Resources for authors

Amazoniac

Presentations

The principles in this section are not limited to presentations, they apply to different formats.

Slide Logic: The Emergence of Presentation Software and the Prehistory of PowerPoint | Computer History Museum

No fancy equipment is needed:

Narrated slides are quite informative. When done right, they don't remind people that they were prepared in presentation programs.

Abrupt transitions are unnatural and are one of the factors that remind the person of the dreaded slides. Smooth transitions of 1.5 second or so between changes help to address it: these are brief, but not rushed.

However, the effect is more useful than it seems. With smooth transitions, elements can be resized and rearranged, leaving it clear for watchers what's going on in the composition. Maybe it's an image that needs to magnified or pushed aside to make room for something else.

It's easier to guide the viewer through gradual changes and animation. One of the most illustrative channels on YouTube uses something similar most of the time:

The essence of calculus | 3Brown1Blue

Slidedocs | Nancy Duarte

Video or perish? An analysis of video abstract author guidelines

Indicators of progress are tricky. Your audience is likely to be in front of their personal device with access to this kind of information somewhere on the screen; it's easy for them track if they want to, there's no need to put it in evidence. The tendency is to make it subtle:

History of YouTube | Wikipedia

It's difficult for these indicators to be used properly, where they motivate people to stick for longer waiting for what's next. Oftentimes it's another distraction to compete for attention, and the mere anticipation conflicts with processing the current information. If your audience is calculating the time to finish, something is probably wrong, as they already grasped the length before starting.

Something similar applies to sections. Moderate sectioning offers an overview, but in excess it tends to promote skipping.

Cameras

For the submissive appeal, it's common to spot women who want to provocate in livestreams placing cameras above their heads; not leveled, let alone below.

Graphics

To avoid random color coices:

Free and Open-Source Diagramming Tools | Linux Ways
↳ Draw is a great app. It's available here as well.

Creating Animated GIF Images | LibreOffice (applies to PowerPoint and Keynote)

To not dump images and conflict backgrounds:

BioRender

Pricing

Advanced search

Some of them work in Google Scholar (very helpful) and elsewhere:

DuckDuckGo Search Syntax

List of academic databases and search engines | Wikipedia
↳ CORE

Privacy

Disroot
Brave Talk (to use with your ~~clients~~ victims)

Web Analytics

Research | Brave
↳ SpeedReader: Reader Mode Made Fast and Private

Ergonomics

"The industry standard height of office desks is 29 inches or 73 cm high for desks with a sitting design.

Regardless whether the desk is a standing or sitting desk, most office furniture is designed for people who are 6’ tall. Odd, since that’s not even the average height in the US!"

Ergonomics of Sitting with your Feet | Cathy White Ergonomics

Timed work sessions

Pomatez

Many of you are autonomous workers that don't have supervisors, and some self-imposed structure can help to create habits. From the routines shared early on, note how disciplined and consistent those authors are.

Work sessions with prefixed intervals seem impractical when we consider that our state changes and a flexible approach that adapts to fluctuations appears more fitting. I used to think this way, but I've overlooked the discipline component and how our physiology also tends to adjust to challenges. The body becomes good at what it's conditioned to do and the capacity can increase when boundaries are pushed. So, focus sessions with specified intervals have their merit.

Some days we feel off, but a bit of persistence on the task sometimes is enough to overcome it. When it doesn't resolve, to maintain the habit, it's possible to switch to some activity that's less demanding, such as focusing on (re)organization and preparation rather than interpretation and composition.

There can be a pattern behind feeling off. Perhaps the meal before tasks that need concentration is too heavy or maybe your posture is defeatist. You can film yourself while working to spot some of these derailing factors.

Fatigue towards the end is expected, but the end can be reserved for lighter tasks, without changing the structured blocks.

When feasible, it's not a bad idea to experiment with splitting work sessions into two blocks: offline and online. If you can prepare the material in advance for the next day, it might allow you to have an early offline session with minimal external interference.

