Doing the NaNoWriMo – Novel in 30 days

Writing a novel in Thirty Days with NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month

NaNoWriMo – the contest which is the National novel writing month that takes place every November. This is what I’m taking part in this November and it is the first time that I have done so. I wanted to take part in NaNoWriMo last year, but I had too many things to do. In some ways this year, I am also in the situation where I have too many things to do, but I’m going to write 50,000 words for a novel anyway.

As I write this I am into the second day of the NaNoWriMo and enjoying it so far. I have written three scenes for the story which is called ‘A Geeks Day out’. My word count at present is just over 3000, so only another 47,000 to do. In terms of the number of words required per day it is only 1700 approximately. Of course that does assume that you are able to write every single day for 30 days. I think I would like to work in terms of having a target of 2000 words per day so that after a week or so, I will be slightly ahead of the curve. I know that there will be some days when it is going to be more difficult to crank out the words. This is not because of hitting writers block and not knowing what to write next for the story, but more to do with if my wife is at home. I tend to get a less work done. Funny that, isn’t it?

-Writing to make money

At the same time as I am writing for the NaNoWriMo novel, I still have to keep working on writing the articles for my websites. Last month was both a good month and a bad month. It was good in as much as, I earned €20 more than I did at the previous month, and the reason for that was hitting a particular good keyword towards the end of the month that brought me in thousands more visitors over a period of two days. More traffic to the site equals more money. It is good that it happened when it did because two days after that event, Google make changes to their search algorithms and my search traffic dropped to about a quarter or a third of what it was. Less traffic to the site equals less money. So that was the bad part of the good and bad statement about the month.

What does the future hold for writing for money?

For the moment the Amazing iPad website which was my moneymaking website before the Google change, I am quite disappointed. The website is full of great information and is a content driven super site, which is the type of site that Google is supposed to like. So on one hand I have to kind of wonder, what it is that I can do to bring this site back to life again, and on the other hand I can be hopeful that if I just keep working at it the way that I have, then it should come good again.

Rather than have all my eggs in one basket, I have two other websites that are already are indexed by Google and are doing okay for the amount of content that is on the site. One of those sites is doing quite nicely and the click through, that I get from it are usually nice earners. I tend to get a higher payment for the click through here, than I did from the other site. So it will make sense to write a lot of articles for this site, to have content there that people will keep coming back for.

The next thing that I have done is to start up a new site. I started this new site a couple of days after the Google changes, which was just over a week ago and today was the first day of getting some search traffic. I only have five articles on the site so far, but they are long and informative, content driven articles. With this new site I don’t intend to do any link building articles in any other places. I plan to only write articles for the site and to promote them using amplify.com and Scoop.it, alongside promoting in Facebook and Google plus. I have already created a Facebook page especially for this new site.

Creating graphics for my websites

Pixelmator 2.0 review

With me being a graphic designer & sign writer in my previous life, I find that I still enjoy doing that sort of work. For my new website I have been using a logo design tool called Art Text 2 which is great for doing designs which look like they are 3-D. I can easily give text a 3-D look, so that they have the pillow shape or the bevelled shape. I can add backgrounds to the design, or sometimes what I will do is to take the text and put it in as a layer into Pixelmator.

Pixelmator has just been upgraded to version 2 and I bought it because it was much much cheaper than if I was to buy Photoshop. Besides it is a particularly good application for working with bitmaps and now it also does some vectors. The Pixelmator application works really well and on top of that it looks very pretty while doing it.

Video and using my time best

The writing has to take precedence at the moment, but I am also very keen to spend more time doing my digital artwork. That digital artwork includes making videos, learning how to use Motion and Final Cut Pro X. Doing any sort of work on video is very time-consuming, so I think I can expect not to do much video during November. So for the moment I will be pencilling in December as a month for doing video. The NaNoWriMo novel will be finished by then, at least the first draft of the novel at any rate will be completed, there will still be the editing and numerous rewrites to do, if I decide that it is worth taking the NaNoWriMo novel further to have a finished novel that could be published. I wish !!

