Sunday, January 14, 2007
Lazy Day
Bit of a lazy day today. Slept till lunchtime though this was one of those occasions where I would rather not have. The house was kept quiet so I could kip - are the rest trying to tell me something?
After brunch I finished off the rabbit hutch, clipping their nails and giving them a quick groom, then I got the guitar out. Amazingly I remembered the A, E and D chords easily and was able to switch a bit quicker than yesterday. I started work on chords C and G, which is a good wee range. That's me finished working through the first book (I did say it was a small one), but these chords are enough to be going on for now.
I intend to do a little each day, even if just for 10 or 15 minutes. Hopefully I can build up enough calluses on my fingers and wrist memory that the repetitive strain will go away. It's a bit like typing for long periods in that you get small focussed strains.
I discovered also, that as well as the exercises in the book, the chords I am learning are also ample for playing some actual songs. For instance, the classic Madness hit, You're Wonderful, uses these chords in its entirety. I got the CD out and used the Madness track to practice against. It made it a bit easier and made me feel like I was actually getting somewhere.
For some reason when I checked my new freelance website it was displaying code in places and blanks in others. Not sure what I did so I had to rip it out and do a couple of pages again. I took some notes down for the new-look fiction site, but I'm not in so much of a hurry over that. I changed the non-fiction page to link straight to the freelance site. I will launch it shortly.
I tidied all the press releases on my website. The links were fine but as far as distribution goes it makes more sense to have them downloadable as PDF's rather than linking to an external website. I'm putting together a kind of Press Kit, which will contain FAQ's, info on my books, quotes etc.
A couple of my writing friends have moved their blogs from Blogger to Wordpress. I set up a dummy site to take a look and play around with. I've not had too much trouble with Blogger apart from the downtime, unreliability and annoyingly enforced changes to function, I quite like it. If Wordpress looks to do the same job but without so much interference, I might consider a move. Meantime, I'll watch closely how my pals get on with it. Their experience will be important.
And that's about it. I watched some telly at night and crossed my fingers for an early rise tomorrow morning. I have to get back in the habit as I fell I am losing time each day by missing my 5:15am alarm.
After brunch I finished off the rabbit hutch, clipping their nails and giving them a quick groom, then I got the guitar out. Amazingly I remembered the A, E and D chords easily and was able to switch a bit quicker than yesterday. I started work on chords C and G, which is a good wee range. That's me finished working through the first book (I did say it was a small one), but these chords are enough to be going on for now.
I intend to do a little each day, even if just for 10 or 15 minutes. Hopefully I can build up enough calluses on my fingers and wrist memory that the repetitive strain will go away. It's a bit like typing for long periods in that you get small focussed strains.
I discovered also, that as well as the exercises in the book, the chords I am learning are also ample for playing some actual songs. For instance, the classic Madness hit, You're Wonderful, uses these chords in its entirety. I got the CD out and used the Madness track to practice against. It made it a bit easier and made me feel like I was actually getting somewhere.
For some reason when I checked my new freelance website it was displaying code in places and blanks in others. Not sure what I did so I had to rip it out and do a couple of pages again. I took some notes down for the new-look fiction site, but I'm not in so much of a hurry over that. I changed the non-fiction page to link straight to the freelance site. I will launch it shortly.
I tidied all the press releases on my website. The links were fine but as far as distribution goes it makes more sense to have them downloadable as PDF's rather than linking to an external website. I'm putting together a kind of Press Kit, which will contain FAQ's, info on my books, quotes etc.
A couple of my writing friends have moved their blogs from Blogger to Wordpress. I set up a dummy site to take a look and play around with. I've not had too much trouble with Blogger apart from the downtime, unreliability and annoyingly enforced changes to function, I quite like it. If Wordpress looks to do the same job but without so much interference, I might consider a move. Meantime, I'll watch closely how my pals get on with it. Their experience will be important.
And that's about it. I watched some telly at night and crossed my fingers for an early rise tomorrow morning. I have to get back in the habit as I fell I am losing time each day by missing my 5:15am alarm.
Colin 7:51 am