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Posts Tagged ‘Personal’

Reliving the commute

Posted in Bruce Byfield, commuting, exercise, Personal, public transit, skytrain, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on April 16, 2008| 1 Comment »

The first two days of this week, I left the house at 8AM to get to the Open Web Vancouver conference at the Pan Pacific Hotel. By doing so, I revived all the memories of commuting that I had almost forgotten, working from home for the past three years.

Understand that I have no particular problem getting up early (although I don’t see any virtue in it, either). By the time I start work at 9:30AM, I have shaved, read The Globe and Mail, run, done several exercises, bathed, and cleaned four bird cages, so I’m well-accustomed to functioning first thing in the morning.

What I’m not used to any more is the company of strangers first thing in the morning. The local bus that takes me to the Skytrain is tolerable; once past the high school a block away from our house, it is half empty as often as not anyway.

But once I climb to the train platform, I’m submerged in a crowd, which takes some getting used to. Moreover, some of the people on Skytrain can be – well, eccentric would be a polite term. For one thing, when you’re pressed shoulder to shoulder with people, you quickly learn that a surprising number either smoke so heavily that it must sit like starch on all their clothes, or else have an active fear of water, considering their personal hygiene.

Then there’s those who carry on their private cell phone conversations at the top of their voices in a crowded Skytrain car. I once heard a young man begging and crying for his lover (whose gender was never clear) to take him back, while those of us around him squirmed in embarrassment. It was, as humorist Kate Clinton, once said, an invasion of my right to know.

But, usually, I’m the only one who apparently finds it surprising that people would have personal conversations in the crowd. This observation that makes me think that if all those mentally troubled people who argue with themselves in different voices on the Skytrain would only be given a cell phone to hold to their ear, they would immediately become integrated into society. They would never be stared at again.

Then there’s people like the intrepid shoplifter I saw once, who boarded wearing three or four shirts and carrying their hangers in one hand and all their wrapping and labels in another. The supposedly deaf people, some of whom carry cards illustrating sign language and want you to buy them and one of whom sold elaborately folded and brightly colored origami that he arranged on a branched stick. The self-important men in three piece suits who try hard to maintain their dignity. The painters and maintenance workers coming home in soiled overalls and looking seemingly pleased at the way that everyone else keeps their distance (I suppose it gives them some personal space). The trusting innocents who actually sleep on the train (quite aside from possibly being robbed, how do they avoid missing their stop? And why, knowing they have to be up early, don’t they sleep the night before?).

And always there’s the Skytrain police, whom – I learned from the newspaper this morning – have a nasty habit of tasering fare evaders (And what do they do to vandals? Suffice it to say that long-term employees at Gitmo have been known to pale when they hear). One or two of them seem to take sadistic glee in hectoring teenage Chinese Canadian girls. All of them seemed to enjoy holding up the entire system while they do fare checks. They always travel in pairs, if not in groups of four or six, no doubt because to do anything less might put them in danger from the innocent commuters whose travel time they’ve just prolonged in their paranoia that someone, somewhere, might actually be riding for free.

With all these people playing out their dramas before the audience of commuters, there’s only one rule that can help you cling to even a shred of sanity: Read a book, carry an MP3 player whose playlists you can endlessly adjust, look out a window if you can see one, but, whatever you do, don’t make eye contact.

However, even this policy doesn’t work with the people who regard the delicate art of squeezing on to crowded car as an invitation to create a mosh pit. Inevitably large and overweight, these people wait until the second before the doors close to take a flying leap on to the train, trusting to the crowd in the car to cushion their fall and keep anyone from actually falling over as they land.

The worst of these people used to be a large woman on a scooter. Don’t ask me how she got the scooter airborne, but she was merciless in crushing your toes as it landed. If you complained, she would lecture you about respect for people with disability in such a loud voice that everyone would stare at you as though you picking your noise and describing the process with a gourmet’s delight.

Even on the rare occasion when you meet none of these types, the average commute still you feeling jagged and unsettled. I can’t believe that I endured similar commutes for years – and thank luck or fate that now I usually don’t have to.

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Hospitals and haunted houses

Posted in Bruce Byfield, death, feng shui, Henry James, hospitals, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on April 9, 2008| 1 Comment »

I spent yesterday afternoon pacing the corridors of a hospital, waiting on the results of an operation. That was the fifth or sixth time I’ve spent a few hours that way, nervous and trying to control my imagination, and it doesn’t get easier with repetition. Nor does familiarity make the hospital any more of a restful place.

