That’d be me, the fairweather friend.  My blog is my longtime buddy.  Twitter is “that chick I met at Sam the Record Man“.

A couple of my favourite bloggers (namely Shawn Elliott and Jeff Green) all but abandoned their blogs in lieu of Twitter’s seductive brevity.  These two are professional writers, tasked with filling pages with prolific verbiage on a strict deadline, who so enjoyed their craft that their cups runneth over into blog form; a haven where they cast away any shackles of limitation imposed by their respective professional voices.  Like any of us, some of what they’d post was pap, and some of it was self-righteous, but these are personalities I’ve grown to respect and so I actively seek out their opinions whether or not I expect to agree with them.  What’s significant is that they took the time to flesh out their musings into cohesive works, providing proofs and counterpoints and purple prose to papier-maché it all together into something complete and cohesive.

So what are these things, blogging and twittering?  Why does it matter which medium we choose to express ourselves?

I’ve blogged before on this topic, before the advent of Twitter.  ‘Twas a simpler time where if you had something to say, you’d create a blog and weave your verbal tapestry in your personal segregated vacuum. Or you wouldn’t.  I stand by my comments from 3 years ago that there is no right or wrong way to blog, and that creative diversity only strengthens and validates the medium.

Between blogging and twittering there are internet forums.  You’d sign up on a message board and chisel out your notoriety into an existing community, coaxing responses from other opinionated souls, surprising no one with your philosophical rigidity.  This all takes place in the public eye, or in a walled garden, but your comments are intended to be read and replied to directly.  A message board is someone else’s domain where you must abide by their rules if you want to remain welcome.

So then, Twitter.  What is it?  What isn’t it?

Maybe a more important question is, if I resent it why did I succumb to trying it?  Hell, I don’t know.  Morbid fascination?  I think I wanted to tour that elephant graveyard where my favourite bloggers went to die.

In my dabbling I’ve found Twitter to be rather infectious.  I described it once as being akin to “IMing nobody”.  If I chance upon something amusing on the web and I think to myself “I’d love to show this to… oh, he’s not online..” there’s always good ol’ Twitter to field my input.  That’s how it started – as little more than a repository for my bookmarks.  Those sneaky bastards at Twitter just knew that this would be the gateway drug.  What allows Twitter to transcend this meagre description is the ability to add just a few short words along with your hyperlinks, elevating mere parroting of references to the merest opportunity for commentary; for personality.

It’s through this tiny opportunity that I’ve been motivated to reach out to other Twitterers (I prefer to refer to us as “twats”, though it’s not catching on). Despite my (probably true) preconceptions about people who use social media services like these, I’ve chanced upon some nice, well-spoken people whose interests overlap heavily with my own.  Goodness help me, I’ve even *interacted* with these people – VERBALLY – and sometimes they even wrote me back!

Who knows what could come of such a concept!  Friendship?  Isn’t that the thing where you can amicably exchange ideas with another warm body and be satisfied to do it again some time?

As much as I felt like a lost fry in a convulsing concerto of a trillion glimmering minnows, I decided to press my luck and follow (née subscribe) a few of my respected celebrity idols (Douglas Coupland, Introversion Games, and Jonathan Mak, to name a few).  Lo and behold, I enjoy having these people’s musings delivered to me!  Sometimes I’ll brave traipsing the frozen Twitter pond and, be still my heart, actually get a reply from one of these incandescent stars!

But I digress.  I’m a selfish sod and so I tweet to my own selfish ends.  I tweet for me, and Twitter is the tool du jour for the modern publishing narcissist.

Here’s how it boils down.

I love blogging.  Doing so for the first time in 2 months reminds me of this undeniable truth.  However, I’m lazy and disorganized.  Many times I’ll find myself out in the unincorporated hinterlands of AFK, and an idea will feign formulation.  “Why, I ought to blog about that,” says I to meself.  Never happens.  Either I haven’t got enough to say about it or the fleeting figment has flitted by the time I find myself in front of a keyboard.

