• At last year’s Christmas party, my publishers implored us to start blogging and tweeting and doing whatever we could on the internet. Well I’ve been doing that for the last thirteen years!

    I decided that I would try and blog everyday so that I could show what a waste of time it was. If I spent a whole year working away at it, and nothing came of it, then I could prove it was pointless.

    This morning, having won yet another minor victory in the endless learning curve that is the Joomla Content Management System, I had that, “Is it really all worth the hassle?” feeling again. I’m thinking of putting all my old experiments in online ebooks back on my site, but I thought I’d make them available only to registered users. Eventually, I might think about charging for them. So I opened up my registration window to the world and immediately received a spam registration, which makes me think it’s insecure and that I should give up the idea as not worth the hassle.

    But a little research finds the information I need. More to learn and implement. Maybe I should employ someone to do this? Actually I’m enjoying it. I’m building up an incredible knowledge and confidence in my abilities as a webmaster.

    I was listening to the wonderful Bob Proctor this morning. He was going on about persistence as usual. Well, I’m nothing if not persistent, but why is this website thing such a struggle? Then he said something so simple – so obvious, it’s the kind of thing that goes in one ear and straight out the other, but today I heard it.

    If I am trying to prove that all my effort is a waste of time, then that’s the outcome I deserve! Duh! Isn’t that really, really obvious?

    So, from today, I’m changing my mindset. All the effort I’ll put into my website will be to prove my publishers right – that blogging and tweeting, YouTubing and is all really, really worth it. Watch this space!

  • Okay this is a little weird because I’m recording this blog post on my iPhone and I’m just talking straight into it and I’m not doing any typing at all.

    I’m having to think and talk a little more slowly than usual because if I talk too fast, my words will slur and the machine will get confused.

    Talking slowly means that my brain is not working at normal speed and so what I want to say is not coming out in a natural kind of way. However this is my first blog post that has not been typed at all. It’s all being done just by speaking into my iPhone and the Dragon dictation software sorts it out.

    Now I’m typing. I had to correct about four words and put in the punctuation. You would do this when editing anyway. Very interesting. Maybe talking more slowly and clearly is a skill worth practicing?

  • Here’s a video that shows some of the tricks I’ve learned and worked out over the years, for making life a bit easier when drawing pen and ink illustrations. Hope you will enjoy it. If you have any questions put them in the comments box.