Part of the problem, of course, is that very few places – if any – are comfortable when you’re in the lockdown mode of a crisis. Life gets ludicrously simple in a crisis, narrowing to two basic motivations: Doing what you can, and hanging on from moment to moment. Politics, your usual scruples or tolerance for other people’s vagueness – all get thrown out during crisis. You could start a nuclear war the next street over, and the fact would be largely irrelevant during the crisis. At the most, it would be just another damned thing piled on top of everything else.

However, I’m also convinced that hospitals are by nature uncomfortable places. For one thing, they’re full of hundreds of people, all rushing around on the trail of their own agendas and overflowing with their own anxieties. Other places have their crowds, of course, but in many places where we’re used to crowds, such as a mall or a university, the average person has less intensive feelings to add to the complexity. I imagine all these colliding priorities could be seen under the right conditions, like the streams of light in a time-lapse photo, or perhaps like particle collisions with some sub-atomic camera lens.

Even more importantly, I’m with Henry James in The Turn of the Screw: How a building is used creates its own psychological environment. There are places like the gatehouse that is all that remains of the BC Penitentiary that have seen too much human misery, deserved or not, to ever be places in which you can relax. And, conversely, there are places like Vancouver’s Sun Yat-Sen which are shaped so that any emotion except a tranquil contentment is difficult.

Not every place develops such a spirit, and just what details its spirit resides in is difficult to explain, although perhaps feng shui attempts to do so. But perhaps it’s a form of erosion, as the dominant emotions in a place wear at the corners and scuff the floor, as in a public building that never closes, which somehow retains a sense of restlessness.

But you can sense the creation of the spirit, if you look carefully. When a building is new, it generally lacks its own individuality. Then, one day, for reasons that are as hard to observe as the details, a critical mass is reached, and the building has its own spirit, not in a supernatural sense, but in the most mundane meaning of the word you can imagine.

In the case of a hospital, I suspect that the dozens of daily crises and dramas are what is gradually sculpting the hallways and rooms – these things plus a vast and personality-less indifference. For all the intimacy of health care (or perhaps because of it), we make medical procedures impersonal. Doctors and nurses practice a certain distance, both for their own sakes and to preserve the dignity of patients, and to this foundation, the need to organize adds a level of even more impersonal bureaucracy.

You can suffer and easily die at hospitals, not just because hospitals are places where people go to do those things, but because both are handled – despite the best efforts of the best medical practitioners – as a routine, and routines are simply not circumstances for emotion. Your friends and family might grieve you as you go, and maybe some of your nurses and fellow patients. But, not far in the background, the bureaucracy is willing to strip the sheets so that someone else can use the bed and to process your body so that, as quickly as possible, it is no longer the hospital’s concern.

In this sense, hospitals are far worse than other large public buildings like hotels. Hotels, too, are used to tidying up after death so their owns can get on with business, but, at least in hotels, staff might recoil from the reality of death and some visitors might avoid a room if they know that someone has recently died in it. But, at the hospital, few ever know that they are being ushered into the setting of a death and a tragedy, and the staff members, for their own sake, cannot let themselves remember very much.

All the same, a trace remains on the building. More than the complexity of conflicting emotions, more than the anxiety, the most basic of human drama slowly sculpts the hospital of the cleanest, most efficient hospital, sculpting an atmosphere of anxiety beyond any hope of exorcism. If you are a visitor, as I was yesterday, you flee the hospital, when you can, like the survivors flee a haunted house.

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My alternate lives

Posted in alternate worlds, Bruce Byfield, career choices, childhood, grad school, high school, Personal, Uncategorized, university, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 7, 2008| Leave a Comment »

The concept of alternate worlds has fascinated me since I first heard of it as a young teenager. Not just the big ones, like a world where William the Bastard went down to defeat at Hastings and a Saxon England looked to Scandinavia rather than the Mediterranean for culture, ir the Haida had an empire built on muskets and the slave trade when the first European explorers came by, but also the small ones of my own life. Sometimes, in the few minutes between turning off the light and falling asleep, I like to think of them.

For instance, if I hadn’t had trouble pronouncing a hard “C” sound when I was six, would I have become so interested in reading and writing? If an elementary school coach hadn’t ignored my request to run the half mile and made me determined to prove him wrong, would I have started exercising regularly?

