David in Spain

Doing the NaNoWriMo – Novel in 30 days

admin — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 12:05:06 +0000

Writing a novel in Thirty Days with NaNoWriMo

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

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 !!

Working on the Web sites to make some money

admin — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 13:56:29 +0000

The efforts I have made with the SEO and the article wrting have been gaining traction in the nearly seven months I have been working at it. It can be hard word and I have had to learn a lot of things, such as the nitty gritty of getting links to my sites to have back links that bring in the traffic. I am pleased with the money I am spending on The Keyword Academy each month and I find the tools very useful. I have just also discovered Keyword Strategy which is another useful tool. The Keyword Strategy works mainly on the interlinking witin the site and other on site SEO things, but it can scan the whole web site over time.

The thing that you have to work as suggested by the Keyword Strategy works like a to do list also. It tells you things like a bunch of keyword that are not ranked at all on Google. You can make a new page for that keyword and then put a tick in the box to say it is done. It als works the same with broken links. When it is scanning the web site it will assign web pages to keywords automatically and also you can do it manually. Then it will tell you that keywords in your list that are not on the web pages.

You have to put the keywords into the list first and it connects to the keyword tool at Google to get you some based on a seed keyword. Put in at least 3000 keywords and then start working with them. Making new posts, adding to posts already there, fixing broken links and checking the alerts on the Alerts tab.

Is it worth doing ?

I can tell you that in a few days of adjusting some of my pages to have more internal links within the web site and making new pages and also putting keywords in to the post where they are missing, there have been more visitors to my site. I will know more when I have been using the service for longer. So far I am pretty impressed and I will probably end up paying the money for the monthly subscription.

Using other free services and being social with it

I am still do the social networking thing with the sites where I will pick an article and push it out through Amplify. That sends it to a pile of places and I think it makes some sort of difference. I also use IMAutomator as another service that does something similar. I reckon what is needed is to have a plan for the week in which every day I write a certain number of words for articles, do a podcast on one day of the week, or a video, Another part of the day to work with the social part of the job. I have already started to time how long it takes me to write articles and I can do it very fast when using Dragon Dictate on the iPad. There is never any reason to be twiddling my thumbs and wondering what to do next. There is always something. I do wish I could have more time to do more video to put up on YouTube. Just because I like doing it.

ISCA Minicon in Girona

admin — Sun, 01 May 2011 18:14:01 +0000

Girona ISCA Minicon

Last week I went and looked in at the ISCA Minicon in Girona, Catalonia, Northern Spain. Basically I went to meet with Steve Hearn the president of the ISCA (International Society of Caricature Artists) I have already interviewed him for the Mac20Q podcast and so it was excellent to meet up in person.

The day that visited there were about 20 or so of the artists doing their drawings that contorted the features to make the victims – I mean subjects – Look funny. A number of the artists were owners of the iPad and I talked to them a little about how they use the ipad as an artist. There are some cool amazing iPad applications that let you create drawings on the iPad.

There were some people doing 3D caricatures using a modelling clay, good quality work, impressive. During the event they were having competitions to do likenesses of people and of course to make outrageous caricatures of subjects. At time they were working from photos and also from life. If you sat still in one place for any length of time you would have someone draw you.

It was interesting to hear some of the stories of how they were doing as artists and tales of seeing their work being used as examples by unscrupulous street caricature artists. There were some artists that were making a living from drawing caricatures, as does Steve Hearn. he goes to weddings and draws the guests and tells jokes while doing it.

One of the artist there was drawing on a tablet computer and printing out the finished images. The tablet computer was up on an easel and being used like a canvas. Then another had a Wacom Cintiq and was working on some virtual 3D caricatures using zBrush

I shot some video while I was there – Look here for when I have edited it and posted it here.

Writing for a living

admin — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 05:43:44 +0000

Since December I have written more than 75,000 words, mostly for articles, some for one off blog posts. The income from it is rising, with adsense it is small but growing, Same with Kontera, infoLinks and the sales of an eBook, small but growing.

InfoBarrel

InfoBarrel is a site I have been posting articles to and I get a good click through rate on it. So far I have 62 articles on there and I can see it will be good to keep putting more up. I don’t have such a good click through on the sites I own, even the Amazing iPad which is getting 250 – 400 visitors per day. Important to build up my own sites and even more important to choose the keywords more carefully, to get the search traffic. On a couple of the sites I have the sites are not even on the radar yet. I have to get more articles on there to build up the authority of the sites.

