Songwriter slumming as techwriter
Three paras into my hatemail response to a Sun blog today I realized that I finally had the topic that I should blog: writers and engineers, can't we all just get along? Now, I'm all for 'healthy tension', but this is just really too bad. Unreadable, inaccurate, OK. But dare to lump me in with the patent lawyers and, well, its time to take the gloves off. In all seriousness, great respect to Mr. Bray, I read his writing everyday. I'm sure that little sentence-fragment was a tiny oversite in an ongoing ocean.
I do agree that documentation is notorious for the characteristics he sites, but I'm here to improve on that and to support an alternate theory: Application of open-source principles in a patent-driven organization ($) might well enable innovation that is truthful and beneficial to all. That is, how about improving on the existing vehicle for making secret innovations useful for the greater whole of society (technical documentation) by way of inclusion, openness, and--huzzah--cooperative content development? Maybe the idea is foolish or entirely false, but I've got others, biggerbetterfastermore ways of improving technical documentation, things I haven't even thought of yet, things I've tried that work, from great cookie recipes to extreme programming and I'll be writing about them here.
On the turntable: sweet english dub album, Bass Potato
In the Civic: Mystic Grooves comp CD and swapping in Time The Revelator, Gillian Welch
In the Walkman: lovely and economical Matador comp w/ Cat Power, Yo La, Pavement, yum! The Telecaster: practically wrote its own song, These Days are History, on Tuesday
PS: Guitar Ctr is moving from SOMA to Van Ness Ave @ California Oct 21st, do check the fire sale
Concert Roundup: FranzFerdinand was insanely great, hot, Tuesday all-ages night never to forget
Concert Windup: Helmut @ Slim's is next week, hurray! Then the Faint @ Bimbo's 365 shizam!
I do agree that documentation is notorious for the characteristics he sites, but I'm here to improve on that and to support an alternate theory: Application of open-source principles in a patent-driven organization ($) might well enable innovation that is truthful and beneficial to all. That is, how about improving on the existing vehicle for making secret innovations useful for the greater whole of society (technical documentation) by way of inclusion, openness, and--huzzah--cooperative content development? Maybe the idea is foolish or entirely false, but I've got others, biggerbetterfastermore ways of improving technical documentation, things I haven't even thought of yet, things I've tried that work, from great cookie recipes to extreme programming and I'll be writing about them here.
On the turntable: sweet english dub album, Bass Potato
In the Civic: Mystic Grooves comp CD and swapping in Time The Revelator, Gillian Welch
In the Walkman: lovely and economical Matador comp w/ Cat Power, Yo La, Pavement, yum! The Telecaster: practically wrote its own song, These Days are History, on Tuesday
PS: Guitar Ctr is moving from SOMA to Van Ness Ave @ California Oct 21st, do check the fire sale
Concert Roundup: FranzFerdinand was insanely great, hot, Tuesday all-ages night never to forget
Concert Windup: Helmut @ Slim's is next week, hurray! Then the Faint @ Bimbo's 365 shizam!
Posted by Tim Bray on October 14, 2004 at 07:51 PM PDT #
Posted by Michelle on October 15, 2004 at 02:58 PM PDT #