Not so with Twitter.  I think, I tweet, I’m done.  No proofs, no counterpoints, no purple prose.  Just the facts, ma’am.

Should another soul chance upon my tweets, all the merrier.  I’ll admit to being delighted to having as many as 8 followers, but those coattail riders will bear the brunt of my honesty because I’m tweetin’ for one.

Check me out or don’t, but try it out yourself.  Twitter is pretty damn great.  It’s no replacement for blogging (as Shawn Elliott and Jeff Green would also attest, as they do still blog intermittently), but it’s a hearty supplement for when you’re peckish for prose between blog meals.

http://twitter.com/djbriandamage/

This article was written by Brian at demodulated Original post:

Don’t be that guy

This article was written by Brian at demodulated Original post:

These pretzels are making me thirsty

For all things grammatical there is little flexibility, and so it is best to follow the examples set in industry-standard style guides like the Chicago Manual of Style (for American English) or the Oxford Manual of Style (for Canadian English).

Industry-specific jargon is more recent and is used less frequently, making it unclear as to which terminology is appropriate in specific contexts. There are a few ways you can go in such an instance. You can decide ad-hoc what phrasing to use, but this runs the risk of being inconsistent compared to other documents written by yourself or your colleagues, and instructions become unclear when you set reader expectations one way and then abandon that standard. You can develop an in-house style guide which is obeyed by all writers in the organization, and this is often an acceptable choice that should work well for readers, but you still run the risk of choosing different terminology than the rest of the industry. If you’re lucky there exists an industry-specific style guide which is mutually agreed upon by the majority of similar companies as the de-facto standard.

For many years Microsoft made available its own style guide, called the “Microsoft Manual of Style” (aka MMS), freely on its web site. This guide was invaluable to technical writers by answering the age-old questions such as “click, click on, choose, select, or tick”, and “log in, log on, login, or logon”, citing usage examples for each term and substantiating its rules with cross-referenced examples and alternative contexts. Microsoft’s guide was by no means adopted by even one tenth the PC industry, but it remains the broadest and most respectable style guide. It’s a great tool to improve the ease and readability of instructional documentation for using software.

For unknown reasons Microsoft opted to remove the MMS from its website, never to return. There used to be an official print version of the book but since its cancellation it is available only at exorbitant prices. Luckily I emailed myself a copy of the MMS while it was still available so I’m happy to share it with you here!

Choose here (just kidding) to download the Microsoft Manual of Style.

This article was written by Brian at demodulated Original post:

Click, choose, or select?

This article was written by Brian at demodulated Original post:

A far cry from original journalism

The first improvement I noticed when I logged on for the first time in four months was that most of the help text and tooltips had been rewritten, for the better. Many previously cryptically-described skills became clear to me for the first time, and that was really necessary for me to grasp the finer depth of this game.

As something (but not much) of a technical writer, one thing bothered me about the description of my necromancer Arecibo’s Frost Blast spell. See if you can guess what it is.

When I began my co-op for my technical writing post-grad I was working on manuals for IT contractors.  A domain administrator was my occasional SME, and he once challenged me on an odd gender-neutral pronoun I’d pulled out of my posterior. “Themself”. Embarrassing, I know.

“Them is plural and self is singular. That’s not a word,” he told me. I felt sheepish; linguistically emasculated by a techie.

It took me a little while to remember this which explained the twinge I felt in my heart as I silently cursed the dummy who chose the pronoun them in place of “The necromancer”.

So what’s the correct gender-neutral pronoun? Seems a glaring omission.

P.s., I’m such an English dork. This isn’t the first time I’ve blogged about technical writing in video games.

P.p.s., Worst. Blog entry title. Ever.

P.p.p.s., You win a prize if you can guess why I picked my character name, Arecibo. Post your guess in the comments below.

This article was written by Brian at demodulated Original post:

Age of Pronoun

The nationwide sales of our dictionary weren’t enough to pay two full timers and two part timers. That’s pretty sad.

I bought a pocket dictionary in college but have relied on Word and dictionary.com whenever I had questions of spelling or etymology. I confess that, in a pinch, I’ll even use Google Suggest in my Firefox 3 search bar.

