Posts

One of my first tasks as a technical writer was to document a Kubernetes-based release orchestration tool. Not daunting at all. At that time, I could provide a vague description of Kubernetes, but hadn’t the foggiest idea what it actually looked like. There aren’t many opportunities in life to just play with a Kubernetes cluster - at least, not without spending thousands of dollars on AWS. Fortunately, I discovered minikube, a free solution for installing a single-node cluster Kubernetes on your local machine. With this setup, I’ve been able to experiment with various products and projects. Thanks to a couple of clever add-ons, you can even simulate load balancers and DNS servers, too. ...

Introduction In the olden days, it would take hours to install and configure a web server on a local machine. It was especially fiddly if you wanted to recreate a specific environment for testing purposes. Happily, Docker has made our lives much easier. In this tutorial, we’ll package a simple website and nginx server as a Docker image. Anyone with Docker Desktop installed can then run that site in seconds without having to set up anything. ...

Introduction Jekyll is a beautifully simple way to build and deploy a static website. Well, it’s simple once you’ve got everything installed and configured. Unless you’re already confident with Ruby, it’ll probably take you most of a wet weekend to get it running consistently. Although the local installation is working well for me, I’m nervous it’ll break. I’m already encountering a few Ruby conflicts with other projects. Resolving those issues isn’t my idea of fun. Given I’ve been doing a lot of work with Docker lately, I decided to see whether I could run my site as a container instead. Plot spoiler: yes, I could! ...

In this short tutorial, I’ll show you how you can create a checklist in InDesign that’s both interactive and printable. I’m assuming you already know the basics of InDesign. If not, I recommend the InDesign Essentials course on Skillshare.

If you’re anything like me, you consume all sorts of content: books, blog posts, newsletters, and podcasts. It’s hard keeping track of it all. In this short demo, I’ll show you Readwise, a web-based tool for collecting, organising, and reviewing your highlights. I’m not associated in any way with Readwise, I just love it!

There are lots of great note-taking apps out there, but sometimes you just want to scribble with a pen and paper. In this short demo, I’ll show how the Rocketbook gives you the best of analogue and digital.

We all have tasks we avoid doing. For some, it’s writing blog posts, while others struggle with keeping on top of email. Nearly everyone, though, will do anything to avoid accounts. In this short video, I’ll introduce you to the Pomodoro Technique, an effective way of conquering those boring jobs.

We spend a lot of our day typing the same stuff over and over again, sometimes getting it wrong in the process. Although it might only be 10 minutes of repetitive keystrokes, this really adds up. That’s an hour a week or more than 50 hours each year. You could do a lot more exciting stuff with those 50 hours. In this video, I’ll give you a quick demo of TextExpander, a great app for saving time and improving accuracy. ...

Once you get into audio and video recording, background noise will drive you absolutely mad. Although there are lots of solutions out there, most of them are very complicated and often expensive, too. In this short video, I’ll show you a simple method for removing background noise in a free tool called Audacity.

I started the year feeling tired. I was running an awful lot of workshops around the south east, many of them weekend events. Thanks to the vagaries of our rail system, I spent countless hours stuck on uncomfortable trains. I dreamed of running virtual events from the comfort of my pope cave. Indeed, I’d tried to convince clients that webinars and online courses were a good idea, but everyone wanted in-person events. Ha. ...