No electric but I still had internet.

Mifi for mobile internet

As happens far too frequently here in Spain, I had no electric for the morning. Supposed to be from 8am until 1pm but they turned it off early and then didn’t turn back on until after 3pm. So had phone working but couldn’t run the router without electric, so I had to fall back on to the MiFi (Huawei E5830) that I have with a SIM card in from MásMovil. I have a pay as you go SIM which is working out pretty good in terms of usage and cost.

I am also, I am very happy to say, at the end of the Telefonica Movistar contract with my iPhone. Hard to believe I have had it now for 2 years and it is still pretty much like new and working great. I did order a battery clip on today to extend the battery life. Not that the battery is giving problems but more because the unit was heavily discounted. Usually £38 or more and I got it for under £15. Worked out at under €20. I think it will give me a bit more life out of the phone. I can’t afford a new iPhone4 this year. Anyway as I can now change mobile phone company I will move the phone to MásMovil also. They have a Contrato Máslibre which will cost me €14.90 for the phone calls side of it and then €5 for 300mb. I could opt for 1GB download a month but I doubt if I will need it.

Just wondered if I need to get the 300mb because I could just carry around my MiFi unit and get the data in that way. But for the sake of €5, then why not?

Of course Telefonica are doing their best to slow the portability of my number to a different company, because they are robbing bastards. Wondering how long now it will take to get the SIM in my hand. With the previous one I got it took a couple of weeks and that was just a straight purchase of a SIM card.

While I had no electric for the morning I was able to do some reading using my iPad, the battery life in that is brilliant. Loving the iBooks application because I can put in bookmarks, notes and highlight text wherever I like. When I use the PDF reader within that application it is good because I can zoom in to images and look really close, which is very useful. On the ePub side of things I can make the text bigger or smaller but I don’t have the zooming ability.

New 24 inch monitor Learning Mac Programming and camping

Working at the camp site

Only another few days working at the camp site and being amused by the antics of the people there. The funniest is the boss and he alpha male activity. He loves to go around dishing out tellings off or simply telling how he thinks the job should be done. Most times he is over doing it and could spend his time more profitably by trusting the workers at the camp site. Mind you there is one guy that gets drunk every day and is useless in the afternoon. There is another that is a useless lump of lard that is so slow entering in the details of the customers as they arrive that there are often queues of people that could be instead putting up the tent or spending time swimming in the sea, or lying on the beach. Then there is the old guy that really is too ill to work and parks his car in the car park only 30 metres from the reception, but the walk across nearly kills him.

Learning Programming

I am itching to get learning more programming and hopefully build a business making applications for the iPad, iPod and iPhone plus some Mac apps too. I have a couple of good book and I have downloaded a pile of videos from the WWDC conference that show how to do many things and are pretty useful. There is the iOS 4 within the new Xcode that is to be released soon. I have been trying it out and it looks pretty good. To get my hands on these I had to pay up the 99 dollars to be a member of the Apple developer program for the iPhone. I am disappointed that they expect another 99 for the Mac developer program. But the code is very similar so by being in the iPhone side you get loads of info that helps with the Mac programming too.

New Monitor

I bought a new monitor for my wife and I am using it. No I am not being selfish or bad – It is just that the Minidisplay to DVI converter cable got broken by her the other day so we have to get another before she can use it. I ordered one from Apple and a Bluetooth keyboard to go with it to make her Mac experience better with the MacBook Pro she has.

Platja d’Aro going crazy for the summer

Back at the camping site again and the guy that was away for the last two years is back working, he really should retire. He is so slow processing the customers and he has another old guy for company working just as slow next to him. Because of this I have been pushed out to work more outside the reception which in some ways is good although I prefer being in the reception. A bit less stressful perhaps but quite a bit more boring. At least I have time to think about things I want to ponder.

The boss is a pain, but isn’t that in the job description for most bosses. Always ready with a telling off for the slightest thing to who ever is in the firing line even if not necessarily the culprit. Never has any words of encouragement for the staff and is not too good at motivation the workers, because of that. At least he does have a lighter side from time to time and can make a joke. now and then.

