"I was an avid apple user, since the past one year I got into Android after 11 years. Android lets you go more under the hood and I'm loving it. I think I am not gonna go back to Apple anytime sooner. This, my current device is a rocker in its league."
Geese, Guides, and Good Luck Cookies 🪿📔🥠... and a (paid) Call for Writers 📝💰
It's out! Check out this month's update, including: our visit to #ATmosphereConf (feat. geese yaoi 🪿), our plans for the fortune cookies revenue 🥠, news on the GitHub Guide Beta and... A 💰PAID💰 opportunity for daring—not to mention aspiring—tech writers 📝⬇️
Growing bigger, better, and beta!
Call for hire
This month we’re once again happy to share a paid position: come forth technical writers (and aspiring such), and let us bring you on a Now Paying Money adventure!
Smithing Words📝…for Money (💰): After much time, feedback, and outlining, the “Introduction to JavaScript with NPM” articles financed through our founding campaign are ready to be written! Now we’re finally looking for technical writers (fannish background appreciated) to help us inspire new, confident explorers of everything the NPM ecosystem has to offer—and yes, we (also) mean Astro.
Check out some of the articles in our learning website for an example of what the final artifacts should look like, and get in touch if you’re up for the (paid) task! We require both basic computer knowledge and the willingness to run simple command line programs, but we don’t require previous experience with professional technical writing NOR pre-existing knowledge of NPM/JavaScript. Just send us some tutorials or other explainers you’ve written!
Smithing Videos📹…for Glory: Are you willing to wrangle video wranglers? BobaBoard’s documentation bubble is looking for a wondrous lead volunteer to coordinate our wonderful video volunteers as they turn our many, many hours of recorded web development and BobaBoard documentation into something the whole FujoVerse™ and beyond can put to good use. If you have previous experience with managing work on video, or have been part of similar work and want to build some managing experience of your own, reach out!
If any of these calls for aid sound up your alley, or if you’d like to get involved in other ways, please reach out at [email protected] or via DMs!
As someone who works under an NDA basically all of the time (I wrote maintenance for a non-USA Airforce One at one job*), the continued War Thunder leaks are so fucking funny.
Not because it's not serious. It is. But it's also SO DUMB. These people can't fucking stop themselves from proving they know about the coolest war machine even if it means literally committing some light treason.
Like. No amount of Infosec training in the world can stop them. Forum members--even those who HAVEN'T shared classified or top secret documents--can't get jobs where they have access to classified or top secret documents.
That's how hilariously terrible these people are at not needing to be the most right on the internet.
(*that was a cool fucking plane with the same out-of-box toilet as every other plane I wrote about at that job)
Hi! Thank you for doing this AMA! How did you get started in on your career path? I feel like I keep hearing either "know somebody who has faith in your ability to write technical documents" or "write technical documents for fun" both of which I'm not certain how to start.
Great question! In grade school, my friends and I were little nerds who wrote and traded stories with one another. We were giving honest feedback, learning, writing more, rinse and repeat. A couple of summers, we took writing workshop classes. We learned the general style of workshop critiquing. Being able to deliver and receive criticism is a valuable life and career skill.
Fast forward, I went to college, majored in English with an informal focus on modern literature, and took more creative writing classes! Having been in a workshop environment as a kid REALLY helped prepare me for the ones in college. Not everyone in those classes knew how to receive even very gentle criticism. Learning how to re-calibrate for them was its own learning experience. Another skill!
Fast forward again and I'm in the job market. I thankfully had a friend whose company was hiring, and that started my personal ball rolling. I got in through a friend, yes, but my career advances have been because I'm incredible. :)
But don't get it twisted. Most of the stuff in my background was completely unnecessary to getting an entry-level position. They helped me keep the job, and get more jobs, and get promotions, but nobody is expecting all that workshop experience. If you have average or higher people skills, you can teach yourself how to gently deliver the news that someone is functionally illiterate and you need to fix their work.
What you should have: a 4-year degree majoring in English, a relevant STEM field, or Communications, in that order. You should be ready to clean up a "test" document as part of your interview. You should probably pay close attention to the job description you're applying for, because 'technical documentation' is a really broad field and you need to be able to prove you're ready for whatever flavor they're asking for. Are you writing instructions (how to operate a device)? Processes (how to onboard an employee)? How much of your job will be interviews with SMEs (Subject Matter Experts)? Are you writing a new document at all or updating something that's outdated or untested? You can do some light testing of software, right?
