Author: alexfornuto

Make a site, NOW!

A month or two ago I registered eastcoastamphicar.com and set up a WordPress site on Pantheon. The eventual goal was to make a web presence for my friend Billy, who restores the historic amphibious cars, and gives rides to folks whenever he can.

Today he called me to let me know that he’d be filming tomorrow for CBS new out of New York. He said he’s doing it for the exposure, that they’d plug his email and phone number at the end of the segment.

Wait, what? His email is at yahoo.com, and his phone is a land line, no texts. Sounds like he needs that website, and he needs it now!

So I took some drone footage a friend captured, some photos I’d scanned from Billy, and made an MVP for eastcoastamphicar.com. And hopefully in another hour, once Namecheap renews their DNS records, I’ll have a nice professional email address for Billy to give CBS.

Oh, look at that. It’s past midnight. Off to bed!

Idle Hands are The Hipster’s Plaything

I’m a pretty modern person. I work remotely for a tech company, I’ve lost count of the number of computers in my home (laptops, old towers, Raspberry Pi’s, etc), I even have Tux tattooed on my arm.

And yet I find myself falling into the hipster trappings of my generation; I have a turntable, I vape, and I just bought a french press. And I wonder to myself, why am I doing this? I’m a scarf and v-neck shirt away from hipster bingo!
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Organizing Photos

This post is on quickly sorting photo libraries. If you want to skip the backstory and jump right to the commands, click here.

I recently switched my personal file hosting/sharing to NextCloud,  from OwnCloud. Among other features and improvements, it will automatically sort uploaded photos from my phone into folders by date. 

This great new feature created a glaring contrast with the many years’ worth of previous photos, mostly all in a single directory, some sorted manually by event.  The process of grammatically identifying, sorting, and deduplicating was simple enough once all the tools were lined up, but finding them was not. What follows are the tools I used to get my photos in order.

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How to ask for help on IRC

Hi.
Hello?
Anyone there?
My server broke, can anyone help?

As a regular IRC user, I’ve seen this message many times. I’ve also seen the hateful responses these intrusions generate. IRC is an older communication form (relative to the Internet), mostly inhabited by those who’ve used it for decades, and are set in their ways.

IRC is also where you’ll find large communities of people all interested in specific topics, usually tech-related. If you’re an expert on MySQL, Ubuntu Linux, Python, etc, you’re most likely found in #TOPIC on at least one IRC network.

Which is why there are newcomers everyday, logging on to seek the wisdom of these software gurus. If you’re one of them, this post is for you; the IRC amateur who’s venturing to Freenode or OFTC for the first time to ask for some much-needed help.
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Why Am I a Technical Writer?

Because of how many great open-source projects have empty readme files.

Because I like open-source software, but I’m not a developer. Even when projects are documented, it’s written for other developers. The assumed level of knowledge is that of the person who wrote it. I think like a user, not a dev.

Because when beginners enter issues on GitHub, they’re met with scorn instead of compassion. And when answers are given, the goal seems to be to give as little information as possible, and make the user chase down the real answer from clues and hints.

Because I hate being told “RTFM“. If I’m asking, I’ve already read the man page. The problem is, a man page generally only lists the options, and briefly explains what they are. Not how to use them, or why you would want to.

I’m a technical writer because I want to use great software without having to know how it was built in order to use it. Because the high learning curve associated with Linux comes in part because its users hoard their knowledge, and belittle those asking for a helping hand.

I’m a technical writer because I want everyone to be able to use the software they want.

Are you a technical writer? If so, why do you do it?