Exercise can have a residual effect for a period after it ends, helping to start sessions on the right foot and contribute to get into the state of 'flow'. If you feel stuck somewhere along the way, strategic pauses with movement can help, as we know it. However, a deity of mine is writing a book (a bible?) and we were discussing how authoring comes with conflicts and problems that need a solution. But until they're worked out, problems lead to tension, that can get physical, and it's better dissipated somehow to prevent its accumulation and spare concentration. It's not practical to get up on every discomfort, but it's possible to relieve the tension by doing some physical activity while working: walking at a low pace on a treadmill desk (speech-to-text if needed) or something simpler as bouncing your legs and chewing gum* when you notice signs of listlessness, until they pass.

When discipline and commitment are not an issue, you can try to hide every clock from your way, including the one on your desktop (that can be disabled), and set up an alarm to the end of your entire available window. The consequence is a temporary loss of sense of time, which contributes to immersive sessions, but without worries about missing future activities. Breaks in between are going to be intuitive.

*From our archive:

Miscellanea

How to start a journal and beat the academic publishing racket | Judith Johnson

My Noise (ambience)
Silent Mice | Logitech (there are more models)

skylark

Thanks, tremendously helpful

Dakota

I put all of my Ray Peat related stuff on Obsidian. Good thread.

ThinPicking

@Amazoniac

It's money for nothing with you.

Wow, very helpful list. Much appreciated!

tinfoilhat

Thank you so very much!

resonance

Extremely useful compilation of resources. Thank you, @Amazoniac. Glad to see you back in full swing.

@Amazoniac If I'm not using pencil and paper, I write using the simple notepad that came installed on my android phone. Or sometimes a typewriter for artistic effect.

Amazoniac

@jwayne

People usually lean forward to write: talk about being inclined versus disinclined. Assuming that you don't write on your ceiling, looking down must promote focus on the task, as it tends to isolate you from the surroundings. The head angle change might also have minor effects on circulation that can be significant over a long period, but I never stumbled upon any information on this. Perhaps spacecraft designers have considered this aspect because they have to decide what to prioritize on interfaces and the consequences of placing displays on relegated spots.

Might interest you:

Amazoniac

Two months of sustained routine to form a habit is the median time:

How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world

"~~Table 2~~ shows the values for the curve parameters for the 39 participants for whom the model was a good fit, and ~~Figure 3~~ shows examples of the modelled curves of their data. Ten of these participants were performing eating behaviours, 15 drinking behaviours and 13 exercise behaviours. The median time to reach 95% of asymptote was 66 days, with a range from 18 to 254 days."

Racing chairs race you to the orthopedist:

For people who read a script while looking at the camera, an alternative would be to disappear from the scene to give space to supportive content on the screen, but appear at the beginning to greet and end to conclude if you want to keep it personal.

Narration may be viewed as a means to invite your victims next to you to show them your perspective rather than confronting them to defend your ideas.

yerrag

This is a nice resource. I wonder how you got them all together @Amazoniac. Surely, you put a lot of time into this. Just looking at them is already overwhelming.

Are you using some of these tools yourself?

What I noticed with you as compared with the past at RPF is that your English is much more understandable now, as I had difficulty understanding you given that English is not your first language and you are Dutch, at least in citizenship if not by blood.

Then again, this is just me being curious and I hope you don't take offense. Or maybe you have a girlfriend now and you have plenty more practice with English. Just saying there are many ways to skin a cat lol.

Whatever your means to improve your English and getting across your ideas in English, it is working very well. I would not rule out you're getting some help from AI, if only to translate Dutch to English better.

But back to writing better, I was wondering if being a good author is something that can come naturally, just like learning a new language where being exposed to good English as in growing up without having to go thru the usual A as in Apple routine of kindergarten. Or even going thru the rigors of diagram analysis in learning sentence construction.

As learning from going to school has its downsides in possibly making the graduates cookie cutter in style.

If one reads a lot and has occasion to write, is it possible that he can develop by osmosis like a sponge from the books and novels of great authors. Like for example if one reads Ray Peat a lot, would one find his writing style becoming more like that of Ray Peat?

I think reading a lot can also do a lot of good in terms of being able to write well. What are your thoughts.

