RE: [OT] Writing books

["Keith Doxey" <lists.diyha@xxxxxxx>]

When I stated working for "Post Office Telecommunications" as it
was back in
1976, I was one of 12 apprentices taken on in the Norwich area. Of the
12,
11 of use were 16 witht he other being a year older and having done a
year
in higher education.

I only had 6 CSE's,
Grade 1 Maths, Technical Drawing, General Science, Woodwork
Grade 2 MetalWork
Grade 4 English.

All the others had O Levels in loads of subjects. What clinched it for me
at
the interview was that I took along a Sound-to-Light unit that I had
built
for the Youth Club disco that I ran. The PCB was homemade as was the
case
which was formed from a cut up solvent container. In fact, the words
JIZER
were still decorating the inside of the case.

About 20 years later I was attending the funeral of a colleague and my
old
training officer was there (he was at my original interview). We were
talking about the intervening years when he recalled the Sound to Light
unit
that I had taken to the interview.

It wouldnt matter how good I had been at English, because whenever I have
to
write technical documentation WORD would still complain about what I
was
typing and then try to put what IT thought I wanted to write. What
really
gets me is when you type in the name of a Microsoft product and the
spell
checker doesnt think it is a proper word! You would think they would put
all
their own product names and trademarks into the dictionary :-)

Keith

www.diyha.co.uk
www.kat5.tv


-----Original Message-----
From: Nic Blinston [mailto:ukha@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 28 April 2002 18:55
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: [ukha_d] [OT] Writing books


>Writing a book would be one in the eye for my old English teacher. I
almost
>failed CSE English but scraped by with a Grade 4. He failed to point
out to
>me that the books on the "suggested reading" list were
actually COMPULSORY.

I had the same problem... I fundamentally disagreed with the notion
that just because something was old and a 'classic', it was
automatically good and worth reading.

Eventually I gave up on English Lit. to concentrate on the other
subjects. Last year, I completed a 50,000 word User Guide for some
software. Similar to Keith, technical books, magazines and other
'literature' have helped me with this and a number of magazine
articles I've had published.

Nic


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