And consider the girls I had a crush on in elementary school. If I had ever had the courage to date one of them, would we have split after a few months? Would I have preferred them to the girls I met in high school? Perhaps we would have married, and had children or even divorced.

Similarly, if I hadn’t dropped off the track team after my first year at university, would I have eventually reached the Olympics in the days before it became so tarnished and tawdry? The idea is not impossible, since a couple of those in my training group did go to the Olympics, although my chances of being in the final, let alone the medals, would have been remote – that’s why I dropped out in the first place.

Then there was my choice of grad school. I had a double major in English and Communications, and I applied for both. But the Communications Department was only admitting grad students in the Fall, and I was desperate to get out my dead-end job and back to school in January. So, I gave up the studies I’d planned to do in imitation of Irene Pepperberg and Alex the African Gray and started looking for a literary topic for a thesis instead.

For that matter, what if I had stuck out the poor job prospects after I had my Master’s degree a few years later and gone for a Phd.? We almost certainly would have had to travel, if not for another round of grad school, then certainly to find employment. Would we have gone to some place like Edmonton or Toronto? Or would the search for tenure have led me to life in the United States? Or perhaps I would have stayed as a lowly sessional instructor, doing twice the work for half the pay as tenured faculty, and bitter for having wasted time and money on a degree that did noting for me.

And what about the trauma that almost destroyed me? (you’ll excuse me if I decline to give details) Had I had less of a sense of responsibility or a belief in human goodness, or made a different decision in a couple of places, perhaps that sequence of events need never have happened. But if it hadn’t, would I have had the courage to become the freelance writer I had always dreamed about?

That’s the trouble with imagining other outcomes. You can’t just change one event and manufacture a happy ending. Sometimes, the imaginary outcomes are no better than the real ones, or fortunate events can come from disasters. And most outcomes, I imagine, have more than a single cause or result.

Still, playing at alternate worlds gives a satisfyingly complex view of the world, especially if you suspect that the idea of an afterlife is based on nostalgia or wishful thinking. While I regret very little about the outcomes I have actually had, somehow it’s comforting to think I’ve taken eveny opportunity, that nothing is ever wasted, and that all the other paths I might have taken are metaphysically close at hand yet forever out reach – if only in my imagination.

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A walkway of cherry blossoms

Posted in British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, cherry blossoms, Personal, Uncategorized, Vancouver, tagged , , , , , on April 5, 2008| Leave a Comment »

This time of year, one of the hidden wonders of downtown Vancouver is the Burrard Street Skytrain station. On the walkway above the ticket level, the cherry trees are blossoming. Overhead, the skyscrapers loom, and the homeless are huddled in blankets less on the sidewalks than a block away, but, on that walkway, both are hidden from view, and you might almost be in the country. As in a classical Chinese garden, the walkway soon makes you forget the urban setting.

Today, I took half an hour from my Saturday errands to enjoy the sight, despite the chill of the day. The cold spring we’ve had so far has stunted the blossoms slightly, but the white-laden branches still managed to leave me with a catch in my throat and an unexpected lightness in my chest. I never notice any particular depression during winter, but the blossoming of the cherry trees – the first signs of spring aside from the blossoming of the broom and the odd hawthorn – never fail to leave me in a hushed awe, and grateful for the sight.

And today, a white-mustached busker on the ticket level was playing Mozart on a violin, his echoing notes providing a plaintive background to the spectacle of the blossoms.

At first, I stood at the top of the stairs to the walkway, alternating my sight between staring down the archway of gnarled branches and blossoms and focusing on the individual blossoms closest to me and their delicate perfection.

In the mid-distance, a bridal party was having pictures taken. Even from a distance, I could see her bare shoulders were red with the cold.

When the bridal party was finished, I began to walk, slowly, and with much turning from side to side and, even once or twice, right around. If I wanted a change from the blossoms, I could gaze down into the garden at the ticket level and see the other flowering trees just coming into bloom.

At the far end, I climbed to street level, and walked back away I came. A few people were thrusting cameras blindly up at the blossoms, apparently hoping for the random luck of a good shot, but no one spoke. Even the two or three couples were taking turns photographing each other were silent and intent, although smiling. I considered a comment or two myself, but decided not to spoil the moment.

On my second circuit, I noticed that the heightened wind created by the skyscraper canyons was starting to shake off some of the petals. They drifted like snowflakes, moving sideways as much as down. They made me think of how short the cherry blossom season is – always too short – and the thought added sadness to the scene that added the beauty of the falling petals.