Back Linking for SEO Juice

Following the tips from Pat Flynn, which he got from Joseph Archibald for building the site so it goes in the right direction on the Google searches. So I am using Unique Article Wizard and I am a member of The Keyword Academy to get the tools for gathering the links back to my web sites. On TKA there is PostRunner for posting articles, which you have to do the work manually with totally original articles. With Unique Article Wizard there is a spinning at paragraph level and it can have some nested spinning within that. Care is needed with spinning to make sure you end up with articles that make sense.

Campsite Work

Back at the campsite for a few days at the end of the month. It will be the Easter Weekend. I expect to be working both in reception and also on the gate security. The gate is easier, less stressful and less hassle with the other person working there who is not what you would call a team player. I will not be able to get so much writing done but I will get practice with the Spanish and a bit of cash. The money is not much – Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick!

I Enjoy The Writing Process

I have a nice system where I write one article first, then do re writes on a per sentence basis, to end up with four original articles. I can then use those as I see fit. One to the blog or money site, one to InfoBarrel and then two to Postruner which is part of The Keyword Academy. Or I could use Three for Unique Article Wizard and then the other to whichever place I feel like sending it to.

I also spin the articles on a per sentence basis that gives me another ten spun articles to send where ever. I haven’t been using many spins lately, I should send a few of them into some article directories.

Anyway the whole point of the writing is to make some money. So far it is extremely slow going to make increases, but it is happening. If I could get to 500 articles on InfoBarrel I should be doing OK with some earnings. I have to write some more eBooks too as I have had a couple of sales this month of the Footy Money Maker eBook and spread sheet.

In the wake of the Japan Earthquake Disaster – Congratulations to Shelter Box and others

admin — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 20:32:42 +0000

I found it truly heart warming to see the people of Shelter Box in the UK gutting stuck in with getting their Shelter Box Kits ready to send out to the Japan Earthquake disaster. I know there are certainly other disaster rescue and help out fits around the world but I saw these on the BBC news and they were putting their backs in to getting as many as possible of the kits they have ready and loaded up on lorries to send out.

There is the North Africa region going completely haywire lately and just getting busy killing each other. More interested in destroying the country they live in, especially Libya than thinking about what they could do to make the world a better place. It has been television that I have been unable to take my eyes off during the day, just seeing how bad things can get on this planet.

I expect the Red Cross will be getting out there in Japan and the firefighter teams that go and help to save people from the fallen down building. Great to see that there is some humanity left in the world and we can fight as one species. Honestly I get quite emotional seeing all the devastation actually happening in front of my eyes today and really feel for the poor people that are caught up in the situation.

Please Help Shelter Box if you can.

How to Survive an Apocalyptic Event

admin — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 16:56:33 +0000

So the Jogging Deceased (Like The Walking Dead but faster) have taken over the world, or there’s been a atomic catastrophe or perhaps a purely natural calamity. That being said just what following that? Precisely how are you likely to come through the terrible challenges? Do you think you’re prepared with regard to existence without the presence of modern day requirements? Zero electricity or propane, phones not working, no internet based or other communications.

SAS Survival Handbook, Revised Edition: For Any Climate, in Any Situation

Simply being geared up has got to be great start. Get some emergency knowledge under your belt. There are actually programs you’ll be able to take regarding learn how to exist in the wilderness, training books for example the one from the SAS that will show you the way to get water along with food stuff, the essentials you’ll need to remain in existence. Naturally survivability will depend upon the amount of the threat, however it is within the characteristics of the human race to try and stay alive and keep our place in the entire world.

I started to look at this due to seeing a good few TV series where there was an apocalyptic event and there were survivors that had to stay alive. In ‘The Walking Dead’ the main thing was to not get eaten alive and become a zombie yourself. There was ‘Survivors’ on the British TV channels and these sort of event seems to bring out the worst in people and only mostly, it is the bad ones that seem to make it past the initial bad event. Looks like we should all have a case of guns tucked away, so that we can shoot all the baddies, just to be able to feed ourselves.

