June 2007 Archives

Brian Clark has published two articles at CopyBlogger.com that cover some simple mistakes we make when writing. Since I’m always trying to improve my writing skills, I thought I’d pass on these useful tips.

1. Your vs. You’re
2. It’s vs. Its
3. There vs. Their
4. Affect vs. Effect
5. The Dangling Participle
6. Loose vs. Lose
7. Me, Myself, and I
8. Different than vs. Different from
9. Improper Use of the Apostrophe
10. Parallelism
11. i.e. vs. e.g.
12. Could of, Would of, Should of

I remember learning a few of these from my grandmother when I was a kid. My mom always spoke of my grandmother as being extremely good at writing, and particular about it too. So I started trying to write better, and I guess it’s stuck with me.

At my last job, Tallie called me and left two messages for me and read some jokes. We were using a voice mail system that allowed us to grab the audio files, so I kept them.

She called and left both of these messages on April 3, 2007.

This is a song for all the fathers and grandpas in our lives:

The kids saw my old Axis and Allies game box today and really wanted to play. So we open it up and then, while my wife distracted the 2 year old, spent nearly 3 hours sorting the pieces, setting up the game, and playing 2 full rounds. The picture is what the game board looked like at the end.

I helped them understand the rules and how the pieces move, and suggested most of their moves for them. But I was surprised at how long their interest lasted. For a game that’s labeled for “ages 12 and up,” I thought a 7 and 4 year old did pretty well.

I found an article written by Zed Shaw that describes perfectly how I find myself approaching my keyboard recently. He compares programming to martial arts and comments on how he finds himself disdaining complicated solutions in favor of simpler, more effective, approaches.