Finally, the cold of the day drove me towards my journey home. But even the downtown tunnel of the Skytrain and the dinginess of the car I traveled in could only lessen my mood a little. I had had one of the aesthetic highpoints of the season, and I was grateful and still carried much of the mood it created.

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Massive Trade Show? Not So Much

Posted in Bruce Byfield, computers, Free Geek, Massive Technology Show, Personal, trade shows, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on April 2, 2008| 1 Comment »

The large IT trade show is in decline all over North America. Comdex disappeared a few years ago, and, despite the thriving market for GNU/Linux, LinuxWorld Expo cut back from twice a year to one. However, since many of these events have been replaced by smaller gatherings, I thought that room might still exist for a local show. However, after spending yesterday at the Vancouver Massive Technology Show, I doubt that trade shows can survive in even such a truncated form.

I was at the show as a volunteer for the Free Geek booth, so my time wasn’t wasted. Recycling and free software education are causes that I am happy to support, and honing my impromptu speaking skills can’t hurt. Still, with five or six volunteers at the booth and a free ticket or two, I had plenty of time to observe the show.

Attendance was only moderate, and, to judge from the way people were strolling around the exhibit hall and from the bland looks on their faces, the main reason for attending the show was to get away from the office for a few hours. On another day, a lazy cup of coffee at Starbuck’s might have provided the same excuse.

But the lack of excitement was hardly surprising. Even allowing for a wish for Canadian content, my first reaction to the list of people was, “Who are these people?” Aside from one or two whose competence I could vouch for because I know them personally, none were exactly acknowledged experts in their fields. In general, the lackluster field made the claim that the show was the place to find out about the latest in technology ring hollow.

As for those exhibiting – well, “provincial” is the phrase that springs to mind. Not only was Free Geek the only exhibitor I saw who was doing anything with free and open source software, but at least one was so clueless that he told a colleague that he wouldn’t use it because it was insecure.

To say the least, that’s not an attitude that you associate with the cutting edge of anything, except maybe a dull knife.

For the most part, the exhibitors were typified by their mediocrity and cheapness. Some wanted to be the next FaceBook, others the next Linkedin. Others were local web designers. Many offered search engine optimization, a piece of voodoo that always reminds me that almost nobody knows how or why marketing works. Many offered marketing or HR services. All were on such tight budgets that few could afford the usual swag – not even a cheap pen in many cases, although one company’s booth team were giving out small oranges or tangerines from woven baskets (which made me think of Nell Gwyn), and one energy drink company offer half-a-swallow samples. None had anything beyond the most basics of booths, the kind that at a really large show practically gets swallowed by any booth of reasonable size.

When I say that the only booth that I easily remember is the one selling IM Buddies – USB dongles that could be made to whirl and emit different color lights depending on who is messaging – you can get an idea of just how unmemorable the exhibits were.

In the center of the exhibit were amusements allegedly designed to appeal for geeks (never mind that I doubt a technical person was at the show), such as foosball and Guitar Hero. The apparent prize amusement was a mechanical bull (THAT’S RIGHT, A MECHANICAL BULL! the program screamed). Aging executives bored with imagining themselves Antarctic explorers could don cowboy boots and hats and be gently bucked about with all the energy of the kiddy rides that used to be placed outside grocery stores.

I haven’t had so much fun since the last time I rolled pennies. But I did think a mechanical bull was an appropriate symbol of a lackluster show full of marketing people going through the motions.

I also noticed that there were plenty of posters and cardboard flats advertising the new cable TV program on which Massive’s owner appears. These did their best to make her look geeky, tough, and 18 – none of which she has ever shown the least sign of being in my contacts with her.

As for her male co-hosts, let me just say (as a middle-aged man myself) that it is embarrassing for everyone when overweight or middle-aged men try to act hip or cool. The result was rather like catching a re-run of Mod Squad on the television screen before the DVD kicks in.

I was far from the only one to come away unimpressed, either. In the Tazzu forum, one of the leading network sites for Vancouver IT, other posters were no more thrilled with the day than I was. One forgot all about the show, one decided he would rather work, and the rest expressed sentiments in keeping with mine.

Massive’s only hope of survival lies in the hope that advertisers and those whose egos are stoked by a brief moment at the podium won’t notice the modified rapture of attendees, or look at the attendance figures. If they ever do, I give it two or three more years before extinction. Meanwhile, you can put Massive and other big time trade shows in the CITES Appendices of endangered species.