It’s a real shame to think these 4 people couldn’t be reallocated to an online service. Canadian English is unique.

This article was written by Brian at demodulated Original post:

Give a hoot, buy a vowel

A spectacular cover of the then-quarterly Computer Gaming World

Up until a few years ago I had 2 pride-and-joy collections stowed away in my parents’ garage – my boxes of old computer and video games magazines and a huge garbage bag full of Toronto rave fliers. The latter collection mysteriously vanished one day, thanks in no small part to the efforts of my indifferent parents, I’m sure. My boxes of magazines, however, I check on regularly.

Before moving out of my parents house I used to read magazines all the time. I’d usually have a small stack of old PC Gamer magazines on the floor next to my bed for easy access every evening, with my shelf of about one third my back-issues at the foot of the bed, standing ready for bedtime reading replenishment. Since moving in with my girlfriend and getting married I haven’t made the time for magazines and have allowed all my subscriptions to lapse.

I’ve had a lifelong infatuation with the English language and with computers, so these magazines epitomized my passions. I read for the content but I also studied the phrasing, the layouts, the neverending variety of ways an inferior product could be lambasted. I found particular columns and columnists I enjoyed reading and found myself unable to tear myself away from reviews of products I had no interest in just to see what, for example, Andy Mahood had to say about them. Most of all, I took solace the feeling that successful professionals based their careers around the hobby in which my parents saw little value (and now I work in IT, so neener neener).

The first computer games magazine I bought religiously (though never thought to save money by subscribing) was Computer Gaming World. This was a magazine geared toward a great variety of audiences, from gamers to store owners to investors to play-by-mail strategy enthusiasts. Never again was there a single publication that gave so many games-related audiences a glimpse into eachothers’ oeuvre.

I read CGW from the early to late-90′s and, as far as I know, have proudly squirreled away every single ish. The magazine was renowned for paying lip service by means of a single paragraph synopsis to no fewer than 70 or 80 games every single month, followed by insider editorials, game strategies, and company profiles.

The pièce de résistance of CGW was its authoritative top-100 list, replete with breakdowns per-category, reflecting reader poll opinions. This is the page I turned to first, usually before even leaving the store. This was my personal monthly Oscar. Would Lucasarts’ new adventure game beat out Sierra’s? How many Maxis games would make the cut this month? Would Wing Commander and its sequel hog twin top-10 spots yet again, or would that sneaky X-Wing steal their thunder?

A large scan of the dual-page CGW Top 100. Can you guess the year?

Back in the early-to-mid 90s, during the veritable golden age of PC games, there was a glut of magazines dedicated to the hobby and specific platform. I bought and collected as much as I could afford, from the short-lived PC Games and Computer Entertainment (which later came bundled with a second magazine for CD-ROM “multimedia” gaming) to the free InterAction magazine published by Sierra (which was perhaps the only publication to speak favourably of the company’s flopped RTS Outpost). My funds limited my choices later on so I said what would apparently be my final goodbye to Computer Gaming World in favour of PC Gamer magazine whose more playful and review-centric editorial voice I’d grown to identify with.

CGW continued on without me for many years, coming to an end in 2006 when it was rebranded “Games For Windows” (ouch). I picked up a single issue of GFW and only liked about half of it – much content seemed to me like a “Swimsuit Edition” of testosterone-pandering pap – but the reviews and editorials were as astute and cutting as I’d ever read.

Parent company Ziff Davis filed for Chapter 11 recently, vowing to restructure to recoup losses and that it would remain a profitable company. Lo, after a good 27 years, the printed magazine is now kaput. Nearly all the staff (minus the layout designers) will remain with 1UP, which is a brand I respect. In truth I will surely read much more of this team’s work now that it’s available for free online on the soon-to-be-redesigned 1UP PC portal. I wish the chaps at the former CGW/GFW absolutely nothing but the best.

