tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-138737282009-10-30T11:46:20.512-05:00This blog is shared among <a href="http://lvtechspeak.blogspot.com/2005/12/who-writes-here.html">several technical writers/managers in the LabVIEW group</a>. We post our views and insight on processes, new technologies that we think are cool, and other things we decide to write about.Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13544462798718591052noreply@blogger.comBlogger86125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13873728.post-81724725691923340302009-10-30T11:46:00.000-05:002009-10-30T11:46:20.521-05:00

 It’s a tradition: Every year on Halloween (or as close to it as the work week will allow), tons of LabVIEW developers set up shop at their desks and demonstrate features or products they’ve been working on to all comers. The email goes out to the entire company (in Austin, anyway) and for two hours, (most) work stops as people come by to check out what we’ve been working on. Today’s that

Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13544462798718591052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13873728.post-1988579131709329322009-10-26T11:53:00.001-05:002009-10-26T11:53:14.174-05:00

In the comments on my last post, Yair pointed me towards this preview of the LabVIEW 1.0 beta, all the way back in 1986. Enjoy!

Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13544462798718591052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13873728.post-14053945722500811302009-10-26T10:02:00.001-05:002009-10-26T10:02:18.721-05:00

Here’s a review of the original Macintosh, done in 1984. It’s amazing to read this now with 25 years of perspective and realize both how different it was and how similarly things still work today. But even back then some people seemed to “get it”. When LabVIEW was first released in 1986, it was for the Mac, because that was the dominant graphical platform of the day, and LabVIEW is

Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13544462798718591052noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13873728.post-90453731136884101622009-10-23T15:59:00.002-05:002009-10-23T16:02:29.025-05:00

I find myself reading a lot of tech news sites. I sometimes email these links out to developers or other technical writers if they are interesting or have applications to LabVIEW/NI, but I figured, why not share them with the world?Here's are a few things I came across lately:Don't offer preferences to users if you don't have to. I think about this sometimes as we design software here ...

Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13544462798718591052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13873728.post-25979838741831821952009-10-13T13:46:00.000-05:002009-10-13T13:46:31.687-05:00

Leica makes some of the highest-quality, precision-engineered cameras in the world. WIRED magazine recently caught up with them and took a tour of their facility in Solms, Germany. In one of the shots, you can see a LabVIEW application (designed by Ramitek GmbH) being used to test the M9, Leica's newest camera. It's kind of awesome to see LabVIEW being used to help control tolerances as fine as

Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13544462798718591052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13873728.post-41737633608202567242009-09-17T12:17:00.001-05:002009-09-17T12:17:42.385-05:00

Small bit of background: I recently got (more) into digital photography and have been having a fun time dreaming of buying fancy-schmancy camera lenses. So I was checking out Sigma's web site and saw they have an "advisor tool". I clicked it and was presented with this: This tool is of absolutely no use to me. Why? Because I don't think in terms of "Lens technology" or even "Weight". I think in

Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13544462798718591052noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13873728.post-41609442081515716262009-08-07T15:00:00.003-05:002009-08-07T15:15:14.048-05:00

As NI's newest tech writer, I feel like it's part of my job to experience as much of our technology as possible. In my day to day work, I can do this by talking with developers about the product and learning from them about how the customer might use the new features they're working on. Sometimes I get the chance to see a demo, but it's rare that I get to see the end result from a customer's

Alhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13832492748461032339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13873728.post-87531690302579116122009-08-07T09:44:00.006-05:002009-08-07T09:55:05.402-05:00

Wednesday at NIWeek, we took the wraps off of the newest project I've been working on - a way to host LabVIEW in a Web browser, letting you build VIs without installing ANYTHING on your computer (ok, that's not the whole truth, you DO need to spend 30 seconds downloading the Silverlight runtime engine!) Just like Gmail, Google Docs, et al let you access email and spreadsheets without installing

Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13544462798718591052noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13873728.post-24363518492792877882009-08-03T09:21:00.000-05:002009-08-03T09:21:39.250-05:00