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Writing effective news releases

Posted in Bruce Byfield, corporate communications, journalism, Personal, Public Relations, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , , , on March 31, 2008| 1 Comment »

Every day, thousands of news releases are emailed. And, every day, thousands of news releases are deleted unread or only partially unread — all because their writers don’t bother to make their news sound important.

Let me explain. Not counting duplicates, I receive several hundred news releases a week. However, I only read about 30-40. I can discard most of them because their distributors haven’t bothered to target their work, and the releases have nothing to do with free software or GNU/Linux. But I also discard many of the rest without reading beyond the first paragraph because they fail to make me care about their news. If the PR people can’t focus enough to make their news interesting, why should I waste more than a minimal amount of time reading their releases?

That may sound harsh. Yet, without ruthless tactics, I would hardly have time to do anything except read releases. Nor did I (or would I) ask for most of the releases I receive.

Besides, I am hardly alone. If anything, I probably receive fewer releases than many computer journalists. A public relations writer who doesn’t know this reality is ignorant about one of the basics facts of their trade. So, really, it is only common sense that they should do what they can to emphasize the relevance of their news, especially when the task is fairly simple.

I always say that, to write successful PR, you need to assume that your everyone in your audience has an attention deficit disorder. They see so many releases that they’re easily bored. A PR writer’s job is to break through that lack of attention so that journalists will read the details and be roused to do a story based on the news.

The best way to attract attention would be to write a custom release for every long term connection. However, that’s hardly practical (although targeting your release is, despite the modern PR writer’s fondness for spamming techniques). But. with a little effort a writer can craft a release that keeps recipients reading.

If you want to attract interest in a release, the place to start is with the head – which should also probably be the subject line if you send the release in an email. Far from being the after-thought that many PR writers seem to make it, the head should be a pithy summary of the news and why it matters. It should not be – as so many PR writers make it – something as bland as “News release from MyPR.”

In fact, it should not just be a bare statement of fact, no matter how specific. For instance, instead of “Jack Parker becomes company CTO” try “Company refocuses on core values by appointing Jack Parker CTO.” The first head sounds irrelevant, while the second explains how the news might affect the company.

A head is usually less than a dozen words, but if you’ve struggled with them the way you should, you won’t need a sub-head. Many long-time writers will actually tell you not to bother with a sub-head, because it’s usually just one more chance to lose the reader. However, if your news is especially complex, those few more words might help keep readers’ attention.

However, most of the time, you’ll want to get directly into the lede. Like the opening of a short story, your first sentence should be the hook you use to catch readers’ attention. You can use the rest of the first paragraph to expand on the gist of what you have to say, but if readers flounder on the first sentence, many of them won’t read beyond the rest of the paragraph, let alone the release.

One thing you do not do is throw away the first sentence with long sentences and cliches. Yes, you want the lede to summarize your news and its importance. But it won’t fill this goal if it’s a compound-complex sentence, and even the most sympathetic reader has trouble following through its entire ten line.

Nor do you want to lose interest by describing your client as a “world leader” in its field or by using any other cliche that the reader has heard thousands of times before. Cliches lose readers’ attention, accomplishing the exact opposite of what you should be trying to do.

Once past the head and the lede, you can relax a bit. However, keep the release short for all but the most monumental news, and put a few quotes in to break up the bald recital of facts. But remember that the quotes should be people talking like people, not like an animated dictionary. Like a cliche, lame prose is just going to lose the reader.

Don’t worry, either, about giving a company bio until the end. Anything more than a clause half a dozen words long will only complicate your basic message unnecessarily. The only reason that anyone will want more about the company is because they are going ahead with a story based on your release. Providing a corporate bio is a courtesy you do journalists, not something that will help you drum up interest in your story.

The idea that a news release should explain why the information it carries is important sounds obvious. Apparently, though, the idea has never occurred to the majority of people working in public relations. Perhaps they are so busy writing a release that pleases their boss or client that they don’t stop to think that they are being paid to offer their expertise as well as please. Or, perhaps, they think the importance of their news is self-evident; the fact that their company has a new point release of a product has kept everyone in the office working overtime for weeks, so why shouldn’t the rest of the world be concerned?