The good news is that all is not lost. An incredible legacy of hard work, passionate writing, gorgeous designs, and mind boggling cover art is all available, free of charge and ads, at the CGW Museum website.
I recently donated $20 to the site who kindly sent me a DVD of as many issues as they’d scanned at the time – spanning from the first issue to about 1993. It seems they’ve now filled out the archive to include every issue until the CGW name was retired. The scans are immaculate and OCRed which makes them fully searchable. It’s a popular site and each issue is around 60MB so if you’ve enjoyed the magazine as much as I have you should consider flipping them a few bucks for a DVD to save time and bandwidth.

In closing, here’s a quote from former Editor-in-Chief Jeff Green in his now famous blog posting immediately following Ziff Davis’ announcement to can GFW:

For me personally, the closing of Games for Windows: The Official Magazine is not just a business decision (though, obviously it’s exactly that in reality), but feels more akin, in fact, to the passing of a loved one. Drama much? Well, you can scoff if you want, but the fact of the matter is that I have poured my heart and soul into this magazine, month after month after month, for over 10 years now. Every four weeks for 10 years I have done my best to get a quality magazine out the door, and the fact that I don’t have that deadline now is not in any way, despite the temptation to go for gallows humor, a source of relief. It feels like a giant gaping hole in my life.

For more CGW/GFW resources check out:

The CGW Museum – http://cgw.vintagegaming.org/

GFW Radio, the weekly podcast – http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3148397

Former GFW EIC Jeff Green’s blog – http://www.1up.com/do/my1Up?publicUserId=5380367&pager.offset=3

This article was written by Brian at demodulated Original post:

The World comes to an end

Yea and forsooth, twas naught but a couple of years ago, waiting for my girlfriend in her college parking lot, laptop atop my lap, squished in my Civic, that I wrote my first ever blog post. My first post, like the one I’m writing now, was about blogging. I’d read a few blogs and blog-like websites (like Slashdot, The Best Page In The Universe, and the now defunct SixthSeal) and really liked the format and nonchalantness of the prose about genuinely important topics, as well as the ability to leave comments to communicate with authors and fellow readers. I recognized the power and flexibility of this medium and mused about the responsibility of deciding whether to identify yourself, what voice to convey, and whether you are committed enough to decide whether to self-censor and to stick by that decision over the years. I like to think I’ve stood fast by my convictions in these areas, though whether this conviction to preserve my often uninformed blather may prove to one day be my salvation or damnation.

More than anything else, blogging is my excuse to apply my craft to something I love. After high school and college and post-grad a guy’s vernacular is cranked through many an organ grinder; reluctantly expelling each word like passing a lego block lubricated with tabasco. Necessity is the mother of mediocrity, and that’s a shame because there are things I’d rather express, at my own pace, for no particular reason, that I could not because I’d been conditioned to classify writing as work.

All this changed in a college parking lot, of all places. What a world we live in. What a country I live in. What incredible freedom and power I enjoy that I can express myself however I want, wherever I want, for all the world to see. It is unprecedented that one as unworthy, unworldly, and unobservant as myself has greater communicative power than the most benevolent professor or megalomaniacal warlord could dream of for the past millennia.

For the umpteenth time in my life I am thankful with no one to specifically thank. Mankind has sufficiently evolved so that its meekest star may outshine the most menacing supernova. Each of us is worthy, and I lament those of us without the means or freedom to join me on this global pedestal. I read about bloggers in Egypt, freelance photographers in America, and anonymous dissidents in China, all being arrested for the crime of disseminating facts outside the control of the establishment. I’m not embellishing when I admit I ache for these people. The truth is always free – only truth tellers risk capture. I strive to be an honest and accurate blogger out of respect for those whose governments and cultures deny them that right.

But it is with a light heart that I celebrate my incredible achievement today. Today is my holiday. I brim with pride as I examine the lifeless numbers that summarize 2 years of my most personal expression:

I thank my readers for reading. I thank myself for writing. I thank my country for leaving me be. Most of all, I am thankless because blogging is not a big deal. The internet may enable one and all to outshine the supernovae, but the stars need no one’s thanks to shine on.

