I'm in the ZONE - stop interrupting me!

We humans have this incredible ability to enter a certain mental space, the zone if you will, when we are heavily involved in problem solving of creativity. I first noticed it when I was 14 years old. I had learned BASIC programming on the Sinclair ZX-81 computer. It had a 8-bit Z-80 microprocessor running at 3.25 MHz, and only 1 KB of RAM. Let's just say that it wasn't very fast at all.

I was trying to make a Space Invaders-style game and found that the interpreted BASIC language was just too slow. I decided to make the game using Assembly. At 14, that was a monumental undertaking. After a few months, ....

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Asciidocs Could Change Everything for Technical Writing

After my last article on tools, I found myself wanting to go more in depth with Asciidocs and compare it to a typical Help Authoring Tool (HAT) or WYSIWYG, such as Microsoft Word. I will go over some of the features and benefits of Asciidocs over other writing systems.

• Ease of Use Makes it Quicker
• Works on Any OS
• Infinite Table of Contents
• Content Reuse
• Multiple Outputs

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TechComm - So Many Tools!

As a seasoned senior technical writer, I often get asked about this tool or that tool. I'm asked if I think they should switch over to this new program.

There are so many tools! I know that this is true in almost every industry, but I will just focus on the field of technical writing. Sure, those tools can help and many are just downright cool. But, some of them do pretty much the same thing.

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The Technical Writer Just Saved My Quality Control

Many people confuse Quality Assurance (QA) with Quality Control (QC). But, put quite simply, QA relates to processes, while QC relates to products. For instance, a QA department may perform the same overall processes to monitor the company's R&D processes, but, 90% of what they do centers around testing of products. That testing is QC.

But, what does a technical writer have to do with QC, you may ask. Well, let me give you an example. Let's say that John is a programmer and he is working .....

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