In case you're wondering just what we do all day ... or all year ... the LabVIEW 2009 Help system is now available online. It contains the help for the LabVIEW Base/Full/Pro development systems as well as each individual module and toolkit. Bet you didn't know we have so many LabVIEW add-ons! Did you know we make a toolkit to help you develop adaptive filter algorithms? (You know, like if you

Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13544462798718591052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13873728.post-3577927189911123252009-07-31T11:09:00.006-05:002009-07-31T11:12:59.534-05:00

Yeah, the cat's out of the bag! We're publicly announcing LabVIEW 2009 today. If you're attending NIWeek next week, you'll of course get a more in-depth look at it, as well as a chance to pester developers about it :-)I'm pretty excited about the Enhanced Block Diagram Cleanup feature. I used the first version of this feature a LOT in LabVIEW 8.6 when developing some VIs here for internal use. It

Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13544462798718591052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13873728.post-46728869714100622022009-07-28T10:06:00.004-05:002009-07-28T10:19:26.596-05:00

From ESPN:Jamie Moyer allowed seven baserunners before recording an out in the third inning. Somehow, none of them scored. I read this bit and did a double-take. This makes it sound like Moyer did the following:Allowed seven baserunners in the third inningDid not record an out until the eighth batter of the inning Did not give up a run during this timeIf you follow baseball, you might remember

Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13544462798718591052noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13873728.post-65591351264449103362009-07-21T11:15:00.002-05:002009-07-21T11:21:55.498-05:00

I'm not trying to start anything political, but I think this is pretty interesting. This is often the end result of documents I write, although we use Adobe PDF Reader to mark comments and distribute them electronically.I like how Vanity Fair has separate literary, research, and copy editors. Often at NI we have to combine these roles into one person.Photo used from http://www.flickr.com/photos/

Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13544462798718591052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13873728.post-68025345101077844642009-04-17T10:49:00.000-05:002009-04-17T10:49:35.502-05:00

Lonely Sandwich talking about how prepositions affect the perception of the App Store: I could say I bought a song on iTunes, but when I speak of it like that, I think of iTunes as more of a network for content rather than an outlet, much in the same way I’d say I saw 30 Rock on NBC or heard my favorite song on my favorite radio station. So does this mean that Apple likes to think of its iTunes

Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13544462798718591052noreply@blogger.com030.185357529701808 -97.89854621856648tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13873728.post-59599528301048752152009-03-23T18:11:00.003-05:002009-03-23T18:20:12.226-05:00

Okay, this sounds kind of odd, but hear me out. A developer friend recently told me about the "rubber duckie" method of coding. In a nutshell, you as a software engineer place a generic rubber duckie on your desk. Every time you make a big coding decision or implementation, you explain how it all works to the rubber duckie. If you find yourself straining for an explanation, or if you find

Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13544462798718591052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13873728.post-56247759350856333072009-03-23T18:05:00.001-05:002009-03-23T18:05:17.408-05:00

An example of some great, actionable user feedback: 3. From the docs: "When you are ready to upload the code, select the correct serial port and NG board type on the Tools menu". This made me want to tear out my own eyes. What are the correct settings!!?We (LabVIEW technical writers, product support engineers, applications engineers, and yes even developers) try to monitor our forums, we really

Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13544462798718591052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13873728.post-84176993022236103322009-02-12T09:19:00.041-06:002009-02-12T09:33:06.063-06:00

I bought a new lens for my digital SLR a couple weeks ago. As I was checking out at the store, I noticed that the staff was setting up for an instructional session of some sort. I asked them which session it was, and the clerk said it was their digital photography basics class. He said the class came about because the staff was having to answer all sorts of these basic questions and do all these

Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13544462798718591052noreply@blogger.com030.396276 -97.732769tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13873728.post-37852162799575814952009-01-23T10:31:00.003-06:002009-01-23T11:10:38.139-06:00