I suspect, though, that many PR writers simply find mass mailouts easier than taking the time to craft a release that journalists will read. Spam, after all, is easy, and effective writing hard. But it is only by effective writing that the composers of news releases can even hope to have their efforts read. Otherwise, they may as well not even bother.

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Speaking at Open Web Vancouver

Posted in Bruce Byfield, computers, Free Software, freesoftware, Open Web Vancouver, opensource, Personal, technology, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 28, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Once you’ve been an instructor, the habit of teaching is hard to break. That fact, as much as anything, explains why I am not only attending the Open Web Vancouver conference this year, but giving a talk entitled, “Working with the free software media.” Moreover, since Peter Gordon and Audrey Foo, the main organizers of the conference, are kind enough to let me in on a media pass to wander the conference and buttonhole presenters, I feel that’s the least I can do. And considering that I can’t code well enough to say anything worthwhile about programming, and the social aspects of the open web are already being presented by others, I may as well talk about what I know best.

The Open Web Vancouver conference is being held April 14-15 at the Vancouver Conference Center. It’s a rebranding of last year’s highly successful Vancouver PHP conference. Like its predecessor, this year’s conference is mostly a volunteer effort, and takes advantage of both local and international experts to present a well-rounded program to a small audience.

I chose my topic because I’ve been writing about aspects of this topic in my blog for about a year now, and those entries have been well-received – probably because there’s a real need. A few free and open source software (FOSS) organizations, such as the Linux Foundation and the Software Freedom Law Center, have people and policies in place for dealing with the media, but most do not.

The truth is, typical FOSS developers tend to be suspicious of the media – unsurprisingly, since marketing communications experts tend not only to have an entirely different mindset and to be absolutely clueless about technology. Yet many projects could benefit from more publicity in order to attract new developers or funding, and much of the community would like to know about them.

I’m still developing what I will say, and I have to admit that my teaching skills are rusty. However, my instinct is to forego the usual slide show, and make the talk as interactive with the audience as possible. Topics I’m considering include an explanation of where the free software media stands between traditional media and free software, why cultivating a relationship is worth everybody’s trouble, and how to pitch news and have more of a chance of receiving coverage.

It occurs to me that, with this talk, I’ve come full circle. When I was a technical writer a decade ago, I used to say that my job consisted of explaining the geeks to the suits. Now, I could be said to explaining the suits (or, perhaps more accurately, the shorts and sandals) to the geeks.

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How to generate ideas for journalism

Posted in Bruce Byfield, journalism, oysterband, Personal, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , on March 27, 2008| 3 Comments »

“I’d like to write more often for your organization,” a some-time contributor to Linux.com wrote to the editors the other day. “However, I was hoping you’d have some advice for someone like me that suffers from writer’s block. Sometimes I’ll come up with a topic, other times I struggle for ideas, then I read other articles on Linux.com and think to myself, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’”

By the time I logged on in the morning, Lisa Hoover had already given a comprehensive answer, to which I could only add a few points (I’m on Pacific time, so I log in long after everyone else in North America, although I sometimes get there before the Indian editors). Lisa posted her reply in the Linux.com forums, and I urge anyone interested to read it.

Meanwhile, here’s my suggestions, which includes my rewriting of Lisa’s as well. I’m talking about free and open source software. but I think that with a few changes of context most of the points would apply equally to any kind of journalism:

