This really was one of the cooler assignments I’ve had to do so far for my Master’s program. I was required to go wardriving in my neighborhood and write-up my findings on “conducting the wireless survey,” which is just PC-speak for wardriving. So without further adieu, here is what I submitted for the assignment, with some minor edits, plus a bonus mention of a possible business venture/idea.

A couple other things to mention before starting in on the meat of things…

• This certainly isn’t ground-breaking research into the world of wireless network security. Other than the statistics from my survey, all of the information here has been widely known for some time. In fact, I could very well even have made some errors in my statements. Please let me know if I did by leaving a comment.
• I’ve added some more info via links at the bottom of the article. Feel free to check those out if you want to know learn more about wireless networks and/or wardriving.
• Until the end of post, the headings below are just the questions that needed to be addressed as part of my assignment. I could probably make them sound better for a blog post, SEO, etc., but I didn’t. Deal with it.
• In case you happen to be interested in copying my content for your own use, please don’t. I’m posting this here after the assignment deadline so at least no one from my class can plagiarize, but I really hope that won’t happen for any subsequent sections of the class or any other reason. Feel free to use it as information, but don’t do a copy+paste on it for your own purposes.

Describe your survey area in a short paragraph.

The area survey covered an approximately 2.7 mile stretch of the northern portion of the Groesbeck Neighborhood of Lansing, MI. The survey was conducted by driving the route shown below.

The path can be followed by a combination of the arrows and letter-based “destinations.” (The starting ‘A’ is behind the ‘G’ towards the lower right.) The survey included driving through the two noted apartment complexes indicated on the map, as well as on Lake Lansing Road, which has several businesses along either side.

Open VIStumbler on your mobile computer and determine how many wireless access points are found in your survey area and how many are active. Include a screen shot of the VIstumbler screen showing most of the found access points.

The screenshot does not indicate any of the active access points from the survey due to safety concerns of creating a screenshot while driving. However, several of the APs were noted as active while conducting the survey. A full screenshot of all the APs detected during the survey can be viewed at:

http://www.screencast.com/t/YTA1YWMx

How many access points did you find?

A total of 156 access points were detected while conducting the survey.

What percentage, or number, of the wireless access points was unsecured?

Of the access points surveyed, 39 (25%) had no security setup at all.

What percentage, or number, of the wireless access points was secured by encryption? (WEP is displayed even if it is secured by another method.)

The remaining 117 (75%) of detected access points had at least some form of encryption. The breakdown of encryption types is as follows:

Please recommend what the users should do to their wireless access points.  Include recommendations for securing the access.

In order to ensure proper security for a wireless access point, some form of adequate encryption should be turned on in order to gain access to the network. Adequate encryption no longer includes using wired equivalent privacy (WEP). Using WEP for wireless security can be cracked in minutes, allowing malicious attackers to easily gain access to the network. At a minimum, WPA encryption should be used, with WPA2 providing the highest grade of wireless encryption for general residential use. In either case, Personal WPA/WPA2 encryption using a pre-shared key (PSK)/personal mode requires a pass phrase of at least 20 characters to ensure adequate protection from cracking.

A final note is that if the user is not making use of wireless connectivity for their home network, either the wireless transmission from the router should be turned off or the AP should be entirely shutdown. This can be done either on a temporary or permanent basis.

What can the owner do to maintain open access and protect their home networks from this open access?

There are some methods of obfuscation that can be put to use on home networks in order to prevent light attempts to gain network access while maintaining an open access point. The first is to hide or not broadcast the service set identifier (SSID) for the AP. Any client trying to gain access to a wireless network needs to know the SSID in order to connect. However, the SSID, even if it is not broadcast, can still easily be discovered. Secondly, wireless APs can often restrict access to devices with approved/known MAC addresses. Any device without an approved MAC address will be rejected from authenticating on to the network. Again, any sophisticated attacker would be able to readily discover an approved MAC address and spoof it in order to penetrate the network. Just about any contemporary access point should have software that allows both of these features.

