Thursday, November 19, 2015
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Friday, October 30, 2015
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Relaxing Music: Nature Video, Blue Ridge Parkway Part 4
Relaxing Music: Nature Video, Blue Ridge Parkway Part 4
This is the 4th and last installment of My Autumn Nature scenes featuring original
music I composed specifically for this video. Next week I will make the 5th video featuring all the nature autumn scenes from the prior 4 videos. Please like, share, subscribe and comment. I hope this video finds you relaxed and completely stress free.
This is the 4th and last installment of My Autumn Nature scenes featuring original
music I composed specifically for this video. Next week I will make the 5th video featuring all the nature autumn scenes from the prior 4 videos. Please like, share, subscribe and comment. I hope this video finds you relaxed and completely stress free.
Saturday, August 17, 2013
Unlimited writing ideas
Never Run Out Of Writing Ideas Again… Ever.
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| Why did I chose a poodle picture for an article on generating writing ideas? Trust me my friend. All will be revealed! |
Where do you get your ideas? That's the most asked question of any writer. In the course of their writing, they link together countless ideas until they have a finished product they can agree with.
No matter what kind of writing you do, you are going to need ideas and lots of them. For blogging, school reports, fiction, general website content, or even journal writing, you have to have ideas.
If you are doing a daily blog, especially if it’s a centralized theme blog, you will need 365 ideas every year. Ask yourself if you have that many ideas ready and raring to go and the answer will likely be a resounding “no.” However, with a little exploration, you will quickly discover you know a lot more than you thought you did. Here is how to go about it!
Word association
1. Write down the first word that comes to mind.
2. Keep going as fast as you can for at least a few minutes.
3. Make a sentence out of every word.
4. Make a theme by combining several words. This also makes your ideas original.
The result would look something like this:
| Ice | The ice was thick | N/a first word so nothing to link it to yet. |
| skate | It’s nice to skate through life | Inline skaters can skate without ice. (We used the first two words here) |
| board | My board broke after I landed. | n/a since these two words, “skate and board” make too much sense when put together we would skip this one and move onto the next two words. |
Bellow are just a few of the writing themes you can get from those three simple words. Can you imagine the ideas you could generate with dozens of word associations?
Antarctica – Living in a hostile environment.
12 Ways to skate through life.
Inline Skating: Who needs Ice?
How to build durable skateboards.
Use the Zoom Out Method for getting more themes
This method can used for each individual idea you come up with to create a slant upon the theme you came up with earlier. More importantly, it can also be used when you need to write multiple pieces on a single subject. Let’s imagine that you have a blog about dogs. That would be centralized, but some people have a blog about certain dog breeds in particular, let’s say poodles in this case. You zoom in with the old familiar What?, Who?, Why? When? Where? and How?
| Poodles | |
| Who? | Who invented them? Who owns them? Who breeds them? Who sales them? |
| What? | What are poodles? What makes them better than other breeds? What made you interested in poodles? |
| Why? | Why do poodles dribble on the carpet? Why do they bark at night? Why do they hate the mailman? |
| When? | When is the best time to immunize your poodle? When you should take your poodle to the Vet? When were they first breeded? |
| Where? | Where should I walk my poodle? Where should I make my poodles bedding? |
| How? | How to train your poodle? How can poodles learn to do tricks? How smart is your poodle compared to other breeds? |
The above table is just a few of the questions you can ask from each of the categories. You could potentially come up many more ideas than you could ever write in a lifetime.
Here are the possible writing themes or ideas we gleaned from zooming out:
So and so. The first breeder of Poodles!
Poodles and the owners who Love them!
Poodle breeders of the world!
Cashing in! The seedy underbelly of Poodle markets!
So just what is a poodle you ask?
How poodles are better than other breeds!
Why I became interested in poodles!
How to avoid stepping in the cold yet spot in your carpet at night?
How to adjust a poodles sleep cycle so they don’t keep you up at night!
How to protect visitors from the ravenous fangs of your poodle!
When to get your poodles shots!
Poodle situations that call for a veterinarian!
The story of the first known poodle!
6 perfect poodle playgrounds!
Where to put your poodles bed so you don’t squish it while going to the bathroom in the middle of the night!
Train your poodle to… (hundreds of ideas here alone)
How to keep your poodle interested in learning new tricks (again, countless ideas here)
Intelligence of poodles compared to other dog breeds!
Zoom out some more!
Perhaps it would be redundant to say this…(speaking of redundant, I can’t wait to see my Google ad suggestions after having said “poodle” so much in this article
) but you can even ask questions of all of your writing ideas, generating dozens more ideas from each theme. For example, you could take one of those ideas and do a series of writings on that one subject. For our next example, let’s take the last one and work with it.Intelligence of poodles compared to other dog breeds!