  • Know the field you’re writing about. In this case, that means keeping up to date on the other basic news sites, such as Linux Today, LWN, and FS Daily. It also means checking out information on new software from FreshMeat, and keeping track of what’s happening with major organizations in the field, such as the Free Software Foundation or The Linux Foundation. Often, these sites just give the bare bones announcement of events, so there is almost always room to go deeper. Moreover, once you have extensive knowledge, you’ll be able to see connections – and, therefore, possible stories – as you make connections between different pieces of information.
  • Subscribe to mail forums in areas that you’d like to write about, and join local meetups of people with similar interests. Their problems and interests will provide endless stories, and, occasionally, a piece of breaking news.
  • When you read a how-to, try it out. What information does it leave out? What information is now outdated in it? Could the information be presented more coherently? Is there a related topic that is left out? Could your personal experience add anything to the instructions? Answering any of these questions can lead to an article.
  • Question what you read. If someone makes a claim about a particular piece of software, go see for yourself. If someone is quoted, contact them to expand on their comments. The more you know about the field, the more you are likely to question. For instance, a few months ago, I got a story when a software project’s members were being quoted as having an opinion which I knew was likely to be wrong.
  • Read bloggers and columnists in the field. Note their opinion, and see if you can come up with a counter-argument (For the record, I write a lot of blog entries using this technique, especially when the subject is career advice).
  • As you get to know your chosen field, you will become familiar with the truisms that everyone knows. Play the contrarian, and see if you can come up with a valid argument that qualifies or over-turns conventional wisdom. An example is my article for Datamation, “It’s time to get over Microsoft,” which suggested that free software was now strong enough to have no need to fear its traditional nemesis. Of course, I received plenty of negative criticism, but I still feel that the point needed to be made.
  • Everyone has a story, and so does every group. I’ve never yet met someone who was boring when talking about what matters to them, so get in touch and tell those stories.
  • Watch for common problems that people have, either in online forum or in your everyday life. Lists of resources or steps to overcome these problems are articles that editors will love, because they’ll continue to be read for months after they’re published.
  • Make lists. For instance, in the last 3 years, I’ve written “11 tips for moving to OpenOffice.org,” “9 characteristics of free software users,” and at least a dozen more. Lists are an excellent way to make use of random observations and thoughts.
  • Think of what’s appropriate to the season. For instance, last Christmas, Linux.com carried articles about gifts for geeks, and non-profits to which people might want to donate before the end of the year to get a tax break. For Valentine’s Day, the site carried suggestions of how to mark the day using free software. In the past, other articles were published to mark the university of the OpenOffice.org and Debian projects.
  • Think about your own experience in the field, whether with your home computers or at the office. Often, what you’re doing with your computer will make a good how-to article, especially for beginners. For instance, I got at least half a dozen stories from my customization of my new laptop last summer.
  • Contact companies and experts, asking for more information about new software or new policies. If you see something interesting in the way of hardware, ask about getting a review unit.
  • Network like crazy, not only with movers and shakers, but also PR experts and ordinary developers. This advice is always sound no matter what you’re doing, but, in journalism, it pays greater and greater dividends as you continue to write, because people will contact you when they think they have a possible story. I don’t know how it works for other journalists, but I now get 2-3 stories and another 2-3 possible leads per month – a substantial reduction of my need to generate ideas. Three years ago, when I started, I got none. And, increasingly, those stories are scoops, given to me because people feel that I’ve written about them or their colleagues with some fairness or insight in the past. Of course, many of these contacts have their own agenda, but generally that agenda is only to get publicity, so you generally don’t have to worry about preserving your independence.

You see the common thread? Consistently generating ideas to write about means that a part of you is always hunting for stories. As you go about your business, a part of you needs to be always analyzing the story potential of what you encounter.

If my experience is anything to go by, once you have this habit, your problem won’t be coming up with ideas. It will be choosing which stories you want to write in the limited time that you have in the day.

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The parrot’s new cage

Posted in Bruce Byfield, conures, nandays, Parrots, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 23, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Parrots are such curious and lively creatures that you can easily forget that they are a prey species – until, at least, they are faced with something new. A cup or toy that they have seen before can often be replaced with one of the same shape, but add a new object to their environment, and their reaction is either a retreat with feathers held tight, or else aggressive posturing designed to intimidate (posturing that lasts only until the new object nears them). A case in point is the new cage we bought for Rambunctious, whom we hand-fed as a baby.

When Ram was pulled from the nest with a foot injury, he grew up in a glass aquarium with a heating pad underneath it. After he was weaned, he was put into the cage that he still occupies.

The cage is smaller that we’d give an unhandicapped bird, but Ram is a sturdy cripple, and could use more room. Besides, the plastic cage bottom is falling apart, and won’t last longer. For these reasons, we’ve been looking for a new cage for over a year. The quest isn’t easier, because most cages have bar spacing designed for much larger bird, which a Nanday conure like Ram could easily get his head stuck between.

Finally, last month, we found an ideal cage, about two-thirds larger than his present one, and with the right bar spacing. Last week, we outfitted it at the parrot supply shop, and deposited it on the counter near Ram’s cage.

His reaction was predictable. He retreated to the back of his cage, eying the new one warily. When we took him from his cage, he refused to come out; in fact, his good foot had to be pried loose from the perch it was gripping. I could feel his heart racing as I held him in my palm.

I sort of got the impression that we would not simply be dropping him in the cage. He was going to need to get used to it.

