smurphy – Page 21 – Tech, writing, and tech writing

Book Review: The Twitter Book by Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein; O’Reilly Media

I chose this book to review as part of the O’Reilly Blogger Review Program cos it looked lightweight and cute. Pretty pictures abound, and the Introduction is an ideal response to the questions of “So, what is this Twitter thing anyway, and why would you be bothered with it?”

Once it gets going, though, there’s plenty of meat in this volume. I’ve been on Twitter for a few years now and manage a selection of personal and professional feeds, but I learned a lot from this book – both about Twitter itself and the various 3rd party products that enhance its usefulness.

At the trivial end of the scale, I’ve always assumed that HT and MT were typos of RT, but no, they actually mean something: HT is a “hat tip”, MT is a “modified tweet”.

At the pro-end, I discovered the TweetBackUp tool, which backs up your tweets for free; Topsy, which allows you to search for and track tweets linking to a particular website or page; Listorious, which provides a directory of Twitter accounts by theme; and a multitude of other useful tools and resources. If you’re after a product that will do X for your Twitter experience, chances are there’s at least one reviewed in here.

If you’re seriously into social media and Twitter in particular, this book is a must have.

You can find out more about the book and order it direct from O’Reilly here.

The Monster at the End of this Book

My oldest son was given the book of this story for Christmas a few years ago and he really enjoyed it.

The Monster at the End of the Book This Christmas, I decided to download the iThing version to entertain the kids while we were on the move visiting family, and both boys (now aged 5 and 1) were crazy for it. So much so, that I splurged and bought the sequel (Another Monster at the End of This Book…) too.

The basic premise of both books (and I don’t think I’m giving much away here) is that Grover reads the title of the book, freaks out about there being a monster at the end of the book, begs the reader not to turn the pages so that he can avoid meeting the monster, and attempts to thwart the reader in progressing through the book by putting up a variety of obstacles (heavy walls, tied ropes, and the like). In the sequel, Grover is accompanied by Elmo who is incredibly keen to see the monster, so wants the pages turned as quickly as possible.

The app follows the same basic story as the physical book. The contents of the speech bubbles appear one word at a time in sync with the voiceover which may be a bonus to kids of a learning-to-read age. Instead of a simple page-turn to progress, there are interactive elements related to breaking down the barriers put up by Grover, as well as bonus interactive elements on the pages (tickling monsters’ bellies and the like). If you don’t tap the screen pretty quickly, you’ll be prompted on what you need to do to move the story forward, usually with a comment along the lines of: “Don’t touch there! That’ll turn the page!”

There’s a bubble at the top of the screen just for parents. When you tap, a popup suggesting activities related to what’s on the page appears – speculate what other crazy obstacles Grover might put up, mime different emotions for each other to guess, talk about a time your child was scared of something.

For a short story (12 pages), there’s a lot to this app. We’re still finding new elements each reading even after a month. Highly recommended.

<a href=”https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0375805613/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwsharonmurp-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=0375805613″>the book of this story</a><img src=”https://www.assoc-amazon.co.uk/e/ir?t=wwwsharonmurp-21&l=as2&o=2&a=0375805613″ width=”1″ height=”1″ border=”0″ alt=”” style=”border:none !important; margin:0px !important;” />

Invisible Hand

I am quite fond of the Invisible Hand addon for Firefox. It’s one of the few addons I’ve kept installed through browser upgrades and machine migrations.

Install it and it lurks in the background until you view a web page listing a specific item for sale. When that happens, it pops a little one-line banner up at the top of the page letting you know whether you’re getting the best price available on the item or not. It uses pricing information from a selection of retail sites, but as far as I can tell, it doesn’t do currency conversions, and it definitely doesn’t factor in any potential shipping charges, so you’ll need to ferret out that information for yourself.

If there’s a better price than the one quoted on the current web page, it will let you know what the best price available is and where to find it. If you’ve already found the best deal, it’ll let you know which retailers come close.

At the time of writing, the addon description says it uses data from 580 retailers across the US, UK and Germany. For those of us in Ireland, it’s always worth checking the local retail sites too as shipping can sometimes be extortionate to our fair isle, negating the usefulness of any product pricing bargains.

In the few years I’ve been using it, the addon has saved me a few bob here and there, and occassionally provided useful pointers to unfamiliar sites with good deals. Give it a go.

Disappearing Text in PDFs – Part 2

Following on from a post I wrote a while back on text that was present in the source file, but mysteriously vanished on saving to PDF, here’s a similar incident I encountered with a different resolution.

In this case, again authoring in FrameMake, I was working on a number of reference manuals in the range of 500-800 pages long a piece. All was going well until it came time to publish one of the longer books as a PDF. On checking the generated file to make sure all looked well, I skimmed through quickly. First few pages, fine… next few pages, fine… next few pages, … hang on – what’s that big gap there about?… next few pages, now all the tables are blank!… skip quickly to the end… all that’s left is the header/footer rulings!

Starting over and saving the PDF again gave the same results – in fact, it looked like problems might just be happening earlier and earlier in the document each time.

First port of call was a few “turn it off and back on again”s. First the software, then the whole machine. After a reboot, the same problem kept recurring.

Next stop, fiddling with Acrobat settings, with an occasional reboot for good measure. Still no joy.

A bit of a Google, trying out a few random suggestions, and finally I hit on the solution that worked: delete the font cache (C:\Windows\System32\FNTCACHE.DAT (that’s .DAT – not .dll! Don’t mess with your .dlls or you’ll go blind!)), reboot, save the pdf immediately.

The font cache is regenerated when you reboot, so if the same problem arises again, lather, rinse and repeat.

In the case of the document I was working on, I had to delete the font cache and reboot between every save of the document or text started disappearing again. Depending on the length and complexity of the document you’re working on, your mileage may vary.

Repak Recyclemore App

There’s no finer time than now, with Xmas behind us and a new year ahead, to have a bit of an auld clean out. And thanks to the fine people at Repak, it’s easier than ever to figure out what we can recycle and where, across the length and breadth of Ireland.

The new Recyclemore app, available for
iThings and Android, allows you to search for facilities by type, area and the material you want to rid yourself of (though the link to the search page is misleadingly labelled as a search “By Address” function on the home screen). Searching by material type is particularly handy for the stuff handled by a limited number of centres, such as that damnable white polystyrene. Once you’ve identified a facility that handles what you want to dispose of, you can view full details of that facility, including all the materials it accepts, their opening hours, contact details, and their location on a map (if you’re using GPS you’ll even get a route plan).

You can also go pot luck and just search for your nearest facility based on your current location. Again, you can view the facility details once selected, to see what you can recycle there and when.

And if you are without an iThing or an Android Thing, you can always pop across to the recyclemore website and get all this info and more the old-fashioned way.

Happy spring cleaning, y’all! 🙂