There are slightly more rigorous methods of protecting the network with an open access point. Using a virtual private network (VPN) is one of those methods. With a VPN connection, security is independent of the transmission path. Even if an attacker has gained access to the network, it would not be able to decrypt any of the traffic across the network. Another method would be to use a separate virtual LAN (VLAN) for the wireless devices. This would prevent any wireless connections from being able to communicate with any other devices outside the VLAN. This would allow any switched/hardwired connected devices to remain free of traffic interception from the open wireless network. Both of these methods usually require more sophisticated AP management software than what is typically provided by home use AP manufacturers. One recommendation would be to replace the AP’s firmware with DD-WRT software to enable this functionality. See http://dd-wrt.com for more information.

Amazing Business Idea!!!11oneone111

After seeing so many open/unprotected wireless networks lying around my ‘hood, I think there is a business opportunity for someone to improve the security situation. Chances are there would be a bit of education involved in getting people to understand the importance of proper security on their network and the risks of not using decent encryption. However, in the interest in making sure my neighbors are adequately protected from anyone wishing to get access to their networks, I think it would be worth the effort… for a small fee, of course.

Additional Information

As mentioned above, I used VIStumbler as the software tool of choice for conducting the survey. It works on Vista and Windows 7. It’s older cousin, NetStumbler is what I used a while back on Windows XP. If you need something for Mac or Linux, try KisMAC or Kismet respectively. There also plenty of other free wireless survey tools.

There are certainly ethical implications of wardriving that you should be aware of before attempting to detect wireless networks. If you really get into it, you should learn warchalking to share your findings with others.

As noted above, hiding the SSID for your wireless access point is NOT an adequate form of protection from attackers. Be careful and make sure to protect your data, privacy and sanity.

Has anyone else gone wardriving recently? Share what you found in your neighborhood by making a comment below. Thanks for reading!

Menlo is a software development firm that primarily focuses on consulting-based projects. It started up in 2001 by four partners. One of those partners was Rich Sheridan, who is Menlo’s president and guided us on the tour. Upon arriving (despite the heavy rains) we all piled into their “lobby” area. We were greeted by Rich who gave us a brief history of how Menlo started and some of his background about why he started the company. Then, at 10:00 on the dot, a buzzer went off in the back area where we heard constant hustle a bustle the whole time we were up front. Stand-up time!

And Now For Something Completely Different

We were brought back as everyone was working themselves into a large circle that was forming around the work area. Our group of 15 was assimilated, almost adding half again the size of the entire Menlo staff (could be off here, didn’t actually count, but sure seemed that way). Passing a large-horned Viking helmet around, pairs of people stated what they worked on since the last stand-up (i.e., the day before). Once all the Menlo people were done, it was our turn. Being we already do stand-ups everyday, we gave our status update and passed the helmet without skipping a beat. Oddly, no one really flinched at me saying I “nuked the current sprint” for one of my teams as part of my report. 12 minutes and 45-50 people later, we were done. Everyone went back to work. Rich started in on the meat of the tour.

Now as people were sitting back down, we got to take stock of their office arrangement. It was literally just tables, computers and chairs. No cubes, no doors, no offices, no walls period… Okay, I mean internal walls… in their work area. It’s a VERY open environment, which explained all the “noise” we heard during the tour introduction. You can basically hear what anyone is saying from anywhere on the factory floor, as they call their work space. Definitely different from all the environments I’ve ever worked in, but certainly seemed kind of neat to be setup that way. My first thought was that being a relatively small company certainly helps to allow that, but I’ll get to the biggest element of their “seating chart” in a moment.

Primarily acting as a ScrumMaster in my current role, having a PMP cert and being generally interested in process related to creating software, the next part is where I really wanted to hear about how Menlo works. Rich proceeded to walk us through how Menlo Innovations creates solutions for their clients. Amazingly, it’s not just sit down and bang out a bunch of code. There is a TON of process behind their efforts.

Menlo practices a form of software development known as Extreme Programming (or XP). XP is one flavor of what are known as Agile methodologies and it has several key traits. Menlo adheres to those traits very judiciously, keeping in line with XP’s mantra of “if some is good, more is better.” No production code is written without having a second person working with you at a paired workstation. In fact, with very few exceptions, there are only paired workstations across the entire company. There are no personal workspaces, desks, what have you. The team working on a project or even as a pair are liquid, and there is at least weekly shuffling of resources to adjust for the various project schedules.

