So I have just had the pleasure of spending some 2 and a bit hours installing Adobe’s CS4 range of applications. Talk about take a while, but at least it was done. I then had to spend over an hour uninstalling CS3

I plan to have a play around with the new 3D effects that Flash offers, plus I’ll have a closer look at some favorites including Photoshop, Fireworks and Premiere. But so far so good I’m liking the new application layout and I see they have taken a leaf from Google and maximized space by getting rid of the title bar.

It will be interesting to see if the same theme is implemented for TCS 2. I suspect it will be.

I saw this posted by Alan over at Palimpsest and thought I have to include this here.

Now this is either a very creative tech. writer or someone with way to much time on their hands, or both.

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. I have been really busy and in all honestly I haven’t had much to blog about.

However, today I found a great article by Cathy Moore called Dump the Drone. While the article is based on the production of elearning courses the same principles can be applied to the creation of documentation. I have included the presentation she created below.

She makes some good points in the presentation that addresses some of the following topics.

• What makes online content boring
• How to create compelling characters and stories
• Ideas for adding “safe” humor
• How to tighten flabby text
• The best uses for readability analysis

I posted a few days ago about Adobe being ready to announce CS4.

Well yesterday was the big day. So I signed-on at the required time to watch the launch but nothing happened. Zip, zero, zilch, nada, nothing. For 40 minutes I tried to view the launch, but all that showed up was the player window with the loading icon. I tried many times to refresh the page but still nothing. I even tried different computers.

Did anyone else manage to view it?

From my point of view that doesn’t bode well for a company pushing media and Rich Internet Applications when they can’t even get it right themselves.

I received a mysterious email yesterday that simply presented a  nice logo formed around the mysterious entry:

DITA 10-29-08

All well and good but very little else was forth coming.

I was tempted to write something about this but I found something even better over at monkeyPi regarding the very same email.

So here it is a delicious cookie recipe :

White chocolate macadamia nut cookies
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup light brown sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
8 ounces (1 1/2 cups) white chocolate baking squares, cut into small chunks, or white baking chips
3/4 cup roughly chopped, unsalted, toasted macadamia nuts

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a mixing bowl.

Beat the butter in a large mixing bowl until fluffy. Add the brown sugar and mix together until smooth.

Add the egg and vanilla. Blend in the flour mixture in 3 stages and stir in the white chocolate and the nuts.

Scoop out walnut-sized mounds of the cookie dough and place on a cookie sheet, leaving 2-inches between the mounds. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until the cookies are golden.