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All Writing And No Play

By Books & Authors, Journalism, Life2 Comments
christmas-mind-map-journal

Christmas Mind Map

 It all started with an idea I had for a Christmas themed short story. One I intended to share with you, dear readers. I hoped to start the tradition, releasing a short story every Christmas. A present to you all. But then I saw a call for submissions and decided to use the story I’d started writing. I had to finish writing it, edit it, cut it down and finally un-Christmas it, but got it submitted.

Then I was invited to submit a short story for an anthropology, that I didn’t want to say no to. I also found two other anthropology competitions that I want to enter. This means a lot of my free time is being spent writing at the moment. I have deadlines till June. I hope to have a new short story to share with you later on in the year. When you make submissions, you can’t share the story anywhere, well not until Editors have decided that they don’t want it.

On top of these short stories, I’ve started the Advanced Creative Writing Course at Runshaw College and continue to write for The Gay UK, both adding additional pressure to my free time. You can read my published articles on professional portfolio.

Recently my blog has consisted of mostly book reviews. Don’t think that I’m slowly turning it into a reviewing site. My blog has always been a place to express myself and share events of my life through words and photos. This shall continue, I just have been expressing myself in short story form and haven’t done anything, apart from write, to share.

Despite my lack of personal posts my blog continues to grow. I’ve had 20,000 unique visitors in less than 17 months:


wp-stats-20000

I’m not sure that the WordPress plugin Jetpack is capturing all of the visitors though; as I also use another stats software that reports the numbers of visitors being higher.

dame-edna-march-2014

Sye & Me at Barry Humphries Show

 There has been some fun. Sye and I went to see Barry Humphries: The Eat, Pray and Laugh Farewell Tour.

I’m continuing one of my favourite pastimes, reading. I’m currently reading: Plague by Michael Grant, The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett, The Awakening by Yvonne Heidt, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks and am about to start Best Gay Romance 2014 Edited By Lambert & Cochrane.

My birthday is coming up and I intend on doing something to celebrate, I’m just not sure as to what yet.

Blog soon,

Antony



I aim for posts on this blog to be informative, educational and entertaining. If you have found this post useful or enjoyable, please consider making a contribution by Paypal:


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Saturday 22 March 2014

Whoops, I Bought An iPad Air (32GB, Space Grey)

By TechnologyNo Comments
Lit Up Reindeer I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a tablet for a while now. I wanted something I can access Facebook on, use to listen to Music and watch Films/TV Boxsets on while being in the living room with the cats.

When I saw the previous generation Kindle Fire for £99 on Amazon’s website, I wasn’t sure whether this was a Christmas offer or Black Friday offer. I wasn’t even sure if the Kindle tablet would be what I wanted. But at that price, I had to look into it.

So during my visit to Manchester Christmas Market (see Getting Into The Festive Spirit: Manchester Christmas Market) my friend and I nipped into Currys PC World to have a look at the Kindle.

I was looking at the newest Kindle the Fire HDX and the screen was just seven inches. So on the one hand the Kindle was cheap, but on the other hand the screen was far too small for what I wanted to use it for.

Undecided on cost or screen size, I spoke with my friend about it and then to mum. With some persuasion from mum, I decided to buy the much more expensive iPad Air (32GB in Space Grey). Whoops! Here are some obligatory photos:

iPad Air - Box New iPad Air - Case Boxed New
iPad Air - Cover Green iPad Air - Home Screen
iPad Air - Back

The reasons I bought the iPad Air were: bigger screen, compatible with my other Apple Products (iMac & iPhone 5), really light, great hardware specs (including better camera than most other tablets) and a massive range of Apps via the App Store.

I also splashed out on a cover. A cover, just covers the front of the iPad (the screen), costs £35, comes in a range of colours and is perfect for using the iPad at home. Whereas a case, covers the entire iPad (front & back), costs £65, comes in a range of colours and is ideal if you’re planning on taking the iPad out and about. Be careful when buying, as their package design is very similar.