Menlo is also extremely disciplined in the other areas of XP. Comments are not put in code; the code needs to speak for itself. Unit tests need to be wherever and whenever possible (they claim95% code coverage with their tests). Additionally, they make use of continuous integrations for their builds, QA follows immediately behind development. Work is organized as prioritized and estimated user stories which are written on paper and pinned up to a cork board in 1-week iterations (increments). There are other elements and nuances, but those are the big ones in my mind.

I suppose your initial reaction could be: Woah! That’s a lot of rules for a process that calls itself “Agile.” On a cursory glance, I get that, but let me dig in a little further after I wrap up the tour. The whole time, we were constantly peppering Rich with our questions. He either fielded them with thoughtful answers or handed several of them off to other employees; usually questions from developers to developers. Everyone at Menlo knows their process very well, so they all could generally deliver the answer Rich was expecting, even if it took them a moment to catch their bearings to be interrupted and put on the spot. And as Rich declared when we first began, we would have more questions than time. But, I would declare we ended up with a great conversation between us and them considering the relatively short time we were there.

Field Trip in Review

As already noted, what it was that Menlo shared with us on the tour, is exactly the type of stuff I’m interested in professionally. Just seeing another company in action creating software and trying to do it on time, while accomplishing the right goals and solving the right problems was extremely cool and insightful. I believe it’s safe to say everyone from our group had the same impression, albeit for potentially varying reasons. Big hats off to Menlo for their generosity in opening their doors, which they’ve done since the company’s inception. (Fun side note: they codename all their projects that have wall boards up on the walls so they don’t reveal actual client names during tours. Clearly a bit of creativity was put behind picking the codenames.)

As far as major takeaways from the excursion, I’m still trying to pin down specific things I feel I could try with my teams. I think something’s there, I just don’t know what that is and I don’t want to force anything if it doesn’t make sense. Granted, teams at my company are usually actively working on improving our processes and learning new ways, which is why so many of us went to Menlo in the first place. There are a couple items worthy of note, though.

Menlo as an entire organization seems to be quite tyrannical with itself in maintaining discipline over the key elements of their process. And from my view, that’s a good thing. Rich shared a story of an intern yelling at one of the company’s first employees over putting a comment in the code. They keep every single sheet of paper that has a completed user story from every week-long iteration of every project they’ve ever worked on. What I glean from that is really the discipline of using their process is what makes Menlo successful. They could using a totally different methodology (Scrum, RUP, Lean, Kanban, etc.) and as long as they maintained that same level of strict discipline, I bet things would work just as well for them. I couldn’t get myself to say that out loud while we were there, though. They’ve been doing XP since Day 1, and I wasn’t exactly sure how sheltered their lives were in knowing about the existence of other ways to do what they do.

Second, their frequent shifting of resources from one project to another seemed cool. It’s the mandatory pairing that enables that shifting. Having one person you can immediately sit with who has context/knowledge to share with you essentially eliminates pure ramp-up periods. That even goes for new hires, who get a 5-minute introduction then start writing production code right away. We’ve done some of that resource sharing of late. It’s been more along the lines of a person or two, or creating an ad hoc team from different existing teams to research, but I think it’s still in the same vein and has provided benefits in every recent case.

A final thought is that while the general concerns are the same (e.g., make great software), a primarily consulting-focused environment as opposed to making commercial software products presents some differences in how effective specific approaches can be. As far as determining what to work on for the next iteration, it’s relatively easy to go directly to the specified stakeholder on the client side to get that priority set versus divining from hundreds of thousands of users who may or may not be giving you their feedback as to what they want in the next version. Likewise, the notion of billable hours lends itself to more clearly defining accountability to get planned work done.

I don’t say any of that to make excuses, build up a wall of differences or even say Menlo has it “so easy”… I’ve done consulting, so I would never say it’s easy. I’m merely pointing out that’s a current hang-up I have in translating elements of the process in their environment into reasonable facsimiles in my environment. Obviously, things like pair programming and unit test coverage don’t need a lot of translating, but I’m looking for more subtle tweaks that will continue our forward progress. Maybe I shouldn’t. I’m also not looking for a silver bullet. Not even Menlo claims those exist.

