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Danacea - Nov 1, 2008

Now I’ve read this, I’ve had to change mine :)

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That’s a lot of people to change look in one day.

[caption id=“attachment_806” align=“aligncenter” width=“499” caption=“the progression”][/caption] I’m not doing too badly. I’m 1000 words ahead of the minimum per day if you take the 1667 word per day rule seriously. Might work up to 20,000 tonight. I’m just 4000 away…

50,000 words is a nice goal. I’ve already got ten thousand of those words in a document on google docs. My Nanowrimo attempt is exploring social media, new technology and the effect it’s having on human interactions. So far the ideas have been flowing. 5600 words the first day, 8000 the day after that and now over 10,000 four days in and I still have some writing time. I’m really looking forward to writing the eighty percent that remain because it’s a learning curve. I’ve started making the chapters longer and attempting to elongate the scenes. I want to create an idea and elaborate. I don’t want to skip from one character to the other. Two people already want to help me with the project but I really don’t want to start editing till I have the first fifty thousand words typed out. Nanowrimo isn’t just about me though There are quite a few people working on the project at the same time. Many of them are still struggling with ideas. Some are speaking about foregoing the social life to progress as far as possible. A few people have reached 10,000 words. It’s a funny month for all of those deciding to take one of the national challenge month to fruition. There’s blogging, writing, podcasting, vlogging and I’m not sure what else.

mousewords - Nov 0, 2008

That’s the cool part–writing without worrying about editing. Makes it very fun. :-) I look forward to seeing your story!

This month I’m trying something different. It’s Nanowrimo. It’s a strange word for the unitiated but it’s short for National novel writing month. It’s the time of the year when people around the world set themselves the goal of writing 50,000 words without proofreading. The idea is to produce as much writing as possible during this month. It’s next time that the challenge of editing takes place.

is twitter changing your blogging habits? (original post) Yes and no. Twitter is replacing instant messaging and chatrooms. It’s an open method by which for people to communicate instantly with others. It’s also about the overheard conversation although that term has dissapeared. What does “overheard” mean? Well simply that whenever two people discuss a topic hundreds of people are following this conversation and when they decide they have an opinion they can cut in. They do have that 140 character limit though, so they need to get to the point is efficiently as possible. When that isn’t possible then they can do the next best thing. Write a comment in a blog post or even write a blog entry of their own where the conversation that took place on twitter is synthesised into a more digestible chunk of information. As a result twitter is changing people’s habits but the question is why people want to chat publicly rather than in an enclosed space. Today people like transparency.

It’s easy to get ideas but it’s harder to organise them and that’s where mind mapping software like Freemind comes in. It’s an easy to use open source solution that allows to create and share mind maps. I originally came across it when experimenting with it’s ipod touch and iphone counterpart, Ibluesky. It’s intuitive, allows for easy export for website integration, image and e-mail to desktops for further work.

Today I went to try the new macbook pro and macbooks and I found that I prefered the macbook to the other device. I like that the keyboard is there and there’s nothing to the side. it’s a better feeling machine for when you move around. The biggest difference between these two machines and older models is the touchpad interface. Rather than have a seperate button and tactile area both are integrated. press down on the touchpad and you’ve got the same reaction as when you pressed the button. Use two fingers and you scroll. Use three fingers in apps like iphoto and you move from one picture to another. Use four fingers and there are three reactions. The first is when going up then down. It minimises the window, to the sides and it changes apps. Down and you go to see several windows. It’s not as intuitive as it sounds. Whilst the trackpad is a nice idea I think it’s going to take people some getting used to. At first it was really great but within a few minutes I would accidentaly drag things across, select something I didn’t want to or other. In brief whilst it’s meant to be intuitive it wasn’t.

Having just noticed that the new gmail application for S60 is out I have noticed some interesting new features, the most interesting of which for some of you may be the accounts tab so that you may use more than one gmail account at once. Other features include Chats, outbox, mobile drafts, Chat, contacts and more. One of the more interesting options now is that you can search through your e-mails straight from the application on the phone rather than using the website. As a result it’s far easier to find that particular e-mail with flight information or the route you were planning on taking.