Reviewable, Runnable Specifications Ensure Software Quality

Designing Programs with RSpec and Cucumber gives a good introduction to what is arguably the most important part of the agile development process, when it comes to quality. It does a good job of explaining that the real goal is not to “test” your code after you write it, but rather to create a “runnable specification” before you write it.

Read more at Artima.com >>

Meditating in the Cafeteria

When I first started training in Jung SuWon, Great Grandmaster (and Dr.) Kim told us that one day, we would meditate anywhere, any time--even in the middle of a noisy crowd. I found that hard to believe, because anything other than total silence totally broke my concentration! But here I was, meditating in a busy cafeteria!

As It is In Heaven (5 Stars)

I just watched a Swedish film called As It Is in Heaven. It comes closer than anything I have ever seen to capturing the kind of personal growth and transformation I witnessed, and experienced, in my martial arts training--but it does so in the context of a choral group.

What's Wrong with American Corporations?

American corporations are not regulated by the market, by the government, or by themselves. They are so far out of control, in fact, that they have a bigger impact on government than government has on them. There is no chance whatever to create a healthy population or a healthy society until they are reined in.

If you've read What's Wrong with Partially Hydrogenated Oils? and What's Wrong with American Foods?, you know that the American food supply is laced with substances that are damaging to your health. But those substances, by and large, are not present in the food supplies of Europe and Asia--either because the corporations there are too ethical to include them, or governments are smart enough to make them illegal, or both.

Meanwhile, the FDA has no mandate to safeguard your long-term health. The FDA is only concerned with cases of acute food poisoning--not chronic, long-term damage.

For more, read Poisoning for Profit: What's Wrong with American Corporations?

A Short Citizen's Guide to Reforming Wall Street

Great ideas. But...



The street is spending $500 million to lobby against it, and the Supreme Court has determined that corporations can spend all they want to influence elections--which gives those lobbyists even more power.



How can corporations with more money than the government ever be controlled by a government they effectively own?



I submit that job number one is to make money irrelevant to elections, by using social media to make information transmission so efficient that undecided/uninformed voters get all the information they need, within moments. That is the only way to put an end to the influence of misleading advertisements and sound-bite politics.



Example: The "Right to Vote" measure in California is obviously funded by electrical companies, to prevent a government takeover the next time they attempt to scam the state for billions, as they did in the last energy crisis. Their ads run 30 times a day, and the election is months away.



That issue, and the vastly more important need to regulate the commercial institutions, are symptoms of the same disease--a government in which money dominates, rather than ideas. The game can be changed, and it must be.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Capitalism: A Love Story -- Synopsis and Review

Capitalism: A Love Story is a must-see video. It's an eye opener that reaches a far more radical conclusion than I expected. Somehow, Michael Moore manages to keep a sense of humor throughout it all, so the video winds up being entertaining, rather than depressing (no small trick). It's full of things you probably knew, but contains quite a few surprises as well.

Books on Writing that are Worth Reading (and some that aren't)

Some books on writing are worth reading--and some aren't. Here is my list of must reads, and one must-avoid.

Need to Check Links before Running the OT

>(Re-post) I just encountered a situation that underscores the need for a Link Checking step that runs before the OT. It applies to those of us who are using DITA in organizations that haven't shelled out big bucks for a content management system. [Note: XDocs is the only really affordable CMS there is. It just needs to add Link Checking to be a really stupendous buy.]

Using a Blog to Track Documentation Issues

Bug tracking tools intended for developers are too “heavyweight” for documentation. They don’t help at all with workflow, and invariably have categories and status options that make no sense whatever for documentation.

Is DITA a "semantic tagging" standard?

As much as DITA has the capacity to be a system for totally semantic tagging, the reality is that what happens to those tags totally depends on what kind of output you're generating, and what processing engine you're using to do it. So the answer to the question posed in the title is, "It isn't yet. But hopefully it will be, soon." This post explains why.

Titles, NavTitles, and SearchTitles

This is one of the decision-areas for departmental standards that needs to be decided at a new installation. It’s more about long-term implications than short-term. But as the number of topics grows, the long term begins to arrive.

Finally! Access to my Yahoo Account

This Yahoo bug has been plaguing me practically forever:

My ID and Password work everywhere they’re requested at Yahoo, except for one place: Account Management.

Writing in 2nd Person

I have been writing in 2nd person for the majority of the last decade, mostly because it just felt better. But just the other day I realized exactly why it is the right voice to use for technical documentation. (It's rather astonishing how long it took, in retrospect.) 

Heck of a good blog site

Having just gone to Google's Blogger.com to create this blog, I am forced to admit that they really got it right.

DITA Tip: Use alt tags to plan your GUI writeup

Quick tip here. Use alt-text attributes on images to plan your GUI topics. Later, when you fill in the actual screenshots, the accessibility work is done!