Backing up your website or blog

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The word “paranoid” is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as

“exhibiting unnecessary or extreme fear; characterized by unreasonable or excessive suspicion of others.”

Well, you know the old joke: Just because you're paranoid i doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you!

In a similar sort of way, I don’t think there is anything “unreasonable” in being paranoid about losing the content on your website.

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Victorian Humour

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Victorian Joke on pictureVictorian humour? A contradiction in terms, surely? Not according to Bob Nicholson, a lecturer in history who is on a mission to make Victorian jokes funny again (which presupposes they were funny in the first place, of course, but one assumes they were!).

Now, you may think this has nothing to do with writing, but it has. Bob is using a computing technique known as “text mining” to trawl through loads of Victorian publications held by the British Library, and extract jokes.

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What acting taught me about public speaking

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speaker with a lot of microphonesMany moons ago I took up amateur dramatics for a while. That may seem a bit odd for someone who likes to keep himself to himself, but someone invited me to see a play he was in, and I thought it looked like fun.

I have to say that the thought of going on stage was a terrifying experience. Note that I said the thought of it, not the experience itself. I’ll try to explain.

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The joy of comics

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QR_Code_Comic_Tutorial“There’s Terry, always with his head in a book or a comic.” My mother’s gentle admonishment was a constant feature of our household. But it wasn’t an admonishment against reading, which my parents actively encouraged (books were revered in our home because they were books, almost regardless of the content). Rather, it was a cry of frustration over the fact that once I was engrossed in a book or a comic, anything she said to me literally fell on deaf ears.
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Should you speak for free?

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2012 Green Heart Schools public speaking competitionIn the article 3 reasons that non-fiction authors should speak, I suggested why public speaking can be important to an author. But the question arises: should that be at any price?

My natural inclination, my default position if you will, is that if you’re good enough to be asked to give a talk, do a presentation or run a workshop, then you deserve to be paid for it. As my wife so succinctly put it to me: “Nothing doesn’t buy anything.”.

However, situations, like people, are different from one another. At the end of the day, if you are asked to give a talk without payment, your decision of whether or not to accept is one that involves weighing up the (perceived) costs and benefits. Here are the considerations you might wish to take into account.

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Should you write for free? 8 considerations.

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On the whole, I am against the idea of writing in return for no money. We all of us have to eat, and find the money to pay the rent or mortgage. Moreover, the more people who are willing to write for nothing, the less likely it is for editors to pay for work. Unfortunately, the usual law of supply and demand prevails, which is to say that the greater the supply relative to demand, the lower the price in the marketplace. Even though the products being offered are not likely to be the same, if an editor needs an article, or is on a tight budget, price may well be the deciding factor.
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Further thoughts on using Word for Desktop Publishing: Frames

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textbox format optionIf you have the occasional desktop publishing to do, or if you only require a sort of limited desktop publisher or simply don’t have the time to learn a whole new program, Word will do fine. But, to borrow from Clint Eastwood, a program’s got to know its limitations. In the article Using Word for desktop publishing, I noted that text boxes are good for enabling you to place text anywhere. Furthermore, you can link text boxes, so that if text outgrows its text box, you can make it flow on to another one.
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Further thoughts on using Word for Desktop Publishing: Text Boxes

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Back in April 2014 I penned a few lines on using Word as a desktop publishing tool. On the whole it works, but, as I noted then, it does have serious limitations.

I mentioned in that article that it was impossible to use automated cross-referencing between text boxes. Since then I have discovered something even worse.

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