ffeathers — a technical writer’s blog

I’ve just finished re-reading The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C Clarke, published in 1979. A lot of people know him as SF-writer extraordinaire. Some would recognise his visionary engineering insights too. We might even acknowledge him as a pretty reasonable technical writer But did you know he was into Web 2.0 as well?

In The Fountains of Paradise, chapter 34 “Vertigo”, there are a by-the-way few paragraphs where the author explores the “development of global information systems” that might have occurred by the year 2142, when the book is set. He guesses there might be some automated solution for annoying tasks like sending birthday wishes to all your friends And then he goes on to say:

But the same technology that had eliminated one set of tasks had created even more demanding successors. Of these, perhaps the most important was the design of the Personal Interest Profile.

Most men updated their PIP on New Year’s Day, or their birthday. Morgan’s list contained fifty items; he had heard of people with hundreds. They must spend all their waking hours battling with the flood of information…

Hallo syndication, RSS and information overload. Alas, the ultimate engineer did not mention a solution to the problem. Perhaps we will have found one by 2142.

Fountains in Darling Harbour, Sydney:

Documentation answers all the big questions of life: How did I get here? What’s it all about? How do I do it? What’s next?

This leads to the inescapable conclusion that documentation is at the centre of the life, the universe and everything.

Even if all it says is: ‘Wrong way — go back’.

I’ve just acquired a Laptop Lap Desk. It’s a cool accessory. Lap heat rash is now a thing of the past

But this blog post is not about the Lap Desk. It’s the packaging which caught my fancy. Take a look at the Australian distributor’s trademark:

First law of commerce: Make sure they know who you are.

Second law of anything: Have fun while you’re doing it.

Happy holidays everyone, and het allerbeste voor een fantastisch 2008. My father made this candlestick and sent it all the way from Cape Town.

Today I did a stone sculpture workshop at the Brookvale Ceramic Studio. It was awesome. This blog post has nothing to do with wikis. Instead, it’s about something that’s a bit harder to undo once you’ve done it. ‘Written in stone’ they say — but you do have a few hours before this particular type of stone sets.

I’ve never done anything like it before. A friend said, Do you want to try stone sculpture. So I went along, armed with an idea of what I’d like to carve, plus my lunch, old clothes and some closed-in shoes. The lunch and attire were as instructed in the studio’s leaflet. The vague idea was based on the picture on this book cover:

Above: Cover of ‘Educating Eve’ by Geoffrey Sampson, published by Cassell, showing Egyptian figurine from about 4000 BC. © British Museum.

We were met by our instructress, Nola. She’s great - professional, skilled, fast with ideas and designs, and when the pressure hits she’s as cool as a cucumber. At times, this came in very useful. Beginners all, we tended to lose noses, fingers and toes. Not our own, of course, but those of our under-construction masterpieces.

I thought I would find a rough-hewn chunk of stone waiting for me at my work table. But no — there was a a bag of cement mix, a couple of buckets and a spatula:

For the first hour, we played with cement mud. It was a bit like making an apple-crumble pie — start with the dry ingredients and add the wet ones slowly, rubbing the mixture continuously to keep it crumbly. Then it got wetter, and it was more like mixing the icing for a cake. We had to aim for that consistency when the icing will form a nice gooey clump, but won’t flow off the edge of the cake. Or, if you’re not into baking, think of the sea sand just on the edge of the waves. It looks dry, but when you press it the water seeps out.

This part was very hard work. As the mixture got wetter, it got heavier. And we had to ferret out all the lumps and all the dry bits. At last, we could pat it all into a box:

While the cement mix was drying, we drew our designs on paper and then practised carving them on soap:

After about an hour, the stone was ready for the real fun to start. First we drew our design onto the stone with pencil. Then we used knives, spoons, and a variety of wooden and metal instruments to carve out the shape and designs we wanted. This took the rest of the day. In all, we were there from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The stone got progressively harder as time went on. It was interesting to feel the difference in the texture, and the change in the way the hardening stone reacted to being scraped, cut and molded.

Nola went from person to person, giving a helping hand here and a hint there. Forming, shaping, advising and consoling, plus sweeping away the scrapings and telling us about techniques we might use when we’re further down the sculpting path, she didn’t seem to sit still for an instant. Here’s my sculpure at a fairly early stage, with the trial bar of soap next to it:

What I really enjoyed was the way my design changed and gained its own character as we worked on it. Here’s the end product:

Above: Front and back views of my sculpture. Actual size: 37cm high and 22 cm wide.

There were five of us in the class. Here are my classmates’ sculptures:

Above: Cathy’s sculpture. Stands upright.

Above: Heather’s sculpture. Bowl in left-hand side will contain water and maybe a couple of frogs.

Above: Rachel’s sculpture. Two nooks on top (not shown here) can hold candles.

Above: Mark’s sculpture.

At the end of the day, we were tired and happy. And we got to take the practice bar of soap home too, which was good because I surely felt like I needed it!

Studio details: Nola, Brookvale Ceramic Studio, 11/9 Powells Road, Brookvale, NSW, Australia. Phone: (02) 9905 0264.