We could zoom out from dog breeds and do a series of writings on the intelligence of poodles compared to other animals, or even humans. Here is how this would look:
| Poodle Intelligence compared to other life forms. | Monkey (let’s see a poodle open a door. Ah the beauty of opposable thumbs) |
| Elephant (can a poodle remember someone as long as an elephant can?) | |
| Dolphin (Let’s see a poodle out swim a great white) | |
| Caveman (How many years of evolution would it take for a poodle to become smart enough to invent the wheel?) | |
| The “Which way did he go George” guy on the Bugs Bunny Cartoon | |
| Cats (Nothing to do with intelligence but what if witches had poodles as a mascot instead of black cats? Would witches be so scary then?) | |
| Bats (let’s see a poodle fly up in the air and catch a bug with radar) | |
| House plants (How many houseplants would it take to equal the intellect of a poodle?) | |
| House fly (If poodles ate the way flies do, would we still find them so adorable?) | |
| Albert Einstein ( How many poodles combined would it take to equal his iq level?) |
Parting Notes
There you have it! By using the most simplistic version of good old fashioned word association, and by zooming out to look at the particular branches of any given word, you can create more ideas than you would ever reasonably be able to write pieces on. And that’s just the easy method. There are dozens of such methods which would not only allow you to discover thousands of ideas to write about, but to make them unique and downright captivating.
There are also added benefits to collecting ideas. The process alone, is a great way to boost your imagination.
Thank you for reading. I hope this helps get you out of whatever writers block you may have found yourself in. What are some of the ways you come up with ideas? Let’s share some thoughts and get the conversation going.
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Five Terrific Tips For Bloggers
Five Terrific Tips For Bloggers
Five Terrific Tips For Bloggers
In trying to discover the greatest tips for blogging, I ultimately selected the ones that kept me going over the years – the ones that inspired me the most. After all, if a tip doesn’t genuinely help insure success it’s not a very good tip. I hope you get as much use out of these as I have.
1. If you have plenty of interests and need several blogs to cover them, consider getting a blogging tool like Windows Live Writer. It will save you a lot of time. You will be able to post directly to the appropriate blog and blogging service from a simple pull down menu. I personally use it to write and post all my drafts, while usually finishing the draft on the blogging service itself.
2. Don’t ever be afraid to be yourself. It’s mighty tempting to go out and look at what other successful bloggers are doing and try to emulate that. But look at any wildly successful person and you will soon discover they are very much themselves, the unique voice they are able to convey to their readers is a major ingredient in their success.
3. You have to genuinely love people. At least for me, the relationships I make with my readers is the big reason I blog in the first place. I have personally been members of certain forums for over a decade because I have friends in there. Look at every post as if you were talking to a dear friend. And when someone invites you to visit their website, go every chance you get. I spend a considerable bit of time every day going to other peoples websites and blogs. When I ask people to respond to my posts, I always appreciate when they give links to their sites or simply links to other resources I didn’t know about. It’s a great opportunity to learn new things and make new friends.
4. Trust your voice. If you think an idea is good then it is good. Your first reaction is usually the best reaction. Never let negativity sneak its ugly head into your opinions. Not everyone will like what you say but who cares? They don’t all have to be zingers. You don’t have to torture yourself like a journalist going for a Pulitzer every time you write a post. There is freedom in blogging. That’s part of the appeal. So play around a little. Vary the length of your posts and mix and match lists like this one with little check-in posts to wish your readers a good day. If you generally wish to convey appreciation to the people who visit you, then just do it. Who doesn’t need a little more positivity in their day?
5. Keep stats for motivation. In a separate place, keep a link to every blog post you have ever written. Laborious? Perhaps. But this can provide a wealth of self encouragement when you need it the most. You might also discover a new slant on a post you have already written, perhaps something you forgot to add in a previous post.
There you have it. Feel free to post links to your own blogs and websites and I will come visit you. A sharing ideas is what writing and blogging is about in the first place. I look forward to hearing from you!
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Working with Html textarea
Working with Html textarea
skill level Beginer
To create a default textarea in your webpage use the following code:
<textarea></textarea>
The text area will look like this:
example 1
To make your textarea a particular size use this code:
<textarea rows="5" cols="40"></textarea>
example 2
To center a text area use this code:
<div align="center">
<textarea></textarea>
</div>
<textarea></textarea>
</div>
As you can see above, we have made a <div></div> tag, meaning that everything between those two tags will be centered when we add align="center" to the opening tag. Here is another code example that explains what i mean.