Conclusion

Menlo Innovations is indeed extreme about their Extreme Programming. But despite all my ramblings, you should really see it in action for yourself. They provide free monthly tours of their operation, and I highly suggest you take them up on the offer. We got a special “just us” tour, but I’m not sure how that all worked out. I was just along for the ride and rather enjoyed it.

Plus, I’m intentionally keeping some of my thoughts about the trip to myself. I don’t want to even attempt to recreate the whole experience and spoil it for you. I would be very interested to see if some of your observations line up with mine or if you completely disagree. If you are so incited either way, drop a comment below or hit my contact page to send me a message.

This probably would have been written better if I was paired with someone, but thanks for reading anyway!

Now that my brain is full of all sorts of neat ideas to save time, money and sanity while enjoying it all, I need to share some of these with you my loyal readers. I recommend the following for all three of you. Some of these go to other sites, but I found them first on Lifehacker.

• Google Calendar goodness (and stop the no scheduled events emails)
  Good read on making use of Google’s handy Calendar application.
• Top 10 Network Utilities
  Fun list for the geekier crowd. Coming in at #2, DD-WRT router firmware is something I’ve been meaning to try on my wireless router for some time. And earning the #1 spot, I’ve been making use of Hamachi for nearly 2 years now and highly recommend it for extremely easy and secure VPN connections.
• Mastering the Windows Key
  This is a good one for any computer user. Despite debate and evidence to the contrary, I’m a firm believer in the keyboard being faster than the mouse at least in such cases as covered in this short video clip. I already use all of these shortcuts to save time navigating Windblows (aka, Windows).
• Use Google Calendar for Long Term Memory
  Another Google Calendar article, but with a twist. This covers recording stuff in the past for future reference.
• Retirement Savings: Setting up a Roth IRA
  Some good info on getting your Roth IRA going. (from Get Rich Slowly)
• Apply the 80/20 Rule to Your Life
  It’s a widely held economic theory that 80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes. That theory has been extrapolated to many different areas. This article applies it to your life.
• Launch: Parallels v3.0 Now Available
  I’m still not a Mac fan, by any means, but this Parallels software keeps pushing me. To have a solid Unix based system with a professional GUI AND be able to easily run the obligatory Windows apps sounds very appeal. Oh, wait… they’re still outrageously expensive. All the same, it’s interesting to read what’s going on there.
• Delete a Locked File in Windows
  I’ve wanted/tried to do this on numerous occasions. The Geeks Are Sexy blog tells you how.
• Da Vinci’s Streamwriting Technique
  I haven’t read through all of this one yet, but I think this is supposed to help you get your thoughts out on paper (or text editor) to help you achieve your goals. Let me know if it works!
• Simple Way to Save: The 60% Solution
  This article isn’t quite as drastic as it sounds. It’s a good read on how to avoid over-managing you finances and still have plenty for savings, retirement, plus some fun money even after all the bills are paid.
• Finances: Devote 15 Minutes a Day to Frugality
  Megan would probably claim that I spend hours on frugality everyday, but these are some good money-savings tips. Check out the rest of The Simple Dollar for more great financial tips.

Okay, those are some recent highlights. Head on over to Lifehacker.com to read more fun tips.

It’s a month old now, but I’ve been meaning to write on this post that, from its title, claimed to be a tutorial on Unix-based command line redirection. I use *nix systems on a regular basis, and I actually got suckered into clicking to this article. It was a waste of time. And then I got even annoyed by thinking about things on a deeper level. I hate thinking.

The post literally mentions the most elementary use of the > and >> operators, and that’s it. That alone is not a waste. Redirection is indeed a powerful capability, and it’s good to spread word to the masses about its usefulness. However, there is a bit more to command line redirection, and the fact that the author provided no other information about it is a shame. And that leads to my main point…

Selfish blogs suck.

In all fairness, the post in question and the site are coming from the Mac OS X point of view, where the target audience may not necessarily be command line fanatics. (Not getting into any anti-Mac talk here. Only saying the average Mac user likely does not use the command line often, if at all.) However, my issue is not just with the limited scope, but with the selfishness of the article.