I’ve had my iPad for a few weeks now, so I thought I’d give you my first impressions of some of the Pros and Cons:

Pros Cons
  • Light-weight, feels lighter than the average book.
  • Great Battery Life.
  • Charges really quick.
  • Compatible with my iPhone 5 charger and USB charging.
  • Like the Space Grey effect, reminds me of the Star Trek pads.
  • Easy to set up & use.
  • Always on, quick to check Facebook, Twitter and other social media.
  • Great Apps available on the App Store.
  • iPad specific Apps, to make the most out of the iPad Air.
  • Made for media consumption, whether it be: Music, films, TV Boxsets or ebooks.
  • Now comes with free Pages, Numbers, iPhoto, iMovie and Garage Band.
  • It just works. No crashes at all (so far), not even Apps.
  • Silent operation – no sound of cooling fan.
  • Reasonable speaker sound quality.
  • iMessage & FaceTime.
  • Can be backed up through iTunes or iCloud.
  • Updates Apps Automatically.
  • Has Siri.
  • Find My iPhone – Works for iPad, so you can detect where it is if its ever stolen.
  • iPad as a device is expensive.
  • Doesn’t come with headphones.
  • Would literately be a blank canvas without the Apps on the App Store.
  • Covers are expensive at £35. Cases are extortionately priced at £65.
  • Made for media consumption – Feels difficult and slow to create things on the iPad.
  • Inhibits creativity and makes it less likely that you’ll spend your time creating something.
  • Pages, Numbers, iPhoto, iMovie and Garage Band are all designed to help you be creative, but each takes up an awful lot of disk space.
  • iTunes doesn’t accept .avi files, so most of my movies can’t be played on the iPad. Have found a work around which I shall be blogging about soon, it’s just frustrating because I shouldn’t have to do this.
  • No way to access my wireless hard drive.
  • Doesn’t seem to want to link to my iMac through WiFi.
  • Missing the biometric security, the finger print scanner the iPhone 5S has.

One or two of the Cons might just be things I haven’t worked out how to do on the iPad yet. If you know how to do something that I’ve put on my Cons list, feel free to leave a comment.

The iPad Air 32GB Space Grey is available to buy on Amazon, on the Apple Store Online or on your local high street (at various retail outlets).

Write soon,

Antony

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Thursday 12 December 2013

WordPress: Content Plugins

By Creativity, Technology, The WebNo Comments

I’ve recently installed two content plugins on my blog: Random Images for WordPress and WordPress Related Posts. The aims for these plugins were to recycle older content and direct visitors to other posts/pages of interest. From the sites statistics they’ve been a huge success. So let me tell you about the plugins:

random-image-screenshot
(Random Image for WordPress Screenshot) 		Random Image for WordPress by Justin Watt
About:
Random Image for WordPress displays a random blog post title and image on the sidebar. It will only display posts with an image, those without it won’t display. But it has lots of customisable features, that are easily tweaked on a settings page (Settings – Random Image).

Features:

  • Sort images randomly or show recent images.
  • Edit the HTML template for how post titles, images and captions are shown.
  • Select from ALL or only specific categories/tags – very useful if I say only wanted to show book reviews. It’s set up for all at the moment.
  • Customisable image width and height.
  • Able to take images from galleries.

Link(s):
Plugin’s Page @ Justin Watts

This plugin is easy to install and use. It’s great because of it’s position on the sidebar. It catches the readers eye and if the title or image spark they’re interest, they can click for a view. It’s a brilliant way to recycle old content; but the randomness has it’s pro’s and con’s. The pro is that on the homepage, it’s good as you don’t know what the visitor is into so it gives a variety of content, changing on every refresh. The con is that on specific posts it doesn’t link to simliar posts.

