Monthly Archives: March 2003

TMA: Too Many Acronyms

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As a software developer, using acronyms is like breathing. You just do it. Eventually, you don’t even think about it. Sometimes the acronym assumes a life of its own. These special acronyms are elevated to the status of buzz words, even though they really aren’t words.

I’m working on my next article for Ars Technica, an XML primer. XML is one of those special acronyms, recognized by many but understood by few. As a buzz word, it is thrown around almost casually, as sort of a badge that says “See? I fit in, too”.

Hurling buzzwords is also geek meeting ritual, used to establish one’s position and rank. Entire conversations can be carried on without breaking a sweat.

Person 1: WTF?
Person 2: RTFM, n00b.
Person 1: STFU.

Of course, this is an extreme that usually only takes place in the ether of the Internet. Across IRC and IM (two more legendary acronyms), exchanges such as the above. This has also led to the phenomenon of this “Internet Speak” protruding beyond the digital divide.

XML, HTML, SQL, IRC, IIRC, WTF, AIM, IM, RPC, OOP, WTF, RTFM. The list is endless and evergrowing. We constantly change technology to improve our lives, but at the same time technology is changing us.

Tangent

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I’ve been trying out a plugin for MoveableType called Tangent for a while now. I’m really quite fond of it. I do need to adjust the settings a little to reduce the frequency of links, but that’s under my control.

I just installed the latest beta of it, so again, please let me know if you have any problems with it. I think it’s a neat way of interconnecting interesting people, and I’ll stay with it as long as I can.

Quick update

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I’ve been really busy the last week or so and haven’t been as diligent in updating this as I should. I’m going to just braindump a bit to get it out of my system.

Ditto has been keeping me fairly busy. We’re preparing to move into a new office. We’ll be in the same building, in a much bigger and nicer office. The task of coordinating the transition of the T1 lines, network, hardware, air conditioning and electricity for the server room. To top it off, I had to rush into work Saturday morning for a minor emergency. Luckily it turned out to be something simple.

I’m disappointed in myself. I have been working on Temperament for two months now, and I’m still working on cleaning up the first draft enough to submit to the group. I’ve got a clear idea of what I need to do to finish it, I just neeed to make the time.

I’m now writing regularly for Ars Technica. I’ve been doing the occasional review or news post, and I’ll now be doing some feature articles. I’m aiming to finish one article per month. I’ll be writing on a variety of technical articles, which will be right up my alley.

I often get distracted while writing on my primary laptop. It’s the same machine I use for work, and the availablity of my development tools, games, and email tend to have a negative effect on my word count. To that end, I picked up a shiny new iBook today. It’s ultra-portable and light, weighing in at 4.7 pounds. It has a five-hour battery life, perfect for escaping to some dark corner to write in solitude. I got a nice discount on a copy of Office X with it, so I’m totally set to write without distractions. I’m quite excited about it.