If the intention is indeed to teach newbies (and not just make money from ads), shouldn’t one combine some concepts that might not otherwise be thought of by the reader on their own? I realize there are people who automatically fire off the RTFM response, but the supposed target audience will not even know where TFM is. Go ahead and leave extra stuff out of your post if you have not the time or desire to add it, but show the readers where they can find it! Don’t leave them stuck on your site if you’re only going to tell a part of the story. Alas, what I can only see as the desire for a few extra pennies from AdSense got in the way of an otherwise decent tutorial. No, let’s call it a tip. Which brings home my second point…

If you’re going to teach someone to fish, show them more than just how to tie a hook on the line.

Such a limited post with no hints at more information is not only selfish, but it doesn’t do the reader much good. The very first comment on the post sums this up nicely. The commenter, a self-proclaimed idiot in command line use, thanks the author for the “insight”, and then asks why/how they would use this. Even better, a responder offers a cryptic g++ execution as if to suffice as an example. I really doubt someone asking about command line redirection recognizes such compiler calls from the shell.

If the original poster had simply added a few outside sources (see below), it could have been a vastly more valuable post. Other than a quick “try it out” at the end, there is no hint that other facets to redirection exist. What about a suggestion to add & to the end of the command to run the job in the background? Unfortunately, I see this “Quick! Let’s post something, anything!” approach all too often in the blogging-for-dollars world that exists these days. Even more disappointing is when the major aggregator sites validate theses types of posts by put putting them on their popular pages, which is exactly where I found it.

Sure, no one (especially, yours truly) is perfect, and the blog that is the current target of my angst is by no means the worst offender of such things. Also, by nature, the Web is a tangled mess of all sorts of good and bad “stuff.” I just like to think these grumpy, old man posts I make every so often might do something to create more good than bad. In the end, if you happened to read this whole thing, remember to follow the spirit of the World Wide Web and make sure to spread around the link love. It makes everything more useful and me a little less grumpy.

Oh, if you came to actually find out more about command line redirection, please check out these EXTERNAL links:

• I/O Redirection from the Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide
• Redirection and Process Substitution
• Wikipedia Article for Bash (the default OS X shell – with segment on Redirection)

And, should you desire to be a better blogger, try these on for size:

• Zen and the Art of Remarkable Blogging
• How to make ‘related articles’ for your blog

Google Reveals Trade Secrets

Okay, so they didn’t really. Grady’s talk and slideshow were rather mundane, actually. The Ann Arbor office is Google’s headquarters for it’s online sales division, so he discussed AdWords and some fluffy stuff about why Google chose Michigan for its new location. The event was put on by the Lansing Ad Club, so it was definitely more geared towards marketing professionals than anything. And honestly, I think any marketer that was already using the AdWords product would have gained little, if anything, from the presentation.

At the same time, it was interesting to hear some about the inner workings of Google and how they keep an entrepreneurial spirit alive in such a large company. Apparently, their new office has been broken up to represent regions (by latitude) of Michigan and the conference rooms on each floor have been named after cities in the regions. He also shared some personal stories of current employees to show they are actually hiring people coming out of the state’s colleges. Then, he went into a more forward-looking segment, talking about connecting with those who have yet to experience 24/7 Internet. I wrote down a few of the numbers he shared in talking about user-proliferation, but I don’t feel liking digging up my sheet of notes. Suffice to say, they were rather impressive.

In summary, considering the $35 entrance fee, I personally didn’t really get my money’s worth out of the event. The one take-away idea I did get was that AdWords can be used to test the popularity of various search terms. The reports from those keywords can then be used to determine tweaks to you website, brochures and other marketing materials. That’s an excellent tactic I’ve already added to my arsenal. People say getting one useful notion out of such a presentation is a good thing, so I guess it was good I went.

Spring Arbor Drama Brings Holocaust Play to East Lansing

The second event of the evening was a play put on by the Spring Arbor University Drama Department. “Meeting in Munich” was written by an SAU professor, but I don’t remember his name now. The work begins with a condensed and translated speech by Adolph Hitler. The professor played Hitler and read the speech in a manner worthy of the original madman. It made all of the old films clips of Hitler’s speeches even more frightening to actually here the translated version spoken as opposed to subtitles. Not that this was the first I realized, but I was very much reminded of how deranged the man was.

