• Just sit in silence
• Apply constraints. Shorten the goals if it is hard to write.
• What did I learned today?
• Find a previous post you disagree or want to enrich. Write about why. Use an old post and update wit h your current experience
• Take a quote you love, or hate, and write about the why's. Backup the reasoning with evidence.
• You probably answer questions from email, IMs, DMs, work, etc... Post the most common answers.
• Write about your mistake
• Make a link post, and explain why
• Help others

Funny that this blog uses Bear as software to power the posts

Make an OSS version of it for the web: why not building on the web for the web?

Note of Tim Berners-Lee

Quitte à stresser, autant stresser précisément!

À la fin de chaque session d’écriture, mettez à jour ce décompte [de mots à écrire], et gardez éventuellement une trace de son évolution.

Plus sérieusement, "j’avoue d’ailleurs l’avoir testé comme une blague au début. Mais en pratique, c’est bien cette info (complétée par la moyenne glissante) qui m’a permis d’organiser sereinement ma rédaction et notamment mes temps de repos, en levant mes doutes sur mon avancée au quotidien.

#idea #project make it real:

1. D’abord, l’objectif : le nombre de mots total visé pour le mémoire. Ensuite, le décompte : le nombre total de mots contenus dans le mémoire à la fin de chaque jour. Et enfin, le délai : le nombre de jours d’écriture dont je disposais avant de devoir remettre le mémoire à l’école doctorale.

2. Le problème de cette information, c’est qu’elle peut donner trop de visibilité à la progression quotidienne : il ne faut pas seulement savoir si on est dans un « bon jour » ou un « mauvais jour », il faut replacer tout cela dans un intervalle de temps plus long. J’ai donc aussi créé un graphique de la progression en nombre de mots par jour sur lequel j’ai ajouté la moyenne glissante sur 7 jours.

1. Having an "inbox" notes to capture ideas in form of napkin, receipt, voice recorder
2. Literature notes: When you consume content, take notes of what you don’t want to forget or what you want to use in your own writing. It is recommended to make them atomic. Make sure to include the bibliographic details, author & source at the very least, so you know where you got the idea from.
3. Permanent notes: every day, you should go through the inbox and seek to refine the fleeting & literature notes. Making connections and turning them into permanent notes.

One idea = One note
One note = One idea

4. Navigation: an index allows you to navigate in the zettelkasten; keyword notes can also be used as link.

KISS and dirty. Simple to use.

These tips are related to academic papers, but it can be applied to every writings that should have an effective communication.

Some that can affect me:

• avoid passive tense
• use strong vers instead of lots of nouns: "make assumption" → assume, "had difference" → differed, "is an illustration" → illustrates
• if you find yourself saying "In other words," it means you didn't say it clearly enough the first time. Rewrite it.
• Avoid filler words, e.g., by converting sentences into simple actor-action-object phrasing.
• Each sentence in a paragraph must have some logical connection to the previous one. A new thought should get its own paragraph, but still clearly needs some logical connection to the paragraphs that preceded it.
• avoid scare quotes
• Numbers ten or less are spelled out: "It consists of three fields", not "3 fields".
• avoid in-line enumeration
• avoid itemization (bullets) as it takes extra space. Bullets can be used to emphasize key points
• name the author with its reference [1] instead of "[1] shows" only. Add "et al." if more authors exist. Cite in depth the section for example to accord the verb.
• more than two footnotes per page or a handful per paper is a bad sign.
• A part before a colon (":") must be a complete sentence.
• Avoid slash constructs: time/money, expand them such as "time and money".
• Avoid cliches like "recent advances in ..."
• Avoid symbols as they are only acceptable on slides.
• Uses uppercased words for acronyms only. Avoid it for technical terms.
• Expand all acronyms on first use, except acronyms that every reader is expected to know. For example, TCP in a research paper is not needed, but Yet Another Compiler Compiler (YACC) is.
• Divide powers of a 1 000 for readability. It can be adjusted by the locale used.
• Use "kb/s" or "Mb/s," not "kbps" or "Mbps" - the latter are not scientific units. Distinguish MB and Mb too.
• It is always kHz.
• It's Wi-Fi, not WiFi or wifi that are trademarks.
• Avoid "etc.", prefers "for example", "such as", "among others" or provide a complete list.
• "for example" or "like" and "etc." are in different phrases. It already indicate that there are more such items.
• Remember that "i.e." and "e.g." are always followed by a comma.
• Do not use ampersands (&) or slash-abbreviations (such as s/w or h/w) in formal writing; they are acceptable for slides.
• "Respectively" is preceded by a comma, as in "The light bulbs lasted 10 and 100 days, respectively."
• Therefore, however, hence and thus are usually followed by a comma, as in "Therefore, our idea should not be implemented."
• Use "in Figure 1" instead of "following figure" since figures may get moved during the publication or typesetting process.
• Figures show, depict, indicate, illustrate. Avoid "(refer to Fig. 17)".
• Often, it is enough to simply put the figure reference in parenthesis "Packetg droppers (Fig. 17) have a pipe to the bit bucket, ..."
• If you quote something literally, enclose it in quotation marks or show it indented and in smaller type ("block quote"). A mere citation is not sufficient as it does not tell the reader whether you simply derived your material from the cited source or copied it verbatim.
• Acknowledge your funding support.
• Integrate PostScript instead of GIF for images [in papers].
• Section titles are not followed by a period.

Over the years, I've come to understand that consistency in writing is not only essential for improving my craft, but also for cultivating the strange and capricious creature known as inspiration.

“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”

A way to set explicitly how a company is running. Here an example about an IT one.

Un dictionnaire proposant des mots plus inclusifs 👍

Summarize any content on the web - from articles to books - in a jiffy!

Generates hand-written style texts

Create a product advertisement from a product description.

1. Conclusion
2. Key arguments
3. Detailed information

Ce blog illustre chaque billet avec des images d'un thème donné.

Le dernier publié Comment affronter un entretien technique des enfers ? utilise les images du dictateur de Corée du Nord. Ces illustrations fonctionnent bien et renforcent le storytelling.

Comment devenir riche en vendant des JPGs utilise des images du loup de wall street.

4 raisons de se lancer dans une relation de mentorat a des illustrations des films Rocky

An example of style guide for content

Impressive

The second lesson I have learned is that when I first sit down to write I must allow the flood of ideas to flow out of me onto the page without worrying about what is coming out. If I pause to correct grammar, spelling, or sentence structure, I risk losing sight of the vision that created the words in the first place.

One of the things that makes me happiest about running a self-hosted blog is that I can write whatever I want, and anyone can read it--assuming they can find it.

So true. I don't allow myself to write on my blog, putting much time on these readings on RSS feeds, then posting them on the shaarli.

Some users are not aware that by downloading RSS feeds literally every two minutes, they are hogging Internet bandwidth and wasting resources.

I am refreshing my RSS feeds or twice a day :/ I didn't they were such impatient people up there. Everything exist on the Internet though.

Personal website owners who endure may do so because they learn to view their work as a way of providing a needed service or information.

Example of lehollandaisvolant, ....

Perhaps we should focus less on the number of visitors we draw to our websites and more on our efforts to create something of value, something that will make others just a little wiser, just a little freer, or just a little happier.

That's why I don't even have a Mattomo instance

I suspect those whose websites endure the longest are those who find joy in coding, writing, and communicating with their readers.

Seems true to me too.

Knowing that I am not alone is a source of motivation for continued writing, not in the belief that by doing so I will change the world, but simply because I am encouraged to feel that someone should be writing about our shared concerns, someone who is not receiving a paycheck or a campaign contribution for doing so.

It is also a very easy way to share on the Internet. And this feeling to be able to reach so many people, or to make content available according to your own wishes is a great equanimity.