Expect no thanks, accept no censorship, and except no inspiration. Look within, see what glows, bring it out, and shine.

This article was written by Brian at demodulated Original post:

One score and five months ago

If you have any suggestions for my blog, please mail them to SHUT THE FUCK UP c/o GO TO HELL. I’ve had too many people tell me what I “should do.”

Little did I know at the time that this would be the best advice on blogging I’d ever receive, and the guy hadn’t even written his first entry!

I’ve been reminded of this prophetic advice a few times in the past week while reading and vehemently disagreeing with various lists defining blogs and best practices.

The first such list, entitled 10 Things Your Blogger Won’t Tell You, comes to us care of SmartMoney.com which was a hint of idiosyncrasy right off the bat. The list is comprised of outlandish generalisations, any one of which would surely turn away prospective readers after one visit. I’d like to rebut some of the more glaring beFUDdlements:

1. Hardly anybody reads me.

And? All the bloggers I read address their audiences and even answer some questions, but largely they write about themselves as they see fit. Personally, I keep an eye on my Google Analytics statistics, but I see this as a separate matter of server administration. I relish comments, but continue writing when I don’t receive any. I more often will ask myself a question than ask my readers one. Bloggers won’t tell you that no one is reading because it is a given, and is irrelevant. If you’re blogging for anyone but yourself you have already failed.

3. Did I mention I’m not a real reporter?

The text accompanying this point pigeonholes blogging as a poor man’s substitute for accredited (thus, infallible) news media. Give me a break. The gut reaction of the general populace to world-changing events IS news. Reporting from the trenches by the people themselves, not a homogenized commercial-break-friendly TV spot, is the wave of the future. Which is more poignant – the 30 second newsreel stating 100,000 people were killed in a tsunami, or the 3000 word essay written by an orphaned teen in a small affected village?

4. I might infect your computer with a virus.

Cheeses n’ rice, kindly fellate the nearest tuber or squash. I suppose what the author was trying to convey here was the fact that there are many advertisement websites hosted on blog platforms like Blogger which offer no value to readers and exist only to trick people into clicking a pay-per-click site. The only thing this has to do with blogging is the publishing platform. I don’t think I’ve seen a virus on a web page in a decade.

The rest of this list really isn’t worth glorifying with criticism. It’s reflective of the typical tiny plea coming from traditional mainstream media outlets too stubborn to change with the world they’re supposed to be the authority on.

The other list I’d like to comment on is by a hugely respected name in publishing and technical communication, Tim O’Reilly. His list is a Draft Blogger’s Code of Conduct. I suspect such a code is in response not to the needs of bloggers, but to those who criticise them. This is a wooden fire escape, in my opinion, since “blog” is a squiggly-defined term to begin with. Here are some of the points I take exception with:

2. We won’t say anything online that we wouldn’t say in person.

Why? Isn’t that kind of the point? (not to do so, but to be free to do so) I’m pretty sure the above statement is true of my blog, but I defend the freedom to do otherwise.

4. When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take action.

If that action is to thrust with our pens then I agree. Otherwise, who is “we”? What is the consolidation between bloggers? I don’t think I’m in the minority of bloggers for having a self-centred blog. If a blogger I read is insulted, and this, in turn, insults me, then I will attack with my +2 verbiage of scathing. Otherwise, good luck buddy.

5. We do not allow anonymous comments.

Two words on this proposal – FUCK THAT. The real power of blogs is that they are portal to the human being who offers the content. A door is a better portal than a window. By default WordPress requires an email address from commenters, but I disabled this. The internet is all about freedom, and I want to assist people in choosing their degree of anonymity. Net neutrality encompasses more than bandwidth allotment.

Blogs are not mass-produced widgets that come in a plastic vending machine egg. Blogs are different things to different people. That’s the real power. You can make a blog designed for daily ranting, product placement, customer support, organizational planning, document storage, radio show playlists, a public calendar, communicating with employees, or whatever else you can dream up. Why limit this? Why impose guidelines? Why craft one size of reins when you don’t even know which animal will be pulling?