The second half of the play was 6 years prior to the speech by Hitler. It depicted a scene the was likely prevalent throughout Germany. A split congregation in a Catholic church argued over allowing the integration of their youth groups into the Hitler Youth, a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. With stormtroopers marching in formation at the onset of the service, there was obvious support for Hitler amongst the church members. Others were greatly concerned that their children were being sucked into an ungodly and unsafe organization by a man who thought himself God of Deutschland. It ended with those speaking out against the Grand Chancellor being escorted from the church for questioning.

For a group of student thespians, this was a very powerful presentation of an extremely sensitive piece of history. There was a question/comment session after the performance, and one of the audience members said she found herself not breathing at times. There was a definite intensity to the acting.

Then, our pastor shared something that I can imagine stuck with quite a few people. He mentioned how the current state of the world (school shootings, wars, genocides, etc.) leaves him more and more seeking absolutes to restore order to all the chaos that surrounds us. But, the play showed him how Hitler and the Nazis used promise of absolutes and order to post-Word War I Germany to get the citizens to buy into his plans. That haunted Pastor, and it haunted me. What was even more frightening was that in trying to choke down the Tom Delay biography, he says something disturbingly similar:

There is a God and, because this is true, there is absolute moral truth.

That just sent chills up my spine. While I certainly could make an entirely different post on that subject alone, let me just say I was all the more thankful that man was eliminated from making any more substantial impacts in American politics. Let’s hope it stays that way.

So, that was my evening. Google and Nazis. Not a likely combination, but certainly thought provoking all the same.

So endeth the lesson.

User Generated Media by the Numbers

Now that UGM has broken into the mainstream, there is a lot of analysis being performed on the available data. Hitwise US generates a good chunk of such statistics.

Hitwise sampled 10 million Internet users and found traffic to YouTube exceeded the combined visits count to all four of the broadcast network sites by 500%. In the Hitwise Music category, MySpace increased its related traffic by over four times to 23%. Similar sites and bands taking MySpace into their own hands continues to usurp the powers of the giant record labels. Isn’t it great?!!

User Created Content in 2007

Where does all this leave us? Well, despite the big buyouts taking place in the social network arena, I believe it’s still rather difficult to fully quantify the value of all this content and traffic. However, when such serious cash is involved, you can bet your bottom dollar plenty are going to be trying to take advantage of it. We’ll see more ways to directly and indirectly pull money out of social networks and their unique content. We’re already starting to see end-users earning cash for content. That will likely make things a little less altruistic, but it’s nice to see the little guy get something for his or her efforts.

So really the question boils down to, is it better to be the next YouTube maker or the next YouTube user? I think I know my answer.

I read this article for two reasons:

1) I’ve been (very, very) slowly working my way towards fluency in Ruby. This was primarily brought about by joining the Ruby on Rails trial bandwagon. That initial motivation has since been taken over an actual desire to learn more about this great programming language.

2) After reading a great deal of Paul Graham articles, he made me curious about Lisp. Paul used Lisp to create the very first e-commerce site. That application was later sold to Yahoo! and became what is now Yahoo! Stores. If I remember correctly, the code base has since been migrated off Lisp, somewhat to Paul’s lament and much to Yahoo!’s chagrin. (side note: I find it humorous, Paul still uses the Yahoo! “Y logo” for the favicon on his site.)

I certainly don’t “know” Lisp, but the big deal I keep reading about it is being able to write macros. Macros give you, among other things, the ability to create your own mini-languages for specific tasks. Eric goes through this much better than I, so I recommend you read his article for a better technical discussion. At the same time, I’m well aware of the power of this capability, and Ruby definitely seems to have most of it already under its belt.

This was an interesting read to see the two languages I’m most curious about these days stacked up against each other. I had been unsuccessful in wrapping my head around some of the syntax and abilities of Lisp before seeing this article. I’m still working on things, but maybe I’ll become a real hacker one day and actually learn Lisp. Ruby is all I’ve got for now.