Which is why I’ve installed WordPress Related Posts:

related-posts-screenshot
(WordPress Related Posts Screenshot) 		WordPress Related Posts
About:
WordPress Related Posts displays other related posts at the bottom of the post page the visitor is on. So for example, if you’ve come to a book review post, it will offer you other book reviews, possibly by the same author. It clearly links together appropriate posts and if you’re not satisfied with the results, you can choose which posts appear on that particular page. It has it’s own settings page (Related Posts on your Dashboard left sidebar) making it easy to customise the many features.

Features:

  • Highly customisable, you can choose to display or not: Title (before related posts links/images), number of posts, the number of comments, the publish date and an excerpt (max 200 words).
  • It can include or exclude a thumbnail image. I choose to exclude a thumbnail image, as I don’t want to distract the viewer from the post they’ve come to. I simply want to offer the viewer suggestions before they leave.
  • Choose a default image, for posts without an image.
  • Choose which posts are displayed on a post, if your not happy with the ones the plugin suggests. Although I have to say the plugin does it automatically very well.
  • CSS customisable.
  • Adjust the formatting for a mobile device.
  • Pageviews & click Statistics (if you sign up to it).
  • Choose to exclude certain Categories.

Link(s):
Plugin Page @ WordPress
Zemanta Ltd. Website

This plugin was easy to install and use. I’m still experimenting with this plugin, in terms of what format works best but it seems to be doing what I want it to do: directing visitors to other posts of interest. It’s useful for me as I write about the same sort of things. I guess if your content was varied and didn’t have simliar themes it wouldn’t be useful to you.

These plugins are helping to increase the time visitors spend on my site and helping them notice some of my other content. However, it means that I’ve got to create great, regular and orignal content that they will want to view.

Blog soon,

Antony



I aim for posts on this blog to be informative, educational and entertaining. If you have found this post useful or enjoyable, please consider making a contribution by Paypal:


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Tuesday 25 June 2013

Typos

By Books & Authors, ThinkingNo Comments

I got an email recently about my Book Review: The Book of Tomorrow by Cecelia Ahern post with the Subject: Typos. See the email below:

Name: Sally O
Email: removed

Subject: Typos

Message Body:
Hello; I found your review of The Book of Tomorrow via Google. It is an entertaining review but has a great many typos. If this doesn’t bother you then that’s fine. If it does, might I suggest a quick proofing and edit? Things to fix =

about to loose everything
LOSE

couldn’t bare facing
BEAR

Rose, in to the gatehouse.
ROSALINE, INTO

which burn’t
BURNED

angry and board.
BORED

having latte’s
LATTES

older man, who she fancies.
WHOM

begin’s to realise
BEGINS

Sally O

Reply Required: No

I’d like to thank Sally O for taking the time to email me. I know that Sally O didn’t require a reply; but I wanted to use her email as an opportunity to write about the grammatical and occasion spelling errors you may spot on my blog.

All of the “typos” or grammatical errors Sally O points out in her email about my Book Review: The Book of Tomorrow by Cecelia Ahern post are most probably right. When I wrote the post that’s where my writing was at. Once I’ve hit the Publish button I don’t go back and edit it, but I do consider the errors and try to learn from them so that my writing improves. This is how my blog helps me to learn to write better and it also shows me how my writings developed over the years.

Interestingly I now spend more time editing a blog post than I do writing one. I’ll write a first draft, then read it carefully looking for grammatical errors. Usually in sentences I’ll find words that I don’t need or words that are in the wrong order. Occasionally I’ll have written a sentence that doesn’t make sense. It’s the editing that takes the time, but it’s the editing that brings out the quality to my writing.

So although it’s tempting to edit posts removing the errors I spot after they’ve been published; especially on posts that bring a considerable number of visitors to my blog like Book Review: The Book of Tomorrow by Cecelia Ahern (according to the WordPress Jetpack Stats Plugin) because the process helps develop and improve the quality of my writing and editing I’ll continue to leave the grammatical and occasional spelling errors as they are.

Take Care,

Antony

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Sunday 16 December 2012
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