William Zinsser: On Writing Well

"On Writing Well" is a classic book on writing nonfiction that recently celebrated its 30th anniversary. As my main area of writing is scientific writing, I read it with the intent to learn for my scientific papers.

With this background, my judgement on the book is mixed. There are several chapters that are useful for scientific papers but a good share of the book are written for journalists. The view, which is the view Zinsser himself probably has, is that of a generalist writer who has to explain something to the public. This does often not fit very well with the intention of most scientific papers.

Most useful for me was Part I "Principles" and Part II "Methods". What he explains there is almost universal. He talks about simplicity and style, about words and their correct usage. I especially enjoyed Chapter 10 "Bits & Pieces" in which Zinsser collected short but helpful hints for your everyday writing.

Part III "Forms" includes chapters such as "Writing About People: The Interview" or "Writing About Yourself: The Memoir" that didn't help for my usual tasks. Even Chapter 15 "Science and Technology" was not what I was looking for because it covered much more the journalists's view. To some degree Chapter 16 "Business Writing: Writing in Your Job" could give some insights for my writing.

Overall the book is fun to read and Zinsser proves in it that he is the right guy to listen to on writing well.

Stop Software Patents

There is a new run for a petition against software patents in Europe. There are many good points in favour and against such patents, but I personally don't see any helpful software patents so far. Please get informed about the issue and decide for yourself!

Airport Express and Airfoil

I don't have a desktop computer anymore because everything I need is on my laptop computer - a MacBook Pro. Although the speakers of the MacBook are actually not bad, I prefer my normal hi-fi system for listing to music and watching movies. Therefore, I have a cinch connector cable to get the sound from the MacBook to the hi-fi system. But that bounds me close to the hi-fi system and the MacBook is not portable around my room anymore.


The solution here is Apple's Airport Express. For this purpose, it acts as a audio streamer. It has audio output interface and connects to any WLAN. Hence, the cinch cable now goes into the Airport Express and I stream the audio from iTunes to it. There is my music on my hi-fi system without any cable going out from the MacBook.

The installation is actually quite easy. It comes with a CD on which you find the tool Airport Utility that lets you configure how the Airport Express should work. It can establish its own WLAN or connect to an existing one for which you have to provide the access information, of course. It has a couple of more features that I don't use such as acting as a print server if you connect a printer to its USB port.


One problem, however, still remains. iTunes lets you only stream music to the Airport Express. Watching movies or TV is not possible. The solution here is the application Airfoil from Rogue Amoeba, available for Mac and Windows. It allows you to stream any sound from any application to Airport Express. This is actually what you expect would work out-of-the-box, but you have to invest $25 for the current single-user licence price. By adding the so-called Extra Instant Hiack it can steal the sound output from any application and send it to Airport Express. This even works for EyeTV and with the included video player also for movies.