Good for me to practice my Spanish as I have to be speaking and listening all day long. I am missing my work on my Mac computers, and the experience with this working for other people convinces me that I should be learning programming and working freelance and also making my own products to sell. Getting only one day off per week hampers my learning efforts although I have been getting some study in before going i to work.

For the last few months I have been diving in to the programming. I started off with Objective C learning and some Ruby, and lately I have been getting stuck in with PHP which again like ruby is getting me to think like a programmer. I happened to mention on Twitter that I was learning PHP and was almost immediately asked if I was well on enough to be able to tackle a php programming job. That is a good sign that there is possibly work out there for me to do. Just have to get good at it thats all.

I do have a couple of ideas for the Mac iPhone and iPad applications centred on my interests of trading on Betfair and also for the education end of things. A lot of maths will be needed to do what I have in mind for the Betfair angle, but not an impossible amount. I can start with something that is more for information on a technique and later move into using the Betfair API to add more functionality.

The course I am following is on Lynda and is very good, fairly easy to follow. With this one I feel I have made some strides with the understanding of the processes of programming, learning things like For and While looping statements and the if then else logic that is the bread and butter of making computer programs work. Another area I have moved forward with is the using MySQL to make database type of applications and use with PHP.

Mind Mapping – A Tool for students in all types of learning situations.

Seeing as a I used to be a teacher I have always had an interest in teaching, education, learning. I have a particular interest in the thinking processes and how the brain works. I have read a good bit on the subject and including ‘Emotional Intelligence’ by Daniel Goleman. There was another I read about that I can’t remember the name of right now but will update when it comes back to me which was along the lines of thinking processes and creativity with thinking. When I was in business I read a number of books which have some great ideas in about things like Neuro Linguistic Programming, and how to get the best out of yourself and the muscle in between the ears.

Try iMindMap today for free to see if you like it

One of the area that interested me a huge amount was the book by Tony Buzan. In it was the story of a young guy that decided one day that he should be a A student and not a C level student. His teachers didn’t believe him and nearly laughed at him for his audacity, but he had made up his mind. Though working out what it was he needed to do from the business end, such as the product he would have to hand in to get the best marks, to the way that he would have to work on himself to be able to achieve what he wanted from his educational life.

Much of it comes down to attitude and the desire to do the best you can do. But there are also tools that you can use to enhance your own learning such as MindMaps and making your short term memory become long term memory. There are tricks that do work and when you know and understand what sort of a learner you are, such as how you best learn material, audibly, reading, visual like video or by doing, then you can design a system for yourself that will ensure the top marks in the tests and exams that you have to put yourself through.

Another of the reasons that I believe this is because of my own story. I was failing at the English class at school, in particular and in other classes too. I was given a talking to by the English teacher, Mrs Dawson and she turned my head around. I had to get a certain number of essays done in a short time or I would be on the educational scrap heap. I didn’t fancy being a van driver or a road sweeper, I knew I was better than that. My attitude changed beyond belief and weirdly I found I enjoyed doing the essays and being successful. I think I even did extra work.

Tony Buzan has a product that is really useful and every person in any form of learning or education should consider investing in themselves by buying and using it. It is the MindMap. You can of course just get a piece of paper and draw the mind maps with coloured pens and that’s great but these days the computer is the way forward. Better legibility, speed of creation of Mind Maps and extra tools all make it worthwhile to get your hands on a copy of the iMind Map. There is a trial version you can use to see if if is worth your while getting so there is no need to just take a chance, spending money before you know if it will suit you or not.

The software will work on Windows as well as on the Mac and is good for writers that want to explore some ideas, getting some ideas out in the open and also for a business project management tool. I am using it in my quest to learn to be a software programmer. There is such a huge body of information I have to learn that I need iMindMap to be able to learn faster and get up to speed.

If you need any information from me, contact me with the form below.

Comments or questions are welcome.

