Last week disaster struck - the screen on my trusty MacBook Air died. It had been my regular computer since 2012 but as someone else pointed out I had already replaced the motherboard, the keyboard, the charger (four times) and the battery so maybe it had seen its day. It certainly is the longest I have ever had a computer without needing to upgrade it to something newer and faster.
I have spoken in public perhaps over hundred times and yet before every presentation my hands shake and I have a funny feeling in my stomach. If I have to use a hand-held microphone you will even be able to see the shake.
This is not nerves or me being afraid. This is adrenaline pumping through my body. This is perfectly normal so I just accept it and go ahead with the presentation.
You've probably noticed that I use some pretty big photos on each blog post here. That should mean big file sizes - but it doesn't have to.
When you take a high resolution digital photo and simply resize it for your web site you are NOT compressing it. Or if you are, then you are probably not compressing it as much as you could be.
I use a macbook air as my only computer and I do not have an external display. This means that my screen has a maximum resolution of 1440 x 900.
For those of you with multiple monitor setups you might think it is odd but it works for me and forces me to concentrate on the task at hand (or it would if I didn't have a tablet and phone as well).
We all know that size really does matter no matter what some nice people might tell you but does length matter as well? There is no point in writing great content if nobody will read it so length does matter - line length that is - what else did you think I was talking about.
Every conference I attend I am amazed at how bad many of the slide decks are. It's not as if people are rushing them or creating them at the last minute. They have been created with a lot of time and care they just suck.
I have a few rules when I create a slide deck. If you follow them then you won't upset me, you will ensure your audience remembers the key points and you will save yourself time.
If you are anything like me then you are regularly taking screenshots to share online. There are many different ways to do this but they all have their limitations. I don't like limits and I do like speed and to be in control of my own data.
In my last post I explained that I have purchased a funky domain name http://tee.mn and set it up with YOURLS so that I can create and manage my own short url service.
My next task was to find a way to use this domain to quickly and easily share my screenshots.
I like short urls (shurls). I like being able to create memorable links to anything on the internet. I like being able to see statistics on who else has followed the link.
There are many online services that offer this but when you are not in control of your own data you can get burned and I got burned badly when a short url service stopped working a while back and I lost all those saved urls. So I stopped creating shurls and I missed it.
So you've seen this blog and others like it and think you can do it yourself? Well it's not that easy and I regularly fail but I thought in the spirit of openness and transparency that I should share my top ten tips to creating a successful blog.
If you follow these ten tips you are well on the way to creating a blog as successful as many others that you see online.
