Ryan Tomayko

3 shell scripts: Kill weasel words, avoid the passive, eliminate duplicates —

I can’t think of anything I like better than the intersection of writing and shell hacking.

On Saying No —

Surprisingly interesting Esquire essay by Tom Chiarella:

Yes suggests pleasure. It wants something. Salesmen train themselves to use yes at the beginning of a sentence, no matter what, which is why when you say it enough, the word yes starts to feel like a con.

But no is cold and heavy. It puts an end to things. In that way, it is a word of control. Its very use suggests a speaker who actually knows something, who won’t bend, who won’t give in to what you want simply because you want it. No says the case has not been made.

Cops use it. Operators use it. Good teachers, too. I’d always wanted to be a guy who simply said no. So that’s what I did for a month. Whenever I didn’t want to do something, I didn’t hesitate, didn’t explain. I just said no.

“No.” Is there a more elegant sentence in the English language?

11 Words That Sound Offensive, But Aren't —

I almost died.

The Programming Aphorisms of Strunk and White —

“Of course, Strunk and White, as the book is commonly called, has nothing to do with software (it was written in 1935) and everything to do with writing: grammar, composition, and style for users of the English language. But in its 100 short pages this book has more to say about the craft of software than many books you’ll find in the ‘Computing’ section of your local bookstore. All you have to do is replace a few key words throughout the text and presto! Pearls of software development wisdom, delivered in near-perfect English.”

The Cunning Linguist (George Carlin, RIP) —

The man was a genius: “‘the unlikely event of a water landing,’ discussed in every preflight safety lecture, sounds suspiciously like ‘crashing into the fucking ocean.’”

To a T —

“… tittle is easily the most likely source, since to a tittle was in use in exactly the same sense for nearly a century before to a T appeared (it’s first recorded in a play by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher of 1607) …”

The apostrophe key does not mean "Holy shit, here comes an s!" —

“You think your better then me just because you no grammar?” :)

Lynch, Guide to Grammar and Style —

Nice little style guide on the web and nicely indexed hyperlinked.