This past week, his reaction would be humorous, except that the matter was so obviously in deadly earnest to him. When his cage door was open, he sidles out as quickly as he can, climbing on the outside of his cage to a position on the top as far away from the new cage as he can manage. When I tried to place him on the cage, he flapped and scuttled up my arm with a piteous squawk and look of the utmost alarm and utmost betrayal in his eye. Only when we put the cage down on the floor would he manage to calm down.

After seven days, he has reached the point where, brought near the cage, he actually reached out to beak it. This is an encouraging sign, since it suggests that curiosity is starting to win out over fear for him. And when I started making some adjustment to the positions of the perches, toys and seedcups in his cage, he flew on to my shoulder, chirping with excitement and happiness as I worked.

The next step is to put him in the new cage for a while, with one of us close by to reassure him. If he eats while in the cage, or plays with a toy, then we can proceed with the move. But the whole operation is still going to take another one to three weeks. Parrots didn’t evolve by taking unnecessary chances, and, in changing Ram’s cage, we’re fighting instincts embedded by generations of natural selection. So we have to figure that it’s going to take a while.

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My cooking highlights

Posted in cooking, cuisine, food, recipes, tagged , , , , , , on March 18, 2008| 2 Comments »

Having been a student and a freelancer for much of my marriage, I’ve also tended to be the chef. I’ve been home more often, and preparing the evening meal helps to divide my working day from my personal time. Besides, while I enjoy the creativity of cooking, I have a pronounced distaste for washing dishes while my partner doesn’t mind the task and dislikes cooking, so the division of labor is a natural one (although I probably take unfair advantage by dirtying more pots than I would if I had to clean them myself) . And, like any domestic chef, I’ve developed my own repertoire of specialties – most of them hearty peasant dishes, which I’ve always found has more possibilities than haute cuisine.

The one I’ve been making the longest is lasagna As made by most people, lasagna is protein and carbohydrate-heavy, and mine is no exception, with three cheeses (in the current incarnation, Chevrai, fresh Parmesan, and Swiss) and lean turkey forming the layers between whole wheat pasta. To round off the meal, I had snap peas and basil leaves, along with a heaping mound of shredded spinach, and season with garlic and basil.

Another long-time favorite is sweet potato pie. It starts with a crust of semolina, barley and shredded carrots. Within the crust, I place a mixture of sweet potato, honey, lemon, HP sauce Parmesan, and cashews rather than the usual pecan – a habit begun because of the high cost of pecans but continued in our latter days of relative affluence because of the smoother taste. On top of this mixture, I place a layer of wheat germ, and whatever cheese is at hand on top of that. I often serve it with sausages and roast potato, but it can easily be a vegetarian meal by itself.

Then there’s my Greek meal. It begins with saganaki, or kefaloteri cheese rolled in egg and semolina, fried with constant flipping in olive oil, and served with a capful of lemon juice. On the side, I do whole wheat pita bread baked in an oven – never fried! — and spread with either butter or humous. The main course is dolmathes (grape vine leaves stuffed with meat, cheese, rice and sometimes a bit of carrot, as my whimsy takes me, and topped with an egg lemon or pesto sauce), potatoes roasted in butter, lemon juice and dill, spanakopita (spinach, feta cheese, and spices wrapped in phyllo pastry), and – just for contrast – unadorned peas and corn. Ideally, the meal is served with retsina, the rotgut resinous wine that you either adore or hate at first sip (I adored).

A couple of years ago, I added a meal based on Spanish tapas I’d enjoyed at the now closed El Patio restaurant at the edge of Vancouver’s Yaletown district. The main dish, which has deviated so far from its origins that I no longer have a name for it) consists of shredded ham and a mixture composed of equal amounts of semolina and Parmesan, as well as rosemary, garlic, and a hearty splash of red wine. I knead this mixture into small balls, which I coat with pesto or fine herb sauce, then bake in the oven. I serve the dish with potat bravas, or diced potato baked or fried in olive oil until just short of crispy, then baked for another ten minutes with a mixture of tomato sauce and mustard with paprika and cayenne pepper.

These aren’t all my special meals. In homage to my ancestry, I used to do a mean Yorkshire pudding, although I haven’t made it for a while. I also do a risotto, three bean chile, meat loaf, and turkey fillet in a lemon-honey sauce, all with my own original touches. However, the four described in detail are the ones I’m proudest of, and most likely to serve to a guest or bring along to a potluck. I’m very far from an expert chef, but, with these four meals, I’ve improvised enough to make them distinctly mine.

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