If the interviewers are smart, they will ask you your plan when you're asked to make a new document. Have an answer ready. The information I always want first is: who is this for? Let's say it's an internal guide for some software your company uses. Is everyone on the project an engineer who's very familiar with computers? Or, is it a more generic office, where a 64-year old named Eustace will need very clear instructions on where the start button is? That information is a starting point for figuring out what your document should be.
So tl;dr: 1) Have a relevant degree. 2) Know the specifics of the position. 3) Be ready to walk interviewers through the steps you'd start taking to make a requested document.
- His goggles definitely have a blue light filter, though before he got them, his eyes were always strained and his eyesight was blurry as frick which affected his training as a cadet.
- On missions with the Batch, he was the team medic. The funny thing is no one assigned him the role, he just is.
- He knows what to do in most situations that require medical attention.
- He's no surgeon, but he can deal with battlefield wounds like no one's business in a record amount of time. (@icedcoffee101)
- HE 👏 HAS 👏 ADHD 👏👏👏
- He was really self-conscious about his hyper fixations and how much he’d talk about them, but the batch made sure he knew he could talk about them once they found out.
- ADHD mood: he can hide his emotions pretty well, but it’s absolute hell for him to, he’d gone deep into a depressive state when he was on Kamino.
- The batchers didn’t really know until his first mental breakdown after a high-stakes mission.
- After that, they always (gently) asked him about his true thoughts which lead to the normalization of him expressing his emotions.
- Tech = gay as 👏 fuck.
- Attraction to women? Never heard of her.
- Men on the other hand... *sharp inhale* (@icedcoffee101)
- After the Empire fell, he moved to Coruscant to open his own mechanic shop (it’s not very well known, but his clients are frequenters there).
- He also met his boyfriend of 3 years from the mechanic shop! His name’s Azar, he’s a pilot for the Republic, and he was *so awkward* when he first met Tech.
- He brought in an older speeder he couldn’t really understand how to fix.
- From the moment he saw Tech, he was smitten. Same for Tech, but he’s better at hiding it (those days on Kamino really shone through 🙁) (Azar oc from @bonethief)
- Tech’s also a free-lance researcher! He’s definitely known for that, to the point where he has to turn down jobs.
- The Republic commissioned him to re-structure the archives, and oh. my. god.
- He closed his mechanic shop for 2 months, he halted his other commissioned research projects, he spent every single day in their physical archives creating (FROM SCRATCH) a sorting and organizing system.
- Once he was given access to the digital archives, he stayed up for 4 straight days organizing them (they were a disaster, thank god for Tech, the Empire really didn’t organize anything)
- Every senator and staff member thanked him for his work (it was a long day of excepting flowers and gifts)
- He helped Leia re-structure the political and economic system based on his vast knowledge of what positives and negatives every system has.
- His stress habit is juicing. Yes, you heard me right, juicing.
- Strawberries, oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruits, pineapples, blueberries, grapes, apples, you name it, he’s juiced it.
- On a tight deadline? Juices cucumbers to infuse in water for lowering blood pressure.
- Frustrated with a project? Juices oranges to help to clean the intestines and pulls cholesterol from the body.
- He brings his clients smoothies since they’re all basically besties.
- He’s one of the best players in the tri-annual paintball games because of his extensive knowledge of different environments and how to work with them.
- Y’all, I’m sorry to say, but Tech did eventually have to close down the garage, his love for it evaporated 4 years into running it and he sold it for a hefty amount of credits.
- But let me tell you a story of how he found his new passion.
- The Batch were all together on Wrecker’s planet, celebrating his job offer from the Republic to be a part-time weapons expert.
- They went out to Wreckers favourite bar to celebrate there
- But the bartender there quit that day because of a salary dispute
- So everyone was all around disappointed and Tech hated seeing Wrecker like that on one of the best days of his life.
- So he asked the owner if he could try it out
- And the owner reluctantly said yes.
- He quickly searched for a few basic rules of serving drinks, different properties of them, and he was serving up drinks in no time!
- The night was saved thanks to Tech!
- He found his second calling.
- He loved how precise the measurements of different ingredients had to be and the way his brothers loved every concoction he gave them.
- Soon after that night, he signed up for classes on mixology and was soon certified!
- After a few gigs for high-end parties and business meetings, he was hired by his longtime friend, Leia Organa, to work as the head mixologist on one of the starships hosting a galaxy-wide summit.
- Almost every being there gave him their personal commlink channels in case they ever needed a mixologist.
- Tech usually gets an extra ticket for off-planet jobs, so of course he brings Azar along when Azar can take time off from his reputable taxi business (he's one of the only services that don't charge a ridiculous amount of money)
- Tech and Azar live blissfully together with their 4 fish and many succulents. Rest assured, they're very happy.
