and neither will the developer. A user isn’t interested in the arcane science of development or how many cool widgets your application uses. The user is only interested in taking a picture or performing some other activity that has nothing whatsoever to do with development or even computers for that matter. As far as the user is concerned, your application should be invisible.

So, why my preoccupation with restaurants in this post? I was watching someone use one of those restaurant data entry programs this morning. After the server provided the secret handshake, she had to navigate no less than ten menus before she was able to complete the order, which then failed because they were out of a particular item. So, she had to cancel the order and reenter everything. Would it really have been all that hard to add a feature where the cook could simply tell the server that something was out of stock? Does an order really require navigation of ten menus to accomplish? It surprises me that this order entry system is actually installed somewhere—perhaps nothing better was available.

The day where a developer can offer inflexible solutions that don’t meet user needs and offer only complexity is over. As users become less interested in accommodating developer needs because there is always another solution to try, developers will need to accommodate the user’s needs. Actually, that’s what should have happened in the first place. No other industry would have tolerated what users have had to tolerate from the computer industry. Let me know your thoughts on gaining the user perspective at [email protected].

 

Happy New Year!

Welcome to the New Year! It’s going to be an interesting year from a number of perspectives. I’m really looking forward to seeing the changes and I hope that you are too! Make sure you subscribe to my blog to keep up with all of the new material I provide with greater ease. A subscription will automatically send a synopsis of new content directly to your e-mail, which will make it a lot easier to determine whether you want to follow a certain post (and it’s associated comments).

The computer market will continue to move away from the desktop toward all sorts of mobile devices. Of course, this will make browser-based applications become even more popular because you can achieve the same look and feel no matter which platform you use to interact with the application. I’m not saying the desktop is dead, but look for browser-based applications to take on added importance. In some respects, browser-based applications can still be limited, so you’ll continue to see the desktop used in situations where a user must interact with complex data from multiple sources.

Self-sufficiency is going to take on added importance as well. There are a number of reasons for the increased participation by people. Of course, the economy continues to provide ample reason for many people who are looking to ways to make their money go further. A lot of people are starting to realize that self-sufficiency also comes with substantial health benefits and is also good for the environment. In fact, except for the time commitment and the requirement to learn new skills, self-sufficiency has a lot to recommend it. I’m planning to provide more emphasis on self-sufficiency in the coming months.

My blog will also feature some of the additional kinds of content that you’ve come to know and love. I’ll be posting a number of reviews and a bit more of my poetry as time permits. A few posts on writing technique are almost a requirement. A number of you have sent e-mail asking about my crafting. A few personal issues have kept me from posting on the crafts that I enjoy, but I plan to address that particular need soon. I hope that you continue to enjoy my blog and will let me know the sorts of content you’d like to see at [email protected]. In the meantime, Happy New Year!