Thanks to James for teaching me this.

–edit–

I just read this post on Matt Cutts’ blog and thought it was a great follow-up on my comments. It’s short and sweet, plus it has a picture of his cute kitty, so check it out. His is one of my favourite blogs so be sure to bookmark it!

This article was written by Brian at demodulated Original post:

However you’re blogging, it’s wrong

In my true-to-life self-deprecating fashion I’d like to say that it was difficult wading through the crap to find a few gems worthy of declaring my best foot to put forward. But I can’t. The truth is that, indeed amongst the crap, there are a few posts I’ve written that I’m particularly proud of and actually enjoy re-reading on occasion.

Amongst the 94 posts in my 16 months of blogging I’ve selected 13 to represent the best I have to offer. Flipping through the remaining 78 posts often made me want to delete everything but my best-of, but it’s all beta, Brian, it’s all beta.

And so I invite you, my favourite people on Earth, my new readers and old, to shift your gaze down the southeastern corner of your monitor to the “Best of Demodulated” heading on my sidebar. What you read there may be more indicative of my potential than my consistency, but that’s probably how you’re most interested in spending your valuable time anyway.

I read and appreciate each of your comments, even if critical, so don’t be dissuaded by the age of the posts.

P.s., since I’m really the only person using the search functionality I’ve removed the “Top Lookups” statistics, showing the most frequently searched keywords, from the sidebar.

This article was written by Brian at demodulated Original post:

Best of demodulated

The second rule of technical writing is to know your audience.

I’ve been playing and rather enjoying Jade Empire by Bioware which I preordered on Steam for $35.99 USD (now $39.99). The PC edition has been upgraded with high resolution textures, added visual effects, and additional quests and plotline elements. Between the interesting dialogue, passable voice acting, gorgeous graphics, and somewhat engaging combat and mini-games I’m having a good time with the game.

While the gameplay is a sober mix of familiar, tired, and safe standards (ancient Chinese shmup?!), my regular readers will know that I’m a real gourmand of immersive virtual experiences. With rare exceptions this is a really believable game with a tangible world and sufficiently round characters that I honestly care about. I dedicated my entire evening to Jade Empire and found it easy to open up and drink in the atmosphere.

Thus, it’s all the more heart-wrenching to be jarred from this fantasy when faced with some ugly technical writing.

For context, Jade Empire, like most RPGs, encourages the player to open every box and smash every crate to get his grubby hands on every last scrap of loot (not to be confused with the MMORPG equivalent, “lewt”, typically an insignificantly incremental improvement over what you already have). One such widget is a scroll of learning; three of which are required to learn a new fighting style. This is all well and good, but upon finding one of these scrolls the way the player is notified leaves much to be desired. I’ve highlighted the elements that immediately and repeatedly turn my smile upsidedown:

I’m really surprised at Bioware for being so sloppy. This is a veteran studio dedicated to role playing games – games where the player is unequivocally encouraged to take on the role of a character in the world. The zen of roleplaying is to leave your real-worldly role behind, which entails not being reminded that you are “the player”. Similarly, my magical seductress has been tasked with collecting medicinal herbs and banishing ghosts; she has no awareness of an “attack button” and certainly does not need two simultaneous reminders of such.

I’m doubly frustrated at Bioware – first for letting such an amateurish mistake escape not only this “Special Edition” of the game but also the prior version released 2 years ago, and second for passing up my application for a technical writing position they advertised a few months back.

Bioware has taught me a harsh lesson in effective technical writing. It’s clear that the UI and writing teams should have been working closely together, but weren’t. As essential as it is to convey usability information to the user of a software product, video games are not just any software product. They have a specific audience with very different goals than users of Microsoft Word or Macromedia Dreamweaver. Over years of experience gamers are conditioned to suspend their suspension of disbelief during mechanics tutorials and help screens. It’s really not necessary to remind us in painfully lucid English how to dismiss every single dialog box.

This article was written by Brian at demodulated Original post:

Bioware forgot the first two rules of Write Club