Learning Objective-C for Mac programming

It is the sort of thing to make your head hurt in the brain region. I suppose it is always good to give the old noggin a bit of a workout though. I bought some books and I have been working my way though some examples of making applications, starting with some foundation type apps that you have to view the output in the console. These are to explain the basics of programming and when you have got some of that done you can move on to making some that have a GUI.

I have said before that when I tried to learn programming I hit the hump as it were – that moment when the book or tutor or whatever hits you with some stuff that is either not explained or os badly explained as far as a beginner is concerned, is seems that programmers forget what it is like to be an ordinary human being and have normal thinking processes. I have had a couple of moments like that this time with looking at the Apple developer website for a tutorial while the tutorials on the Cocoalab.com web site has been much easier in comparison. That one is called ‘Become an Xcoder’ It really is good in feed in the info in small baby sized chunks.

So I am starting to think that I really could become an Xcoder of Mac, iPad and iPhone applications. I do have a couple of ideas of applications I want to create in a niche market that has not yet been covered. I will not be making any tip calculators that’s for sure, seeing as every man and his dog has already made on of those. On the Apple site it went in to so much detail that it was bordering on unintelligible so I ended up copying in code that I had no idea where it came from, why it was there and what it was supposed to do. I am working on the basis that if I go through it a couple of times or more I will pick up things bit by bit, I will be able to understand more as I go along.

I have been following the book mostly but I think it is a good idea to get a different view and take on the process by looking in other sources, like the cocoalab site and the Apple developer site. I think if I has started with the Apple tutorials I might have given up already.

OK then so if it is so difficult then why am I banging my head against the brick wall? Seems to me that creating applications for the iPad and iPhone has been proved to be a way of earning a living and I want a part of the action. I know that maybe a lot of people have a head start already and it could be a while before I can come up with something that will be useful enough to have people willing to give me money for it. But hey I do have to start somewhere.

Apple iPad Worldwide availability

The iPad availability Europe situation is not good as it stands at the middle of April. There was recently an announcement from Apple to say that they were not going to supply iPads to Europe for another month. The release date for the iPad for the UK, Germany, France Spain and some other European countries will not be until the end of May, with a pre-order date of 10th of May.

Apple should at the very least had plans to be able to ramp up production faster if needed and as the problem stands now they should have made sure that European iPad developers could get an iPad because they need the physical device to get the apps ready and working right.

Of course it is not just in Europe the iPad is not getting out the rest of the world either. Apple are bound to look after the most vocal customer base first and there local customers as in U.S. citizens. So much for there being a World Wide market now, when Apple looks after one section of its customers before the rest.

Read more about the iPad and the accessories at Amazing iPad

Posted via web from Mac 20 Questions

Blogo latest version

Set up the latest beta version of Blogo on the MacBook, the licence allows up to 3 computers & the developer was helpful with my setup today!

via Ping.fm

Posted via web from Mac 20 Questions

Bento Database Video Turorial

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Bento

Setting up a database with Bento and using the information stored in record that you have already in Address Book and getting access in the same place to iCal events and Apple Mail.Using data that is stored in one place and one place only is a nirvana for databases. That way you can’t have different versions of the same data and lose your database integrity. That’s what I want to have this work so that I can collect the data in Address book and so long as I put in a keyword in the Note fired then the information will also propagate into Bento also. So I don’t have to have Bento open all the time but when I do open the application I will have all at my finger tips.Why I think Bento is so useful is because it is easy to set up extra fields for information that you want to track and even though it isn’t a relational database like Filemaker is it so much better that keeping your data in a spreadsheet table.

Setting up a database with Bento and using the information stored in record that you have already in Address Book and getting access in the same place to iCal events and Apple Mail.

Using data that is stored in one place and one place only is a nirvana for databases. That way you can’t have different versions of the same data and lose your database integrity. That’s what I want to have this work so that I can collect the data in Address book and so long as I put in a keyword in the Note fired then the information will also propagate into Bento also.