How would you survive an Apocalypse? Would you be able to hack it in the dog eat dog world? What would you miss most, and could you make the right decisions that would ensure your survival. There was a series called Jericho not long ago and one of the problems was tat there was no fuel left for the cars. So what do the heroes of the series do? He drives around in a huge gas guzzling vehicle that demonstrated his stupidity or more so the writers’ inability to imagine themselves in such a situation.

Comments or questions are welcome.

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No electric but I still had internet.

admin — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 20:30:35 +0000

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.

The end of the World

admin — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 10:50:54 +0000

Was watching the TV programme last night in which it was a drama documentary based on a world wide pandemic which killed people off and only a few were left. There have been a few stories like this on TV over the years and they always focus on the bad things and how society would break down and it would be a life of dog eat dog. Often the military would take over and be the bad guys making stupid decisions. The man in the street would be making bad decisions that would lead to them dying or being killed.

The thing that was on last night was based in Los Angeles in the U.S. and was typical in assertions that people would get out their guns and kill whoever got in their way. There would be no sense of community and ‘We are all in this together’ sort of spirit. There would be no getting together to help other survivors, everyone would be so shocked by losing all of the modern luxuries that they would turn into morons.

The family that were portrayed in the drama left the city like they were going on holiday, suitcases and nothing that could be useful in a survival way. I suppose if they have never been camping and were typical city people it could be realistic. The people that made the programme made out that they based there ideas on seeing what happened after things like Hurricane Katherina. Looting was rife and the supermarkets looked like a plague of locusts had descended.

I can imagine that when this programme was shown in the States many went into the supermarkets and started to stock up with food stuff in tins and have other long life foods that could support them in a similar sort of crisis. Probably hitting the gun stores to set an arsenal in the home, just in case.

In the end I could not watch the end of this TV programme, it was so typical of a U.S. sensationalistic view of whatever. repetition of many of the shots and the whole just plain annoyed me. Just glad I don’t live in America.

Got the iMac Back

admin — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 12:40:23 +0000

It took three weeks, well slightly longer to get the computer fixed, so in all I was unable to use it for a month. You can imagine how happy I am to get in back in full working order. I don’t know what took them so long to be able to work what was the problem and I think they had forgotten about it. It must have been sitting in the corner gathering dust. Anyway after I had been waiting two weeks I rang them up to tell them to get their finger out. Then on three weeks I gave another push and they still had not decided what was the problem. intially they had said it could be the main logic board or the hard disk. I very much doubted that it could be the hard drive. In the end they changed the graphics card.

Only having to have a new graphics card was good for my wallet with a saving of over 100 euro. That was nice. At one point I was wondering what I could do with the computer, how far would it go before I though was not viable to fix it. It is only two years only and I want it to last for 5 years. If I had any sense I would start a fund to save for the next computer. If only I could put away a small sum every month so that I would have the cash to buy the latest and greatest when the time comes to upgrade.

How long do you expect your computer to last for?

Comments or questions are welcome.

iMac woes part deux

admin — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 14:06:24 +0000

I took the iMac into the Apple Store in Barcelona nearly 2 weeks ago now and I was told that they would call me when they knew what the problem was, to let me decide what to do with it. That was mainly because they wanted to rip me off with the cost of a hard drive. €140 for a 500GB drive is a bit steep when I just bought a 2TB for under €100.

Like a bit of a prune I waited for them to ring me and in the end I thought I had better stir it up a bit and call them. It took me four attempts to get through and the woman on the other end tells me that the problem is the logic board. I knew that the drive was OK. But then she tells me that they still have not got the parts in to fix it. I always feel I get unlucky with these sort of things.

The cost of the fixing will be over 500 euro and I have no choice but to pay it. I need my machine back. Working now with my MacBook and my MacMini is not good enough for me. I need more screen space to work with.

When I was at the Genius Bar when I left the computer in to be fixed, I was talking to a guy that spoke English pretty well and I don’t think the problem is due to things being lost in translation. I suspect that they forgot about me because the shop is new and they are inundated with work to do. You know how it goes 50 people working there but each of them thinking someone else was taking care of it. Or more likely not even thinking at all.

I am a bit miffed that I will now have to wait probably another week before I get my computer back, I was told that the repair would be 7 – 10 days because it was a busy time in the new store, instead of the usual 5 – 7 days. So you can see that really I am having to wait 3 time longer than I should have to be looked after.