Daniel D. Beck
I write documentation and I program, so I know lots of ways to use a semicolon.
Also, I am making bread, learning Dutch, and doing other normal human activities.
🇺🇸 in 🇳🇱
- Reposted by Daniel D. BeckA Chicago Pope implies the existence of an MLA Pope and APA Pope
- Brief notes on astroblocking ddbeck.com/notes/2025-0...
- I liked watching Andrea Kao’s FOSS Backstage talk, particularly the way Andrea talked about the word “content”: it doesn't just diminish the work, it also diminishes the people do the work. www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmwp... I took some longer notes here: ddbeck.com/notes/dimini... #WriteTheDocs
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- Though age is possible, here's my theory of the declining "fun" of April fools' day: Between scams, dark patterns, and chasing "engagement," tricking people out of their time, attention, and money is an increasingly loud everyday experience. When a brand does April fools, they're rubbing it in.
- It's the first of the month, which is as great time as any to document something with a README file. Do it! I promise it'll be satisfying.
- Reminder: It's April 1st, so there are going to be a bunch of dumb things on the computer today.
- I took some notes on bkt, a really useful command-line stdout/stderr caching tool that makes slow processes feel fast.
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- I got to go to Now Play This a couple of times, when I lived in the UK. It's a really special thing and I'm glad it existed. I really like that this recap points out that the folks who put on Now Play This on are continuing to do other special things.
- Reposted by Daniel D. BeckIf you're critical of the US government and you are planning to cross the US border any time soon, today is a good day to review EFF's border search pocket guide: www.eff.org/document/eff...
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- Brief notes on obscure Unicode separator characters and their even more obscure printable picture characters
- I took some notes on how I really like the fish shell's abbr command and what's new about abbreviations in fish 4.0 ddbeck.com/notes/fish-s...
- Pulling back the moderation curtain a little bit with notes on how I ask people to correct their behavior, as a volunteer chat moderator for #WriteTheDocs
- Brief notes on text.makeup, @aresluna.org's very fun and educational tool for learning more about Unicode ddbeck.com/notes/text-m...
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- I wrote some notes on adding skip links to my website, which helps with keyboard (and other non-mouse) navigation ddbeck.com/notes/skip-l...
- Here's how you use Pandoc to convert text to Markdown without getting a misbegotten non-standard table syntax.
- What if something important to you disappeared from the web? Brief notes on on a zine you should read about web archiving: ddbeck.com/notes/diy-we...
- I wrote some brief notes on re-encountering the Information Process Maturity Model, what it is and comparing it with the work that I (and other writers) do now.
- I just wrapped up my talk on patterns for tech writer and open source maintainer collaboration at #FOSDEM. Thank you to my attentive audience! Go to ddbeck.com/fosdem2025/ for information on how to follow this work, additional notes, and more. I'll be updating it with the recording and slides soon.
- "Effective immediately, STC will permanently close its doors and cease all activities." As a student the Orlando chapter was a key part of getting my tech writing career started, but after graduating it felt like it represented an increasingly bygone era. It's still a shock to see it go. www.stc.org
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- Last year the NumPy project made a zine about how to contribute to NumPy. I like how it's honest about how knowledge of an open source project is shared between all users and contributors, not held centrally by a few core maintainers. heyzine.com/flip-book/3e...
- Version control is email with consequences. I wish both developers and version control tools could see version control as communication first.
- If you're a tech writer or open source maintainer (or, like me, both), come to my #FOSDEM talk in Brussels on Saturday, February 1, 2025 about how you can work together to finish the most common types of documentation projects fosdem.org/2025/schedul...
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- A note from some recent conversations about how to adopt a style guide: A style guide doesn't produce consistency. It is the artifact of a culture that values consistency.
- Weekend Dutch practice gripe: I know to expect weird exceptions while learning a language, but I hate it when I'm given a categorical rule that's immediately broken with no explanation. Don't lie to me, grammar book writers!
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- Today in things I learned by reading a specification: > Human beings on our planet have, past and present, used a number of languages. datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc...
- It's amazing how every article about a web platform feature starts with a history lesson, like it's Carl Sagan's apple pie recipe.
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- Apparently I've been put on a list of tech writers. Hi new followers! It's nice to have the company. If you're new to my work, then check out this blog post about the mythical yearning for open source docs contributions. ddbeck.com/starving-for...
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- I'm a simple man: I don't like a loading screen, but if it says "reticulating splines" I don't hate it.