<div align="center">
<textarea></textarea>
<p>I am centered as well</p>
</div>
example 3
I am in centered as well
Setting the background color for your textarea
As you can see, the textareas examples all have light gray background colors so they show up better on the page. By default, the textareas will be white. However, to set the background color of your text areas you will use the sytle property. Here's how to do it.
<textarea style=background-color:lightgray></textarea>
The resulting textbox using the above html code will look exactly like example 1.
Putting a border around your texarea
<textarea style="background-color:lightgray;border:5px solid green;"></textarea>
Changing the text color
Changing the text, or font color, is similar to changing the background color but easier. To change the text color, simply use this code: color:blue;
Monday, July 1, 2013
How to speed up your computer
Easy and Fast
These suggestions are things you can do without installing anything on your computer. These tips involve the following:
- Clearing out everything you don’t need. This will take you through some of the things that often get overlooked. Over time, your computer gets bogged down more and more when you visit websites.
- Getting rid of software you don’t need and will never use. If it’s taking up space and you can honestly say you will never use it, it should probably go.
- Defragmenting your hard drive.
1. Delete temp files
To clean old files follow these steps:
from my hard drive. |
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2. Remove Unused Programs
To remove unused programs do the following:
Warning: Do not remove a program unless you are sure about what it does. sometimes, certain drivers are installed here. Deleting those may prevent some of your hardware from working correctly.
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3. Defrag
To get to the defragmenter in Windows 7 take these steps:
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Saturday, June 29, 2013
How to easily avoid viruses
How to avoid getting a virus (The easy way)
This post is the result of my having cleaned hundreds of computers that were infected with a virus. When someone brings me a computer that has been completely crippled with a virus they all say the same thing; "I have no idea how that got there." In just about every case, I believe them. It's just too hard to avoid these viruses without a little know how and the right tools. Today's tip will give you a little of that know how. We will focus one hundred 100% of our attention on avoiding the virus before it gets on our systems in the first place.
To avoid viruses we need the right tool. We also need a tool that's pretty much automatic, one that warns you when you are about to surf to a dangerous place. The tool I'm suggesting today is called WOT, aka Web of Trust. It's an add-on for your browser, and chances are it supports whatever web browser you happen to be using, be that Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Firefox...etc...
How to install Web of Trust and what does it do?
- Web of trust is easy to install, simply go to this link on whatever web browser you are using and it will give you the appropriate version of the add-on for that browser. Click here for the link.
- They provide easy to follow directions once you install.
What does it do?
- Once you have installed it, search for something just like you ordinary would to test it out. When you get the result page for your search you will notice that there are little green, yellow and red circles beside each result.
yellow means they don't really have enough information and you should be careful before going there
Red means to avoid going there unless you want to get a virus.
Your search results should look something like the following page. Here I have searched for the word "FREE" which is for some reason one of those search term which can take you to some unsavory places.
after searching with WoT, these are the first three results I got. Notice the red circle beside my expertly drawn red arrow? : )
So what happens if I click on a link like that one by accident?
The result would look something like this:
A handy pop up warns to you to go back. The screen also gets a little darker. If you absolutely must go there, virus or not, you still can.
So there you have it. This step is not foolproof but it will go a long way to drastically decreasing the chances of getting a virus on your machine. Keep me bookmarked, subscribe, or just check back from time to time for the next installment where I'll show you a "little more complicated" but 100% guaranteed way to avoid getting a virus on your main machine.
Turn a webpage into a pdf
Here is a quick tip on how to turn a webpage into a pdf file. As a bonus, I have included an optional tip on how you can combine multiple pdf's into a single file. There are other ways to do this but this is all free
Google Chrome has the ability to save any webpage as a pdf file but there are several things you need to do to make that happen. If you don't have Google Chrome you can download it here.
1. In Google Chrome, go to the page you want to download. Once there click on the options menu in the upper right corner.
2. Scroll down and click on Print
3. When the new window opens up, look the the left and click change in the destination section.
4. Under the "Local Destination" section, click on save as pdf
5. Rename your file whatever you like and you're done.
Optional Tip
How to combine multiple dpfs into a single dpf
There is a freeware program that can do this for you called PDFbinder. You can download it here. Once installed start it up. Once running, all you have the do is drag all the pdfs you want added into the program and click "bind" If you need the separate dpfs to be in a certain order, as in a multiple page story or a tutorial, be sure they are inserted into dpf binder in the exact order that you need them to be in. If they are not in the correct order you can change the order with the up and down arrows until they are just right.
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