Amazoniac

@yerrag

I gathered them little by little and the collection was available in a private group where I communicate with my gurus.

The English is better now because of conscious effort to moderate the Prolactinese and keep the speech minimally understandable. However, I continue to reject most of the formalism in everyday writing, for treating it as a conversation and to not depersonalize it too much in trying to eliminate mannerisms. As an example, overuse of adverbs is condemned by writers, but I insist for that rebel quota. I don't bother with correctors for informal writing.

This article relates to the second part of your post. But being on the passenger's seat is different than being the driver, so I don't think that reading a lot will be much effective in improving writing skills, although it helps (enhancing vocabulary would be an example). In support of the need of practice, try to learn a new language by only receiving information and applying it once you reach a satisfactory level: it's likely that you'll struggle.

Amazoniac

Authors tend to overwhelm their covers trying to stand out in competitive niches. If it's usually a good practice to declutter compositions to reduce noise, when the options around are exaggerated, it's one more reason to do it. And the clear message is the most impacting.

I replaced one of the thumbnails below with something simple, done in a couple of minutes, to show that it's possible to be effective without resorting to arrows, confetti, "according to science", "evidence-based", or other garbage.

yerrag

@Amazoniac said in Resources for authors:

I gathered them little by little and the collection was available in a private group where I communicate with my gurus.

A pack rat if there is one. Thank you for sharing what you pack. You must do backups conscientiously. I frequently have the equivalent of a house fire destroy what I pack digitally over the years. Glad my mind doesn't crash, so far.

yerrag

@Amazoniac said in Resources for authors:

@yerrag
The English is better now because of conscious effort to moderate the Prolactinese and keep the speech minimally understandable. However, I continue to reject most of the formalism in everyday writing, for treating it as a conversation and to not depersonalize it too much in trying to eliminate mannerisms. As an example, overuse of adverbs is condemned by writers, but I insist for that rebel quota. I don't bother with correctors for informal writing.

Now I'm tempted to ask what you mean but I won't. Innuendos and double entendrés are styles to be mastered, both for rhe writer and the reader.

This article relates to the second part of your post. But being on the passenger's seat is different than being the driver, so I don't think that reading a lot will be much effective in improving writing skills, although it helps (enhancing vocabulary would be an example). In support of the need of practice, try to learn a new language by only receiving information and applying it once you reach a satisfactory level: it's likely that you'll struggle.

I beg to differ. Just as many naturally gifted musicians learn by oido, or street dancers learn by feel, one can learn to write by getting drunk or gorging in books. Though I can say I wish I were that.

Kvirion

@Amazoniac said in Resources for authors:

The English is better now because of conscious effort to moderate the Prolactinese and keep the speech minimally understandable.

Wow, that's interesting. Do you mean that the higher prolactin levels the more distorted the clarity of a speech may be?
(As prolactin is related to stress and anxiety)

Can you tell us more about it?

Amazoniac

@yerrag said in Resources for authors:

I beg to differ. Just as many naturally gifted musicians learn by oido, or street dancers learn by feel, one can learn to write by getting drunk or gorging in books. Though I can say I wish I were that.

If someone could watch as many music concerts or dance performances as he or she wanted and then had to pick an instrument and perform, I bet that the person would have difficulty.

@Kvirion said in Resources for authors:

@Amazoniac said in Resources for authors:

The English is better now because of conscious effort to moderate the Prolactinese and keep the speech minimally understandable.

Wow, that's interesting. Do you mean that the higher prolactin levels the more distorted the clarity of a speech may be?
(As prolactin is related to stress and anxiety)

Can you tell us more about it?

Never mind, it's a joke that started on the Garrey Smeat Forum.

Kvirion

@Amazoniac said in Resources for authors:

Never mind, it's a joke that started on the Garrey Smeat Forum.

LOL! Nice one, thanks for the clarification

yerrag

@Amazoniac said in Resources for authors:

If someone could watch as many music concerts or dance performances as he or she wanted and then had to pick an instrument and perform, I bet that the person would have difficulty.

But if that someone were gifted, he could. If someone went to art school and the best he could get is theory, he would just be performing in parochial churches, not cathedrals, much less concert halls.