All right, so I wasn’t actively seeking out anything on writing. I just happened to stumble upon a couple decent articles in a relatively short amount of time. Lucky me! There have been other articles I’ve seen lately, but these two stuck with me for some reason. That might mean they could be useful. Heh, something useful… the Internet continues to surprise me in new ways.

Writing on Technical Writing

The first I article I ran across was Amy Hoy’s post on the Five Sins of Tech Writing. I believe I’ve seen some of Amy’s articles regarding Ruby on Rails, but I apparently never hung around to check out her other posts. She’s a very thoughtful and well-typed author. She’s even working on a book, and her blog indicates it would be a very decent read. Amy is also a UI designer, so her Slash7 site is a nice bit of eye candy on its own.

The point of Amy’s article is that anyone who’s read any amount of technically based “literature” has surely come across some that totally did not do the job. She basically says unless you are someone who absorbs any style of writing in one pass, you likely have serious problems with the state of tech writing as a whole. I certainly cannot disagree with her.

Technical writing is truly one of the most difficult types of reading for just about anyone. I can’t count the number of times I have failed to get all the way through or feel I didn’t get as much out of the text as I should have. Amy breaks the problems of technical writing into 5 key factors:

• Losing the reader
• Making the reader feel stupid
• Failing to stick
• Being a total bore
• Not providing much-needed context

She then goes into detail on each problem area. The only thing missing are reasonable solutions to the issues. However, Amy knows this and is saving solutions for a later post. Head over and see the original article, so you’re ready to read the “answers” once they become available.

Writing and Thinking More Clearly… and Checking Your Math

The second decent article I read on writing and related subjects was actually a webified PowerPoint presentation. It’s titled “How to Write More Clearly, Think More Clearly, and Learn Complex Material More Easily.” This is a presentation created by Dr. Michael Covington from the the University of Georgia. For me, slide shows can often be as tedious as most technical writing. This set of “slides”, however, get my attention.

Dr. Covington does indeed clearly write out how to do everything advertised in the title. He provides a solid review of the steps to writing effectively and clearly. He covers planning, drafting, revising, editing and even some tips on formating. While, most of us learned these in grammar classes starting in elementary school, it never hurts to review. It’s a great reminder for all those rules that I know I rarely think about consciously.

There was one overlooked flaw in this section, however. This involved the use of some quasi-algebraic “factoid” when discussing writing revisions. In Slide 29, Covington writes:

Time taken to process and n-word sentence is proportional to n³, or more.

Now, I’m pretty sure he could have picked a different letter for his description than “n” and still proved his point. I realize he’s 99.99999999% likely to have meant absolutely nothing by it, but it just seemed weird to me. Surely, I’m not the only person who has read that and tilted their head in reflective pause, even for a second. Has anyone ever asked him to swap in an ‘x’, ‘y’ or ‘m’ instead? Likely totally meaningless, but I had to point it out.

Anyway… The presentation then slides (pun intended) into thinking more clearly. This area covers use of language, logic and epistemology. The language portion involves Covington’s statement that we use language (on some level) to do the majority of our thinking. If we can’t understand the language, we’re going to have difficulties thinking about something. The end result is to beware of “talking about things without knowing what they are.” Know anyone who does this? Possibly yourself?

Okay. I admit it. I have. Yikes!

Dr. Covington, then transitions the language discussion into use of logic, and then epistemology. Epistemology, the study of how to acquire knowledge, or as I call it, learning how to learn, is something I feel is essential to continued intellectual growth. I consider college to be the final chance to be taught how to learn. After that, most people are on their own.
This brings the presentation to its final section on how to learn more easily. Covington mentions three tools for easier learning:

1. Use a suitable learning strategy.
2. Insist on clear understanding.
3. Organize the knowledge for yourself.

Different situations call for different learning strategies, if you don’t have clearly understanding you cannot learn more, and organizing knowledge is unique to the individual. I suppose writing this post is my own way of organizing all this information. And yes, I do believe I might even understand it a little better than I did.

I’ve already pointed you to the HTML version of the presentation, but if you want other forms, you can go to the presentation’s main page to get it in a PowerPoint .ppt or Adobe PDF format.

Happy writing, thinking and learning!