Some stats on Microsoft's technical documentation for communication protocols:1,660 identified bugs ... Nearly 800 Microsoft employees are working on the technical documentation ... More than 20,000 pages of technical documentation ...That works out to:2.075 bugs per writer0.083 bugs per pageI don't know about you, but I think those are excellent ratios, even given the fuzzy numbers and imprecise

Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13544462798718591052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13873728.post-30297109036238222242008-12-03T01:45:00.002-06:002008-12-03T03:05:29.179-06:00

I think one of the hardest things in technical writing, especially for new hires, is to be assigned to document a product or feature that you know nothing about. Since we have a wide variety of LabVIEW products, from signal processing to HMI to control and simulation to report generation to sound and vibration measurements (not to mention the core product itself), no one can be expected to

Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13544462798718591052noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13873728.post-67492424019593556922008-11-26T23:29:00.004-06:002008-11-26T23:48:30.013-06:00

Over at Ars today, Erica Sadun gives thanks for the iPhone SDK's documentation:Thank you for the kick-ass SDK documentation. I know you have employed many OCD victims who would otherwise be wandering the street picking up litter and tidying our world and instead aimed them at creating precise and glorious help pages. Sure, it takes about five years to download each API update but oh, the beauty

Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13544462798718591052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13873728.post-73124628282758927302008-11-17T19:39:00.005-06:002008-11-17T20:06:54.129-06:00

Hat tip to Daring Fireball (an excellent blog that I read despite not owning any Apple products) for the news that Apple has released its 2008 style guide.When 1,000 writers are writing technical documentation for 2,000 products, consistency is very important, even down to the correct capitalization and noun strings used to refer to specific parts of software or hardware. Style guides keep

Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13544462798718591052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13873728.post-2312449880347545302008-10-28T20:25:00.004-05:002008-10-28T20:40:32.593-05:00

McLuhan famously said "The medium is the message." In my 10 months in Shanghai, I've been learning just how true that is. More than once now I've been involved in a disagreement or similar situation that has been instigated, and carried through, in email. These emails take a lot of time to write and respond to, because we all want to be precise. And because of the time difference, I don't receive

Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13544462798718591052noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13873728.post-17785959404496122042008-10-24T21:34:00.004-05:002008-10-24T22:03:29.241-05:00

I'm really proud to say that I'm not only a LabVIEW technical writer -- I'm also a client! One great thing about being a technical writer at NI is the opportunity to actually USE the products we document. Okay, so I haven't gotten a chance to prototype a control system. But technical writers at NI use LabVIEW every day to improve our internal processes.That's a pretty general statement, so I'll

Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13544462798718591052noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13873728.post-29113438862982231332008-04-01T04:34:00.002-05:002008-04-01T04:38:14.583-05:00

One of the tech writers here at NI Shanghai has posted a great entry describing what she does all day. Now, we don't do all of this stuff every day. But a large majority of it will be done over the course of a week or so. At any rate, it's a great peek into just what life is like at the office -- because I know you all were curious about exactly that :-)

Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13544462798718591052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13873728.post-29361200347210578902008-03-21T03:46:00.002-05:002008-03-21T04:14:18.558-05:00

I've never had the opportunity to learn a foreign language before, outside of the pidgin-Spanish I can remember from 7th-8th grade. Coming to Shanghai and attempting to learn Mandarin has been an adventure. A frustrating and difficult adventure, but a worthwhile and rewarding one also.At the same time as I'm trying to learn a new language (or at least get some basic handle on it), I'm reviewing

Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13544462798718591052noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13873728.post-24973559309639353522008-03-04T03:58:00.002-06:002008-03-04T04:05:21.894-06:00

From now on, I'm going to start filing typos as bug reports that are far more serious than "trivial".Barry Bonds seized on a pair of typos, complaining in court papers Thursday that the government's mistakes could compromise his chances for a fair trial. The typographical errors showed up in a recent filing by prosecutors wrongly accusing Bonds of flunking a drug test in 2001. They later admitted

Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13544462798718591052noreply@blogger.com0