• I’m visiting Dorchester Primary School, near Kingston, Surrey (where I was born) on Monday. I’m doing a whole day of Just So Stories, so I’ve done this drawing lesson of a Baby Elephant for them. Don’t do the drawing yet, I’ll be showing you how first thing Monday!

  • Santa's Secret PodcastDuh! I guess that’s what makes publishers publishers – they think like publishers. We who spend all our time at the creative edge are not thinking abut markets or marketing. There I am busily starting to work on Craig Mnure, when really I should be working like mad on Santa’s Secret Diary, which is not only out of print, but all the rights have reverted to me.

    The basic book is still good and relevant, but there are one or two parts that could do with updating – CdPlayers should be updated to Mp3 players and the toy that everyone wants wants for mChristmas needs to be changed. I called it a Grommit twenty years ago – a cuddly furry thing that every child desires – not knowing that Wallace and Grommit were coming along hard on my heels!

    I think it’s worth pulling the stops out to see if I can sell a few copies before Christmas. I certainly don’t have the manuscript file for this one! I wrote it on a Smith Corona word processor that had it’s own proprietary disks that I’ve never seen since. Better get my skates on!

    If you can’t wait, click here or click the picture to get Santa’s Secret Podcast – the audio version of the book.

  • spider on keyboard
    About eighteen months ago, my site was hacked and trashed. I vowed not to get too deeply involved again and let those who know what they are doing take the strain.

    But I’ve been seduced back into trying things out – mostly through a desire to make my drawing videos available in schools. As I’ve sorted out and learned new things, new ideas have come into my head and I’ve started thinking about all sorts of new projects. Then I had a strange email from Digilante, which I mentioned in a previous post, which set the alarm bells ringing again.

    This morning I was going through my 404s, those are the requests made to my website that were unsuccessful. This is a useful habit as it helps to find files that are missing or links that are broken, but it also shows when you are being probed.

    Someone is asking for files that have never existed on my site. That someone, a robot crawler or something, is looking for weaknesses, like a fox sniffing around a chicken run, looking for a bit of wire that’s gone rusty.

    This morning, I was also researching systems by which hackers can take over your site to post links back to their site in the single minded attempt to get themselves to the top of Google search results. Most of the sites they are pushing are of the unsavoury type or they are sites without any content, or content stolen from others, which are purely designed to fool you to go to their site so you will click on an advertising link. Reading the forums of these people makes me feel quite queasy. There is a total lack of morality involved in this business.

    When I first went on the internet in 1997, it was a wonderful experience. Everyone was a pioneer, everyone helped each other out. If you look at all those billions of pages that Google searches through, about 80% of it is swill and, going on the Pareto Principle, that 80% is produced by 20% of people running websites on the net. I suppose it is easier to be immoral, if not criminal, on the net because you never see the damage you are doing to others. Those posting on SEO site forums are only interested in advancing their totally useless sites and they don’t care whose site or reputation they trash on the way up.

    I think it really is time to admit that the internet has changed and become very complicated. I just don’t have the time or the inclination to try and stay one step ahead.