So I don’t have to have Bento open all the time but when I do open the application I will have all at my finger tips.

Why I think Bento is so useful is because it is easy to set up extra fields for information that you want to track and even though it isn’t a relational database like Filemaker is it so much better that keeping your data in a spreadsheet table.

Am I going to buy an iPad?

I like the look of it, I want one but don’t really need one. My wife will be getting one of these beauties though. She is a teacher and has been on the look out for something exactly like this for using with her work. She wanted a MacBook Air for the lightness of it and this is lighter. The iPad has a super looking version of Keynote on there for $10 and she can do all her information management that teachers have to do easily on this device.

Best of all – She may let me touch it from time to time, perhaps even use it?

Posted via email from Mac 20 Questions

Twitter Podcast

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Really pleased to have found a tool that works so well. In the podcast I discuss two tools I have tried and you will understand why I prefer Tweetadder over Twitter Guru Elite. Both have pluses but Tweetadder has more features to its advantage.

The main thing though is that it really is important to have bigger Twitter numbers if you have something you need to get out there. I have a burning ambition to get my podcasts noticed and I think this is the way to go. You can’t rely on a small group of followers to re tweet for you generally be people are busy doing other stuff. You have to take matters into your own hands and find the followers yourself.

Have a listen and leave me a comment below the post if you have an opinion or would like to know more. Basically if you want or need more followers then it can be done with this software solution, a lot quicker.

Comparisons with 2 Twitter systems

I was trying out as you can see in the last couple of posts, Twitter Guru Elite. But then I also started to use Tweetadder. The reason for looking at this other one is because of it being a stand alone application that has a Mac version as well as a Windows version. On top of that it has a one off payment instead of the per month cost of Twitter Guru Elite.

The plus side of Twitter Guru Elite is that it filters out some of the crud. If if has in its database twitter accounts that are plainly spamming robots then it will discount them. I don’t think Tweetadder does that, it is less discriminating. I did pay for 30 days with Twitter Guru Elite and after a few days I decided to stop the recurring payment in PayPal. This was a bad move because then Twitter Guru Elite stopped working and I had only been using it for about 4 or 5 days.

I am leaning towards the Tweetadder application because it has some good search features. I can search for the followed accounts of a twitter user as well as the accounts being followed. I can put in search terms using the operators such as OR which I can’t do in Twitter Guru Elite.

I still like Twitter Guru Elite for some of what it does and I think it is horses for courses. Some people will prefer to pay monthly and some will prefer to pay the one off cost of buying the software. Tweetadder cost me $79 to work with 5 accounts and you would need to pay for the middle version of Twitter Guru Elite to get similar functionality. I did run into the limits that were in the $19 a month version of Twitter Guru Elite. It allows you to add 100k records and if you do searches on accounts belonging to people with large numbers of followers it is easy to hit the limit.

So my recommendation would be to use Twitter Guru Elite if you want to work with up to 2 newish accounts you own. If you want to go for a more long term solution then Tweetadder is the one to get.

Another post about getting the Twitter numbers to grow. I was away for the weekend in Liverpool at a Tweetup and met some friends from my online Twitter world. Great bunch of Tweeps and really excellent to put actual faces in the flesh to the names I talk to online.

So I wasn’t able to do anything with building the Twitter numbers since Friday evening but that is OK because I had the Twitter Guru thing working for me. I had primed the system with a number of feeders and it was doing the job all by itself. I had no internet access while I was away although I did go in the Apple Store and looked at the numbers. Great that way you can get free WiFi in the Apple Store. I also made a video in there too. Thats is something else though.

Here are the latest numbers though from Twitter Guru Elite…

In the last post it was 107 on Video20Q and 229 for Mac20Q. SO it is looking healthy in terms of forward movement.

Looking at Twitter counter I can compare the 2 accounts and see how they are growing.

