sidelanes.com

I drink club soda and I ride a motorcycle. I’m considering taking up hangliding and skydiving as well as alligator wrestling and a few other bold activities.

Contents under pressure!

How about this:
WARNING!
READING WARNING LABELS AND TAKING THEM SERIOUSLY CAN CAUSE EXTREME PARANOIA AND IN SOME CASES MAY LEAD TO INSTITUTIONALIZATION. UPON ENCOUNTERING ANY WARNING LABEL PLEASE CONSIDER THE RISKS OF READING IT AND REMEMBER THAT YOU DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK.

What are blog readers? They’re simple programs that bring all your online content into one place. They make it easy for you to read the newest and latest stuff from your favorite sites. In short, they’re great organization tools.

Since blog readers help you organize, they save time! You won’t have to go from website to website just to get the most current information — simply subscribe to your favorite sites in your blog reader and you’ll see the updates there — without having to visit each site directly. Take a look:

So what are you waitin’ for? Click on my SUBSCRIBE link (here or at the top right of the page) and get a FREE account with one of the popular blog readers. Once you sign up, you’ll wonder how you ever got by without it!

You… do you want to do write 1000 words a day? I thought you might. Let me let you in on a little secret I discovered called Copyblogger. I found the site a little over a year ago and I haven’t told too many people about it so, you’re getting in on the ground level… okay I’ll stop talking like that.

But I do want to say I’ve been coming back to their site for more advice ever since I first discovered them. Why else would I write a headline like the one that made you read this post? It’s #1 on the list from 10 sure-fire headline formulas that work.

Copyblogger is a blog that tells you how to become a better writer, especially if you’re writing copy or blogging.

Anyway, recently I discovered a post on Copyblogger that caught my attention: 20 warning signs your content sucks. Number 17 says, “You write less than 1000 words a day”. Well, if you read that post, you’ll discover there’s a lot of warning signs that apply to my blog; Augh! That’s another story, forget I mentioned it. Let’s talk about number 17 since it’s the one that got my attention.

I asked myself honestly if I write 1000 words a day. I don’t. I tried to add up all my daily emails and IM’s — those count, it’s writing — but it still didn’t come close to 1000 words. The only time I write that much is when I’m working on a special project, like a short story or article, etc. And I think what Copyblogger’s referring to when they say 1000 words — actual content; stories, articles, etc.

So, that’s my goal for the month of July: write 1000 words a day. I’m going to take the advice of Copyblogger and see if my writing improves. But hey, it’ll be our little secret okay, don’t tell anybody. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime so if you decide to join me, keep it hush and happy writing!

My wife and I celebrated the completion of the 2nd draft of my novel last week. We went out to dinner and toasted to my small victory.

Actually, calling it a small victory may not be the best choice of words, since it felt like a pretty significant victory. It was tough to stay committed to this project. I thought writing a novel would be a far easier task than it’s turned out to be; one time through, hand it to an editor, be done with it! I was wrong.

I recently realized how wrong I was when I took a short class on writing a novel. The instructor was a published author who told me she had about 15 drafts before she was able to call it good. FIFTEEN!!!

Personally, I don’t plan to create 15 drafts, but I do anticipate several more drafts on my project. At least one, maybe two or more before I’m ready to hand it over to a select few people for feedback. Once I’ve got some feedback, I plan to do a couple more drafts — including an edit from a professional editor.

Right now, I’m going to put the project away for a short while and wait for inspiration to put draft number 3 in motion. I’m not sure when that will be, but I have a tentative goal to get it done by the next Nanowrimo 2010, in November. A month in which a new book will likely find it’s beginnings.

So, to sum up how I got to this point: when I did Nanowrimo 2009, I completed most of my first draft. I wrote all through November and about two weeks into December. I then harvested the high points from the plot/characters and put them on 3×5 cards that I stuck on a bulliten-board that remains a permanent fixture in my house.

My writing board and my muse

The breakdown:

1st draft – 2.5 months (Working daily, several hours a day)
2nd draft – 4.5 months (Working weekly, on a doable minimum schedule)

The above 7 months of work has actually taken me over 9 months with all the breaks I’ve taken on the project. Completion — if it sees the light of day —will easily take more than a year. I hope it sees the light of day, but I still may decide to shelf it. I reserve the right to shelf it! And if I do, well, all will not be lost.

Writing this novel has been fun, it’s been difficult, but it’s also been a great learning experience. One which I plan to do again and again!

I think if I was a professional author, working only on my project, then 4-6 months would be a reasonable time-frame to complete a novel. Since I work full time and write novels on the side — even though I haven’t finished one yet — I’d say a year and a half to 2 years would be reasonable. But that’s just a projection.

So… if you’re writing a novel, or planning on writing a novel, hopefully my experience will shed some light on the subject. Thanks for reading and keep writing!

I recently needed to find out the optimal height to design for when building a website. This is sometimes called “the fold” height, a term borrowed from newspaper displays. Basically, the fold refers to anything seen on screen without the user scrolling.

Ideally, keeping important content “above the fold” will allow the user to understand what the website is about without having to scroll in their browser — a reasonable goal when laying out a webpage.

Anyway, I thought I’d share some of my results from the research I did. Defining an exact pixel number can be tricky, so I made this graphic to give an idea of heights in pixels. http://www.laughcard.com/hi.html

Go ahead and view the graphic on your friends, coworkers and neighbors computers. This will give you an idea of all the little things you have to keep in mind; toolbars, menu bars, window decoration, system bars, browser window sizes, etc.

There’s a lot to consider, but I want to define a number or at least a range in which to design for. I came across this website boxesandarrows that stated “the three highest fold locations were 570, 590 and 600 pixels—apparently from different browsers running on 1024×768 screens.” It was talking about another study conducted.

Based on my research, I would say less than 600 pixels tall is a good height to design for. If I was to give a range, it would be between 550 and 600 pixels tall. There is a lot to consider, but those are some pretty decent numbers for the time being, which of course is subject to change…

Also, here’s a cool tool I found for measuring the users browser size and placing content:
http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/