Amazoniac

Programmers may use code editors for general purposes and some people are fond of the basic notepad with the default font.

If your writing involves reflecting on what you just wrote, monospaced fonts can be an issue. However, the split screen with the goofy font for editing and a live preview with a readable font perhaps addresses this.

Learnability in Information Design

"Text can be presented in a monospaced font or a proportional font; extensive research has demonstrated that a proportional font is more readable than a monospaced font [4]."

User Interface Design For Programmers

"You may have noticed that almost every edit box on the Macintosh uses a fat, wide, bold font called Chicago which looks kind of ugly and distresses graphic designers to no end. Graphic designers (unlike UI designers) have been taught that thin, variable spaced fonts are more gracious, look better, and are easier to read. All this is true. But graphic designers learned their skills on paper, not on the screen. When you need to edit text, monospace has a major advantage over variable spaced fonts: it’s easier to see and select narrow letters like “l” and “i”. I learned this lesson after watching a sixty year old man in a usability test painfully trying to edit the name of his street, which was something like Fillmore Street. We were using 8 point Arial, so the edit box looked like this:"

"Notice that the I and the Ls are literally one pixel wide. The difference between a lower case I and a lower case L is literally one pixel. (Similarly, it is almost impossible to see the difference between “RN” and “M” in lower case, so this edit box might actually say Fillrnore.)"

"There are very few people who would notice if they mistyped Flilmore or Fiilmore or Fillrnore, and even if they did, they would have a heck of a time trying to use the mouse to select the offending letter and correct it. In fact, they would even have a hard time using the blinking cursor, which is two pixels wide, to select a single letter. Look how much easier it would have been if we had used a fat font (shown here with Courier Bold)"

"Fine, OK, so it takes up more space and doesn’t look as cool to your graphic designers. Deal with it! It’s much easier to use; it even feels better to use because as the user types, they get sharp, clear text, and it’s so much easier to edit."

From Monospace to Duospace: In Search of the ideal writing font

"In contrast to proportional fonts that communicate “this is almost done” monospace fonts suggest “this text is work in progress.” It is the more honest typographic choice for a text that is not ready to publish."

"The typographic rawness of a monospace font tells the writer: “This is not about how it looks, but what it says. Say what you mean and worry about the style later.” Proportional fonts suggest “This is as good as done” and stand in an intimidating contrast to a raw draft."

"Proportional fonts are optimized for high reading speed. That makes them the perfect choice for reading. Good writing, on the other hand, is measured, reflected, slow. It takes one step at a time. In a monospace font every letter, every number, every punctuation mark and every space takes the same visual space, which slows us down. And, for writing that’s a good thing."

"Proportional fonts save space. They suggest that you “hurry up and fill the page.” Monospaced fonts, on the other hand, feel more productive. Every typed letter translates into a homogenous visual progress in writing. It is both more relaxing to write at a slower pace and more satisfying as the progress is more tangible."

"Programmers use monospaced fonts for their indentation and because it allows them to spot typos. In a perfectly regular horizontal and vertical raster, letters and words become easily discernible: A typical proportional font comes with word spaces as wide as an i. Monospace fonts come with rather large word spaces. This makes it easier to discern each word and letter."

"Designers have pointed out that, with all the structural benefits that may or may not come from using a monospace font when writing, there are typographical compromises in typewriter fonts that are mere mechanical constraints that can and should be overcome. Due to the way mechanical typewriters worked, using the same horizontal space for each letter was inevitable at the time."

Making Code Beautiful With Type

Gain the Upper Hand with Good Typography

"Times New Roman was invented in the early 20th century for the Times of London and quickly gained traction among newspaper publishers. The Times commissioned it as an intentionally narrow font to fit more text per line and to enable quick reading.[6] Even from the beginning, it was criticized as unappealing to the eye."

"For all its ubiquity in self-published documents, when was the last time you saw Times New Roman in a book? Maybe never. Fonts used in professionally published books are comparably easier to read. This visual appeal, in turn, fosters comprehension and retention.[7]"