Now I have to do some podcasting and publish the next podcast at Video20Q…

Hitting the Twitter brick wall

This is the thing with starting to work with a Twitter account that is new or more or less new. You can see from the Video20Q account that although it started at only 8 followers and has added 100 since the start of using this service 2 days ago, because if the rules regarding the ratio of followers to following, it has slowed down in terms of growth. We have gone into the next phase though which is when the system starts to unfollow those that are not following back. That comes from the setting in which you say how long to leave people as non reciprocal followed. That is you have followed them and they have not followed back. The standard setting is 48 hours. I think I will leave it at that.

In Video20Q the following has dropped to 67 while the followers has hung at around the 105-107 mark. I expect what will happen next is that the system will start following those that I have been adding to the queue from the feeders and the searches. The feeders are people that already have followers in my niche and I follow them with the expectation that some will follow back. The searches are just that where I have specified a search term and then chosen some of the Tweeps from the list that came from that search to go into the queue.

I think I will make a little video showing how I do this adding to the queue of possible Tweeps. I think it will help other people see what this system does and how it does it. That will be great because the help on the site is not that good to be honest. I think the people that made this system are busy using it to make money for themselves but getting sales from their tweets.

My aim with this is to build up the numbers that I can tell about my podcasts. There is a chance I will see if I can get in some sales of things like this system itself seeing as I am proving that it does work.

Not quite sure right now how long it will take for this to start putting in more requests for follows. I will have to wait and see. I wonder if it is possible to have two bites at the cherry wit the follows. Perhaps if they didn’t follow the first time around they might do the second time of asking. That may depend on if this system will do that, because all of the followers and follows are indexed.

One other thing is the possibility to white list some people you follow, so that even if they don’t follow back they stay followed. I have not set up any of those yet but I may do if I see it is necessary.

So far I am pleased with the results. I would have seen a bigger growth if I had worked with my Wizardgold account seeing as I was starting with a bigger number.

Just checked in Twitter Guru Elite and updated the numbers and the requests to follow have gone into Twitter. It had dropped to 67 that I was following but has gone back up to 100. Excellent. I like it when a plan comes together.

Building up the Twitter numbers

Funny thing Twitter, I was in there early before it got crazy popular but didn’t do enough with it when it started to run away with itself. I was working with the Wizardgold name which came across from what I was doing with the betting strategy podcasts and only recently have I got other Twitter accounts that are suitable to what I do now with the 20 Questions web sites. I have the Mac20Q, Video20Q, Spondicious, Photo20Q. I got these mostly to stop other people taking the name and pretending to be me. But now I think it is a great idea to have multiply personas online and to separate the identities on the social networks.

Today I decided to give a system a try called Twitter Guru Elite. It did cost 19 dollars but I thought what the hell. It was promising big increases in my twitter numbers daily, in the 300 range and that the people following would be as far as is humanly possible be worth having. They claim to stop the bots and let the real people through. I was a bit sceptical and when I started I thought the information on how to get started was a bit skimpy. I struggled to find out how to do some of the basics but persevered.

Basically the way it works is by looking at people that are interested in the topics that you are interested in and see who their followers are. You put them in the system as a ‘Feeder’ and go through the list of followers and add them to a queue to follow by your account. Obviously it has to be a bit clever because Twitter has follower limits so the system has to monitor how many followers you have and how many following. When you get more following then the queue is used to follow some more. It keeps the balance right for your Twitter account.

Despite my initial worries that I had wasted 19 dollars I have been quite happy with the way it has gone. It was a little weird when on account which had 8 followers dropped down to 4. But then the thing started to work and the numbers went in the right direction. The next picture is after about 5 hours and look quite healthy in terms of growth.

I will have another look at this in the morning to see how the numbers are looking again. As you can see I was able to work with 2 Twitter accounts with this tool to increase my followers. The best thing of all is that the followers are likely to be interested in what I am offering and that means I will be able to get the Podcast in front of more people. That is what I am doing this for, promotion of the 20 Questions Brand.

This snapshot is from 10am the next morning, so about 11 hours later than the last picture. Quite impressive really. I will post up a new picture in 24 hours.

David in Spain

A little bit of everything

Category Archives: Technology