Tag archives for themself - Page 4
2015 Top Ten Posts on Themself
During 2015 Themself had 14,500 visitors who viewed 22,640 posts/pages according to the Jetpack stats. The 2015 Top Ten Posts are a bit different from the 2014 Top Ten Posts, although there are some in both lists. I've commented in the list to show you last year's placing for the older posts. I've written 128 new posts & 1 new page in 2015, which added 81,509 words. That's enough for a novel. I also forked the games and military history bits over to which has had a number of unique posts. The originals are still here on Themself, but as I get round to it I will be setting the SEO so that they canonical version is on Hot Blood & Cold Steel. That's another thing new in 2015, I started using the Yeast SEO plugin late in the year.…
B203 Exam tomorrow
The exam for B203 is tomorrow afternoon, I can't honestly say that I've done enough prep for it but all I need is a pass. I've already done enough to secure a 2:1 for my degree and this is the last of the mandatory modules I need to do. It's also the least favourite of the modules I've done. Tomorrow night it will be done, barring the need for a resit if I fail the exam. Instead of blogging I've been cramming theory on Operations Management, Information Management, Accounting & Finance, Marketing and HR Management into my head. I've also been putting my notes into a personal wiki that you can find at if you too are one of the people studying B203 with the open university. Let me know if you find it useful. Next up will be T317…
Could You Write Five Million Words?
Five million words. That's about a hundred NaNoWriMo winners worth of words. More than most authors will publish in a lifetime. Yet it's not far off what you need to write to become a good writer. Ten Thousand Hours There's a theory, most famously expounded by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers, that you need to spend about ten thousand hours practicing a skill before you get to the world class level. He cites The Beatles and Bill Gates amongst others as examples of this. There's more to success than just putting in the hours, but it certainly counts for a big chunk of it. So what counts as practice as a writer? You'd think this was obvious, writing stuff, and maybe a bit of reading. However I'd disagree with that, or rather modify it a bit. What I think makes you increase…
Twenty Years on the Internet
(Photo credit: Wikipedia) It's so long ago that I've forgotten the exact date, but I first used the internet in February 1995 when I was working as a local system administrator for the UK Energy Efficiency Office. I had a second-hand 386 laptop with a 9,600 baud modem in it and I mainly got usenet through a now long defunct CompuServe account (with the snappy and memorable as my email address). My primary use of the internet was for work, I was finding out about Novell NetWare admin and Groupwise as the mail client + server software. However there were no official internet accounts, and no way of getting sign off for one. That said, everything was done in-house, with the odd specialist contractor to add expertise. So I just got on with using one of the free CDs that…
Six Steps to Blog Posts People Read
One of my oldest friends asked me for some advice on writing a blog and attracting a following. He asked me because I've been blogging for decades and have written hundreds of posts, the most popular of which get thousands of hits. It made me think, here's how I think you should write a blog that people will want to read. NB lots of people bang on about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) but if you write good content in a readable way then it ought to hit the search engines fine. Well written and thought provoking content presented well will beat keyword stuffing any day of the week. 1. Pick a subject and be insightful By this I mean write about something you really know and care about. A topic you think about and can make insightful or thought provoking commentary…