This month I’ve decided to start this list at the beginning of the month and add to it as I go along, rather than trying to retrace what I’ve been doing (like I did last month). The latter approach takes forever and is prone to losing something I did in the process.
Starting this list early means I can easily add to it, and even schedule the date of publication. It works great both for scheduling as well as a victory log.
Super Survivor Project
I’ve spent the second half of May writing more of my book, something I’ve taken a break from for over two months. To see where I stand, I printed the whole 400+ pages out and bound them using 1″ book rings (just about fits). The book is definitely coming together, but there’s so much more I want to say. It will probably take me the better part of June finish t.
I gave myself an (already extended) deadline: Broken Bowels shall be released on the 4th of July, which means I need to deliver the final manuscript to Amazon no later than June 30th 2018.
My original plan was to have it all done by the end of March but I had reached a point at which it just didn’t flow anymore. As I later found out it was the premise that wasn’t working for me. The more I thought about it, the less I felt that an account of the events as they happened during my cancer journey wasn’t telling the whole story.
What was fascinating me more and more was the question, “how did I survive this ordeal – both mentally and physically”. And as soon as I started writing with that question in mind, things kept flowing like never before. Hence I’m very happy to report that I’m back in the game, hitting the keys almost every day and I’m very much enjoying it!
I had several very successful sessions that yielded more than 4200 words per day (about 20 A4/Letter pages) and the whole project is becoming more than what I had envisioned it to be when I started it. Here’s what I did in detail:
The other day I had to print out a rather large file to sift through. It was about 20 pages long, and being the economically conscious guy that I am, I wanted to print this document double sided to safe some paper.
Turns out my (relatively cheap) printer, the HP 4620, does not have such an option built in by default. However, the included printer driver does allow for odd or even pages to be printed manually. With a bit of thinking and elbow grease, perhaps this is an adventure worth exploring.
But how do we do it exactly, and what settings do we use? Lucky for us both that I took some notes when I did it last time so we can do it again next time.
Did I mention that my book LAMP Stack for Humans is also available in paperback format?
Actually it has been for several months now, and it slipped my mind to share this news with you. LIfe’s just too busy I guess. Amazon are kind enough to offer it alongside the Kindle edition, so if you want a printed and nicely bound guide on how to build your own LAMP stack, here you go.
The printed version is a lovely 6 x 9″ (15 x 23cm) large book with matte finish, about 1″ thick and weighs about a pound (413g to be exact). Printed with love in South Carolina as soon as you order it.
Amazon have introduced Twitch Prime, which gives users access to Prime Video
Amazon actually own Twitch since August 2014…
And my final tech discovery this month, “new isn’t always better”. I already knew that. However it manifests in such contemporary facts like WordPress websites: PHP 7.2 is not compatible with many of my client’s websites. Instead, many still require PHP 5.6 or they simply won’t run.
Miscellaneous Discoveries
Website of artist Eric Budivitch, my first ever Patreon supporter!
In this screencast I’ll demonstrate how to pixelate or obfuscate text in Photoshop.
I usually use Skitch for such things, but one day it wasn’t working, and all I had to hand was Photoshop – so I hunted around and found that it works just as well. It’s just knowing what to click. Once I figured that out, I thought why not share it with the world.
Here are some written instructions, just in case you’re not a video person.
Using the rectangular marquee tool (M), draw a selection around the area you’d like to pixelate.
Now head over to Filter – Pixelate – Mosaic to bring up a little dialogue box.
Here you can select the Cell Size, meaning how pixelated you’d like the selection to appear. Photoshop even gives you a preview option – how nice is that?
When you’re happy, click OK and Photoshop will burn your pixelation into the selected layer. Press CMD+D to deselect the marquee, or head over to Select – De-select. Next, share your anonymous masterpiece with the world.
It’s been a very productive month for me, more so than I had expected. I must admit that before I started compiling lists of what I’ve been doing with my time I had the subtle feeling of “slacking off” too much. Looks like that’s not the case after all 🙂
In keeping with the Japanese Kaizen movement, I’ll try to write future lists during the month rather than retrospectively. I’ll be so much quicker and won’t take half a day trying to remember where I put what. Without further ado, here’s what I’ve been doing with my time in April 2018: Continue reading Created in April 2018→
Last month I’ve printed three books I had a (shady) PDF version of. They were all old Commodore computer books full of good knowledge and have sadly been out of print for decades.
My first attempt at getting hard copies from those was at a local copy shop, who were kind enough to print and bind the files onto US Letter paper for me. While the result looks great, the size of such a document is rather huge. Imagine a 500 page book: it consists of 250 pages printed double-sided, comb-bound on the left. The total cost was $60. Yikes!
When I do research, I come across a plethora of interesting links on the internet. I always tell myself, “I really must remember this link”, but then I never write them down or add them to my bookmarks (believe, I’ve tried that once – only to find that my bookmarks were overflowing to a point in which I could no longer find what was really important).
Then I came across a blog whose owner simply compiled a monthly “link dump” to paste anything he deemed interesting. I thought, what a cool idea is that, perhaps this could work for me and any discoveries too.
In the past I once had a category on my other website just for links, and when there is something I’d rather not forget I tend to add it to my Twitter feed – but the trouble with those things is that I don’t do this with enough regularity for me to remember it as a notebook of where things are. A new category for discoveries seems to be right up my alley.
So here it is, the first instalment of interesting links I’ve discovered over the last 30 days (with omissions of course, because I’ve forgotten most of them already):
IDEA Instructions – a collection of IKEA-style comics that explain principles of computer science (such as Quick Sort). They even come with a template to create your own!
To be continued – thank god for the shared history feature in Safari!
This month I’ve setup a Patreon campaign so that people from all walks of life can support all my many projects on an ongoing basis. As part of that, I though it might be an interesting idea to give supporters an idea to see what exactly I’m doing with my time, and as a result what I’m creating.
So starting today, here’s a list of things I’ve created during the last month. It’s quite an eye opener, even for myself. Usually what I create – be it writing, images, videos, setting up new projects, et cetera – is spread across many different places. I always knew that I create a lot, but as soon as I hit the “publish” button it becomes “the past”, and I tend to look ahead rather than behind me.
These little lists are a nice reminder of one’s hard work throughout the month. I’ll try to devote some time on the last day of every month going forward to compile what I’ve done. If I find the time, I might even go back and add more lists retrospectively.
Let’s start things off with what I’ve been adding to the world wide web in March 2018:
I’ve spent the second half of May writing more of my book, something I’ve taken a break from for over two months. To see where I stand, I printed the whole 400+ pages out and bound them using 1″ book rings (just about fits). The book is definitely coming together, but there’s so much more I want to say. It will probably take me the better part of June finish t.